Track detail blurred - advice to fix

[Assiduous]

Hello fellow AC enthusiasts!

I'm hoping for some advice about optimising my AC graphics details. I am trying to address noticeable bluring of the track texture, like the LOD falls away too quickly - see in the screenshot there is more detail in the backdrop than the road just before the rise. 8->16x AF helps a bit, but its expensive and does not fully address the issue. The issue is rather pronounced on LA canyons and Black Cat County in the drivers seat perspective even with 16xAF. i'm after tips on whether there are other tricks to address this. It's like we need a way to tune at what distance the next LOD kicks in beyond a certain distance. Adjusting the MIP LOD bias setting in CSP is too heavy handed as it effects all distances, so you cause texture shimmering issues up close and it's also very hard on your frame rate.

thanks.

 

[ZaksonPL]

Thank You.
Got myself 1.66 with Sol 2.0.2 because:

Seems to be working as for now.

(Stripes are still there, just not that pronounced, as long as I have stable 60 fps without stuttering I will live with it).

Have a nice weekend!

 

[Rogério Morais]

@Assiduous It's definitely not just you, but from the numbers... It's reasonably rare!

This page gives some information on Anisotropic (texture) filtering

TweakGuides.com - Gamer's Graphics & Display Settings Guide

A central resource for PC optimization information.

tweakguides.bidecraft.com

Basically the screen image is built up from the pixels in the texture, using pixels from the Mips as the distance increases. (dependent on the angle)

You will need x16 AF, and Tril-linear to get crisp lines... The issue is obviously more prominent because of the centrelines, not present on a race track.

From your screenshot... It looks like your GPU is using x4 AF... or at the distance of the blur, is only using 1 or 2 Mips. At a rough guess, somewhere between those green lines is where Mip 1 or 2 is being used to build the image. so, to me, it looks like it's using some level of the Mips.
View attachment 414765
Just a few random ideas, do you have a global/program specific preset applied in your Graphics Card control panel... Forcing, for example a certain AF level? or High Performance, which may be using Bi-linear filtering, instead of Tri-linear (Basically as @Johnr777 said) over which AF is being applied?

Have you tried reseting your video settings in CM back to default? In case you've changed something somewhere, causing the issue, or making it more pronounced.
(Make a profile beforehand to keep your current settings to back track)

Probably a last resort option, as this will probably lose game settings / Skins / Apps / Mods etc...
Verify Integrity of Game Files in Steam - Replacing/repairing any files that Content Manager/CSP may have changed, or in case a file has gone corrupt and isn't getting used or used incorrectly.
I really doubt this will help things, but you never know, some real funky things can happen!

Other than this, I have no idea... Hope you figure out what it is!

Thanks a lot @Phoenix77

I did exacly what you suggest here, i went to my Nvidia control panel and changed the Anisotropic filter settings forcing it 16x, i´ve also changed the Texture Filtering -Quality setting to High Quality and it work for me, solving all track blurryness problems i had, including LA Canyons

 

[Assiduous]

Thanks @Phoenix77 and @Rogério Morais . I'm on an AMD R9 270 2GB, I forced high quality texture filtering but can't see any improvement (except for a reduction in FPS). I can detect no difference between forcing 16x AF via content manager or Radeon Settings. 16x AF does reduce & push the blurriness further away vs 8x, but as you can see below even with 16xAF the road lines degenerate into a blurred smudge not far past the start/finish line, and stop dead about where the other cars are visible. I would add Longford 67 and Transfargarasan 0.9.5.1 to the list of tracks that exhibit noticeable blurring. It's definitely not all tracks. I've looked closely at the road markings at Monza 67, Highlands, Fonteny, Feldberg, Deutschlandring and the difference is night and day to LAC and black cat county - something unique seems to be going on here - perhaps nvidia's drivers do a better job with the right settings and perhaps the stretching of textures across the 4 lanes exposes this. I wouldn't mind hearing from another AMD GPU user who compares my screenshot below with their experience.

