Rfactor 2 wet weather effects : current state

hi all

I've never really used the wet weather effects of rfactor 2
although Ive always looked forward to them becoming a useful feature when they are closer to completion.

I did do a test last night & first impressions the effects ( physics & visuals )
seemed more complete than what I was expecting.

I'm just wondering what the overall opinion of others currently, perhaps from users who use wet weather more frequently


please bear in mind I didn't spend to long using wet weather but first impressions :


nice feeling of reduced traction yet not over done
(would need more time to get use to it & form a better impression)
not sure what % complete this is

graphically much better than the last time I looked
(no more mile long rear spray throw ups)
-I think just a bit of spray & droplets on the cams/views (but not overdone) would really make things look convincing

 

It'd be nice if I didn't have to decide if it was going to rain or not. I really wish ISI would just implement a random, or a weather forecast function.

I think the effects on the physics are pretty great, about as understeery as I've experienced in real life. The track seems more grippy on the rubber, which isn't quite right. I'd change is how quickly a dry line forms too - it's way too fast in my opinion. If I have a lot of cars running close together a dry line forms even in heavy rain, which is really dumb.
The spray is good too, it'd be nice if ISI tried to get the windscreen droplets back working, they previewed them years ago and they looked great.

 

+1 Twista

 

I suspected the speed at which things change would be exaggerated maybe this will be corrected I later builds ?

things need to change more naturally , more subtle which is more of a simulation of real life than "game " like

 

Its also the racelengths? doing a 15 lap race, even in realtime seems too short for the weather to keep up. I've gone for wet tires in such races and when exiting the pits it was already drying up

 

not sure, the weather transition surely should be set to mimic that of the real world,

this would maybe promote longer races too

 

What about the rain tyres? Do they work (dont know)?
Spray doesn´t look good!! These cubic textures that spawn every 1/10 sec or so are very bad to look at! (I mean the texture on the ground)
The same with tire-smoke:
The skome is not an order of consistent "clowdies", but a continously emitting amount of particles.
I hope that the new particel-system is "aware" of that and that it just has to be implemented
on cars/tracks.
Can someone confirm (with screenshot)?

Greets
Pete

 

Depends on the mod of course.

- Track gets wet too quickly with light rain (supposed to be 3 levels of intensity, but almost always you'll see 1), 2 normal laps after rain starts you need wets. If it stops raining, 2 laps later you need slicks. Throw away those inters.
- Wet tarmac, like grass, offers less grip but still heats and tears your tyres up.
- Don't believe wet tarmac offers any tyre cooling.
- Missing WetGrooveEffects, as mentioned above, so there's no reason to drive a wet line. Just keep driving where the rubber is.
- To get some sort of balance between slicks and wets across dry and wet conditions, wet tyres usually gain grip when the track is wet. The track itself loses grip. Because the blocks moving around and overheating isn't modeled, as far as I know, so this gives you wets that work in the wet while being too slippery in the dry. Unfortunately recently, and possibly still, the transition is broken and wet tyres can get super grippy on a damp track.
- With no aquaplaning intermediates and wets are faked because there's no clearance of water to worry about. The track just has a level of dampness. And because of the speedy transitions the inters are a waste of time anyway.

We were excited by the weather. I wrote a program for our league use that randomised weather within set parameters. But because of some aspects of the implementation and the discovery of the super grippy wet tyres bug we've shelved it. Back to just dry races now.

peterchen: it looks fine from behind, sure it doesn't look great from side on but any better looking solutions will probably be more demanding. It could do with more options but what we have right now does the job, obscures vision about as much as you'd want, and runs fast enough for it ok to be forced and stop people 'cheating' by turning it off.

 

I've always thought the tires heat up too much when sliding/skidding on a wet track. Just my opinion though.

 

If ISI are going for pure reality regardless of how difficult something is then they should actually add back in some more of the "1 mile long rear spray".

Also, I haven't checked in build 590, but I remember in the previous build that the spray would continue to spray out at way too slow a speed. Cars going around a turn at, let's say, 80 km/h threw up almost the same amount of spray as they did when going 200 km/h. The spray has to decrease MUCH more as speed decreases.

 

Attached is a screen from tv-cam with build 590 spray. It looks good enough to me from tv-cam or when following other car. Make sure Soft Particles setting is on "High", otherwise it will look horrible. The reason the clouds spawn only 1/10 sec is because it would decrease FPS too much otherwise I believe.

Having said that, everything else about the rain is a bit broken or unfinished at moment...

View attachment 12247

 

Does this work for smoke as well Stonec?

 

I haven't tried rain for some months but last impressions were not good.

1) If I remember correctly grip increases on the rubbered line in wet just as it does in dry. In real life you're supposed to drive different line.
2) The track dries way too fast
3) No really random weather
4) It just doesn't look good visually. Makes one wonder if we'll ever see those cool raindrops and wipers we saw in a vid published by ISI 3 years ago.

rF2 is only good at ideal sunny weather, just like rf1, at the moment.

 

here's a pic to show from a graphical point if view,
what this guy made for rf1, a nice looking wet weather mod
(he wrote the rain drop effect on visor originated from a photo he took of his window after it had rained)

don't like the head moving around so much but the wet weather effect looks very convincing to me & this is rf1

vid: http://youtu.be/O5tdIdcxeDo


pic :

 

I´d like a "rain" button (after race weekend starts) in of line mode.

 

Yes, soft particles on High cuts the "edges" mostly away from all particle effects, but it does cost some fps. Particle effects are still not as good looking as in build 340 something, but back then everyone complained they caused low fps. Similarly if you look at Assetto Corsa you see these edges in particles and quite heavy fps slowdown. iRacing smoke looks bad as well. It's a bit ridiculous how something like smoke can't be made good looking and run smoothly on 2014 graphics cards, but apparently that's the case.

 

Battlefield 3 (and probably 4) has some very nice, thick and "deep" smoke effects when you shoot a rocket out of a rocket launcher and see the trail of smoke the rocket leaves behind.

 

I'd like to see water on the windscreen and working wipers that actually wipe.

I'd like to see turning off soft particles not be an advantage

The line should dry out more slowly

hydroplaning needs to be implemented

the driving line should not have as much or more grip than off the line. We should have to square off corners like in real life. The driving line should have less grip forcing us to drive like real drivers do in the rain.

 

do you mean aquaplaning?

 

I've asked many times to add rocketlaunchers to the sim but ISI are such spoil sports :/