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Project CARS (crowdsourcing) racing sim by Slightly Mad Studios (fully funded 3.75M)

MaLDo

Member
Pretty sure this is just Motion-Blur, because the vehicles are excluded from that system and don't get the 'ghosting'. I just looked at one of the VVV videos and you can see the 'ghost' (as you call it) offset is proportional to the vehicle speed when pausing the video at various points. In motion this translates to variable "length" blur depending on how fast you are travelling, which is pretty standard for a post style MB system like the one used on Project Cars. In the case of that GIF - looking sideways the blur system would be producing very large offsets for each frame and the result looks like one I'd expect from this sort of MB shader.




You did big improvements in motion blur in last few months. Still, the effect never applies to cars can produce bizarre images like this (very extreme example, I know)

motionblur.png

Is there something planed in the future to add object based motion blur in cars? Is motion blur different in PC? The trail image seems to be blended using actual blur with the original one.


Furthermore, motion blur was applied to windshield in cockpit cam and on water drops too when turning, braking and accelerating creating an uncomfortable tunnel effect but I glad to see those were fixed recently. Congrats.


It's need a more soft filter on tree shadows because when projected on the windshield are very unrealistic. I will search a representative shot later.
It is also confusing in the graphics options that the level of detail of cars affects the shadows of these (distances, specifically). It would be nice to have an option for shadows resolution and another one for distances (separating cars shadows options and track shadows would be great) as there are people more sensitive to blocky shadows but others prefer less resolution but avoid shadows pop in.
After the great improvement in the visual quality during night races a couple of months ago where you applied bloom effects to simulate the atmosphere density, would be great more control in options for cars shadows from car lights. They are only perfectly fine in ultra shadow preset but this preset is very demanding on the hardware for the other parameters that rise in the preset. Every track shadow produced by our car lights disappear in other preset but ultra. Using our car lights produced shadows with lower resolution could be a better compromise, so again allowing the user to check track shadows on/off indepently of the shadows quality will be perfect.

External camera has judder problems in some too long turns. There are similar problems about keyframes interpolation in replay cameras, but they are more visible in some zooms + travelling movements.

Anisotropic. You have perfectly described the level of AF applied on tarmac and ground decals (tire marks, dirty decals..), but what aniso level consoles apply in vertical surfaces? I refer especially to advertising textures on the track sides. They are usually the most critic part because our eyes tend to read them.

LODs. Are there plans to do a less rigid LOD calculation? Taking account the number of cars on screen and weather conditions (fog or rain) that can affect visibility. I remember doing a similar comment about detailed grass in wmd forums. Moving every car to lower polycount LOD in a few meters in storm weather could save resources that could be devoted to drawing minimal car reflections.

Faked reflections for rear lights produce inconsistent results, some occluded by another car lights has reflections, sometimes they are visible through the tarmac, cars with 3 rear lights only have 2 light reflections .... are there fixes for that in post launch patches? It's fantastic you have achieved to fit that effect in consoles so recently that we've not seen in any console footage yet. Was it possible at the expense of a few miliseconds in consoles frametime or putting more optimizations in the code. In the last case, are those optimizations usable for PC version or are they using specific console workarounds? I always though that performance hit for those faked reflections was too massive.

About car reflections, until a few months ago, reflections presets MEDIUM and HIGH showed reflections of the opponents cars on the wet asphalt. Different presets involved different quality of those reflections (basically reflection resolution without filtering). A few weeks ago this approach was changed, and now there are only car reflections using the ULTRA preset. Leaving the rest of presets without opponent cars reflections as it is the console version. Ultra preset is very demanding in CPU requirements so now is available to very few people to enjoy races where your opponents have reflections under the rain. This change is related to the recent move to some SSR layers? Is there intention for bring car reflections back in any way or is already something for PCARS2?

There have been some last minute changes in the ambient occlusion? It has always been an absent effect in pCARS but it could give a boost to the graphics. HBAO + for the future?

Congratulations for finally fix problems with detailed grass in multigpu systems in v998, I already thought I could not test that improvement in any build before the final version. My 3way sli thanks you.



Thank you.
 

Megasoum

Banned
Oh, really?

I thought GT, Forza and Project CARS were all car sims featuring real cars and real tracks.
How can we not compare them?

Even if the way racing is implemented in the console titles isn't your cup of tea, this certainly doesn't make them so different that they can't be compared.

You keep saying this but how are they different games?

They are aiming for different goals.

