The extra cars and tracks

The download "POD (1997) (CD ROM) + Extras" has POD - Extra Cars (51 zips) and POD - Extra Tracks (50 zips) beside the POD disc. This page lists every one: what it is, whether our readers and the game load it, and whether the installer puts it in the original and in Un-POD. The files stay in derived/extras/ (unpacked: data files only) and never enter git. How the game finds its files is in modding.md. The formats are in formats/.

What is in the download

• POD's own content in 3dfx zips (*_3dfx.zip that name a POD car or track: Azthec, Lake, Shane, Truck and others). POD already has these. Some zips hold the same files as POD (measured, MD5). Others hold different .BL3/.BL4 files, probably older (inferred). The installer leaves them out, because POD, the reference, already lists them.
• OEM forms of POD's tracks: AlderOEM, CanyOEM, CityOEM, GalOEM, PlantOEM, PompOEM and SewerOEM. Each has a .BL4 only. Six are in group 2 with numbers 110 to 115 (Circuits.bin); AlderOEM is in group 1 with number 212.
• Fan and web content. The rest. Readmes name QBall (Banana, the Stinger beta, Night), Leadbest (Newsance, November 2003) and the Witnessteam (the Down reskin of Slimepit). Some zips name a _3dfx version but hold a car or track that POD does not have (Adeo, Akura, Iceberg and others). POD's VOITURE2.BIN already names fifteen web cars past its count (formats/cars.md): Breton, IRX, Akir7, Nocte, Kaizer, Pirate, Razor, Xira, DarkSmil, Bat and Witch are here. Eagle is not in the download.
• lagoon_stock holds three zips. Two are Lagoon and Stock "converted by Nico". The third is a copy of an installed game from May 1997. That copy is in an older car layout, with parameters 4 bytes longer and older picture headers, and its lists replace two of the race cars. The installer takes only the converted cars.

Each package is a folder with its list file and data files: Circuits.bin with one row (formats/lists.md) and <name>.bl3, .bl4, .img, .meg for a track; voitures.bin with one record (formats/cars.md) and .bv3, .bv4, .img, .meg for a car. Everest and Natura also carry a .ght file, and Enneade a chrome.ch4. The installer does not copy them: CD Patcher copies only the extensions above (below).

How Ubi Soft's CD Patcher installed them

Observed in CDPatcher.exe 2.0 (POD - Patch/cdpatcher2.zip, 1997), decompiled with Ghidra; the program was never run.

• It reads Directory from UbiSoft\Ubi.ini and builds the game's folders from a table of six names: Data\Binary\Circuits\, Voitures\, Scripts\, Mimg\, Resson\ and Data\Records\ (FUN_00405040, the table at 0x42b258, 0x18 bytes per name). Source folders are \circuits\<name>\ and \voitures\<name>\ under its own folder.
• A track: the .bl3 or the .bl4 to Circuits (the choice is below), the .img to Mimg, the .meg to Resson, and <name>.brt and -<name>.brt (the reverse best times) to Records when the package has them (CopyFileA in the install loop; none of the download's zips has them). A car is handled the same way: the .bv3 or .bv4 to Voitures.
• BL3 or BL4. At start-up it looks for five programs in the install folder (FindFirstFileA). If one exists, DAT_0043569c is 1 and it copies the .bl4/.bv4; otherwise it copies the .bl3/.bv3. Inferred: the five are the 3D-card builds, whose names are in its strings. Only the 3dfx builds read .BL4 (FINDINGS.md).
• The lists: it copies circuits.bin and voiture2.bin before changing them, then adds the new row or record. Rows after the sixteenth count as added ones.

The installer: pod-extras

crates/pod-extras does the same job (crates/pod-extras/README.md):

build/release/pod-extras install derived/extras GAME_DIR --build software

--build software installs for WINPOD.EXE, --build 3dfx for WPOD3DFX.EXE, and --build all both model files for Un-POD. It appends the rows to the install folder's CIRCUITS.BIN and the records to its VOITURE2.BIN, starting from the disc's lists. The rows POD's lists keep past their count stay after the new ones, where the game never reads them. Two limits come from the original's buffers:

List	Limit	Evidence
CIRCUITS.BIN	96 rows	POD's load_circuit_list (0x471f24) keeps at most 0x60 rows (observed)
VOITURE2.BIN	32 records, so 24 cars after POD's 8	POD reads the list into 0x1000 bytes at 0x4fc8a4 and copies 0x1000 bytes of it at 0x430f5a (observed); more would overrun the buffer

With every zip: the software build gets 5 tracks and 24 cars. Every other new track has no .BL3, and the car list is full. The 3dfx build gets 34 tracks and 24 cars. Un-POD gets 34 tracks and 41 cars; its content folder has no limits (Deviation: in install.rs). --only ZIP,ZIP picks which ones go in. Where two zips hold the same car (Lagoon, Stock, Stinger), the one with both model files is installed, and the first one in name order when both have them.

