Track Profile Smoothing Tool (MS Excel spreadsheet)
Posted by Prblanco
Hi everyone,
This is a small MS Excel spreadsheet that I built to smooth track elevation profiles (compatible with MS Excel 2007 and newer). It's not a finished tool by any means, so use at your own risk. Download here.
How to use it: First, open the .dat file of the track you want to smooth in GP4Builder, and select Export - Export Track Database.
Then, open the S1CTXX_TPOS.txt created in your track folder.
Copy the contents of the .txt in and paste them in the spreadsheet. TPOS0000 should be in cell A2.
In the spreadsheet's yellow column, called "Knots", insert the number 1 and the number of the last sector of your track. Click "Recalculate".
Now, look at the second graph, called "Drop". Look where the blue line changes direction (highlighted by arrows here). Take note of the corresponding track sectors.
Write those sectors in the yellow column, as new knots. Don't worry about the order, they will be sorted automatically. Click "Recalculate" again.
The red dashed line tries to fit the blue line, changing direction at the specified knots. If the fit is not good, try changing the knots and recalculating. This is the graph that you'll be looking at during knot placement.
This is how the graph looks after knots were placed at sectors 19, 31, 36, 50, 57, 78, 82, 93 and 107.
And this is the final result. A total of 32 knots were placed for this example (not all of them in this picture).
The smoothed elevations will be stored at Plan2. Copy those values into a new .txt file and use GP4Builder's Import Track Database feature to apply them to the .dat file.
The greatest source of difficulty in using this tool is placing the knots at the best position. If there are too many knots (and too close from each other), you may get bumps in the final result that were meant to be smoothed. If there are too few, you risk losing detail. It's a trial-and-error process really.
PS: Do not select sector zero as a knot. Numerical errors will haunt you.
My unfinished tracks: [www.grandprixgames.org]
Send bug reports and track editing questions to f1virtualblog@gmail.com
Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 06/29/2015 03:54AM by Prblanco.
This is a small MS Excel spreadsheet that I built to smooth track elevation profiles (compatible with MS Excel 2007 and newer). It's not a finished tool by any means, so use at your own risk. Download here.
How to use it: First, open the .dat file of the track you want to smooth in GP4Builder, and select Export - Export Track Database.
Then, open the S1CTXX_TPOS.txt created in your track folder.
Copy the contents of the .txt in and paste them in the spreadsheet. TPOS0000 should be in cell A2.
In the spreadsheet's yellow column, called "Knots", insert the number 1 and the number of the last sector of your track. Click "Recalculate".
Now, look at the second graph, called "Drop". Look where the blue line changes direction (highlighted by arrows here). Take note of the corresponding track sectors.
Write those sectors in the yellow column, as new knots. Don't worry about the order, they will be sorted automatically. Click "Recalculate" again.
The red dashed line tries to fit the blue line, changing direction at the specified knots. If the fit is not good, try changing the knots and recalculating. This is the graph that you'll be looking at during knot placement.
This is how the graph looks after knots were placed at sectors 19, 31, 36, 50, 57, 78, 82, 93 and 107.
And this is the final result. A total of 32 knots were placed for this example (not all of them in this picture).
The smoothed elevations will be stored at Plan2. Copy those values into a new .txt file and use GP4Builder's Import Track Database feature to apply them to the .dat file.
The greatest source of difficulty in using this tool is placing the knots at the best position. If there are too many knots (and too close from each other), you may get bumps in the final result that were meant to be smoothed. If there are too few, you risk losing detail. It's a trial-and-error process really.
PS: Do not select sector zero as a knot. Numerical errors will haunt you.
My unfinished tracks: [www.grandprixgames.org]
Send bug reports and track editing questions to f1virtualblog@gmail.com
Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 06/29/2015 03:54AM by Prblanco.
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