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.

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.

Quote :

Cascades are the separate shadow maps drawn over increasingly large areas (at lower resolution) as you move away from the view point. The correct cascade is selected for each pixel to decide if it is in shadow or lit by the sun.

This implies to me it's dynamic, but then again its only my word on it.

The new track models look amazing, I really hope the unused areas of Autocross see some more use

Quote from mbutcher :

Scawen has mentioned that all of the current tracks will need at least a basic level of remodelling. There have already been photos posted of new SO lighting (specifically, shadows) but so far no remodelling. I'm confident it's on their to do list though.

That i know that all Tracks gets this "Graphics Update" but i mean the remodeling There are so many possible Roads you can Drive in SO and i hope they will any time.

I like the Historic LFS Tracks but its anything time for something new

Great update, thanks for sharing!!!

Just beautiful.
In my opinion, once the cars have the same level of detail, LFS will be on par with other current gen SIMs (only talking about visuals here).

I really like what Eric is doing to the tracks. Looking forward to try LFS again on the future when those GFX updates are done.

NEW ASTON OH OMG
HOLYSHIT I'M EXCITED

I JUST WAIT FOR NEW SOUTH CITY

maybe its a bigger map?

Quote from ThunderX86 :

Just beautiful.
In my opinion, once the cars have the same level of detail, LFS will be on par with other current gen SIMs (only talking about visuals here).

I really like what Eric is doing to the tracks. Looking forward to try LFS again on the future when those GFX updates are done.

I agree

or make customizable same assetto corsa
with tracks and cars made by player

Looks incredible! Looking forward to the release!

Quote from MacedoSTI :

or make customizable same assetto corsa
with tracks and cars made by player

This won't happen for a long time but this is the wrong thread for this.

However, as long as the original content is fun and looks good, it's not THAT necessary.

So little things done yet so much improvements to the visuals, well done devs, cannot wait for the release!

Absolutely stunning, nice job guys

Quote from Scawen :

Yes, Aston has been raised to fix the area that was below sea level. I think it is 2 metres, so to make accurate comparison shots you can subtract 131072 from the Z coordinate (3rd number) in the /cp line.

Apologies for bringing questions, and I don't know how much headache it is to do this, but would it be possible to do the same to AU? Currently ground level is zero, which means no objects can be sunk into the ground. (A lot of our old bangers layouts rely on this)

Quote from Racon :

Absolutely stunning, nice job guys

Apologies for bringing questions, and I don't know how much headache it is to do this, but would it be possible to do the same to AU? Currently ground level is zero, which means no objects can be sunk into the ground. (A lot of our old bangers layouts rely on this)

Why do you need objects to sink into the ground on AU? Just curious.

Incredible visuals, great job guys!! Can't wait to see more screenshots/pics

Quote from Eric :

Why do you need objects to sink into the ground on AU? Just curious.

One reason might be that we can create something like curbs using ramp walls that are sunk into ground. With a little creativity such curbs work really well. Of course actual curbs layout object would be even better...

Great work! I'm looking forward to this update being released

Just brought a tear into my eye of how beautiful everything looks now.

Yay, good job guys!

https://www.lfs.net/static/screenshots/bl_03_specular.jpg

I love this image particularly The specular effets look amazing!

Quote from Eric :

Why do you need objects to sink into the ground on AU? Just curious.

As Rony says, the top part of a sunken ramp makes for a good kerb. Our banger league has a lot of old BL carpark tracks that I've converted to AU after the Blackwood revamp, but a good deal of them used that trick and just don't work there without some major remodelling. There's a thread about my adventures in layout conversion here

Would that problem be solved if one of the 3d kerb objects (e.g. from Blackwood) was included as a layout object?

EDIT: I guess not - looking at your pictures, there are a lot of reasons to put concrete objects slightly underground.

E.g. https://www.lfs.net/attachment/165190

Quote from Scawen :

Would that problem be solved if one of the 3d kerb objects (e.g. from Blackwood) was included as a layout object?

EDIT: I guess not - looking at your pictures, there are a lot of reasons to put concrete objects slightly underground.

E.g. https://www.lfs.net/attachment/165190

A 3D Kerb object in the editor would help massively, will enable turns to be done smoother and kerbs to be placed more accurately. Although it doesn"t resolve all the purposes of putting underground concrete parts, it does solve the majority of issues regarding "Ramp kerbs".

I think most of the questions in the thread have been answered by other readers.

Quote from nacim :

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 ?

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).

Quote from nacim :

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

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.

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.

Quote from nacim :

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

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.

Quote from MicroSpecV :

Also, for the layouts created in Aston sky/Autocross here
https://www.lfs.net/forum/thread/90485-Nova%27s-really-good-circuit-layouts ,
Will I be able to transfer the track file and placement direct into the new environment? Or will it be another Blackwood situation where the coords will be different?

The layouts at Autocross should be compatible, though some of the areas are a few metres wider. So some changes at the edges may be needed.

At Aston there are quite a few adjustments, various corners have been improved, tightened up a bit in some cases, but most things are pretty much in the same place so I believe most layouts should work with a few adjustments.

I think I should be able to make old Aston layouts load with the extra 2 metres added automatically.

Quote from Scawen :

Would that problem be solved if one of the 3d kerb objects (e.g. from Blackwood) was included as a layout object?

EDIT: I guess not - looking at your pictures, there are a lot of reasons to put concrete objects slightly underground.

E.g. https://www.lfs.net/attachment/165190

Having a 3d kerb available would certainly help as I could finish the tracks off manually with it. It might not cover all the tricks they used, but the inner kerb is definitely the most important one

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

The screens hors are looking great.
I hope the long grass will not pass through the car floor.

it is like when you get the interior going to green when you touch a green area of the road, or the arm of the driver going through the window/roof of the LX6 ... : maybe not related to track graphics but cars ... I admit I do not know ...

A bit off topic, while I see the Aston subject raised, I was dreaming of a new corner for Aston Grand Touring (in aim to differentiate its layout a bit more than the GP one) : it would be to use the part of the last corner of Club as per the attachment ...


NB : the trucks parked in Blackwood are very sexy, I wonder if we will them move one day arond the tracks