[HO] Project CARS

Updated task List below, added to first post which we will keep updated.

bugs
- moon and sun flares appear in front of the skyring
- post 1238 on wmd weather thread reported that TOD doesn't follow the fast-forward and reverse function in replay.
- strange dark and light flashes.

clouds
- clouds need to follow a dome path so lower at horizon
- define cloud area using HUD xml and adding more around edges.
- angle of pass-through is too wide, needs to effect just normals that are near perpendicular to sun direction.
- pass-through should be around the edge of the entire cloud mesh and not on every billboard as it looks odd.
- should try ibl for ambient to get more shape, darker underside ambient etc.
- draw order issues between clouds, clouds also draw in front of trees now.
- clouds need to draw in emap (maybe its a billboard facing direction issue?)
- clouds need to spawn in more random places other than just from wind direction
- clouds should randomly fade out sooner rather than just at the edge of the map
- wind speed wants to be independent of the time speedup otherwise we'll have Benny Hill Fast Fwd style clouds.
- clouds should occlude lens flare
- need fade duration control in tweakit
- Add rotation variation to tweakit so that I can turn random off for directional cirrus clouds.
- the model is positioned in the world by aligning the mesh pivot to the spawn point, this can be problematic with big clouds that spawn on the min altitude as their bottom surfaces are too low. What I was after was the centre base to be aligned to the spawn point. It's no biggy though, I just get the bottom of the bigger clouds getting too close to the track with the current set up but I can get around that by upping the low alt more. Low on priority list.
- Improve art. Need better normal maps and more variation as repeated textures can be seen
- setup final conditions and tweak lighting for clouds.
- clouds not visible in replay cams
- do we need to fog the clouds? maybe a zenith fog.
- Review cloud shadows, the tech may change depending on the outcome of the cloud work we do. If we keep the current tech then issues listed below need looking at.
- cloud shadows don't effect trees
- cloud shadows could do with blending on a per condition basis
- Issue with the cloud shadows and the alpha of the distant crowd cards.
- volumetric lighting through clouds (god rays)
- optimisations.
- review id we need a cloud dome and ring for heavier cloud settings. This will be based on
performance and look.


night lighting
moon colour needs to be keyed on the moon elevation
- add moon glow. Could be keyed to fade in with sun elevation as the moon on the earlier skies look OK and prob don't need glow.
- Get Sun and spot shadows working at the same time. D0 we still need this, we have a switch over at 0 degrees currently?
- spots and headlights need to render in the emaps and hence IBL so that we get more accurate night ambient.
- Balance night lighting, rework car settings and flare textures. (Darren, Gus and Casey?)
- Add spot lights, emissives and night sky rings to all tracks (DaveF to start on this)
- Add new uv channel for tiled star texture to save mem, unless there is another solution.
- look at a way to add city glow at night, possibly in a blended texture. needs to be separate from the stars as the glow wont rotate like the stars
- realistic stretched headlight reflections in road
- Spot lights could do with coronas at night,
- shooting stars (wishlist)

weather
- Weather descriptions and forecasting tech.
- Rain fall, rain splashes, Road spray and lightningfrom my tests need to be implemented. The particle density needs to dynamically vary depending on the weather state.
- Track spec and reflections. need to dynamically increase and decrease depending on amount of water on track. Masked off fully in tunnels.
- standing water, maybe develop this alongside the reflections on track as it can tie into the wet mask.
- look at increasing GSI on all mats as it gets wetter, GSI needs removing from cars and balancing better for dry conditions as a start point.
- Drying line, hopefully we can utilise groove line tech for this.
- Windscreen effects - I did some tests with complex layers and masks but RobD suggests we use a procedural heightmap approach for less repetition.
- camera droplets similar to windscreen tech. These need to go in and out of focus as track side cams zoom in and out http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4snTm...layer_embedded
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JIYcu...ayer_embedded#! @121
- rain drop effects on the paintwork, probably can't be as complex or as dynamic as the windscreen but we need something here.
- Side and rear window effects (simpler versions of windscreen effect)
- wiper anims (car team)
- Hook up weather settings to physics system.
- Snow (if we decide to do that) needs snow fall and spray effects, texture overlay or snow versions of near track textures, an overall whitening effect on far geo based on vertex normal direction (whiter if vertex normal is up etc).
- Add in slightly out of sync thunder noise and lightning effect for storms.
- localised weather, first pass being rain clouds ..
(for localised weather it involves a small overhaul of the current system (separation of data that can be local and data that is not .. ) it also require a review of the scenegraphs so to plug in information to models based on location and localised weather)
- Rainbows?

