I wanted to know how high poly car you can put into rF2, with bit over 150 000 polys I still get constant 60fps as long as I keep track detail low, my gfx card starts to run out of memory. Actually I can't test with more than 1 AI car because I run out of GFX memory (512MB), but as long as memory is not running out performance seem to be rather nice. With better hardware it should not be problem to use such high poly cars for screenshot purposes, maybe even for movies if movie maker similar to replay fridge is introduced. I had 2048x2048 textures for body and windows, then few other 1024 and 512 textures with car, not very well mapped as it was just a test (and because I'm not very good at mapping), but it was facinating to see that no matter how close you did look, those wheel arches were perfectly smooth and life like. Has others done similar tests, where are the limits? I start to think that engine has no limit in this, only hardware, 128GB gfx cards might make some silly things possible, so waiting for that next
I'm testing my LOD0 Dallara F309 with 170.000K tris; no problems at all on a midrange old HD6870. Tried a race with 20 cars on the track (without LODs, just LOD0), and I get 30fps without problems on maxed out settings and 60fps with standard AA instead SSAA. Considering a lot of polys are for interiors and spindle/brakes/calipers/mechanical parts, I'm pretty confident for a good margin for the final optimization with proper Lods, keeping the max resolution just for screenshots and closeup views. Of course If we get problems with FPS hits after the release for the public beta testing, I'll roll back to a lower resolution...
For Lod0 I guess 2-3 meters is limit, one can't tell difference from that distance if next level is say 80-100k, at least that is what I would imagine, driver's own vehicle is mostly then that shows with super detail even at max setting, that way performance can be of course tuned. I have currently only one level of detail, 0.5GB gfx memory seem to run out very quickly, is HD6870 1GB card? I did run out of ram too (3GB) rFactor crashes when it meets that limit, used to crash earlier, but I set boot.ini so that application can use all 3GB if it is large address aware. Great to hear that there are others thinking alike about detail, it is lot of work and mapping is pain with high poly levels (at least my machine refuses to operate smoothly with max 2012 student version), but I think that it is worth the effort. There is also always possibility to use something less than max detail level for car, people like me with ancient hardware can choose lower detail level, with properly set .gen file it should just leave LOD0 unused, then for screenshots etc one can ramp up settings. Will be interesting to see what kind of details people end up with, single model series can of course run bit better than multi model series. Dallara looks really great in that screenshot, that high detail removes so many imperfections that it gives much better illusion of being there. Even I don't really care that much about graphics, I must say that when graphics go above some undefined level they seem to create something more to illusion.
Yeah, the HD6870 is 1GB. And I agree with you about everything. I'm trying to keep high polys just for specific areas as I think is pretty useless put tons of polys everywhere, even in almost flat areas..The bodyshape is almost a standard, except for most organic parts...and the most of the polys are just for subjective driving and/or closeups. I hope we can get soon some optimized ATI drivers to test properly how those details can work in the final..
That is so true about putting polys where they do count and at least for me very difficult, actually when I try to make model, at some point I find edges being like messed up hair at the morning, nothing like nice combed hair I see in Dallara, but that is my lack of practice, some 6 years (on and off) only and still not much of result If damage is going to work similar to rF1, then it moves vertexes and for that to work well one needs enough vertices so there are no large gaps, but of course that depends bit from what kind of material vehicle is made from, fibres need completely different approach as they don't bend like sheetmetal and what I said applies mostly to sheetmetal bodies. That is also reason why one would need polys even on straight sections that could be done without many edges if damage is not taken into consideration. I think that is something that has not been brought up with rF1, with rF2 we really don't know what damage will be yet.
Not to get too far off topic... But Tuttle... How's your track coming along? I haven't heard or seen anything lately. Is it still going? Car looks great, by the way.
Of course it is in my pipeline... I think there is no need to spam every 2 days with new shots, especially if the track is short as the TG is, but you can stay sure the track will be released. I could close the TG layout in a very short amount of time, but as already said I prefer to stay calm a bit...waiting for some build updates to avoid repetitive operations on the same project, especially on shaders tuning and HDR. The modeling/texturing part for the TG layout is 90% finished btw, then I'll move on other layouts..
