"It's impossible to race in the rain in RF2..." - not really! :)

Check out this 20min+ race to the flag finish from VEC's 6 hours of Istanbul, final hour in the wet (using Gerald's RealWeather plugin)...

[video]https://youtu.be/SKMfTjwKaHs?t=5h40m8s[/video]

 

Wasn't actually raining there, it was a wet track with a developing drying line which is a really exciting and under used feature.



Why so many dislikes for that video? lol.

 

haha, good question But the drying line was washed away again...

 

"But the drying line was washed away again..." and again and again and again. Was really tricky.

 

948 watchers
18 dropkicks = 0.2% = they do not matter.

p

 

I know who they are - since we banned a few teams for not living up to the rules and regulations - all of a sudden there has been dislikes.
Childish yes - necessary for the league yes - worth 200 dislikes erm yeah - but hey they are still watching which means they must miss us

 

We had a wet quali too yesterday...

 

The issue is that track doesn't look wet.
Wet track has the appearance similar to sky above it:



Otherwise you can't judge the conditions.
In rF2 you pretty much have to learn new reality - how given appearance of track in rF2 translates to grip. Unfortunately there is no clear translation in rF2.

Yes, you can "race in the rain", but it's not at the level I would expect it to be.

Don'e get me wrong here - I don't need "shiny graphics" - just something that translates well. I've tried, but what rF2 offers doesn't translate well to actual road conditions, not to mention that visualization often falls behind current situation. Lot's of work to do for ISI, but I hope they will sort it out - especially now that they started to work on wet physics a bit

 

The track looks just as wet as it is/feels - we never got it flooded, it went from dry to wet then damp, drying line and wet again. But when it's getting dark and the sky is cloudy it get's harder to see... I think that the head/rear -lights are not able to reflect, which would help alot, agreed on that part.

The Asia Series were not using the same version as VEC, I see NO reflections at all in that video.

 

Remember that video compression would dull the graphics somewhat.

 

Indeed. We are using the 2 year old version of the Istanbul Park from Racedepartment. VEC is using a special one.

However heres the wet one in Sepang where the wetness is quite good
[video]https://youtu.be/AIfzwEaaOIY?t=314[/video]

 

Track doesn't have to be flooded to reflect sky. Especially when sky looks as bright as in that rF2 video.

I still find rain visualization in rF2 something you need to get used to, rather than something that matches reality.

Pause your video at 17:24.
Driving straight into the sun and you can barely see any reflection on the road.

In reality, if road is wet (not flooded, just wet), it's hard to look at when facing the Sun.

 

Overlay OVERLOAD!! 3 rev counters, 2 mirrors and the rest!

 

[video]https://youtu.be/icFLFk_QGTs?t=1h34m10s[/video]

 

As I said, the track used in that specific video has clearly not been optimized.

 

Its there.

I think the track is not as wet when the sun is finally out and maybe he reduced his road reflection level.

 

Of course it's there.
That's my point - things are there in rF2, but are not scaled to the levels you would see in real life. This creates "alternate reality" that we need to get used to if we want to judge road conditions while driving. You just need to know if X% of reflection in rF2 means Y% loss of grip and if wet tires will be better for that level of reflection. You can live with it, but it's definitely not the way you would judge road conditions in reality.

In reality, you would clearly see distinction between wet road and standing water. There is no such distinction in rF2 graphics engine, regardless if underlying physics engine supports it or not.

 

The overall atmosphere of rainy weather needs to be improved. As you guys said, the features are there! Just need some tunning.

I took some shots out of my window right now, as it happens to be raining here today.

Road with some traffic and a little more worn tarmac. The rain stopped and the sky is bright white, completely overcast. You can see a lot of variations on the surface, amount of standing water, just the damp tarmac, the different levels of reflection and specularity, which are different from the dry conditions (check the little dry spot near the sidewalk).


And here's a shot from a parking lot on the opposite side. Where the tarmac has little use and there's much more standing water.




One other think I missed from the last time I raced in rain on rF2 (quite a while ago) is that it doesn't affect anything other than the racing surface. I mean, would be nice to have some diffuse darkening and specularity boost on grass, buildings etc.*

*I know the buildings think would be a little bit more complicated, since rain falls from above and not always damps the whole surface. It would probably need some Object Space Normal mapping to work properly. But I think a subtle variation on diffuse and specular on the whole model would be a good start.

 

Remember... real life is more than 4k... and we haven't even got to 4k in rF2 yet (at least not many people do 4k textures when modding tracks).

 

It's not a matter of resolution. I'm not talking about sharpness of the texture. All I said is pretty much achievable with everything we got right now.