Last time was thinking about reason of existence possibility to create own HDR profiles for each separate track. And you know what? I didn't found a good reason. Moreover, I can see only flaws of this feature. I talked about it with my friend, well known author of ShaderPack, and he confirmed my concerns. Let me prove the thesis. In real world, there is only one ligh model. Each of us can see the same sun, surroundings. Even if our eyes/brain reacts on it differently, source light rays hitting our eyes are the same. So, why to allow gfx artists to change light properties for each track? You can say, that in different parts of worlds scene is lit different way. Yes... and no. Light source is only one (the sun) and it is the same in Australia, Africa or in Europe. Only difference is in angles and distance to the sun (additionally changed through the year). But light source is still the same and shouldn't be changed by gfx artist. Let's think about why gfx artists want to change light properties? Mostly because to tune up the scene when build from particular textures. Don't you think it is complete wrong approach? Let's back to first truism: there is only one sun. So, game should provide strictly defined source light (as sun) and after that gfx artist should create textures in way which give needed result. It may be even worse in case of conversions. You can find converted tracks from various titles, containing light attributes just copied from original files. No one think about "why there is too much red". Answer is: because original game uses some specific HDR profile which has been tuned for game content. For build-in game tracks. I bolded the last sentence intentionally. Can we talk about rF tracks as "build-in"? No - almost each track is created by another artist. In closed titles, there are a few tracks prepared for one selected lighting model and lighting scene properties. It makes whole game consistent. Unfortunately, rF2 provides possibility to set HDR profile for each track separately (as well as light properties). First thought is: great, more things to tune up, more freelance for gfx artists etc. but no one think about basics: what about consistency? Why various tracks going to be look completly different? It is unrealistic! And the last think I'm sure even ISI missed while developing this feature: Why the hell the same car run on different tracks looks different? To clarify things: light properties and HDR affects how car looks like. The car model/textures are prepared also by gfx artist for specific light settings. Why some other artist (track creator) is allowed to (unwittingly) modify others work (car appearance)? In short: why car developed as white looks pink one one track and on another one is more blue? Is this what we can see every day around us? I'm sure no. At the and I want to point some clues and solutions. 1. First of all, lighting model should be consistent 2. Light settings including HDR should be the same for whole game 3. Light model should be driven correctly by engine using only geo-position, current date and time and weather - neither more or less 4. Allow modders to change light profiles (including HDR) for WHOLE game environment at once (instead for each track separately). It will give possibility to satisfy own taste, but for whole content, making it consistent. 5. If someone like warm colors - let him do it, but with any part of content in the same way. And let it be end user decision. 6. Again, if modders will create content for one, strictly defined set of lighting properties, whole content will be consistent allowing end user to tune up its appearance. best regards
Well said Maxym! +1! I believe ISI wanted to give track creators more possibilities but as Maxym wrote, in the end it probably create more confusion and negative effects. We don't want that.
The light in Europe, Africa, Australia etc. might all becoming from the same sun but the atmosphere it's coming through could be very different at each location. Compare a sunset over Hong Kong Harbour to a sunset over the north west coast of Scotland, same sun but do the lighting conditions look the same?
light source is the same. Clear atmosphere is also (almost) the same until we want no to simulate air particles. Lighting condition must not be, depending on things like amount of smog for example. But such things might be simulated for example by fog. If not - I may leave with it. Worse is if each track looks different because of artistic vision rather than real appearance.
I can see your point MaXym, but I respectfully disagree... As time goes on, rF2 probably will give us possibility to create new types of racing, like rallying. What if I want to create rally stage with winter conditions? How we can reach wintertime lightning enviroment for this specific track, if we are forced to use single kind, general HDR profile for whole sim? Lightning enviroment is totally different on every season. Sun is not only thing which affects lightning. Atmosphere (=temperature, moisture etc), sun angle, ground reflection attributes of ray of light, for instance, affect overall lightning. I'd like to have that option in my control when creating racing enviroments. We didn't have that option before and I'm glad we have now. We cannot master this new platform within few weeks. It took with rF1 months or even years (at least I did..) to master all available aspects and get benefits from it...
