I love that FFB, at least with my Fanatedc wheel, is superb right out of the box and requires no adjustments. The graphics are acceptable (barely) with the known jaggies issues being the worst aspects. The only thing that is totally distracting to the point that it ruins immersion and the driving experience is the "strobing shadows." This may be an ATI-only problem, I am not sure, but it destroys the otherwise nice effects. For those of you who don't know what strobing shadows are, it's when the, e.g., in-cockpit shadow across the dash from the sun, looks beautfiul when the car is stopped, but goes crazy with a strobing effect as soon as the car moves a millimetre. The same strobing occurs whether you are travelling 0.1 km/h or 100 km/h--it is not speed dependent. I pray to the gods of ISI programming that this can be fixed in the next build. Hopefully it will be part of an overall optimization of shadows (desperately needed), but at this point I would take just the strobing being fixed! I'd love to know who else sees this effect.
Not sure if i know what You mean but shadows are far from being complete. They flicker, dissapear and appear again. Im sure they will be improved but probably at the end of beta as ISI says graphics are last to fix
The draw distance for shadows seem to be a ridiculously short distance. That's my only real gripe with them.
What shadows? If I even have them on low with all other settings on minimum, I'll get a graphics freeze within a couple of minutes the like of which I've never seen before. With shadows off, I can run everything on max with no sign of trouble. Turn them off mate! looks better without 'em anyway.
I noticed quite a lot of shadow flickering, especially in trees. Also if i zoom in, using the free cam mode, shadows start to disappear under the car etc. Optimizing clipplanes in vehicle cam would be a start, as already pointed out here: http://isiforums.net/f/showthread.php/4923-Cockpit-Cam-ClipPlanes?
This may work for the cockpit cam Georg, but sadly not for the exterior/trackside cameras (i used to fix trackside cameras in rFactor 1 for long straights and cameras with high focal distance, the cameras at LeMans for example, using the same method). There are some issues with the shadows disappearing which is not due to a high distance to camera. Look at this (marshall's stand) or this example. In the second shot in the second link there are multiple "areas" in which the shadows disappear. Funny enough, they move and eventually fix themselves when the camera moves along the track, so I think the whole lighting/shadowing system works a little bit different than in rFactor 1 and will probably not get fixed by simply increasing the clipplane distance. I'm no expert though.
I agree Robert, fixing clipplanes will probably not solve all the problems. I hope ISI are aware of the problems and are looking into it
Just curious Marc... If it doesn't cause too much trouble, could you post a video of said effect? Would like to see it myself.
Great idea except I don't have video capture software and have no intention of installing it just for this purpose. It is so unnatural looking that it is easy to see the problem. They key is that the shadows are perfect when stopped, but strobe or undulate in a rapid manner as soon as the tiniest of movement in the vehicle occurs. Imagine a disco ball but instead of mulit-coloured lights in a dark area, it is dark across light areas. That happens with the clip plane issue, too, but this both right in front of you on the dash of your own car and equally affects shadows of leaves from trees and so forth that are mucg farther away.