Rear-view mirror

Deleted member 387850 · Feb 5, 2018

Meatloaf may have sang "Objects in the rear-view mirror may appear closer than they are", but in Raceroom it appears objects in the rear-view mirror may appear further than they are!

I mentioned this in TS after the league race last night, but I've been really struggling with the rear-view mirror in R3E which always seems to make cars seem further away than they actually are. If a car is behind me they can appear in the mirror to be a car length or two back, but looking backwards reveals they are right on your bumper. This makes defending into a corner very difficult as you really aren't sure how close the car behind is, whether or not they're going to make a lunge and whether or not you're about to chop their nose off.

I haven't been around R3E very long, but is this a known issue and if so has there ever been any effort made to fix it? I'm also wondering if it's in anyway connected to FOV. Does the scale of the reflection change as you adjust the FOV or does a different FOV affect depth perception? I'm currently running at 0.6x on a single 24" 1080p monitor.

I'd be interested to know whether anyone else has ever noticed this before, thanks!

Lars Hansen · Feb 5, 2018

It is FOV related, sorta.
It's because the side- and rear-mirrors in R3E are projecting the same image. So they're running at a pretty high FOV in order to get the full view.
Which means that objects that seem far away will suddenly be right on your tail.
It's hard-coded though, so it isn't linked to whatever FOV settings you run in-game.
The only real solution is to bind a key on your wheel to look back, and use it whenever you're unsure how close the opponent is.

Deleted member 387850 · Feb 5, 2018

Ahhh okay, that kinda makes sense! I don’t rememeber noticing this in any other sim before, but perhaps I’ve just never noticed or they render their mirrors differently. I should also clarify that I’m using the virtual mirror in the cockpit as at my FOV there’s no way I could see the cars “real” rear-view mirror!

Lars Hansen · Feb 7, 2018

suspectmonkey said:
Ahhh okay, that kinda makes sense! I don’t rememeber noticing this in any other sim before, but perhaps I’ve just never noticed or they render their mirrors differently. I should also clarify that I’m using the virtual mirror in the cockpit as at my FOV there’s no way I could see the cars “real” rear-view mirror!

It's not in any other sim (that I know of).
As good as R3E is, the graphics engine that runs the visuals is positively ancient, so I assume they had to cut corners with the mirrors.
And it affects the virtual mirror as well. In fact, the side- rear- and virtual mirrors all project exactly the same image.