Graphics are Great WTF are people saying rf 1 ?

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Sean_S36, Feb 4, 2012.

  1. K Szczech

    K Szczech Registered

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    As for lighting I've just sent you a PM on SRPL forums :)

    As for sky, well I don't think we can do much about it.
    That's just the way ISI's implementation looks at the moment. They seem to have per-vertex calculations of Rayleigh and Mie scattering implemented, but it's still too fresh to produce realistic results.

    Getting sky colors right, especially during sunset and right after it, is quite a challenge. Most of programmers who happily start implementing Rayleigh scattering aren't really aware what they're getting themselves into :) Neither was I the first time :D

    One needs to give it a lot of thought. Otherwise you will not be able to identify weakness in calculations that cause something to look different than desired and you may end up tweaking something else instead.
    And when that goes wrong aswell, you'll probably end up running blind and tweaking everything there is ;)

    I haven't seen a single game so far that got sunsets right. The problem with many realtime atmosphere implementations is that they do not take presence of ground into account properly. Sounds funny, but that's not so straightforward to introduce into equations :)
    And sometimes it's about incorrect calculations of optical depth.
     
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  2. nothke

    nothke Registered

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    Haha, I wanted to mention Crysis, but I didn't want to cause of the "racing game" context we are in.. Subsurface scattering is also something I wanted to mention, but I think it's not yet ready for racing games, first cause you don't really need THAT much detail in for racing at 200kmh just to past them and not even take a closer look at. On the other hand, SS is very well used in todays games for human skin, wax materials and stuff like that.. Here, it would probably be only used for leaves.

    ON THE OTHER more important HAND, I think Crysis vegetation is quite cartoonish, why? Well because it is actually "designed" by modellers, and it is reaching the bottom of uncanny valley. What I want to say is that RBR trees are actual real photos straight from the nature, and are put on the model, while Crysis trees are designed by programmers and modellers as an object with special branch building hierarchy with carefully "realistic" programming that is supposed to "look like a tree". (like Speedtree) It's like actual nature vs mimicking the nature. It's like a tree in reality and a tree from the film "Avatar" =)

    ON THE THIRD HAND (if you have one): Crysis is a jungle FPS and you spend 90% of time looking at and hiding begind trees, chopping them with your gunfire and throwing it at enemies..
    The difference is that people playing crysis would say "OH WOOOW This TREE looks so good!!"
    While people playing racing games would say "OH WOOOW Look, this FORREST looks so good!!"
    It's about the full/average feeling more, cause THE actual TRACK and THE CAR is where the full attention goes in racing games and vegetation is a filling, atmosphere "effect", how to say..

    But, OK, the years are progressing and we are supposed to build better vegetation models, so mimicking the nature is inevitable.. I understand that Crysis looking or some kind of "speedtree" trees with advanced graphic shaders is the next step even in racing games, but I think it's not their time yet. You can do much better things with high res tree photos today. RBR had it's times limits, now the limits are pushed exponentially and it's time to multiply and improve that technology...
     
  3. nothke

    nothke Registered

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    But, I don't wanna fight with people here.. Just point out some things =)

    Anyway, now, to answer this whole thread:
    Many people who compare rFactor to other sims in any way usually forget that the main advantage and the main motto of rFactor games is that they are very very very
    OPEN TO MODIFICATION (aka MODDING FRIENDLY)

    that is what matters to me the most, and that is why my allegiance is to it! It is completely open, and modifying it is very well supported.. There is not many games that are like this..

    The only thing I want from rfactor2 is to completely open itself for graphics modding as well! We will then see our big graphic minds such as K Szczech improve it in the same way the basic content (cars and tracks) are added and improved..

    It's not ONLY the physics, performance, graphics or realism that kept rFactor so alive since it came out in 2005, it is the huge modding comunity that came with it!

    Now of course, there are problems with optimisation in this beta, but we should hope they will be solved, we've seen advances in newest builds..

    But please people, don't argue about comparing the sims so much when the mottos of all the sims are so obvious.. Now, if you want to complain about the graphics.. Why don't you try working on improving it? =)
     
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  4. MaXyM

    MaXyM Registered

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    @nothke
    You were already pointed one reason why trees must be modelled in Crysis - With plain texture you couldn't dip into the forest.

