I know i'm not supposed to care about visuals when it comes to sim racing and especially proper sims like rF2 but something has changed ! I've put rF2 aside for a couple of months waiting for Reiza content and with the imminent release i thought why not just check rF2 is running right and have been greeted with terrible aliasing , half rate reflections and cascade shadows right up close to the driver ! Why ? Im running 4k with max settings , 5 x AA and even tried FXAA on top of 5 x AA ! I thought S397 where trying to lift the visuals of rF2 more inline with 2019 titles ? I mean performance is great but what wouldnt be with next to no AA and reflections running at 30 fps ? Come on , isn't there better ways to optimise than just reduce the quality levels ?
I noticed the same and thought that some settings in game must have changed, looked last night and nope, all still cranked up but jaggie's are like their is no anti aliasing at all.
That shadow line (big orange circle) has always been there for me. I never figured out the way to remove it. Not sure if it is something to do with draw distances...
cockpits are in the process of being upgraded to the PBR shaders. But some items really are for improved performance over best visuals. rF2 will most likely NEVER be eyecandy like so many expect, but the skins being put out now are much flashier than the previous methods allowed. Patience my young Jedi....only a few months? this is rF2 after all...
The whole graphics engine ideally would need a re-write I'm afraid... The rising demand for more polygons and detail is really showing by now... I am sure quite a few of the racers in the 12H Sebring official race will experience FPS drops into uncomfortable levels with that amount of cars on that 'heavy' track... I can't begin to think about the measures having to be done to try and optimize the SCN-file for the upcoming lasered Nordschleife... If the fidelity level is going to be the same as the Sebring, it'll be a real effin' hog... I'm also pretty sure that the latest Endurance and GT3 pack LOD optimization was to squeeze out as many FPS as possible for this official 12H race... And yet I'm sure some racers in that race must experience drops in FPS... Why? Because this old graphics engine do decrease (almost exponentially(nah of course not but you get my point)) in performance when the poly count is growing... Something the rF2 graphics engine seems to handle worse than any of its rivals... The computer used to stream that stream (track cams doesn't flatter the situation)... I don't even want to know what's in it, but I think NASA wants it back after the stream... See what I mean here: https://www.twitch.tv/rfactorlive
The problem of shadows has always been there and is very embarrassing, especially on some circuits and when the sun is low. I think S397 said they might consider improve shadows (not sure). Concerning the AA, I advise you these settings with nvidia inspector : X2 MSAA associated with X2 sparse grid OR X4 MSAA associated with X4 sparse grid. (for this to work you need to put the AA in "enhance application settings" mode with rF2). Of course the FPS will be lower, but the alliasing will be strongly better and especially the shadows will be less aliased.
EDIT But for people playing in 4K I am skeptical about the ability of a very powerful GPU to display enough FPS with the sparse grid ..... to test!
I'll be testing that tonight, i use it with AMS but just haven't used it for rF2 since before when it was DX9, it worked fine, then S397 locked it to only ingame AA when moving to DX11and just haven't tried it again as it wasn't really even needed, in game 5 x was perfectly fine until recently.
You can do a rollback from the Steam betas tab back to an earlier build and compare the AA, that's really the only way to objectively verify that anything has changed.
that shadow redrawing in front all the time on the building up high, has been a problem with rF2 going back to the days when rF2 was ISI's, it is also especially distracting around Luffield c gantry on Silverstone and happens all the time like there is a bubble around the car. I sent Gjon pics and vid footage back in the day and nothing was done about it sadly. You don't need to go as far as sparse grid AA to get a good quality picture, using 16xQ(16x csaa) in nvinspector with lod bias set to -1.000 and negative lod bias allowed, gives great fidelity, of course you will need nvidia card for that.
I play in shadow ultra and shadow blur ultra. The problem is there sometimes, but rarely enough. And I play EXCLUSIVELY with the sun low in the sky (+ night). Try to see if the full ultra settings resolve much of your problem.
I have all set to max except PP which is High. Still have cascade shadows everywhere If enough noise is made they will have to do something about it!