[suggestion] 3d Grass Color Shade Variety?

[nothke]

I hope this is a good place to reach Kunos, cause well first I have to say that stuff they showed us so far is just amazing! All kudos to Kunos =) Except well, with all the high quality gorgeous models and textures, one thing really pierces my eyes is how the 3d grass looks. Not much to the grass texture itself, but the lack of variety in shading..

Even if you CAN see the difference in color on the screenshots like those yellowish/brownish spots.. The problem is that they are too uniform.

In reality, no grass blade has the same "brightness" or "hue" cause it all depends on different factors such as: time in shadow, soil nutrition and water, air humidity, pressure (if it's being walked or driven over), and few more.. What it looks on the screenshots you showed us is that all blades are the same, and it looks very repeatable, bland, unrealistic and artificial, you name it..

And brightness changes also come in "clumps" so to say, not uniform random "dots", but in a more (lets use the stupid word, but you know what I mean) "organic" way.

In some my tracks I tried to pay attention to this and make same texture with different brightness and WOW.. It just sets realism to a higher league!

I don't use grass everywhere like you, but just just on some pieces where it's thicker, but since you are using it everywhere this would help greatly! And of course, I had to hand plant the objects to create realistic/logical visible clumps, not just scatter uniformly. But I guess if I had better programming skills it could've been done through scripts too.

In this one I actually made the same grass texture but repeated it on a bigger texture with I think 10 versions of variety in brightness and color,(not very good performance wise), but generally it could be done (much easier) with other methods such as vertex painting or add/multi layers on top

I hope you'll see this and well this could serve as a tutorial for others too =)

PS. Kunos: what happened to that teamspeak you promised? Am I missing it somewhere or is it not there yet?

 

[Michael Hornbuckle]

I don't want to be a troll, but I gotta admit that the nitpicking about the grass is starting to irritate me. If graphics are the number one thing a person is looking for, seems to me pcars should be right on for them.

The new shader looks nice even though I thought the grass looked fine before; its just not something I look for or even notice. When I play the Power and Glory mod I am so caught up in the driving experience that I simply don't notice what the trees actually look like and how tall the driver in another car is. I'm not mad that Kunos spent an hour on a Sunday to make a new shader (it actually blows me away how they listen and react to community wishes)

I guess my point is "stop talking about the stupid grass and let them finish the game!"

 

[Dinca Andrei]

Deja-vu....looks like the frustration keeps growing.
This thread its about grass...you know,to actualy talk about grass.
Its possible that this subject its closed now since Kunos already transformed community feedback in to action.
To think that we delay Kunos team to finish the game.......its just not right...

 

[Lee Knight]

The new shader looks nice even though I thought the grass looked fine before; its just not something I look for or even notice. When I play the Power and Glory mod I am so caught up in the driving experience that I simply don't notice what the trees actually look like and how tall the driver in another car is.

I can understand those sentiments with purpose built tracks that have a few meters at best of grass between track & some kind of barrier...
But I prefer open roads & some of which have nothing but grass & the occassional tree for miles & in those situations it really does make a difference!

I'm not mad that Kunos spent an hour on a Sunday to make a new shader (it actually blows me away how they listen and react to community wishes)

Same here about how Kunos is not just reacting with the community but also interacting & giving us feedback on some questions & most threads...
In fact they deserve a bloody big thumbs up & it makes me wonder if we're not better of with small developer teams than large well funded companies who ignore the community which are the ones that pay their wages....
Well done Kunos
It's this alone that has had me go from maybe purchase to definitely!

 

[nothke]

"Troll" was, I admit, not the right word to use. I meant something more like "an ordinary supporter". That group includes me, of course, if, perhaps, it was something else we talked about =) Grass is (lets say) 0.02% of the development of AC. You may think physics gets neglected because the grass (just this post, to be precise) gets much more publicity. And it certainly minimally affects the development time. I guess that there are other technical problems which are harder to discuss about in a straightforward way, but which take much more time (it usually is like that in big projects).

Showing that Kunos cares, thinks through, and implements a suggestion in such a short time is much more important than what the subject exactly is about.

So lets leave grass for now, but still if some ideas pop up to me, I will surely share it with you.

 

[Travis]

Many sim racing developers could learn a thing or two from the likes of Kunos and Reiza - they sure know the value of keeping their fans informed and react to reasonable requests with speed akin to lightning.

Grass looks briilliant, just like the rest of the game revealed thus far.

 

[BanjoMaster]

Showing that Kunos cares, thinks through, and implements a suggestion in such a short time is much more important than what the subject exactly is about.

All three posts above but ^ this in particular is why the grass thing is so important, beyond the fact that it looks excellent and (in my opinion) really adds something tangible to the environment. Real interaction with your followers & customers, exchanging ideas, communicating, feedback, and so on. It's priceless, and one of the reasons I think that AC will be a massive success for Kunos and us - they're already building a very loyal fan base with their attitudes before the game is even out!

Where the grass will really make a spectacular difference and show it's worth is when someone (Kunos/whoever) does the Nordschleife - that place will look alive like never before I reckon

 

[BanjoMaster]

To resurrect this thread and take it off on a bit of a (related) tangent, but would it be possible to include 'seasons' into shaders like this? Around about this time of year you see a lot of pre-season testing vids from Monza in particular, and there's a very definite vibe from the place that differs to the height of summer. I thought it would be cool if as well as having time of day in the game you could have time of year as well? You'd get different sun curve, different ambient and track temps, increased chance of rain in a session (I think modelling snow would be a bit over-the-top, just before it gets mentioned), and the growth and colouring of the trackside vegetation would be different. If the feature existed, you really could run a full championship season in game.

Just a thought. Bored out of my tiny mind at work, so my thoughts tend to wander to matters and ideas such as this...

 

[Dinca Andrei]

The game will look amaizing if it has this features but there are some questions like,is it possible in the game engine,how many resources will take to achive this and will there be an impact on game performance....

 

[BanjoMaster]

I wouldn't expect it to use much resources, because you'd only be changing things that are in the engine already? The sun already moves in the sky. It would just be a case of changing it's arc. Not sure how you'd change the vegetation colouring, but maybe you could add a filter of some sort to the textures/materials? Just an idea anyway

 

[mapu13]

making a version of the tracks for each season would be the easiest way

 

[r@m]

Detail, detail, detail, it's all about the detail, brings the track to life, cool effect, great improvement.
...I cannot wait to play with this stuff