In the original (measured)

Run in the emulated PC by the race-loop session (2026-10-24), with derived/extras-install/software copied into C:\POD\ and POD's WINPOD.EXE:

• The track screen pages past POD's 32 circuits to a third page with Beach, Fallen, Hellway, Iceberg and Night, each with its picture, length and laps.
• "Load new car" pages through the VOITURE2.BIN cars. LORIS, the last counted car, was swapped into slot 1, and the car screen showed its picture and its figures (86, 37, 61, 55, 61).
• A race on Beach with LORIS started and ran with the opponents, lap 1 of 6, with no crash, to a race clock of 29 s.

The 3dfx build (Tron, CanyOEM) is still to be run, with the wrapper's POD 3dfx run. The installed VOITURE2.BIN names Breton twice: once counted (installed) and once among POD's own records past the count, which the game never reads.

In Un-POD

unpod --content GAME_DIR/Data reads the installed folder over the disc (game_source::Layered, case-blind), as the game reads its install folder first. A track with no .BL3 is read from its .BL4, and a car whose .BV3 does not load (ED, Homard) from its .BV4. Both are marked deviations in apps/unpod/src/load.rs. The track screen pages through the longer CIRCUITS.BIN: with every extra installed, 66 circuits on 5 pages of 16 (measured: pod-ui's track_pages_extras; the car swap offers all 49 VOITURE2.BIN cars, car_swap_extras, both run with POD_EXTRAS set to the content folder). POD's car screen pages only VOITURES.BIN's eight cars. Its "Load new car" item opens the car swap (menu 25, handler 0x4308ac), which trades a race slot for a VOITURE2.BIN car and writes both lists, so an installed car is raced by swapping it in (traced by the front-end session, docs/systems/front-end.md; pod-ui's car_swap.rs). Un-POD writes the two lists into the content folder, where the original writes them into its install folder, and the next race reads them from there. Live races on Hellway, Arcade and Tron, and with the car ED, were driven headless on 2026-10-24. What looked wrong on three of them came from one port bug and two things in the files (the app session's dive, 2026-10-24):

• The port. pod-world read the wrong word of the .BL4 sector faces, so every .BL4-only track lost its ground and wall bits. Tron's cars fell through the floor, and Arcade's ran into a zero vector in the physics, where the original stops with a fatal error. Both come right with the fix: on Tron the cars settle 0.7 below their start records, on the ground (measured, headless).
• Arcade's grid lies flat over a sloped road. Start records 5 and 6 are 3.5 and 1.4 units below the ground (measured: the faces under each record). The settling pushes those cars up onto the road, as the original's would, since the grid code (FUN_004236f0) places a car at its record raised by 1 and does not look for the ground.
• Beach's grid is on the lower floor (sector 17, z −9.58), where the race paths run. The out-of-play sector above it (63, z 30.4) is scenery. The player's car stands at the back of the grid, near the sector's back edge, and Un-POD's chase camera (a stand-in: the game's FUN_0042b6c0 is not traced) sits inside the wall behind it until the car moves off. The cars are where the file puts them.
• No opponents on EASY or MEDIUM. Ecocoon, Forest and Tron name "NEANT" for those two lists. POD's reader (FUN_0046774c) then leaves the computer count at 0, so the player races alone, as Un-POD shows (observed). Tron's HARD list is Forest's (forest_H.lev); its computer cars still find their lanes and race (measured, headless, 52 s).

Files the game cannot load

Our readers now read every file the game reads, and write each back byte for byte (crates/pod-formats/tests/extras.rs, 482 files). The test lists these eight as broken:

File	Why	How it is known
aztec/.../AZTEC.BL3, hive/.../Hive.bl3	Empty (0 bytes) in the zip: the software build cannot load the track	measured (zip listing)
ed/.../ED.BV3, homard/.../homard.bv3	Byte copies of the .BV4: 16-bit 128 × 128 pages that the 8-bit build reads as 256 × 256 8-bit pages, past the end of the file	measured (MD5 equal; the block passes the end)
lagoon_stock/.../lagoon.bv3, stock.bv3	The 1997 snapshot's older car layout: the torque curve count sits 4 bytes later than in POD's 0x558-byte parameter block	measured
lagoon_stock/.../lagoon.img, stock.img	An older picture header: 16 bytes shorter than the converted copies	measured

These load, with a caveat (formats/tracks.md, "What the game tolerates"):

• CanyOEM and PompOEM declare fewer animated faces than they hold (15 against 77, 17 against 27). POD's 0x463c8c writes one 0x18-byte record per face into an allocation sized by the declared count, so the original writes past its buffer (inferred: heap corruption; not yet run). CityOEM declares more than it holds, which is harmless.
• Forest's reverse track does not read, because entry 3 lacks its 0x38-byte head. Race it forward.

