The Circle - 2026

The Circle

What started as a stupidly simple April Fools idea, just making a circle track and laughing at an F1 car trying to superclip its way around with no regen braking, ended up getting a bit out of hand.

Download - https://drive.google.com/file/d/193YzpJUIrCqsIQPQ7Y1N4MRf_pPpvxGs/view?usp=sharing

If it’s not obvious – please don’t take this project too seriously. It’s just a bit of fun.

In spare time away from Buttonwillow, I started working on this around two weeks ago. What came out of it was a modular circle track system with a 1 km radius, giving a total lap length of 6.2 km.

Then came the banking.

There are options for 0 degrees, 45 degrees, 90 degrees, and even... 180 degrees.

That’s right. If you’ve got a car producing more downforce than it weighs, you can drive on the top of the track. Interestingly, from the driver’s perspective, that turns a counter-clockwise layout into a clockwise circuit.

The environment is set around a huge water reservoir, with a built-up futuristic city running around the outside of it. (The city is actually Shinjuku Tokyo from Open Street Maps, scaled up and then duplicated a bunch) Peppered with a few random buildings. Tokyo Skytree has found a new home in the middle of the circle. In the distance, I’ve used the mountains from Pahrump, Nevada as the backdrop (from Spring Mountain), which helped give it a bit more scale and stop it feeling too flat.

The idea was basically to make it feel like some oversized future project, where a city has been built up around this massive body of water, and then for whatever reason decided to wrap a race track around it too.

Bask in the glory of the track’s single turn.

The most functional layout is the 45 degree banking. The 90 degree version is slightly broken, mainly because the AI seems to struggle once the banking gets beyond about 60 degrees. My guess is it only checks left and right relative to the horizon, so when cars go side by side it either fails to detect the car next to it properly, or thinks both cars are occupying the same space and immediately brakes. Weirdly, this seems less of an issue in faster cars, so feel free to experiment. The 180 degree banking actually works quite well when the cars get up there, it’s just the side by side bit that’s the issue.
It’s important to note that the AI needs to start on the flat ground, so the line that the AI race through does drop smoothly to the flat start / finish area at that point of the lap.

Please note, Extended Physics must be enabled for the 90 degree and 180 degree layouts to work properly. Without it, you’ll clip straight through the track surface.

There’s also an additional 45 degree layout with obstacles, basically random cylinders placed around the circle that you need to avoid. That means it’s no longer just a flat-out lap and you actually have to pay attention.

One other thing, the pitlane entry and exit is a bit tight, maybe a revision needed to the walls in this area and add some signage or something. But I’m not sure the project will gain enough traction to warrant the extra effort to be honest!

Lastly, I split the circle in half and joined the gaps to create an 11.2 km oval. These oval layouts are not really finished and mostly just exist as places to mess around. The pitlane is also a bit too long, so for these it’s better to spawn on the grid rather than using hotlap start, unless you fancy driving for two minutes before even reaching the track.

The three ovals are:

• Standard – just an oval

• Hill – one side has a large hill and, naturally, a downhill on the other. Good for chasing a bit more top speed. It reminds me of Special Stage Route X from Gran Turismo, just on a much smaller scale

• Twist – instead of a hill, the back straight is twisted like fusilli pasta, which lets you drive upside down again

As I said, this started as a joke and never really had much of a plan.

Still, I think you might actually get some good racing out of the 45 degree banked circle.

Features:
Every track has working AI, but it has it’s ‘issues’ as discussed in the earlier points.
The Circle tracks have:
- Full pits
- AI
- Replay cameras
- VAO patches
- Night lighting etc.
- Start lights
- 50 grid spaces.

Normal service will resume now, as I'm back to full development of Buttonwillow Classic / karting

Thanks for your continued support!
Tyrone