Quote from edge3147 :

Can't wait for Kyoto to get updated

I'm also hyped for Kyoto (as all the other tracks actually lol) but I can't wait for the pièce de résistance: South City. I think it will be the last one as it should be the most complex.

But I'm also wondering: is it just me or every new track so far starts to look a bit similar? I don't see the same level of track identity as before, a bit more sterile. I guess its a time constraints. Eric, I would love to hear your thoughts

Last edited by nacim, Wed, 19 Dec 2018 22:59.

Wow, a really drastic change! Well done Eric!

Btw Scawen, I don't see indirect specular lighting on the environment (except on glass). Do you have a reflection probe system in place ?
At least one for the whole track with the skybox and precomputed convolution would help differentiate materials even in shadow.
Here is a resource on that if you don't see what I'm talking about: https://wiki.jmonkeyengine.org/jme3/advanced/pbr_part3.html#indirect-lighting-for-pbr-with-image-based-lighting

Quote from Big Daddy :

Wow that´s really nice.

It is very sharp, I dont know if photoshop could recreate this sharpness.

Thanks.

I think Photoshop would have a nice Depth of Field effect if you managed to get the depth buffer when taking your screenshot. But without it, it would be hard to get a realistic result.

Quote from Big Daddy :

One question, I opened the shaders file just because I am a little curious.

Do you actually change the values of the code or even write or implement new functions?

Yeah indeed, I implemented new features in the shaders like height aware exponential fog (Crytek's implementation of it), and some post processing (vignette, tweak to the S-curve). The rendering is also in linear color space (gamma correct rendering, which Scawen is *properly* adding to LFS's next update btw) thanks to Keiichi_Tsuchiya. After that it's mostly stock reshade effects (depth of field and bloom for example).

Before reinstalling your GPU driver, I suggest that you clean the old one out with Display Driver Uninstaller.

Nice necrobump, after 11 years! Maybe read the date before hitting reply, I don't think you'll have much answer now.

Having more money won't make the game progress magically faster. Devs don't want to have a bigger team and already work full time on it (except for Victor, the web developer). And having ads on a website where you already sell a product is unprofessional.

There are screenshots of the Sirocco in the "Screenshots from the currently available version" part too though, it can be misleading too I guess.

Quote from Kevvedajsel :

Does anyone know why LFS Lazy isn't compatible with 0.6R22? It says it supports 0.6R15-0.6T but whenever I try to launch it, it just gives me that window saying this.

Not all test patches were supported. But why don't you just update to 0.6T?

Quote from Racer Y :

Uhhh.... to be honest the existing shading/reflection in LFS looks more realistic than your example. Your example works the other way with all that reflection. Does every car have a freshly waxed lacquer paint job and rolls off the show room floor before hitting the track? LOL most of what I've seen from newer titles are so overboard with all these reflections and solar flares and what not, they kinda remind me of the painting Vanilla Skies more than any sort of realism. Way too over the top IMO. The finish on the LFS example looks more along the lines of the automotive finish of the car for what it is. I mean really. Who the hell puts a paint job that costs five digits on a 15 year old car that's a beater? The example you posted? I'm haflway expecting to see a tree with a pocket watch draped over it around the next corner.
Now if you went on about the need for things like paint chips, scratches, uneven finishes (Ever see a real race car up close? Some have really crappy paint jobs) I'd be inclined to agree. But all this shiny stuff? Not so much.

He didn't talked about the shading though. He just asked to have every object drawn in the reflection. Basically an option to use a dual parabloid map instead of only one, or even a cubemap maybe.

Still, I don't think it's unreasonable to think that there will be options to reduce and/or turn off shadow and specular effects. Lighting will still be dynamic, but without specular effects, it won't be that much of an increase in compute power required.

Quote from MicroSpecV :

South City will have an expansion for sure. I'm certain.

Don't hype yourself and others. I don't want to see people hyped by non official stuff and make devs looks like they over-promised and under-delivered. I think this update will just be a small upgrade to current tracks, and put the bases for other graphics or track upgrades

Hahaha, well played

Quote from Scawen :

Usually the specular reflections are not coloured. So I suppose that is a specular workflow though I'm not really sure about the terminology. Currently we do not have control of specular colour per pixel. A specular colour can be set for a whole surface and that can be used for a metallic effect (or another kind of coloured reflection, for example a window covered with a film of coloured transparent plastic).

Basically, a metallic workflow is when an arstist has a control over roughness (or smoothness) and metalness. A specular workflow is when the artist has control over smoothness/roughness and specular color directly.

In a metallic workflow, specular color is defined by base color when metallic is enabled, and diffuse is killed. A dielectric material uses the sun color for specular lighting, and has diffuse lighting. Something along thoses lines:


In a specular workflow (like you did right now), if an artist wants to do a similar effect, he needs the control over the specular color per pixel, or have control of metalness per material.

Quote from Scawen :

I'm not really sure what a specular factor or a specular power is, but the BRDF naturally reduces the brightness of the shine and increases the spread if the roughness is increased.

Okay nice, that means that the specular is normalized.

Quote from Scawen :

Our shaders are using an approximation to a Cook Torrance BRDF with optimisations discussed by various authors. After quite a bit of experimentation we came to one that Eric was happy with and felt he had enough control over to get most of the effects he needed.

Cook-Torrance ? That's nice ! I was pretty sure that you would have stayed with blinn-phong for this

Quote from Scawen :

I was forced to implement fog in the shaders when I needed to move to shader model 3 and it doesn't do fog otherwise. So I went for exponential fog. It's nice because it allows fog to have some effect in the middle distance without reducing far distance pixels to 100% fog colour.

