Driving in the pack, in the rain, in the night...

So yesterday, I dove a little bit more into the rain driving thingy, and after doing some laps in a practive session, started the first race in the rain, from the end of the field...

Up to this very point, I was pretty much convinced of two things:

1.) When race drivers speak of how they are absolutely blind when driving behind another car during heavy rain, because of the spray of the car in front, well, I always believed they were exxagerating to quite some extent, because, I mean, if ya cant see, ya cant drive, and if ya really cant see, ya really cant drive!
...Well, after driving ACC in the pack, in the rain,...seems they did not exxagerate, not at all.

2.) In RL onboard clips, the spray looks blinding, but I always thought, it looks worse then in reality, because of the white spray causes the camera to overexpose the frame, making it look more white and more blinding then it actually is.
...Well, turns out, it has not been overexposure, you really dont see a thing when driving close behind another car in heavy rain.

Being ever contemplative, I still wonder though: Are you really THAT blind in the rain?

Not to get this wrong, I actually loved it, and found it one hell of a thrilling, although nerve wrecking experience, driving by road side objects picked up in peripheral vision rather, and holding on for dear life onto the rain and brake lights of the car in front. Going full blast, hoping not to overshoot a braking point that I can only guess upon, but not really see, because everything is just a spray of white. On occasion, I was shifting my lane to get out of the spray of the car in front, just so to see a little bit more.

After getting my apprenticeship during the day, I did a another rain race, but this time in the night!

Now I do know from driving in RL, that when driving through a foggy night, if the fog thickens, at some point
it reflects so much light, that high beams make you see less. Of course, in RL, you have dedicated fog lamps, and most of all, you drive more slowly if the visibility worsens...

However, in ACC I'm supposed to go as fast as ever, regardless of how much I see, or even anything for that matter. Having said that, I was still surprised of the level of dazzle due to the reflection of my own cars head lights in the spray of the car in front. Sometimes I switched off the head light alltogether, because I could then at least actually see the braking lights through the spray.

Now I wonder, if in its current state, these parameters of the density of the spray, and its reflection parameters may still be down to some tweaking, or if real life racing drivers are indeed utter and complete maniacs, to drive under such conditions.

Given how much a blast it was for me, and how much it reassambled what I heard and saw of it before, but did not really believe in, I suppose the latter...But man, am I glad to not have to do this IRL.

One thing about the head lights: The high beams seem to make the light cone more bright, but do not actually have a further reach.

 

This video shows quite nice IMO how much spray a GT3 is producing in the wet.

(hard to tell from a video, but it doesn't even look like the track is really soaked)


Especially look out for (sadly rare though) moments were the camera is in-line behind the car and the imagine driving closely behind from the driver's position.

 

I have had one CTD immediately after installing the game, and then three more so far, the latter three times always with enough darkness that all AI cars were using headlights, and heavy rain or thunderstorm. The race did not last one lap this way. Considering that may rig is not the weakest, nor is my gfx card, I am a bit irritated. CPU temps stayed below 81 at max, which is kind of normal for heavy load tasks over here (normal load around 70, idle around 30-33)

Racing in day and just sunny or cloudy weather conditions, is okay. Did several 20 minutes races, and completed them. Hotlapping in darkness and thunderstorm, also seems to work.

 

By far there will be some other user with some proper driving experience here, all what i can see is coming from my simple multiple experiences on rental kart.

2 times i've had races under the rain, with slick tires and also with rain tires.
And both times i've had an horrific experiences talking about visibility.
Expecially the very first time that i've tried in this conditions, i almost was quitting the race just because i really didn't see nothing behind the other karts. Nothing.

The experience between cars and kart obviously is different, but for sure after tried that, my opinion about real drivers who run under the rain is completely changed.

 

Very valid reference still, and in line with what in generally is being told.
I think ACC also made me change my opinion on what it really is like to race in the rain, talking balls of steel...

 

@Skybird that very much looks like an issue with Overclocking. Have you tried to clock back your 1080? I had very similar issues with X-plane Planemaker, which crashed on me randomly
and it was in the end my 1080 being clocked a tad too high. Funnily, the card was stable in X-plane itself, and also in the benchmarks I tortured it with to find the highest stable clock...

 

to be fair, even if irl and in acc you can't see anything (almost), is a bit different what you (can't) see.

I mean, now in acc we have almost a solid white wall in front of us (or at least, i see this with my graphic settings). IRL you don't see a flat wall, but like a shower in your visor (in my examples) that covers, distorts, confuses all what you see.

So in the end you are always almost blind, but just in a different way.

But, ok, i'm not pretending the moon and what acc is showing on screen is anyway over my expectations.

 

My gfx card comes at factory-OC settings, the Asus card 1080Ti is decribed to have better performance in its OC version - while staying slightly colder than the default card! That actually was the reason why I threw out the extra coins for the OC model instead of sticking with the default model - I was not after the performance, but the temperature advantage . Both are slightly different on the hardware level, the cooling system. I do not even know how to overclock something, never did that, so I have not added any OC myself - no need for it, also, I use a good, huge air cooler, no water cooling. While temps are high but in the green, its in my interest to avoid pushing them over the tops.

Also, I wonder in how far I must care for extreme gfx conditions like heavy rain plus night and lights, plus AI cars. I fear, somehow the AI goes the same way like in AC1 in the dry, and in the rain right now we can see it doing tremendously slow nonsense when driving through puddles of water - making them even slower. Add this to the weakness of the AI in braking into turns. As a single player it probably will not make sense for me to race the AI in the rain, as long as they do not dramatically increase the AI over that in AC1, as I said, what there is now looks too familiar to AC1 as if I will believe before it happens that it is happening. So, night plus and rain might become a task for hotlapping anyway. Rain in general. Talking as a non-MP player. Which is kind of fine, since I suck at rain driving anyway, probably never will be competitive, even less so since car setups mostly are black magic to me.

 

Looking for some wet onboard race videos. Found this, its not a gt3 car but he has a cracked windscreen thats badly fogged up in rain. Not sure how heavy the rain is as you cant see chit out the windscreen but he keeps on having a go.


Here is a gt3 onboard at Paul Ricard.