Tracks Thomson Road Grand Prix - Singapore

[aphidgod]

Soon. (No "TM")

 

[Fat-Alfie]

Alfie, thanks to you Thomson Road is getting quite popular for sim racers !

Have a look at how many times Thomson Road was mentioned in the comments in the article about the favourite sim racing track.

http://www.racedepartment.com/threads/have-your-say-your-favourite-sim-racing-track.132448/

Well done !!

That being said I need to drive it urgently. Wouldn't mind having a go with that Lola T70

Wow, I wouldn't have expected even a single mention

Thank you, though, to anyone who has taken the time to download and try my track

 

[nericksenna84]

Well, I thought it was probably time I started a thread about this track. I started work on it about 3 weeks ago. I was looking at times from the 1967 Grand Prix championship, for the Lotus 49, when I saw the name Thomson Road in Singapore. I had never heard of it so Googled it, and so my journey began

It turns out it was a street circuit, half of it a twisty old road through the jungle, and the other half a newer, straighter section. It was used between 1961 and 1973, when it was cancelled due to financial and safety issues. It was badged as the Orient Year Grand Prix, the Malaysian Grand Prix and finally the Singapore Grand Prix once Singapore gained its independence. It measured just over 3 miles in length, or 4.865km, and featured sections such as The Murder Mile (the main straight which had a hump halfway along its length which caused the cars to take off at high speed), The Snakes (a series of twists and turns as the track climbed up through the jungle) and Devil's Bend (the most dangerous corner on the circuit). Seven lives were lost in the circuit's 11 year history. There were no run-off areas, most of the fast bends were surrounded by trees and the added 'feature' of 2 feet deep monsoon drains either side of the track didn't help either

Video footage is almost non-existant and DEM info for the area seemed to be limited to SMRT3 (90m), so only really of any use for the surrounding terrain.

1966 video

1970 video

The more digging I did the more info I uncovered. I found GPS data from people who had jogged around the circuit and uploaded the data to MapMyRun. I found a YouTube video of a cycle ride where the guy showed the elevation readout from his GPS bike computer, but both of these seemed wildly inaccurate compared to the on-board videos I found online

I decided to try a very quick test just to see if the circuit was worth pursuing in terms of a project for AC. I found the area on Google Earth, took a few screenshots to get the layout of the roads (which are still there and used as public roads). I downloaded the terrain of the area using this great site http://jthatch.com/Terrain2STL/ which enables you to download a 3D mesh of an area selected on the map. I imported this into 3ds max, subdivided it to smooth it out, and then simply draped my road over the terrain surface. I thought "this will give me a good enough idea of how the circuit drives - if it seems fun then I'll take it on as a project. If it's dull and flat then I won't waste any more time". I got it in-game, tried it out and immediately thought "Yep, this could be great!"

I started collating as much information as I could, photos, written articles, POV videos on YouTube, maps, everything I could find. The more I found, the more excited I got

I fell in love with the circuit's charm and innocence. Chicanes made from sandbags, spectators allowed to stand anywhere (and everywhere) they wanted, temporary pits and grandstands that were rebuilt and then demolished each year.

After a couple of weeks I ended up with a pretty good track in AC. I was fairly sure it was nowhere near being accurate (in terms of elevation changes) but the shape was correct (from the Google Earth images), the camber seemed right (from the YouTube POV videos) and more importantly to me, it felt great

I carried on working on it, making sure that cars took off going over The Hump (I was using the KTM X-Bow, which was lifting a few inches off the ground taking the hump at about 220kmh), even the lap record was comparable to my times in the Lotus 49. I carried on my research, finding a few more photos here and there, a few more articles written about the track, and then I hit the jackpot! I stumbled across the Singapore National Archive online, which had about 3000 photos taken all around the circuit, and more importantly, I found the official topographical maps from the 1960s, showing the ground height in 10 foot increments. There were even spot height marked on the roads in a few places! Bingo!

This meant that I had to effectively start again I couldn't carry on with my track using approximated elevation changes when I had all this new info. I decided to digitise the topographical maps, tracing every contour line in Illustrator (about 500 for the area I needed), imported these into 3ds max, ran them through a free plugin called Populate:Terrain which was able to convert these contour lines into a single 3D mesh

I did the same process again, draping my road over this new terrain (which now had 3m spacing, rather than my original 90m spacing), compared the new road to my original road, and to my amazement (and slight annoyance!) the two versions were remarkably similar. There were a couple of sections I had wrong, but on the whole I had been pretty close I quickly got this new circuit in-game to test out the new, 'correct' layout, and it felt great! I love this circuit so much I really feels like a mini Nordschleife in places, twisting and turning through the forest/jungle, mad hairpin turns, lovely elevation changes, and when all those turns get too much for your concentration, a nice long straight to recover. It even has its own Flugplatz!

I am fairly confident in my track layout now. The shape is as correct as I can make it, the camber changes feel good, the elevation changes feel great, creating a few blind crests which are so much fun. I am still driving on the 16k poly visual mesh but now the layout changes all appear to be done I think it's time I start work on a high-resolution physical mesh, and give this track some 'feel'. If people are interested to try it out I would be more than happy to send links via PM, or I could simply upload my latest beta to my Dropbox and add a link here. I doubt I would be overwhelmed with requests and breach my bandwidth limit

Now I have my first WIP thread I will try to remember to upload images of my progress. I don't think it will take too long to complete, especially with the knowledge and experience I have gained through making Bilster Berg and the Deutschlandring, and the fact that half the circuit runs through the jungle, and that things like the grandstands and timing buildings were made from wooden planks and bamboo

(thanks for reading, and let me know if you want a copy to try)

What an amazing story and really great to read ! Thank you !