Graphics improvements suggestions

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by hamiltonfan2205, Nov 16, 2014.

  1. stonec

    stonec Registered

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    This is what HDR does as per definition. It transforms both colors and brightness to a higher range than standard, so whites will look more blown out and colors more saturated. There still seems to be big misconceptions regarding this. This image is an early wip screenshot, but it demonstrates quite well what HDR does. It does affect everything, from colors to darkness of shadows. If ISI would change it now, they would probably need to re-tweak every texture of every existing track, as all textures are now tuned to work with current system.
     
  2. K Szczech

    K Szczech Registered

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    I know what HDR does :) And it should not affect colors by definition - only brightness range. However, applying tone mapping may affect colors, since it's not linear process. That's why modern HDR implementations make attempts to preserve colors better across varying luminance range and for that they often convert RGB domain into HSL and back again. If you have bug there, you may mess up colors, instead of preserving them :)

    ISI did a nice HDR with multiple features, but it appears to me they also made some bugs in it :)

    As for texture saturation - HDR is dynamic, so you don't prepare something as static as texture, for it :)
    Texture's job is not to provide object's appearance, but it's optical properties. Lighting engine is supposed to turn that into real world appearance and then HDR is supposed to turn that into on-screen appearance.
    You don't prepare your textures for specific HDR behavior, just like you don't prepare them for specific lighting conditions. Textures are description of objects and nothing more.
     
  3. Carlo

    Carlo Registered

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  4. K Szczech

    K Szczech Registered

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    One thing is having entire image over saturated - this can be solved by changing some settings.
    Another thing is having some textures standing out - this can be solved by changing some textures.
    And yet another thing is having software messing up colors in some edge cases - this can be solved by fixing the software.


    That article is about textures from older games, so it's the second issue. I'm talking about the third issue.

    People often confuse these, though. They just put it in one bag called "saturation problem" :)
    Some users will ask for saturation slider. Developers will often blame textures from older games. Now try reporting the third issue - everyone will think you're talking about the first or second, because third is just so unlikely :) I guess I'll have to find those kart screenshots I took and provide through description :)
     
  5. F1Fan07

    F1Fan07 Member

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    This is what sold me on this sim back then.

     
  6. Marc Collins

    Marc Collins Registered

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    I have already droned on about the karts being a great test case of how things are screwed-up.

    Just look at Quebec kart track on a sunny day and see the karts sitting in the shade under the tents in the pit area. How/why do certain colours on the karts look like they are still in the bright sunlight, while others look appropriately shaded? This plagues almost everything in rF2, but the example above is just a convenient/easy place to see the effect.
     
  7. Marc Collins

    Marc Collins Registered

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    When they can figure-out how to give us that with more than 8 FPS, we'll have it! Or just wait a while until hardware catches-up and then we can all have it (the more likely scenario).
     
  8. stonec

    stonec Registered

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    I think it's mostly a problem of fitting this rain windshield effect to work with all cars (including mods). Might cause some funny bugs if mod is set up wrongly. Also many cars (including ISI content) don't have working wipers at moment, would be a bit impossible to have this effect with those. Just one of those features that should have been finished in beta stage instead of now.
     
  9. Spinelli

    Spinelli Banned

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    They haven't had working wipers for years, and that pic is from over 4 years ago, I'm sure GPUs have caught up just fine.
     
  10. K Szczech

    K Szczech Registered

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    Yep. Especially that orange bumper I mentioned :)

    Glad to see other people noticing it, too.
     
  11. Some1

    Some1 Registered

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    Actually, wipers are working if you set up the animation. But they don't wipe anything :)
     
  12. Marc Collins

    Marc Collins Registered

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    How do you "set-up the animation?"
     
  13. Some1

    Some1 Registered

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    I created some bones which I assigned to the wipers meshes and then animated the bones. Unfortunately, I do not remember the details.
     
  14. Marc Collins

    Marc Collins Registered

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    OK, so nothing relevant to a normal user.
     
