Next-gen trees in simracers

Has been discussed before, sry.
Completely wishthinking and utterly useless regarding AC future, but maybe AC2 will show the way.
Look at 0:59, this is the track trees I want in a next-gen sim



For now, is there any hope we can se 3D/animated trees? Like these:

 

they look very nice, i wonder how resource hungry it would be tho.

 

Didnt watch the vids but, as far as my experience goes, adding 3D trees is easy.
Its the hardwares ability to get decent framerates that holds them back.
Other than waiting for HW to evolve, I dont see any other option.

 

But could we not have at least animated 3d trees (low poly as possible, not the maya-stuff yet) with current hardware in a racesim, if we´re able to configure lower settings, like low smoke, reflections, rays, etc. to have good fps with anim trees?
I know it would be much to ask for max settings on a triplescreen setup with animated trees, but still it should be an option, right?

I really really want to be done with cardboard trees close to track. They belong in the background.

 

I'm sure it can be done, GTA seems able to cram loads of animated trees into it's game so it's possible. It's the kind of thing that you wouldn't really notice until you're stopped though, it would add to the game but what you'd get back for the work put in probably wouldn't be worth it at this stage. I think it might be something that would go into AC 2 like you say rather than adding it to this version.

 

No current Sim studio has anywhere near the capability to deliver cutting edge graphics. Just how it is.
(unless you count PCars as a sim, which as it's not released yet we can't say)

It's not just supporting potato PC's, but the man-hours put into optimizing graphics and post-processing on a scene by scene basis to maintain framerate parity.

 

Well, I agree that the animation is maybe pointless unless the weather is very windy. But, the 3d trees would no doubt make an impact on the overall tracklook, to me the cardboard trees is the biggest immersion braker of the overall track impression. No problem 10 years ago, but today we´re spoiled from other games.
The cars look much more realistic, it´s crazy with high reflections even, the tracksurface looks awesome on high settings, and we even have 3d grass? As soon as I pass trees that is too close to the track, I get the dreaded toy-feeling for couple of seconds, it bugs me with the high standards of the rest.
An extreme example is the great trans-north track (not pointing fingers at drdoomslab!), the first part is great but looks 10 years old, I can´t wait to get up to the mountain part where everything looks more realistic because the lack of cardboardtrees. It bugs me on official tracks like Spa as well, so many parts where I look ahead on straights and my eye catches...cardboard wall of trees and bushes, eek! I need the decades of cb-trees to be over

 

The main part of the tree that really breaks the illusion for me is where they meet the ground. They do tend to look like a piece of board that has been drove into the ground. I don't know what your could do at the base of the tree to make it blend better without there being a big processing cost.

 

It's the flat 2D foliage pads on the branches that hurt my eyes the most.

I understand this isn't Arborsim 2.0 though

 

I would prefer simulation of backstage racing life than realistic trees... We allready have trees and they serve their purpose, while there is no proper carrer in no racing game whatsoever....

 

Anyone who has played Arma knows how FPS intensive 3D trees with dynamic shading and animations are.

 

Racing games are quite different from other games, since it features long open straights and high speeds through the world. Other games can downgrade graphical detail in the distance or around corners, and up the detail when the player comes close.



I made a quick example to explain the way AC does trees. In AC you'll see methods 1 & 2. These will have an image of a tree laid over them so they will apear as trees ingame. Other games will use method 3 & 4, where the squares in method 4 will have images of tiny branches or leaves. When you're further away the game will usually swap these more detailed trees out for the ones in method 1 & 2, depending on if you can move around them or not.

Personally I prefer the way AC does it since once you start to notice the game swapping things out you'll never unsee it.

This is a worst case example:

 

Exactly this. KS don't currently have the resources to do a proper day/night cycle (or even fix the completely broken sun model), a lighting model with more than one source, or animation for anything other than very simple flags (not to mention weather, but that's obviously far more involved than just graphics).

Proper 3D trees swaying in the breeze would no doubt be lovely, but it would be nonsense to give them any sort of attention before addressing some of the other visual deficiencies.