Forza is all about collecting cars, upgrading them, grinding for money etc. You drive really short races with a small number of cars on track and always start from the back of the grid.

pCARS is all about playing through a motorsport career. You sign up in a Kart team and climb through the ranks over multiple seasons to eventually end up in LMP1 and race at Le Mans. Basically they are re-creating a Madden/FIFA style career mode but applied to motorsport. You do practices and qualifications for every race week-ends. You have mendatory pit stops, you have real time fuel usage, time of day, weather, etc etc.
All the cars are unlocked from the beginning and there is no leveling or grinding anywhere.


Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that one is necessarly better than the other. I loved all the Forza and GT games so far and I'll be buying FM6 next fall on day 1. All I'm saying is that they are different enough that this kind of comparison doesn't make sense.
 

Bobnob

Member
Comparing Pcars to Forza is like comparing Forza to Need for speed hot pursuit imo, they have both got cars in,no
 

VodevilX

Banned
Tbh I was expecting like Shift 2 lineup of CARS, nothing moar, nothing less.
But at least 1-1 from those Jap an US cars, that many were expecting.
 
Comparing Pcars to Forza is like comparing Forza to Need for speed hot pursuit imo, they have both got cars in,no

Have you played Project Cars or Forza 5 much?

I have. PCars Team Member and got FM5 at launch.

The handling between the two feels very similar.

The games differ in their gameplay focus - motorsport or car collecting etc. But in terms of handling they are very close. Especially when one plays both with an XB1 pad.
 

Bobnob

Member
Have you played Project Cars or Forza 5 much?

I have. PCars Team Member and got FM5 at launch.

The handling between the two feels very similar.

The games differ in their gameplay focus - motorsport or car collecting etc. But in terms of handling they are very close. Especially when one plays both with an XB1 pad.
I'm talking about feature's and the all round racing experiance, a lot of people seem to be ignorent to that fact. : )
 
Have you played Project Cars or Forza 5 much?

I have. PCars Team Member and got FM5 at launch.

The handling between the two feels very similar.

The games differ in their gameplay focus - motorsport or car collecting etc. But in terms of handling they are very close. Especially when one plays both with an XB1 pad.

What about the graphics? Similar?
 
Got a question for the render team.

Are these reflections SSR? And how long have they been here if so? Only just noticed them today but they look fantastic. They work on all cameras too as opposed to just the bonnet cam like Forza does it. Nice seeing the side of my car become orange when I overtake a bright orange Focus.

They're also so detailed that looking at my roof, I can see the reflection of the brake lights of the car in front on the wet road. Reflections within reflections, man.

 

Helznicht

Member
Hi
Formula A with a skin of McLaren F1 2015 ( locust) with my new wheel on the Nurburgring GP



greeting

OK PC Gurus, is it possible to force a 3 monitor wide resolution (5760?) on/in the game and have the videocard drivers downsample it to 1920 for output on a single 50 inch TV?
 

Arulan

Member
Thanks for the insight. Here's a bigger gif, this shows ghosting across the frame, including the cars.
9wPO2Og.gif

There's even ghosting on the driver's hands, I'll make gif of it too and edit it here.

If it is indeed caused by motion blur, which seems to produce only one sample, hopefully it can be turned off, right? (Also, it's even present in the rear view mirrors, you can see that in car in the rear view mirror. This seems like a whole-screen effect)

What kind of AA are you using? Try turning it off and test. Alien Isolation for some reason causes ghosting when using SMAA T2x. It may be a longshot, but just something I thought to check.
 

danowat

Banned
Just watching the latest VVV video, this one is on controller settings.

There are a lot, however I did notice that there aren't any tooltips for explanation of what some of the options do.

Are there any?
 
Thanks for the insight. Here's a bigger gif, this shows ghosting across the frame, including the cars.
9wPO2Og.gif

There's even ghosting on the driver's hands, I'll make gif of it too and edit it here.

If it is indeed caused by motion blur, which seems to produce only one sample, hopefully it can be turned off, right? (Also, it's even present in the rear view mirrors, you can see that in car in the rear view mirror. This seems like a whole-screen effect)

I can 99% guarantee you that's caused by the sampling of the video. If I render a 60FPS video down to 30FPS in Sony Vegas without disabling resampling, I get ghosting exactly like that. Unless that's your own recording and you can vouch for it being seen in person, then it's rather strange.

