I'll start with the bad news first, to the joy of a few and the disappointment of many, SimBin have emailed me and asked me to stop working on the conversion.
To make it short, after an email with Jay, he was kind enough to allow me to continue working on it, and even update the people that sent me a prrof they own gtr evo.
While I would have liked for them to see an opportunity rather than an IP infringement, but at least I'm happy they were open enough to come to this with me.
I'm sorry I was a bit too quick, but I really thought, the fact there was 1 mil gtr evo key going on soon after I came up with it, I thought the two had some sort of link, and made the key public thinking SimBin would probably not mind.
This happened on friday, so that's why the BTSync key link was removed from the blog.
I have asked Jay if I could add new gtr evo owner to the BTSync circle, and will probably get a reply about my second email monday, as when I replied the first time, I got an out of office automated message... so I was lucky to get a reply before the weekend.
So this sums up the bad and good news.
Now what's the awesome?
I have updated lots of mats with some better (much better) shaders. I have worked a good bit on the curbs and all concrete stuff next to the road. I used some detail maps of the nurb track, and it really makes a nice difference.
But that isnt the awesome yet ;)
After having the track look much better with the shaders, I thought I should now give the inside grass (before the guardrails) a try...
So I grassed up all the track and without trying before finishing, I splitted the objects, edited the normals and exported, and the kseditor crashed. So I decided to give the 4gb patch that Quadriga Corse told me about not long ago, and guess what, it worked.
Then I was thinking, how about the other grass I did a few days ago... and again, it worked. The fbx file is now 200mb, and the kn5 nearing 500mb, and it works!
I haven't seen much performance hit from only the niside grass, but adding the other brings it down a little. I can still play without lowering settings tho.
Some that were already tight will definately not be able to run it, at least well, might be able to run it for screenshots, but those with medium end hardware and better should be fine.
As a reference, I got a rather modest Phenom II x4 965, 8gb generic ram, and a gtx580 1.5gb.
I run with almost everything maxxed out, 1920x1080, 8x AA (just turned it on a few days ago, and it makes the trees like... almost photorealistic, unless you are real close to it, there is really a huge difference, and surprisingly, very little performance hit for me, as I'm bottlenecked by cpu anyway) but I have mirrors off and everything related to them, since I don't see them mostly anyway at 35 fov. Also have the reflections at low and 1 cubethingy. HDR on, etc.
So anyone with similar or better hardware should be fine
Now I haven't got all the grasss in yet, so there is a possibility I was already close to the limit and I won't be able to finish it up.. but at least I got the inside grass in.
As a cherry on top, I did a third layer of grooves, and highlighted the corners only with this one, and made the other running all around track less opaque.
Here are a few screenshots showing how it would look like with both grass in :)
Now wipe off the drool :P
By the way, all those screenshots comes from the standard replay cam using only forward/rewind, stop/play to capture a good frame, I didnt even used the photo mode to move around. :)
ReplyDeleteThe poly count is bogus and the engine deals with it like a champ... I'm really impressed...Thanks Quadriga for the patch :)
ReplyDeleteForgot to mention I created lots of spec maps as alpha. When I first set the simple shaders, to make the spec work, the simple solution without knowing how it all worked was to make a white alpha. This worked, but made everything on the material reflective.
ReplyDeleteI have created many spec maps, and things looks quite a bit better. Along with the new details maps, it makes the track look much fresher.
Hope you are allowed to keeping sharing updates, as I actually bought GTR Evo a few weeks ago just to get access to the track, and it was well worth it :D
ReplyDeleteYes, I may have explained badly, but as I said, he gave me the okay to update people who already sent me a proof they own GTR Evo, so when the next update will be ready, I will go thru my AC forums inbox and send the new BTSync key (as it's down now) to you all.
DeleteI have asked Jay if it is possible to add new gtr evo owner (well either brand new, or those who bought a while ago) but wasn't aware of the track, and did not originally sent me a proof of gtr evo.
If he accepts, then I think I would be happy..
One of the main reasons SimBin don't want conversion to happen no more seems to be because people were ripping their game clean, often without letting know others in others sim where the content came from, so little people knew it was from simbin games.
But from the start, I have never tried to hide this, but in fact pointed out the great work they have done, and even went as far as finding simbin logos (as well as rf2 and kunos) and put them in game to replace the missing simbin banner ads, that must have been hardcoded or changeable with time... I dunno.. the poly and texture of some banners were simply missing.
It would be nice if SimBin give some sort of authorization within their "rules", so that you could share the track in websites like VirtualR.
ReplyDeleteThis^ would be a really great move for everybody.
DeleteThe way I see it, the content in previous games and out of life titles like race07, gtr2, rfactor, shift, shift2, etc, all of these have some awesome cars and tracks, and even today, with a little work, they would look brand new again, or almost. And as it is now, all that stuff is left dying in their original games...
DeleteAnd who does it hurt really, if it is done well? I seriously can't see... as Jay have mentioned to me, people in the past, went as far as hiding where the stuff they converted came from. So yeah, I can see this as a problem, but if we work with some kind of ethics, all I can see is free advertisement for the original game, and even tho it might not make everyone buy the original, it will likely spark that desire in some people, and those are extra sales.... On my next update, I will add a steam link to gtr evo on my blog, so it can easily be bought. Dunno why I haven't thought about this before.
Plus, most sim racers have bought most, if not all sim racing titles since he started sim racing, so there is good chance many have already all the titles needed to play them in whatever game they wish nowaday.
I really would like to see ISI/Kunos/SimBin change stance on modding. I know this all changed last year when SimBin changed theirs, but if we all work together, I think something positive could come out of this.
And out of these conversions, some will be more awesome than others, and what prevents the original creator to offer some compensation to have access to the updated track and put it in their new game?
I now know what would be my dream sim.. a sim made by Kunos/SimBin/ISI together, with Kunos worknig on engine/physics/ffb/cars, ISI and SimBin on cars and tracks, and helping where they can in the physics/ffb and other department, but clearly, Kunos have an edge there... but SimBin are the masters at track making, with ISI closing ground with every track they do these days... And all of them make nice cars too.
I mean, look at what Notch said about Minecraft, the day the game will see a decline in sales, he will put it open source so others can take it further.
ReplyDeleteThis is what I'm talking about...
Seriously great work Pleclair!
ReplyDelete