GPxPatch Speed and Time (GPxSAT)

GPxSAT is an extension for GPxPatch that shows timing- and speed information during various race sessions and practice sessions.

This extension was developed by:

• Marc Aarts: Classic and Digital.
• Markus Krötz: Digital 2004.
• René Smit: Digital 2010.

Initial work has been done by Andrzej Barganski.

Original Digital 2010 graphics were copied from rfDynHUD. Graphics have been converted to .tga and resized for compatibility with DirectX 7 (GP3).

Thanks to F1Racer, Christian Schäfers, PK Arnall and 'mclarenaustralia' for their suggestions and help.

Features

Timing info during qualifying

In qualifying GPxSAT tries to recreate the timing information displayed in real F1. Everything I could think of is included and to me it looks pretty much like it is for real.

Timing info during the race

During the race GPxSAT shows the difference between yourself and either the car in front of you, or the car behind you at each split. An attempt is made to show the previous differences as well, though there are circumstances that this is not working 100% correctly.

Speedtrap info during the race

One of the things the GP series never had is speedtraps. GPxSAT brings this to GPx and shows you the speedtraps like in real F1 at the 2 splits and at start/finish. As GPx doesn't deal with this at all, everything is computed and derived from things happening during the race.

Position info during the race

Once again, hopefully very much like in real F1, I have tried to show the positions of the drivers in blocks of 8 per page. Once a driver retires, he will no longer be listed. See below what keys are used for this mode.

Replacements of GPx's skymessages

GPx has pretty ugly messages it projects in the sky (hence "skymessages"), and some of them can be replaced now. Choose which ones you want to replace from GPxPatch's configuration screen.

Track Map

One thing players ever missed on Grand Prix 3 was a track map. GPxSAT tries to enable a simple track map while racing.

Microtime

In all GPx sessions, you can display a small window in the top-left corner of the screen that displays information about your laptimes in a style similar to GP2lap. The maximum length of the driver name is 10 by default (longer names will be shown in a condensed font). This can be changed by specifying a value in gpxsat.ini using a key named MaxNameLength under the [Microtime] section.

Configuration options

Show in cockpit

Speed trap width

Skymessages

Digital vs Classic mode

Cars per page

Font

Tyre type bitmaps (no effect in GP3-2000 if they are specified in a season set)

Note : "digital 2004", "digital" and "classic" modes use different bitmaps. The first two brands can be configured through the GPxPatch GUI, more brands and other options can be configured directly in the "gpxsat.ini" file.

Note 2: the tyre type bitmaps are not (yet) used in digital 2010 mode.

Logo animation

• FadeInDuration1. The time (in ms) it takes to expand the first logo. Default is 0.
• ShowDuration1. The time it takes to show the first logo. Default is 1500.
• FadeOutDuration1. The time it takes to shrink the first logo. Default is 1500.
• IdleDuration1. The time it takes after the first logo to start the second logo. Default is 500.
• FadeInDuration2. Same as above, but for second logo. Default is 0.
• ShowDuration2. Default is 1500.
• FadeOutDuration2. Default is 500.
• IdleDuration2. Default is 500.

Digital2004 animation

• FadingSpeed. The timestep (in ms) it takes to fade in. Default is 10.
• RotatingSpeed. The timestep (in ms) it takes to rotate elements. Default is 10.

Track map settings

• TrackMap. Default is 1. Enter 0 if you want to disable the track map or if there are problems with its creation.
• TrackMapPosX. Default is 0. Set the x coordinate of the track map in pixels.
• TrackMapPosY. Default is 0. Set the y coordinate of the track map in pixels.
• TrackMapSize. Default is 256. Set the width/height of the track map in pixels. Value is relative to 1024x768 resolution and will be scaled to the actual resolution. The aspect ratio of the track is always retained.
• TrackMapColor. Default is 0xffe0e0e0. Set the color (format: alpha, red, green, blue) of the track as hex code.
• TrackMapEdgeColor. Default is 0xff202020. Set the color (format: alpha, red, green, blue) of the track edge as hex code.
• TrackMapBackground. Default is 0. Set to 1 to draw a half transparent background.
• ShowCars. Default is 1. Set to 0 to hide all cars on the track.
• ShowCCs. Default is 1. Set to 0 to hide all computer cars on the track. Only relevant when ShowCars is 1.
• ShowYellowZones. Default is 1. Set to 0 to disable drawing yellow flag zones on the map. Too many/large zones will have some impact on the performance.
• AutoShowEnabled. Default is 1. Set to 0 to disable the show mode (toggle with '8') in which the track map is shown automatically when there's a yellow flag zone anywhere on the track.

