RaceRoom to go Unreal 4 in Future

[Paul Jeffrey]

Sector3 Studios to upgrade RaceRoom Racing Experience to Unreal Engine 4 and include day / night cycle, enhanced weather and improved physics in future development plans.

When RaceDepartment went to visit the new UK office of SimBin Studios a few weeks ago we had the chance to have a chat with Sector3 Studio Head Christopher Speed, where we took the opportunity to speak about the future of RaceRoom Racing Experience and gauge how the Swedish developers plan to prolong the relevance of the title in light of an increasingly competitive sim racing marketplace.

Many of us know the history behind RaceRoom Racing Experience, and the great strides the game has made under the leadership of Sector3 following their formation back in 2014. However with many top quality games such as Project CARS 1&2, Assetto Corsa, rFactor 2, Automobilista and many others flooding into the racing game space, what do Sector3 intend to do with RaceRoom Racing Experience in order to improve their positon in the sim racing pecking order?

"We know with R3E the game engine is old in comparison to the competition, there is no doubt we are missing certain elements and eye candy the others have. We took the decision that Unreal is the way to go" said Chris Speed.
​

This is indeed exciting news for RaceRoom fans, and with a new graphics engine sat in front of an already very enjoyable force feedback experience and some incredibly well made content, a move to the Unreal engine and the addition of all the benefits that will bring could prove to be somewhat of a game changer for the title - proof positive that the current investment of both time and money fans have dropped on RaceRoom Racing Experience won't be wasted in light of the GTR3 announcement.

"Eventually RaceRoom will move across to this new technology, but first and foremost it's GTR3. Then we look into what we can do with RaceRoom afterwards.... he continued.
​

Of course with SimBin Studios UK dedicated to working on the new game, and Sector3 still progressing with the current RaceRoom project as well as lending support to GTR3, it will be some time until the benefits of the Unreal 4 development see light of day in RaceRoom.

"There is no doubt that the work that is going on for GTR3 we will see in RaceRoom when we make that decision to switch, which means day night cycle, weather, improved physics, AI and visuals. All these goodies will be coming across when the time is right" added Speed.
​

This is very positive news for fans of R3E. With the long term aim of SimBin and Sector3 to get the Unreal Engine 4 working to it's maximum potential, Speed was at pains to stress that the continual development of RaceRoom remains Sector3's priority. He went on to acknowledge the fact that many currently missing features that fans consider to be essential content are in development and should be included in the title as part of future update.

"No doubt there is still some key elements missing in RaceRoom... Flag system, tyre compounds on certain cars is being worked on. Multiclass racing we have a design on paper and will at some point work towards that but first and foremost we have to get the structured MP racing features done"
​

When pushed on the subject of the sheer volume of work to be undertaken in order to get both games where they want them to be, Speed explained a little more about the division of resources

Think of it like this, two separate studios working on two separate products. We are under the same umbrella but we are two separate entities working on different things. We are supporting one another in different areas and provide feedback where necessary, but the Swedish studio is still solely responsible for RaceRoom whilst the UK studio is responsible for GTR3.​

This is a very intelligent move by both development teams as it allows Sector3 and RaceRoom Racing Experience to benefit from a considerable jump up in technology and graphical standards, without the need to undertake a costly development exercise in terms of both money and resource if the team were to go it alone with just the RaceRoom product. Basically by developing a shared structure of support with SimBin and GTR3, Sector3 will be able to utilise the hard work and development effort that goes into producing the new GTR3 game for the benefit of R3E, a move that may have been more difficult and costly to achieve otherwise.

For a sim running an older engine and DX9, RaceRoom still looks a very visually pleasing title and stands well amongst it's sim racing rivals. The studio are well known for the quality of their content, and have some very impressive licences already under lock and key in terms of the WTCC, DTM and ADAC deals, plus some interesting open wheel vehicles and a number of official licenced cars and manufacturers, so a move over to the latest generation graphics and inclusion of weather, time of day, improved physics and all those other things that are yet to be revealed, it looks like the future of this game is very secure and rather exciting indeed.

