(i7 2600k oc'd 4.2, HD4890, 8gigs) I'm really getting annoyed by all this hatred towards improvement.
(Because, honestly, LFS does need a graphics update. Example: What about weather effects, better RALLY anyone? Racing is just as much about the visual as it is about the sound and the feel. A lot of you people don't understand this. No we don't need groundbreaking graphics, but honestly:
This silly hatred of anything that requires you to get anything new is annoying. (Seeing how all it does is limit the game's potential, rather than help it.)
Point is, yeah, you do need to worry about the physics and the game itself... but you're running on old technology by old technologies standard. At least a little DX9 would help... geez.
(and honestly, if you can't run that, please afford yourself a better computer. I know you can. I worked on a walmart hourly wage and i did. then i lost my damn job...
.....and I'm STILL doing ok. (ok maybe not this past month but, hey! I lasted 5 months before I actually went negative... because it took a LOT longer to get working and get a paycheck at my new job than i expected.)
You people have gotten whiny, just like everyone else on the internet.
It's all good and well having the code in place for having normal maps, shaders, etc, etc, etc, but to implement them, it does take a bit of time from an artist's point of view. And also it can mean having to rebuild assets as the
If LFS were to get all these bells and whistles, and trust me, I would like to see it too, it would take time to implement.
But lets just play Devil's Advocate here...
Uprated lightmaps and maybe even look at how the GTA games handle realtime shadows- I was lucky enough to see the R* Rage engine before GTA IV was released, and even Chinatown Wars on the DS had dynamic shadows based on the collision boxes that were used for the buildings and props. This really does make a difference and would mean that Eric wouldn't have to bake out different lightmaps for the different times of day as a majority of the details would be created realtime.
Another method would be to have several lightmaps showing different times of day and maybe some kind of blend between them to show how shadows change direction and length.
This does open the possibilty of proper 24hr races- This would mean having to change the skyboxes and how they currently work but it would be worth it.
Use pixel shaders. BUT only where needed- you don't need every texture normal mapped- only surfaces that cannot be created very convincingly will use them. Specular maps would be a necessity and would help describe the materials used in the scene better.
Better Trees where possible. This isn't a tree growing simulation, so nothing too fancy, though it could show up alpha sorting issues as trees rely on layering alpha masked textures to create dense looking foliage.
Bloom could be used but only for for spot effects i.e. entering/exiting tunnels and if there are lighting changes.
For textures, Vertex Alpha blending- this ends the need for textures that blend between one type to another such as grass going to sand or you could have a worn out part of the road created seamlessly. It would help towards lowering the amount of materials needed which means more time can be spent on making the normals+spec maps.
There is the whole thing of doing nice reflections as well for wet tracks which has been mentioned, and uprated particle effects- but for the latter it's going to take some man hours to get them looking good.
Ohh Scaven should note that we are in 2011 and yes the game does not look hopeless, but graphics engine could be updated for Shader Model 2.0 or higher.
I beg to differ. Comparing Arma 2 and LFS is like comparing apples and oranges. There is much more going on in LFS than Arma, it's just not immediately visible. Much of LFS is physics rendering, and Arma just doesn't do that.
LFS graphics are adequate for seeing differences in road surface, picking lines, braking points and the like, but when we drive, we don't look at all of the scenery, see the leaf textures etc. Yes, wet road glare, reflections and other such niceties would be great, but only when we have the appropriate physics to match. Too many other titles have been lured into thinking it is all about the look, and even then, I would not like to live in the worlds the devs for those games seem to inhabit, or believe we should.
I'm against a graphics upgrade for the sake of eye candy alone. There must be a tangible benefit to the overall simulation before it should even be considered.
Will bump mapping really help us drive faster for example?
Don't get me wrong, I am very much in favour of as realistic a simulator as possible, but we must cut our cloth to fit, and super graphics rendering is not the whole emphasis as some might think. It's not just the hardware, but programming required to achieve those effects. Every line of code, takes a finite time to run, and every line of code introduces a potential bug. Add to that the monetary cost of licensing particular API's, or the cost (including time) of writing your own from scratch. Some of the other mentioned titles simply compromise on handling in favour of looking good.
Going back to Arma, Try turning up the detail and shadows then fly low in a fast jet over a city with a full battle going on. The frame rate drops through the floor, so timing a strafing run is nigh on impossible. We need split second timing in LFS, and waiting for geometry and textures to load and render while turning a corner just won't win any friends or races.
I'm not a computer expert, But firstly, I play with everything on high, Dymanic shadows, the whole nine yards, I think a fullscale battle with tank ballistics, Bullet ballistics, Wind, Hundreds of AI, Dymanicish grass, Huge view distance and a thriving battle with shadows from jets, cats, planes and whatever else is in the battle, Is alittle bit more than tire physics calculated by the CPU (As so i've heard.) And some dymanic shadows.
Don't get my wrong, I'm on the LFS tugboat here, But there is alot more going on in other games Just because the fact it's made by three people, if it was a company producing to the "masses" Then it wouldn't be as good. Physic wise, But would be good graphics wise, And other games are starting to become more simulator-ish, When was the last time you saw any need for speed contain load on tires? My jaw hit the floor.
Why are you against a graphic update as well? Any update is a good update. As you can see, LFS isn't "First come, First out" As it seems, We got way more tracks and freedom while S3 or just a car and a track are still cooking. It's amazing to think of the possiblitys of a graphical update, At least for us 500+ Fpser's with everything on high, Even if most people don't or can't run that high.