@Playerone11 and @Overnight76 - any luck with the suggestion above?

 

[Assiduous]

Ok I get it. The road markings on the tracks that suffer blur are baked into the road textures. The tracks with what i'd describe as crisp road markings have implemented road markings as separate floating objects as described by Phoenix77 in an earlier post. Exhibit A below is Highlands @ 0xAF - notice the 'amazingly' crisp road markings

So, the only questions that remain is whether my texture quality & texture filtering is as good as it gets on AMD hardware and whether nvidia hardware is really able to a better job with LAC and Black Cat County. I have to admit i'm skeptical @Rogerio Mendes - want to show me what the same sections of Black Cat Canyon or LAC 4 lane road look like on your nvidia system? AMD Radeon fanboi's step forward with your best screenshots

 

[Please Stop This]

Ok I get it. The road markings on the tracks that suffer blur are baked into the road textures. The tracks with what i'd describe as crisp road markings have implemented road markings as separate floating objects as described by Phoenix77 in an earlier post. Exhibit A below is Highlands @ 0xAF - notice the 'amazingly' crisp road markings

View attachment 473162

So, the only questions that remain is whether my texture quality & texture filtering is as good as it gets on AMD hardware and whether nvidia hardware is really able to a better job with LAC and Black Cat County. I have to admit i'm skeptical @Rogerio Mendes - want to show me what the same sections of Black Cat Canyon or LAC 4 lane road look like on your nvidia system? AMD Radeon fanboi's step forward with your best screenshots

wth its not supposed to look like this, here one with amd rt480, movie ppfilter, csp

now without csp (did not care for time setting):

 

[Please Stop This]

 

[AccAkut]

looks like as if the Mipmaps are the wrong way around, on your screenshot @Assiduous . Did you try turning CSP off completly?

 

[Assiduous]

Hi AccAkut, yes i've disabled CSP, but the road texture blur remains. Negative MIP LOD bias clears up the blur but kills FPS and causes bad texture shimmer closer in, thus I don't get how the mips could be the wrong way around - see below MIP bias -0.25 vs -2 @ 8xAF on LAC.

 

[Assiduous]

Any guesses as to what might be the issue here? 1920x1080p, 4xAA, 8xAF. MIP LOD bias 0, CSP 0.1.68, Radeon driver version 21.3.1

Zoomed in you can see an odd pattern of artifacts.

 

[Assiduous]

OK - youtuber Boosted Media just posted footage of Pacific Coast v1.0 with the same blurring of centre lines i've described in this thread - they are running 4K triple screens fed by an RTX 3090. To my surprise they have indicated they are running 4x AF.

 

[Phoenix77]

OK - youtuber Boost Media just posted footage of Pacific Coast v1.0 with the same blurring of centre lines i've described in this thread - they are running 4K triple screens fed by an RTX 3090. To my surprise they have indicated they are running 4x AF.

Yeah will from Boosted Media, said he was using 4x AF. (they actually look damn sharp for 4x)
Nothing is baked into the road textures with PCH... They are completely separate 23kms worth of objects, with 16,384 x 1024 textures. No blurring on those lines, if there is... It's the game, or your not using x16!

EDIT: remember to overide the game settings to 16x AF in your GPU's control panel, more efficient than AC's AF!

 

[Assiduous]

Thanks Pheonix, i've tested and i'm seeing the same blurring as will's vid. 4x AF brings it a bit closer, 16x pushes it away but it's definitely there. I've got independent confirmation from a R9 290x owner. Definitely not behaving like Highlands (post #24), where the centre lines are crisp regardless of the AF setting.

Pacific Coast is looking amazing otherwise, but I have some major performance issues - same settings that net 60fps in LAC achieve low 40s with frequent hitching and stuttering suggestive of paging to system RAM. I'm not seeing object LOD transitions - have you got more performance optimization planned?

 

[TheRidersDream]

I'm also having this issue.
Does anyone got it resolved?

