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[mrklaw]

Stuck in traffic this morning, I was watching the reflection of my car as I pulled up to the car in front, over and over again. Figured it would be really nice in a racing game, but nobody does it.

Surely its not that difficult - will we see it next-gen? I figure you don't need to reflect the entire car model, just knock up a texture taken from the front, and reflect that.

Same would be good reflected in the sides of cars when you look sideways, or if there are two cars in front.

 

[Project Midway]

Nah....people will just troll it and say "omg lol, cars dont reflect like that. too shiny!!".

Ofcourse in reality car paint reflects everything almost like a mirror, be it a just waxed or slightly dirty car.

 

[Hyoushi]

Well. Putting moving objects (cars) into an animated env-map like that is a bit tricky, I'd imagine. The "reflection" from the track and surrounding objects is another thing entirely, it's the same all the time.

 

[Kid Chameleon]

Right now there just isn't enough processing power to do stuff like that without the game running at ten frames per second. They could do it next gen but I espect most devs to use the additional power to display more polys, dynamics etc.

 

[OpinionatedCyborg]

Bah, racing games demand to be played in first person mode

 

[Project Midway]

Bah, racing games demand to be played in first person mode

But you still see the other cars...right..?

 

[Hyoushi]

Right now there just isn't enough processing power to do stuff like that without the game running at ten frames per second. They could do it next gen but I espect most devs to use the additional power to display more polys, dynamics etc.

Yeah, Forza is a good example, the "reflection" envmap on your car is animated at half the framerate, 15fps. Like in PGR1. PGR2 had 30fps ones. They chose to do that to lessen the performance hit. If they wanted to include car reflections as well, it wouldn't be fast...

 

[mrklaw]

Bah, racing games demand to be played in first person mode

I drove to work this morning in first person mode too. I still saw the front of my car looming large in the rear of the car in front. And playing Forza last night there were plenty of times I was v.close to the rear of another car.

And you don't put it in the env. map - you do it as another layer I guess? Just whack a texture of the car on there and distort it. Anyway, I expect this next gen please.


While we are at it, I'd like first person views in racing games to give me an indication of how wide my car is. Just a couple of indicators on the bottom of the HUD - just how close can I get to the edge of the track?

 

[OpinionatedCyborg]

But you still see the other cars...right..?

hmmm... I do glance in my rearview mirror from time to time.

I drove to work this morning in first person mode too. I still saw the front of my car looming large in the rear of the car in front. And playing Forza last night there were plenty of times I was v.close to the rear of another car.

And you don't put it in the env. map - you do it as another layer I guess? Just whack a texture of the car on there and distort it. Anyway, I expect this next gen please.


While we are at it, I'd like first person views in racing games to give me an indication of how wide my car is. Just a couple of indicators on the bottom of the HUD - just how close can I get to the edge of the track?

Very true, but accurate reflections ranks very low on the my list of things that make for a good game. I'd rather developers focused on great gameplay, track variety, career modes, etc but I most certainly will come to expect another level of graphical polish with the advent of next gen consoles.

I was being tongue in cheek when I made the comment about looking in my rearview mirror, but it holds some truth: when I'm driving, my focus is on the road, while my peripheral vision takes care of the cars around me. Focusing on graphical polish isn't one of my top prioties when racing - it's winning.

 

[Hooker]

Isn't that a limited form of ray-tracing... as in impossible to do in real-time

 

[Cold-Steel]

Is there anyone else having trouble attempting to drive to work in third-person or is it just me?

 

[Kobold]

To be honost that would most likely not be noted by most people too, the reflections of other cars, unless they are bright yellow or something!

 

[eso76]

Actually they could use dumbed down car models for the environment maps, that'd be tricky but it would work, probably even on current gen...cube env mapping renders some simplified model of the background from different points of view every frame and then plasters the image on the car...including toned down car models would work, i guess.
Of course it would have to be much simplier models, because using a detailed setup (that is, using the same poly setup used for in-game graphics) would mean rendering 6 times the same frame from 6 different points of view (using cube environment mapping).

The biggest problem would be; all racing games only use ONE environment map for all cars, which is calculated on the player's car, or the one which is being followed by the camera during replays and then replicated on all other cars - it would be much too cpu heavy to render a different reflection map for every moving object on screen.
You can see this in GT4 for example, when your car passes under a bridge, the same bridge is reflected on all 6 cars at the same time.
If you included cars in the environment mapping that wouldn't work well, because, for example, you'd see the red car on your right reflected on the right side of each car (including the red car itself ! ) that would be pretty pointless: It would use too many resources and it would look obviously wrong.

 

[OpinionatedCyborg]

Is there anyone else having trouble attempting to drive to work in third-person or is it just me?

When I'm as rich, powerful, and fashionably inept as The Donald, I intend to steer a remote controlled Ferrari to work while sitting in a 1776 Bordeaux-powered mini helicopter flying just meters above said Ferrari. I don't like cheesecake, but I'll eat some anyways.

 

[SHOCKIE]

Cockpit view is best.

 

[eso76]

By the way, there's actually one game where you see cars reflecting other cars.
True Crimes Streets of LA does this, simply because it uses the very same in-game view as a reflection map; that is it simply grabs the entire screen and uses it as the reflection map, and i'd swear you can spot the HUD itself being reflected on cars at times

 

[Blimblim]

Isn't that a limited form of ray-tracing... as in impossible to do in real-time

Not really, but it would require that each car you can see in front of you to have it's own 360 degrees render of everything that's around it and then applied as a reflection map.

 

[mrklaw]

Not really, but it would require that each car you can see in front of you to have it's own 360 degrees render of everything that's around it and then applied as a reflection map.

Nah. Just have a side view, a front view and a rear view of each car, stored as single textures. Then depending how far alongside another car is, paste the side texture into its panels. you don't need a whole lot of detail.

Of course the reality is more complex, but I don't see why you need fancy cubic environment maps.

 

[eso76]

Nah. Just have a side view, a front view and a rear view of each car, stored as single textures. Then depending how far alongside another car is, paste the side texture into its panels. you don't need a whole lot of detail.

Well, for those 4 views to be 'stored' as textures, you have to render those, and you have to do it dinamically for every frame.
Using the same poly models would be as tough as running a 6 split screen and then some, and again, for the reflections not to look completely wrong, you'd have to do that for *every* moving object on screen. That would be like placing 4 cameras on each car and rendering what each one of them "sees" at every frame, then use it as reflection map. Even using *much simplier* versions of the models, that'd be crazy.

 

[mrklaw]

you have to render those, and you have to do it dinamically for every frame

why? You probably don't even need to render it once - have it drawn/created by the artist when each car is modelled.

 

[Hyoushi]

why? You probably don't even need to render it once - have it drawn/created by the artist when each car is modelled.

One for each car, car color and eventual damage and upgrades

 

[eso76]

why? You probably don't even need to render it once - have it drawn/created by the artist when each car is modelled.

Ok, now i get what you meant: you'd settle for 2d representation of cars in 4 positions being 'added' to the regular environment mapping, right ? nah, come on, that might look acceptable in a few limited conditions, but most of the time it would look silly.

 

[mrklaw]

One for each car, car color and eventual damage and upgrades

Alright then, render it once, at the start of each race. If the car gets damaged, render it again at that time - maybe take a few frames to spread the load.

 

[Borys]

Not without ray-tracing.

Ray-tracing makes all reflections, shadowing and lighting million times easier. Of course it takes some time to compute PS4 maybe PS5 will be able to do it.