Race Remaster

[Incredible Hulk]

But still not there
I see you are testing shaders mostly with STCC tracks which are already saturated and Reloaded shaders work good for them (when hd skies work).

But as we are in WTCC 2006 I will start with Curitiba.
And who knows Curitiba better than Reiza, so I will use Copa Petrobras de Marcas latitude and north dir gdb values with same race Start Time.

Copa-Petrobras-de-Marcas-Curitiba, 15:30 shadow-direction and lenght

 

[Incredible Hulk]

From my GTR2:
Latitude = -11.25
NorthDir = 270 // or 90 if your track skybox is backwards (that meaning: if the Sun rises, or sets, at the opposite side of your track "sun" sky. Like on "Yas Marina 2011".
RaceDate = 0

Latitude = If you use 0 is default. But it is so center (at NorthDir = 270 / RaceDate = 0) that produces an error (dissapering) at 12:00 (perfect noon) on some shadows. And look ugly and unrealistic. A negative value is my best for create a diferentiation between morning and afternoon.

NorthDir = This is garbaje. No wonder why factory default was 270. It only moves the sun image but not the sun light nor the shadows or the skydome .. is a mess. It does nothing but damege in every possible combination.

RaceDate = This **** tries to diferentiates summer and winter stuff. At default of the "other values" the default date for this (meaning maximum sun intensity) are actually 2. March 30 and Septemeber 30. But as soon as you change latitude or recedate this **** missalingn everything again as far as I remember.

Conclusion: The geolocation system is a P.O.S. And it doesnt resemble reality or anithing like it.

Really interesting findings and as the more I grasp into gdb values and track settings the more I see how broken things are.
But for reference.

Race07-Curitiba-Default-gdb- original-gdb-and-sky 15:30
Latitude 0, NortDir 30. Shadows are lot shorter on cars, unlike Reiza Marcas.

Race07-Curitiba -NEW-gdb-and-HDsky srpl shaders 15:30
Latitude -25, NortDir 0. Shadows are longer but on wrong direction.

Race07-Curitiba -NEW-gdb Reloaded shaders 15:30
Latitude -25, NortDir 0. HD sky doesn't work. Some details better but overall washed out look

 

[Incredible Hulk]

Race07-Curitiba-Default-gdb- original-gdb-and-sky 15:30
Latitude 0, NortDir 30. Shadows are lot shorter on cars, unlike Reiza Marcas.

Race07-Curitiba-NEW-gdb-and-HDsky srpl shaders 15:30
Latitude -25, NortDir 0. Shadows are longer but on wrong direction.

Race07-Curitiba -NEW-gdb Reloaded shaders 15:30
Latitude -25, NortDir 0. HD sky doesn't work. Some details better but overall washed out look

 

[AndreasFSC]

The reason for what you "call washed out" color is if sun (or directional light) direction is very low, the shader "thinks" that it is evening, and evening light tints the world in its color. This time, since it isn't really evening, the cars gets tinted white (as day light). So it is only a matter of tweaking of the function, to introduce it later and more gradual. But if sun really is this low (do they race in their winter?) it should maybe be more yellow?
The longer sun lights travel through air, the more blue light from sun gets reflected away towards the sky.

If we had unlimited space for code I could build this into the shaders, but now it can only be included in some of them, and that would be really bad for consistency...

 

[holacrosty]

But for reference.

I give my geo "ISI Simbin" values and some reasons not because I dont know what Im talking about.
here is more if you need:

https://www.racedepartment.com/threads/missalignment-did-you-notice.199176/

The longer sun lights travel through air, the more blue

Exactly, but yes, it needs more sun color. I know very well transitions becouse of GTR2 24hs cycle. And is like the "noon DAY transitions" (in and out) have a "white" color and a very low intensity also. Not real.

I can help you with all this and the colors and the angles and the "time" (I know what it needs) but there is no point for me if I cannot use your shaders wich are already way better than SRPL.
I remember once, I ask Bjarne (he was helping me somewhat) if we might have been working with the wrong SIM.

Now I see were this is going. And in the end, even I know that we are going to need access to the *.EXE and been able to modify it.

So that makes me think about GSCEx as a still DX9 platform for Andreas shaders.
Does GSCEx or GTR1 support 24hs cycle?

 

[AndreasFSC]

I wonder if it is possible to make something like an excel spreadsheet that helps calculating what the game doesn't? I will study your linked findings more and make some tests.

I also will continue the work on the shaders obviously to eliminate as many errors as possible, but it is quite difficult, and I am still a shader novice
I don't know what is really possible in the end, but we will continue the work, and if it is also useful for GTR2, it is a good thing.

 

[Incredible Hulk]

Andreas work can go into all isimotor2 games and AMS1 is obviously the ultimate there as a moddable platform.
But on the other hand not one is perfect. Rain racing, wipers, fully animated drivers, sane AI, UI and many little "game" polished things in Race 07 are "quantum physics" for Automobilista 1, no matter how much I like it.
I have time for only short burst races up to max 10 laps so all those weather transitions are not for me.

 

[AndreasFSC]

Received Curitiba tracks, and just started to update materials, mainly transparency.
By setting as many materials to simple transparency as possible, the annoying car windows bug is much better. The buildings glass windows look very plain here, so I'll see if some material swapping can help.

 

[AndreasFSC]

Transparent windows and updated glass normals. Simple fix, but looks better.

 

[holacrosty]

About transparencies. I remeber I try reshade on gtr2 and a pack with a shader that show just the normals and I could see that the Z ones were backwards. (like upside down) and with diferent types of camera views the things were lot weird but IDK what I was seeing.