But for me at least it looks nothing like that ingame, the screenshots shown above are more accurate because they show the cars not being affected by motion blur.
 

hesido

Member
What kind of AA are you using? Try turning it off and test. Alien Isolation for some reason causes ghosting when using SMAA T2x. It may be a longshot, but just something I thought to check.

I've taken this from the TeamVVV youtube video, and this is also present in the Gamersyde videos which is direct feed. Actually, a temporal anti alias was one of my first theories to explain this (aside from a video encoding problem), but it turns out they are not using a temporal anti alias solution. (for PS4)

Unfortunately no, for a variety of reasons (have to leave it at that).

If indeed this is not a video encoding problem, it's a very poor implementation of motion blur, as it just looks like a frame blend, instead of approximating the changing light that a "sensor unit" or film receives during exposure time, this just seems to blend two frames, as the ghost of a previous frame is also present in the next frame with a new ghost.

I can 99% guarantee you that's caused by the sampling of the video. If I render a 60FPS video down to 30FPS in Sony Vegas without disabling resampling, I get ghosting exactly like that. Unless that's your own recording and you can vouch for it being seen in person, then it's rather strange.

But for me at least it looks nothing like that ingame, the screenshots shown above are more accurate because they show the cars not being affected by motion blur.

That was my initial reaction when I saw 30fps videos on TeamVVV. Their 60fps videos were in fact running at 30fps, and with the ghosting. I even commented on one of their videos telling them to check their encoding!
edit: I found my comment, this was commented 4 weeks ago:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VaMkw8S7vDE&lc=z13dttbwltexzjct223uif1ihznoh1wgq04
And indeed, that "60fps" video was actually 30fps, because I was suspicious of the framerate and the ghosting, so downloaded and checked to make sure, each frame had a double frame! But the gifs are taken from 60fps videos :\


These are from 60fps videos on youtube (this time they are indeed 60fps!)

Here's one showing the ghosting on drivers hands:
mHxzjzy.gif


I'm hoping all these are due to bad video but SMSrenderteam says it may be because of the motion blur, but this affects also cars AND rear view mirrors, and looks like a frame blend instead of a motion blur (as consecutive frames are visible at every frame, instead of a motion blur that provide multiple samples along a path.)
 

_machine

Member
If indeed this is not a video encoding problem, it's a very poor implementation of motion blur, as it just looks like a frame blend, instead of approximating the changing light that a "sensor unit" or film receives during exposure time, this just seems to blend two frames, as the ghost of a previous frame is also present in the next frame with a new ghost.
I wasn't commenting on the quality of the motion blur though, but as far as I can say the implementation of PC looks pretty good, though of course there some minor things that could be improved. That said, I can't remember noticing any excessive ghosting either, but it could still be there. But yeah, the point was that motion blur can't be toggled on consoles.
 

SMSRenderTeam

Neo Member
Got a question for the render team.

Are these reflections SSR? And how long have they been here if so? Only just noticed them today but they look fantastic. They work on all cameras too as opposed to just the bonnet cam like Forza does it. Nice seeing the side of my car become orange when I overtake a bright orange Focus.

They're also so detailed that looking at my roof, I can see the reflection of the brake lights of the car in front on the wet road. Reflections within reflections, man.

The reflections are not using SSR - they use a cube-map which is a 6 directional render from a point below the track. This is an expensive method but gives a higher quality end result, avoiding the various problems and limitations of using an SSR approach.

A few months back, water (lakes/rivers/sea) also used this reflection method but we decided that the SSR approach and the associated artefacts weren't visible on a rippled water surface so switched over to that method for the water shaders, giving a decent speed-up (> 10%) over the version that Digital Foundry for example tested.
 

hesido

Member
I wasn't commenting on the quality of the motion blur though, but as far as I can say the implementation of PC looks pretty good, though of course there some minor things that could be improved. That said, I can't remember noticing any excessive ghosting either, but it could still be there. But yeah, the point was that motion blur can't be toggled on consoles.

I know, just had to point out the quality aspect because it's unconventionally poor as a motion blur and I think it may not be motion blur that's causing this, and that SMSRenderTeam may be talking about a different effect due to mis-communication.

Game developers don't make drivers for the wheels they support in their games, though.
What you're asking for is Logitech's responsibility.
You are right, I'm just talking theoretically.

