First of all, I think I can speak for a lot of us that we're extremely grateful for having such an abundance of historic tracks at this level of quality. Not to mention the plethora of appropriate cars. Now, for the sake of making it a lot easier to match car/class with an appropriate track on the fly I'd suggest naming the historic tracks according to the layouts rather than a specific year. I did a little online research and would suggest something like this: Adelaide 1985-1995 Hockenheim 1970-1980 Hockenheim 1982-1991 Hockenheim 1999-2001 Imola 1953-1972 Imola 1985-1994 Imola 1995-2006 Interlagos 1970-1977 Interlagos Outer 1978-89 Jacarepaguá 1977-1994 Jacarepaguá 1995-2005 Jacarepaguá Oval 1995-2005 Jacarepaguá 2010-2012 Jacarepaguá SCB 2010-2012 Jacarepaguá Short 2010-2012 Kyalami 1961-1987 Montreal 1988-1990 Monza Road Course 1966-1971 Monza Road Junior 1966-1971 Monza Road + Oval 1959-1965 Monza Road + Oval 1966-1970 Monza 1995-1999 Nürburgring 1971-1982 Silverstone 1975-1986 Silverstone 1975-1986 No Chicane Silverstone 1991-1993 Silverstone 1997-2002 Spa-Francorchamps 1971-1978 Spa-Francorchamps 1983-1993 Spielberg 1969-1976 Spielberg 1977-1987 What do you think?
I recall reading that they tried this before with the F1 cars, but got into some trouble with copyright rules. Not quite sure how this works for other types of cars and racetracks.
The car's years should be the following (correct me of course): F-Vintage G1 = 1967 F-Vintage G2 = 1969 F-Retro G1 = 1974 F-Retro G2 = 1979 F-Retro G3 = 1983 F-Classic G1 = 1986 F-Classic G2 = 1988 F-Classic G3 = 1991 F-V12 = 1995 F-V10 G1 = 1997 F-V10 G2 = 2002 F-Reiza = 2012 F-Ultimate G1 = 2019 F-Ultimate G2 = 2022
Ngl im not a fan, as even within these years the tracks change. Curbs are reprofiled, trackside ads change etc. Imola in 2007 isnt really the same track as in 2022.
Maybe they could leverage the community for stuff like this. It would be cool if you could drop some xml files somewhere, which could override or add to the existing information for cars and tracks. This way the community could build accurate information about real models\dates of cars and extra information about tracks.
This would be great but only if it stayed in keeping with how Reiza have the Ui layer out, unlike the liveries which (while I appreciate the work) can look rather messy with all the different ways the preview images are taken.
Thats rather annoying but at least we know the reasoning behind it then. Would be nice to know if it could be implemented for cars where it wouldnt be an issue. I often find myself on google to find which cars raced on which historic layout when Im feeling nostalgic...
That's a fair point, and it would be a stretch with regards to trackside aesthetics, adds and so on. However, if the default dates are left as they are they would represent the exact version i.e. the day Reiza took the snapshot of the track, the date range should only roughly represent the overall layouts. Roughly. But suppose I wanted to do a short custom championship set in, say, 1992. Going through the layouts in the track selector it takes me less than 20 seconds to pick: Adelaide 1985-1995 Imola 1985-1994 Jacarepaguá 1977-1994 Silverstone 1991-1993 Spa-Francorchamps 1983-1993 You can do that with PC2. Strangely, you cannot set a date earlier than 1970 in-game (same in AMS2) but you can set the default date to anything you want by editing the text file.
Ah well, I suppose as the game matures, more and more stuff will eventually be unlocked for us to customize. If/when it will be possible to edit track info I will happily do that and share the docs for those interested. Shouldn't take more than 10 minutes to fix.