Readers changed for these files, each following the game (observed in POD's code): texture blocks are read where the file puts them, without checking the names; "NEANT" is compared case-blind in load_track_file; zero bytes between entries are allowed; and bytes after a picture's pixels are kept (formats/textures.md, formats/images.md).

Every extra

"Kind": POD's own (with the same or other files than POD's), an OEM form, or fan or web content. ".BL3"/".BL4": reads (our readers, as the game reads it), none (not in the zip), broken (above). "Installed": by pod-extras for each build. In POD means POD already lists it, list full means the original's car list has no room, and duplicate means another zip holds the same car.

Tracks

Zip	File	Kind	Author	.BL3	.BL4	Installed: software, 3dfx, Un-POD
AlderOEM	Alderoem	OEM form		none	reads	no, yes, yes
Antipod	Antipod	fan or web		none	reads	no, yes, yes
arcade	Arcade	fan or web		none	reads	no, yes, yes
arcane	Arcane	fan or web		none	reads	no, yes, yes
aztec	Aztec	fan or web		broken	reads	no, yes, yes
azthec_3dfx	Azthec	POD's own, other files		reads	reads	in POD, in POD, in POD
babelweb_3dfx	Babelweb	POD's own, other files		reads	reads	in POD, in POD, in POD
bank_discover	Discover	fan or web		none	reads	no, yes, yes
BEACH	Beach	fan or web		reads	reads	yes, yes, yes
Bender	Bender	fan or web		none	reads	no, yes, yes
canyoem	Canyoem	OEM form		none	reads	no, yes, yes
cityoem	Cityoem	OEM form		none	reads	no, yes, yes
ecocoon	ECocoon	fan or web		none	reads	no, yes, yes
Enneade	Enneade	fan or web		none	reads	no, yes, yes
escape	Escape	fan or web		none	reads	no, yes, yes
everest	Everest	fan or web		none	reads	no, yes, yes
factory_3dfx	Factory	POD's own, other files		reads	reads	in POD, in POD, in POD
fallen	Fallen	fan or web		reads	reads	yes, yes, yes
forest	Forest	fan or web		none	reads	no, yes, yes
Forgetit	Forgetit	fan or web		none	reads	no, yes, yes
galoem	Galoem	OEM form		none	reads	no, yes, yes
Hellway	Hellway	fan or web		reads	reads	yes, yes, yes
hive	Hive	fan or web		broken	reads	no, yes, yes
iceberg_3dfx	Iceberg	fan or web		reads	reads	yes, yes, yes
lake_3dfx	Lake	POD's own, other files		reads	reads	in POD, in POD, in POD
loon_3dfx	Loon	POD's own, other files		reads	reads	in POD, in POD, in POD
magnetic_3DFX	Magnetic	POD's own, other files		reads	reads	in POD, in POD, in POD
megapol_3dfx	megapol	POD's own, other files		reads	reads	in POD, in POD, in POD
mine_3dfx	Mine	POD's own, other files		reads	reads	in POD, in POD, in POD
nadir	Nadir	fan or web		none	reads	no, yes, yes
natura	Natura	fan or web		none	reads	no, yes, yes
Newsance	Newsance	fan or web	Leadbest (2003)	none	reads	no, yes, yes
NIGHT	Night	fan or web	QBall	reads	reads	yes, yes, yes
parking_3dfx	Parking	POD's own, other files		reads	reads	in POD, in POD, in POD
pipeline_3DFX	Pipeline	POD's own, other files		reads	reads	in POD, in POD, in POD
pipeline_heaven	Heaven	fan or web		none	reads	no, yes, yes
plantoem	Plantoem	OEM form		none	reads	no, yes, yes
pompeii_rayway	Rayway	fan or web		none	reads	no, yes, yes
pompoem	Pompoem	OEM form		none	reads	no, yes, yes
road70_3dfx	Road70	POD's own, other files		reads	reads	in POD, in POD, in POD
seweroem	Seweroem	OEM form		none	reads	no, yes, yes
skyrace_3dfx	Skyrace	POD's own, the same files		reads	reads	in POD, in POD, in POD
slimepit_down	Down	fan or web	Witnessteam (reskin)	none	reads	no, yes, yes
slimepit_parc	Parc	fan or web		none	reads	no, yes, yes
special_3dfx	Special	POD's own, the same files		reads	reads	in POD, in POD, in POD
spin_3dfx	Spin	POD's own, other files		reads	reads	in POD, in POD, in POD
tron	Tron	fan or web		none	reads	no, yes, yes
veitland_colony	Colony	fan or web		none	reads	no, yes, yes
west_3DFX	West	POD's own, other files		reads	reads	in POD, in POD, in POD
Zed_3DFX	Zed	POD's own, other files		reads	reads	in POD, in POD, in POD

