Latest Roadmap Update -October 2017

Thank you very much.

Very good roadmap/communication/informations this time, thank's.

Your communication on the "PHYSICS" part is THE thing I expected most from S397.

Frankly I was not "reassured" about your interest for physics due to lack of information and some of your priorities that seemed to be preponderante for you : graphics, UI etc.

The elements brought into the roadmap concerning physics show all your skills/abilities, your interest, and the fact that physics seems to be for you the HEART of RF2 and GOAL of a simulation.

Delighted that it remains an important part of ISI in your identity (for me ISI = best simulation + best physics + best FFB + best car content + best algorythms like realroad etc).

You have all my encouragements.
BRAVO

 

And just to clarify, do you get the same 70 FPS at start of race with 20 Radical GT3 cars? Because from my investigation, this is not possible on a system with PCI-E 2.0.

This time roadmap was very detailed and I'm glad to hear the performance issues are being looked at.

 

have an upload on steam ,and is 285mb for rf2

 

GT3 pack update

 

yes,only GT3 update

 

@S397

Something very important has been tackled only very partially :

Optimization of the overall graphical performance.

It's really hard to get a good compromise between:

- perfect and stable performance (60 constant FPS for example).
- Graphics really correct, detailed and immersive).

---->>>> I had to do hundreds of tests and ~ 50 hours of tests (gigantic ...) to get a really good compromise with perfect performance (having a very original approach).

So there is going to be an apparently strong improvement in shadows performance :
BRAVO S397, the improvement concerns the most poorly optimized parameter of RF2 (again, as the improvement of the performance on the GT3 pack, you listened to your customers : BRAVO).

Can we have information about improving the performance of the entire RF2 graphics engine (mirrors, environment reflections, post process, stuttering, etc.) ?

Thank's a lot

 

Just to add :
The only plugin I use sometimes is DELTA BEST PLUGIN : I really think this functionnality have to be INSIDE rf2.

Thery important for hotlapers and some offline users.

 

Posted in RD but goes here too
Adding 3rd party mods to the store makes even more important to allow people to race against cars they don't own. This really should be a priority now. Some leagues are already opting to not use the S397 GT3 pack because of that.
If I make a league with 3 classes for example and people are not a fan of prototypes they should not be forced to buy it.
Why cant it be done like Reiza... maybe not exact same model (in AMS you don't need to own the DLC to drive its content online), make people at least have to buy the car they'll drive if it is paid, that would be a huge plus already.

 

- Agree that even ultra + ultra shadow settings is relatively ugly
- you dont say that : whatever the combinations of shadow settings, thats allways ugly
- I really dont agree with what you say about shadow performances : shadows is the WORST thing for performance, first thing to put OFF before perharps lower other settings

TOTALLY agree that with ******EXACTLY***** same settings (nvidia driver settings, launcher settings AA/PP off etc / same weather / same hour / same AI / mirrors / acceleration of time / same track / same cars / same hardware and same OC etc......) and even lower AA, dx9 is 100% smooth VS dx11 very lower FpS compared to dx9

 

when loading low fps but at two seconds it stabilizes at 70 / 68.5 , with 25 cars , Nolan circuit
"Max Framerate":70,

(this is not possible on a system with PCI-E 2.0)
I think that is not true
I do not know what optimization people use, but I'm doing well

 

I forgot the graphic configuration

 

The two bad thing for performance are...
- shadows : you put low = off (shadows is the absolute worst thing for performance)
- environment reflection : low = almost the same result as off

Then there AA, one of the other bad thing for performance : you put level 4 which is a very low setting for full hd. (With 4K, level 1 is high, level 2 or 3 is perfect aliasing.

Post process high or ultra : one of the worst thing for the performance BUT YOU PUT SHADOWS LOW, AA LOW AND REFLECTIONS LOW ---->>>> you save A LOT OF FPS with that.

So, if you have 60 stable FPS with PP ultra with just full hd, low AA, no reflections, low shadows = EVERYTHING IS NORMAL, we could expect that.