 

Little correction AC uses Y trees. But it's the same thing. I think we are not there yet with HW to have 2000 3D trees on track. When Simulators are simulating most of the physics of the car, AI etc. There isn't uch power left for trees. It works in GTA, FPS etc. because, they can get away with 60 - 30 fps. And you don't see far and you don't drive 200 km/h, they are not simulating much.

 

The trees from the first video would eat up more RAM than you could imagine. These trees have millions of polygons and are only used for professional 3d visuals. Even if you use proxies (technique to save up a lot of ram) that wouldn´t work in any game at the moment. Maybe there are some new ways to handle that with DirectX12.

 

Great answers, everything makes of cause sense to why we don´t have 3d/animated trees yet, and I admit I already knew the letdown facts before starting this thread.
What I didn´t know, was how long till, or how far we´re from having 3d and/or animated trees in a leading racesimulator. Thing is, that I played a modtrack where the trackside trees were 3D, anything further was 2D, and it works very well. It immediately adds to immersion of being on a real track/road rather than in a cartoon, so I´m still wondering why we´re not seing at least a mix of 2d/3d in official content.

 

It's not only 3d trees the issue of making a realistic environment in a game, it's the entire vegetation and the way it's subclasses interact with each other and then with the land/track.
The entire vegetation made in a 3d world should be comprised of a multitude of sizes, types and colors of grass, bushes and trees and combined and mixed up in a natural way, like nature does in real life.

One of the most realistic looking games I played lately was The Vanishing of Ethan Carter. It looks absolutely stunning and very real life like from color palette, to the lighting to the realistic vegetation as I said above and distant land rendering of objects as far as the eyes can see, plus vegetation physics.




Of course, this is an FPS game and it's not even one of the fast paced ones, so you move slowly thru this photo-realistic world, thus it's easier on the PCs to render it than doing it at 200km/h + lots of car physics and AI like racing sims do. But this does not stop me from dreaming the day we get photo-realistic looking sim racing games.

As far as I seem, the 3 best looking racing games at the moment, which look a little better than AC are PCars, Driveclub and Forza 5, but not even those look as good as The Vanishing of Ethan Carter or Crysis 3 or the new FPS games to come this year.

Sim racing and sims in general will always be 1 or 2 steps behind the leading force of graphical advancement in video games: the FPS games. These were the games that started this whole race of better and better game engines and GPUs. And I believe this will always be the case up to the point where there can't be any more advancement in this field. When is that gonna happen? Some say in 10 years, probably, but most likely in 15-20 years I say, until we cannot distinguish and game from reality.

 

I had a friend saying Forza 5 looked better than AC. That is mind-boggling to think of. Load up the game and just look at it. The game runs at 720p. The models are Ok, it had maybe 2xaa which it didn't even look like that when I played it. The overall environment is dull except for the trees and you have a very limited grid. Not to mention no AF. Smh

 

Are 3D trees linked to dynamic lighting over trees? My question is if it would be possible for the trees to change their lighting color, based on where the sun is and based on our perspective from the car.

 

I'm not sure why your friend's TV output is lower, but Forza 5 runs at 1080p 60fps > http://www.gamespot.com/articles/microsoft-responds-to-xbox-one-1080p-controversy/1100-6417720/

Also if you look in this video below, which for now still represent the best virtual representation of Nords, you can clearly see it's not dull at all. The entire vegetation is much more real like and the lighting is too, compared to AC. The only thing I don't like it's the sun's fixed position, but I bet at the end of this year when Forza 6 comes that will be changed and it will probably get dynamic weather and time.

Also take, take a look at their AA, is not worse than AC has now. AC used to have 8x and now it has 4x, that's great progress. Sure you can use external programs to force the AA higher, but you need a very good PC to do that. Don't forget youtube compression.


Sorry, but making a comparison on the same terms, that is 1080p @ 60fps AC vs 1080p @ 60 fps Forza 5, graphics wise, Forza 5 wins almost at every aspect.

Nah, graphics are not an issue of Forza, physics are. That's where AC mops the floor with it, but that's pretty much all there is.