Trackside 'life'...

[BanjoMaster]

Howdy

Sorry for going on a bit of a question bender over the last couple of weeks, but here's another:

What are your plans for trackside objects and people? I don't recall seeing any shots featuring any trackside or support vehicles/personnel, or any spectators. Would be interested to know how you intend to tackle it, if at all?

Cheers

 

[Hannes-Joshua Thor Barthel]

my PC is over 2 years old.. wouldn't call that highend anylonger (it was very highend at that time yes).. I think most 2-3 years old CPUs are quite efficient yet.. at least the "I" series

 

[Chris James]

One thing i noticed switching from Gran Turismo to PC sims is that in Gran Turismo, the cars look stunning, and the track area immediately around the car looks great, but Gran Turismo blurs up after just a short distance away from the car, and it looks like a pixelated mesh the further out you look. Compare that to sims like iRacing, where you can see clearly all the way down the straights, and all the way down from the blimp in the replay. If I remember correctly, at the 'Ring, Gran Turismo uses a foggy atmosphere on the main straight to hide this.

 

[Mr Whippy]

GT5 is a perfect example of super-optimised content for a single hardware, and also heavily optimised exactly for what the user expects.

If you race, then it looks great. If you drive along you can see hard texture boundaries all over the place. Sand-traps to asphalt with soft boundaries have the sand-specular in the bleed-in to the asphalt) obviously the shaders it uses are pretty basic to aid rendering speed and worrying about those tiny issues in the bigger blurred picture when travelling 50mph+ is not worth it.


GT5 also took years to make with a fairly large team, so even with one hardware and fixed resolution they could really spend time optimising every little shader and track and texture I think...

Also the resolution is pretty low, it's anamorphic pixels and that saves a good chunk of processing each screen.


But it is really great to go drive Eiger. Stop any where on that track and there are people talking, waving, flowers blowing in the wind, a real ambience.


I'm sure AC will get there, but like Polyphony showed, building content like that takes a lot of time haha!
But I'd prefer AC to come out with such elements left out and it get released soon, than wait years for it to become a bit out-dated.

Assuming AC will be an upgraded title, rather than a superseded one, then I see no harm in iteratively updating (even at cost)... I think it's a better route for simmers.

Dave

 

[r@m]

I so hope pitcrew / crowd animations are possible, it's the one thing thing make rfactor pitlanes featureless, it's a must for the immersive feel imho.

 

[BanjoMaster]

I

I so hope pitcrew / crowd animations are possible, it's the one thing thing make rfactor pitlanes featureless, it's a must for the immersive feel imho.

I like your moxy kid :-D Agreed

 

[CCX]

I so hope pitcrew / crowd animations are possible, it's the one thing thing make rfactor pitlanes featureless, it's a must for the immersive feel imho.

I think that's something they were going to work on after the release of v1.0, so hopefully it will come eventually.

 

[r@m]

I think that's something they were going to work on after the release of v1.0, so hopefully it will come eventually.

Sure I understand there will be priorities, but as a modder, lack of crowd / animations in a Sim is a glaring hole, especially race sims where there is plenty of activity around the track.
There may be performance issues to take into consideration for certain PC's, that's fine, include an option to turn them off, problem solved.
I hate the words think/hopefully/eventually ..I prefer know/will/soon
I don't want another sim with invisible pit crews....it's just wrong on all levels.

 

[CCX]

I agree, I'm just quoting what Kunos have said. We can't have everything in AC, so I'm happy to wait personally.

 

[r@m]

I agree, I'm just quoting what Kunos have said. We can't have everything in AC, so I'm happy to wait personally.

Me too if it's definitely on the to-do list

 

[CCX]

Me too if it's definitely on the to-do list

As far as I know it is. We have a lot to look forward to after the release of v1.0.

 

[BanjoMaster]

Just going to resurrect/update this thread to try and keep everything in one place for future reference:

Cookie Monster​

@KunosStefano Is the architecture there in AC to support animated trackside objects and people, even if left to the modders? Grazie.​

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Stefano Casillo​

@NKCookieMonster we have a special shader for flags but that's all for the time being.​

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Cookie Monster​

@KunosStefano Are special shaders for other items something we can do ourselves, or does it need to be done by yourselves in the main core?​

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Stefano Casillo​

@NKCookieMonster there is a small program needed to build shaders and pack some additional data in them.I dont know if that will be released​

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Cookie Monster​

@KunosStefano Please consider releasing it. It would open up many new avenues for modders, like track 'atmosphere packs' with marshals, etc​

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Stefano Casillo​

@NKCookieMonster we'll see but don't hold your breath. it would require a HUGE amount of documentation to be useful.there are better ways​

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Cookie Monster​

@KunosStefano You could farm out the manual? There are very competent people in the community that live and breath shader building stuff​

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Stefano Casillo​

@NKCookieMonster it's easier to just build support for animated objects with an attached python behavior file. Better tool for that job.​

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Cookie Monster​

@KunosStefano Ah ok, and I assume that'd be more flexible a tool for the job ? Your vegetation would look even better with wind movement ​

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Stefano Casillo​

@NKCookieMonster you definitely dont want to animate marshals with HLSL. Anyway, the priority is the game now.. no time for these things.​

 

[o0thx11380o]

I still don't get one thing. Alldought the graphics in AC is really beautufil, and I mean that is the best looking sim, I still cant figure it out, that GT5 on machine that is 6 years old, looks amazing and have no problems whith FPS (even in 3D). And you have a lot of trackside life on it. And I must say that lighting, cubemaps and replay's are better than in AC TP(dought AC is the first that is coming close). Where is the catch. Here are exsamples. In phisics AC is lightyears ahead!

Two words... Anti Aliasing. The xbox has no AA and thats why it can run with high fps. It also runs at a pretty low resolution compared to our PC's

 

[Marcel Pfister]

Two words... Anti Aliasing. The xbox has no AA and thats why it can run with high fps. It also runs at a pretty low resolution compared to our PC's

xbox???

 

[o0thx11380o]

xbox???

Sorry I mean to say ps3... Plus the physics in gt5 are much much more simplified so that leaves a lot of room for adding more details.