    But there is second thing you didn't mentioned - lighting. With trees realized like in RBR you cannot light it correctly.. just because tree objects are plain only with photo-texture. It was ok for RBR because there was static lighting. But in dynamic environment, such trees would look good not enough. You can improve it a bit by normal maps but... there are a lot of lighting effects you will be not able to get with this technique (mentioned by KS in previous posts).
    In other words, you will be see a forest (from outside) but it will still not look real, even if textures will be made by photos (or will look ok only during time of day and under conditions the photos has been taken)

    @nothke
    Sounds nice, but... you have no source code. So you cannot mod any part of the engine. I think some one of us has started that being a modder means you should be able to modify any part, any bit of software. Wrong! Modding means create content. The content put into engine. The engine should be complete environment, sand box to put content. In case of simulation it should simulate real world as good as possible, but not providing possibilities to modify the "appearance of simulated world". Otherwise content will be affected by artistic visions of modders which turns it into fantasy instead of trying to simulate the real.

    That's why we have a lot of "brown" looking tracks (ie Mid Ohio), more saturated, less saturated, brighter, darker etc. It is wrong approach IMO. All content should follow the same rules - copying reality. Even if not possible in 100% - whole content would be consistent. Otherwise it would end up as bunch of artistic vissions.
     
  5. K Szczech

    K Szczech Registered

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    An interesting post nothke, much appreciated :)

    However look at this photo - you will have to agree that tree shading and subsurface scattering can have huge impact on overal appearance of vegetation.

    [​IMG]

    And we're definitely not inside forest on this photo :)

    Now take any tree from RBR and try to copy it onto that photo - no matter where you put it it will not match.


    As for SSS - we don't need full simulation of course, just some imitation based on textures is enough.
    I allready have support for this in my shaders. Then it's all down to creating nice tree texture and SSS overlay texture.


    Another interesting example:

    [​IMG]

    Trees on left side of the road are bright, because we're looking at lit side of trees here. At the same time trees on the right side of the road seem dark, because we're looking at the shadowed side ot these trees.


    Yeah, it's true manmade trees will look a bit artificial, but on the other hand, as long as general appearance is good, you will not notice details at 100+ km/h :)
    What we note at high speeds is mostly general appearance produced by lighting. That's why I think it's better to have medium-quality trees with good lighting rather than high-quality photos that do not match the rest if the scene.
     
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  6. DurgeDriven

    DurgeDriven Banned

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    Were did I say HDR is Bloom ? lol

    I did not look at other games to compare it. ?

    I JUST DONT LIKE IT.

    sheesh lol :)
     
  7. MaXyM

    MaXyM Registered

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    You must be very unhappy seeing these effects any day, any time, in real world ;)
     
  8. K Szczech

    K Szczech Registered

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    Well, I started my post with quiting yours, which said:

    You say you find images without HDR sharper, but HDR has absolutely nothing to do with image sharpness. Bloom on the other hand has everything to do with image sharpness.

    That's why it shounded like you mistook bloom for HDR, which is a common mistake :)
     
  9. DurgeDriven

    DurgeDriven Banned

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    Sorry does rFactor2 have bloom because I cant see it in the menu. ?

    With HDR ON (Pic #1) and OFF (Pic#2) to my eyes OFF has more definition to things abet it looks a bit more unnatural. :)
     
  10. bazzak

    bazzak Registered

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    i must say,before the beta came out and all we had was screenshots,i was optomistic and even denigrated the obvious trolls.Sadly.this is is not up the current standards of iracing and pcars.
     
  11. DurgeDriven

    DurgeDriven Banned

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    Having both I hope rF2 will improve graphics and pCAR physics.

    imo ISI have not released "stuff" they have finished like hi-res textures, maybe I am wrong but
    I do not think those skins are finals were as pCARS are pretty close to final quality or is that too
    far of a stretch.

    Either way modders will improve it won't they. ;)
     
  12. tsunamibr

    tsunamibr Registered

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    As MaXyM said earlier, Modders will, hopefully, improve content, yes. But our concern isn't about content, it's about the graphic engine that will run this content, because it's looking kinda old and flawed, by today's standards.

    Rodrigo
     
  13. Cleverleyson

    Cleverleyson Registered

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  14. K Szczech

    K Szczech Registered

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    Results can vary, but reasons for them are not that complex. It's all down to shading and shawows just like with anything else.

    The problem is that shape is too complex to be described by reasonable number of polygons, so hybrids of 3D models and billboards are used. These can still work well with lighting and shadows. They can even produce convincing self-shadowing.

    I can tell you that we're not far away from having really nice trees in rF2. The foundations are there in game engine, but some simple bugs prevent proper lighting and self-shadowing of billboards. ISI needs to fix that and I'm pretty sure they will eventually. Right now they seem focused on other things so we just have to wait.

    Although I'm hoping for one or two extra features for billboards, and Luc seemed to like my ideas, so maybe he can support them when there's time for it :)
     
  15. Old Hat

    Old Hat Registered

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    I meant this to read as: I prefer the look of rf2's road surface *over that of* iRacing and most other sims. rF2's gives a much better sense of distance and speed than does iRacing's standard grey look, which is terrible for me.
     
