Nordschleife

I did my first laps last night on the Nordschliefe.
It was fantastic. I always had a lot of fun and many great hours of racing on the previous version by Pleclair, DJC, Tosh and 6e660 et al but this one is up a BIG notch from that one in realism and immersion.
Thank you S397.
However I will say that the few significant differences make me want to thank those guys for the years of fun we had on their track. It was close enough and in some areas incredibly close and it was fun.

I am a bit slow so far so like many of us will be putting in some work now.

It did seem that a full out-lap is required to trigger the timing. I tried cutting through the witches hats but didn't trigger timing. Maybe that's real life but it is time consuming for testing a setup change. It means a full out-lap before the delta is visible.

I also had to run less AI than normal to get the CPU to stay in real time.

Have fun everyone.
 
davidporeilly said:
I did my first laps last night on the Nordschliefe.
It was fantastic. I always had a lot of fun and many great hours of racing on the previous version by Pleclair, DJC, Tosh and 6e660 et al but this one is up a BIG notch from that one in realism and immersion.
Thank you S397.
However I will say that the few significant differences make me want to thank those guys for the years of fun we had on their track. It was close enough and in some areas incredibly close and it was fun.

I am a bit slow so far so like many of us will be putting in some work now.

It did seem that a full out-lap is required to trigger the timing. I tried cutting through the witches hats but didn't trigger timing. Maybe that's real life but it is time consuming for testing a setup change. It means a full out-lap before the delta is visible.

I also had to run less AI than normal to get the CPU to stay in real time.

Have fun everyone.
Click to expand...

Yeah, the old one allowed us to do the cut and was a great feature. Shouldn’t be too hard to add a cut track in there.
 
+1 for Bathurst as one of the top 5 tracks in the world. Give me IT laser scanned though pleazzzzze

Btw the new s397 Nord is impeccable! Don't know about the optimization yet (just ran a few solo laps) but so far I'm impressed. Also the pricing is a nice surprise too. Well done s397 well done
 
I see lots of people happy about this product, I mean it is great that people are happy and it is good for rF2, I don't want it to be different. However I just have to share my concerns, I am just simply not happy about Nords. I mean it is great fun to drive, but as I care for graphics, it bugs me out a lot.

I don't care how some of you will look at this, do you see moaning, negativity, or criticism and feedback, I don't care, but I wish for the later. Some things perhaps debatable, some are just simply bad:

  1. Shadows are awful. They are so dark, that they are even very noticeable in worst overcast weather. It is distracting, looks wrong. makes hard shadows appear even harder, and makes you want to turn on headlights as drive.
  2. Ugly wet tarmac. Wet tarmac looks very low res, and it is just a mess. There is also noticeable lack of reflected objects.
  3. Not sure about this one, but even without dark shadows, majority of tarmac does seem too dark for me.
  4. Rubbered tarmac grooves looks wrong to me, not sure what, but something is strange about them to me.
  5. Trees positioning, textures colours in some cases seems rushed out, incomplete, off. Trees in many places rotates through fencing and bariers, thats just terrible. Some trees has very noticeable mip maps issues. In various places trees looks repetitive, not only they looks repetitive, but they even has way too noticeable mirroring, which shows that 2D artist was taking shortcuts. Many trees has their "cutout" bottoms visible as they cuts into terrain geometry, those could have been blocked bu bushes or shrubs/weeds.
  6. I dislike overall shading, track doesn't seem to match properly to sunny or overcast weather.
  7. Skidmark objects looks weird to me, and in some cases it extends over grass, which is quite unuasual to see a rubber skidmark over the grass IMO.
  8. In various cases tree walls shows their bottoms, or corners, which is just bad. Also they look just uncharacteristic as trees overall IMO
  9. Noticed that spectator cardboard people in pits goes through the geometry of stands.
  10. Vette safety car... well known thing, but mentioned anyway, it is perhaps the very first negative thing you see in this product.
  11. Overall tracksides are bland, mostly "thanks" to uncharacteristic trees, lack of bushes, complete absence of shrubs and weeds, samish material/texture as with in track grass, very modest terrain geometry (at some point there is a huge triangle sticking out behind trees not to mention other hard edges, lack of characteristic texturing in the places where people camp and more...and more...
  12. IMO red tones are too desaturated, kerbs an soft walls use red a lot, and it feels a bit dead there.
  13. Grass/lawns terrain perhaps colours are good, but the mapping and texturing/shading bland, boring, and in many places looks weird.
  14. Ruts/tracks along side of many kerbs looks either unnatural because it shouldn't be there, or looks bad because the soil texture is quite weird, like if it belongs to sebring or something like that.
  15. In GP track when leaving Mercedes arena you see quite dead background scenery, just looks bad.
  16. In GP track I noticed quite a bit of American vehicles, like a fire truck, and logistics trucks for example...
  17. I don't like this strong humidity fogging everywhere, I guess this is just taste thing, but it makes backgrounds look bad, it doesn't look right to me.
Ok thats just most things that I noticed during few first hours testing. I am not impressed, and I expected better. I am most definitely going to enjoy the tracks a lot anyway, but only if I'll learn to ignore all these things. And probably I'll just notice more.

This track does not live up to Sebring or Lemans quality IMO, nor to Reiza tracks or Digga conversions, like Oulton or Lilski tracks...

Respectfully,
Mantas
 
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mantasisg said:
I see lots of people happy about this product, I mean it is great that people are happy and it is good for rF2, I don't want it to be different. However I just have to share my concerns, I am just simply not happy about Nords. I mean it is great fun to drive, but as I care for graphics, it bugs me out a lot.