I did some tests with 100k tris model, up to 104 (current limit for rf2 - the same like in rf1) and was looking at how does fps change when going in steps up to the limit and there were no signs rf2 had enough, although my test track is a special one, with not much polycount. In the very near future I will do similar tests, but with ~200k tris car model.
Now that is what I call proper modelling Tuttle Here's a related post I wrote once: LINK It's more complex than just total polygon count. Number of parts / materials matters pretty much.
Thanks K Szczech, that is really great post, imo. It would deserve own thread, imo. even better if it could be copied to rF2 Wiki as at least for me that looks like what should be basic principles to keep on mind when making car / track. Recently I managed to figure out elements in max, no longer need to make every bit separate model just because it uses different material. I have long way to go with texture optimizing. In rF1 I did run out of material slots Are meshes compressed in GFX card memory? Car I did test with high polycount is 32MB on disk, 20 cars is then 640MB alone, which is more than I have memory on card. Textures of course take more space, but as they can be used in compressed form it is not as bad that what it could be (single car texture is 4MB for car I'm working with), however with big meshes memory could become an issue if meshes can't be compressed. If vehicles has higher and lower polycount meshes which are switched by LOD, where does the other mesh come from? I mean if it is loaded from disk, it takes time to load and can cause hiccups, if it is stored in GFX card's memory it will still occupy memory from card even it is not causing computing power to be used, if it is stored in main RAM, then it takes again bit of time to load and it takes RAM which also can become limiting factor, especially with 32bit systems. Good things to think about which are not necessarily though up when building tracks and vehicles, also I think there are ways to be learned (tricks) that can help to gain more details with less performance cost, like for example that using less GMT's trick.
No, but you should not look at GMT file size either. GMT file contains material settings and other stuff that is not stored in GPU memory. You can assume that each vertex will take 84 bytes in GPU memory. Each triangle will take 6 bytes in GPU memory. Vertex: 3 floats for position = 12 bytes 3 floats for normal (for lighting) = 12 bytes 4x2 floats for UV coordinates = 32 bytes (for more UV channels, there's probably optional 4xUV set in GMT file - at least that's how it was in rF1 and it seems to me like like it's the same with rF2) 3 floats for tangent (for normal mapping) = 12 bytes 3 floats for binormal (for normal mapping) = 12 bytes 4 bytes for vertex color and vertex alpha If object has multiple LOD meshes, all of them will be loaded and stored in GPU memory. Rendering engine needs them all because it switches between them on the fly depending on distance from camera. Regarding that post I wrote in other thread - keep in mind that some things in there were purely hypothetic. For example rFactor 2 does not render other cars into environment map. Game programmers usually avoid that - little visual gain, huge performance loss.
Well, remember, some things will be reused from car to car. So, it shouldn't be exactly 32MB x 20 cars. As far as texture memory goes, it'll be more like: 32MB + (#MB) (which refers to each unique texture for the same car). I'm not sure how the geometry is handled for each car--if it's held in memory once per class of car, and "instanced" (or similar technique) for each opponent. But anyway, my point is is that it's most likely not an exact multiplication of the original asset size.
Saabjock, Do you use the turbosmooth function in 3ds max to make your car? I'm sort of learning max and I was wondering if that is something I should be doing when I make car models.
Yea, that question was directed at Tuttle.. I got caught up in the quotations by other people.. I fail, miserably... But yea, just shoot me a pm tuttle if you wanna answer it so I don't have to clutter this post anymore with my nonsense
Must be that aura which glows around him Here is attempt to steer topic to somewhere, this is first version that I got pieces almost on place in rF2, materials are still wrong, mapping is very poorly, some parts are not at correct position so despite gazillion polys I managed to make car look poor, that skill must be worth of something too, right? But at least wheel arches look smooth. View attachment 3274 Model is made by MJ. My computer is not enough to load single car to all gfx options set to full at croft track, no shadows, no AA, no AF, I think that track detail was set to low in there. I would gladly give graphical aspect to someone else to do, but there really are no anyone else that would like to work with car, so I slowly improve, fall down, climb up and try again, but at least I'm trying I guess that I could reduce window texture size a bit, it is 2048 that is bit green and with single blue stripe in it, some might consider that bit wasteful? And of course windows are not visible at all, only blue stripe at windshield and it has one pixel green box around it, nice Maybe I get it sorted out at time of rF3, I might learn some more modelling by then, so I can make new interior with gazillion polys of course
