[B2.0] Ugly shadows when computed in Ultra quality

[Akbalder]

I computed the shadows of all my maps in Ultra quality using the batch command.
On my PC, it looks very good but it's ugly on the PC of other players (ie: http://bczteam.com/~akbalder/Tmp/UltraShadows.jpg).
It's worst than when the shadows were computed in High quality!



I have a little question to fix my maps for now:
The game doesn't let me re-compute the shadows because they already have been computed.
Is there a way to force all the shadows to be re-computed without modifying manually each map?

[HaagseSmurf]

Also reported in dutch here http://forum.maniaplanet.com/viewtopic.php?f=87&t=15736
but this seems a more appropiate topic for it
I copied his picture because it shows exactly your point.



greetz,

[Akbalder]

It doesn't seem to be the same problem as mine.
For me, the shadows looks good on my computer (in the editor and in-game).
It's only ugly for other players playing on my maps.

[TMarc]

A possible answer: maps don't store ultra shadows / lightmaps, they are only in the cache.
Could you please check your cache for the lightmaps? There should be a zip or textures corresponding to your map.

Could you please either post a comparison screenshot, or upload your map as well?

[Akbalder]

- The map.
- A screenshot taken on my PC with the media tracker (it is almost as beautiful ingame).
- A screenshot taken by another player ingame (every players told me that the shadows were ugly on their PC).

[Fix]

For what i know (luckyboy may corrected me if I'm wrong here There are 2 lightmaps : the one on your computer (also used on solo tracks), and the one saved in the map.Gbx, shared and downloaded by other users in multiplayer.

-You compute in very high and ultra, you have nice antialisaing, bounces, etc... and your lightmap is stored as .dds and is 4096x4096 or 2048x2048 big.
-When you save your map, it's a 1024x1024 .jpg version that is saved. so, if you map is very big, You'll have artifacts that will show up because of the lower texel ratio.

Could you make comparisons of a all the compute settings : local <=> multiplayer version.
Maybe we will identify something?

[Akbalder]

I computed the same map in different qualities (Normal, High, Ultra).

When the lighmaps file are present, everything is ok (Normal, High, Ultra).

After emptying the cache, it isn't as beautiful:
Normal and High are about the same quality but Ultra is really ugly!

You can see my settings here (It may be because of my settings).


Aren't the beautiful lightmaps supposed to be shared by P2P?
Can I force the shadows to be re-compute in high quality (without modifying the map) to stop playing on ugly maps?

[TMarc]

P2P sharing is always a double-sided sword: one one hand you want good quality, but on the other hand, you also want the data transfers to be as fast as possible.
So there is a tradeoff regarding the size of the lightmap stored in the gbx.

From your settings I can see the following:
When loading maps in a game, e.g. on a server, your machine doesn't calculate any lightmap,
since it is set to "very fast", this means "nearly lowest quality".
Then the "ultra" quality setting is also not effective.
It comes into picture when you are calculating the lightmaps of your own maps in the editor.

You can check this with the lightmaps in the cache. I guess only your own maps lightsmaps are big.
You have posted your lightmaps from normal to ultra, funny thing all the files have 1.5MB, or did you resize them?
The locally calculated and cached lightmaps are 3x the size of the GBX, so it is clear that the maps (and only those are exchanged) don't contain the full lightmap (or in a very compressed way, and by this also with fewer quality).

Now, if you now set the lightmap calculation to high in the settings,
your machine will always have to recalculate the lightmaps of new maps you are receiving from a server,
until you have all lightmaps from all maps
This might make you miss matches, or even miss complete maps if the calculation takes longer than the duration of the match before the next map switch.

One solution could be to allow larger maps on the server side (and also MX of course),
or to have "HQ" servers where the admins have calculated all maps before they put them online,
and where the P2P code allows downloading of the server side cached lightmaps.

[niarfman]

Now, if you now set the lightmap calculation to high in the settings,
your machine will always have to recalculate the lightmaps of new maps you are receiving from a server,
until you have all lightmaps from all maps
This might make you miss matches, or even miss complete maps if the calculation takes longer than the duration of the match before the next map switch.

I am wondering about servers where all maps have been computed with Ultra or High quality Lightmaps.

What is about players with a slow network connectivity and a weak graphic card with low lightmaps quality set ? They will need to download the 3x larger Gbx given by the server ? So they need to spent more time to download the map with no benefit for them about lightmaps ?

With default P2P settings, the servers are very slow with many lags when 16 players are on it. We need to decrease P2P upload and increase the cache size if we want to allow a 32 slots server with good performances.

So P2P decrease + High quality Gbx seems to not be the best choice isn't it ?

[TMarc]

Exactly this is the tradeoff.
Some servers might want fast connections and fast play,
others might want better quality.

The HQ servers would need a different connection and map loading process.
E.g. reduced count of maps so the big lightmap pack which is downloaded at a connection is not too large.
Additionally, the game cannot be started until the file is downloaded. In a team there should be an additional limitation, so all the team mates are ready at the same time.

Or as already proposed in another thread, pre-loading (with constant rate) already during the match or race, so the map switch is only limited by the user's PC.