Trying to add shadows in Racer

[dangar]

I'm trying to improve some tracks to make it more realistic.
The common miss thing in all of them are... shadows.

Without shadows the track seems plain and some kind of unreal.

I've started to investigate the Racer documentation, but, as usually, does not clarify so much.
Apparently, if you add som cast objects around your abject, you should get some kind of shadow effect.
You define your cast object in geometry.ini inside 'shadows', but if you open the track, nothing different happens.
Plus... if you open the track in tracked, when you save the track, the shadows{..} definitions for objects in geometry.ini simply dissapears... quite annoying.

Maybe using CGs?
I' noticed a neat shadow effect in Swiss-stroll track, creating a semitransparent object with the shadows on it...
How can I generate 'automatically' this object?

Kind regards!

 

[MitchVL]

Well actually, its not that big of a change (relatively) , we have a material system, a scenegraph, etc ... those things are a fundamental part of every renderer.
I can not put a timeframe on it since i have no experience with deferred renderers.

The current renderer can handle a lot more than most people think it can.
Racer has all the potential to look great, but there is not much content for Racer that can really show it off. All content comes from a community of hobbyists working on content in their spare time, which is amazing if you look at the amount of work that goes into making one track or car,
but its hard to compete with other games that have a gigantic army of professional content-developpers working months on one little car.

 

[Some1]

The current renderer can handle a lot more than most people think it can.
Racer has all the potential to look great, but there is not much content for Racer that can really show it off. All content comes from a community of hobbyists working on content in their spare time, which is amazing if you look at the amount of work that goes into making one track or car,
but its hard to compete with other games that have a gigantic army of professional content-developpers working months on one little car.

IMHO, the main reason there isn't much nice content is that Racer is currently too fragile - things can change a lot very fast, which means content becomes outdated pretty quick.

First, we need current features in Racer finished and the more critical bugs sorted out and a new Racer FINAL released, then the community can start making content.

 

[MitchVL]

IMHO, the main reason there isn't much nice content is that Racer is currently too fragile - things can change a lot very fast, which means content becomes outdated pretty quick.

First, we need current features in Racer finished and the more critical bugs sorted out and a new Racer FINAL released, then the community can start making content.

My perception of highend content is a track with detailed textures and lots of models.
Those basics have a large impact on overall visual quality.
Texturing is, in my opinion, the most important step in building realistic models, people tend to neglect that.
Animations, collision models etc are fun but im sure you can model a mindblowing track without it.


Indeed, Racer needs a good solid release, that will help ALOT.

 

[Tiberius]

Hmm, I think I could have worded my last post better.

My point is that once everything gets sorted out, we're in the situation now where the last 18 months or so of changes to the gfx system are finally coming together, if everything could be tweaked and made to tie in nicely, it would look a lot better than many people realize.

Probably most of us feel that a new 'final' version would be great, I really wouldn't want to see the end of regular beta versions (even if they do have bugs and Ruud probably gets sick of people moaning :smile, it's nice to see things being developed and getting an idea of new features as they're added in - BUT, it would be great to have a stable benchmark version, at least something which we'd all work towards getting stuff compatible for, at least for the next year or two. Most people agree that the 050f days and just after were the best, looking back you can see why - things were more stable then.

I'm only one person but I'd love to see anything new tried, even in beta. Deferred rendering sounds great from the small amount I understand about it, but it's up to you guys over there to decide whether it's viable or not.

About models, I agree there too. There are some nice user created tracks around - BUT (and this isn't holding anything against the people who create content, a lot of basic tracks are still fun to drive), there's only a small handful which could compete with good content from a high end game on a graphical level.

I still feel that Racer with nice user created content looks better than most budget games, but, like you say, it takes a lot to get content which looks anywhere near commercial grade, most of us are willing but just don't have the amount of skill, time or even the software to create high end looking content. We also don't have the might of a large software company, somebody like EA could license a car and get pretty all the data they need straight from the manufacturer - we just can't do that :frown:

Another long post and even further off topic now :smile:

 

[camsinny]

Ah, yeah forgot about transparency issues. Well if you have ideas to get tunnels looking nice with the forward renderer then I reckon go with it. DR really isn't the way forward anyway, so I guess it's better we keep the future in mind.