Race Remaster

[AndreasFSC]

This is a little bit of Estoril

Race Remaster should (at least it works for me) have ingame videos enabled by default. This one showing a GT race
Maybe adding more video screens could help some tracks come to life?

 

[MrRandom287]

Ok, you've convinced me.

I honestly didn't think that changing the shaders would make a big difference, but seeing the comparison shots really does look awesome.

 

[AndreasFSC]

Glad to hear that, I had a vision, and it fells like this is quite close to that now

 

[Incredible Hulk]

It seems that those "Recalculated Normals" do wonders for old tracks

 

[AndreasFSC]

Yes absolutely!
For some reason several tracks had no(?) normals or maybe all normals in the same direction, giving no shaded surfaces.
Also the diffuse shaders dx8 had very little normals shading so everything looked so flat.
So that was one of the main reasons to try to make new shaders. It was like all materials had their own ways of doing things and their own range, so the only way to make something look good was to edit all materials one by one to find out what works.
The new shaders had to be more special versions than I had planned for(because of limited space for code for different things), but at least they behave mostly the same.

 

[Incredible Hulk]

Those trees really bothers me
Darker is better but is it possible without hard cut, with some soft feather?

BRNO-default-trees

BRNO-Race-Remaster-trees

BRNO-default-trees

BRNO-Race-Remaster-trees

 

[AndreasFSC]

It is not possible for the moment.
To have the feathered transition transparency has to be set to "multiple".
But then we will have the inside-out drawing issue, and that is a bigger visual error.
Even if we have double trees (in fact that is how it is made by simbin. It might work differently on different graphics cards), with simple AND multiple transparency the inside-out trees will be drawn over the simple transparency trees and the issue will be there.

So this is not a tree shader issue, but a transparency issue. Multi transparency is not handled in the shaders as far as I know.
The only thing that could help is to isolate every tree for itself, but the tree could still be drawn inside out and it is so much work...

 

[AndreasFSC]

I have made some tests multiplying alpha so more of the tree textures are drawn. Also testing to multiply brightness with texture alpha. This results in a little bit darker edge around the alpha/nonalpha edges. Might look a little bit better. Maybe the edge should be more grey, to blend better with most colors. If the shader could "know" what is behind it would be possible to blend that in. But that is not possible, materials with multiple transparency are calculated in a per object and per materials way, and that is the reason for the transparency problem.

 

[AndreasFSC]

No multiple transparency, but maybe slightly better like this.

 

[Incredible Hulk]

This one on the right has terrible alpha channel anyway

 

[AndreasFSC]

Alpha blur improves things

 

[AndreasFSC]

Not much luck today. Tried some different things to improve trees, and some things looked quite nice.
But when using the same things at other tracks it looked bad, so no real progress there.

Then working a lot on the sky shader. Had to revert back to a standard shader before, but it had some unwanted side effects, the most important one being making the sky too dark.
Now I have made a new DX8 shader, one of the most basic shader that is possible to make, but I hope this will result in never have to "fix" sky transparency again. (I hadn't used other starting hours or weather for a while, so didn't noticed it was broken again).

One shader related thing still left to do is to make something for the 3d grass, similar to tree shader, but still just a little bit different.

 

[AndreasFSC]

Could not edit Brno track materials without them being corrupted (when unpacking) so I simply merged one of the road shaders with "L2BumpSpecMapT0Shadow", the material that is used for most tracks by Simbin in Race 07.

 

[AndreasFSC]

Is someone here interested in car sounds?

When working on my super touring cars I discovered that it is possible to improve sounds a lot just by just editing the .aud files with notepad.

Things to edit:
Set a more even engine sound level for all cars (done by ear, dot decibels)
Set higher coasting engine sounds. I think, specially the external sounds, it is too low, making engine sounds very uneven from ai cars, much like on/off.
Add just a little bit of braking sound to some cars
Increase internal gearbox noise/sound (not sure about all s2000 cars, but most of the later should have sequential gearbox )
Shifting sound can be a little bit high on some cars, maybe caused by low coasting/off or low revs engine sound.

I am really no engine sound expert, but I believe this can improve the experience.

 

[AndreasFSC]

Updating some normals on BMW 320i, mainly doors and door handles where they are usually a little bit "wrong", resulting in a little bit distorted reflections. I do this manually, and usually set up the car material as a solid not too bright color with specular light and cube map to view the surface from different angles.

 

[AndreasFSC]

The pit crew tries to organize and to get the right clothes. There is hope, but it doesn't work for me for the moment

 

[PiotrGT]

I'm so happy to see this in the works! I was wondering if there will ever be something like Anniversary Patch but for Race 07 and I guess the answer is yes! I'm wishing best to everyone working on this project.

 

[Mick Leahy]

I just wish to echo Piotr's sentiments. I am useless for modding and can only enjoy the fruits of everyone's hard work. My particular gratitude to Andreas.

 

[AndreasFSC]

Thanks, I am happy to have the help of the team in this project, and it means a lot to get the feedback and to know that there are still some people that are interested in the game

 

[AndreasFSC]

@MrRandom287 is joining the team
He is helping with research about how the game is made and finding improvements.