general
- get rid of hte mex and vhf files from clouds folder
- check cockpit exposure settings are working correctly
- check exposure at sunrise, could maybe be brighter
- check sun cols at dawn and dusk, could possibly be more saturated to give better coloured spec
-check fog setting 35 overcast
- add render modes back to f1 for easier testing (or add them to tweakit)
- Remove deps for crowd lods on time of day.
- Remove deps for helmets based on time of day.
- Review BattleHardenedWindscreenManager usage of GetLightsHintForTimeOfRace()
- The sun flares and shadows bounce. The sun and flare position seems to tween strangely in and out of the keyframes.
- Look at new approach to skyrings, possibly meshes, although these still need to have the nightlight shader.
- Add in key-able contrast and saturation (more of a wish list really as we have colour cubes, although they may not blend)
- aircraft trails (wishlist)
- morph meshes..

sun flares
- keyable lens flares are needed so that we can edit the col at dawn and dusk. Once in then I need to add glare back. Maybe glare needs adding as separate element so it can be turned off and on independently of flare.
- review when flares draw, I think we should look at how our flare cuts off at the edge of the screen. BBC F1 footage shows nice low sun flares cast even though the sun is out of shot.
- optimise flare textures by desaturating, save as L8 and colouring in xml.

skydome
- apex key needs to be 50/50 choice to avoid horizon rising too much. Currently a 66 degree apex uses an 80 deg texture, meaning 14 degrees gradient rise which looks bad. It should use 65 sky as that's closer and would just have a 1 deg rise which is fine.
- Review hdr skydome approach to improve mem.
- look at ways of compressing skyring textures without banding
- still some visible sky texture seams
- sort out pixelated suns in some textures

foliage
- Look at vertex colouring trees so that they change based on seasons. winter trees would need to switch textures.
- if above works well then we could try on grass textures and billboards
- add random tree health colour variation using vertex cols.
- we need to bias the leaf particles so that there are more in autumn.
- more daisies and flowers in summer?

other
- seasons, changes to tress etc..
- snow
- better tweakit editing (custom timeline as discussed more to allow localised weather fronts)

I've checked in some tweaks to the main conditions. They mostly involve the addition of an extended twilight and moon lighting.

Moon lighting currently switches over from sun lighting at around -10 degrees, this may seem a bit late but its because of the cloud illumination. The clouds, being higher in the sky, still receive sun light even after the sun is visually set (below 0 degrees), so this means that the switch over to moon light comes a bit after the sun goes down. Basically what this means is that for now you will have a period where the environment isn't lit by the moon or the sun, but when the clouds are it it will make more sense.

The moon light helps the night illumination a great deal, although the moon isn't always above the horizon so you may not be able to race cars without headlights when it's not. When the moon is in the sky it is always full brightness. We intend to add a multiplier so that a new moon will give out less light than say a full moon.

The extended twilight is mainly the addition of new twilight (rising and setting) textures at -10 degrees. The sun set I had in was over too quickly and this addition means that we'll get more realistic post sun set sky illumination. Most of the sun sets/rises have a yellowy/orange hue. Clear has a slightly purple/pink sun rise and clear_02 has an extreme version of this where the morning twilight is almost red. These are the results of some tests I have been doing and I wanted to add in to see what you preferred. Some of you may think that they are too extreme but clear_03 and clear_04 haven't changed that much colour wise, so they can be always be used if you are offended by the colours

As part of the cloud lighting I have tweaked some sun light colours around sun rise and sun set. Clear_04 hasn't been changed but the others have more saturated yellow and orange sun light colours as it works well with the clouds.

Some of the fog colours need some work, as I was taking the screenshots I noticed a few mis-matches so I need to fix that. One thing worth pointing out is that the fog currently switches direction at 0 degrees because of the terrain lighting sun/moon flip at that point. This means that the twilight skies haven't had haze added yet and they will look a little odd until we get that fixed. It's not an easy bug to sort but I've added to the list in the first post, along with the moon intensity multiplier.

I've added a rainy setting which currently has no rain so don't get excited just yet. It's basically a darker overcast with more fog, but ready for when it pours.

Cockpit and helmet exposures are back in and working.

IMPORTANT NOTE: you'll need to delete your local wtc file in lighting edits if you want to see the changes when they make it into the build.

La galeria completa aqui:
http://imageshack.us/g/15/ss1777.jpg/