Northampronshire nights are way too bright!

Pandamasque

Night lighting

Is there a way to make this ISI track darker? It's not even dark enough to justify using headlights. I tried copying gdb values from other tracks - no visible changes. I even tried these ridiculous RGB values which would result in pitch black night elsewhere - yet no visible changes for Northamptonshire.
Code: 
  SunriseAmbientRGB = (130,130,160)
  SunriseDirectionalRGB = (240,220,250)
  SunriseFogRGB = (220,210,220)
  SunriseFogIn = 0.0
  SunriseFogOut = 1950.0
  SunriseFogDensity = 0.5

  DayAmbientRGB = (100,100,105)
  DayDirectionalRGB = (255,255,255)
  DayFogRGB = (255,255,255)
  DayFogIn = 100.0
  DayFogOut = 2500.0
  DayFogDensity = 0.2

  SunsetAmbientRGB = (1,1,1)
  SunsetDirectionalRGB = (1,1,1)
  SunsetFogRGB = (2,2,1)
  SunsetFogIn = 100.0
  SunsetFogOut = 1800.0
  SunsetFogDensity = 0.5

  NightAmbientRGB = (1,1,1)
  NightDirectionalRGB = (1,1,1)
  NightFogRGB = (1,1,1)
  NightFogIn = 120.0
  NightFogOut = 1200.0
  NightFogDensity = 0.5
isisilv.jpg

11:30 PM (23:30).

What's different about this track that gdb values seem to make no difference?
 
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Are there any AmbientColor and/or FogMode parameters in the .scn file? If there is, try commenting them out and see if that helps.
 
That didn't help (although thanks for the info, I've never seen those values in scn)

Now the problem is that rF thinks Northamptonshire is at the North Pole! Changing the latitude from 52 to 24 fixed the problem.
 
In the dark I found another problem though. The armco barriers don't reflect headlights. They only way I can get them to be lit by headlights is to turn off transparency, but that's kinda necessary as the gaps in the armco go solid white without it. Any tips?

lightsgif.gif
 
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Open the armco.gmt's in 3dsimed and safe them again with the box "lit at night" checked.
 
Done that. No changes. That works only if I set transparency to 'none'.

UPD: After trying pretty much every option and parameter available and playing with alpha I gave up and turned the arco into a non-transparent solid fence. At least now nobody will crash out exiting the pits at night.
 
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Is this material double-sided?
I not, it may be the reason - object reflects light only on front face of polygons.
You can also revert polys. But don't know how it affect whole object
 
That's the whole thing with rFactor - it's modder's responsibility to get consistency in scene's lighting while in reality, if something is there, it is there and reacts to all kinds of lighting.

Hopefully this will be done properly in rF2.


This may sound surprising, but the cause may be not in mod or track, but in a combination of mod and track. you see, headlights can work on completely different rules in various mods. Modders can define how headlights apply to scene and unfortunately there are no guidelines from ISI, how to do it properly.


Check out your .gen file in mod you're using - it should have light projector defined and in that definition you'll find how projected texture is blended with scene. Perhaps you can experiment with that, although these settings are in corelation with light projector texture used by mod.
For example - if you use ONE - ONE blending in your projector, then texture should be black with white shape on it. Alpha channel is irrelevant. But if your blending is SRC_SLPHA - ONE_MINUS_SRC_ALPHA, then texture should be all white, with varying transparency.

In original rfactor cars you'll find even more exotic settings. This all leads to situations where some cars headlights are in conflict with some tracks objects. I've seen headlights that actually make some objects brighter and some darker. Fo example, I drove at Suzuka circuit and my headlights caused grass texture to become brighter, but grass blades reacted in opposite way and became black in some sections of a track. Took a different mod and it worked properly.

rF2 will come with improved lighting model and better shadows. I've posted some hints about then in "wishlist" thread. We'll have to wait and see, because I can't tell enything from WIP screenshots since they don't say how will the final version of lighting system work.
 
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It's not a problem with side of polygon if neither one reacts to car headlights.
It's also not a problem with normal vectors either, because directional light works at daytime.

It's all about blending. Barriers are rendered using some blending settings (for transparency) and it's defined in GMT file of this track. Car's headlights use completely different blending settings to overlay lighting over an object and that is defined in car's .GEN file.

Try one of original rFactor cars on that track. If headlights will work on barriers, then it means that mod you're trying to use has some different philosophy behind it's headlights and is in conflict with track made by ISI.
 