  16. dragon3007

    dragon3007 Registered

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    when I'm looking at rFactor 2, the updates come very slowly. At pcars they bring an new build every day. And the changelog in one day at c.a.r.s is equal at the changelog from rfactor's built 60 to 69. the isi guys are very slowly...
     
  17. John.Persson

    John.Persson Registered

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    You dont think ISI guys has new builds every week?

    Of course they do, but they don't need us to test those daily/weekly builds. That's what internal testing is for and some quicktest for functions and so on.

    ISI is doing a nice pace if they can dish out 1-2 builds every month later on. Right now we're at 1 build per month since release of beta.
     
  18. bastins

    bastins Registered

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    To be fair, this really doesn't say much. Whether they release builds minutely, or yearly, it doesn't say anything about how fast, or effectively, they're actually working in the office. It's just how often they decide to release their progress for testing. For example, can anyone honestly say more work went into Call of Duty than Skyrim because it's released every year, as opposed to several years with The Elder Scrolls?

    Change-lists are along the same lines. If there isn't much to change, then change-lists will be short. It doesn't necessarily mean the developer is slow or not doing much.
     
  19. blakboks

    blakboks Registered

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    I haven't checked in on this thread in quite a while. But it seems to be getting at some topics very near and dear to my own heart. Namely, HDR (and thus, tonemapping) and foliage.

    HDR: I've found that this term is very frequently used interchangeably with tone-mapping, and, like K. Szczech has pointed out, bloom. Personally, I'm 100% all for High Dynamic Range lighting and calculations, when used with exposure settings. However, I tend to find that tone-mapping has a tendency to wash out an image, and completely blast away any contrast. It's pretty easy for everything to just become a gray mess. It's typically used as a band-aid for improper lighting. Movies have done fine without tone-mapping (as we know it in games/software). Photography has been fine without tone-mapping. All we need is proper exposure and lighting setups. Bloom is an aberration. It's something we see because our eyes and camera lenses are not perfect lenses--they still diffract some light--which is why you see bloom. I think bloom is fine when it's used in moderation. If we had High Dynamic Range displays, we wouldn't have a need for either tone-mapping or bloom.

    Foliage: I, again, pretty much agree with what K. Szczech has said regarding this. We are very close to having some pretty powerful tools for creating lush environments. Creating trees for close-up is not the difficult thing, really (if we had some nice back-lighting tricks). It's getting the density of foliage that's the difficult thing. I think this is what RBR did so well, to make their games look so good. Most games end up looking like a tree farm, with each tree at "arm's-length" away from each other. Trees in real life are right up against each other, intermingling, competing for light.
    [​IMG]
    There's so much going on in terms of foliage in just that one picture--from the trees nearby, to the mid-range, to the distant trees covering the mountainside. I dream of being able to cover a mountainside in a forest in our tracks--using actual 3D geometry. Well, perhaps not EVERY tree as 3D geometry. But at least some sort of shader that we can apply to a 3D mesh to get it to have that irregular surface and silhouette against the sky that's caused by the trees.

    While, personally, I disagree that they're cartoony looking (a lot of that can be fixed with some post-processing), if we want to move forward at all from simple billboard trees, we need to build on what Crytek has done with their trees. If you want your tree to have 3 dimensions, to be able to hang out over the road or armco, if you want the trunk to look like a solid object, if you want to drive by it and not have it "stare" at you, trees will need to be "designed" (as you put it). It's nearly impossible to get all of the surface attributes (specularity, bump, scattering, etc.) of the tree from a single photograph. To do so, you would need to have a fully grown tree inside a studio with completely controllable lighting. AFAIK, it's completely impossible to actually get a tree that doesn't look flat as you move around it from a photograph--especially when nearby the tree--to get it to move in parallax, etc.

    As far as builds go--ISI has said that they expect to release an update every month or so. I imagine that once they have a build they are ready to release, it needs to first be tested to make sure that there are no show-stopping bugs. Look at how much people whine as it is, now imagine if the game was actually unstable....
     
  20. PLAYLIFE

    PLAYLIFE Registered

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    This thread is the perfect example why rFactor was so successful and why rFactor 2 has great potential to replicate it's predecessor.

    Talented guys (and gals!) who pay attention to the detail bringing their experience and knowledge to further enhance the game.

    It makes all the difference. So for those who think talking about tree shadows is irrelevant think again. It's these details, from tree shadows to everything else which gives you a big difference in the end result and increases your immersion.
     

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