rFactor 2 and graphics engine (not unreal compared to other MG games), why?

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by pilAUTO, Jul 14, 2021.

  1. mantasisg

    mantasisg Registered

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    I am becoming really much not a fan of attitude towards modding. You should appreciate modding, alll that it gives. There are lots of people, who does modding for themselves to expand rF2 experience, and a lot of them shares with others.

    Even more so there are some new mods already that uses latest tech, and there might come some older stuff that will be updated. I downloaded Albi racetrack yesterday, and I absolutely love it.

    I am amazed by people who has this much little grasp to suggest throwing it all to the bin, and introduce new rFactor game, assuming that there wouldn't be negatives about it. People suggesting to release new rFactor just so modding and older content could be discarded should really think again IMO

    PS how can you like that Unreal Engine that much, I have no idea.
     
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  2. burgesjl

    burgesjl Registered

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    Well lets be honest, the writing was on the wall about what MG have been up to. They bought the Kart developer because they used UE4 but their own physics engine. They are marrying UE4 with the rF2 physics engine on the new NASCAR title; and from which, they are pulling expertise from both studios to do so. Next up, BTCC; and then after that, ACO/LeMans title.

    Using UE4 seems on the surface to make sense; its after all what SimBin were tasked to do with GTR3 (Sector3 physics, UE4 graphics) but have failed to deliver. And of course there is ACC. The advantage of it is that you can port the game to consoles as well as PCs. But Kunos have alluded to certain problems with mixing UE4 and their physics; and there are some rumors that if they ever produce an AC2, they'll revert to their own graphics engine.

    My own experience with ACC, has been pretty poor quite frankly. When you look at the type of games UE4 is used on, and for consoles in general, they are fixed to either 30fps or 60fps, and are generally slow-moving games such as first-person shooters and adventure games, where you slowly travel around an environment with buildings and trees and such, where they don't move quickly and can render with shadows in a decent way. On ACC, the shadows on the trees are terribly distracting - they only start at a certain draw distance and so they pop in, changing tree colors from light to dark constantly as you blast up to them at 150mph not 30mph or 5mph. There's problems with the auto-exposure as well, for the same reasons. In order to try to overcome the shortcomings, and massive fluctuations in fps and stuttering, I've had to lock fps to 84 and massage settings; and this is on a 9th Gen Intel proc and 2070 Nvidia GPU. Performance is crap. And of course, like everyone else I read about what a disaster it to try and run VR with that title, and the inability to retain fps performance.

    The question is, what does this mean for rF2? In much the same way as Reiza had to rebuild all their content for the Madness engine, pretty sure S397 would have to do the same were they ever to swap out the graphics for the MG UE4 engine. All mod content instantly obsolete, including those with 3rd party relationships (KartSim, guys who did Alpine etc.). But without this, they've got to maintain full development of the graphics subsystem so they don't fall behind. UE5 is coming soon as well; raytracing; DX12; DLSS or AMDs competitor (allowing to have apparently better resolution that actually being used, upscaling); plus whatever happens with VR. That's a tall order, and I just wonder if MG will want to do it. Or instead, they'll just let the content gradually migrate to the "new" games that are built on the MG engine. I suspect, that'll be the plan. There's also competing Competition Systems to worry about as well, since they aren't using the rF one on the other titles.
     
  3. pilAUTO

    pilAUTO Registered

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    1) I never said that I had a preference for unreal engine, just that it is more modern, and that the debate deserves to be asked.


    2) This backward compatibility story has been annoying me for 5 years, because it probably caused a lot of delays in the development of S397 and it has in my opinion prevented S397 from projecting far enough forward. And the Modding track ok, but the Modding cars I am rather against with the exception of some particularly rare and exceptional modders like Slow Motion. Cars deserve phenomenal attention in terms of realism / physics / data etcetera, which is hardly ever the case with modders, except a few rare ones.
     
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  4. EricW

    EricW Registered

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    Hope you're not saying the shadows in RF2 are great and optimized?
    In the pit it's a psychedelic event and the armcos still show the exact same problem you describe within ACC.
    Maybe it only occurs on my PC.
    But if you know a fix I'd really love to hear it.
     
  5. hitm4k3r

    hitm4k3r Registered

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    The issues that you see with rF2 graphics aren't that much worse than more advanced engines like Madness and UE4. Casquade shadows or shadow crawling is a common issue in racing sims as you have to find a fine balance of maintaining performance, a smooth image and image quality. What's more showing it's age in rF2 is the particle system. It's actually much worse than the shadows. In that regard I have to say that the image quality and performance in rF2 is on a very good level, atleast from the cockpit. If shadows are really a pyschedelic event for you, then this could indeed be a hardware related issue. Different graphic cards render shadows differently and there are differences in AA quality between different manufacturers and hardware models.
     
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  6. davehenrie

    davehenrie Registered

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    As far as rF2 not using Unreal because the other MG games use it. We have to remember the choice by S397 to continue using the ISI graphics was made 5 years ago. We dont know how long ago the negotiations for the MG merger began, but long, long after S397 made their decision.
    If MG told S397 to immediately change over to Unreal, it would long months or year before that change was completed. There is no reason for MG to waste money licensing the Unreal engine for a title that is 8 years old. MG will spend money advancing rF2 with the goal of improving it's other titles. Just not graphically.
     
