Latest Roadmap Update - January 2017!

The saturated DX11 sample is oversaturated. Shadows are too dark and the building color has gone wonky. And I suspect custom skins will be all out of whack...

Otherwise, good to see the progress!

 

hey, just to remember all, this is a work in progress...

 

Hence why I offered feedback.

 

do you honestly think that anyone expressing their opinion doesn't know that it's early in developement?
we are better off without forum "mom's" reminding how thing are in every turn. critisism is not the same as putting someone down, ok?

PLEASE let people express their opinion without immediately pointing out that "it's still wip" etc.

Now to the issue at hand:
I've seen few titles transition to dx11 from dx9. at first, the outcome is allmost allways too saturated and too much of these new effects (HBAO etc) that dx11 offers in use.

and i get it, really i do.
it's very hard for the devs to please customers that have their expectations high up from the transition to new tech. and in fear that the change is not enough to please most customers it allways seems to go a bit too far at the beginning.
I really hope that we could skip that part.

my opinion is that dont put stuff in just because you can. i think that peeps might have too high expectations how much the transition will improve the looks of the game. trying to please that bunch is gonna leed to the situation i described earlier.
F2 is very nice looking game as it is, i think it's good example what dx9 can do.
now you have new set of tools to make it better, but it doesn't mean you have to use all the tools available that much that everyone can see its been used. i think subtlety is better way to go with the new effects, it's not like rF2 looks so bad that everything has to be redone.

the change is not the most important thing, the outcome is.

I know the guys at the 397 are still finding their way with the new tools, so this is just a reminder, based on opinion and observation. not an given order (quess why this was added to the end?)

 

It's great that they are fixing issues and working on the foundation,that's a true sign that this new team are looking to strengthen this product for the future,but if they want this product to viable in a year or twos time then it's the online part that needs to be heavily overhauled into a tructueed online system,I have faith that one day rf2 will reach its full potential now,

 

@Kelju_K wooooahhh calm down mate, not a personal attack here, mine was just a reminder...I saw a lot of talk about Ui and in-game colors, in my opinion is a bit earlyer to say those are wrong, we just need to wait the pre-release product....

 

iRacing did the transition just fine, at first graphics in DX11 were basically identical, but some 100% better performance. Later they have added some more effects, but it has never annoyed me and you still have the same basic tone. There's nothing wrong with a more aggressive color approach either, just needs a slider to adjust the saturation then, as some mods are already oversaturated right now (for example the Formula E Vegas broadcast would have looked even more horrible if saturation was further increased).

 

Personally, I don't really give a flip about the colors of things to come or DX11 for that matter, but I am not really looking forward to a change in the setup pages... been driving ISI since the beta for rF1 and I have grown attached to the well tested and established setup pages. Please leave that part of this excellent computer sim alone?

 

For instance, do you believe that one of the most basic adjustment, like brake balance should remain in the advanced settings?
I don't, even if I know where it is.
Cheers.

 

Forgive my ignorance, but why are all these sim titles developing DX11 engines?

Wouldn't it be more beneficial to go straight to DX12, with DX11 compatibility?

I'm sure there is a reason; )

 

Simple. Windows 10 exclusivity being the main reason. Also DX12 is still very young and more times than less proves absolutely useless (for the time being). You can check how many titles are DX12 compatible and how many DX12 exclusive. I'll give you a hint. You won't need more than 2-3 breaths to speak them all.

Anything else you may need or want to know? ; )

 

i agree on the iracing transition. dcs did it also quite nice with hdr being the exeption but that is more of a problem in hdr in it self.
(the hdr algorithm has no way of knowing if you are looking at the bright light source, sun in sims usually, only if it is visible in your screen. that leads to some situations where it does more harm than good, especially with higher fov's like what is common in flightsims)

about the color saturation slider.
the problem with that is, that the base saturation has huge impact on hdr, ambient occlusion and bloom.
Move the slider to increase the saturation, hrd and ao gets really harsh, while bloom diminishes.
Move the slider to decrease the saturation, hrd and ao gets lean while bloom leaves the image "washed out".
bit like what we have now in rF2 after they toned the hdr down. same can be seen in ac if you move the saturation slider down.
so we would need few sliders oh well, there is allways reshade to the rescue

Anyway i would still welcome the saturation slider because of 3rd party tracks. better yet if it would be available ingame and not only in the ui.

 

I assumed Win10 was widely used given its free to upgrade launch.
I also assumed DX12 was in a more finished state.
I'll go read up a bit on it.

Thanks

 

There is considerable resistance to Win10 for various reasons; some may be technical while others are more about trust and information sharing. DX11 seems a logical choice at this point and there seems to be plenty of evidence to support the belief that advanced API's come with over-stated claims before real-world use provides accurate data.

Another one to read about may be Vulkan (API).

 

As you can see Windows 10 is getting stronger but you have to remember that sim racing community isn't that big and mainstream. Among fellow sim racers I bet windows 10 would be in around 20-30% bracket. But when you fathom that even AAA companies are super careful about creating a DX12 exclusive title (mostly they are run by Microsoft and pushed there for marketing reasons to make DX12 game for Xbox One and PC) because they can't afford leaving out more than 50 % of they customer base. There is no denying that on the paper DX12 has some features that could really benefit simulations type of games but we are yet to see them actually working. There have been evidence of games running actually worse on DX12 than on DX11, most of them usually about the same with -+ 5 fps and maybe only 1-2 of them gaining more than 5-10 fps average. Going for DX11 is just smarter these days. Marcel in many interviews didn't say no to completely new engine, new API in the years to come if there's need to do so. If DX12 doesn't improve in near future there is always Vulcan which isn't that popular at the moment but at least this one seems to actually work as intended.

I get this strange feeling that in the next year and year after that we will be in a strange place where for the first time we will have software trying to catch up with hardware rather than hardware catching up with software. With Volta and Navi coming out which on paper seem to be monsters that we've been waiting for. If the same happens in CPU, ram and whole management of entire system we will get to the point of having spare horsepower in our cases so optimization won't have to be so brutal.

But after going sideways a bit I will end this post with: API is just an API. It's just an interface for a programmer. Even best API won't help with bad coding. But smart coding can do miracles even with outdated architecture of API.

 

If you say that in the next few years hardware will make a leap forward.. I fear optimization will make a backflip.

 

Hahaha. It was kind of thought shortcut. What I meant that TODAYS technology and software tech won't make new cards break a sweat. There's always 4k 144 Hz with all the newest goodies, 4k textures, post process effects etc but apart from that new family of cards should have enough spare raw power to get what's today considered a wet dream. Optimization is required to get the best performance without making any downgrades (in best scenario) to satisfy high-end users but foremost to enable lower end users to actually have any chance to try the software out.

 

for this a new ui is the first step. We need server-lists, favorites, statistics, results, etc. You canot make this happen with the 90s style ui stuff.

 

Th

They still (i guess) are trying to appeal to new customers (players) and not so much the old school rf1-2 players.

 

In the end, colors depend on a lot of factors, personal perception and hardware related, so, some slider to adjust gamma or other parameters will be the best for everyone.