I had the same issue and the only thing I had to do was set the AF (Anisotropic Filtering) in my NVIDIA control panel for Assetto Corsa on 8x (or 16x if your pc can handle it), and in the game as well. Lines were very blurry before, now they're as precise as they can get!

 

[fenderjaguar]

The tracks with what i'd describe as crisp road markings have implemented road markings as separate floating objects as described by Phoenix77 in an earlier post

it seems to be some sort of parallax occlusion mapping (POM) or bump mapping for the center lines on some tracks. for some reason, even drivers have trouble filtering them. nvidia's drivers are usually very good with this (they will filter the POM in GTA V, wheras AMD drivers won't).

however, even nvidias drivers won't filter the lines on black cat. and whilst some people in this thread seem to indicate they don't have blur on black cat, I have yet to see anyone post a good screenshot that indicated they have solved the problem for this particular track, with either AMD drivers, nvidia drivers, in game AF or custom settings LODs etc

I don't know how to do it, and I'm quite experienced with nvidia profile inspector. I refer anyone who would know how to implement this to the crysis POM AF mod:

Steam Community :: Guide :: How to enable Anisotropic Filtering and keep Parallax Occlusion Mapping without startup crashes in 2018 (POM+AF mod)

Game's textures look blurry at a distance? Tried the online mod fix but it crashes your game on startup? Here is how to do it in 2018....

steamcommunity.com

 

[Assiduous]

it seems to be some sort of parallax occlusion mapping (POM) or bump mapping for the center lines on some tracks. for some reason, even drivers have trouble filtering them. nvidia's drivers are usually very good with this (they will filter the POM in GTA V, wheras AMD drivers won't).

however, even nvidias drivers won't filter the lines on black cat. and whilst some people in this thread seem to indicate they don't have blur on black cat, I have yet to see anyone post a good screenshot that indicated they have solved the problem for this particular track, with either AMD drivers, nvidia drivers, in game AF or custom settings LODs etc

I don't know how to do it, and I'm quite experienced with nvidia profile inspector. I refer anyone who would know how to implement this to the crysis POM AF mod:

Steam Community :: Guide :: How to enable Anisotropic Filtering and keep Parallax Occlusion Mapping without startup crashes in 2018 (POM+AF mod)

Game's textures look blurry at a distance? Tried the online mod fix but it crashes your game on startup? Here is how to do it in 2018....

steamcommunity.com

Interesting. Based on what i know, I think the fix is to limit the lowest MIP map level the game uses for road textures on specific tracks such as Black Cat County or LAC. Need to be able to put it in the CSP track config file. Unfortunately I am not presently aware of any way to do this with CSP.

 

[traddy]

Csp 2.2.2 preview1 did it for me. Hope it helps!

 

[hellomihai]

SOLUTION:
Fix = set Nvidia setting for AF to 16x (8x if weaker system)

Nvidia control panel, "Anisotropic Filtering" was off...
I set AF to 16x and problem on bad tracks greatly improved, and newer tracks perfectly clear.

Performance dropped a bit so I had to lower some other settings to compensate.

hope this helps someone

system:
win 11 pro
Content Manager: latest
CSP: lights-patch-v0.2.4-preview1-full.zip
Nvidia 4080
Nvidia drivers: 555.84

 

[Michael Krone]

SOLUTION:
Nvidia control panel, "Anisotropic Filtering" was off...
I set AF to 16x and problem on bad tracks greatly improved, and newer tracks perfectly clear.

Performance dropped a bit so I had to lower some other settings to compensate.

hope this helps someone

system:
win 11 pro
Content Manager: latest
CSP: lights-patch-v0.2.4-preview1-full.zip
Nvidia 4080
Nvidia drivers: 555.84

I think you also need to turn AF off in AC settings.

 

[hellomihai]

I think you also need to turn AF off in AC settings.

I dont think so

if nvidia AF = 16x, it overrides whats in the app (content manager)
if nvidia AF = app specific, then itll take into account whats in the app (content manager)