Update Speculation thread

Wtf is PBR?

 

physically based rendering

 

Physically Based Rendering.
In 3D graphics this is the way of making materials look ultra realistic by using their real physical characteristics. It is hard to explain because English is not my native language, so if you want the deeper understading of how PBR works try finding some articles or vids on YouTube. Blender Guru had a few tutorials of how they are done in Blender and explained the whole idea of PBR pretty well

 

Yeah, well, in theory it should give ultra realistic looks, but only game that I have, which I know using PBR for few cars, is not so ultra realistic looking, same looks can be achieved with good texture work and normal shaders without PBR.

However I think they will improve that, so I am following what they eventually come up with, but it seems to take bit learning to get right even from game studio.

Apart from rFactor 2, I don't know other sims using that yet, UE4 and Unity engines have support, but don't know which games actually are using PBR as of today.

It is of course hottest new thing, but if I would like to have game that uses Vulkan and PBR for example, I don't know where to look even, probably only some monster killing games as those tend to get new stuff first.

For me it appears so far to be that PBR is more of hype than delivery of such claims, at least in games that I have seen (whole total one game), but hopefully more games that I can tolerate will appear with the thing.

I would not except such for next 3-4 updates though as there is also question of old content, which devs like to keep supported, so they don't want to break things, which means implementation might take even longer.

If PBR allows to get away from UV map making, that of course is a plus alone, but there are lots to it until it will give ultra realistic graphics.

 

I was talking not so much about PBR in games as in 3D field generally. If you look at results of using PBR in general rendering or maybe even movie production (including animated movies) than PBR is pretty impressive thing. But I was surprised when I saw mentioning of PBR in context of using it in the game development because it is resource heavy and also needs another approach for the texturing. And to me this approach its to messy to use in games. At least if my understanding of how PBR works is correct

 

It is coming to games, some use it already, but I know only rF2, Unity and UE4 has support, also T3D is getting support and apparently BeamNG will have something along lines of PBR, possibly, maybe.

That is hottest thing coming to games I guess.

Without that overkill fresnel PBR in rF2 can look quite nice, at times, that dashboard is really nice looking when playing for example:

Yes, soft tires were as fast as rain tires, but that was probably my lack of skill.

At moments car can look nice too, how light plays with shapes, but also that overkill fresnel is quite bad. There is so much to like in that game, but also really lot that makes me cringe, way car body moves when driving and especially when crashing is just weird.
I forgot how to make monitor big

I don't really know enough to confidently say much about how PBR works, but I guess for games they have figured out some cheaper ways to do it.

If they find way to make it really stand out, then it is great, but for me differences look to be quite small, but certainly on some bits like on dashboard it is making a difference as light plays on dashboard, but BeamNG light and shadow is not quite the best, so I don't know how good it will work, but maybe illumination overall will improve before that.

Oh, also this track might be PBR, not sure, but I doubt that is quite possible with texture work only? Might not be very much against if BeamNG roads and road paintings would look like that.


Also, not sure if BeamNG would look this at night with PBR, would think something more is needed to be done? There is some weirdness by praised AI near the end of the clip:

 

My guess is that it will be presented in 0.18 , if it doesn't make it to 0.17. (and this is assuming the current version numbering doesn't get all wonky when it does get released)

 

What i think we'll have by december 2020
Bluebuck
Career mode
Some sound tweaks
Etk v12
Menu improvements
Performance tweaks

 

No PBR is not a surprise as such would be quite huge undertaking while it is not necessarily quite huge thing as hype makes it to be.

Moving from old skin texture compression to new might of been bigger jump as of what PBR would give.

I speculate that most likely illumination and lights improvement and post processing is what might improve visuals of game most.

 

Illumination and lights were a big part of what made NFS Most Wanted 2012 so yummy to look at so that is a distinct possibility.
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Since someone in the original thread mentioned PBR in relation to different paint types, how does this affect that? I seem to recall that at least metallic was actively being worked on but I can't remember when or where I saw that.

 

This definitely isn't true. PBR is a complete overhaul of the fundamentals of rendering engines and shaders, and how they implement lighting based on the actual physical properties of materials versus simple approximations of the same thing. An overhaul of these fundamentals, although it's an insane amount of work, would go way further than changing the compression of textures.

Check out these examples from the Trainz games. Old style renderer:


PBR renderer:


Ignoring the more detailed displacement textures on the ground, notice how the way the light interacts with the train and the environment looks much less gamey, and way more realistic? That's the effect of PBR in a nutshell.

 

When I made my metallic paint experiments, all it took really was a good texture with fancy UV mapping and then using specular to make the effect come out. Main thing to get sparkly bits not to be ugly big was to use UV mapping that provided something like 8k or 16k size of textures by tiling, that is I did just scale UV map to be really big for sparkly bits texture, which was just simple 1024 or so noise texture made in Blender.
Then I used that texture for specular if I recall correctly. I did run out of range of adjustments though, but when maxed out range it was okay looking at times.

Haven't tested in latest game versions if it still works or if it works better now.

I would think that making new shader that applies noise would be way to make that properly though.

For corvette look a like, I did not rescale UV map and that made sparkles look bit too big. Especially on pink that is evident, with scaled UV map that would of looked lot better I think.




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Yes but it looks too shiny, like if overdone.

Sure it does improves looks, but for me it is not that huge, with normal maps, specular maps and properly tuned shaders one can get much less flat and gamey looks that what is seen in without PBR screenshot.

With more tuning PBR might look much better though, so there is that, but art of subtle effects is difficult one.

 

The shininess is down to the metallic/roughness settings of the individual materials, not the lighting system in place. "Old style" renderers can (and frequently do) have things that are too shiny, it's not an inherent PBR thing.

 

Is it just material setting or is it also something that needs improving in implementation of PBR can be hard to know, but yeah, overdone effects are bit of curse in games, often more subtle approach could provide better end result.

 

May I note that I have the impression that the graphic settings aren't equally set for this comparison ? It's just an
idea because I don't know too much about high level texuring, pbr or other graphical sophistication.
I just don't think the level of detail is matching those two images ?

 

Just material settings. The vast majority of implementations of PBR have the same correct results, but material settings still have to be set up correctly by the artist. PBR workflows are based on real calculations of light, and as with anything, if you put garbage in, you get garbage out.

Correct, they don't match, it's clear from the picture that the devs of that game upgraded a lot of the assets at the same time. My point was to try and ignore the upgraded ground modelling, skybox, and environment, and rather focus on the way the lighting reacts realistically to the side of the train, and how the surfaces of objects look less like flat textures with specular/cube maps, and more like actual multi-layered "materials" with nuance to them.

 

Thx You know the graphics quality aren't really that important to me as the physics, sound and animations are but
I do realize this is different for most of us. Have you noticed @Brother_Dave 's recent developments of tone mapping etc ?
I mean, taken all together ( graphics quality - pbr - tone mapping - new texture compressing techniques ) ?
I'm just expressing my opinion.

 

I wonder if PBR could potentially solve some of the issues the game has right now with lighting.

 

It would definitely improve lighting, so much comes/is won automaticly with PBR.
Much of the current 'issues' of the lighting right now is pure map settings IMO but that is a result of some deeper shader issue, if my interpretations of what the devs said is correct.
One of the obvious ways to spot it is how the bloom is offset compared to the techdemo and t3d, which are morw or less identical lighting nd shader wise.
One thing ive seen is that gamma has had some changes and i dont know if that is related.