As I said (I think) gfx Engine should simulate such things. Otherwise you simply end up on qustion what is better: unreal looking winter which is unsupported, or almost all tracks looking unreal? What is better? One of most important disadvantage of giving possibility to create various profiles "per track" is that authors will create 'crazy' profiles not to simulate real lighting, but to force appearance of textures and satisfy own taste (or believing based on photos etc). Believe or not, I saw numbers of rf1 tracks with unrealistic light properties. It just happened. Most modders even don't know about rate between amount of direct and diffuse lighting and how it changes through a day (I don't event say that rf engine itself is highly limited in this area) Unfortunately custom settings affect also cars which has been prepared for other light settings then track. To show up how differences may be significant, just compare appearance of SimBin titles to other ones. Simbin has chosen very warm lighting. F1 2010 has more cold colours, but more real because temp of colours are depending on lighting and light angles. Now we are going to have such different appearance in single sim (rf2). Is it what we really want to reach? It is also post to be read by ISI developers. I'm not going to say "don't create own HDR profiles anymore". I just want to work with consistent gfx enginea and puting an idea about a way we and devs should go to get better results.
@Jka You don't want to simulate snow reflecting atmosphere and sun rays with HDR profiles, do you? It's shaders for materials to do the stuff. Atmosphere (thickness etc. ) and sun (angles, intensity etc.) should be simulated by dedicated shaders (for lightning conditions). I understand you point but we should try to stay with baseline lighting parameters as unified as possible.
I agree with Maxym. Look at this. Two different tracks with two different HDR profiles. Look at Megane's light. And question is Megane's lights are too strong or too weak?
This reminds me of an interview with one of the guys from Pixar. While doing the concept artwork for one of the movies, one of the artists colored the mountains in the backdrop purple. When asked why the artist made the hills purple when they were going for a more realistic look, he brought them outside and showed them the mountains in the distance, which were, in fact, purple! Now, tell me, to get some mountains to look purple in rF2 at a particular time of day, which is going to be easier? To try to tweak a set of atmospheric conditions which may or may not have real, tangible values, or to just tell it to use a sky light of purple? Sometimes, making something as "realistic as possible" is just not feasible. Let's also not forget the computations that would be involved in creating a truly simulated atmosphere with volumetrics, GI and all the bells and whistles. That's even fairly computationally expensive in pre-rendered CGI. Plus, there's always the case of the artists feeling like their hands are tied. You should not limit what all artists can do just because another crappy artist creates crappy artwork. It's game art fascism (just exaggerating, btw) I, personally, believe that what you're suggesting is like making all painters switch over to photography. Or, maybe more accurately, telling all photographers that they can't edit the photograph after it's been taken. Everything has to be done 'in-camera'. So, even within those parameters, you will get crappy amateur photography, or you can get brilliant professional photography. My point being: limiting the tools will not get rid of crappy artwork.
A movie is a "closed" product. Think - SimBin or EA products. Their content is consistent. All tracks were done with a more general idea in mind, so they have similar feel (lighting properties) in those products. rFactor is an open platform. Do tweaks to one track. Other guy will use this track to make his cars (and tweak their materials based on what he see on that track). Then I take that cars to have a race on a different track, with completly different HDR profiles and they won't be looking as their creator wanted. That's the main issue Maxym is talking about - inconsistency in scene lighting between tracks (and because of that, also between mods with cars).
Well, I certainly have seen plenty of attempts at exactly that sort of fascism in the last few weeks and I don't think you're exaggerating much. Coincidently, I somewhat agree that HDR profiles should be a last resort and not a shortcut to changing your color palette/affecting your lighting setup of a track. Removing them as a tool is stupid though. We also have settings like latitude, longitude, time of day, altitude and a calendar which - when set up correctly - should handle most of the needs to fiddle with the HDR profiles, shouldn't they? Edit: LesiU, inconsistency in scene lighting is something you will have to put up with. As you say, it's an open platform. From where I'm sitting, the proper approach here would be to write up an explanatory tutorial on how to set up HDR profiles, when - if at all- to use them and how to ensure they are generally "in line" with what rF is capable of. Going around demanding features to be removed or to dictate to modders how to do their art is the wrong way, and can get offensive quickly with an open platform.
