Hmmmm the tarmac textures are more tricky than I first thought. I mean if you do it like it really should in rf2. I was lucky since the original texture were kinda perfect to use together with the detail texture of ISI. I have studied more in detail how they did it in silverstone for example, and the base tarmac texture have no grain in it, and it in ratio with the road, so 1024x2048... the original textures had no real grain in it, so the details worked perfectly with them... However those I have now are better quality and have a grain... and are 2048x2048... so if I use the normal and spec map that comes with those, and use them without the asphalt_mult, using a blank file instead, the result isnt very good.. to get a fine grain, i need to tile too small and heavy repetition appears... and if I tile so the repetitions aren't a problem no more, the grain isn't in ratio since its a square texture mapped in a rectangle, and its too much stretched on the length as well. So I'm working on brand new textures I'm making from different other textures I have, and the result so far is encouraging I'm currently figuring a way to map it without much seams... cause the lines didnt really mattered, but the tarmac will.. I cannot map each part individually, so I must work on the track as a whole. I don't think 32bit will be able to handle it, so I might give 64bit a shot, and use standard checker map to make the mapping and split it, and return in 32bit.. that might work. So far I have made the base road texture, the detail map, the normal and spec map for the most common tarmac found over there, the lighter one. I will make a different base/detail/normal/spec for the newer patch, as was suggested.. the original textures didnt had this, so thats why I first thought of simply use vertex coloring. But I will make it appear different. And I happen to have a very sweet cracked asphalt texture that I think will look awesome in the inside of the karussel, where in real life the tarmac is all cracked up. To be continued!
I soooo want someone to do a Caterham, Lotus... any type of "Street Legal Trackday Car" just because it would fit perfectly on the Tourist track. For some reason running a full-on race car on here just feels weird to me.
Well, I spent the whole day working on that tarmac texture yesterday and by the end of the day, I had something satisfying. However, while watching carefully a replay, I noticed my texture setting were set to medium when I looked at a tree. Turns out I had worked on the tarmac texture all this time with the texture detail set to med in dev mode, when I was trying a full grid when making the rubber profiles. Obviously, when I set it to max, the tarmac texture looked horrible. I was really put down, and didn't knew what to do. I pretty much had to start over. So after realizing I couldnt get a decent 1024x2048 texture look good, it was appearing too large in game, so I made the base texture 2048x4096, and wow, what a difference. The tarmac is looking awesome now. Still need to do the new tarmac patch, and the cracked one for the karussel, and map it. Did I said the tarmac looked awesome? Oh yes I did
Well, I dont think it will make that much of a difference honestly... The way the road was done before, each texture was made of two 1024x2048 textures, for the left and right side of the road. Each of those different textures were repeated twice, one with the groove to the left, and one with the groove to the right... to map and try to simulate the fast path in and out of corners... so there was a lot of textures, but only really 3 appeared in tourist.. the light tarmac, the dark one, and the cracked one (which wasnt cracked, but used a different image file nonetheless) inside the karussel. There was a set of textures with the tarmac all new, another with part old, part new and so on... Now there will be like 3 materials, more if I had some variety later on in each kind, and they will be mapped on the needed polygons... I think that where the dark patch were showing previously, like on the inside of a corner, like in schwedenkreuz, I think the whole width of the track was giving more grip... now since both mats will be independant, we will have varying grip level in these areas! So, it might even improve performance, as there is over 15 different road mats now defined... On the other hand, I will likely make 3 sets of different detail maps as well.. we were using the same detail map all around up till now... but it should be much of a problem, given the cut in number of road materials.
Was able to remove basically all stuttering with my Nvidia card. If you have a Nvidia card and there are horrible stutters even though your framerate seems pretty high, this could be the cause: Clicky I had very similar issues on ethone's/Virtua_LM's LeMans track. Now it's very smooth. Worth a try.
Thanks for the tip. I don't really have much stutters with it set to 0, the only stutters I have is when I try to load too many AI. A few number before I crash on load, the game will load, and look fine, but when I have many AI in my view, the stutters and slow mo kicks in... then I remove a few more AI and I get no more stutters. Not sure if this would help in this case. On the tarmac matter, the textures are all done, and I've done quite a few variety of cracked textures. 16 to be exact. Not sure if I'll use them all, but they are from 1 (most cracked) to 16 (less cracked)... so I'll be able to swap a few pieces of road (that used the bumpy version of the track, but the texture looked the same)... So I have made the base light tarmac, the new (dark) tarmac, and the cracked versions of a different light. I was wondering how to do the cracked version, at first I tried adding the cracks to the base diffuse texture, but it didnt looked good, since this texture is tiled big, and the cracks weren't looking really good. What I did is use the same light base I did for the main light tarmac, but instead use different details textures. So all 16 are using the same base (could setup different later on) and using all different details textures. So the cracks appear smaller, as they should be, and I get the normal/spec map working with it... if I did it in the diffuse, I wouldnt have had the bump/spec working on the cracks. So we feel the cracks in the wheel How cool is that! I'll likely fine tune the tdf later as well, after I'm mostly done with setting up the different cracked versions around. At the moment, the whole road is done, with the light and dark patches setup, and the cracked tarmac inside the karussel, and another cracked patch somewhere. I need to check out the original track and look for the bumpy version (those that also were generating dust) and set up the other cracked patches. I also double checked with gtr evo, and noticed some extra dark patches in some places, and added them as well. One in tiergarten for example. All those in gtr evo are full width of the track, and com8 went further and set up patches that don't cover all the width.. so in these case, I went with com8 and setup the appropriate new patch... so the grip level will vary now in these cases. It wasn't before... be careful I'm having problems with the road lines tho. They were raised by 0.001 and setup as decal in the exporter (but I noticed it didnt generated an output scene with Decal=true, so I edited the scn file and added them. After setting up the z-offset to 2, the flickers went away, but some parts of the road line are still in the tarmac... but I checked two of these spots, the two first one you see in game, and they are well above the tarmac, not touching it anywhere... so I'm not sure what's the problem. They arent 0.001 no more tho, before I noticed the z-offset value in 3dsimed looking at silverstone's road lines, I raised the line by 0.001 a few times... so maybe they are 0.005-6 now... Any idea on the matter? If I can resolve the issue, I will probably have time to finish up what's left of the road, and you could be driving this new tarmac this weekend Can't wait for you to try this out... if I compare these road textures to my grass, I would say they are a notch above... so they are looking pretty neat They are the results of many (failed) experiments... spent about 1 day on each texture alone, this and fine tuning the fresnel specular values that goes with them. EDIT: Oh and nDo2 is incredible. I should have known this from start and get it before anything else. I'm happy to have finally found something allowing me to produce awesome normal/spec maps. I think you will see a very clear difference between what I had before and now. And I'm only scratching nDo2's surface... I've started to play with dDo as well, but I didnt get any good result trying to add dust to a road surface... I'll play with it later on. Sometime later on, I will also redo all the normal maps I've done in the past, with nDo2...