Just my 2 cents.
I personally wish for just a tiny bit of motion blur, To get a feel for speed, Currently i have to look at my speedometer to make sure i'm going.
I don't think that real life has anything like a motion blur, to actually see things blurred in a car I have to look through a side window while driving on a highway at 130+ km/h. I guess that the sense of speed comes from the peripheral vision which is sensitive to motion. If there's nothing moving at the edges of your field of view, the sense of speed is gone. To get that same feeling in a game you'd need a 50" inch screen and sit quite close to it.
NFS etc. intentionally overdo the blur effect to sorta recreate the sense of speed by blurring everything at the edges of the screen. Some people might like it, I don't 'cause it's not how it looks like in real life, it's the same crap like blooming. Kegetys made this nice mod to add motion blur to LFS; it gave me a hell of a headache after a while but you might want to try it out...
Perhaps I over simplified my previous comment. Yes there is lots going on in Arma, but completely different things to LFS, and proper physics isn't one of them. Much of what the player perceives is illusory if you set aside the fact it's a simulator for a moment. Vehicle dynamics and many other "dynamic" objects are simply pre-made animations that are played back to the player according to certain cues. Ballistics are very simplified - better than most others - but simplified all the same. A Lapua Magnum round has the same ballistic properties as a BMP in the Armaverse. Drag coefficient and windage are omitted for expediency. An approximation is made by applying a damage value to objects that intersect in collision geometry, not a true physical impact value. Many objects just cease to exist when out of sight of the player. Arma does what it does - simulate a battlefield experience - very well, but at the cost of having to make compromises. The professional version -VBS2- as used by the military, runs on a network of PC's in a form of distributed computing, simply because one machine can't handle it all.
It might appear that I'm criticising Arma here. I'm not, I love the game, and have spent many hours/days/months on modding it. To do so, will uncover the limitations that it has, and gives an understanding into some of the dilemmas the devs must have when bringing in new features. Understand the limitations and get creative to make something plausible is probably the best phrase to use. Comparing Arma and LFS really is pointless because they do different things.
I think there are different philosophies going on here. Big games companies are in the business for money. They are purely sales driven, and as such will make games that appeal to the masses via the lowest common denominator. Yes there are exceptions, but generally they aim for pick up and play titles. I feel for some of the devs that have their artistic talents compromised in the name of the "greater good" Some brave souls strike out on their own and become independent to be able to express themselves without compromise. Arma/Bohemia Interactive, and LFS/Scavier are two such outfits, and in this sense, the only real comparison can be made between them.
I didn't say I was against any graphics updates. I said that there must be a good reason for one. Eye candy alone is not good reason. I have nothing against the approach that the GT series use for a photo render mode, but for gameplay, things like this are just fluff. About the only example of a graphics enhancement aside from wet reflections and other effects already mentioned, would be heat haze mirage effects for distant stretches of track. This can cause drivers problems in picking lines, but I can live without it, and unless an easy method of achieving this is discovered, I'd say don't bother trying.
Motion blur is an artists impression of speed. It is a post processing effect only, and has no place in a simulator. Our perceived blur in real life is exactly as MadCatX describes. I'd go further than the 50" screen in fact, and say get a projector or two, and use a wrap around screen. A motion blur effect would make that implementation completely wrong when looking to the side.
I think the "sense of speed" is a bit mixed up to begin with for some people. I feel as if i'm going pretty fast in even a XFG around BL or even a GT2 class'd FZR. It all lies on if you have any adrenaline pumping through your system and how close to the edge you are. A Clumsy off pace lap around FE Gold on a XRT will of course feel slow, but a front runner on the edge pace will give you that sense of speed your longing for.
I can't read minds but i'm guessing what most people want is lots of blur around their screen. That's just not happening although i had a ENBseries tweak where it had motion blur in it. I'll have to go digging around for it.
I'd disagree with this in certain situations mainly involving very high motion speeds, such as wheels. The wheels in LFS just show a static image of the wheel each frame, whereas with a real wheel spinning that fast you wouldn't be able to make out individual spokes at all. Another example is helicopter blades. A helicopter in a game always looks pretty stupid when the blades are supposed to be spinning too fast to see, yet they render as a series of stationary blades in different positions each frame.
There is a difference between this and motion 'blur' though. Motion blur tries to recreate the effect of a fast moving object being captured by a camera with a shutter (in fact most post-processing effects, like MB and bloom, are there to try and recreate effects you get with a camera) - and you most definitely do get a blurring effect with this. As perceived by actual eyes though, it's more a 'motion transparency' than a blur, as you don't perceive separate frames.
You're right of course. There are some situations where this might be preferential.
As Arma has been brought up before I'll continue with that analogy.
This is how BI cope with exactly this problem. Helicopter blades do not use the post processing blur effects that the player gets when turning quickly. Instead, they use one set of textures for static and slowly rotating blades, and then replace them once the rotation speed has passed a threshold. The second set of textures are a blurred version of the statics. Due to the render frames, there is still a shutter effect seen even with the blurred textures. It seems to be a good compromise.
That is a good description, and my feeling is that what some people refer to as realism, is in fact the cinematic effects that some games apply. Lens flare is an often overused one.
To qualify post processing blur a bit more. It is a whole frame effect and cannot be applied selectively to individual objects. It can also cause lag problems on lower end GPU's and systems. I don't think this effect can be applied to any cards that don't support Shader Model 2? or below.
I'm really getting annoyed by all this hatred towards improvement.
