I believe you're both right and wrong in this one. Let me explain why. While yes, it does make sense to use a subset of the laser data, it doesn't mean it's not accurate. To demonstrate this, let's imagine the bump bellow was captured by the laser-scan data: Now, in order to accommodate the data so that it works in common computers without slowing them down, let's imagine the developers decimated the amount of detail of such bump, making it be like this: While it does have less faces, it's by no means inaccurate. It has the overall same shape, it's on the same spot as the real bump, and this will exert almost exactly the same forces on the tyres and thus the overall physics won't be different from the real thing. I'm not sure how rFactor 2 does things, but on Assetto Corsa you have 2 track layers, one is visual, and the other one is invisible and contains the actual collision data. The visual track is, well, only for visuals, and the collision track is where all the detail is. It makes sense to have 2 tracks. The visual needs to be less detailed, otherwise it would hog the computer's resources. I don't think the invisible collision track needs to be decimated, so if my assumption is right we could have all the collision details down to mm and the visual track would have less details. 1 cm isn't much, though. When talking about tracks, there are a lot of taller bumps that cannot be accurately reproduced without laser scan data. You can have a general bump somewhere near the real thing and that somewhat represents what it feels to drive over the real bump, but it's still not as accurate as the laser scan data. I believe the point is to have a real solid base of a track where we know most of the details are highly accurate. I also believe nobody expects a company to re-rent the track and equipment only to scan a portion of the track that changed. That wouldn't be feasable - having a laser-scanned track is.
And about the employees on S397: Here's an idea. Hire me to work on this if it ever comes to fruition, I'm willing to work on this project for the minimum wage on the USA
So long message ... but everything is relevant and true. Congratulations for your patience to type this message! But I tell you right now, it is useless: hardly read, your arguments are facing a wall in my opinion (I have not read the following messages). Between ANTI scanned laser tracks people (very virulent despite all the factual and pragmatic arguments of the world) and ANTI Nordschliefe people (just the best circuit in the world and present in all simulations and games), there is nothing to do. basic logical argument that you mentioned: "what's the point of having the best physics in the market and now the real data of cars (gt3 and FE) if you do not have in parallel the best track physics?" I'm not talking about Fictional but real tracks. Let S397 decide because we have no choice. Let us just hope that after the UI and DX11 (1 year....), S397 focuses again on the most important: all technologies of physics (not only tires), the realroad, aquaplanning and driving realism in the rain, all the algorithms that come into play, DLC car exclusively with real data (except perhaps for old cars), and ... hopefully scanned laser tracks, but strategic tracks like SPA, not things that nobody knows about and about which people will not ride (example of a track on which all Europeans will drive dozens of times during their life? the nordschleife !! all Europeans passionate about cars of course. Just two examples. But circuits where we go around in circles ... I think we understood .........
There is a world outside Europe in case your wondering , It’s been said yet you constantly bring it up but Nords isn’t that popular for regular use . Your impatience with S397 is getting really boring .
So a race on Toban Park or any other fictional track in perfectly modded cars would be next to useless following this argument? Sorry but in my view the cars behaviour is the core simulation asset. A track that is 98 or 99% accurate will offer brilliant racing. the opposite is not true (perfect laser scanned track and flawed car physics).
For an accurate laser scan track you need to update it after various resurfacing, change of curbs, ecc.... Btw my interest is for historic tracks, so no need many money for that. S397 are you listening?
I totally agree (yes, Europe is not the center of the world...). Looking at the car and circuit content of ISI / S397, I say to myself : Boys there is something else than the USA in life. The vast majority of the content comes from the American continent (a little Japan too). The OVALS is so great for driving ... going around in circles, we'll understand. We even had a manual to understand the great rules of NASCAR, cool. Sorry, but it's totally wrong. It is probably more used offline (as a reminder, most users play almost offline, but these people are not present on the forums), but online there is ABSOLUTELY NO circuits that is as much used (on the dozens of online circuits, even SPA-Francorchamps!). I have watched several times but not at this moment. Take into account all versions of DJC / Tosch + Nordschleife 2016 + ksring. If you do not believe me, believe the verifiable, pragmatic and factual arguments. Really easy to say for users like you. You've had most of what you wanted in 1 year S397 : - DX11 super graphics (catastrophic performance for "medium" PCs such as GTX 780) - Super VR (not even 15% of users) - Super good damage on cars (essential) - New UI (improved ergonomics) - Super LCD / HUD (as in real life, I have nothing on the screen ...) - Not fantastic circuits (zandvoort, hong kong), etc. In short, everything related to ergonomics / immersion / graphics. I do not say it's useless. But this does not satisfy all types of users. What has been done and what I expected (in 1 year) : - Some high quality cars (as usual ISI) - In physics only new tires very good but ... that equip only the last 6 cars... The 45 cars that are really very good have only partially been updated (very very partially). In case you did not understand I do not care about the update DX11, what interests me is the physics update (radio silence). So there is more than a year that. Because mainstream developments have monopolized the entire team, great. I do not rejoice. Lastly, I would be more patient if S397 communicated the only really important thing : realism. We have nothing, 0 information. - Neither on the information of the update of the 45 cars with the latest technologies of physics - Nor on the aquaplanning or the realism of the driving on rain - Nor on the will to use as much as possible the real data of car - Same for the circuits (scanned laser) - Nor on the physics (tires, and all the rest of which they never speak) - The improvement of the realroad, ... etc. In short, certain types of users are delighted with this past year. Others do not. According to the priority of the user.
