Racer v0.9.0 RC3 released

[Ruud]

Get it at http://www.mediafire.com/file/67b1mep0z1evvbh/racer0.9.0_rc3.7z

Changes:
- Reverted SMD camera up orientation, since it sticked to up even if the car was rolling.
- Added 'uniform float2 resolution' parameter for Cg shaders. Used in the motion blur shaders.
- Added theoretical sprung mass weight distribution under Ctrl-9, see also http://www.racer.nl/index.php?jump=reference/carphys.htm#bodymass
- Motion blur on by default; improved by detecting non-moving objects better.

 

[tormento19]

Great news! At least the 0.90 name in version Yuhuuu let's try it as always, thanks Ruud!

 

[skybh]

Hi,
looks great but i've horrible FPS in this version (10FPS), i've disabled the velocity map and it's still the same problem

 

[camsinny]

Cool, motion blur looks much nicer now!
Though what's with the weird frosted glass effect? (Happens in replays - possibly due to the depth/velocity buffer not being generated until time's running or something?)

Also, the racing line on carlswood doesn't seem to blur - maybe it doesn't have motion_blur=1 or is it the alpha_to_coverage that's breaking the motion blur?

 

[Mr Whippy]

Looks much better, but it still feels a bit artificial vs what you get on the high end console racers.

Things like 'pause' would be nice if it literally stored the current frame buffer in memory and constantly displayed it (then the gfx card could cool off while paused too ), then you could see the scene with motion blur. Right now it just corrupts badly with weird blur if you pause.

There does seem to be an issue with alpha/alpha to coverage materials not blurring (my runway painted lines/markings are not blurring)
I also had my wheels set to no motion blur but the stuff behind the wheel spokes which was blurred was kinda interfering with the wheels a bit.

Hopefully there is some more improvement to come but it's certainly generally feeling nice on the motion blur front



I think we should have different fs_filters per camera if we want too. Then track cameras can have more blur, vignetting, DOF, lens flares etc, but our head camera for instance, can be more realistic without as many effects.
Also would be nice to have an exposure scale value per camera too, so in a dark car interior we can bias the exposure for the outside a bit more. In the SL65 AMG for instance the car is so dark inside that the outside ends up too over-exposed.
The bonnet view is fine in comparison, so ideally per-camera bias would be nice on exposure


Little wish list, would be nice but who knows

Dave

 

[SwiftPL]

Hey, I've got little problem with this version. When I want to start it, error shows on my screen. Can someone explain me what should I do? Here is a picture.

 

[Alex Forbin]

Hey, I've got little problem with this version. When I want to start it, error shows on my screen. Can someone explain me what should I do? Here is a picture.

What video card do you have?

Alex Forbin

 

[JagerMan]

Racer is now running an extra 10 (ish) Fps more, and runs smoother generally. Great stuff !

 

[SwiftPL]

I have an ATI Radeon HD 4800 1GB.

 

[Some1]

Tried it out, and the motion blur is pretty good.
The issues I noticed with motion blur:
- no velocity map is generated in the car selection screen, resulting in blurry image
- the motion blur "border" is visible in front of the car when driving
- just a little bit of the car's silhouette is also blurred

Other than that, great!

 

[boomer541]

Carlswood upgrade looks nice. The grey woods in the background were a bit of a problem until I looked in tracked. Looked like maybe a blur bug. FPS droped 20 fps from previous version.

The controls in replays all work now no more auto start when pressing F2, click the start > arrow.

Motion blur right out of the box with no racer.ini changes SUCKS! I've tried three times to post an image in this thread to NO LUCK. I'll try to post in another thread that isn't named #post-1188595!
Posted in another thread and then loged out refreshed browser and tried again. WTF is going on with this forum or what if anything am I doing wrong. The name of the thread is now Racer v0.9.0 RC3 RD is screwing up!!!

To those that like motion blur - Tell me what if anything you changed in the racer.ini file and post a picture to show the great motion blur you like. For me I turned it OFF!

Where are the sparks we used to have when a car rubbed on a rail? That has been gone for several versions and I have noted it for each version of Racer that has been posted.

 

[Some1]

Boomer, the only major issue with your car vs motion blur is that the wheels are blurred. You must disable motion blur for the wheels in car.shd. Look at the Lambo shader for details.

 

[Mr Whippy]

I'm kinda confused how motion blur is done on other platforms. It has to be said that in Racer it's still not quite there.

