How to increase mirror's draw distance

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by pmarin2, Jul 1, 2016.

  1. pmarin2

    pmarin2 Registered

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    Hi, although I have all the graphics settings maxed out, on certain tracks the draw distance used in my mirrors is not far enough and trees and buildings disappear/fade. This happens on both "normal" and virtual mirrors.

    Is there a way to change some parameter to increase how far away objects on the mirrors disappear?

    Thanks!
     
  2. Woodee

    Woodee Registered

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    Might be a tweak in player.json file (kept in rFactor 2\UserData\player folder)

    Try setting to false?
     
  3. pmarin2

    pmarin2 Registered

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    Thanks Woodee! I´ll try that tonight
     
  4. pmarin2

    pmarin2 Registered

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    I tried changing it to false, but unfortunately nothing changes, everything keeps disappearing when its far away.

    Thanks for the help Woodee!
     
  5. Proud Tiger

    Proud Tiger Registered

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    I can't set the virtual mirrors on the cars vertically.
    I'm using the seat settings with CTRL (left mirror) and ALT (right mirror) for the other positions.
    I use a low fov(27) and can't seem to get the virtual mirrors set up correctly.
     
  6. Lazza

    Lazza Registered

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    In your player.JSON, change this value:

    "Rearview_Back_Clip":0,
    "Rearview_Back_Clip#":"Back plane distance for mirror (0.0 = use default for scene)",

    To something large. (make sure you do Back_Clip, not Front_Clip, or you won't see anything ;))
     
  7. peterchen

    peterchen Registered

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    Wow! a global setting for this? Didn´t knew that! Thanks Lazza!
    I always thought that it is fixed in the track.SCN
     
  8. Proud Tiger

    Proud Tiger Registered

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    I fixed my problem by using shift and the seat position keys.
     
  9. pmarin2

    pmarin2 Registered

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    Thanks Lazza, that did it! I did some tests, and it seems that some tracks have different configurations, for example, ISI's Lime Rock Park won't show buildings or any object besides trees on the mirrors, others like the excellent Oulton Park, show almost all objects (I guess this is for performance optimizations, all relevant things show, but some stands or safety vehicles don't).

    I guess its just that Lime Rock is optimized for old computers, and has not been updated for a while (even the loading screen uses the old format).

    As far as I understand, the SCN file in the tracks establishes what is drawn and the distance when things start to disappear, in Oulton for example they chose to draw much more detail and even when you are far enough. It would be great if ISI could update their tracks to enable this things.

    Thanks again for the tip!
     
  10. Lazza

    Lazza Registered

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    The rearview cull Woodee showed above should override the SCN settings for which objects don't appear in the mirrors (when set to false).

    Track makers generally have a performance target when setting these things, and you have to allow for different levels of hardware. When they make a track with these optimizations someone with a more capable PC can change these global settings and see more/everything; if the track is like that from the start someone with a slower PC can only make everything in the mirrors disappear very quickly or even turn mirrors off entirely, just to be able to run the track.

    Of course different tracks will naturally have varying levels of performance, so the type of tweaking they need will also vary. Even if rF2 had more options in the UI to adjust track by track I think it would be hard to keep it neat. You could probably envisage a sort of auto benchmark system that takes all the track objects categorized by the modder, monitors performance while drawing a complete lap or two, and saves a configuration file on your system so that in future it draws the right amount of objects to keep a certain level of performance. But that would be quite a project in itself. As long as we have moddable content there'll never be consistency.
     
  11. pmarin2

    pmarin2 Registered

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    Here is a crazy idea, I don't know if it could be implemented easily, probably not. A level o priority could be assigned to objects in the scn, and then you could choose which level you want to run your tracks at. Level 0 is no objects visible on rear view mirrors, level 5, for example, eveything shows. Maybe for rFactor 3 :)

    What I would definitely add in the UI is the option that Woodee mentioned, and a slider for the one you brought up. rFactor can look a lot better this way IMO, but it should be something that is easily configurable to the normal user and not something hidden in a file.
     
  12. Emery

    Emery Registered

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    In one sense, that already exists with the Track Detail setting. I'm not sure how/if Track Detail applies to culling rearview mirror objects. It's rare, though, for people to actually turn down track detail unless it is the only difference between running all tracks at a minimum framerate or not. They are more likely to turn off rearview mirror or reduce AA level or lower visible car counts.
     
  13. pmarin2

    pmarin2 Registered

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    Maybe track detail affects the objects you see in the cockpit and not the ones rendered on the rearview mirrors. Maybe someone from ISI can explain this to us a little bit. It would be awesome to have a simple guide on what things could be modified in the json archive to have better graphics and details.
     
  14. Lazza

    Lazza Registered

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    You could have multiple instances of an object, via Visgroups in the SCN, and that visgroups could also be different for whether the object appears in the mirrors (each instance can specify which detail settings it appears in, but only has one "don't appear in mirrors" setting, so you'd need multiple). But you're right, people with performance issues tend to look at other settings, and performance issues (framerates) are usually bad enough that track detail won't help that much. I think at some point the game itself needs to handle this optimization, which would be more efficient anyway, but that's definitely a future thing rather than something we could hope to see in rF2.

    *And, I agree draw distance is something logical to have as an in-game option, both for normal view and for the mirrors. At least we have it in the JSON, but that's a bit of a step for less technical players. (rFactor veterans are used to it, but if we want more than rFactor veterans playing rFactor we probably need some changes :))
     
  15. stonec

    stonec Registered

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    On a typical track, more than half of the objects are visgrouped to not be shown in mirrors at all (on any distance). This makes sense, since if all objects were shown, you would basically half the FPS by having mirrors on. Besides visgroups there is the rearview back clip setting (both track specific and in player.JSON), this setting doesn't seem to have much or any impact on FPS so you might as well put the draw distance as far behind as you wish.
     
  16. Marc Collins

    Marc Collins Registered

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    What setting do you recommend for the player.JSON?
     
  17. stonec

    stonec Registered

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    "Rearview Cull":true
    "Rearview_Back_Clip":500
     
    mister dog likes this.
  18. Marc Collins

    Marc Collins Registered

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    Hmmm, I have always used false because I like seeing things like cones flying around in the mirror after I hit them ;)

    Not to divert the topic, but the lack of direct control over the mirror resolution (as we had in rF1) has always bothered me more than the draw distance. I would like what is there to be of a consistent quality with the front view.
     
  19. Lazza

    Lazza Registered

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    The danger with a statement like that is suddenly being forced to have a crap front view :p
     
  20. stonec

    stonec Registered

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    The only reason I don't use cull at false is because it costs significant FPS, it basically gives you the same view in mirrors as in front view. With a good GPU I would probably turn it to false. Mirror resolution is mod-dependent, I once tried a mod which gave poor graphics performance, then I noticed it used 4K mirror resolution...
     

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