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  7. Filip

    Filip Registered

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    You have a typo here.
    MG bought rF2 with the goal of using its engine in incoming titles. There are no plans for improving rF2. RF2 engine was chosen based on its price and flexibility (successful Grand Tour project that proved its ability and ease of use in less complex driving physics requirements, or "arcade" if you wish)
     
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  8. davehenrie

    davehenrie Registered

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    I'm bad enuf on a PC keyboard perched on my lap, but with the phone I'm absolutely dismal. Price of admission I'm afraid.
     
  9. EricW

    EricW Registered

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    I use A Asus Nvidia 2080TI...these Graphic shadow artifacts show with all setting combinations I can think of, on screens and in VR.
    good example, set the time to somewhere noone, and drive down the Spa pitlane and look at the shadows in front of your car.
    when those are realistic and smooth, I take back my words and have to fiddle a bit more with the settings.
     
  10. hitm4k3r

    hitm4k3r Registered

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    The crawling shadows aren't realistic and smooth, but they are the lesser of two evil. Another way would be shadows that pop up in front of you or fantastic shadows drawn long into the distance but abysmal performance. It's allways a tradeoff. I guess they will improve them a bit, as they have stated in the roadmaps, but when that happens and how big the gains are needs to be seen.
     
  11. davehenrie

    davehenrie Registered

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    They have shown a GIF of how they are trying to improve the crawling shadows... I couldn't see what the improvement was, but others with a keener eye seemed to have noticed something. So at least that is one area they are working on.
     
  12. AlexHeuskat

    AlexHeuskat Registered

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    the crawling shadows improvement is nice, but the shadows on the barriers which follow is awfull too, the best graphics for me are without shadows.
     
  13. mantasisg

    mantasisg Registered

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    So they are fixing that.
     
  14. AlexHeuskat

    AlexHeuskat Registered

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    following shadows on the barriers or side too?
     
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  15. Lazza

    Lazza Registered

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    It's not a system change so it's not "fixed", it's just a bit smoother than currently. You really should be able to see the difference :)

    The barriers look more like an on/off switch, maybe that's because of the angles. Perhaps we can hope for the same work to result in a step improvement, and the barriers will look more like the road does now?
     
  16. AlexHeuskat

    AlexHeuskat Registered

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    I hope we can add ultra shadows only for the cars...finally with shadows off, I only regret the cars shadows....
     
  17. pilAUTO

    pilAUTO Registered

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    For me the qualities of the graphics engine of rFactor 2 are :

    - Very detailed laser circuits
    -Vegetation on these very successul tracks (but in 2D) and the sand.
    - The realroad is quite successful graphically
    - Successful road surface
    - Recent car cockpits detailede
    - Reflections sufficiently successful except wet.
    - And ESPECIALLY:
    Natural aspect of the graphic scene (saturation / shades / color temperature, white and black levels, exposure etcetera ....). This is a great achievement of rFactor 2.
    The day / night cycle is also a great achievement. The sun's rays are also magnificent...


    What needs to be improved are :

    - The reflections of rain
    - The puddles of water although the realroad presents real successes physics and graphics
    - The drops of water on the windshield and the bodywork
    - The fact that all the vegetation is in 2D.

    What is wrong and some things will certainly be improved :

    - Clouds
    - Raindrops in the falling sky
    Not enough animations (gear shift, driver's hands...)
    - Car dash insufficiently well done because too many limitations etc.
    - Various projection effects
    - Absence of fog and "suspended water" as on AMS 2
    - Shadows to be improved, in particular bug on fences, fences and shadows must be much more detailed over approximately 75 meters.

    I have surely forgotten a lot of things, but what I can say is that the graphics engine has potential while remaining compatible with the old content.

    Yes, 2 big problems :

    -Performance optimization is really needed, including day/night cycle, rain, VRAM, terrible load times and there should be a lot more different graphics settings with more possibility of adjustments for each of them.
    - And there is a lot of track content that could be interesting on rF2, but this content is not homogenized with the latest graphics technologies (PBR...) which change absolutely everything, it's a big problem in my opinion (Very concrete example : Reiza VIR, because of its vegetation, is a cartoon track. We almost only see grass and trees ...... And this vegetation is catastrophic.)

    MY CONCLUSION :

    So if S397 keeps this graphics engine, S397 must both improve it, make it easily compatible and ensure that the qualitative content is as quickly as qualitative, and that this graphics engine has more homogeneous and optimized FPS in all circumstances. (less difference between dry and wet ....), it could be a real success.
     
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  18. AMillward

    AMillward Registered

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    Changing graphics engine isn't an easy task. It would take a massive, if not COMPLETE re-write of the code and that would take so much time, the time would be better spent on making a whole new game.
     
  19. bobbie424242

    bobbie424242 Registered

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    There is no way the rF2 graphics engine is ever changed to UE in rF2, at least not this decade, and then it will not be called rF2 anymore. Current rF2 graphics engine is not that bad and can sometimes give other sims a run for their money in term of looks, in specific conditions. It has very good anti-aliasing and a mostly clean image and that particular "realistic cold" lighting it shoots for (that sometimes miss the mark). Madness Engine is much more versatile in various lighting conditions though, including evolving time, weather and track conditions, and seems much more optimized for modern PCs.
     
    Last edited: Jul 16, 2021
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  20. Remco Majoor

    Remco Majoor Registered

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    totally agree on this
     

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