Hello All,
I am new to RD but not new to the sim-race community. I have some experience modding on ISI driven sims.
GSCE brings some amazing physics and attention to detail. I want to congratulate the Reiza team for a job welll done . I have been watching you guys grow over the last 3/4 years and I recently supported the team by purchasing the latest offering. Thank you Reiza for a great product.
I normally drive from the cockpit without using the virtual mirror. From a sim like GSCE I expect that the cockpit view willl give me the most "realistic" visual experience. I expect that if I have the hardware (a very wide screen ratio) I should see a rear and side view mirrors that show me whats behind the car in a reasonably accurate way.
At the moment that is not what GSCE is offering and I hope that when time permits this issue can be fixed.
For me its a big immersion killer if the rear view mirrors don't give me an image that is believable. In my past experience I often remapped cockpit mirrors on rF mod cars to suite my liking. I figured nobody was racing from the cockpit or if they did the side mirrors were never visible on 16:9 monitors anyway. Now were are in the age of Track-IR, Oculus VR, Triple screen and 22:9 monitors... now many people can see and use the side view mirrors, if they are made useable.
The problem I find in GSCE is the mirrors on most of the cars are not mapped properly for the MIRROR material being used. I don't understand the inside details of the problem exactly, but I know how to work around it. What I would like to do is offer my findings with some screen shots of GSCE v1.252 in hopes that Reiza will mend this pretty serious buzz kill to my simulation immersion
.
So to describe the issue I have would be this. There are two problems, the scale between width and height of the image in the mirror, the second is the view point of the mirror.
It seems that the X:Y scale on all the cockpit mirrors except the Camaro, Opala, and Stock cars is not correct. Is it only me, nobody else finds this annoying? ( ) The image in the mirror is compressed in the horizontal by various amounts as listed in my table below. In my screen shots provided I have "corrected" the distortion by using a MIRROR.bmp with dimensions that "stretch" the image back to (near) correct 1:1. This is not a great solution as I just guessed on the correction, and I am only using it to point out the issue.
Looking to the table I made you will see the size of the bit map I used to "correct" the X:Y scale of the mirrors for a given car. Then I have some notes about the quality in my opinion of the rear view from that car. The column XY ratio refers to the size of the bitmap used. If I understand correctly Reiza uses a 2048x128 (or 16:1) pixel bitmap for standard mirrors (ie. virtual mirror and cockpit). The standard bitmap works fine for the stock virtual mirror but the cockpit mirrors on many cars for some reason have been mapped differently (or vice verse).
I think that a detail like this would be important to Reiza and with the right tools they can make the mirror image scaling pixel perfect.
I hope that Reiza will agree with me and look into the cockpit mirrors when they can and sort this out.
Some notes on the screen shots... They are quite low res as I am simulating 3440x1080 on a 1920x1080 laptop. I am waiting for my new rig to arrive. You can still use the images to get a feeling for what I am discussing here. Seat and mirror positions are all at 0,0 for any screenshot. The FOV is set to 36 degrees.
This is F Classic with what I think is 1:1 scale for the rear view mirrors. The overall image seems reasonably realish
F Extreme... looks good after the correction
F Reiza... looks good after the correction
F Retro side mirrors overall view point/coverage are not very usefull (by design?).
Hard to see I know but the lead car (black) can only just see the yellow car in the RHS mirror
The blue car is not visible... a massive blind spot to be sure
Another shot as the cars go into the corner and the blue car just comes into rear view
IMO for better game play the mirror POV should be compromised to show a bit more behind the car, The Copersucar mirrors could be made a bit more useful.
F V12 I generally like the side mirror coverage on this car (using a 2560x256, 10:1 mirror.bmp). The rear view is obstructed by wing and wheels with a bit of a blind spot directly behind the car, but you can still spot your rivals position for the most part. I would like to see the other cars with similar rear/side view mirrors.
F Vee Made a change to PLR setting Self In Cockpit Rearview="1" to remove cockpit.
The blue car is ready to pounce but you won't know it until its too late
The next image is from the cockpit of the lead car at the same moment. You can see below that the cockpit mirrors are not very useful on the Vee due to the cockpit obstruction. If IRL the cockpit obstructs the mirrors as shown I can accept that but maybe a compromise can be made for game play.
F3 I generally like the side mirror coverage on this car (using a 2048 x 256, 8:1 mirror.bmp).
Mini The mapping on the side mirror is scaled differently than the inside rear view mirror. The view point on the side mirror could be a bit more game play friendly, but it looks like this is the way it was intended.
Hard to see I know but notice the "o" in mobil in the side mirror... the horizontal scale is stretched
This is the same Mobil sign now in the rear view mirror... the "o" is round and if you look you can see the size of the sign in the side mirror is bigger than that in the rear view mirror. The mapping on the mirrors is different.
StockV8 The XY scale seems ok to me but the side mirror view points too far left. The green car should be visible in the red cars side mirror in this scenario.
The side mirror view point is very far to the left (its useless imo)
MetalMoro Left vs Right side mirrors are not mapped evenly and overall view point/coverage is not very useful (by design?). IMO for better game play the mirror POV should be compromised to show a bit more behind the car. No screen shot examples for this car.
Camaro Side mirror view points too far left, but not to bad and probably by design. IMO for better game play the mirror should be mapped to show a bit more behind the car
Opala The rear and side mirrors point in believable directions and the horizontal scale looks good
Phewwh! Thats a lot of post.
I put some effort into this post as I hope that you will agree that this cockpit mirror thing is important and worthy of a fix. Please give your opinions on this issue.
