Why Automobilista has outdated graphics?!

[Mike85]

Seriously guys, i would lovely buy this game and i know it's amazing! But the graphics engine is outdated as hell... It's something like 15-20 years old but with higher quality textures.. It destroys any kind of immersion.... :-(

 

[GuitarTech]

I think the critics moaning about the colours in AMS should cut the programmers some slack. It's almost impossible to accuratly reproduce colours on a monitor. Ask any graphic designer. Or in my case: I'm a luthier. I repair and build guitars and other stringed instruments. and I repair a lot of Fender guitars. if you look at the colour charts available on the net for Fender colours, depending on what monitor you use, they all look different. And I've never seen a colour chart online (not even the one on Fenders website), that even remotely looks like it does when you have a guitar of that colour in your hands. I have wooden colour blocks sprayed with the actual colour ( btw, all vintage Fender colours are car colours, except for candy apple red. Useless fact of the day....), so that the customer can see what it really looks like.
And talking about the textures themselves: In a previous life I raced 250cc class motorbikes, and I know Cadwell Park, Brands hatch, and Oulton Park like the back of my hand. Believe me, when you're doing 150mph in a pack of 25 or 30 other bikes, the last thing you notice are the cloud colours or the grass textures being blurred ( IRL at 150mph they're blurred anyway )
If you have time to notice all this stuff, you're probably driving too slowly....; -)

 

[P*Funk]

I really don't see the point of comparing pictures which use a lot of post processing filters to obscure the ugliness of such old graphics to the leaner AMS graphics. Still, you can get the game to look much more photogenic if you use special SweetFX filters, ones you'd never use when driving most likely.

Also, apparently the new Brit pack content is pretty superb with interiors better than ever and the tracks better than ever. Mix that with some SweetFX voodoo and you get this sort of thing.

http://forum.reizastudios.com/threads/how-to-ams-and-reshade.1462/

That definitely looks better to me than any 10 year old sim.

 

[Andy_J]

Looks blurred to me.

 

[Will Mazeo]

F1 Championship, released TEN years ago looks better than AMS.

Is this modded or edited? for such an old game and at least in a screen shot that's looking pretty nice

This video is TEN years old:

That moment you look for more videos of this 10 years old game and the rain spray is far better than rF2

http://forum.reizastudios.com/threads/how-to-ams-and-reshade.1462/

That definitely looks better to me than any 10 year old sim.

In no way it looks better with this blur, I'm not a fan of blur but I can tolerate some, in this screen shot tho it's just too much, my eyes weep looking at this lol

 

[P*Funk]

Whats wrong with you guys? Its called depth of field. You either get blurred distant/near objects or an uncanny but useful ideal focus in the whole frame that lets a human eye roam and create its own focus.

Real life is apparently displeasing.

 

[Will Mazeo]

If your vision is like this you should see a doctor urgently

 

[P*Funk]

If your vision is like this you should see a doctor urgently

But that's the point, most post processing effects aren't very realistic when it comes to representing human vision. You either doll up a game to make it look like a photograph or a hyper stylized image like you get in movies or you make it flat in terms of perfect focus in the frame because the human eye looking at a representation of an image needs to be able to selectively focus.

A lot of pictures chosen to say this is old but looks better is using a lot of unrealistic PP to hide the imperfections, like blurry textures or aliasing. Most of what makes an older game stand out against AMS is the presence sometimes of HDR lighting, which AMS badly lacks and is the reason most people rightly feel its lacking some immersion.

The real weird thing though is when people are using images from cameras and judging them next to what a sim is representing as human vision. Its a weird situation where what is or isn't realistic is jumbled up with whats both expected and whats considered aesthetically appealing.

 

[GuitarTech]

Easy to do with an SLR camera: just set the apature to as big as you can: a really high quality lens will stop down to f1.4, and then you have fast zero depth of field, which can be useful in certain situations..but not in a driving sim
The cheap lenses only stop down to f2.8 or even f3.5, of course with them the effect is not quite so pronounced.

