Race Remaster

[AndreasFSC]

Yes some cockpit shadows looks nice if we can make it work, maybe there is some way to handle the windows...


I have updated all WTCC 06 and 07 tracks now (I think, there are probably some mistakes... and I have probably forgotten some things)
Testing and more tweaking is needed, but not bad now over all.

For some unknown reason I also updated materials of all the STCC ('08) tracks. Only testing, texture color edits on Knutstorp track, and some light settings left to do. This will not be included in Race remaster, but an optional addon (original STCC addon is needed).

So the plan now is (probably)
Race remaster
STCC remaster tracks pack
STCC2 remaster tracks pack
Race 07 extra remaster tracks pack

WTCC 87, WTCC extreme, STCC cars, Camaro cup, Formula Raceroom etc. will probably stay as tiny/midi-tweaks

WTCC 2005, 2009, 2011, 2012, 2013 (I don't own 2008 and 2010) could also get tinytweaks later if it is OK by their authors.

 

[AndreasFSC]

There is a lot of work left on Race remaster tracks, cars etc. but since UI will take a long time (my simple ST Ui did) I thought I should have a look at some of the other tracks.

I don't think I have ever raced at Vara raceway track in Race 07.
As you might know it is a fantasy track, but Vara is a real town. I actually visited it this summer. I nice small town, a few hours from where I live, with a very strangely colored travel center:

This is the track without any changes (it looks less yellow with standard shaders obviously).
The track is not bad, but it suffers very much from the transparency issues.

I will update the track now to see what it can look like, and also try to find the real streets that the track is based upon

 

[AndreasFSC]

So here it is

This is the blue house (not so blue, but it was painted a few years ago):

How cool is this?! We bought pastry at Conditori Nordpolen

Then we went to this park/playground. I even recognize some of the houses

This house had a wonderful garden with a lot of rhododendrons of different colors

 

[Kenny Paton]

This is the blue house (not so blue

You can make it any colour you want.

 

[AndreasFSC]

Yes I have to think about that...

The Simbin guys are there too.

 

[Vanaja]

Cool

 

[AndreasFSC]

 

[Kenny Paton]

Amazing upgrade.

 

[holacrosty]

I test the 1.5 shaders and at the begining was like.. everything looks better but I dont know why.

I see things that werent there before. In general it looks more clean.
The bumpmaps and specs are way better and I can see them also at the distance.
Trees look better but even the grass looks way better than before (great job with the normals).
Nice job with the smoke and all the lights. Now I havent test your custom shaders.
I see that you give color to sunlight at morning/afternoon transitions (8:00am/4:00pm) according to the sunrise/sunset color. It looks more real now.

- If the grip is way better on "laser scaned tracks" because they have more amount of polys what about the tires having more polys?

-what about the option on the *.TRK files: "Reflector=True" ?

 

[AndreasFSC]

The first focus was on adding as many things in the shaders as possible, now I focused on tweaked the values to try to find the right amounts of everything and also to work with more different light settings (and some bug fixes obvoiusly).
Nice to hear that it looks better now

A more high poly track surface produces a more detailed .hat file (the surface we drive on), but wheels are only dependent on the wheel center position and tyre diameter. But good idea, the best way to find out new improvements is to see the game from 'new angles'.

I don't know if I have edited any reflector object. so I don't know (yet)

 

[AndreasFSC]

This is a good opportunity to look more closely at the not so much used tracks.
Most of them are very well made, I can really appreciate the work of the artists.
Just some minor fixes and they can look very good.
This is Crowne Plaza raceway without the edits.

 

[Incredible Hulk]

Darker trees with more shadows definitely.
But this tree shader is cutting too much of the leafs and few trees are looking "oversharpen".
Something like there is missing mipmap on textures maybe?

Brands-Hatch-newLighting-Reloaded-trees-1

Brands-Hatch-newLighting-default-trees-1

Brands-Hatch-newLighting-Reloaded-trees-2

Brands-Hatch-newLighting-default-trees-2

 

[Sven Hielscher]

This is a good opportunity to look more closely at the not so much used tracks.
Most of them are very well made, I can really appreciate the work of the artists.
Just some minor fixes and they can look very good.
This is Crowne Plaza raceway without the edits.

View attachment 522262

In this case I believe the problem was that the Crowne Plaza addon wasn't that well known and especially because it was not available to everyone first (at least as far as I know).

Anyway, some great progress and pictures here!

 

[AndreasFSC]

About the trees, it is just a matter of finding the right mix of light and also mipmap bias.
There are more negative bias to compensate for multi transparency. If the negative bias is too small it will result in lower mipmaps with more semi transparency which results in bigger holes or smaller leafs. So it is simply a balancing thing, and some more tweaks will be needed. I personally like the darker tree look (but it can also be too dark), but it can easily be adjusted. It will take some time to get the "best" settings, and probably everyone will not agree 100%.

Brands Hatch is still one of the worst looking tracks in some places, more materials and texture work is needed.

 

[AndreasFSC]

I think all the track have some degree of "fixes" now. Now the focus will be on finding the worst looking details and improve them. It can be anything from shaders to 3d meshes, but I will try to do as little 3d modeling and remapping as possible.

 

[AndreasFSC]

Trying to adjust and improve Brands hatch. Trees are a little bit brighter, grass is more green.
Added back some of the multi transparent extra trees, but some of them could not be added back, because of the inside out transparency issue.
But I have also made some adjustments to the tree textures to compensate

 

[Incredible Hulk]

It took Studio 397 six years to have new UI alone ready.

Pardon
It’s still not ready.

Reiza changed the engine to have rain, cockpit shadows and similar effects.

It ruined physics in the transition

So take your time Andreas.
Or release it and we can tweak it bit by bit for years to come.

Btw. Sky clouds have some tint color. It should be white

 

[AndreasFSC]

Interesting point about the skies. They "should" not be tinted, I thought it was a color context thing, but maybe there is something in the code that causes it? I will have a look...

 

[AndreasFSC]

Should be taken care of now I think

 

[AndreasFSC]

Updated materials at Imola, part of the "extra" tracks pack. Nice track, have almost never used it before.
Those HD skies are great and adds so much to the game. Maybe the darker sides look too dark in these settings.
Sadly I had to revert back to more standard shader names for the skies because the rain/dry texture mix was broken (again...) and that limits how much color correction can be done in the shader without getting unwanted side effects.