Maniaplanet Forum

When I set shader quality to very nice all Stadium tracks have white-ish textures. Canyon and Storm look ok. I ran into this before since release but didn't realise what it was until now. When I set it back to high all is ok.

My specs: HD6950 2GB, i5 2500K.



shader quality : very nice

shader quality : nice

Where is the problem? The better the shaders, the more realistic and the more accurate is the lighting and the texturing.
All I can see is a bit more contrast in the below image, but also less details.
I don't see anything that looks like oversaturation in the upper image.
For me this is definitely not a bug.

Do you have other kind of "digital vibrance" settings enabled with your video driver?

Maybe screenshots don't show it well. I hope these pictures are better. Digital vibrance seems to be a Nvidia thing and my Ati card's settings are all on default including saturation. It's like there's a thin layer of snow all over the tracks. It happens in the editor, solo and online. I've never seen it before. But since I'm the first to report it could very well be something on my end. But I'm just reporting to find out.

shader quality : nice


shader quality : very nice

Well, with very nice shaders, there is definitely a more distinct shading and lighting.
Without (or with fastest shaders which is nearly the same) the textures and objects look much too clean (except the dirt part ).
It can also be some athmospheric attenuation effect.

Here the 4 shader qualities from Very Fast to Very Nice on my card:


On Nice Setting, 3D Decalcs get automatically enabled.
And you'll certainly notice that the lightmap calculation artefacts get filtered out on Very Nice setting.

Please also look at the official trailer for another comparison:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P5Qnws7Njas

I don't see anything wrong with your pics or the video. Thanks for trying to find out what it is but what I'm seeing is not something slightly off, it's completely off. But I guess the screenshots don't show it well. I'll try to post a video later.

Look at the grids of the half-pipe and wallrides... the pics I've taken show exactly the same as yours.
With VeryFast the grids are clean and dark, with VeryNice they get brighter and less clean.
The concrete road parts show similar.

If this is not what you're talking about, then I'm sorry, I don't see it then.

I made a video but it still doesn't show well. You just have to believe me.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQ7s4rMPSRI

I definitely understand what you mean!
The colors look less intense and there seems to be a little weak white layer over everything! I can see the difference, yep!
BUT: The white layers are actually the way it has to look like. Take a look at reality The colors are not all very intense and bright all the time! There are reflections and shadows on objects, which alter the colors.
In my opinion very nice shaders look much more realistic because all objects are not as "clean and intensely saturated" as with nice shaders. Very nice shaders provide a little more dirtier and plastic look of these objects. They look far more real and three-dimensional than on nice shaders.

Just take a look around in your room and name me objects which have very intense and highly saturated colors from your current viewpoint. I bet you won't be all too successful.
From very close observation and with some extra bright light these objects look different of course and colors are more intense. But this is not the situation we are in right now, as you have to look at everything from your very own local and current viewpoint. "Everything is relative!"

All in all, more saturation is doesn't not always mean more realism

I'm glad you see it and thanks for the explanation. Still I don't feel like it's supposed to be so extreme white-ish. It wasn't like this in Stadium1 and and I don't see it happen in Canyon on the same settings. I can't believe this is how Nadeo intended it. Well I race on medium settings anyway. I only used very nice for screenshots but I'll use nice now.

This is fresnel reflection.
you can search more infos if you want
As computing real environment relfection (raycasting) is very very expensive, we do an approximation with the lightmap. but Fresnel gives always a velvet or snow feeling.
As the environment color we send to the shader is very blurry and averaged, you got a surnatural look (and a bit real at the same time). Also, it's better with localy computed lightmaps that store 3 directions, rather than the ones embeded in the Map.gbx that are just one color.
The biggest advantage is that it helps "reading" the 3D shapes. Our brain is programmed to translate fresnel information into volume information.
Original stadium already had it but the color was the same everywhere in the track. Here, each lightmap pixel stores "vaguely" it's surroundings (dark areas don't have bright fresnel, if you are in front of a big green inflatable, the fresnel will be green)