 

[hex]

Also, apparently the new Brit pack content is pretty superb with interiors better than ever and the tracks better than ever. Mix that with some SweetFX voodoo and you get this sort of thing.

That definitely looks better to me than any 10 year old sim.

You do realize this ReShade package was made mainly for screenshot purposes in TV-camera view not to actual driving in cockpit view?

 

[fortyfivekev]

If any of you guys have the beta you could be driving the Caterhams right now instead of arguing about this crap

 

[GuitarTech]

If any of you guys have the beta you could be driving the Caterhams right now instead of arguing about this crap

Thanks for the heads up I had no idea it had arrived!I've been looking every day since I bought the beta I just spent 30mins thrashing the 620R around Oulton

 

[P*Funk]

You do realize this ReShade package was made mainly for screenshot purposes in TV-camera view not to actual driving in cockpit view?

Yes I do, and most people seem to like posting screenshots of games in TV camera view with post processing in order to illustrate how much better another game looks too.

 

[John-Eric Saxén]

..and to follow up why it seems "outdated", it is because older sims (my generation) could only use primary colours as their colour palette was so limited.

I would argue that Grand Prix 4, from 14 years ago, does not look that much different from AMS, mainly due to the colour palette used in both.

There is nothing in the game engine that limits the use of the color palette, it's purely down to track texture work. Even Grand Prix 2 that was released in 1996 supported SVGA mode, which means 16 million colors. The last time color precision was an issue was when games used to run in "256 colors" mode, somewhere around early 90's.

If you want to run AMS with less vibrant colors, I believe it can be done by simply reducing color vibrancy from GPU controller panel, at least this can be done with Nvidia cards. Having said that, real life is vibrant, often much more than what onboard camera footage shows (especially old onboard videos are useless to compare with as the cameras lose so much color information through processing).

 

[REM1976]

If any of you guys have the beta you could be driving the Caterhams right now instead of arguing about this crap

If you think this dicussion is "crap", stay out of it, instead of posting your useless contribution.

 

[P*Funk]

I don't think its crap either and we're just debating ideas and using some actual vaguely empirical reasoning which prevents it from being too truculent as the internet is want to be when its more about feels and put downs.

I always get excited when an internet disagreement involves presenting evidence and counter argumentation to discredit said evidence.

 

[Terry Rock]

It's really quite simple.
Don't like the graphics in AMS ....go drive something else.
They're lots of sims to choose from right now.
That said... If you dare to take the superb new Caterham out to Johannesburg in AMS Beta, you'll be hard-pressed to find one modern sim which feels better.... while running as 'fluid'.
It is quite good-looking relative to where it came from with the updates.

 

[REM1976]

^ ^ Another off-topic meaningless response

 

[aleph]

I have been following this thread with mild interest because (a) color is a very subjective issue and depends on a multitude of factors (hardware, monitor/TV calibration, ambient lighting, even your own age) and (b) I live in Brazil, where skies actually are quite blue. Nevertheless, given that we are discussing color in a program that runs SweetFX, which provides very fine control over visual features, I decided to see for myself if anything could be done about the issue instead of just discussing it endlessly. What you see on the right in the picture is the result of my very first attempt. Basically, I disabled everything except Vibrance in the SweetFX preset file and set that to - 0.175. I gave it up after that because, for every iteration, you have to quit AMS and run it again, which takes a lot of time. Anyway, it seems to me that someone with a bit more patience could tweak AMS visuals to their heart's content.

 

[REM1976]

Looks so much better with just that small adjustment. If only Reiza could spend some time looking at this issue and applying an easy fix.

 

[aleph]

Looks so much better with just that small adjustment. If only Reiza could spend some time looking at this issue and applying an easy fix.

Or perhaps we could have a section in this forum just for SweetFX presets. I am not familiar with this plugin, but it has lots of parameters and it seems you can do interesting things with it.

Incidentally, the Vibrance parameter that I tweaked has the following values in the existing preset files: -0.075 in Default, 0.01 in HDR Emulation, 0.033 in Original. The split screen you see in the picture is just another SweetFX feature that can be turned on in the preset file.