Then I read about the transparency fix for trees for AC been the same for rfactor1 and so on. Wich is making them "double" one as "simple" and other as "multiple" (alpha blending and alpha chroma?) both in same place (or almost).
Just info.

 

[AndreasFSC]

That is actually simple but clever. The problem with transparency (as I am sure you know but could be interesting info for everyone) is that as soon as there is multiple transparency z-buffer or testing can't be used, as it only shows the pixle that is the closest to the camera. Instead the object that are the closest to the camera gets drawn last on top of things behind. It should work as long as there are only one layer of transparent materials, but often there are more than that, and often the result is bad. One way tonsolve this is to split big objects to many smaller ones for more precise sorting. I had an idea to try to make the alpha = 1 pixels behave like simple transparency materials, but I think that is not possible. So the fix you tell about has to be the best option

 

[holacrosty]

this is "my" tree shader failing on these trees on AC lemans version (the grip is amazing on laser tracks)

this is just nice on googlesx version with my texture redone as a newbie at 16:00

at 18:00 (no more shadow. Although it could be unnecesary added, because the moon keeps shining as a new sun. Wich is clever way to mimic the effect of sky color lighting at sunset. But should only be the color, and no more shadow)

 

[AndreasFSC]

Race07-Curitiba-Default-gdb- original-gdb-and-sky 15:30
Latitude 0, NortDir 30. Shadows are lot shorter on cars, unlike Reiza Marcas.
View attachment 517990

Race07-Curitiba-NEW-gdb-and-HDsky srpl shaders 15:30
Latitude -25, NortDir 0. Shadows are longer but on wrong direction.
View attachment 517991

Race07-Curitiba -NEW-gdb Reloaded shaders 15:30
Latitude -25, NortDir 0. HD sky doesn't work. Some details better but overall washed out look
View attachment 517992

I have seen that you use more ambient light than in the new shader recommended settings (a matter of taste since it is not possible to have real values in a 0 - 255 rgb range). The "clear coat" of the car paint in the shader reflects the ambient light too (in a simulated way, not for real obviously) so a higher ambient value makes it look more white.
Anyway I am not very concerned about that, the important thing right now is to make the shaders do what I want, but tweaking the best amount of the effects is done mainly when the programming part is finished.

 

[MJQT]

This is all looking amazing. Happy to do some testing once there's a stable enough product you'd like feedback.

Edit: Or even before that if you'd like! Just let me know haha.

 

[AndreasFSC]

Most shader work goes well. But there are a huge number of things that can go wrong on some tracks.
I have spent some days trying to make a second road shader work, and it has really been a pain.
These shaders rely on so many details that has to be right, or it will not start at all.
The main things left now are
- Fix vertex transparency (should be vertex shader input color alpha I think, but it doesn't work)
- Fix tree shader. It works as intended sometimes, but often too dark or way too bright. I think specular "overflows" even if there are limits set. should probably be much lower values??
I think I have to start over again with specular...
- Second bump road shader needs to work much better.
Bump can give some very strange specular effects, maybe because bumpmap is mapped in wrong direction when track turns?? The shader without bump is ok.
- Try to set the best looking balance of everything...

 

[Incredible Hulk]

I would like to hear some opinions on how important is historical accuracy and to have both Race 1 and Race 2 start at the same time - 15:30.
I know it's important but...

Curitiba 06 Race 2 - 17:30

 

[AndreasFSC]

Good question, I think I like it to be as realistic as possible, but no problem to move a race one hour or two if it works better. And it is nice to see a track at different time of day.

I had some issues with the skies, but it seems to work now after a combination of hexedit and 3dsimed. Just need to adjust sky brightness in shader to make it look better again.

 

[holacrosty]

-About trees, I did not now what I was doing but, in the SRPL_TREE_T0 I just change this lines on the "in game" shader I (but still use the original in 3dsimed):

float lightInFront = 0.8 - dot(lightVec.xz, normEyeVec.xz) * 0.4;
float lightThrough = pow(max(0.05, dot(lightVec.xyz, normEyeVec.xyz) * 0.8 + 0), 3.0);

lightThrough *= day;

tex.rgb = lerp(tex.rgb, float3(9, 8, 0) * tex.rgb, lightThrough); //subsurface scattering

-there is still an extra character on your specular.gfx at "ShaderName=L2SpecularT0xT1(here)" (now Im on XP, so I might be missing some fonts or something, and I now it needs to format the disk) It dissappears when I paste and its a square.

-ShaderName=L0NonDirectionalT0 says shaderlevel=2, should that be 0?

 

[AndreasFSC]

There might be some typos in my files, but generally shader names are not very important other than matching against mesh materials. There seems to be some rules for pixel shader names for Dx7 and 8, but not sure exactly how it works. So I reuse the ones that exists.
I think the special character after "L2SpecularT0xT1" was there before in my file, so haven't changed that as far as I know.
But I can remove it and see if it changes anything. I don't think that material is used much in game(?)

I use a quite similar way to calculate light for trees, I think the error is in the details.
Sometimes values gets too high, and it seems to be some kind of "mode" in directx or graphics card that disables that calculation. So at one special track some tree material have the sun effect, and some have it disabled. The most strange thing is that it can be different tree materials that works from time to time. Also remember in the beginning my road shader sometimes got the specular light inverted in some road objects, but not all (bright material with a dark reflection). So there are some very special and unwanted things that shaders can do if values gets out of range.

-Yes L0NonDirectional should be "0", not 2

 

[holacrosty]

waht about the new shaders failing because tracks and cars (gmt´s) have been come out from 3dsimed with the old ones?

what if that is the "limitation" thing and tha solution is to use (whatever shader needs it) as a custom one in "hardwareshaders" folder on 3dsimed.

But I understand that standard shaders still need to be updated.