Latest Roadmap Update - May 2018!!!

Yes, if you compare the internal details of official rF2 cars, with iRacing and AC, rF2 isn't near close.

One way to see it is editing the onboard camera and set it on the passenger seat, which is a normal cam on iRacing and AC.

 

Tried environmental reflections on high

I’m sure it makes the whole track
Look a tad better not just the reflections on the car surfaces

Is this right?

 

This is the problem , if you move up a setting you see a dramatic improvement in visuals but the performance hit is too large .

 

i5 4690
gtx970
Single monitor, 1080p

My test is a simulation of the worst case scenario, which i expect to be a normal thing (40 cars) like in iRacing, when the competition infrastructure come, maybe the grid could be in rolling start, but i don't think it will change much the FPS.





The problem is on the start, like the image shows, after two laps, with the spread of the field, the FPS go up to 95 in dry conditions.






I noticed that the AUTO-FPS function was changed, the cars don't dismantle anymore to gain FPS. Which is a good thing, thinking on e-sports live broadcasts, but the game can't keep 60 fps in these situations.

I'm thinking how bad it is for ppl with VR, or ppl with lower end pc's.

Which changes you guys recommend me to do on graphics, to get 60 FPS without seems like i'm racing in a 486 PC ???

 

I have an old potato, see signature.
It’s the exact same for me.
~120 fps during daytime and dry conditions.
~ 60 fps at night
30-40 fps during night and rain

With even higher settings than yours

 

Try :

- 100% standard settings on the nvidia control panel
- PP OFF
- AA = 0 OR 1 max 2
- Using the S397 recommended settings for low end GPU
- But with : opponent low, visible vehicule 6-8.

But you will not be sure that you will have 60 FPS all the time, and and graphics will be monstrous (almost same GPU : gtx 780 = gtx 970).

RF2 magic.

 

It is no surprise, that the game will struggle with performance if it has to render 40 cars with atleast high graphic settings and more demanding weather conditions and shadows at high. Next to the fact that the GT3 cars are propably the most demanding content in terms of performance, you have your answer why it runs as it runs. For shadows and opponents you can easily go with medium settings and you won't notice much difference in quality while driving. For taking nice screenshots it is something else though. Given the fact that it has allready been stated that there is still potential for performance and visual improvements for the rain I wouldn't worry too much right now though

 

You are right - sadly thats no surprise at all. In fact the day I will be surprised is the day it will be possible to race any amount of GT3 cars in VR in the rain.

 

When I was young, I always wanted to have a game which would be improved after each hardware upgrade. I was disappointed when I bought my 486 after a 386, and few of the games looked better, they were just faster.
Time has come, and I consider it a feature not a bug. Really. OK, there are functions which don't work at all on any computer (ie. rain in VR), but still

 

The tech is still in its infancy. It'll get there.

 

There is only so much you can do though unless you use very agressive LODing or strip down detail wich isn't an option either going into the future and especialy the GT3 pack stands out as being a real hit in terms of performance. There will allways be a point - and race starts are prime example for this, where hardware will struggle. Rendering 40 cars at high for very critical settings like shadows or AA and expecting it to run smooth with mid end hardware at best is a bit beyond of what people should expect and that's no different in AC actually, atleast for me. Sure, only time will tell how optimization improves, but looking at the first big performance update I am rather optimistic. VR on the other hand is a complete different beast though as the resolution is much higher than the usual full HD resolution for gaming. The problem is clearly acknowledged though.

 

The problem is that hardware isn't getting faster at the rate it used to back in the 486 days. We used to see CPU power double every 18 months as per Moore's law, so developers could release a game that runs like crap (read: Grand Prix 2) and within a year or two it would run great when everyone had upgraded their hardware. Now we are lucky to get 5% more per core performance from each new CPU generation. VR is often CPU limited, so here lies the problem. And a bit same is going on with GPU's, Nvidia is content on selling two year old chips and not releasing anything new to the market due to mining and no competition from AMD. Meanwhile gamers want better looking car models and tracks with higher resolutions, but hardware isn't really much different from three years ago.

 

I have already written this on Discord, but again: please make some videos of the new content. We see iRacing making videos of a simple grass update, and it works! We are about to see the Porsche, Sebring and LMP2 cars coming to rFactor2. This content deserves videos and the new competition system deserves a better propagation too. Those eye candy features are welcome too.

 

One thing positive i notice, is the CPU usage, definitely improved a lot, low usage with this field of 40 cars, months ago was almost impossible with my CPU. Seems that the CPU issues was solved.

But it's obvious to me that the graphical side needs improvement, i can run AC, AMS and iRacing with higher and nicer graphics(IMO) (@hitm4k3r ) and keep above 60 fps even with a full grid.

I gonna try some suggestions you guys gave here (@DrivingFast ) PP is already off, and see what happens.

 

As regards PC performance, it certainly is slowing down from where it had been. CPUs first; my i7 940 is now regarded as "4th tier" hardware by Tom's, but the physics in most racing games run fine within the 'tick window' on something which is 2.93GHz (as opposed to the latest, which will turbo boost to 4.7GHz). GPU has up until 2 years ago been doing the Moore's Law thing of doubling in performance each generation; but nVidia stopped that with the 10 series, and as @stonec says, they are now milking the cash cow (was crypto, now they have a big backed up demand from gamers and THIS is why their CEO said this week that next gen won't be coming "soon", because they have capacity they need to maintain use of and sell now so he wants everyone to think and upgrade is not imminent, because that depresses demand in the short term). AMD are just capacity constrained, and they've had power/heat issues for quite some time. The upcoming trends on both CPU (seen in Threadripper, 4x modules) and GPU (not yet seen) is for multiple 'modules' within the unit bridged together, since they can't keep making bigger and bigger chips with the yields they get. Whether these will eventually have internal bridging bottlenecks isn't clear. But this is a fairly major structural change.