Theoretically, a developer could strike a deal with immersion like a per download fee, work with logitech (or re[verse]engineer their drivers with permission), off-load that licensing cost to end user by packaging in a paid DLC. But this is indeed far fetched. Developers can selectively enable fight sticks not officially supported by Sony on PS4, as you know. But of course the FFB, the requirement of proper drivers (a fight stick is just standard controller) and the licensing issue make this much more complex issue.
 

le-seb

Member
They are aiming for different goals.
It still doesn't change the fact that they are all car sims featuring tracks and cars.
And this is a sufficient reason why this game will be compared to the other ones in the same genre, like it or not.

You can be sure people will applaud the game for the many things it does better than its competitors, but they will also criticize it for its relative lack of cars, still when compared to its competitors .
This *will* happen, and saying 'you can't compare pCARS to Forza/GT' like you do won't change shit.
 
The reflections are not using SSR - they use a cube-map which is a 6 directional render from a point below the track. This is an expensive method but gives a higher quality end result, avoiding the various problems and limitations of using an SSR approach.

A few months back, water (lakes/rivers/sea) also used this reflection method but we decided that the SSR approach and the associated artefacts weren't visible on a rippled water surface so switched over to that method for the water shaders, giving a decent speed-up (> 10%) over the version that Digital Foundry for example tested.

I thought cubemaps were by design limited to static things like the environment and skybox, and couldn't reflect dynamic things such as physics props and cars? Or is that a special method you're using?

Also, regardless of how it's achieved, let it be known that you guys achieved it well, lol.
 

hesido

Member
I thought cubemaps were by design limited to static things like the environment and skybox, and couldn't reflect dynamic things such as physics props and cars? Or is that a special method you're using?

Also, regardless of how it's achieved, let it be known that you guys achieved it well, lol.

You can have dynamically generated cubemap by pointing your camera at each direction. Very expensive because of it.

edit: https://youtu.be/CHnSRFO_pjM?t=37s
You can see the cubemap being generated in realtime.
 
Maybe SMS means the cubemaps are dynamically updated, which does indeed sound expensive but with good results?

Unless I'm mistaken, what you're speaking of is essentially what Image Based Lighting is. The Forza games have used that since FM4, and GTA 5 uses it. From what I understand it basically works as a "screenshot" of the surroundings that updates X times per second that gets mapped on as a reflection. But, those are also incapable of reflecting physics/dynamic objects from what I've seen, because they're essentially just updating cubemaps, which is why I was curious as to what SMS used to get their real reflections.

Like I said I could be mistaken about the whole thing, but thankfully we have actual graphical engineers in the thread every now and then to correct us on these things.

You can have dynamically generated cubemap by pointing your camera at each direction. Very expensive because of it.

Is there a proper name for this method? I'd love to see some info on it because it's completely new to me.
 

SMSRenderTeam

Neo Member
You can have dynamically generated cubemap by pointing your camera at each direction. Very expensive because of it.

edit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHnSRFO_pjM
You can see the cubemap being updated as soon as the object is moved, but is static as long as the object stays put.

Project Cars uses 6 environment maps:

DUMMY - this is a small env-map containing the sky/clouds only. It is rendered every frame.

STATIC - this is used as a basis to control the dynamic time of day lighting system - it is sequentially updated progressively over a number of frames. This uses the DUMMY env-map so that objects in this map "receive" the sky colour and clouds. It's called "Static" because it is at a fixed place in the world, chosen by the art team. It does not include dynamic objects like cars and physics props.

DYNAMIC - this is used for the the reflections you see on the car bodywork. Rendered every frame.

REFLECTION - used for the track surface reflections that you see in wet weather. Rendered every frame.

DIFFUSE/SPECULAR CONVOLUTIONS - these are two maps that are generated via a convolution filter for image based lighting, used on the cars. Rendered every frame.

WMD members can see all of these maps using the F1 debug menu in gold builds :)
And that feature has been particularly useful, with the community using this debug mode to isolate and report many bugs during development.

*EDIT* So there's a lot going on "behind the scenes" before the main scene is rendered to accomplish the result you see on screen!
 

hesido

Member
Is there a proper name for this method? I'd love to see some info on it because it's completely new to me.

It could be called dynamic cube mapping. Explained here:
http://thangnguyendemo.blogspot.com.tr/2009/05/dynamic-cube-mapping-for-real.html

You don't have to render everything of course, or one for everyframe.

..awesome info on reflection maps..

Thanks!

Did you see the ghosting gif effecting cars and the rear view mirrors? Not just the track or environment? :=) I'm hoping it could be "fixed"!
 

SMSRenderTeam

Neo Member

Lego Boss

Member

Hedrush

Member
I asked this over in the car thread but it's went unanswered.