  15. PorscheMR6

    PorscheMR6 Registered

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    What do you mean "now"???
    Is this
    [​IMG]
    in the current build or is it just a marketing lie?
     
  16. stonec

    stonec Registered

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    Of course they have the code for that somewhere but not enabled currently. I think "normal user" can create animated wipers, same way as modded tracks can use animated marshals. But basically all cars with not working wipers would need to get an update first, including many ISI cars. No point in bringing rain effects before that is fixed.
     
  17. Guineapiggy

    Guineapiggy Registered

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    Let's be frank, rFactor2 is visually primitive. The HDR profiles are an irritation attempting to mask HDR that doesn't work properly. The reflections are dark, clumsy and seem to cut out suddenly from external views leaving plastic cars. The shadows are blocky even at maximum resolution (why can't we make them higher-res?) and for some god-forsaken reason we can't even control basic shadow/reflection draw distances from the menus. The lighting all looks flat and is actually a step back from the custom community shaders of RF1 in many respects. I cannot begin to understand why we still haven't seen a hint of 3D grass, (a feature games have been using for about a decade) and, let's be honest, much of the texture work isn't exactly world-beating. Where is some nice depth-of-field desaturation and soft focus? Has SSAO even been implemented yet? It certainly doesn't look like it has. The end result is that, visually, it all feels... dead.

    Don't misunderstand, the physics engine is an impressive piece of work and ISI isn't exactly working with a massive budget either but the fact that rFactor2 looks like it's a six or seven year old game graphics-wise is hurting it. The fact so much is missing from pre-testing previews (as shown above) just makes this baffling to outsiders. Where did these features go and why, coming up on 2015, are they not back yet?
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Nov 22, 2014
  18. Minibull

    Minibull Member

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    I think the reason that kind of feature isn't present is pretty obvious. It must have not worked well, or not as nicely as they wanted it. For whatever reason it may be, be it performance wise, or implementation wise for each car. How did the rain on the screen react to motion and wind, etc? If that is just a static animation, it isn't going to work well over a range of speeds and rain quantities. So then there's no point going through each car to implement it, only to have to redo it how you want later. That would just make even more wasted dev time.

    If that rain effect had a small effect on FPS, and was easily done for any car plus it worked well in the most obvious cases, it would be present, rational thought prevails surely...
    Maybe it will be left until a proper amount of work is done on wet weather. We shall see I'm sure.

    Tuttle made comments a few weeks ago about lighting system changes, and tweaks. Along with comments about clouds and weather related things.

    I do have to pull you up on the shadow and texture comments...the shadows at max look great, no hint of blockyness. The texture and modelling work on the modern stuff is brilliant too (Silverstone, Mores, Indy, etc).
    Also, I still find myself torn with the lighting/HDR. It has flaws for sure, related to a hard top car usually, if not is is poor texture lighting work by the modder. I certainly would not want the old rF1 non HDR lighting though...
    HDR still looks nice in my eyes though. Midday lighting is quite flat if the sun is overhead, details are lost. Conversely, morning and evening looks lovely and rich, the lighting colours and the big shadows. What's busted is night lighting, but hey, I'm sure it will be seen to.



    C'mon...early morning with near clear skys, low sun...

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]



    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]
     
  19. Guineapiggy

    Guineapiggy Registered

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    I'm still thoroughly unimpressed by the shadows/lighting in those pictures. First, the shadow blockiness is clearly obvious in these pictures. More, however good the new tracks may be, (again, I find them at best average) there are still issues like the crappy trees, over-saturation, flat grass and texture sharpening issue which this image shows off nicely. My computer can do more and many games I own accomplish so much more. As for "It must not have worked well", that's plain to see, the question is more why it has taken so very long to implement, especially when it was part of the pre-beta promotional material so many years ago.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Nov 22, 2014
  20. MystaMagoo

    MystaMagoo Registered

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    NFS titles are better visually than rF2 and thay are also still on DX9.
    Just got Shift2,drives like crap but looks far and away better than rF2.
     

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