Released Nürburgring Nordschleife PBR Update

Discussion in 'News & Notifications' started by Christopher Elliott, Oct 21, 2020.

  1. Kahel

    Kahel Registered

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    Thanx for the shot comparison... overall, the 'new' track look more natural in most shot. But it's true that some tree texture look uneven.
    The tree before simply blended better and felt, ironically, better quality, higher resolution.
    It goes in the right direction tough. If the tree blending can be improve then it would be an obvious win for the updated version.

    With the caveat that textures aren't high resolution enough... especially for 4k... and while a little less 'cartoonish', style something off. Probably just not high resolution enough for my taste and I can see every compression artifact with my low 'Field of View' camera.

    About shadow, try not to focus on time of day... instead match the shadow length even if it's not the same in-game time.
    Maybe the night fall at 19h30 for the first and 20h00 for the second. Worth the experiement...
     
  2. stonec

    stonec Registered

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    I suspect most textures are already 4K, which should be plenty, and if they are not, they really can't increase texture resolution anyway as the track chews 6-8 GB of VRAM as it is, unless somehow the engine could stream assets in and out of memory live, but no racing sim does this as far as I know.

    Imo those screenshot comparisons mainly show a different lighting. It looks like the light is reflected slightly differently, which makes some trees look brighter and brighter textures in general tend to expose any imperfections easier, while with a dark texture like some of those old trees you can't really discern the details. In daytime conditions at least, I reckon the new track looks a lot closer to TV footage than the old one, while perhaps being a bit less contrasty and dark.
     
  3. DrivingFast

    DrivingFast Registered

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    @AlexHeuskat

    They may have just changed the reference date of the circuit, so at the same times as before the shadows are different.
     
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  4. Craig Waddell

    Craig Waddell Registered

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    Go into the DX11 config file and edit the ShadersLevel value from 0 to 1, 2 . That solved the issue for me.
     
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  5. 2ndLastJedi

    2ndLastJedi Registered

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    Top picture looks so much better! I hope this is just different settings and time of day or there is an option to use old version. Why is S397 optimisation just to lower settings? We have 3090's available to us now, we need higher settings!
     
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  6. 2ndLastJedi

    2ndLastJedi Registered

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  7. Alex Sawczuk

    Alex Sawczuk Administrator Staff Member

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    The sun is clearly in a different position in those shots. I can't remember if we changed the race date on the track, I have a feeling that we did. I don't think we reduced immediate major shadow casters either.
     
  8. FERNANDO CABRERA

    FERNANDO CABRERA Registered

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    Track look nice with the additional objects to track side; the building textures looks way better.
    But agree about the shadows and treed poping up... Actually the lack of shadows/selfshadows to trees and track side object brakes immersion.
    I can not state is a downgrade, what's missing are small details that are taxing but there are a few of us that are not FPS junkie and race offline, I prefer immersion and quality over FPS; the shadows gives that small details that gives the felling of been there, specially in VR where shadow haves an impact on how you perceives the word.
    Nice upgrade, I hope developers can find a way to rise fidelity and quality to those that prefer it over FPS.
     
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  9. redapg

    redapg Registered

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    I'm working on the "instant Timing" Update and i noticed some Changes like that.
    E.g the Endurance Series Layout changed from
    RaceDate = October 26, 2019 to RaceDate = June 27, 2019
    and also the test Day Start changed from 8:00 to 13:00
     
  10. alesanchez

    alesanchez Member

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    it is undoubtedly an upgrade and the image is better than before. The track is simply fantastic, the best ever. However I am sorry to say that S397 is getting it wrong on the shadows. They are now obsessed with the fact that in the real world the shadows are not very marked. This flattens everything giving a mediocre result despite the progress made.
    The contrast is too weak and there is no harmony between the objects, car and track.
    The graphics continue to be a cartoon, they are being pushed to the maximum without using post porcessing effects that could mask the cartoon effect. The improvement is there but very minimal.
    However I'm almost happy with the result, I'm sorry to see only DLC and updates that revolve only around the GT3 mainly.
    No progress in the game code, shortcomings and bugs that have been known for more than 4 years never solved, lack of features such as dirty rubber and particles. After all, the dirt of the tires on the GT is not visible and probably you do not have the desire to strive to achieve something of an absolute banality and simplicity.
    We have been waiting, patients for years ...
     
  11. mesfigas

    mesfigas Registered

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    thanks mate i ll try it thanks
     
  12. Flaux

    Flaux Registered

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    That is news to me. Do you have any pictures that show the difference? I'm interested.
     