For those who have played the game, is it possible to create your own private multiplayer room, invite my friends and setup a small tour of let's say 6 races with a points system in place?
 

danowat

Banned
I asked this over in the car thread but it's went unanswered.

For those who have played the game, is it possible to create your own private multiplayer room, invite my friends and setup a small tour of let's say 6 races with a points system in place?

In addition to this, can you create your own solo championships?, choose tracks, cars etc etc.
 
I asked this over in the car thread but it's went unanswered.

For those who have played the game, is it possible to create your own private multiplayer room, invite my friends and setup a small tour of let's say 6 races with a points system in place?

You can create your own private game. You can set a password, lobby name for server browser, and privacy. Can't find any settings on creating a tour/championship but don't take that as a no.

In addition to this, can you create your own solo championships?, choose tracks, cars etc etc.

Likewise, I can't find any options but that's not a definite no. There's a "coming soon" button under the freeplay menu buttons, so that could be what you're after. You can roughly control the AI's car choices in a single race though, you can choose between same car, same class, and multiclass.

EDIT: I've got my own question. Does the game export photos taken in photomode? Where do they go if they do? I have quite a few pictures that were surprisingly enhanced by the photo filters and I'd like to grab them.
 

SMSRenderTeam

Neo Member
Thanks for the insight. Here's a bigger gif, this shows ghosting across the frame, including the cars.
9wPO2Og.gif

There's even ghosting on the driver's hands, I'll make gif of it too and edit it here.

If it is indeed caused by motion blur, which seems to produce only one sample, hopefully it can be turned off, right? (Also, it's even present in the rear view mirrors, you can see that in car in the rear view mirror. This seems like a whole-screen effect)

I think here a slowed down gif doesn't correctly represent what you see in-game. The ghosting in each frame combined with persistence of vision at 60FPS approximates the human visual system's limitations. Certainly all the 60FPS videos on-line look fine to me - I just see (a not overdone) motion blur effect on the road and scenery .

With regards to the driver's hands I'm certain that we had various bugs during development in this area that were fixed - a bunch of graphics code wasn't correctly setting the flags to exclude items like the driver from the motion-blur effect. It's entirely possible that this is a geniune bug though - so was the capture from a video or from a shop running the game? If it's from a shop it's worth checking if the game has the D1P patch applied since it may already have been fixed.
 
My understanding is, licensing of Immersion tech (and its drivers) was platform specific and not product specific. So to use a product on a different platform, money has to be spent either by the game dev to implement it per title, or the hardware company could pay royalties for their product lines, an unknown sum. Logitech is out of wheel business and won't be paying any extra money for it. There are no current products with the feature set of a Logitech GT wheel, you'll just have to spend as much as your PS4 for a wheel with proper force feedback and not just a vibrating wheel.

I for one would gladly money transfer 15 usd dollars to Immersion's bank accounts.

Seriously, devs could sell the license as a dlc to off-load that fee to the end user. Better than shelling out 300 usd for a new wheel.

That's a good idea. Of course it's Logitech's matter, but considering the impact this has on YOUR game, developers should try to do whatever is possible to fix the situation, even doing work that's supposed to be done by somebody else.

Game developers don't make drivers for the wheels they support in their games, though.
What you're asking for is Logitech's responsibility.

See above.

You keep saying this but how are they different games?

GT is a driving sim, Pcars is a racing sim. That's the easiest way to put it.

It still doesn't change the fact that they are all car sims featuring tracks and cars.
And this is a sufficient reason why this game will be compared to the other ones in the same genre, like it or not.

You can be sure people will applaud the game for the many things it does better than its competitors, but they will also criticize it for its relative lack of cars, still when compared to its competitors .
This *will* happen, and saying 'you can't compare pCARS to Forza/GT' like you do won't change shit.

Unfortunately you are right. We've seen many games not being understood by the media or the market, for Pcars the question is just how much this will hurt them in the long run. I still see then getting 85+ average on metacritic/gamerankings and selling over a million copies, but people will complain about those things, with or without understanding what the game is.
 

hesido

Member
I think here a slowed down gif doesn't correctly represent what you see in-game. The ghosting in each frame combined with persistence of vision at 60FPS approximates the human visual system's limitations. Certainly all the 60FPS videos on-line look fine to me - I just see (a not overdone) motion blur effect on the road and scenery .

