Unreal Engine 5 – What Could It Mean For Simracing?

[stickdeath1980]

Assetto Corsa Competizione, KartKraft, MotoGP20

Love MotoGp20

 

[odiopower]

it means "you gonna need a better graphic cards"

 

[stealsomefish]

The spec on the NVIDIA Ampere is looking like a big step up when it comes to ray tracing. I'm sure we've all seen how amazing RTX Minecraft or Quake looks. Ray traced (RT) shaders for Minecraft was done by a small team of modders, not Microsoft or Nvidia so to add native RT support hasn't proven too difficult. Nvidia is doing a series of RT reboots of classic games adding RT shaders
The new cards seem to allow us to run RT games with everything on, a little like Control was the first RTX game to use global illuminations, global shadows and reflections, Battlefield 5 only had reflections.
Adding RT global illumination changes everthing, as as sim racers we need raw GPU horsepower and I'm sure a lot of us may invest 400-800 on our next card. AMD also has RT abilities in their next cards and after the 4K push on last gen consoles, I'm sure we will see Sony and Microsoft push RT along with Nvidia and AMD.

So, I expect we will be awash with reboots of older games looking amazing, after all the HD remakes we will have the RT remakes and I can't wait. If you haven't seen what happens to minecraft check Youtube.

RT in simracing? ACC has RTX shadows but we all know how that runs. I do believe this next Gen of cards can deliver what the RTX 2000 series failed on, and DLSS 2.0 is looking very impressive. I can't wait, the next revolution in CG is here.

RTX rFactor 2 please 397

 

[A man with a Harmonica]

And soft houses can deal with all this technology but can't code the AI driver to pit when they need or, even worse, code AI cars to pit for change tyres and pit next lap again to swap driver.

Not pointing fingers

 

[RichardHessels]

Note really, that UE5 demo was running off of PS5 hardware.
But its still misleading because you would need multiple GB's of data pumped through the bus. Far more than PCI E 5.0 (limited to 63 gigs back and forth).

PCI E 6 coming out in 2021 has 128gb back and forth.
NO way your are pumping billions and billions of triangles with a 64gb lane. So the new consoles must have an incredibly fast bus, and you have to have SSD chips that will fill it.

So on the PC side? its gonna be a while.

For games the PCI-E bus bandwith has never been a problem, as most textures are stored locally on the videocard anyway.
WIth UE engine you can even store 3D models in there.
Consoles have unified memory so the graphics and textures are stored in the same place as where the need to be loaded from.
Memory bandwith on modern GPU's or future consoles is far greater than PCI-whatever will be.

 

[2stains]

I don't understand the "it's not all about graphics" argument! Of course it's not but visuals play a massive roll in our hobby, sim racing is trying to simulate something real that our eyes can look at, the real world and it looks fantastic with my 3D 16k (or whatever 2020 vision is) vision and if I have to look at something that looks worse than real, well then I get pulled out of immersion, the closer to reality it looks the more my big brain can immerse me
Bring on UE5 sim racing

 

[MarcG]

Euro Truck Sim 3 in UE5 that would be immense!

 

[Damage Inc]

No authored LODs doesn't mean there's no LODs. They're just autogenerated by the engine from the high detail models. It would be a crazy waste of performance and memory to not scale down detail with distance.

But you're right about the popup, I misremembered it. There's "popup", but it's related to ligthing/reflections, not detail.

That's the point, it saves a bucket load of dev time (THE most precious resource in making a quality game) because the engine creates the LODs automatically.

Not so good for modellers, but money saved in that department should be plowed into physics hopefully (and not into just more and more vehicles!)

 

[Damage Inc]

Euro Truck Sim 3 in UE5 that would be immense!

God YES, the pop up and draw distance in ETS2 and ATS are quite bad at times.

 

[Vitor Ferreira]

A maior coisa para simracing eu acho que poderia ser a iluminação ou a capacidade de importar diretamente modelos CAD para o motor.

O primeiro poderia significar iluminação muito realista para condições de corrida noturna sem realmente ter que obter hardware super high-end, o último poderia significar que os devs poderiam apenas pedir às empresas para os modelos CAD e bater aqueles diretamente no jogo, cortando muito o tempo necessário para fazer os carros.

O motor permite que plugins sejam desenvolvidos, não há impedimento para alguém fazer um plugin para converter arquivos CAD com suas propriedades para o Motor. pode haver um plugin que faz isso.
Mas concordo que seria maravilhoso se fosse nativo da Engine.

 

[Neils on Wheels]

I didn't read all of the pages but seems people are somewhat typically negative.

This technology won't just be seen in UE5 but in other engines too, it will allow fast hard drives with super high bandwidths to be used like ram & stream huge amounts of data to create far more complex polygons. It doesn't mean that everything will run at 5FPS as the way a PC uses hardware will change. You might moan about having to upgrade your aging PC but this has happened before with 3d graphics card acceleration in the 90s. It may take another 5-10 years but i think it's inevitable that we see it with racing sims. We are already seeing it FS2020 although they are using a different approach by streaming online & then into memory but its a similar idea.
Lumens seems interesting as its like ray tracing but doesn't need the hardware.