With better combination of settings you can have better graphics (I have better graphics according my criterias with gtx 780 with +23% OC and in playing in 4K)

 

@dadaboomda, there is virtually no-one who will use the settings you suggest. Primarily, its because it will look awful. About the most important factor in realistic world-like graphics are shadows; and you suggest to turn them to low or off. It's a way to get high fps, but virtually no-one will want to do it unless they like driving cartoon racing cars.

One of the big problems with rF2 has always been shadows. It still persists today, with wildly varying results at different LODs. Throwing hardware at the problem doesn't seem to help it. iRacing used to have two forms of shadows; volume and maps. The volumes were projected directly from the 3D models and used the CPU to help define them. They've almost completely eliminated those now, but I had a large fight with the dev who wanted to pull them from the code and rely entirely on maps; those draw way faster, but have terrible artifacts with jagged edges that they use particular techniques to try and soften the edges of. My argument was, if you want to use your processing power to have much higher quality shadows, that should be the choice of the user, given that the code existed to do it both ways. He wouldn't have it, and now, the shadows in that game look just as bad as shadows in all the other games.

This isn't simply an issue of doing a small optimization to the GT3 cars; its an inherent issue in the game code that has existed from the beginning. About 3 years ago the DX9 engine had similar terrible frame rates to what we now get, and ISI underwent a task to optimize, and raised the fps by about 50% into useable territory. Now, its back into unusable land. PC2 has had a significant upgrade from PC1 in its handling of dynamic lighting and shadow drawing; its almost impossible to see glaring issues now except for some special cases. The degree of polish they have applied to this is huge. S397 don't have that level of polish; its v1, where SMS are on v3 and iRacing are about at the same and trying to reverse engineer dynamic lighting into what they have, which stands a fair chance of putting them back at v1 quality.

in my case to get something that looks reasonable, I turn the shadows to high. In doing so, I have to give up other settings. And in particular, at present, I am having to sacrifice the postprocessing effects that give all the new eye candy. It's not reasonable for S397 to sit and say they are improving the graphics, but then, anyone who got decent frame rates in the past now cannot enable any of the settings that get them that better world. There's things need fixing and changing in the base code before these can be utilized, and the roadmap didn't address this and its the biggest omission.

The second big omission is not addressing the numerous existing bugs and gotchas. And there are certain design decisions that need to be revisited that hold lots of things back re: packaging, mods, DLC etc.

They've done a good job doing what they said they would do as a 'state of the union' at the end of year one. DX11 and VR delivered, to a large extent. Licensed content delivered, to a large extent. The UI has had the goalposts moved and isn't done; I don't think people worry so much about that, frankly, and are happy to give them more time to get this right. But there's an awful lot of what existed before, and what has been added (like the free Radical and Zandvoort), that still has that unfinished feel to it that also plagued ISI. It's what SMS have more successfully done with PC2 on the core sim; added polish and eliminated issues; though they too have introduced new issues on the added capabilities. It's the same issue at iRacing; they get continually told by users to 'fix their shit' and they just keep pumping out new stuff.

 

2 months earlier, before having made hundreds of combinations and 50 hours of tests, for me, as you, one of the 3 main elements that I thought were the most important for the immersion was the shadows.

Why ? Because I only use nordschleife (100% of the time) and there are thousands and thousands of shadows.

- so I did more than 90% of my tests for hundreds of shadow tests (all shadow combinations in a lot of different parameters)

- so I did at least dozens of tests with no shadows at all. Remember to have done tests without shadows with the environment reflections disabled. Is a GPU pretty weak for rf2 (gtx 780), I deactivated the post process and at the end then disabled the real mirrors (I play offline without AI).