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MaXyM said:
So.. it's strange. because second fence is lighted by some light source when one closest to camera is not.
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That's exactly the same amount of (ambient) light that's visible on the same polygons from the other side. Similarly the nearest piece of railing is as dark on the other side as you can see on this side.
K Szczech said:
Try one of original rFactor cars on that track. If headlights will work on barriers, then it means that mod you're trying to use has some different philosophy behind it's headlights and is in conflict with track made by ISI.
Click to expand...
I tried the Panoz. You were kind of right... but I didn't expect to see THIS ))
z823.jpg

I've never seen anything like this :D Other objects all around reflect the light normally, just like the road.

K Szczech said:
Fo example, I drove at Suzuka circuit and my headlights caused grass texture to become brighter, but grass blades reacted in opposite way and became black in some sections of a track. Took a different mod and it worked properly.
Click to expand...
I had that problem with many mods at some tracks, Suzuka being the most obvious example (headlights create weird 'shadows' around 3D grass, trees...). I managed to fix the problem with Endurance Series mod completely. That mod uses headlight textures with alpha channels (same gradients as in the RGB but light = opaque, darkness = transparency). What I did appeared to be quite simple but involved a lot of trial and error. I opened the textures. Painted the apha channel all BLACK, saved as DTX3. Now ES lights work perfectly at decent-looking track, including Suzuka.


PS: If anyone missed that, I reiterate: rFactor latitude system is completely rF***ed up! 52 degress (Northamptonshire) looks like North Pole at night!
 
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I tried the Panoz. You were kind of right... but I didn't expect to see THIS ))
Click to expand...
I did :)
Headlights in rFactor are fake - they're not part of lighting system, but re-rendering the object, only this time with extra texture (headlights) and using some form of blending (defined in car's .gen file). The problem is - when object has it's own blending allready, then engine goes bananas. Especially if there's an alpha test involved in the process (I bet that barrier object had alpha test enabled to get more sharp appearance of holes than what you get with just alpha blend).

I even tried these ridiculous RGB values which would result in pitch black night elsewhere - yet no visible changes for Northamptonshire.
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1. You need to restart rFactor to see changes in .gdb files
2. Are you sure you edited the correct .gdb file?
Just a sanity check... ;)


I managed to fix the problem with Endurance Series mod completely.
Click to expand...
Apparently not :) That .gif above was from ES, right?
As I said - it's not a matter of track or mod, but track and mod combined.

Not using alpha channel in headlight textures and setting blending to ONE, ONE in .gen file should solve this problem. However this will make lights from many cars to add to each other. Which is realistic of course, but you will end up hitting total white on the screen eventually.
 
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K Szczech said:
1. You need to restart rFactor to see changes in .gdb files
2. Are you sure you edited the correct .gdb file?
Just a sanity check... ;)
Click to expand...
Well, let's just say it took me several attempts to find out about the need to restart rF. But at that moment I already did so. With default latitude (real for Northampton), even at 1,1,1 the night looked like there are polar bears lurking in the paddock. You need to set it at ~20 or lower to achieve anything like real night. I tried setting latitude to 89 just for fun - it made night look like a very sunny day :D There's definitely something wrong with the latitude in rF.

K Szczech said:
Apparently not :) That .gif above was from ES, right?
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Yes. But that particular wall is special)) The gif also shows that light actually comes through it. That wall must be made out of dark matter.
 
A tip: Among the public rFactor tools, there is a neat little program called Win32Viewer which is a real time saver when testing changes to .gdb and .scn files. Basically it's a way to view the track without loading it in the game. Most of the graphical options are supported, the only one I haven't found is the anisotropic filtering, and you can transition between times of day, fly around the track etc. Very handy and very quick. It doesn't handle the lighting 100% properly as it for example ignores the north direction, and it does not rotate the sun position, but other than that it's a great tool.
 
Pandamasque said:
That's exactly the same amount of (ambient) light that's visible on the same polygons from the other side. Similarly the nearest piece of railing is as dark on the other side as you can see on this side.
I tried the Panoz. You were kind of right... but I didn't expect to see THIS ))
Click to expand...

I've seen that at this track too. I think it may have to do with the fact that the Armco is all one gigantic object encircling the entire track, instead of small individual objects at each location. The specular power setting of the object in combination with its size means that it only reacts to light from very specific angles.
 
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