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Damn it looks good!!

I really wish this would stop. Posts like this actually make pCARS look way nicer than it really is and elevate it to some sort of god-like product graphically. A fair warning to anyone who has not tried it – It’s a reasonably nice looking game, but just don’t start thinking it looks THIS good in actual play.

Just a fair warning to those drooling over these pics to lower expectations a bit, not a put down on pCARS.

I don´t get your post. Those are ingame shots and everyone who has done those shots plays the game like that.

On my PC the game also doesn´t look nearly the same. But that doesn´t mean that it isn´t possible.

Good to see them implement, dirt accumulation on the vehicle’s chassis. Hopefully it will be windshields as well, and the crew can wipe the window when you pull into the pits :D.
http://www.virtualr.net/wp-content/gallery/3663/025.jpg

No, It’s definitely not impossible to make screenshots look this good with super high levels of super sampled AA and oversampling, etc, which would bring you down to 10 fps on any current system (sli etc), but this is not so much my point. My point is when you actually drive this sim in a viewport that is cockpit or nose cam–not just watch replays–it’s graphics are no better than any other sim, and you get a lot of aliasing, much more than most other sims, in fact.

Again, I am not saying pCARS is crap, i’m saying to those thinking of trying this for the amazing screenshot graphic posts that attempt to draw people in on this basis alone, to think twice, because when driving this with realistic settings, even max everything and 4xAA, it looks “OK”, like any modern game graphics – not like a render from Pixar.

pCARs has some nice effects, and the car models are gorgeous, but it’s overall engine is just on par for 2012, not mind-blowing.

So what my post attempts is to look at those screenshots, and counter it with real world views, not make believe graphics you’ll never ever attain while driving this game. I am not saying pCARS is not impressive pgrahically, just not like these PR shots suggest, and they are PR, fan made or not.

Yes and these are stil shots. This game is one that suffers from extreme aliasing on moving shots, atleast it is on AMD cards. Only solution to sort of get rid of them is with supersampling which makes it nearly impossible to run on most cards, excluding the latest 7 series where they improved the performance a bit.

Anyway, what’s the news value of this post?

Don’t even go there :)

Dear God these are beautiful looking…….

Well it doesn’t look AS good on my system as these screenshots but saying that pcars doesnt look any better than other sims? Thats just lying.
I have HD7850 1gb which I bought brand new for 200$ and pcars already looks million times better than rF2 or any older sim. Nothing else comes even CLOSE graphically, point.

That said, the physics is still not where I’d like it to be so my #1 sim is rF1.

It looks great on my system with only a GTS 250 and I know people on the forums using SLI’d 6XX series cards.

The game isn’t coming out for probably 6-8+ months when that type of graphics card setup will be relatively cheap.

Honestly, with no bias or anything, i just don’t like the way this game looks in the cockpit view. But the actual car cockpit detail and modelling is far ahead of, say, rf2. It’s what you see out of the car that looks poor (the tracks). I have my screens calibrated and the colours just burn my eyes out, and I’m using a standard gamut screen, not a wide gamut that is prone to colour saturation. There is a lack of atmosphere in the tracks, especially when there are no cars in front of you to make the visuals look a bit more spicy. I’m so very aware I’m on a virtual track at all times, i can’t lose myself in it for even a second. On rf2 i get lost in the way the track breaths and feels like it’s alive, i can’t really explain why it does this and pCARs doesn’t for me. rf1 does this for me on some of the best tracks, too (sebring, nord by com8, Rouen, etc).

I’ve had a few conversations with single screen monitor owners vs triples, and the feelings on graphics can be quite different. Once you get in triples and use a low FOV, some games just don’t hold up. GSC and RF2 just leave you with goosebumps, and it’s not just the physics doing this. Car models are brilliant in pCARS, the tracks are extremely lacking somehow.

But hey, if everyone thought the same the world would be a dull place, this is just my feeling on things to date.

This is one of my additional templates for custom liveries, ATM. But the devs are working on a dynamic system for dirt accumulation, also on windshields.

Fair enough, indeed the world is not a dull place :)

Perfect summarization of PARS

Tracks in rFactor breathe and feel alive? 0_o

no doubt these are awesome shots! But give me physics…PLEASE!!!