Cheers,
Greg
I am new to RD but not new to the sim-race community. I have some experience modding on ISI driven sims.
GSCE brings some amazing physics and attention to detail. I want to congratulate the Reiza team for a job welll done . I have been watching you guys grow over the last 3/4 years and I recently supported the team by purchasing the latest offering. Thank you Reiza for a great product.
I normally drive from the cockpit without using the virtual mirror. From a sim like GSCE I expect that the cockpit view willl give me the most "realistic" visual experience. I expect that if I have the hardware (a very wide screen ratio) I should see a rear and side view mirrors that show me whats behind the car in a reasonably accurate way.
At the moment that is not what GSCE is offering and I hope that when time permits this issue can be fixed.
For me its a big immersion killer if the rear view mirrors don't give me an image that is believable. In my past experience I often remapped cockpit mirrors on rF mod cars to suite my liking. I figured nobody was racing from the cockpit or if they did the side mirrors were never visible on 16:9 monitors anyway. Now were are in the age of Track-IR, Oculus VR, Triple screen and 22:9 monitors... now many people can see and use the side view mirrors, if they are made useable.
The problem I find in GSCE is the mirrors on most of the cars are not mapped properly for the MIRROR material being used. I don't understand the inside details of the problem exactly, but I know how to work around it. What I would like to do is offer my findings with some screen shots of GSCE v1.252 in hopes that Reiza will mend this pretty serious buzz kill to my simulation immersion
.So to describe the issue I have would be this. There are two problems, the scale between width and height of the image in the mirror, the second is the view point of the mirror.
It seems that the X:Y scale on all the cockpit mirrors except the Camaro, Opala, and Stock cars is not correct. Is it only me, nobody else finds this annoying? (
) The image in the mirror is compressed in the horizontal by various amounts as listed in my table below. In my screen shots provided I have "corrected" the distortion by using a MIRROR.bmp with dimensions that "stretch" the image back to (near) correct 1:1. This is not a great solution as I just guessed on the correction, and I am only using it to point out the issue.Looking to the table I made you will see the size of the bit map I used to "correct" the X:Y scale of the mirrors for a given car. Then I have some notes about the quality in my opinion of the rear view from that car. The column XY ratio refers to the size of the bitmap used. If I understand correctly Reiza uses a 2048x128 (or 16:1) pixel bitmap for standard mirrors (ie. virtual mirror and cockpit). The standard bitmap works fine for the stock virtual mirror but the cockpit mirrors on many cars for some reason have been mapped differently (or vice verse).
I think that a detail like this would be important to Reiza and with the right tools they can make the mirror image scaling pixel perfect.
I hope that Reiza will agree with me and look into the cockpit mirrors when they can and sort this out.
Some notes on the screen shots... They are quite low res as I am simulating 3440x1080 on a 1920x1080 laptop. I am waiting for my new rig to arrive
. You can still use the images to get a feeling for what I am discussing here. Seat and mirror positions are all at 0,0 for any screenshot. The FOV is set to 36 degrees.
This is F Classic with what I think is 1:1 scale for the rear view mirrors. The overall image seems reasonably realish
F Extreme... looks good after the correction
F Reiza... looks good after the correction
F Retro side mirrors overall view point/coverage are not very usefull (by design?).
Hard to see I know but the lead car (black) can only just see the yellow car in the RHS mirror
The blue car is not visible... a massive blind spot to be sure
Another shot as the cars go into the corner and the blue car just comes into rear view
IMO for better game play the mirror POV should be compromised to show a bit more behind the car, The Copersucar mirrors could be made a bit more useful.
F V12 I generally like the side mirror coverage on this car (using a 2560x256, 10:1 mirror.bmp). The rear view is obstructed by wing and wheels with a bit of a blind spot directly behind the car, but you can still spot your rivals position for the most part. I would like to see the other cars with similar rear/side view mirrors.
F Vee Made a change to PLR setting Self In Cockpit Rearview="1" to remove cockpit.
The blue car is ready to pounce but you won't know it until its too late
The next image is from the cockpit of the lead car at the same moment. You can see below that the cockpit mirrors are not very useful on the Vee due to the cockpit obstruction. If IRL the cockpit obstructs the mirrors as shown I can accept that but maybe a compromise can be made for game play.
F3 I generally like the side mirror coverage on this car (using a 2048 x 256, 8:1 mirror.bmp).
Mini The mapping on the side mirror is scaled differently than the inside rear view mirror. The view point on the side mirror could be a bit more game play friendly, but it looks like this is the way it was intended.
Hard to see I know but notice the "o" in mobil in the side mirror... the horizontal scale is stretched
This is the same Mobil sign now in the rear view mirror... the "o" is round and if you look you can see the size of the sign in the side mirror is bigger than that in the rear view mirror. The mapping on the mirrors is different.
StockV8 The XY scale seems ok to me but the side mirror view points too far left. The green car should be visible in the red cars side mirror in this scenario.
The side mirror view point is very far to the left (its useless imo)
MetalMoro Left vs Right side mirrors are not mapped evenly and overall view point/coverage is not very useful (by design?). IMO for better game play the mirror POV should be compromised to show a bit more behind the car. No screen shot examples for this car.
Camaro Side mirror view points too far left, but not to bad and probably by design. IMO for better game play the mirror should be mapped to show a bit more behind the car
Opala The rear and side mirrors point in believable directions and the horizontal scale looks good
Phewwh! Thats a lot of post.
I put some effort into this post as I hope that you will agree that this cockpit mirror thing is important and worthy of a fix. Please give your opinions on this issue.
Cheers,
Greg
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