Summary of Graphical Updates We're excited to announce a major graphical update to RaceRoom, designed to improve the visual experience and enhance performance. This update introduces significant improvements, making the game look more realistic while performing a lot better than ever before. For this update, we focused our efforts on improving rendering quality and boosting performance while maintaining a clean and stable image that feels highly immersive. Anything that shimmers, pops or crawls into view is distracting and an immersion killer, this is why we have focused on eliminating or avoiding issues that can disrupt immersion, such as Z-fighting, aliased shadows or short shadow draw distances. Here's a detailed summary of the key changes: Performance Enhancements We have optimized the game's performance to ensure better framerates. This means you can enjoy the new graphics without sacrificing smooth gameplay. The gains were obtained through: Optimized frustum culling: By optimizing the frustum culling system, we can now skip rendering of a lot more objects that are not in the view. This results in significant gains, especially on large and complex tracks, such as the 24 Hours layout of the Nordschleife. Rearview mirror and reflection optimization: The improved frustum culling system now allows us to render only what is necessary for the rearview mirror and dynamic car reflections. Furthermore, we have improved the looks and efficiency of the lowest car reflection setting significantly, which makes it a great option for those looking for extra performance. Time Progression: Performance of the time progression feature has been significantly enhanced, which means the performance difference to static time is now almost negligible. Color System Upgrade Transition to a LUT (Lookup Table) Color System. This change allows for more accurate and vibrant color representation, enhancing the overall visual fidelity of the game. Cloud Coverage Selector Added a new feature to the game menus and dedicated server allowing players to select cloud coverage options. You can now choose from clear, few clouds, scattered clouds, and overcast skies, adding a dynamic and realistic touch to the racing experience. Improved Shadows Rendering Shadows have been significantly improved, providing more realistic and dynamic lighting effects across various environments. This includes soft, anti-aliased shadows, with higher resolution and much longer draw distances. Shadows are now also rendered in the rearview mirror. Auto-Exposure Feature Introduced an auto-exposure feature that dynamically adjusts the brightness based on the scene's lighting. This feature enhances visibility in different lighting conditions, ensuring a more immersive experience. Improved car paint and car parts materials rendering Better support has been added for all different types of liveries and paint found on racing cars. Most notably, chrome, matte and metallic parts can now be represented much more accurately. Improved Car Cockpit Improved lighting inside the cockpit, to achieve a much more realistic and immersive view. Improved Car Reflections Car reflections have been enhanced to better mimic realworld reflective surfaces, adding depth and realism to vehicle reflective parts, such as windows. Improved Specular Reflections Specular reflections have been fine-tuned to provide more realistic highlights and shine, especially under varying light conditions. Improved Track Surface Lighting The track surface lighting has been improved, giving a more accurate representation of light reflection on road surfaces and built-up rubber. Improved Depth of Field Blurring Depth of field effects have been refined for more realistic background blurring, enhancing the sense of speed and focus. Improved Motion Blur Motion blur has been updated to provide a more natural and immersive sense of movement and a reduction of artifacts. Improved Rendering of Headlights and Taillights The rendering of headlights and taillights has been improved, making dawn, morning, noon, afternoon, and sunset racing more visually striking and realistic. Improved Vegetation lighting Trees are now blending in much better in the lighting environment. Track Grass normalmaps: Our normal maps are now properly reacting to orientation of the light Track material specular: Until now, only a few objects had specular around our tracks. This is now addressed so all objects reflect strong lights. Performance mode through Vulkan rendering pipeline The vulkan-based implementation of d3d9 by Philip Rebohle was already a popular rendering mod among the RaceRoom community, providing a significant performance boost. Our engine is now supporting this mod more officially as we addressed some visual glitches that had been impairing the experience. A start-up option in Steam will be available to start RaceRoom using Vulkan. Eliminated Z-Fighting We have completely eliminated z-fighting artifacts by adapting the engine to use the more modern ‘Reversed-Z’ approach to handle depth in the rendering. Particle lighting Particles now properly react to different lighting conditions Sharpening This effect increases the visual crispness of the game, making textures and fine details stand out more prominently. However, because the visual experience is based on individual preferences, the default setting will be off. These updates mark a significant step forward in the visual and performance quality of RaceRoom. KW Studios is a small team of highly talented and motivated individuals committed to providing the best possible products, and this graphical overhaul is a testament to that commitment. We can't wait to continue modernizing the engine by going even more in depth and unlocking highly efficient render techniques offered by more recent DirectX versions. For this (and more!), we are still on the lookout for a senior programmer - This may be you? If not, please make sure to share the ad around - https://www.kw-studios.com/jobs/lead-cpp-programmer/
nice to see that the "old" graphics is still being further developed and will not be replaced by new waste, as the past "GTR3" UE4 attempts showed
Vulkan implementation is an excellent addition for people like me who use AMD GPUs.Will definitely provide a significant performance boost over DX9. Hopefully, the game moves on from being mainly single threaded on the CPU side in the future.
Just watched the Grid Talk episode this morning and being a programmer myself, the technical part on updating the old engine was very insightful. Clearly we can expect more improvements in the future now that you're fully understanding the old code Raceroom was built on top of!
As it was asked about on discord, I'll also leave this here: This update is not just catered to those with good hardware. If anything, the visual difference will probably be the biggest for those that are running on minimum settings. As we focused on making the new minimum settings as efficient as possible. Resulting in a much better visual experience, with similar or better performance! I did a quick comparison in a rolling start on Nords NLS with 1x time progression, with the full DTM 2023 grid: Current game, minimum settings (~260fps): Graphics update, minimum settings (~320fps): And a secret bonus of the new overcast weather, is that you don't lose any visual quality from turning off shadows (which is a big performance gain).
@Thomas Jansen Have you tried it on pcs with Intel Iris and recent gen Intel laptop U pcs, the ones that have really low standard clock speed for energy saving? Right now RRE chokes particularly when the rear view mirror is on or there are multiple cars drawn.
Unfortunately not, I would suspect this is the same issue we get on other hardware too though. On my system nvidia doesn't seem to recognize RR as a game because of the old engine, so if I leave the power saving mode on automatic, it will not give the GPU full performance. When creating a profile for RR with 'prefer maximum performance' all works as it should. I would expect there is something similar for Intel and AMD, that would help a lot with low/inconsistent performance because of power saving modes. (So likely not something we could fix on the game side, until we upgrade to a modern API that GPU drivers properly recognize as a game. DXVK might help in those cases as well)
What's the word on VR performance? Will it still have to run thru steam VR and no direct Oculus option? ATM I can't access steam thru VR and it's been like that for a while. It's opening in a small window and not showing in the headset. Do you guys have any recommended settings after the update?
From my testing, VR should see the same performance uplifts as 2D, if not more! In that same nords rolling start but in VR, on comparable settings I see about 30% lower frametimes (40% higher FPS) in the new update. No change in how the VR works unfortunately, that is also locked behind a new graphics API. for Oculus, opencomposite might still work, though I've been out of the loop for a while with that. You can check the explanation for that in the VR performance thread in my bio.
Is there any way you could put an option to turn off AI flashing headlights? It's a real immersion killer to have a GT4 car flashing it's headlights at the GT3 car that just passed it. Thanks.
As far as VR goes, will there be improvements to bloom for brake lights, head lights, and sun flares?
All very nice but there's still the issue of the AI under performing? If the AI aren't sorted then all this is in vain