How does one activate the spotter, and set green-flag position?

Keeper

These two things I've never been able to figure out and haven't seen anything written about.

For an oval track, I'd like to have a working spotter. I've seen third-party tracks which have a working spotter, but for the life of me I can't figure out what it is that activates it.

In addition, I'd like to be able to adjust the point at which the race goes green on a rolling start (or a restart). I've made AIW files for a few different short ovals, and while sometimes the start position is nicely off of Turn 4, other times it's disconcertingly right up against the s/f line (which can cause problems if people are accelerating too much like they usually are by then). Can't figure out what the determining factor is for this.

If anyone knows, these really should be put into one of the track tutorials!
 
I had an epiphany this morning as I was getting ready for work, which I'll have to test tonight. I thought to myself, if I were ISI and had rFactor already made but wanted to add the spotter, how would I do it and ensure that the spotter doesn't bother telling you about cars in the grass, on the apron or entering the pits? My answer: Use a material-based trigger. I recall now that I've seen ovals whose racing surface materials were OVALx or OVALRDx, so I wonder if spotter activation is as simple as changing the ROADx materials of the track I'm working on to OVALx or OVALRDx.

Tonight I will post a confirmation of whether that is the answer or not.

Still would like to know how to set the distance from s/f that the green flag comes out on a rolling start or restart, though. Surely somebody knows...?
 
Nope, that isn't it.

I can't believe that no one knows how to activate the spotter.
 
the spotter is in the sound options isnt it ?

btw you have installed the spotter plugin ?
 
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No need to install the plugin; rFactor has its own spotter. The spotter works at some oval tracks but not others. I want to know what the trigger is that makes a track use the spotter.
 
FOUND IT!

Because I've been copying from the same template GDB every time, I've been copying the same error. I had a space in "TrackType" so the entry was being ignored. My first thought about spotter activation was that it had to be based on that value being "Short Track" or "Short Track Oval" or "Oval" or "Superspeedway" or "Superspeedway Oval" -- all of which I've seen on tracks with working spotters, but that didn't work when I changed the value, which confounded the heck out of me.

Finally, as I cut and pasted line for line and tested against a GDB from another track I copied over which was giving me a spotter at my track, I noticed the working GDB had "TrackType" and mine had "Track Type". Phew...

The green-flag position was solved too. It is simply several waypoints beyond where you set the teleport location. I just had the teleports too close to s/f, or, for tracks that were being made only for league use, had no teleports at all. That was putting the green flag out right at s/f in either case.

Now there's a new problem cropping up I just noticed. It's that old chestnut of rFactor adding laps when you quit qualifying. I do one timed lap, quit, then it says I have done six laps, when it should say I have done three. Any ideas about that one?
 
Ah, solved the extra-laps problem myself. Not sure whether it was the use of the Pit 1 Extension for the garage area or having the beginning of the garage path joined to the pit path (I think the latter makes sense, as it would mean it's imagining your car trying to drive through a wall to get back into the garage after qualifying). I made a new garage path naming it Pit 2 and used Cap End of Path Segment for the first waypoint of it. No more extra laps in qualifying. AI cars were confused as heck though, so manually changing wp_branchID=(2) to wp_branchID=(1) (essentially forcing the Pit 2 to be thought of as Pit 1) allowed the AI cars to drive it, while still keeping the extra-laps bug at bay.
 
@keeper

this is a good find with regard to the spotter... can you elaborate more on how you were able to find out and are you know able to manipulate how it works?
 
I think it just looks for certain keywords, like "Oval", "Speedway" and "Superspeedway".
 
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