Configurable strings

Configurable 3-letter codes

An additional copy of this file may be specified through GPxSet's performance manager. For this, GPxSet must be enabled, the performance manager must be enabled (a performance file is optional), and in [gpxset.ini] the drivers .ini path should be specified under section [PerfManager] using key DriversIniPath. It can be relative to the GPx directory. This file will be searched first, before searching the global drivers.ini file.

If a driver name is not found in either file, GPxSAT will use generic rules to determine the code:

1. Take the first 3 characters from the last surname.
2. For each other surname, insert the first character at the front.
3. If not unique, use the further surname characters until unique.
4. If still not unique (i.e. surnames are equal), then for each duplicate insert the first character of the first name, or the 2nd etc. until unique.

Keys

All non-race sessions

• T : Toggle the display of the "remaining session time".
• S : Toggle between split time and speed trap information. In digital 2010 mode speed traps are not supported.

Qualifying and race weekend practice sessions

• B : Toggle the display of the current positions. In digital 2010 mode, it will toggle between relative and absolute lap times. Turning this on will suppress the time display in "classic mode".
• V : Browse through all the cars in the positions screen.

Race sessions

• T : Toggle the display of the "lap counter".
• D : Toggles between showing or not showing the director's cut.
• S : Toggle between time and speed trap information. Time information consists of two screens: 'difference to car ahead' and 'difference to car behind'. In digital 2010 mode speed traps are not supported.
• B : Toggle the display between the current race positions, the current race positions with pit stops and off. Turning this on will suppress the speed/time display (above).
• F : Same as B, but toggles the bottom tower race positions (digital 2010 mode only).
• E : Toggles the left tower that shows the race positions and difference with the grid positions (digital 2010 mode only).
• V : Browse through all the cars in the positions screen.

All sessions

• 1 : Show GPxSAT information map. Highlighted items are displayed by GPxSAT.
• K : Suppress on-screen information generated by GPxSAT. It toggles between showing all, sky messages only, and nothing.
• 8 : Toggles between showing the track map, showing it only during a yellow flag (if AutoShowEnabled is set to 1), and hiding it.
• M : Toggle the display of Microtime
• H : Toggle Microtime comparisons between the absolute fastest laptime in the session, and your own fastest laptime.
• J : Toggle Microtime comparisons between relative (i.e. + 0.123) or absolute (i.e. 1:23.456) time display.

Advanced options

Country flags

The flag to be shown is determined from the same gpxpdata\drivers.ini file as the 3-letter name codes (see above). In this file the nationality can be specified using a key named Country under each driver name section. This must be an ISO 3166-1-alpha-2 code, which is a 2-letter country code. These codes can also be specified in a performance text file, which has precedence over drivers.ini.

Flags can be specified using a key named FlagsDir in gpxsat.ini under section [Digital2010]. Default is "Flags". This is the name of the subdirectory under gpxpdata\gfx\digital2010 that contains flag images. Each image must be named after the country code specified in drivers.ini. Within this directory, a file named flags.ini can be stored along the images that contains some meta information:

Section(s)	Option	Values	Default	Description
[Image]	Ext	tga, png, ...	tga	Image file extension. This is the file extension of the flag image files. Note that for GP3 and GP3-2000 tga is required (png only works for GP4) and the image width/height needs to be a power of 2 (e.g. 64 or 128).
[Image]	Width		0	Image source width. This is the width of the flag inside the image. Only useful for tga images, where the image width is usually larger (rounded up to a power of 2). Value 0 means the width will be taken from the image.
[Image]	Height		0	Image source height. This is the height of the flag inside the image. See Width.
[Image]	AdjustWidth	0..1	1	Adjust image width to 120%. Most digital 2010 graphic widths are scaled to 120% to make more room for the driver names. Use value 0 to disable or 1 to enable the same scaling for the flag image.

Driver pictures

Driver images can be specified using a key named DriversDir in gpxsat.ini under section [Digital2010]. Default is "Drivers". This is the name of the subdirectory under gpxpdata\gfx\digital2010 that contains driver images. Each image must be named after the driver (e.g. "lewis hamilton.tga"). Within this directory, a file named drivers.ini can be stored along the images that contains some meta information:

Section(s)	Option	Values	Default	Description
[Image]	Ext	tga, png, ...	tga	Image file extension. This is the file extension of the driver image files. Note that for GP3 and GP3-2000 tga is required (png only works for GP4) and the image width/height needs to be a power of 2 (e.g. 64 or 128).