In case anyone wondered how much more development RaceRoom has in front of it in light of the new announcement, I'll leave that over to Chris to put those doubts to rest.

"We want to assure everyone that RaceRoom is going to be here for a long time."​

We will be publishing the full RaceRoom interview sometime in the next couple of days. We will talk more about the future development, have a deeper look at the focus on eSports racing, chat about some new content coming to the sim and take a look behind the scenes at what RaceRoom has in store for their fans heading off into the future.

Stay tuned to RaceDepartment over the weekend to read more!


RaceRoom Racing Experience is a PC only racing simulation from Sector3 Studios. Available to download for free with limited content, further cars and tracks can be added either as individual items or full packs via the in game RaceRoom store.

Here at RaceDepartment we do club racing. We do club racing very well indeed. If you feel the need for an online fix then please head over to our RaceRoom Racing Experience League and Club Racing forum to have a look what we have on offer and sign up for an event - all skills and experiences welcomed.

If you don't want to get involved in the racing action then head on over to the RaceRoom Racing Experience sub forum to catch up with all the latest news and discussions regarding the game, download a mod or two or just simply hang out with like minded individuals. All here at RaceDepartment.com!

Do you feel excited for the future of RaceRoom Racing Experience? What do you most anticipate? What series licences would you like the developers to secure for the game? What new features are you most looking forward to? Let us know in the comments section below!

 

[Andy Kettler]

I’m guessing you don’t drive in VR

Imo its the fault of the hardware industry if a up to date engine tech is too much to handle for top of the line hardware. Its not the engines fault. But as long as player pay every price for a couple % more fps this will never change.

 

[Deleted member 197115]

I’m running it on a 3080 and still can’t get the settings high enough to stop the floating cars, pop up shadows and the weird lod rippling effect on the foliage. R3E shadows on low setting are better than ACC on epic. All of that just kills the immersion which is why I’m using VR

Matter of perspective, to me it's arguably the best looking sim on the market, monitor or VR. But for VR I've settled for 60hz to squeeze extra image quality. 3080/i9-9900K/G2.
I should admit that it looks tons better in HDR on G9 with everything maxed out than in VR.

 

[PurgerUK]

Imo its the fault of the hardware industry if a up to date engine tech is too much to handle for top of the line hardware. Its not the engines fault. But as long as player pay every price for a couple % more fps this will never change.

I would actually reverse that - the fact that a generation of video cards that wasn't even out when ACC was developed still can't run it decently in VR show that they didn't get it right. Unreal tech does support a number of optimisations for VR but they seem to be stuck with an older generation of Unreal4 and I guess that with the work they have done to develop triple screen support means they are unlikely to upgrade. Shame as VRSS and DLSS would go a long way to making the VR experience nearer to the flat screen.
It will be interesting to see what tech they use for their next project as modders have shown what the old AC engine can do and I imagine it must smart a bit paying a big chunk of their income over to Epic.

 

[Deleted member 197115]

Are there options for independent studios besides UE5 and may be Unity. Considering some experience gained with UE4 the chances are it will still be UE, with some lessons learned approach, hopefully.

 

[Andy Kettler]

as modders have shown what the old AC engine can do

For a huge cost in performance and for me it doesnt even come close to the realistic look, details and features of the UE...

 

[Deleted member 197115]

Speaking of engines, look at that just announced beauty from Ubisoft.

 

[Slapped]

Imo its the fault of the hardware industry if a up to date engine tech is too much to handle for top of the line hardware. Its not the engines fault. But as long as player pay every price for a couple % more fps this will never change.

Did you really mean that? Honestly it baffles me the way that people fail to understand technology in this day and age.

It most certainly is the engines fault, or more to the point it's the developer failing to understand the engine that leads to piss poor performance. Hardware is what it is - you can't just magically conjure up 2 or 3 times the gflops just because a software developer can't be bothered to optimise their software to get more than 25FPS out of it.

It's down to the software developer to work within the limits of the hardware available and produce products that perform well within that defined envelope. It's not down to the hardware industry to pander to the self entitled software developer.