What do you think of these in game videos I took.
http://youtu.be/8bDHVs4m724?hd=1

http://youtu.be/YpF-kuNYTpA?hd=1

http://youtu.be/RHFXuio_mFc?hd=1

Also in some broswers youtube is messing up the aspect ratio so im sorry if they appear stretched or squashed. I don’t know whats wrong.

E=MC2

Im Running 670s in SLI and the game looks nothing like that for me… granted im using tripple screens but even the lighting for me looks completely different.

Are there particular tracks that look better than others? Any ive been testing look at best on par with iRacing (with less FPS).

I have to turn a lot of stuff off just to get around 30-40fps where on iracing i sit locked around 120. (1920×1080 on each screen)

I cant imagine getting decent FPS with full settings with anything less than a pair of 690s or something.

Still think it could end up being cool… maybe like a Forza Alternative.

That footage was taken with a single nvidia gtx470, a dual core e8400, and at 1440p downsampled to 1080p on a single screen. I was only getting around 20-25 fps but the game is not optimized at all now. I will probably still need to upgrade to a quad core though when the game is out. Try messing around with hdr. I think I used the third hdr setting for those videos. Time of day changes the lighting a lot as well.

The best tracks looking tracks right now are suzuka, bathurst, watkins, spa, and laguna seca. They are still not close to being complete though. The ring is coming along nicely as well.

Tracks are amazing…don’t know what your on about. Some of the tracks are a lot more finished than others. Maybe you need a better card or need to work on optimizing your settings. If RF2 graphics give you goosebumps I don’t know what else to say.

well this is exactly what I am talking about…sorry to teach you but you’re wrong. Should be lowercase “m” and “c”, we must be precise as physics is involved, because the car behaves like in pCARS then when not correct numbers/letters are being processed.

True Look of game is AWSOME but need work on physics

But you weren’t talking about anything….. Anyway, yes I am aware of this. And the number 2 should be superscripted too. But I just couldn’t be bothered. I didn’t have the energy (or is it mass ? no, energy, as I didn’t pass through a Higgs field).

E=mc² < there ya go. Energy=mass times the speed of light squared. Or is it Energy=McDonalds (2 happy meals) ?

don’t get me wrong, I just want to be constructive … everybody would love to say that this is a gr8 sim, but we’ll have to w8 and see.

Not to mention, downscaled (I think thats what its called) for example, a 1080p pic gets shrunken down to 720p or 480p (or whatever size), which makes everything look even more amazing. Lots of pics out there are 1440p (2560 x 1440/1600) and then they get shrunken down to 1080p size or even smaller. It is a known technique in the photography world (especially it seems in video game marketing).

PCars is gorgeous though, but A. like you said, in game it doesnt look THAT good, and B. the movement of everything looks bad so regardless of how gorgeous it is in a frozen still, thats only half the battle in graphics, the 2nd half is the actual movement of everything, and pcars looks brutal in that category, but the target audience for this game isnt going to notice and be picky about that stuff so I guess its all good, kudos to them.

I love the pics though, but only a couple of them are interesting enough for me to use in my wallpaper folder though. I wish there were more shots like pic 040, where instead of just one bloody car taking up the entire frame (clearly trying to shove the car in peoples faces to blow them away with the detail and graphics), instead they have a further camera and you can actually see what the car is doing, where its going to head off into the distance, or where its come from. Those are beautiful shots worthy of putting up on someones wall, not just a pic of an entire vehicle covering the entire frame and thats all you are looking at.

Back to the downscaling thing I mentioned above, if they are going to downscale their pics, they should at least have them not downscaled to less than 1080p, I mean some of those pics are like 4 inches by 3 inches on my 23inch 1080p monitor, and you can tell they were originally bigger pics massively downscaled.

The problem is that you are comparing 2 completely different genres of racing video games. You cant compare PCars to sims like RFactor 2, GSC 2012, Netkar Pro, iracing.
2 completely different categories. 2 different markets.

Its like comparing Grid or Shift to Forza or Granturismo, you cant compare, Grid and Shift are different genres of racing games than Forza and Granturismo are. Well same with PCars compared to rf2, gsc,nk pro, ir.

PCars for what it is and what I think it will be in the future is going to be brilliant :) , the thing is, like everything, you have to compare it to things in the same category, not to things in other categories designed with a different goal in mind.

Everybody never will though :) But hopefully as time goes on and as pcars develops, more people will see in better light than they do today.

oh ya. I and others have had the very same feelings aswell.