  13. UGM 133A

    UGM 133A Registered

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    This update is incredible. Every car I've tried here feels completely different now and in a very good way. Holding cars at the limit is much more rewarding than it used to be, it used to feel like there was a very narrow, but very obvious window where you could keep the car on the limit. Now it's a lot more vague and requires a lot more corrections, which is way more realistic. It's amazing what an update to the road surface can do for the behavior of the cars.
     
  14. Craig Waddell

    Craig Waddell Registered

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    No I've not, I'm a VR user and have always found that in RF2 my RiftS looked washed out. Found this myself whilst looking for a fix earlier in the week. For me changing from the default 0 to 1 gives the best improvement, 2 was a little too saturated.

    It's not helped though by many of the non official tracks having different colour pallets. That's not the developers fault though.

    Let me know what you think once you've tried it.

    Information below from another post that I posted a couple of days ago.

    "Rfactor2 VR users, specifically RiftS but possibly affects other headsets too.

    Have you always found that RF2 looks washed out and dull compared to other Sims. That's what I've always thought but have never found a fix.....until now that is.

    Whilst looking for a fix I came across a file called Config_DX11. Within that config file there's a line which by default reads ShadersLevel=0. By modifying this to =1 the game is significantly brighter and the colours more saturated. At 2 it was too much for me.

    I suppose it depends on how you like your games to look but for me it's a good improvement so I thought worthwhile sharing."
     
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  15. memoNo1

    memoNo1 Registered

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  16. mantasisg

    mantasisg Registered

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    Are you sure about that ? Just look at the screenshots @AlexHeuskat shared and the shadows appear very dark when they are supposed to be so. Shadows darkness appearance depends on many factors, they definitely shouldn't allways be very dark, and S397 certainly improved that.
     
  17. mantasisg

    mantasisg Registered

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    Here I did tiny attempt to examine what does what. I disagree with @AlexHeuskat that track is less beautiful now, I think it is more beautiful and more realistic looking overall, more immersive. But I think he is right about some stuff not being better.

    Of course it is also a bit sad that there appears to be less trees, why not just leave them and just disable their shadows instead ? If anything, I would have anticipated for even more foliage, a lot more bushes, but of course without shadow casting properties... In particularly the Fox-hole picture shows that foliage was way richer before, and now it the tree walls are even exposed there, thankfully, the tree walls are way nicer now, so thats I guess where the compromise came from.

    Bottom images edited. I was focusing on foliage everywhere, so for example I might have slightly too low contrast for shadows on the ground maybe in edited pics.
    [​IMG]
    I have reduced contrast a lot, and increased brightness a little. I have edited selected colours - green and yellow. Then finally used "burn" tool to quickly darken/saturate bright washed out trees on the left side.

    [​IMG]
    Again similar application for contrast and brightness. Again some fast edit to selective green and yellow colours. And did a quick patch on that weird shadow on the tree on the right side, just to point out that it shouldn't appear there.

    [​IMG]
    Reduced contrast, and increased brightness slightly. Did not compensate or edit for green and yellow selective colours like in above two examples. Patched up tree wall bit on the left side that appeared to be incorrectly shaded or something and was unrealistically poping out in this scene.

    Thats how I see stuff, any thoughts about these edits ? In conclusion, opposite to what alesanchez said, I think that there is too much contrast (in the foliage in particularly), also some colour/shading balancing in the foliage might be positive, because they appear not uniform enough, not sayign that all foliage should be completely uniform, but shouldn't look like totalyl different materials either.
     
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  18. DrivingFast

    DrivingFast Registered

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    @2ndLastJedi

    His excessive insistence that it was bad, only bad, based on poor knowledge of the game and based on bad screenshots (VISIBLY NOT IDENTICAL DATE) was quite annoying.

    My comment was related to his.
     
  19. Mister Bronze

    Mister Bronze Registered

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    Had a quick go last night. Looked great to me. Fps ok, still get a reasonable dip on pit straight. Tried loading 88 cars on 24h circuit but crashed to desktop at end of loading bar. Loaded ok straight away after with 60. Need to test some more, likely my pc can’t take it but i also noticed after that a windows update was maybe installing in the background as well.

    edit : all good with 90 cars. I miscounted and went over 90 last time. Doh!
     
    Last edited: Oct 22, 2020
  20. twinkle

    twinkle Registered

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    Am I crazy or curbs are so much different?
    Kinda feels it’s less bumpy in some places as well. Is this how nordsleife looks like in 2020, changed some curbs and fixed bumps on some places?

    Oh and yes, looks so much better than before! Just missing some curbs. It actually changes my driving in some crucial places.
     

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