I made that mistake, although exaggerated you should play around with settings again, you will be surprised. I had to use one of Tosch's HDR profiles to see anything at night on Sebring with an AMD card, sad but true. Not about the profile, just needing to play around. (Thanks Tosch) +1 to whoever said about brightness control in game, let's not fool ourselves thinking this will ruin all the lighting efforts that have gone into RF2 If you can't see anything and have no monitor controls left to change. Most setups / profiles could be wrong
I think it's partly a psychological effect that people tend to look at the new build as better graphically even if little or any has changed. Especially when it's mentioned like this in the release notes. This build has improved the particle effects, allowed static reflections when reflections are off and fixed the cockpit overbright issue. Besides this, there is no other visible change to graphics, at least not in any of the comparisons I made.
I still think LOD has been tweaked or something like that tho I dont think that would get mention in the release notes, turbidity has also been tweaked. DrR1pper I also notice new amendments to the PLR file each new build of recent, I never use the update facility but its worth a check to see files like the PLR get refreshed as in taking your old settings and applying them the the new PLR. Again with the shaders folder do the old ones get deleted, if you dont change settings like resolution I'm not sure if they get updated, worth to check how well the updater works. Occlusion has also been includedd this has made a big difference too. No I dont see much of a difference in your screenshot.
Sorry if I sound like an ass Bart, I do appreciate yours and everyone's post but I'm trying to weigh up the objectiveness of your comment that I should see agraphical difference vs what I perceive to be only a lighting difference in the before and after screenshot comparison (though I did see the cars are reflective now...not apparent in the screenshots but in external view from different view directions they were obvious). I will however still follow through with your suggestion of a clean install. I also want to know if that will change the performance delta from a loss to a gain. Hope you don't read this the wrong way. Cheers
If you compare the graphics, you should compare on high settings, not on medium. Also, particle effects like dust and smoke have also been greatly improved and you can't see that from (your) images. The biggest performance drop by far are the road and environment reflection. My FPS more than doubled (!) when I switched those from low to off. For example, on Loch Drummond it went from 25-70 to 60-120+ HUGE difference! Hopefully that still has to be optimized
@DrR1pper As BrokkelPiloot says above yes the comparison should probably be made at Max settings. Tim did say you could turn everything down for the same visual experience so maybe the higher levels have seen improvement. I run mine at max all the time so perhaps thats why it seemed more obvious to me. Another point about my settings is FOV mine is narrow at 26 so I see more into the distance, its possible the quality is more in the distance. Try the sun occlusion setting I think that could be the factor of why it seems so much different to me.
One thing that jumped out at me fairly quickly on those screens for comparison was the difference in how the texture appears between the builds, The left wall looks very rough in 300 and smoother in the new build.
I have just done a separate, clean install of the 342 build and compared it to the old version that I've had autoupdated since the spring. Same graphics settings, no visual difference whatsoever.
After autoupdate I also couldn´t see a big difference on the graphic side. So i did a clean install after that and...wow...an obvious change in lighting. don´t have a comparison of the cockpit view. but luckily i saved one screen on external view in build 300. the depth of the scene in b342 is awesome now. B300 View attachment 10584 B342 View attachment 10585
And the performance? You'd be doing me a huge favour from potentially reinstalling everything please.
are you sure these are from the exact same time of day? And are you using exact the same graphical settings? And if so, at what level?
this are exact the same settings and also the same time (look at the shadows). I think you only see the improvements when turning on hdr and sun occlusion. In my settings everything is on full except crowd,wind motion and shadow blur. and my AA settings are not the best, i know.
For me the most obvious improvement is I can now turn environmental reflections to maximum and I get smooth real-time reflections without a huge impact on fps.
Firstly I much prefer the new Megane cockpit HDR in 342, no more massive over exposure and everything just looks better for me. I think people need to understand that in a real racing car you've got light coming in from all windows around the car yet in RF2 depending on seat & FOV you may only have the windscreen. Therefore for me the original pre-300 cockpit was overly bright and just a mess in my eyes. Sure we all want a close as representation of a simulation that we can get but ISI/We have to give and take a little to compensate for using a computer. Secondly the "Enjoy the New graphics" made me laugh somewhat, the only "New" graphics are the Particle Effects, everything else to me has just been touched up, improved and fixed (Sun Occlusion), kind of a sneaky misselling plot by ISI me thinks...and its worked
It worked pretty fine for me yes new particles effects, other graphics touched up, improved or fixed make a good visual differences and it's a good forward step IMO
Thanks John. I just let it install everything fresh so I guess I have a driver profile reset then. Now, I'm wondering if I did the reinstall before or after updating my drivers, LOL!
I'm not sure how else they could improve the realism of graphics other than the lighting and shadows cast on objects and reflections in general. Sky and clouding and rain could probably do with little more work but are sufficient for the time being. I think its pretty close to being good enough next to the competition. Personally for me the only thing missing is better antialising in the distance of the road to get rid of the jaggies. SparseGrid Supersampling x2 virtually eliminates it, at x4 its pretty perfect coupled with the right AA mode. Hopefully in the near future they will surprise us.
Sorry about such a late response, I haven't noticed your question until now: I have not seen any difference in performance between the fresh install and the old, autoupdated one. Even if it does exist, I believe it is negligible.