Cars

Zip	File	Kind	Author	.BV3	.BV4	Installed: software, 3dfx, Un-POD
adeo_3dfx	Adeo	fan or web		reads	reads	yes, yes, yes
akir6	Akir6	fan or web		reads	reads	yes, yes, yes
Akir7	Akir7	fan or web		reads	reads	yes, yes, yes
akura_3dfx	Akura	fan or web		reads	reads	yes, yes, yes
alien_3dfx	ALIEN	POD's own, other files		reads	reads	in POD, in POD, in POD
arakn_3dfx	Arakn	POD's own, the same files		reads	reads	in POD, in POD, in POD
atlas_3dfx	Atlas	fan or web		reads	reads	yes, yes, yes
Baboss	Baboss	fan or web		reads	reads	yes, yes, yes
banana	Banana	fan or web	QBall	reads	reads	yes, yes, yes
bat	Bat	fan or web		reads	reads	yes, yes, yes
Breton	Breton	fan or web		reads	reads	yes, yes, yes
buffo_3dfx	Buffo	POD's own, the same files		reads	reads	in POD, in POD, in POD
catamax_3dfx	Catamax	fan or web		reads	reads	yes, yes, yes
crow_3dfx	Crow	fan or web		reads	reads	yes, yes, yes
dalton_3dfx	Dalton	fan or web		reads	reads	yes, yes, yes
Darksmil	DarkSmil	fan or web		reads	reads	yes, yes, yes
deuch_3dfx	Deuch	fan or web		reads	reads	yes, yes, yes
eclypse	Eclypse	fan or web		reads	reads	yes, yes, yes
ed	ED	fan or web		broken	reads	no, yes, yes
f1	F1	fan or web		reads	reads	yes, yes, yes
f2	F2	fan or web		reads	reads	yes, yes, yes
f3	F3	fan or web		reads	reads	yes, yes, yes
frazer_3dfx	Frazer	POD's own, the same files		reads	reads	in POD, in POD, in POD
fuego_3dfx	Fuego	fan or web		reads	reads	yes, yes, yes
HLRazor_3dfx	HLRazor	POD's own, the same files		reads	reads	in POD, in POD, in POD
homard	Homard	fan or web		broken	reads	no, yes, yes
IRX	IRX	fan or web		reads	reads	yes, yes, yes
jaero_3dfx	Jaero	POD's own, the same files		reads	reads	in POD, in POD, in POD
Kaizer	Kaizer	fan or web		reads	reads	yes, yes, yes
lagoon_3dfx	Lagoon	fan or web		reads	reads	yes, yes, yes
lagoon_stock	Lagoon	fan or web		reads	none	duplicate, duplicate, duplicate
lagoon_stock	Stock	fan or web		reads	none	duplicate, duplicate, duplicate
locust_3dfx	Locust	fan or web		reads	reads	yes, list full, yes
loris_3dfx	LORIS	fan or web		reads	reads	yes, list full, yes
mirage_3dfx	Mirage	fan or web		reads	reads	list full, list full, yes
Nocte	Nocte	fan or web		reads	reads	list full, list full, yes
Onyx	Onyx	fan or web		reads	reads	list full, list full, yes
panther	Panther	fan or web		reads	reads	list full, list full, yes
Pirate	Pirate	fan or web		reads	reads	list full, list full, yes
razor	Razor	fan or web		reads	reads	list full, list full, yes
RM667	RM667	fan or web		reads	reads	list full, list full, yes
shane_3dfx	Shane	POD's own, the same files		reads	reads	in POD, in POD, in POD
shark_3dfx	Shark	fan or web		reads	reads	list full, list full, yes
stealth_3dfx	Stealth	fan or web		reads	reads	list full, list full, yes
stinger-beta	Stinger	fan or web	QBall	reads	reads	list full, list full, yes
stinger_3dfx	Stinger	fan or web		reads	reads	duplicate, duplicate, duplicate
stock_3dfx	Stock	fan or web		reads	reads	list full, list full, yes
truck_3dfx	Truck	POD's own, the same files		reads	reads	in POD, in POD, in POD
turd	Turd	fan or web		reads	reads	list full, list full, yes
twin_3dfx	Twin	fan or web		reads	reads	list full, list full, yes
Witch	Witch	fan or web		reads	reads	list full, list full, yes
Xira	Xira	fan or web		reads	reads	list full, list full, yes