I detect some sarcasm here. Are you too good to race on ovals ? And in real life, there's a guy on the radio telling you this kind of information. A crap track for you is a good track for someone else. It's not because you have such a weird obsession with the Ring that you have to spam the forum with all your lengthy posts to explain how right you are. Nordschleife : great track yes, but soooo overrated. I don't think you can even post "in short"
It seems some people forget that a product is purchased due to need or desire. That is unless it is the only product of it's type. A product (logically) is not purchased in order to tell the maker of the product to change that product that was already paid for by your own choice. In this case the maker of the product has given things out free and charged money for new things as well. Try that with anything other than software. The maker of this product even has a wish list on this very forum to read things that some people want. I am guilty of this as well. I cannot count the times where I thought I had an Idea that everyone of you would love. What is good for the goose might ruin the gander. We (those who interact online in any form) as a group have not grasped that yet. It seems some people do not know that forum users do not represent the majority of rF2 users. Neither in numbers nor ideology. The forums users are a small number of users who seek extra information, community interaction or other things related to the product itself. Even within that group there is a smaller group. Those are the vocal minority. If anyone yells loud enough someone will eventually hear it if there are people around. If it is yelled often enough and by just one more person, it can be perceived as a "we", "us", "a lot of people here", "most of us" type of feeling or thought when in reality it is nothing more than loud yelling being echoed. This can be demonstrated in various threads where something looks more popular than it really is due to the 15 people that posted something. If Nords can be brought up again....is there any one else who wants to ride that rollercoaster thing they have there? If not I will just have to put all Rollercoaster Factor thoughts away.
Of course not. You totally misunderstood my post. Fictional tracks have no real counterpart to be based on, it's totally based on the creator's vision. Where would we get real-world data since the track doesn't exist at all? Your argument makes absolutely no sense. The same for historic tracks: there isn't a track to get real-world data from, so we must rely on other sources to create them. Both fictional and historic are completely OK to be non-scanned. Totally subjective since it depends on what "98%" means to you. The only way to compare is to actually quantify non-scanned tracks, and I'm positive most won't be "98%" or even close to that. Let's say the "%" is the number of vertices close-or-better than 2cm of a LS track, then we'd be able to tell if such track is "98%" or not. We could have both with rFactor 2 + LS tracks, but for some reason some people think we just don't need them. There's nothing to lose with LS tracks, only to gain. The opposite is true for non-LS tracks: those such as the free Norschleife is a reason to laugh/cry at rFactor 2 track list and quality, specially with such a popular track.
This is the wish list section and the topic is "laser scanned Nordschleife". So I am going to post my opinion here (only once) and I try to keep it short (not yelling). The Nordschleife for me is the most important track. Not only for me, also for 5-10 rFactor2 users in my town I live. We meet very often at my flat and only race Nordschleife in rFactor2. Why we race only in rFactor2? Because for us it is the most realistic consumer simulation. We tried them all but we only trust rFactor2 regarding physics and FFB. Why is Nordschleife so important for us? Because we drive on the Nordschleife in our own cars every year in real life. Beside that it is very unique and fascinating: length and difficulty. There is a reason this track is a legend and called "the green hell". All car manufacturers test their cars on this track. Why do we want a laser scanned Nordschleife? If you KNOW the Nordschleife and drive the free rF2 Nordschleife mod you will immediately notice that this version is completely wrong (every corner of its 73 corners is wrong. Still I want to thank the authors a lot for their work). If you already know the Nordschleife to some extend and drive this version, it is more likely you do more harm than good regarding to learn the Nordschleife. Another important thing are the tarmac details you get with a laser scanned version. Yes, it is true that the real Nordschleife changes every year. But at least the laser scanned version was correct in one point of time, that is totally OK for me. At least I know I drive a correct representation of the Nordschleife with all its real details (and there are a lot!!) like it was in e.g. year 2016. No fake details added. Yes, it is true that for performance reasons you have to reduce the laser scanned data. But it is also true that there are algorithms to solve this. Computer graphics solved these problems decades ago to reduce data by using e.g. irregular meshes, which minimize errors and keep polygon count low. BTW rF2 perfectly can use irregular meshes already by now and there are no problems at all (rF2 real road tech simply works on these meshes). That said, I would be surprised if we get a laser scanned Nordschleife from S397 because of its costs and effort needed. On the other side, me and my friends would pay a lot of money to get one too.