Anyone highly experienced with the real track? Like, do you know by heart the spots where the tarmac is most damaged, and you need to be careful? I'm experiencing with tdf reactions, and could set up a few spots harder on the wheel.. at the moment I'm going by this video here: but even at 1080p and few inches from the ground, its too low quality for any such details... so I try to notice when he doesnt press it hard and when the car shakes violently and try to add a few polygons here and there with a mat set to a higher ffb reaction... so the track will feel alive again! But if someone knows exactly the spots I should mark, I could send you a track overlay and you could draw the spots where I need to add severe bumps? Like bumps that will make you spin out if you aren't careful.
I'm not a rf2 moder, but I think what you see is Z-fighting (though the model is theoretical correct, but because of the in reality limited precision of the graphics cards there are problems). See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z-fighting
This is exactly it. At cockpit level, and now a bit up in the air, the lines are mostly flickerless (except the spots where they just disappear in the tarmac), but if I raise the camera high enough, the lines starts flickering like crazy. This must be related to the high clip plane value used with the track... looks like I will need to do experiments to resolve the problems... I'll first try breaking down the lines into smaller pieces and see if it helps... otherwise I'll need to figure the lowest clip plane value I can use and see if it helps the line problem. Thanks for the info.
Hi peclair i don't think that your feel these cracks in the tarmac. Just think about how big they must me so that the tire moves up and down and you feel them? At least about 10mm depth and 100mm wide. There aren't any type of cracks around there of this size and even if they are there then the would get sorted out. And don't relay to much on this video. It's a F1 car doing a "fun" lap around the nordschleife. Not on full throttle anywhere. So don't take the throttle position as reference for bumpyness on track. The track isn't as bumpy as many think.
Thanks! That's exactly what I was looking for. Actually, I remember looking for that guide when I had no internet, and couldnt find it on my computer no more... I looked on the web since then, but only found other guides, as there seems to be plenty of those available. But couldnt find this one! It's gonna be awesome! Early test are very conclusive! The new tarmac surface is most interesting! Due to the look of the tarmac, I have raised the grip by .1 again for both tarmac. So the light is now 0.97 and new is 1.02. The older cracked one remains at 0.94. But I will make more cracked definitions in the tdf with varying grip level depending on level of cracks. The karussel is more bumpy now, and I added the rumble sound to it, as they have done it in gtr evo. But I also raised the feedback on it, so its not only the fake rumble bumps, as this was added more for the sound. I never noticed, but the bumps you add in the tdf actually happens in the game for reall... I was looking at some spots yesterday and I was sure to see them... not sure if it was my mind or not, but I was sure to see them. Neat stuff! This must be part of the stuff that happens when you make changes to this kind of stuff and reload in dev mode (or update and load in the game). It applies this stuff to the mesh and build temporary meshes with the bumps added? But that's only a guess again. Might be what this cbash stuff is?
Regarding the flickering lines, I have tried to play with the clip planes, but it was already pretty tight.. I have been able to shave only 600-800m or something like this, not even 1000m. So it did little to help the lines... I'm gonna have to try breaking them into smaller pieces, that might help... since they are as large as the road object it is next to. EDIT: I remembered having seen something related to high clip planes somewhere, and just found it again: I helped my problem a lot by doing this: On my oval test track I tried a topographical object which extended to 7000m outside of the track. To view it (without clipping) in the onboard cameras (TVcockpit, cockpit, etc.) you have to readjust the clip planes to a similar value in the default.cfg file: ClipPlanes=(0.90, 7000.0), in the scn file (View=mainview ClipPlanes=(0.50, 7000.0)) and in the cam file. (ed. it would be better to tag the materials for this object as No ZBuffer, and set No Clip in the instance panel. These clip plane values are going to cause huge z fighting issues) as mentioned in the rf1 basic track info found here: http://rfactor.net/web/rf1/devcorner/basic-track-editing-information-notes-from-the-field/ So my clip planes went from 8000 to 3000, and I will try to get it as low as I can... but I think 2500 is the lowest I will be able to go, or in between 2500-3000, so it wont go down much, but still.. I'm curious to see what effects on performance it will have. The lines are still flickering when when seeing them from really high... no tv camera should flicker I believe, but I'll make sure that these dont flicker at least... but some might still remains when taking bird eye shots.