<SNIP>
Click to expand...

Sure it would be great if studio397 had the resource of Polyphony Digital. In the meantime, we must adjust expectations accordingly, be happy with what we have and even if everything is not perfect, it is a damn fine track!
 
A lot of that list is not really resource dependant. But individual artist who does that thing. It is mostly artsit skill and honesty. But of course overload and lack of time does not help. And I am not even comparing to GTS, not even to iRacing... but with such work as Simone did on AC Nordschleife (I don't know though if he for sure was only one, I believe someone else must have had helped with textures crafting).

Now I am going to play Nordschleife with shadows turned off. Problem solved ? We'll see, I expect track to feel much better with shadows turned off.
 
About 1)
There is a general flaw in rf2 about shadow display, or lets say part directional sun light , in relation to cloudiness. Afaik sun light is only damped with Rain. More rain, less directional light, less shadow. You need 50% rain or more to kill sun Shadow, way too much. Its allready a semi Monsun.
Sun should be damped allready by cloudiness, and from 10% rain on only ambient light should be present
 
Loving this version, looks very nice with the dense trees and party tents aside of the circuit, attention to detail is top notch. Had to soften up the car though it's a very bumpy ride otherwise.

Driven an 'official' ring now in AC, R3E and PC2 and I gotta say I think Rf2's is up there with R3E's version. The only thing I miss compared to sector 3's version is the distant house music when passing by the fan zones :D
 
I discovered that Nordschleife is much more enjoyable to me with cars that are faster than 8minutes, Ferrari 330P4... ooh yeah, also when track is from 6PM to 6AM. Not focusing that much into cosmetics but in being fast definitely make it more enjoyable obviously, and the 6PM-8AM time is just better looking I suppose, also as headlights are in use it makes the track brighter, which appears too dark for me in general.

And must to mention - Nurburgring GP was so missing in rF2, and it is great fun and I like that track a lot, I hope more such tracks in rF2 from S397. Is Nurburgring GP the first actual typical racing track from S397 ? To me Sebring, Lemans, Nordschleife, Botniaring... are all non typical racing tracks, they are all extra. Nurburgring is "pop" track, those that does most of that popular regular events such as F1, Blancpain, Moto GP and so on...

Look at this jump at 1:20 in the video, in AC it doesn't happen, but in rF2 that track geometry feature exists, and it is one of many which makes feel driving more epic in S397 version. I don't get why there are differences in both laserscan based versions, but it does show that just having scan data is not the whole story.



I have noticed one more bad thing about shadows... right now I am using medium shadows setting, so IDK perhaps it has an effect on that... As I was driving in the morning, I noticed that almost nothing else was setting shadows but the spectators, aka cardboard people. It looked extra weird as they were almost the only ones setting shadows, even the terrain hills on which they were standing didn't seem to cast shadows. I just thought that in all objects which would be casting shadows, I would probably give the last priority for cardboard people lol
Terrain, walls and fences would definitely be a priority to me.

And it is weird to see a wall by the finish line not casting the shadow, but posts, or even people from stands casting shadows through it... stuff like that. Of course such shadows shouldn't even get there, but if a wall would cast a shadow it would hide that other one which shouldn't be there....

This is becoming a wishlist on better lighting system in rF2 lol

Check this out, I was watching a replay, and just wondered how much it would take to improve this one thing.
IGGAoKp.jpg


The light source (Ferrari headlights) are behind the geometry of flugplatz entry hill, but it does illuminate it anyway. Interestingly the bariers and marshal aren't illuminated on their backside, so whatsup with that ? The lightsource has unlimited vertical reach, or what ?
 
@mantasisg - For the shadows being too dark, try using clouds in the sky, which should soften them (rF2's HDR in action). Having clouds in the sky also will reduce that "too blue" effect because now all the reflecting surfaces have something other than blue to reflect.
 
My first try was with overcast weather and even storm weather, and it did look super dark anyway even when it shouldn't appear at all. I'll try again.

I was never catching any significant "too blue" effect, perhaps there are some particular tracks which has more blue tone dialed in than other IDK... Le mans colours for example are super awesome in my opinion, and I like it's tarmac wet and dry shading a lot, even though it is slightly "too clean".

Here is one more bit that i cought up in Nords today. Initially it was very impressive to me that signs in Night are perfectly visible from far away, as it should. But it was little disappointment that they are actually just set not to get dark in night, and aren't infact responding to the headlights. But great touch anyways IMO, as long as they doesn't appear in darkness without beig lit

ZlKXhlP.jpg
 
As a old Ring fan (and Assetto) let me say I'm really impressed with the quality of track virtualization, surroundings, forest, minor bumps, slopes, hills, kerbs overall a sense of being embedded in the track. Everything that makes up driving immersion. In combination with new licensed car models it's an absolute top simulation. Congratulations S397, you did a great job. :)

NÜRBURGRING NORDSCHLEIFE rFactor 2 vs Assetto Corsa comparision
 
Wait, what? the ring is out???


How is the performance in vr?

never mind. got aswer already.

whoohoo! it's time to light up rf2!!
 
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Kelju_K said:
Wait, what? the ring is out???


How is the performance in vr?

never mind. got aswer already.

whoohoo! it's time to light up rf2!!
Click to expand...

It's great with my Odyssey MR, 1080Ti. I can just run everything maxed with a little jitters in the corners but mostly only if you're looking for it.
The Oculus, however I heard someone complain.
 
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