With regards to the driver's hands I'm certain that we had various bugs during development in this area that were fixed - a bunch of graphics code wasn't correctly setting the flags to exclude items like the driver from the motion-blur effect. It's entirely possible that this is a geniune bug though - so was the capture from a video or from a shop running the game? If it's from a shop it's worth checking if the game has the D1P patch applied since it may already have been fixed.

Thanks for the clarifications. The captures are taken from TeamVVV's youtube videos (latest ones). As for me, I noticed this ghosting during normal speed play. Maybe it's my cheap laptop LCD that's amplifying the effect, maybe I'm just that susceptible to this, but certainly the way you take on motion blur is very different from other games.

I think it may be down to preference but here's motion blur from a near-60fps game (GoW3):
MXY2Ulp.jpg
Kd8vkJ4.jpg


We notice that motion blur is applied along a path, which tries to approximate the continuous reception of light during exposure time which is smaller than 60th of a second, by applying blur along motion vectors.

On the other hand, here's motion blur on P.Cars:
bYWykzm.jpg


It's just like two frames blended into one. Actually, on P.Cars videos, this effect is omnipresent across the frame, so at any given time, you are basically seeing two consecutive frames, and always, which would amount to an exposure time of exactly 60th of a second, however, there's no blur along a path, just blending of two frames:

Gfwa3uC.gif


In this gif, you see two consecutive frames, however, there are actually 3 frames visible. You'll see that 1 frame is shared between two frames, beause the motion blur seems to be blending just two consecutive frames, with no linear blur across a motion vector. This does a very poor job of simulating motion blur if that's what it's trying to be doing, as there's no blurring but blending, and since you are always moving, it creates that smudgy look.

Here are two consecutive frames from a GoW3:
hzYtjX7.gif

We see that the two frames do not meet in a "middle" frame, because the blur is applied with respect to how fast the camera is moving, instead of blending those frames, and the "exposure time" is less than 60th of a second (probably less than a quarter of a 60th second) because the blurred pixels do not meet across the frames.

So this is why I hope the ghosting is just caused by some bug or bad video encoding, and I hope the team re-thinks their choice of motion blur method if this is a design decision. It's just detrimental to the hard work all of you guys / gals have put in this game.
 

le-seb

Member
See above.
Great story, bro.

Now, just try to think for a minute at all the hassle involved, all the paperwork / legal stuff required, and all the money needed to make this happening. And all the shit that may happen afterwards regarding support because Logitech would say "it's SMS problem, not ours".

Are you back to earth, now?
 
In response to the lengthy post with gifs above, again I'm pretty certain that it's just ghosting as a result of video resampling. I've never once seen the ghosting effect in game, and it's a signature artifact of bad sampling. If I need to I can render some footage, recorded at 30fps and saved at 30fps with no resampling if we want to check details.
 

hesido

Member
Great story, bro.

Now, just try to think for a minute at all the hassle involved, all the paperwork / legal stuff required, and all the money needed to make this happening. And all the shit that may happen afterwards regarding support because Logitech would say "it's SMS problem, not ours".

Are you back to earth, now?

I don't think we were strictly implying SMS should solve this, but just brain-storming how this issue could be addressed. Of course a developer with relatively limited legal backing would have a hard time. The other option being platform holders could strike that deal, work with vendors, and let people pay for those drivers. Have the drivers available to all devs, but enable it per user. But these are all imaginations of a naive Logitech GT owner :=)

If a game decides to include Logitech GT or G27 support, I think this would positively affect its sales. I for one would flock to buy it. That's when a dev deals with it. If a platform holder manages to strike that deal, it could positively effect the hardware sales of that platform as people with older wheels may be more prone to buy that hardware if their wheels are supported.

In response to the lengthy post with gifs above, again I'm pretty certain that it's just ghosting as a result of video resampling. I've never once seen the ghosting effect in game, and it's a signature artifact of bad sampling. If I need to I can render some footage, recorded at 30fps and saved at 30fps with no resampling if we want to check details.
That's what I'm hoping all along! Because such application of motion blur does not make sense to me, the best explanation is that the videos are badly encoded. If so, the videos are doing a great disservice for demonstrating the quality of the game. It's present in all Team VVV videos and Gamersyde videos.

For example: https://youtu.be/ebHSLx71TV0?t=43s
Just hit pause at any given second. You'll see the distinct two frames blending. All things on screen are ghosted.
 

