New User: Graphics Seem Disappointing - Am I Missing Something

All the licensed renault sports cars are brilliant, f 3.5, megane, clio. They all seems to have more data than the other cars, and the force feedback just have a broader range. In fact I hope ISI acquire the rights to the rs01 car, that should be brilliant, gt looks but with a real race frame. Many people love the gt cars, including the urd, and as they are the best looking by far, the cars are too heavy for my taste. I just love nimble cars. Also all the historic are great, hard to master but with an excelent force feedback that keep you coming back.

 

I wasn't "taking a shot" at anyone or any sim in my post by the way (well except people like "Driver A", lol). All I was saying is that if a modder/modding team decides which game to mod for based on graphics as the main priority, then that, well, shows you what their priority is and the type of outlook they have - how nice things look.

Neither is correct or incorrect, awesome graphics are, well, awesome; who doesn't like good graphics...or good sound, or a nice U.I., or good content, or good FFB, or good physics, etc. etc.? Everyone likes "good" everything.

However, the priorities to me personally are physics and FFB - just like the entire purpose of a racing simulation - oh, and also non-car physics (24hr day/night cycles, weather, rain/water, track surface condition changes, rubber build up for grip and "marbles", damage [severely lacking in most racing sims, but even more so, it seems, in RF2], geographical location, seasons of the year, etc.). Only after those 3 things comes the other tier-group of priorities/importance - things that don't directly affect the core driving/gameplay itself - like U.I., graphics, sounds, content, menu music, having real-time graphical fur simulation for the trackside beavers, etc.

 

Have I really to go into detail?
I don´t know how many poly´s you use for tracksite objects or the car-maker use for theire cars,
but there is not really a noticable difference if the car have 50000 or 30000.
For trackside objects I think it´s even less noticable. I think of the large buildings and such.
OK, details eat! That needs polys too.... so everything is relative - there you are right to doubt my sweeping, overall statement.
But after all, that is not the problem of rF2 graphics (what counts for most modding content too).

 

Domi, there's a modding section on this forum. If you have a question about a specific parameter you should ask it there; AFAIK there are very few mystery parameters in the HDV.

 

If there are no mysthery parameters I wonder why there isn't any simple example of aero fully calculated on the Internet Anyway I already asked in the past to people that has the knowledge, including ISI, and all what I got was very vague answers or no answers at all. So basically like in this thread

But anyway it was just an example, we could expand more, especially with the new tire model... and it's not only a problem of not knowing how the engine works, but also a problem of not having all the data that the engine asks for.

 

If the modeling technique is good, believe me, there is a HUGE difference between a 30K and a 50K car model, unless you are going to waste the +20K plus into a single element (like a 20K steering wheel), instead of improve the entire model. This could be considered as a LOD delta between the 2 values.

In modern game industry, tricount matter as well of good shaders, good textures, good baked normals etc. and that's also why you see those crazy GPUs growing, year after year, with humongous power available.

Of course there is a red line you can't cross and everything needs to be optimized under that line but saying there is no correlation between visuals and mesh resolution it's basically wrong.

 

This is exactly one of the reasons why the modding community isn't as alive as it used to be if you ask me. With every generation of race sims modding becomes more difficult and the more difficult it becomes the less people are able to do a decent job. More, and more complex physics parameters are to be dealt with and with hardware becoming better and better we are able to create higher poly models with bigger textures and more complex shaders. Then there's also the extra things like animations and such that need to be implemented. Not all of it is really that much difficult but it does take up a lot more extra time. Making a single car can already be a huge commitment but you really need the time to do it properly. I find it hard sometimes wo be working on a single car for such a long time. This has nothing to do with rF2 or any other sim for that matter. It's just a consequence of higher standards being set.

 

On graphics...

I was watching some youtubes yesterday of F1 2013 (Codemasters) because I'd really love to have a full "game experience" for offline again, with a championship, animated pit crew, teammate/engineer, full race weekend rules... they do get the atmosphere pretty right in those titles.

But besides the fact that CM stuff drives not half as nice as RF2, I actually found that visually, RF2 has beaten them by now. There is a clarity and color to the HDR which leaves no question as to which looks better.

Of course CM has more Bling, but I was seriously impressed that RF2 turned from ugly duckling (Build 118 when I started) to something that makes me consider Codemaster stuff ugly.

 

The Codemasters F1 series looked "good" in 2011. It has not progressed at all and the tracks are so incredibly dull... they all stick out very sorely with their lifeless rF2 conversions.

 

It is amazing how CM managed to make time stop, and practically not improve their 2011 effort over the next 3-4 years. I hope with the recent shakeup and a new engine that they'll be able to at least make a half decent F1 game this year.

 

Firing 50 people makes me think the yearly updates will be even less limited. Or they plan on not maintaining their F1 license and thus have reduced overhead.

 

Rumor has it that the F1 team at CM aren't affected by the layoffs though. So maybe they fired a bunch of people in order to be able to afford keeping the licence? Who knows. The quality of their upcoming release will reveal which way the wind is blowing. Either way I wouldn't mind seeing what another company could create with the F1 licence. Maybe it's time someone else had a crack at it.

Sorry for OT

 

Have you seen the Sochi conversion. In the right hands some tracks look pretty darn sweet.

 

ISI doing the PC version like back in the day

 

When there's will there's a way

A passionate person will usually be able to learn anything he wants - it's only a matter of time.

 

But more detailed modding is also a matter of more time spent. That's ine reasons I don't mind donation and payware here, the free time needed to present a full working car is that much higher these days...

 

Oh I completely agree. I do a bit of modding myself but before I started I had no knowlege of anything. Of course that was years ago, so the learning curve was much less steep. In the F1 Challenge days, I was able to learn 3d modelling and create something worthwile within a few months. The required quality was much lower and the process was more simple. If you have zero knowlege of modding now, you're in for a bad time. Of course, it's still possible but the chances of simply giving up are much higher because it takes ages to learn and create.

I guess a lot of modders that are active for a long time like me were able to learn by doing and benefit from the things they learnt while modding, for example, F1 Challenge and use these skills to their advantage while modding rFactor. Same goes from rFactor 1 to rFactor 2. If I didnt have this background knowlege, I would never start modding now. So now we have a situation where long time modders eventually quit and take their knowlege and skills with them and nobody to 'replace' them.

 

You know which one I saw, I haven't looked at anything since so I don't know which one you speak . Conversions are fine (especially if done with rights) but they require effort to adapt to the games. I can't begin to fathom all of the necessary material and shader adjustments that should go into each track so they take advantage of the platform. Then on top of that there's the issue of original quality - from concern with layout and elevation accuracy, to trackside barriers being "pointy" instead of smooth curves along the track. I do hope that due to current standards, a track made for AC can be transposed to rF2 without taking more time than specific adjustments like real road and AI, and vice versa, but I am speaking without any knowledge.

 

I mean I bit I got 2010 and spent a few weeks in it was cool ......... but alas every day I spent less time.

pCARS did a race in Sierra and Ruf an AC Historic and Ruf in new builds, worked up setups, they were both as BUBBLES would say....

lool , you get the drift .....

This in turn creates a very nice overall immersion and ambiance for the most part.



Sometimes I wish "decent feel" was enough for me.

 

If you look at both it is obvious the foggy picture is better. I think it is because the weather system in rf2 is great.
If you want to know why the other image looks worse (my opinion) just imagine better grass an vegetation in general. In the picture with foggy weather this issue is faded.