I kind of agree with what you are saying regards your rig, but then if your rig is a bit under powered so to speak, I think you should drop the amount of cars you have on screen. My rig is not the latest, 965 x4 Black edition, 16 gig of ram and 7870 vid card, If I run with full cars on the fps drop really low as well but I find that when I am racing I drop the number of cars seen to about 8 or 10, I find that its only the car or 2 cars infront and 1 or 2 in the mirrors that i need to worry about any way. Sure it looks good with all cars in a static picture but personally dont think its neccessary to see them all when racing. Same as you said, I,m not arguing with you but just suggesting a quick fix. I also agree wholeheartedly with what you say about ISI, the latest updates for the historic cars etc have set a new standard for this game graphics wise, the physics where the best anyway lol.
In all honesty and in an effort to keep it real, unless you're using what the Pro's use "Motion Pro" or some other multi-million dollar racing simulator -- Or drive pure racing cars on the regular -- Your's and my, interpretation of physics is extremely subjective. I'm not an expert {far from it} on the topic of commercial sim physics, but can state with complete certainty that no racing sim I've tried can match the feel of real racing and real car physics. Come on down to Myrtle Beach Raceway, spend a couple hundred bucks and drive an as-close-to-real racing car and you can without a ton of insurance, and you'll see what I mean. Racing sim physics is subjective and always will be ...... That being stated, can't wait to see and try what pcars has to offer as a final product.
So you need a specific track, specific time of day setting, specific graphics settings, specific hdr profile: And then rfactor2 will look good. That's like preparing a photoshoot in a studio.
If you read the earlier post from someone who knows what he's talking about, that's almost exactly what iRacing can do because the time of day doesn't change.
Big differences which contribute to the reality in my opinion: Coloring: iRacing colors look more natural (in a small thumbnail it looks like real!) and has more balanced contrasts Environment: rFactor2 has a dynamic sky where iRacing clearly has a high res skybox picture Progress: rFactor 2 is not finished yet
Neither iRacing, as it is in constant development. They will move to dynamic conditions at some point, too.
I really hope there is some scope for performance optimisation with rFactor 2. Like you said, I understand the reasons why this game uses so much resources, but I would still expect better performance. I was talking about this with a friend on another forum - we both have good PCs running overclocked 7950s (which gives performance similar to a 7970 GHz Edition), therefore we should be able to get good performance from rF2. Yet we were both complaining of poor performance after running a race at the latest Brianza with a modest sized grid of cars. We were both getting FPS drops into the 20's and struggling to hit 60fps throughout. Even when sitting motionless on the grid or in the pits the frame rate is down to around 30. It seems the proximity of other cars cripples the frame rate, as when I'm on the track by myself or well away from other cars I get an almost rock solid 60fps. Something doesn't seem right here. Turning down the settings doesn't improve things all that much. The game looks decent on max settings but nothing special. Lower settings really makes the game look poor. It's disappointing that even with a high-end GPU, the game doesn't run as I would hope, yet other very demanding games run very smoothly with good fps. Obviously this problem will improve with time as faster GPUs arrive, but for now it's not an ideal situation.
It was stated that performance was low because of physics and dynamic weather > > this should rather pull hard on your CPU than your GPU. My CPU however is not used heavily with rF2 while I still struggle for good FPS with a 7970 card. (overclocked to 1200mhz... AND NO that's not the issus, I tried it @ default clock as well > just even lower fps) If the FPS issue is to due to something like dynamic clouds... honestly I don't need them. I rather have constant 60 fps and static clouds. (honestly, who looks at it when driving?) However I rather think that the gfx is the issue and not the physics calculations. > lowering details and aa brings stable fps... however the game really crap.
smh! Would you accept the statement I made "Racing sim physics is subjective and always will be", if "Niels Heusinkveld" also made a similar statement in his article "Tires in race simulations"??? Well try reading it .... very informative BTW!!!!!
What isn't subjective is that rF2 for me has flickering all over the place (all windows at Belgium), objects popping up, and general lack of smoothness in motion. None of which applies to iRacing. Subjectively, looking at the latest version of Belgium, I couldn't get the words "children's colouring book" out of my mind, unfortunately.
And you think an Iracing promo shot would be any different? I'm sure they just went out on a track with their eyes closed pressed the screen capture key then posted the shot for all to see lol.
I get quite a lot of flickering at Belgium too. Not a lot but enough to annoy. Its the occasional building and billboard for me.