SMSRenderTeam

Neo Member
Thanks for the clarifications. The captures are taken from TeamVVV's youtube videos (latest ones). As for me, I noticed this ghosting during normal speed play. Maybe it's my cheap laptop LCD that's amplifying the effect, maybe I'm just that susceptible to this, but certainly the way you take on motion blur is very different from other games.

I think it may be down to preference but here's motion blur from a near-60fps game (GoW3):
MXY2Ulp.jpg
Kd8vkJ4.jpg


We notice that motion blur is applied along a path, which tries to approximate the continuous reception of light during exposure time which is smaller than 60th of a second, by applying blur along motion vectors.

On the other hand, here's motion blur on P.Cars:
bYWykzm.jpg


It's just like two frames blended into one. Actually, on P.Cars videos, this effect is omnipresent across the frame, so at any given time, you are basically seeing two consecutive frames, and always, which would amount to an exposure time of exactly 60th of a second, however, there's no blur along a path, just blending of two frames:

Gfwa3uC.gif


In this gif, you see two consecutive frames, however, there are actually 3 frames visible. You'll see that 1 frame is shared between two frames, beause the motion blur seems to be blending just two consecutive frames, with no linear blur across a motion vector. This does a very poor job of simulating motion blur if that's what it's trying to be doing, as there's no blurring but blending, and since you are always moving, it creates that smudgy look.

Here are two consecutive frames from a GoW3:
hzYtjX7.gif

We see that the two frames do not meet in a "middle" frame, because the blur is applied with respect to how fast the camera is moving, instead of blending those frames, and the "exposure time" is less than 60th of a second (probably less than a quarter of a 60th second) because the blurred pixels do not meet across the frames.

So this is why I hope the ghosting is just caused by some bug or bad video encoding, and I hope the team re-thinks their choice of motion blur method if this is a design decision. It's just detrimental to the hard work all of you guys / gals have put in this game.

Honestly, when I watch those on-line videos I don't see the ghosting only motion-blur, but if you can point us to a time stamp in a particular video from the GIF fragment that you posted I'll certainly have a look.

I sort of feel that the comparison with GOW here is invalid - because the car is moving at 150+km/h and the camera / character is moving at least 1/10th of that, so the motion vectors in GOW are likely to be 10 times shorter, as is visible in your post.

Additionally the QA process internally first, then Namco's QA team and then 1st party's team haven't highlighted any issues around this area. Again, this is a subjective area so unlike the matters of absolute fact here that the render team have engaged in - feedback is really welcome. Motion-blur levels are a product not just of the graphics team, they are balanced by art direction and production team.
 
I don't think we were strictly implying SMS should solve this, but just brain-storming how this issue could be addressed. Of course a developer with relatively limited legal backing would have a hard time. The other option being platform holders could strike that deal, work with vendors, and let people pay for those drivers. Have the drivers available to all devs, but enable it per user. But these are all imaginations of a naive Logitech GT owner :=)

If a game decides to include Logitech GT or G27 support, I think this would positively affect its sales. I for one would flock to buy it. That's when a dev deals with it. If a platform holder manages to strike that deal, it could positively effect the hardware sales of that platform as people with older wheels may be more prone to buy that hardware if their wheels are supported.


That's what I'm hoping all along! Because such application of motion blur does not make sense to me, the best explanation is that the videos are badly encoded. If so, the videos are doing a great disservice for demonstrating the quality of the game. It's present in all Team VVV videos and Gamersyde videos.

For example: https://youtu.be/ebHSLx71TV0?t=43s
Just hit pause at any given second. You'll see the distinct two frames blending. All things on screen are ghosted.

I'll try and get a video recorded soon. What would be your criteria? I know 1080p is a given, I'll do LMP1 one so it's fast moving.
 

SMSRenderTeam

Neo Member
In response to the lengthy post with gifs above, again I'm pretty certain that it's just ghosting as a result of video resampling. I've never once seen the ghosting effect in game, and it's a signature artifact of bad sampling. If I need to I can render some footage, recorded at 30fps and saved at 30fps with no resampling if we want to check details.

Cross-posted as I was responding to another post - I don't see the ghosting in game. It's present in individual frame screen shots/posts from videos as a matter of fact - which is a static 'analysis' not what you actually experience IMO.

So let's engage the scientific method here people - the slowed down segment is around 2 FPS - so someone take a longer segment say 10 seconds and repeat it at 2,5,10,30 and 60 FPS in a single video and let's look at the results.
 

hesido

Member
Honestly, when I watch those on-line videos I don't see the ghosting only motion-blur, but if you can point us to a time stamp in a particular video from the GIF fragment that you posted I'll certainly have a look.