Anyway if we're talking ACC, honestly it's the most unoptimised pile of dung to have ever existed in sim racing, and it doesn't even look that good - I'd take the original AC graphics over the over saturated, almost cartoony look of ACC any day, and I'd bag an extra 300 FPS as well.

 

[Deleted member 197115]

Great in full glory on monitor in HDR with all settings maxed out, but lagging behind AC and AMS2 in VR.

 

[Andy Kettler]

Anyway if we're talking ACC, honestly it's the most unoptimised pile of dung to have ever existed in sim racing, and it doesn't even look that good

It bafflfes me that people still say this and for me this is just wrong. I get more fps and insane more details and features in ACC than in RR or let alone the 15sec loading times for a 25 car grid from a 5400rpm hdd.

I made as close as possible performance comparisons with included graphics settings when so many people complained about bad performance and said it runs bad on older hardware. I think my 1080 and Haswell i7 is old...

Started at the back of a 25 car grid and even used the same car and FoV:

And to say that the UE4 does not look good is just a bad joke to me sry...

Circuit Zolder Looks Just Like the Real Thing in Latest Assetto Corsa Competizione Preview

Assetto Corsa Competizione is set for its fifth major update release next week. With it comes a new car and track combination, as well as new features. Early Access players will soon be able to acquaint themselves with the Emil Frey Jaguar GT3 and Circuit Zolder. In fact, the Belgian circuit is t

www.gtplanet.net

And from my side thats all what i have to say to this topic. People can have a look with their own eyes...

 

[Andy Kettler]

And btw I´m not a fanboy of ACC. I´m not a fanboy of anything but love all Race games and Sims and i love RR and I´m happy to be 8 years beta tester next month and I´m all in to see RR in an up to date engine

 

[RasmusP]

With a 1080 at 1920x1080, basically any title will easily run fine on high settings. My 1070 could run anything already.
Try some more "modern" resolution, bad word but you know, if you'd buy a monitor right now, it would be 2560x1440.
And for racing you'd probably want some 3440x1440 ultra wide or 1080p triples.

Then the issues really start when you turn things down on acc. Things will pop in, flicker, shimmer, look weird, float without ao or shadows and stuff like that.

Then you have 25% car lod, 60m mirror view distance and seem to be okay with about 60 fps while racing.
Not really in the same boat as the vocal people here at RD.

I don't know why your fps are that low in raceroom though. Not really into that sim currently. Might be the 32 contact shadows and the complex motion blur that cause too much cpu load.

Sadly we can't see your graphics card load in your videos to see if the gtx 1080 is working at the limit or if it's the cpu that limits your fps (if the graphics card isn't at 99% load, it's the cpu).

Overall comparing 40-60 fps vs 60-70 fps isn't really a great argument in our simracing specialized forum, where many people either use vr headsets at 90 hz/fps and need that "magic fps number" to not get motion sick or very annoyed or have triples or an ultra wide at 100+ fps.

I'm not one of these acc bashers. The overall look vs performance has a sweetspot, that's good, but it's not fitting for everyone and when you go out of it (lower settings, high fps etc), then things become messy and frustrating.

I for example can run AC at fully stable 90 fps whatever you throw at it thanks to the custom shaders patch custom font rendering. The default game didn't allow to run the hud overlay apps I'd like to. Cpu wise.
Also the msaa from ac isn't smooth enough my me but the TAA from custom shaders patch is amazing!

Then acc... Getting it to run at stable 90 fps is basically impossible without an overclocked Intel 8th gen cpu or newer together with at least 3200 cl14 ram.
Or a Ryzen 5xxx cpu.
That's why the VR crowd is frustrated as a given.

Then triples are causing too high cpu load too and also you have to turn down settings if you don't have a 2080ti or 3070 or better.


But if you are happy with 70+ fps and only use 1080p or 1440p 16:9 single screen, then it looks really nice and runs well.




One thing that I absolutely love about acc though: you can set the graphics settings while on track and the fps stay very very much the same no matter if it's dry or wet or day or night or whatever mixed weather you throw at it.
So once set up, it's good!