Yeah exponential fog is nice, I'm happy to hear that you used it now, it helps a lot with depth perception. I think you probably saw how much it can change the feeling of the atmosphere, and when you add height into the mix, it can be pretty stunning:
https://www.lfs.net/forum/post/1914308#post1914308
https://cdn.knightlab.com/libs/juxtapose/latest/embed/index.html?uid=d148d5e4-af52-11e6-8803-0edaf8f81e27

Quote from ColeusRattus :

Looks great! But is the lighting dynamic or pre-baked?

The former would finally allow for day/night cyclesa and dynamic headlights, while the latter has clear performance advantages.

It's fully dynamic now. We lost global illumination but we've progressed towards night/day cycle. Btw you can combine baked lighting with dynamic headlights, since light is additive.

Well done Scawen and Eric

Really impressed with the revamped Autocross (and all improvements on other tracks btw, but Autocross really needed a fresh batch of triangles ), I'm really looking forward to see Fern Bay and South City !

So Scawen, your technical description is still a bit vague for me.. you used a specular workflow right ? I can't see any metallic surface on theses screenshots, does Eric has a control on the specular color per pixel ?

And looking at the road, I don't really know if your specular factor is normalized depending on the specular power, or if it's up to Eric to tweak it. I suggest you check this out if you haven't seen it already: https://seblagarde.wordpress.com/2011/08/17/hello-world/

In all cases, I know I have to look at your BRDF once the update is released

Oh and I remember you talked about exponential fog one day, is implemented or still on your backlog ?

Last edited by nacim, Sun, 26 Aug 2018 18:49.

Quote from lfsrm :

Wow you went that far, for a first project it's really well done, bravo.

Thanks mate, well I really invested myself on the project, even on thing that were not my job (car physics mostly)

Quote from lfsrm :

Do you think working for weak (like the switch) is platform less/more enjoyable than pc/psx/xbox exclusive projects ? or graphics fidelity make working on those platform more demanding ?

Well, it's a bit of both I'd say. I didn't have the opportunity to work on PS4/Xbox One on a real project like that, but I think for my domain (graphics programming), it's more interesting because you can do much more shiny stuff and still optimise to try and cram as much effects as possible. For gameplay and physics too, as Game Designer gets really frustrated when constrained by "low" technical ressources. But for artists, even if they have more freedom, there is also much more work because of the players expectation.
Working on the Switch or mobile is also interesting, because you feel prouder when you see what you're pushing on such limited device. I have to say I'm pretty satisfied on how the game look, especially when playing in portable mode.

Doing a racing game on PS4/Xbox One as we are right now would be a real challenge, because the competition is way stiffer.

Last edited by nacim, Sun, 19 Aug 2018 19:00.

I agree with you, but Flotch resumed it pretty well. People want fast cliché cars, not iconic hatchbacks and sportives.

If it was my choice, we would already have Skyline R32 and R34, Supra RX-7, BMW E30, Lancia Delta Integrale, Golf Mk II, Honda Civic EK9, S2000 MX-5 NA/NB and all that good stuff just to name a few. Who knows, maybe one day

I work at Eden Games.
I really don't know what's the plan for the TDU franchise, but I personally don't think they'll do anything other than sell it when they become short on cash. Maybe we could buy it back, it would be cool
But hey, it's not because we don't have the licence that we can't do games with the same prestige.

BTW, I want to precise that I speak for myself, I'm in no way representing the studio when I talk.

Quote from Flotch :

let's say the general environment is not looking that good

Well, the trailer makes it really blurry (motion blur + youtube compression), but personally, this environnement is in my top 2, wait for some gameplay footage and you'll see

Quote from Flotch :

I guess it is not simulation related, but anyway it looks like very sweet !

Well, let's say it's way less arcade than the first one imo, car can oversteer (and do massive drift with some cars) and understeer, you can do scandinavian flick or other weight transfer related stuff, and I personnally find it pretty enjoyable.

Thanks, I really put effort on the cars shading, in collaboration with car artists. Sadly its the marketing team that messed up this part, there is only 300km. :/
But I can confirm there is still a lot of road to enjoy

Hey everyone!

Today we announced Gear.Club Unlimited 2, the game I've been working on almost exclusively since I started working. I feel proud and wanted to share it, so here is the trailer:



As you might have guested for those who know me here, I'm working as a graphics programmer.

What are your thoughts and hopes ?

Quote from Eclipsed :

where they sell practically the same product again with some changes under new name.

As much as I agree with you on the LFS side, for AC, it's a complete change of engine, and a new focus for this game. But let's not get off topic.

Creating a racing simulator takes time, lots of it. Especially if you create everything by yourself (full engine with graphics, physics, inputs, network, and cars plus track).

Quote from PeterN :

Higher resolution but maybe too clean now? Also the different typeface leads to the padding looking 'wrong'.

Agree, it looks too clean now

Quote from AfterAll14 :

Camera options are quite limited

Did you go to Options > View ? You can create your own custom camera per car, and customise every other camera.

Quote from AfterAll14 :

Graphics is something from 2005. I won't complain about light calculation techniques, but at least you could add some hd mesh and textures for models, that is not that hard to do.

Graphics are the focus of the next update (mainly lighting and shadows, with some fixes on some tracks), wait for it.
Some track were already remade in higher quality (Westhill and Blackwood), and Rockingham is also in high quality, and the idea is to update progressively every track.
It's not a matter of hard to do or not (even if yes, it's hard to make high definition models and textures), it's mainly a matter of time. It takes time for a single artist to upgrade all the existing tracks while also creating new ones.

Quote from Victor :

It tries to load an image from imgur but imgur returns a 403 Forbidden. I guess they don't like the referrer (cdn.knightlab.com)? Try hosting the image on another website.

Works fine for me