Although not even close to the graphics of PCars, for some reason I feel like I am really there, really at that track, actually sat in the car in rfactor 2 (and to a lesser extent some other sims), where as with PCars you feel like you are behind a screen playing a very very very good looking video game.

Not sure what it is, maybe its got to do with how the different graphics engine work? I dont know, cant explain it, but thats the effect RF2 gives my brain.

So weird how the brain works.

I think that making something feel to your mind like real life in an attempt to almost trick your brain into feeling like you are really there transported into the game world, goes alot further and beyond than just having the most beautiful graphics. There must be more to it (graphics wise I am speaking, not physics or ffb or anything like that) because I dont know how a visually inferior game tricks my mind into getting sucked into the gameworld more than a game that is visually superior.

Makes no sense when you think about it and analyse it, but thats what the end result is, wether it seems to make sense or not, thats just what happens.

So weird how the human mind works

Wow the first 2 look sooooooo good. I have to agree with that guy on the first video though about the softening and blurring.

You can really see it in the 2nd and more so in the 3rd video, it really ruins the beauty for me and sticks out like a sore thumb.

It looks like its been exageratted or something, doesnt “feel” realistic at all, but its still beautiful dont get me wrong :)

Something about the graphics engine, I cant explain it, it looks super duper gorgeous, but doesnt “feel” real (when I say feel, I am talking graphics, not discussing ffb/physics or anything like that).

I feel the same way when I see Assetto Corsa videos sadly. The graphics are very good, but it looks too much like a video game with really really good graphics, then I did some research on why I felt like this on the 2 best graphics racing games. Well I dont know if it is true or not, but I read that Assetto Corsa and PCars are using the same graphics engine??? Thats just what I read, I could be completely wrong.

Some great shots there………..it doesn’t look anything like that in motion but as a screenshot sim it is really shaping up well.
We’ve been seeing screens like this since early in the builds………how about forget about the graphics for a while and make some decent physics and FFB.
Thanks.

Ya I was just talking about downsampling technique above, glad I got it confirmed :)

Atleast you downsampled 1440p to 1080p so that we can use them as beautiful wallpapers :).

Those pics that are downsampled to like 480p or 720p are useless, too small for wallpapers :( .

Tell all the guys at WMD making these official pics to not downscale smaller than 1080p, people want full screen pics and wallpaper pics, not pics that are 4 inches by 3 inches :)

Ask the people to do more artistic photos like photos 030 and 040 above, zoomed out/further distanced out pics, rather than just close ups where a single car is taking up almost the entire frame.

I know they are trying to advertise their graphics, hence all the close ups, but the far away shots are just soooo much more beautiful, seeing the car relative to the track, relative to other surroundings, the track in the distance, etc etc. Shots that you can clearly see had some thinking going into them instead of just some “close up entire car filling the entire frame” shot.

:)

Sorry if I am being critical, its just that some of the shots are so beautiful and they have sooo much potential but 90 percent of them are just generic close up pics, with not artistry or creativity going into the pic itself.

I get excited when these official pics come out, because of beautiful wallpapers, but I only saved 2 pics above because 90% of them are just close ups, and one of the pics I would have saved was downsized like crazy :(

News value? Pumping out “stuff” to market/advertise/spread the word/attract potential inverstors to the product.

Basically, no news lol.

It is frustrating , but its also just an aspect of software development where sometimes core aspects of a product only come-together in the last month or later in development.

The core team is apparently testing a better physics model at the moment so those that want something with more realism and depth will just have to hold on to the stage coach whilst getting slapped in the face by screenshots.

As for this build.. I downloaded it to make a review video but the physics are still mostly in the same state as the first release ( with some tweaks and better FFB ) So I’m going to hold of a review until they have the physics better implemented.

If you are a member you can go on the forum and request the 1080p images as you like.

You forgot the subscipt 0 on the mass if I am to be pedantic :P. That equation everyone sees in the media is wrong, strictly speaking. Always did annoy me how that equation got into the media the way it did.
As always, stunning shots, graphical porn as usual, to think that it is realtime and no genuine raytracing and/or radiosity the whole environment on the cars, the reflections looks damn convincing. Sometimes you’d almst be fooled into thinking it was a render for a split second. Amazing stuff.

When you go to a race track real people and banners and flags are 2d textures for you?
You should visit a doctor, sir!