With rf2, my gpu load fluctuates from 20% alone in the dry sunlight to 100% when I go through a shadowed, dark passage with 6 cars close to me.

One thing to always remember when having a discussion with people about games with fast moving geometry while needing accurate looks at far distance:

Youtube compression, standing still Screenshots etc don't show the live experience of people.
You won't see Pixel crawling, shimmering, the little pop-ins and stuff like that.

AC and AMS are just extremely good at giving you a nice looking, calm and sharp image quality while going fast!

 

[StefanoCasillo]

Then acc... Getting it to run at stable 90 fps is basically impossible without an overclocked Intel 8th gen cpu or newer together with at least 3200 cl14 ram.
Or a Ryzen 5xxx cpu.
That's why the VR crowd is frustrated as a given.

my feeling is that these engines are really designed to offer awesome visuals with pretty stable FPS in the 30-60 range and not really to go with insane high FPS numbers like home made engines.
Even with almost empty scenes their FPS is never stellar....but as load increase they handle it much better than most custom engines I've seen.. it's really where they shine.

 

[Sascha Reynders]

Then acc... Getting it to run at stable 90 fps is basically impossible without an overclocked Intel 8th gen cpu or newer together with at least 3200 cl14 ram.
Or a Ryzen 5xxx cpu.
That's why the VR crowd is frustrated as a given.

Maybe that frustration stems from the fact that so many seem to be hung up on hitting that "magic 90fps" number, yet very few seem to be willing to accept the sacrifices that are needed in order to do so ?
I don't think I can run any sim on my PC at constant 90fps on graphics settings that are satisfactory/pleasing to my eyes and with large enough grids that give me the feeling that I'm actually in a real race.

That's why I decided long ago to run my Odyssey + at 60hz, and that allows me to crank up the eye candy a lot and still achieve good performance.

I run ACC on a mix of high to epic settings (except mirror quality/res at mid but at 60fps, foliage low, volumetric fog off), with car lod at 100%, 100 metres mirror view distance, all AI visible, 200% pixel density, in-game sharpening plus ReShade sharpening, etc etc... And I get rock solid 60fps with a 30 car grid, in medium rain at night, no floating cars or other disturbing visual anomalies whatsoever. It can drop to mid 50's at the start of a night race in heavy rain or storm, but who races in those conditions for fun anyways

I'm having a hard time calling that "unoptimized" or "messy" or "bad performance", ACC definitely runs better in VR than R3E or rF2 for instance, and it looks the part too.
Yes, there is some shimmering and some pop-ins here and there, but do I really notice that when racing 29 other cars at 250+ kph ? Nope, I don't: the sheer joy of the experience prevails !

Now I know not all headsets offer the 60hz option and some people seem to need 90fps to avoid motion sickness (although I sometimes wonder if we'd be having that discussion had none of the manufacturers ever brought up the 90fps baseline in the first place ?), so my approach is probably not a solution for everyone.

And yes, ACC takes a pretty beefy system to run it in all it's glory. But hey: you don't take a Fiat Panda out on the Autobahn and then start complaining that the road doesn't roll underneath your wheels at 200kph, do you ? And in no way do I mean offense to anyone with this last remark. We all have to do with the systems we can afford, and we all have to accept their capabilities as well as their limitations in running certain pieces of software. Or accept that we need to spend more to get more.

Just my 2c.

 

[RasmusP]

I'm having a hard time calling that "unoptimized" or "messy" or "bad performance", ACC

Yep, me too. Sure, we can discuss the visuals vs performance package that ACC offers but imo it's running very well for all the details it offers and I really like the constant fps in changing conditions!

I would only say that the lower settings don't really look that great and that the TAA is not smoothing things out enough plus the ghosting is a bit "urghs".
(KTAA + bumping up the resolution scale works well though!)
But if you have a good system and don't need the magic 90 fps, then it's a well made game!

When you bring ACC to the same performance of AC, AC will look better in my opinion.
And I think that's where a lot of the negativity stems from.

