Permanent undercar shadows

[Hectari]

As someone who runs race settings with no shadows I discovered that we now have undercar shadows always visible, not linked to shadow settings. I can't see anything in graphics section of plr for this, is it forced on for everyone?

I do like them and they solve something that people have been complaining about for a long time, but can we please have the option to toggle these? Car reflections bug me much more in this regard as it's not just a performance hit with them forced on, but they are distracting on certain cars when the reflections update. Being a simulation we should really have full control over settings like these. I probably wouldn't turn the undercar shadows off, they're great to have without needing everything else that comes with shadows, but definitely would turn off car reflections, low is too slow a refresh rate and high is too power hungry, but having the reflection map change mid corner is very distracting. Please make this possible, many others want this too.

 

[Hectari]

Thought I should note, I haven't viewed the undercar shadows from a large distance yet to see if they disappear but from the trackside cams i've used so far I haven't see any shadows popping in or out. Will need to have a proper look, maybe someone else can definitively report this if they've been an issue with your settings in previous builds.

 

[88mphTim]

As someone who runs race settings with no shadows I discovered that we now have undercar shadows always visible, not linked to shadow settings. I can't see anything in graphics section of plr for this, is it forced on for everyone?

I do like them and they solve something that people have been complaining about for a long time, but can we please have the option to toggle these? Car reflections bug me much more in this regard as it's not just a performance hit with them forced on, but they are distracting on certain cars when the reflections update. Being a simulation we should really have full control over settings like these. I probably wouldn't turn the undercar shadows off, they're great to have without needing everything else that comes with shadows, but definitely would turn off car reflections, low is too slow a refresh rate and high is too power hungry, but having the reflection map change mid corner is very distracting. Please make this possible, many others want this too.

If they're the ones I think, I don't think they use enough to be worthwhile turning off.

 

[Hectari]

Yeah I didn't think it would be very taxing, I just think we should have full control over things like that, for some people every little helps. Forcing a minimum seems to be a growing trend, is it likely we will get updated reflections options to set them off or even be able to set the update rate?.. to infinity

 

[88mphTim]

Yeah I didn't think it would be very taxing, I just think we should have full control over things like that, for some people every little helps. Forcing a minimum seems to be a growing trend, is it likely we will get updated reflections options to set them off or even be able to set the update rate?.. to infinity

There's simple reflections you are forced to have with reflections set to off, too.

The shadow you're talking about is the most simplistic low LOD object ever. It was in GPL and even titles long before that, basically, albeit probably not as sharp.

 

[Hectari]

There's simple reflections you are forced to have with reflections set to off, too.

The shadow you're talking about is the most simplistic low LOD object ever. It was in GPL and even titles long before that, basically, albeit probably not as sharp.

That's what i'm trying to say, can we get reflections that are actually off when set to off and can the simple reflections come with an adjustable update rate? It's something like 15-20 seconds between updates just now, the ability to lengthen this would be nice. Or even simple reflections that don't update in that way but rf2 will take a simple reflection map and keep it the same for the duration of a race or stint, maybe even let the driver freeze the mapping with a key. Surely there is a better solution for those who don't want to/can't run reflections on high.

Lol yeah seems pretty simple but nice, so could we have these with an option to increase the draw distance to that of undercar shadows when using max shadows? If this is possible then we could have lower shadow settings(or even off) with proper permanent undercar shadows that are always visible. More options is what i'm looking for

 

[Joe Campana]

Many of the mats require a HDR reflection map for the lighting model. Also, the ref map has to be somewhat related to the current environment - using a random or hours-old ref map just won't look right. With shadows off, the ref map updates at a low enough rate to not cause any noticeable performance difference between this and a completely static ref map.

 

[Hectari]

Thanks for the explanation, though my main concern is not with system performance but with driving performance. Sometimes when the reflections change the difference can be like night and day in your peripheral vision for certain cars(windshield on historics it can be really noticeable). It definitely doesn't look right and is a much bigger issue for me than some lighting that is a bit off. If you are in the middle of a corner and it updates it can be enough to snap you out of 'the zone', not saying it will ruin concentration or focus but it definitely can break it some. It's a horrible distraction that can happen when you need it least. I really hope you understand just how wrong it looks from a racing perspective, it is a real immersion breaker. I set my graphics up for performance so that I can immerse myself in the physics of the driving, I really don't want to be distracted by elements of the graphics that I can't control. I leave myself plenty of overhead power for fps on most tracks so that I don't drop below 120 even on the grid of most tracks, but I can't do this with reflections on the high setting so i'm left choosing off which is still flawed in the way I described.

So is having reflections completely off on our own car like we used to be able to do out of the question? Or more control over the basic('off', needs renamed ) reflection setting?

 

[Mulero]

Many of the mats require a HDR reflection map for the lighting model. Also, the ref map has to be somewhat related to the current environment - using a random or hours-old ref map just won't look right. With shadows off, the ref map updates at a low enough rate to not cause any noticeable performance difference between this and a completely static ref map.

Thanks for the explanation Joe, I agree with hectari that this process is a bit annoying and on many occasions I get to deconcentrate because of the great difference between a reflection and another.

If you need to update the reflection, the only solution I can think of for this problem is that the reflection is always updated at the same point in the circuit.

Do not know if this would be possible, it's just an idea.