In fact my post on the pCARS forum about something wrong in replays, that pCARS just doesn’t look like real cars are driving on a real track, is from 2011. Devs and many people replied, but still there must be done tweaking to the suspension and chassis movement to let it look real. it still looks too stiff and too edgy.

On a sim-racing forum, do I really need to put the equation in a different way to how most people recognise it ?

Yep, all you graphic peeps stop what you are doing and go make an arse of the physics, thanks.

It was meant in a joking spirit, nothing more. Just funny how that has come about in the media I always thought. :)

Yeah I got the ‘:P’ :) heh
Well it seems to be the generally accepted method of writing that formula. Hawking, Cox etc.. they all refer to it that way and I’m no physicist :) I can tell you how the Universe began from nothing but don’t task me on fomrulae that are any thing other than Formula 1 :)

Quote: ” but I read that Assetto Corsa and PCars are using the same graphics
engine??? Thats just what I read, I could be completely wrong.” End of Quote.

Are you ‘Slightly Mad’ (Excuse the pun) They are using their own technologies to produce their games. :)

FWIW I rate Hawking much higher for a concise introduction if you want for the layman, but I am not a big fan of Cox. He was also the one that made a bit of a meal trying to explain energy levels and labeled them to be the same as quantum numbers, obviously contradicting the Pauli exclusion principle. He got some stick for that from the scientific community. Some may say knitpicking, but IMHO be careful reading that stuff, he is often a little misleading, not deliberately of course as he trying to explain that stuff to the layman and understands that difference. Cox is doing a good job and obviously doing well at making a few bob out of trying to make the subject more popular, which is a good thing, but there are books out there that do a better job, and are more concisely written. It is just that he is well known, his overall presentation of the TV programmes seem to appeal to the public.

I’ll shut up now. I forgot I am on a simracing forum, but seeing physics discussions are so common around here, why not have some :). For those that think some strange concepts like quantum tunnelling has no relevance to F1, it could very well have, tyres, rubber and gasses, it happens all the time, I believe it could have some role in tyre degradation in fact, but not seen any studies, not that I looked very hard, most of that kind of info would be kept behind closed doors anyway :(

As I always try to tell myself, the more you learn, the more you know, the more you realise you know very little.

I wonder how that tyre model is moving along in PCars and what type it will be, another one of the brush variations on a theme I guess ?

You completely misunderstood what i was trying to say.

As I said, it is vastly inferior to project cars’ graphics, but as i also said, I was talking about the “feel” of the general visuals and how that tricks and immersses your mind.

Not talking about staring and analysing particular objects graphics, as I said atleast twice that PCars is vastly superior in terms of graphics.

Maybe you can’t comprehend what I am trying to explain, and that’s ok, I don’t expect everyone to understand or agree with me.

On a separate side note though, for you to even bring such stupid things like 3d flags, banners and ppl into the equation of racing graphics, clearly shows that you have completely different priorities to me when it comes to racecar games.

That’s totally cool.

MULTIPLAYERS IN P CARS IS NOW FOR FULL MEMBER

AC and pCars both use advanced deferred renderer compared to the forward rendering in many other (and basically all older) games. They are very hard to tweak (at least to make it look real-ish :) ) but offer many advantages in terms of light sources and shading.

I think some devs just like a bit more stylized and/ or filmic look.

The distant blur can look beautiful I agree. I think they already had some non real-time adjustment ingame, while real cameras adjust zoom / focal length in real-time. Zoom on an object, focus on it and the distance blurs. Maybe that can be further tweaked.

And there’s a super early trial version of the new tyre model for Formula A too, activated with ‘-seta’ on command line.

There wasn´t any work on the replay system, yet. I agree, it looks not even nearly what you experience while driving. There must be sth. really wrong in the replay system since it doesn´t show any fluid and smooth behaviour but looks edgy and unevenly. Even if you are driving in hood cam and driving smooth through a chicane, in replay it looks totally different.

C4 thanks for that bit of info :)

So is the use of advanced deferred rendering, and how its harder to tweak (at least to make it look real-ish like you said) the reason why to some people it doesnt look as “real life like you are really there in the game”?? Even though the graphics themselves are obviously much much better and beautiful, if that makes any sense……….???……….

Well, it’s harder to tweak because of the complexity of materials and shaders.

I don’t think that’s the reason, then again, I dunno what people think and why ;)

Really ? No-ones ever mentioned that before.