I'm not an opponent of laser scanning even though I may have come across as one. I just questioned whether a well-made non-laser scanned track like Silverstone (and mind you, that was from 2013, so they could do even better now) would be significantly different from a laser-scanned track. @Adrianstealth has already admitted he doesn't feel a big difference between laser scanned and the best non-laser scanned tracks in rF2 like Indy. If they released a non-laser scanned track with "laser scanned" stamp, I wonder how many would notice the difference? @Amarildo Junior makes a valid point that the sampling reduction from point cloud isn't always a problem, it's even silly to use a high-res mesh than what the bumps are. But I believe in majority of consumer sims we are not there yet. At least older laser scanned tracks from AC that have been ported are not 1 cm in precision, neither 10 cm, they are something much sparser than that, so they will not capture every bump. The physics vs graphics mesh I agree on. I think rF2 currently has limitations in how precise the mesh can be without causing performance issues with the physics engine. Typically an rF2 track is divided into around eight triangles on the width, which is roughly something like 1 meter in precision. So they'd probably need to do improvements in engine to allow high precision mesh to run smoothly with 400 Hz tire model and also allow the separation of physics and graphics mesh, because a graphics mesh at 10 cm resolution is pointless.
The AC Nordschleife track ported to rFactor2 already uses an irregular mesh with small polygons in the order of 10cm and big polygons in the order of meters. Small polygons when details are needed, big polygons for sections were less details are needed. So, it is already working by now, no performance or other problems. We "only" need an official version by S397. (... and legal version. I want to add: in my country it is totally legal to do reverse engineering and do porting of paid content/software to get it working on another system)
Both fantasy and laser scanned tracks have equal worth in a sim,imho. Laser scanning for the sales bumpf and fantasy tracks to fill the roster while the contracts of laser scanned tracks are sought and then produced. I couldn’t care less really what I race on as long as the track is well made and designed to produce great racing. Let’s face one thing though,most real world high profile tracks do not produce great racing,take Monico for example,great hotlapper but poor racing track. End of the day though s397 should try to cater for everyone,so including both should be tried and tested
Tried Iracing today because i saw a video about how Iracing track team is making laser scan tracks. well ok i admit i m super stubborn and didnt like Iracing at all. RF2 looks most beautifull that iracing and the physics here are top notch in the world of simulation with the second simulator to come second by far. i wasnt expecting to find iracing so bad and i dint went there for the physics but for the tracks so...........Rfactor 2 > All the rest.
See the same echo of your OWN beliefs , we hear you , have heard you and no doubt will again . Zzzz. “Are we there yet , are we there yet are we there yet? ” . “No kids , almost there though “
Even if it doesn't make sense (regarding performance and effort) to model and reproduce every single small bump from laserscan point cloud, but all the laserscan data is really helpful to get cambers, elevations and corner angles get right. It's crucial to make the track feel right. Especially on "rollercoaster"-tracks with a lot of elevations and changing cambers it is much more difficult to build an authenic track layout from scratch without the help of laserscan reference data (or at least CAD data). The "old" Com8-Nordschleife is a good example. Feels good and realistic on first look, but if you have driven the real thing or a laserscanned Nordschleife, then you instantly notice all the big differences, which makes the Com8-Track almost a fantasy track. And i don't want to bash this track. There where times we (simracers) had no Nordschleife track to race on. So my biggest compliment to Com8 (Alex from Sector3) for making this track. But now we have the opportunity to race a laserscanned Nordschleife in almost every sim. Good times for simracers. I hope Studio397 can officially bring the track to rF2 too.
Same. I just think that they should do other tracks first as opposed to the Nordschleife. It's the attitude of 'I will only race on 100% accurate laser scanned tracks or nothing' that grates on me.
Laser scanning is pretty much the standard now , people in the know (who appreciate scanned tracks) are generally happy to pay for them too as opposed to being offered the free of charge non laser alternative Debates on this subject seems to go round in a circle, think it’s really is down to those (people) that know laser scanned tracks & those that are yet too. ( I state this very politely & honestly etc )
