BHMS: Who came up with an idea for the GT Racing 2002 Mod and why exactly this racing series?

Marco Demontis: GTR2002 is born as a "son" of the original FIA GT for F1 2001. I would say that a GT mod for EA's F1 was originally my idea. I've realized by myself (with help from Marc Aarts and Turner) the first even GT mod exited for F1, the FIA GT Mod V1. Then I entered in the Simbin and we started to develop the updates for this mod, until the lastest one developed for f1 2001, the FIA GT Mod V3. Then, you already know the story for GTR 2002....
Why GT? I was always a fan of GT racing and each time the circus went in Monza for a race I was here, in the "prima variante" or at "Ascari". When I've decided to develop a GT mod for F1 (more than a year ago), I was known as a modeler/painter in the SCGT community.

BHMS: What made you decide to do this mod using the F1 2002 game engine?

Jan Frischkorn: The F1-200x series is the only game so far which offers a highly editable engine and convincing physics. Especially the F1-2002 physics are much better than the older releases of this series and offer a lot of new parameters for convincing closed wheel cars.

Marco Demontis: The main reason is the better engine and the better AI!

BHMS: When did the team start working on the mod and what were the 1st steps in development?

Marco Demontis: As I said, GTR 2002 is born starting from the "old" FIA GT V3. So the first step was making the graphical update (3d Meshes and paintings) for the cars already present in V3. The developing is started approximatively in late may.

BHMS: The 3D car models are great. How were they modelled and what is the average poly count for them? How did you draw the line between quality models and fast frame rate?

Perran Truran: The poly counts of the cars are very low compared to the original F1 2002 cars; a balance was made between the very high texture resolutions and the low poly count to give a comparable performance to the original game. All of the cars were modelled in Zmodeller apart from the Marcos which was made in 3dsMax (and converted by Marco from Zmodeller)

Marco Demontis: This is a good question! We have always used blueprints to perfectly match the 3d models to the real cars. Then we have resized the cars to match with real dimensions data like wheelbase, overall lenght and width etc. The main meshes are usually approx. 3500-4000 polygons "all inclusive"... The hardest step while developing a mod like this, with more than 30 cars on track in the same time, is to gain a good compromise between polycount/framerate and a high quality model... Everybody that knows how to use 3dS Max or Zmodeler is able to model a great mesh using 8000-10000 polygons... the hard step is to make the same using 4000....

BHMS: There are 8 new tracks in the GTR 2002 mod which were converted from Superbike 2002. Tell us all about them. How were they converted? Did you guys get a permission from Milestone...

Sean Vollmer: With the exception of Mugello all the tracks were converted from Superbike 2002. I can't supply much info about the conversion of the SBK tracks but what I do know is the following...
A converter was used to convert the SBK meshes into a Lightwave file and the Lightwave file was run through Deep Explorer and exported as a WRL file. This WRL file was then imported into Max using scripts that Neil wrote which automatically changed all the materials to Multi/Sub-Object. Once the work in Max was completed the meshes where then exported using the original ISA Max plugins to export as MTS files. Perhaps Marc/Ian can supply more details about the SBK tracks since I was working on Mugello while the rest where busy with the SBK tracks.

I will concentrate on Mugello. Mugello originally came from GP500 which I converted to SCGT about 3 years ago. Bobi converted the track using Zmodeller with the idea of getting it to work in F1 2001 and sent it my way to be worked over. It was decided that I would work with the meshes in 3D Max and David would redo the textures.

The main problem with the track (as far as the meshes go) was that the rumble strips where way to wide, so I set about recreating narrower rumble strips and added some height to them. Once this was completed the next step was to work on the barriers. Most of the barriers weren't double sided and I then set about updating the barriers.

About this time F1 2002 was released and we now worked towards doing Mugello for F1 2002. The project was nearly dropped due to various reasons/problems but thankfully along came the F1 2002 MTS plugins for Max which was a blessing as they solved all the problems I was experiencing with Zmodeller in the export process.

With renewed enthusiasm I set about the track again concentrating on redoing the pit buildings and making the pit garages to accommodate 36 cars.

The next step was to add in multi tex's which F1 2002 now supported and most of this work was done by Locutus and David. While this was going on I started changing a few things on the track so as it would remotely resemble the real Mugello using some great photo's the Ian had found. Around this time the GTR mod was close to being completed and it was decided that since Mugello was just about finished it would be included in the GTR Mod, as there was an opening for one track to make the season complete. (Can't remember which track Mugello replaced)

Doug was once again called in to make an AI for it and we had ourselves Mugello. Hope I left nothing out.

BHMS: Doug Arnao was in charge for developing physics for this mod. Why did you choose him for this job?

Perran Truran: Because we are very lucky to be able to do so!

Jan Frischkorn: With all his experiences in real races and with the knowledge about suspension dynamics from his real workshop Doug is really the best man for this job. But did we choose him or did he choose us? No... We just found each other.