Most of all though, the problems I think we have is with software structure. The physics calcs in all sims at the moment seem to all require high single-thread performance, since they are single threaded. This is surely solving multiple equations simultaneously, but the algorithms seem to be recursive and not parallel. The single-thread performance needs more GHz, and we aren't going to be seeing massive leaps with this. This means we can't take advantage of multiple CPU cores. The place where you can is with the graphics: issuing draw calls to the GPU. But, this needs DX12. I'll be frank and say, I don't know why S397 targeted DX11 and not DX12 when they had to do their rewrite; they are a PC, Windows-only solution; and 70% of Steam users already having DX12-class GPUs. We've already seen the limits of a DX11 engine - not sure anyone is going to get more out of that than SMS have with PCars2. Windows still has internal structural problems: for example, it 'supports' HDR but you have to enable a specific mode and if you do, the desktop looks like complete crap. MS are sleeping on the job. For things like VR, there's a lot of CPU-to-GPU interaction, no direct memory accesses across both, its across a relatively slow bus. The APUs available use 'slow' DDR3/4 shared memory, not high spec memory. I still maintain we need "one GPU per eye" or one per viewport, but I see no progress in making this viable (there is a spec, its unused). I don't see S397 as being a technology innovator in any of these areas, they'll use "tried and true" approaches because they can't afford to take the risk or requiring a unique software/hardware combo; they are "mainstream". Hopefully we'll see more improvements in the rain implementation and general performance, but it won't be orders-of-magnitude.

I went from upgrading a PC every 3 years to upgrading every 10 (CPU/motherboard; 3+ years now for GPUs). That's how much progress has slowed down, or at least, that which impacts a sim racing gamer such as myself.

TL;DR summary: yes, we are limited by hardware and especially so in 'mid range', but the manufacturers aren't exactly helping matters with their pricing/profit taking (Intel/nVidia and MS, I'm looking at you).

 

Yes the cpu load is much better now, 60 fps even with Multimonitor setting is possible at the End of the grid with 30 Cars but the Gpu utilisation is nearly at the same Level like bevor 1100

 

Again, it makes no sense to compare the products as they are all doing stuff different and they certainly have all their advantages and short commings. I am not saying that there is no room for improvement in the graphics departement in rF2, but at the end it is like a comparison between ArmA 3 and Battlefield 4. If you expect a fully dynamic environment to be rendered as smooth as an allmost static one then your expectations are simply unrealistic. The day when rain and a fully dynamic TOD cycle with a dynamic sky get released for iRacing, I am predicting similar complaints from the players as we have them with rF2 right now. Rendering dynamic environments is heavy on hardware. And you will see the same for ACC, Reiza18 or whenever they release it and GTR3 aswell. Sure, S397 could go back to nicely rendered static sky boxes and bake the lighting, but that's not how progression works

 

Which series runs 40 car grids in iracing ????
For the years I was there,the biggest grid in the series I ran in was the lotus 79,which was limited to 36,and that was not common,but even then I had visible cars set to to under twenty otherwise performance was hit hard.
Try lowering your visible cars,you don’t need to see all 40

 

Well, it does make some sense to do so. You are right that iRacing, AC do not have fully dynamic lighting. But PCars2 does. And I would say, even on a relatively potato PC like mine, I am seeing less variation in running between normal weather, night, rain and night+rain on PC2. Yes there are significant fps drops, but not to the same extent as rF2. And at those, it's still just about playable with about the same graphical quality where rF2 is not. But SMS have had a lot more time to optimize their engine than S397 have (two major releases) and they also have to contend with multiple console architectures as well. They both use FMOD and YEBIS.

iRacing just released Belle Isle. Where I can see 150-200fps alone/80fps with field on Spa for example (even with the latest improvements to shadows being cast on many more objects), I'm down to 90fps alone/sub 60fps with field on this track. There's a lot more going on with the shaders and such on it, its a lot more graphically intensive than older tracks. Which is why I am a bit concerned here for fps on Sebring, which I don't doubt both has many more polygons and also textures/shaders than older tracks do that already suffer.

 

It’s no secret really,everyone knows that rf2 is still poorly optimised,I don’t like to be negative but I do question why s397 updated the rain graphics when people couldn’t run the old rain graphics already.

Iracing released dx11 as just an implementation at first,if I can remember correctly it took over a year for us to see any real gains from it reguarding performance,but for me the biggest performance gain was when the implemented the dx11 feature that rendered triple screens more efficiently but limited the max fov,can’t remember what the setting was called now.

But iracing for me was never really lacking performance wise,it’s a very wry well optimised game,I know a lot has changed though since I let my sub run out,and they have just overhauled there shadows too.

There was only one problem track for me and that was the Nurburgring ring gp,the start finish straight was a fps hog due to what had to be rendered,they will not complete that road tech circuit or even consider Monaco due to them knowing it would grind iracing to halt performance wise,yet o can run Monaco in rf2.

Comparing games is pointless imho because not everything is equal

Let’s just pray for more optimisations from s397