I sort of feel that the comparison with GOW here is invalid - because the car is moving at 150+km/h and the camera / character is moving at least 1/10th of that, so the motion vectors in GOW are likely to be 10 times shorter, as is visible in your post.

Additionally the QA process internally first, then Namco's QA team and then 1st party's team haven't highlighted any issues around this area. Again, this is a subjective area so unlike the matters of absolute fact here that the render team have engaged in - feedback is really welcome. Motion-blur levels are a product not just of the graphics team, they are balanced by art direction and production team.

The comparison is not that off because the ghosting of car is caused not by the forward speed of the car but turning of the car, which would be akin to a camera pan (which is what the animated gif of GoW3 shows. Also, whatever the speed, a proper motion blur would create a blur line instead of blending of distinct two frames.

In this teamVVV video of PS4 footage, just tapping the pause button around the timemark linked in the external view will demonstrate the ghosting effect:
https://youtu.be/ebHSLx71TV0?t=43s
This is not confined to the external view.

If you can somehow download that video and play it frame by frame, you'd see every frame blended with the previous one with a 50% transparency. Which is why it may indeed be a video artifact, but it's there on all TeamVVV PS4 videos.

I'll try and get a video recorded soon. What would be your criteria? I know 1080p is a given, I'll do LMP1 one so it's fast moving.

I'm guessing you would be recording from a PC? I think it may not have that problem, but then again, that's good info too.. You don't need necessarily a fast car, just rolling the wheel left and right when a car is in front of you should provide enough camera pan.

Cross-posted as I was responding to another post - I don't see the ghosting in game. It's present in individual frame screen shots/posts from videos as a matter of fact - which is a static 'analysis' not what you actually experience IMO.

So let's engage the scientific method here people - the slowed down segment is around 2 FPS - so someone take a longer segment say 10 seconds and repeat it at 2,5,10,30 and 60 FPS in a single video and let's look at the results.

I'd happily do this from a Gamersyde video but I don't have any Video editors for the job :\
 
I've taken some 60FPS footage of me and another R8 LMS on Le Mans. I made sure to wave around so that the AI car moves rapidly between frames. I'm just editing it down to make 2, 5, 10, 30 and 60 versions like SMS mentioned.

EDIT: Vegas kept giving me an error trying to render at 2FPS. All the others came out fine and are uploading now.

EDIT 2: Here we go. No resampling on these at all.

60FPS
30FPS
10FPS
5FPS

Watch the red Audi. It remains crystal clear through the whole clip, even though my angle on it changes rapidly, sending it across the screen pretty quickly.

Here's a screenshot during one of the fastest direction changes. Notice how the background is very smeared, indicating a fast camera pan, but the Audi is still clear as day.
wOR80TD.png


Hope this helps, it should be definitive proof that the ghosting is a part of weird editing and not a flaw in the game.
 

SMSRenderTeam

Neo Member
The comparison is not that off because the ghosting of car is caused not by the forward speed of the car but turning of the car, which would be akin to a camera pan (which is what the animated gif of GoW3 shows. Also, whatever the speed, a proper motion blur would create a blur line instead of blending of distinct two frames.

In this teamVVV video of PS4 footage, just tapping the pause button around the timemark linked in the external view will demonstrate the ghosting effect:
https://youtu.be/ebHSLx71TV0?t=43s
This is not confined to the external view.

If you can somehow download that video and play it frame by frame, you'd see every frame blended with the previous one with a 50% transparency. Which is why it may indeed be a video artifact, but it's there on all TeamVVV PS4 videos.



I'm guessing you would be recording from a PC? I think it may not have that problem, but then again, that's good info too.. You don't need necessarily a fast car, just rolling the wheel left and right when a car is in front of you should provide enough camera pan.



I'd happily do this from a Gamersyde video but I don't have any Video editors for the job :\

Just to step back a little, aside from static screenshots in a mp4 are people really seeing a ghosting issue in the 60FPS videos?? Feedback please! So, I would like to qualify if this is a video pause artefact or a real motion problem. I don't see it (and coded the Motion Blur code on PC/XB1) but I'm open to the idea that it can improved in the live case - for me the paused online video doesn't represent the game experience and additionally the actual game pause has a separate path to deal with the artefacts people are talking about... nobody in the 100 strong team,Namco testers and 1st party have mentioned this.
 
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