GT5 stuff... ooooo, how to make Racer do it?

[Mr Whippy]

It's interesting watching this. I'd love to see it with another car on there, and see if it reflects nicely in the wet road too.


But for now, what is it doing that Racer can't do?

The main ones I can see are multiple light sources with regards to shadow mapping and illumination. I wonder how that is done. Within the scope of what Racer could do with the current engine or not. Maybe a hint towards the idea that PD have decoupled lighting from sun/sky to what are essentially light sources?! Hmmmm.

Also, the softened distorted reflection on the tarmac.
I've had the envmap working nicely here, and it will reflect emissive objects too, but the bump map doesn't influence reflections nicely (though I think I saw Ruud mention that would change shortly!?)
So that is possible too.

Then we have the rain on the windscreen. Ruud has mentioned wipers too I think, so it'd just be a normal map of a rain blob, pasted on the screen area, and blown around?


Hmmm, just all interesting stuff. I'll be buying GT5 and looking closely at these effects, but all said and done it's funny how not that far ahead they are really in gfx terms, considering the years in development and money they have had!

The lighting is the thing that interests me the most.

Dave

 

[2o6]

GT5 is going to be crap. 1000 cars, but only the 200 premium cars have modeled interiors. The other 800 are the exact same models from GT4, and they look like crap.

Look at the gross difference between the Megane (Premium) and the Alfa 147 (Standard)

 

[Splashonda]

Honestly, Racer's graphics are very good the way they are now. Focus on physics people!! That's what makes a game fun for months, rather than 15 minutes! What's the point of something that looks great if it doesn't play that well?

 

[ammods]

i agree, when i release something, im not so much focusing on the appearance, but dont get me wrong here, i do everything within my limited abilities to make it look clean..but i do prefer physics to be accurate to real world data..

sometimes thats not entirely possible but i do try to make it as real as humanly possible

 

[QuadCoreMax]

Yeah, light sources seems to be missing, so for a night mod, it'd be cool if we could integrate some of them with different params, like a flashing, a colour, an intensity param & other light related params, will check in SB2 (Crytek) what they have. It's basically almost like the car lights where you have a projected volume with a custom shader. Still, I don't know how Racer would react with shadows...A lit tree in Racer at night, won't project any shadows...so the whole scenery looks kind of fake, hmm

I don't think the bump map needs to influence reflections, it's the colors (white & black gradients) that gives you the nice result.

For the wipers, it should look like F1 2010 which imo have coded the best rain blobs in the actual gaming world. A bit of Crytek effects mixed to them would be great, since F1 2010 blobs seems to be a little pixelated. Same here, we would need a special shader, a good animation & something which is consistent, so related to the clouds/rain state over time. We'd need a rain.crv somehow to set the intensity & on/off states. Wipers should automatically be working with them & stop when rain stops, logical stuff. A special entry in car.ini should be added for 3D custom wipers along with their params (rotation max/min around CoG).

@206

Hmm, do you even know how they created the cars ? They using the greatest & most expensive scanning technology to blueprint the cars as they are in reality, with hundreds of references points for the outside. The more complex the car is, the more work they have. Imagine just for 1 second how much work it does represent for interiors, knowing they 100 times more complicated to scan...In my youth, I've been re-painting the dashboard + all other pieces of my GT, man that was 1 of the biggest work & helped me to understand how those were originally created...

Anyways, glad that RJ de Vera (one of the best tuners worldwide) been working with GT5 conception from memory. He has been the moderator for the "trick it out" show, which I've been following & shows the new way of doing things.

 

[luthobu]

(deleted boring post)

 

[2o6]

Quadcoremax - That is unacceptable. Forza Motorsport 3 has 500 cars, all with full interiors, ect, and they used the same method as you described.


Making us wait 6 years for a rehashed version of GT4 is terrible. A good physics engine and good shaders can't mask an old and reletively old mesh......it's going to show.

 

[boomer541]

Wiper have been available for several years now in the car.ini file. The only problem is that Ruud hasn't provided the code in racer.exe to turn them off/on even with the control key listed in the controls.default.ini file.

 

[Krisz]

Honestly, Racer's graphics are very good the way they are now. Focus on physics people!! That's what makes a game fun for months, rather than 15 minutes! What's the point of something that looks great if it doesn't play that well?

