Proper IBL instead of those spherical harmonics
🕑 Added 2019-12-14 00:42:10 +0000 UTCI finally found out what people use for nice reflections and ambient fitting objects in scene! Now we can get rid of all that dynamic ambient stuff and use proper approach instead.
Here you can see difference in detail. Or, here is a good example. This is how tyres were rendered in 0.1.34, horrible:

Here is the same scene, but now tyres use old reflection data to calculate extra lighting — better, but way too glossy:

And here is how it looks like with proper IBL:

If you want to try it, I attached a preview build. Reflections FX Debug app got a few new options to quickly switch between proper IBL and original approach or disable interior masking, things like that. I tried my best to ensure it wouldn’t affect materials like original Kunos chrome (with its pretty blurry reflections to start with), and just in general, since blurred reflections looked the way they did, a lot of content creators didn’t really use them for rough surfaces, so for now, it mainly affects cars with PBR materials, like Quattroporte, Huayra ’12 or P1. Please let me know if it broke anything.
I also increased grass density, maybe now it’s a bit more acceptable? Grass adjustments will be ready soon.
Thank you so much for your support! Sorry for the lack of updates and good perks, there will be much more preview builds a bit later.
Comments
Ilja Jusupov aka x4fab
Good idea, I’ll try to think of something! Maybe not with fully automatically, but with config, so it could be done more accurately (and, have to say, easier to code 😅 )
Thank-you Ilja. I keep forgetting how 'old' AC actually is. Reminds me once again of the rFactor game lifecycle. Good work as always! Thanks!
xez
Hi Ilja. Speaking of requests... Would it be possible to add something to automatically correct the aspect ratio of rear-view mirrors in non-Kunos cars when driving with smart mirrors off? As I'm sure you know, the 'MIRROR_PLACEMENT.png' template image that comes with the dev sdk has the wrong aspect ratio. It's 2:1, but the mirror used in-game is 4:1.
Ilja Jusupov aka x4fab
Thanks! And, of course, if you have any requests, please do tell me. Gotta make some basic perks so it would be clear :) One problem with HDR monitors is that, apparently, to work with them, app needs to do postprocessing differently, maybe even without tonemapping at all? I’ll look into it, but major problem here is that AC uses YEBIS, and I don’t think YEBIS would allow that. It’s not a major deal-breaker — I’m planning to try and make an optional replacement for YEBIS with something either faster or more customizable — but it might take some extra time first.
xez
Another leap forward! Thanks Ilja.
looks great! an amazing addition. Not sure if this is the place to ask for feature requests, but would it be possible to add hdr support for users with hdr monitors? anyways keep up the amazing work!