Random disconnected NR2003 thoughts

[beeze_costello]

“What’s so dangerous? Why do I have to be a trained professional?” I think to myself as I hit semi-colon at the beginning of the ai_line_modifier line in the track ini

 

[TChapman500]

I wish I had taken notes on what that line does when I experimented with it.

 

[beeze_costello]

I wish I had taken notes on what that line does when I experimented with it.

I think it’s something like how much the AI is allowed to deviate from the race lp. To be honest, when I have the time to burn I need to just toy around with putting absurd values in each line to see what everything does

 

[Mystical]

The last several months have been pretty much revamping my entire backend of home systems creating my own self hosting setup using my old pcs and also migrating away from Windows to Linux. Its honestly been crazy. This all started in June 2025 when I found out the latest version of the issue tracker I used (YouTrack) no longer offered an installation file but rather ran in locally hosted docker systems. (I'll get to where NR2003 fits into this lol)

It led down a rabbit hole of "wow I can take my old pc's, self host many apps that can be accessed anywhere on my home network, I can even setup my own file sharing system using old drives or get a NAS" which led to finding a ton of new open source docker apps, which led to learning Linux is better for servers than windows, which led to realizing even my daily driver pc I want to move to Linux after seeing its customization and freedom. Linux isn't perfect but avoiding Microslops AI injection in Windows 11 and whatever the nightmare Windows 12 will be, I'm glad I skipped out now. I just personally don't trust Microslop is going to be good stewards of AI and stealing more data/personal info and dangerous AI loopholes as it becomes more and more ingrained in the system. Of course, the big selling thing for me is once I saw I can install and play NR2003 on linux and all its apps perfectly (and better in some cases) than windows I was sold to move lol

Long story short, part of this process is also a revamp on my complete NR2003 projects in terms of efficiency, tooling, and pipeline workflow. For example some of the projects I finished or currently working on:

• re-rendering all my ICR paint schemes with the newly released blender scene I made, I don't have to do this but I like consistency so making all the renders look the same. Especially sicne the render scenes are used for my startign grid cards. Marmoset Toolbag is a great 3D Renderer but Blender to render just working on linux natively is quicker and anything I make I can share with others since blender is widely used in NR2003 community more
• the racing videos I upload I made the starting grid/post race graphics even more automated using python scripting to take the nr2003 html race results and auto-reorder my starting grid driver cards for my composition in Davinci Resolve, I no longer have to manually sort for 'each' race. I just get the starting grid driver list, run my script in my driver cards image directory and it orders them for me (I haven't actually shown the new starting grid graphics but its pretty great)
• learning Krita (Affinity works through translation in linux, but just incase Affinity never gets a Linux version I want a good paint program backup that is fast and snappy and Krita has been really great so far. Found a lot of good addons and already started porting over my ICR paint scheme templates so I can paint schemes using Krita when I want.
• and a lot more things!

Did I really need to go through this entire thing? Probably not but honestly its been very satisfying, learned (and still learning so much) feel like I leveled up in terms of flexibility. I've always been very "go against the grain" when it comes to creating stuff, for example I dropped Adobe the moment they removed perpetual licenses and only allowed Subscriptions. Many stayed out of fear having to re-learn entire programs but I just immediately went to competitors like Affinity even if the initial feature set wasn't as robust as Photoshop/Illustrator. Then Blender, wasn't widely used in the NR2003 community but I was the first to use it to do all my modeling for my mods. Everyone before then making mods seemed to do 'everything' in 3DS Max but I wasn't about to try and model in the old 3DS Max 8 program lol. So at the end of the day my expanded toolset and branching out means my options to pivot is much easier and reliance on a single tool or program isn't the end all for me.

Things are slow turning now but the end result will be a lot less friction and output in the future will be better. I definitely want to get back to presenting, painting, and racing ICR series again in the short term.

Soon™

 

[DaleTona75]

I've been stuck in a rut regarding NR2003, mainly in the name of trying to figure out what I want to do. In the past I have dabbled in silly season carsets, particularly back around 2015, but doing that for say 2027 doesn't quite feel the same, primarily due to the fact that with the charters, a team must contract for one to expand, limiting the ability for interesting part timers and team expansions, and outside of maybe JRM, there are not a lot of really interesting teams rumored who could join the Cup Series.

I guess as I've gotten older I've lost that sense of wonder and adventure that I used to have.

 

[mtblillie]

I feel similarly. I still feel the desire to do things, create things that pop in my head. I just don't have as much energy to do them anymore. Or at least, I don't have the energy to make the time for it anymore.

 

[DaleTona75]

One of the things I've recently been doing as part of my most recent project is "weighting" paint schemes based on how often they appeared IRL.

How I do this is I make 10 copies of one driver, then look up roughly how many races a season a particular paint scheme ran, and then assign the tga files accordingly.

So for Example, with Kasey Kahne's 2007 ride, I have made 3 schemes: Dodge Dealers (primary), McDonalds (alt1), and Mopar (alt2)

So the driver list would look like
Slots 1-6: Dodge Dealers
Slots 7-8: McDonalds
Slots 9-10: Mopar

This allows for a more realistic spread of paint scheme variation where the primaries still appear most often, but the other schemes can appear as well.

Also this has a bonus effect of evening out the ratings bias towards drivers with multiple schemes over those with only one, as NR2003 chooses whichever file has the highest ratings.

 

[motorwerkracing]

The .wavs for the external engine sounds are pitched 250 RPM too low, and the cockpit sounds are 175 RPM under.

 

[TChapman500]

How would you be able to tell that?

 

[motorwerkracing]

How would you be able to tell that?

I used Engine Simulator and some hex editing to tease out the proper RPM for each sample. I will be posting my research soon in a separate thread which decodes some important values in the winston.ces file.

 

[motorwerkracing]

I used Engine Simulator's dyno hold feature with a test inline 8, and some hex editing to tease out the proper RPM for each sample. I will be posting my research soon in a separate thread which decodes some important values in the winston.ces file.

EDIT: here.

 

[motorwerkracing]

"Shiny mips whose brightest shade is (128,128,128) and F1DANZA'S reflection mips go perfectly together"