Thats so true. I just can't wait for physics updates.

 

[Raphael Buthmann]

Then we have the rain on the windscreen. Ruud has mentioned wipers too I think, so it'd just be a normal map of a rain blob, pasted on the screen area, and blown around?
------

I remember , somewhere on nvidia site there is a rain shader with the blobs on the floor.
I will search and post here ^^

 

[Raphael Buthmann]

http://developer.download.nvidia.com/SDK/10/direct3d/samples.html

Here , one of them is the rain shader.

 

[Raphael Buthmann]

I think , the blobs can be made like dirt map , like is done on Dirt 2 . It's real and 'cheap' to gpu.
From 0 to 1 intensity of rain , the blobs can have the same intensity.

 

[Some1]

Here's another video showing the same car in daylight... !

Note that the cockpit shadows don't look as good as in Racer!

 

[Mr Whippy]

That's weird really, because in GT5P they look pretty ok. I wonder if these are faster and a bit more sharp, just less nice looking or something!?

Racers interior shadows are ok, but the fact they stop rendering at about 100m away isn't so nice. Not sure how good the GT5 ones are in that regard till I have a play... hopefully before the week is out


It looks like the rainy and wipers stuff is relatively easy really, and QuadCoreMax suggests a nice ref map might get the watery road reflection looking nice too (though not sure we can do it quite as nicely without a blurred envmap (or smaller mipmap version))... just those per-light shadows.
Not essential though, but it'd be cool to have the rainy stuff.


Yes, totally agree, Racer is about the physics, and driving pleasure. BUT, if these things are a shader addition away, I know I'd like to see them showing off Racer to their best!

Ie, in that video, the Lambo goes from a dry tunnel to a wet road, and doesn't slow down. Now I know that in Racer the wet road material would add some drag and slow the car down

Racer can be all about physics and accuracy there, AND look good... win win

Dave

 

[MitchVL]

http://developer.download.nvidia.com/SDK/10/direct3d/samples.html

Here , one of them is the rain shader.

Well, Racer does the rain pretty much the same.
The differences for so far i can see:
- We output 4 verts instead of 1 because geometry shading is not supported by ATi ...
- Rain is not influenced by lighting ...

If someone is interested in fiddling with the rainshader to change that last one ... be our guest !

 

[QuadCoreMax]

If someone is interested in fiddling with the rainshader to change that last one ... be our guest !

I would try but I actually don't have enough skills in CG programming & I doubt it's all about the shader.

Observe the rain blobs in a real situation. Its animation would be speed-dependent, the more speed & the quicker the blobs moving to the extremity of the windshield. Also, you have bigger blobs "explosion" on it when rain's more "intensive", so it's intensity-dependent.

All kinds of observations that could be implemented correctly, there are also like in DIRT2, the mud/water puddles, both requires 2 different textures & animations at 2 levels (once no wipers are working & one when it's activated) + for sure some kind of a trigger once driving on it in order to activate them automatically...or manually settable for a G25/G27 button ?

Omg, it won't be that easy...:wink: I also forgot the rear stuff...

 

[Mr Whippy]

Just ideas for now Mitch, thought processes etc... deep breaths ;-)

I think the rain right now could just do with light influence, so it's visible in headlights on a night, and stuff like that, but for now I can live without the screen effects.

More important to me probably is a blurred envmap possibility call in shaders. Maybe alongside the envmap call in the shader, have a mip-map level to choose from!? That way reflections in the water/puddles on our tracks can be a bit soft rather than super-sharp...

Dave

 

[Raphael Buthmann]

Well, Racer does the rain pretty much the same.
The differences for so far i can see:
- We output 4 verts instead of 1 because geometry shading is not supported by ATi ...
- Rain is not influenced by lighting ...

If someone is interested in fiddling with the rainshader to change that last one ... be our guest !

---------------
Yes , the rain in racer looks really great , but there's no effect on the floor D:

 

[Mr Whippy]

Add a refmap to the floor, and use some alpha to make it patchy.

Does look loads better

The offset feels kinda wrong somehow though, other cars don't reflect too well until they are a metre in the air

Dave

 

[FiftyOrange]

Shadows in GT5 are crap.