OK fair enough. That should be OK (and time will tell, if that would be enough). But who is up to the task? ISI? They already said in their tuts, HDR profiles setup is "up to a modders taste and feeling"
I could be mistaken, because I haven't touched cars at all (yet), but don't they create the textures and materials based on the spinner/showroom? Basically what you guys are asking for is some sort of quality-control. The whole reason why ISI (or any other company for that matter) opens themselves up to modding is to allow additional content to be made for that platform. They fully understand that not all of the content that will be released will be up to their standards, it will be of varying quality. I think people are being REALLY oversensitive about how something 'might' be seen or used. If someone downloads your car (for free), and wants to only race it at some course that has terrible HDR, why should you or anyone else care? Do you think that that person is racing that car at that track because of the way it looks? Probably not--they probably wanted to drive that TYPE of car at that specific location (and that's probably the only version that's available for that specific track/configuration). Like ISI have said before, the better mods will be the most-used. If someone creates a mod that makes all cars look like garbage, there's a good chance that not that many people will be using them there (let alone making videos of that particular car/track combination).
Not 'might'. We already see how it is - with rF 1 content. Doesn't matter who will be using who's cars and tracks. Two different tracks. Both looks fine but are with different HDR profiles. Still have no idea how possible can that be? OK think - VirtuaLM (dark, wiped out colors) vs ISI (vivid, blue-ish tint) tracks. Cars were made to looks good on first. On the second one will be looking differently. On one track they might look like garbage, on other they might look great. You have different lighting conditions in showroom vs on track. That's already visible in rF 1. You can call it like that. rF 2 is at early stage so there is still a chance to do things in better way than they are. At a cost, yes, but do you really 'need' to tweak everything you would want to? I don't think we all need that much lighting options. I'd rather see more advanced shaders to be available for use for scene lighting rather than using tweaks in HDR profiles. Again, try answer Feel's question from this post: http://isiforums.net/f/showthread.p...ng-profiles-HDRs?p=49795&viewfull=1#post49795 That's the exactly same car - keep that in mind.
Feel's question is a bad one because it heavily implies a false dichotomy. The answer is not "yes" or "no". It depends. In that case not even on HDR but on the way night lighting is set up (and I'm with mianiak on that one, Mill's is far too bright even for a mostly lit track in my opinion). We touched upon this in another thread: Why do you have to force everyone to meet your subjective quality standards? If it's crap then let it be crap, it's not hurting anyone.
...because I thought we all want to have content made with the best possible quality? If someone's target is doing "crap" then does he really need rF 2 for that? rF 1 will work perfectly well for crap content. Why would you want to have crap in rF 2? Apart from the fact that AGAIN, I've never said anything about crappy content... or maybe I'm wrong and VirtuaLM or ISI tracks are crap indeed? None the less... how you can tell, which HDR settings are proper and which are not? But still then, are you sure you have the right settings? Or maybe you should tweak your textures? How do you actually want to create good quality content, without knowing which standard to follow (or at least have as a base) if there are no standards defined? No offence mate but having no defined standards in terms about proper lighting parameters, how can we expect to have unified, quality content?
It's not about yes or no. It is about to give us a chance to get consistent looking content. If some one would like to make a crap using bad textures or material properties - we cannot do anything with it. But giving to modders another tool which may be used to make tracks different and whole content inconsistent - is like giving a loaded gun to a child. Nothing will stop modders to use it and tune track lighting to own taste. Nothing will force them to use single one profile if some one will do that. If you would have a chance to do things consistent or not, you will chose second option? If you want inconsistent looking content in rF2 - just say it.
Edit: Yeah, I just did some tests of my own, and it seems that what feels3 showed are two different tonemapping settings. However, that shows that the problem is in the tonemapping, not in the skylighting lighting system. I will admit that I'm finding this whole system very difficult to work with. I've worked with "HDR" in the pre-rendered world before (basically, sun/sky systems, and a need for camera exposure/tonemapping) and all those times I haven't had much issue with getting a good tonal balance. With the system that's currently in place, I'm having a very difficult time balancing blown out whites and over-saturated colors. Combine that with the fact that I can't even edit any of the values in Developer Mode, and it makes for an unpleasant situation. I kept my original argument below in quotes, because it still has 'some' truth. In my wishlist thread, one thing I ask for is for exposure settings per camera (http://isiforums.net/f/showthread.php/3193-blakboks-Wish-List?p=39062&viewfull=1#post39062). I think the exposure settings should be more editable, and we should be able set those per camera. Of course, when you're racing in cockpit view, the settings as they are now are probably ok (auto exposure with a certain 'delay' time).