- these settings (especially the shadows, which we are talking about) have incredibly enabled me to play with a resolution 4 times higher (4K) and forcing all the parameters of the GPU to the MAXIMUM (all)

Direct and truly amazing:
no more aliasasing on a screen of 132cm + no more flickering + perfect textures filtering + game totally smooth at least 99% of the time and especially FPS totally stable without stuttering + details throughout the image (road etc ... ) as I did not never think see in rf2 on a screen of 132cm + no more impression of blur including 20-30 meters on the road .....

In short, the graphics are incredibly beautiful, smooth, detailed etc.

I was EXTREMELY SURPRISED, I never imagined such a result at the same time qualitative and especially at the level of the performance .... I was convinced that to play in 4K was a luxury and that to put the parameters of the GPU in very high quality did not bring as much improvement. Again I thought it was a luxury and it was only for gtx 1080 ti ....

- But the thing I was most sure about is that the shadows were really ESSENTIAL to drive on the nordschliefe ....

I was really surprised : That's why I had fun doing at least 40 hours of testing without even considering testing without shadows .... if I had known!

- In view of the incredible results of my last dozen tests (without shadows), I understood the unthinkable:

The quality / performance ratio with these new settings according to my criteria is simply incredibly better than 100% of the hundreds of tests that I had been able to achieve with shadows.

Incredible as something i was sure was reduced to nant after 40 hours of horrible and long tests that i really do not regret.

Computer:

- gtx 780 with + 23% OC on pci e 2.0 16x (NOT 3.0)
- i5 2500K + 15% OC
- bad motherboard
- 16gb ram
- no throttleling I am sure of that
- 132cm tv (52 ")
- ultra optimized windows 7
- ssd

Suggest you to test to make you a factual opinion.

EDIT :

I am sorry, for this post I had needed "google translate" but I don't know why google translate made a very very bad work (more than usually). I tried to correct the errors but I think this is not very good, sorry.

 

@dadaboomda you are wrong, his opinion is not only irrelevant to me, besides it is not true, in any case the shadows in high only bother me,and the reflection is exaggerated, I think that if he has not realized with so many hours of tests, he does not have the capacity to do so

you have wasted your time

 

- Finding a setting that allows for an excellent performance / quality ratio takes a lot of time ( with rf2 and weak GPU).

- Trying this setting takes 30 minutes ....

I'm just trying to help in giving the conclusion of 50 hours of tests.

And no I do not like driving cartoons cars

I hope it will help someone, a forum is done for that, right?

 

This is the big factor that you are overlooking. People are mostly looking for racing other people or AI and in that regard DX9 just works much better on most systems without having to sacrifice stuff like shadows, wich are frankly speaking a minimum and essential in a dynamic racing world. I for one hope that they really keep improving the DX11 Beta until the framerates are equal and until the game is equaly fluid - wich was the ultimate goal and hopefully still is. I have terrible slowdowns right now with the CPU running out of realtime in DX11 no matter how low I turn the graphic settings, even with the updated GT3 cars, as soon as there are opponents on screen. As long as I am driving alone I can crank everything up to high settings with very high AA and even PP at ultra. But looking into the future this is not my goal. I really would like to have a fluid experience as I have it in DX9 and there is nothing that should have a higher priority right now, because the performance situation with multiple cars is just not acceptable. And I am definitely not the only one noticing this so there needs to happen alot more to the core engine.

Other than that I have to say, that the performance improvements of the cars are def. noticable, but there is still something not quite right in how DX11 stresses the CPU and how it causes spikes. rF2 was GPU demanding in the past and handled the CPU side of things quite well, so it would be nice to get into that comfy zone again. People having to turn down graphics to low with a 1080 is a bit too much to ask for.

 

Whew! That was close!

 

1º sorry , were you angry? not what I intended
2º you have forgotten stonec's question !!! ... And just to clarify, do you get the same 70 FPS at start of race with 20 Radical GT3 cars? Because from my investigation, this is not possible on a system with PCI-E 2.0.

to that has been my response.

you will have done many tests but you are still wrong
I appreciate that you share your opinion even if it does not work for me, maybe another user will be more valuable than me

 

the translator cheats a little, I'm sorry