BUT, when we first got CSM, and early tone mapping days with HDR, things looked a bit average. But now they look great...

So motion blur will have to get better with time.

It's certainly good to see it being developed as imo it's essential to a good visual look. BUT, I think it should easily be toggled on/off somehow at this stage.


I've just let the AI have a run and watched the motion blur again. It's really not that bad imo considering this is the first release of m-blur in Racer since the old shader/pre-csm/LDR days...
It will get better and soon be very nice looking I'm sure



Ruud, is there any way to easily have different Racer cameras use different fs_filter files? So we can have some cameras run different effects to others?
Ie, lens flare, amount of motion blur, bloom, vignetting, DOF etc...?



PS, I still get this annoying shadow effect. It's not a massive problem but I'm sure we had this before, fixed it, but now it's back again...

The shadow is sharp at the opposite end of the car, and blurry near where you are looking from. When you move the sharp end now becomes blurry and the end where you just were is sharp.
If it were consistent it'd make some sense but the fact it changes is clearly buggy.
Probably related to camera coords vs shadow map cascade mixing?

Not a deal breaker but it does look a bit odd once you start seeing it

Thanks

Dave

 

[Some1]

PS, I still get this annoying shadow effect. It's not a massive problem but I'm sure we had this before, fixed it, but now it's back again...

The shadow is sharp at the opposite end of the car, and blurry near where you are looking from. When you move the sharp end now becomes blurry and the end where you just were is sharp.
If it were consistent it'd make some sense but the fact it changes is clearly buggy.
Probably related to camera coords vs shadow map cascade mixing?

Not a deal breaker but it does look a bit odd once you start seeing it

Yes, this was fixed a while ago, but now it's back. I think it was related to the fact that the shadow cascades did not follow the camera rotation.

 

[Stereo]

BUT, when we first got CSM, and early tone mapping days with HDR, things looked a bit average. But now they look great...

So motion blur will have to get better with time.

It's certainly good to see it being developed as imo it's essential to a good visual look. BUT, I think it should easily be toggled on/off somehow at this stage.

Yeah, plenty of opportunity for tweaks until we have something that looks and performs the best the technique can manage (for example, to avoid the car's silhouette trailing, try MotionBlur2 function?). This is after all the first release where it is functional. Wheel blur models might be necessary to fill in for some of the issues, once we have a stable well-performing target, the content will adapt to match it.


@ n.z always being positive, the only time that's observably an issue is with cull=none polygons, every other polygon is facing the camera and should have normals also (approximately) facing the camera. I'm not sure if anything can be done about the no-cull polies but to not use them much.



On default content, motion blur looks like this:

One obvious tweak (in motion_blur.cg, MotionBlur3) to make it a slightly less sudden cut-off is to base the 'zero cut-off' speed on the number of samples, like

if(abs(vel.x)+abs(vel.y)<(0.001*i))

(instead of a single 0.015 value)

This way there isn't a single cutoff point where sampling stops, there's a series of them peeling away samples making the transition non-obvious.

Another one I did, cutting out some of the ghosting, is setting up the calculation order differently.

    tc=saturate(tc+vel*oneOverSamples);

This line moved to above vel=MB_GetVelocity, and also, earlier on,

  float2 vel;
 =>
  float2 vel=MB_GetVelocity_SingleChannel(velocityMap,tc0,texWidth,texHeight);

since speed now needs to be known during the first loop to get a tc update...

 

[Ruud]

@Stereo: nice changes. About the normal.z, it does seem an issue since I'm now generating normals in world coordinates, there will be negative Z values. Are you expecting normals in eye coordinates?

 

[Stereo]

@Ruud: I was using the eye coordinates for AO, yes. I suppose the modelViewTransform is available either way but it does help the negative z issue to pass the eye view.

 

[Mr Whippy]

I guess you can swap between but it's more gpu time to do so...

I suppose the question is, which are more commonly used in post-effects? May as well generate the ones we need the most?

Hmmm

Dave

 

[SwiftPL]

I still can't run racer, what is the matter? I have an ATI Radeon HD4800 Video Card.

 

[Some1]

I still can't run racer, what is the matter? I have an ATI Radeon HD4800 Video Card.

Perhaps the matter is your video card?

Ruud, I think for the 0.9 final, it would be nice to put together a list of minimum required hardware to run Racer or perhaps add hardware checking into Racer itself?