My only issue with the visuals of ACC:
The BLACK raindrops! Yes, water is transparent and if something dark reflects in the water, it will look dark too. But for me, the rain really looks like it would rain dirt

And a real photo:

 

[PurgerUK]

It bafflfes me that people still say this and for me this is just wrong. I get more fps and insane more details and features in ACC than in RR or let alone the 15sec loading times for a 25 car grid from a 5400rpm hdd.

I made as close as possible performance comparisons with included graphics settings when so many people complained about bad performance and said it runs bad on older hardware. I think my 1080 and Haswell i7 is old...

Started at the back of a 25 car grid and even used the same car and FoV:

And to say that the UE4 does not look good is just a bad joke to me sry...

Circuit Zolder Looks Just Like the Real Thing in Latest Assetto Corsa Competizione Preview

Assetto Corsa Competizione is set for its fifth major update release next week. With it comes a new car and track combination, as well as new features. Early Access players will soon be able to acquaint themselves with the Emil Frey Jaguar GT3 and Circuit Zolder. In fact, the Belgian circuit is t

www.gtplanet.net

View attachment 481508

And from my side thats all what i have to say to this topic. People can have a look with their own eyes...

If only I could get it to look remotely like that in VR then I would be racing it much more. Certainly hoping they can modernise R3E but the risk is if it is with Unreal then VR could suffer but certainly not many options and I’m not aware of any racing games in Unity which always seems to me to be the budget engine.

 

[Sascha Reynders]

I would only say that the lower settings don't really look that great and that the TAA is not smoothing things out enough plus the ghosting is a bit "urghs".
(KTAA + bumping up the resolution scale works well though!)
But if you have a good system and don't need the magic 90 fps, then it's a well made game!

I agree that on lower settings ACC (UE4 ?) doesn't look all that great in VR. I changed my screen resolution recently, causing the game to revert to one of the default VR settings, and I was like...WTF ? But I'd like to refer to my Fiat Panda analogy again here.
I run at 70% resolution scale with anywhere between 150 and 300% in-game sharpening and 200% pixel density. And it's the pixel density that makes all the difference to me.

When you bring ACC to the same performance of AC, AC will look better in my opinion.
And I think that's where a lot of the negativity stems from.

In some ways it does, especially with CSP and SOL, but I've just never been a big fan of AC as a "serious" sim: it tries to simulate too many cars at the same time, and doesn't really succeed convincingly at any of them. At least to me it doesn't, AC just doesn't feel "right", just my personal opinion.
ACC is "only" GT3 and GT4 but what it does, it does so well. Just like GTR2 did at the time.
I think lots of the negativity towards ACC comes from people wanting quantity, me: I'll take quality any day of the week.
And then there's the "moddability" debate, but to me only 25% of all AC mods out there are really worth it, even though I respect and appreciate the time and work all modders (not rippers) put into the sim, more often than not for free. Again, quality over quantity, it's a personal preference.

My only issue with the visuals of ACC:
The BLACK raindrops! Yes, water is transparent and if something dark reflects in the water, it will look dark too. But for me, the rain really looks like it would rain dirt

I never payed much attention to this, but now I bet I can't ever un-see it next time I'm racing in the rain

 

[Deleted member 197115]

but to me only 25% of all AC mods out there are really worth it

That's way too generous.

 

[RasmusP]

Nice post!

I run at 70% resolution scale with anywhere between 150 and 300% in-game sharpening and 200% pixel density. And it's the pixel density that makes all the difference to me.

Sadly that's not possible for my pancake mode I guess? I mean there's DSR for nvidia users but it probably doesn't have the same, improving effect. Mostly I don't use DSR since it's just tanking performance without really stopping pixel crawling or blurriness...

I never payed much attention to this, but now I bet I can't ever un-see it next time I'm racing in the rain

Sorry

 

[Deleted member 197115]

Wow, ACC support thread in the most unexpected place.
For pancake I am using TAA at 100% resolution (make sure TAAU is disabled) and these vars in engine.ini really help with ghosting
[ConsoleVariables]
r.PostProcessAAQuality=6
r.TemporalAACurrentFrameWeight=0.2

 

[Sascha Reynders]

Wow, ACC support thread in the most unexpected place.

Ain't life sweet