In the Screenshot, my sim is always really dull. how could I have bright colours like in screenshots?
Is there any way to get rid of the dullness without enabling HDR? I haven't liked HDR since the beginning and I still don't like it now.
Nope. All ISI cars/tracks have optimized texture colors with regards to HDR. That means they will always look dull unless "lit" by HDR.
Thats one of the major things why you see people bashing rf2 graphics. They dont have enough requeriments to use rf2 at a decent level and then ...pufff. RF2 on low settings is completely diferent on using high/ultra. I must admit that using rf2 on all low settings seems youre using rf1 graphically speaking. That first picture is the perfect exemple. If you take off the bottom bar and ask someone which title is that much probably they will be confused.
What is there not to like? it enables dynamic stuff, its not like its changing things radically in terms of what you experience. But, you could enable HDR and just tone down some parts like reflections, road reflections and other stuff. see if it meets your needs. A few builds ago I could not run HDR because it would crash my pc so I went vanilla. but after an update I could run HDR on low gfx settings and it made a world of difference. Not because it looked so much prettier but because HDR gave much more immersion. its like going from 2D to 3D. But that might just be me and my crappy pc
I hate HDR and its mega boosting of the outside brightness when in cockpitview. I tend to use bonnet or bumper view just to get around this. Is there any way to get the game to stop this boost when in cockpit view?
I'll say it depends the car and its windshield. Some make dull colors (even with HDR), over brightness, some not. If you use bonnet to get ride of it it confirm it a windshield problem IMO... AFAIK (I'm not behind my gaming ccomputer) the new NSX don't have this problem at all (fully transparent windshield). Some expert could explain here how to change the windshield texture inside a mod. I already saw thread about the Clio windshield here and how to get ride of it's problem...
I get the issue with every car. I assume it's because the game is being stupid and taking the dark interior of the cockpit into consideration when calculating the overall brightness. It's not right that the brightness should change simply by changing the view. Apologies if it's not as simple as that. I have a feeling it did get better when the automation profile was released but certainly the last two builds are back to the full-on over brightness issue. I used to have a no-HDR profile but that doesn't work anymore. An alternative is to turn HDR off altogether but that makes everything very dull - but consistent. No silly lighting up the track for a split second as I go under a tiny bridge. All we need is an alpha mask to remove the cockpit from the brightness calculation. Again, probably over simplifying things.
It's a complex issue, game takes the dark cockpit into consideration just as your eyes would too. HDR simulates auto-exposure which lightens dark areas and adapts like real eyes, otherwise it would be impossible to race at night with it. In real life when you sit in a dark cockpit far away from window and gaze out, then surroundings will look lighter than they really are, depending where your eyefocus is, for example see this hole. In Assetto Corsa it's turned upside down, surroundings are normal lit but most cockpits are so dark you can't see any detail, so it's not easy to find a good compromise.
