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Real Unreal start-line gantry — 3/2/1/GO visual QA

Status: source change, not a verified UE game. The canonical RaceStartLights still gates all actual race clock time, wheel forces, player checkpoints and rival controls. A small original asset-free circuit gantry is only a cosmetic representation of that already qualified phase.

Planned physical installation

A new non-colliding gantry beside the original south-straight starter grid is built from Unreal engine's BasicShapes, 3 red point lights and a green GO point light. Three red lamps are visible with 3 seconds remaining, then two, then one. A green light appears only during the existing short GO phase. After the GO announcement, lights switch off, rather than claiming a second start signal or holding a misleading permanent green.

A not-ready circuit, absent/unverified local driver, paused/menu/focus loss, failed restart, or finished race turns off the dynamic lamps. In game-state-pause scenarios the explicit mode interruption handlers also hide them so the last green/red state cannot remain misleadingly visible.

All posts, beams, bulb meshes and lights have no collision. A mesh failure must not change the authoritative nine collision-bearing blocks, the four required checkpoints, road safety audit, car physics, career saves, awards or AI progress.

Portable automated checks

StartGantryVisualTests.cpp validates every phase and every failed readiness combination, pause freezes, crossing the exact GO boundary, racing expiration, invalid phases, and race restart. Python UE source bindings verify the actual GameMode builds and refreshes the fixture without creating a second countdown timer or bypassing pause guards.

Mandatory real 5.8 Editor / installed QA

  1. Run genuine UHT and compile the Editor/Game targets with UE 5.8.
  2. Open the authentic cooked /Game/Maps/LatebrakeCircuit, examine the gantry alignment over the original start and its distance from vehicle collision, steering/touch inputs and the four gate planes.
  3. Observe 3/2/1/GO with the game HUD in regular Circuit, solo Time Attack and career starts. Check first frame of GO and the transition to racing at different frame rates.
  4. Pause or lose focus at every light phase, resume explicitly, restart, and trigger an unready grid/failed chassis state. No signal may skip ahead or falsely show GO while race timing is blocked.
  5. Verify screenshots, point-light appearance in daylight and mobile, dynamic light performance, readability and colour accessibility.
  6. Record exact source SHA, engine build, packaged Win64 EXE and user hardware evidence. This work does not close the genuine playable release gate #148.