 

[Leonardo Chaves]

RT in simracing? ACC has RTX shadows but we all know how that runs. I do believe this next Gen of cards can deliver what the RTX 2000 series failed on, and DLSS 2.0 is looking very impressive. I can't wait, the next revolution in CG is here.

It has? I'm sure they said RTX features were scrapped.
To me ACC looks next gen enough and so do games running Madness.
Heck modded AC is pretty stelar.

This lumen thing could be pretty game changing for other genres though.

 

[stealsomefish]

It has? I'm sure they said RTX features were scrapped.
To me ACC looks next gen enough and so do games running Madness.
Heck modded AC is pretty stelar.

This lumen thing could be pretty game changing for other genres though.

I've not checked, it may have been removed as it really had no value except for destroying frame rates.

Lumen looks good too but it seems the Nanite virtualized micropolygon geometry is the reason everyone is getting excited.

 

[turbo86]

I don't understand the "it's not all about graphics" argument! Of course it's not but visuals play a massive roll in our hobby, sim racing is trying to simulate something real that our eyes can look at, the real world and it looks fantastic with my 3D 16k (or whatever 2020 vision is) vision and if I have to look at something that looks worse than real, well then I get pulled out of immersion, the closer to reality it looks the more my big brain can immerse me
Bring on UE5 sim racing

I agree to SOME extent....but pretty graphics don't improve immersion as much as SCALE does. Ever been in one of those military simulators? Man i'm telling you....things don't look very pretty in there...but your brain doesn't give a F%#@. It will make your heart beat faster.
Could it be more immersive with awesome eyecandy? Maybe yes...maybe no because all the "features" and post process effects and lighting effects they use are mostly unrealistic. Their goal is to create an impressive, sharp and pretty picture, not a realistic one.
Overdone graphics ruin immersion for me. I tend to dumb down the settings in older to make games (especially the modern ones) look a bit closer to what i'm seeing in real life.

 

[2stains]

I agree to SOME extent....but pretty graphics don't improve immersion as much as SCALE does. Ever been in one of those military simulators? Man i'm telling you....things don't look very pretty in there...but your brain doesn't give a F%#@. It will make your heart beat faster.
Could it be more immersive with awesome eyecandy? Maybe yes...maybe no because all the "features" and post process effects and lighting effects they use are mostly unrealistic. Their goal is to create an impressive, sharp and pretty picture, not a realistic one.
Overdone graphics ruin immersion for me. I tend to dumb down the settings in older to make games (especially the modern ones) look a bit closer to what i'm seeing in real life.

I agree that it doesn't need to have the most PP or effects but it certainly needs to look like real life , i don't want lens flare or depth of field but i really want real like textures and zero aliasing , smooth soft shadows and clear reflections just like i see when i look out my windscreen ! I also don't want a car with 12 triangles so it needs to immerse me by looking as real as life itself or as close to as possible !

 

[sparkyplug28]

I don't understand the "it's not all about graphics" argument! Of course it's not but visuals play a massive roll in our hobby, sim racing is trying to simulate something real that our eyes can look at, the real world and it looks fantastic with my 3D 16k (or whatever 2020 vision is) vision and if I have to look at something that looks worse than real, well then I get pulled out of immersion, the closer to reality it looks the more my big brain can immerse me
Bring on UE5 sim racing

Agree totally anyone that says visuals are not important to them is lying else we would all still be player rfactor1 after all gameplay and physics wise it was great.

People just get upset they can't afford the gear to run it I guess but just stay at work a bit later or something

 

[turbo86]

I agree that it doesn't need to have the most PP or effects but it certainly needs to look like real life , i don't want lens flare or depth of field but i really want real like textures and zero aliasing , smooth soft shadows and clear reflections just like i see when i look out my windscreen ! I also don't want a car with 12 triangles so it needs to immerse me by looking as real as life itself or as close to as possible !

Well, if your priorities are textures and aliasing and shadows and reflections...then i'd say you're not focusing on the racing itself but you're "playing" simply to enjoy the pretty graphics. It's ok there's no problem with that. Each "player" has different priorities and gets a different kick out of games. I tend to focus on the scale, physics, AI, FFB etc. That's what provides maximum immersion. Eyecandy is jut the icing.

 

[turbo86]

Agree totally anyone that says visuals are not important to them is lying else we would all still be player rfactor1 after all gameplay and physics wise it was great.

People just get upset they can't afford the gear to run it I guess but just stay at work a bit later or something

1) Some people still play RF1. Just as some people still play RBR, Race07 and GTR games.
2) There's no jealousy involved when someone says that when it comes to SIMRACING , graphics are secondary. It's simply a fact.
3) Most simracers do have good computers because they play all of them. I haven't met a single simracer who hasn't played ACC because his computer is a potato and can't run it. They simply buy a new computer to be able to play graphically demanding simulators. Just as a virtual pilot would have a really good computer in order to run XP11 and DCS World.

 

[Case_]

Well, if your priorities are textures and aliasing and shadows and reflections...then i'd say you're not focusing on the racing itself but you're "playing" simply to enjoy the pretty graphics.

This fallacy will never die

 

[Sergio Loro]

hope it brings the oportunity to use real 3d trees, good looking one