The best option, from my point of view would be, if we could use the good old feature of rfactor 1, where you could select the cars inside of the showroom. That would solve a lot of problems immediately. And we could get rid of these icons and see the 3d car instead.
What do you have in mind? Something like this: Or more like that: Hm... I would prefer the second version Red does look "interesting"... And "clay" too...
Totally agree with this! But the showrooms must reflect what the car looks like on track. ATM rF2 showroom and on track are chalk and cheese. Has been sins the beginning off rF2. Have the same livery change. Not this "alt" sht.. When I was with ORSM the guy's set the series up in the veh so the right livery was used on the track that, that livery was raced on. Shame to say today after 6 - 7 years of rF2 we still don't have as many Aussie V8 series tracks that we did in rFactor. This is apparent for a great number of the content we used to have in rFactor over rF2. But this is quite mute with the rF2 1 car random thing. True series setup like we could do in rFactor and Sim-Bin GTR isn't really possible in rF2. Or AC for that matter. Interesting discussion https://www.racedepartment.com/threads/the-future-of-sim-racing-mixed-bag-or-single-series.156727/
AC has a dark showroom. People tend to use it when showing car liveries for download. It tends to hide to much when used for this but just to view the car it's hard to see what your viewing the car for in the first place. Not a fan. Just 2 cents worth.
It depends on settings. I've presented my thoughts twice previously (and believe ASR Formula and Darcidm's showrooms may be the best we currently have), but will provide examples of it being well executed in both dark and brighter conditions: A showroom should highlight all of the car's attention to detail and care. It is the one/best chance to render the car at its absolute best with reflection, shadings and shadows, and any post-processing/HDR effects. The car should look like it belongs in the environment; users should be able to have better and free range of control on cameras and rotation, at least without breaking the surface plane.
I'd do a bit of gradient from black (top) to dark grey (bottom). And can the lighting be adjusted, so the ambient light can be darker? Or you can try darkening ambient but increasing diffuse, should add some more contrast. edit: ah ok, your grey one has gradient already. I've looked at it on a laptop previously and it looks like solid color there. I guess I'd blacken the top part more. Hm, or better idea - to have a spherical panorama of black top to grey bottom gradient, and some square lights on the very top, so the car could have reflections of them. To each their own. I loved modern showroom in rf1, the dark version, where the ambient/diffuse whas dimmed (especially ambient) so you could see how the reflections play on a dimmed light.
I do understand why some are upset and that there is a desire to have more graphic power in the showroom, but honestly this is a discussion which should be held in a different place. The same applies to the UI and other general stuff. Back to topic. I found a showroom for AC (rebuild or copied from a NFS title) which I used to try out to set up a more "shiny" showroom, with reflections and background lights. Is this what you all where thinking of? EDIT: This also looks good with other contents I've to admit.
Sorry FuNK!, bad timing from me but I just wanted to mention something after I read D.Painter's post. By the way, great to see someone doing some work on an often looked over area, just like the 3rd party HUD boom we just had. I was thinking that the other day when FuNK! first started this thread. I can't remember the last race I did around the showroom. I feel I'll be seen as a weird freak who'll be told I need therapy but just because it's called a "showroom" why does it have to be inside. I'd like the "display area" to be maybe the pitbay. Yep, outside with "real" sunlight with a racetrak theme. Edit: I must have nodded off and Corti sort of visualised and posted my thoughts.
Yeah, honestly I ever would prefer an outside scenery over these current indoor ones. But the available graphical features of the current showroom renderer are much too limited to achieve good results. For instance it looks like lightning cannot be changed so there is always one directional light only. I've once put in Silverstone in the showroom, just to see what happens. It was ugly as hell! I guess there are ways to finetune materials and might get something decent, but in the end it will never look as good as in game. However, I might give that another try one day
Also if you put a big outdoors scene as your showroom, you have to wait for more models and textures to load up. I thought about a bit simplier dark showroom like the one in AMS. But in AMS the light reflections are done via cubemap, here it can be done via 360 panorama or simple flat rectangles or circles hanging on top, above the car - not even really visible, but they're mainly for the reflections on the car. Also, the one on the Can-Am Porsche looks very good, I think If you make a normal map for the floor, with a lot of grains (or use the tarmac normal map) but increase the tiling so the grains wouldn't be too much visible - you'll still have a bit scattered reflection, distant resembling that reflection of Porsche.
The recent shader update made my showrooms look very bad. So I invested some time to rework them. It's not that easy and still need some fine tuning and testing, but it recently began to look rather good (on many, but unfortunately not all cars/skins)! What do you think? Yes, the white is very heavy, and yes, the cars look way out of center (never noticed this before and hope that moving the camera center will work).
Indeed. Especially because saving screenshots (with standard F12) in the showroom create a PNG with an alpha that has the car already cut out (makes the prep a bit easier for the spotter guide)
I use the "White Studio" fixed in side view and I have no issue with it. I keep it preciously to make the preview/spotter captures
And I'm really happy about that. Always when seeing screens using my Showroom this makes me happy No issues you say? Then you don't use post-processing effects? Because for me the current side showroom does not fill the whole screen and you have a big black area at the bottom. I corrected/changed that already, but only in DevMode currently. Anyway I'm curious to know what makes the difference for you that you don't have that issue?
Ah yes, no post-processing effects on my side (playing in VR and making shoots with VR config) And I use only the side view. So no issue with the black "shadow" on the other side
@FuNK! I've been using your showroom for some time, I like the simplicity and also noticed some change after recent update. Comparing your old version versus new, of course I like the new better - Shadows are nicer and smoother, is there and additional undercar shadow or noise effect? - Headlights are much better - Grey colors and reflections too The only thing is the white, as you mentioned yourself, it burnes out the white on the car a bit, but not too much. Would love to see also this one in the pack.. https://abload.de/image.php?img=grab_230qbfoh.png
@MaD_King Just found that many of the Endurance Series cars are not placed in the center in the showroom. My guess is that this is not only the camera setting of the showroom. If it's also the model, do you see any chance to change this in one of the upcoming updates? @Prodigy Thank you very much for your feedback. Honestly my experimental and (somehow) extreme setup really gives some very good results. Especially some prototype cars look very good! However, I do have an idea on how to achieve a similar result with a slightly different setup, but with more control of the car highlights. Will investigate soon On the other showroom: Unfortunately this is an illegal copy of a NFS showroom (at least I believe it is). So I would have to rebuild it. And I will do as soon as I have time for that, because also that showroom could be really good for some cars!