Assetto Corsa PC Mods General DiscussionPC

[Ken134]

Anyone else seeing horrendous shadow banding on cars and tracks in CSP 0.3.0 p212, mostly on vertical surfaces at high sun angles?
Nothing in CSP Smart Shadows settings or AC video settings seems to fix it, so unless a random tickbox elsewhere is causing it I assume Ilja maybe broke something.

View attachment 1503169 View attachment 1503170

I have had this issue for a long time but can’t fix it unfortunately.

 

[andrevr]

Anyone else seeing horrendous shadow banding on cars and tracks in CSP 0.3.0 p212, mostly on vertical surfaces at high sun angles?
Nothing in CSP Smart Shadows settings or AC video settings seems to fix it, so unless a random tickbox elsewhere is causing it I assume Ilja maybe broke something.

View attachment 1503169 View attachment 1503170

I swear I'm not trying to wind you up, but I used to have this (much worse) on the car paint in any external view, on earlier versions of CSP. Seeing you say it, I realised I haven't seen that for a while (around the same "while" since I updated to 0.3.0 p212). So I went back and checked. Sure as nuts, gone. (No, I haven't made any CSP settings changes recently, either. Too scared to.)

I don't know man, I just don't know. It's like a sadistic, complex, puzzle at this stage.

 

[Apocalypse211]

I posted this 5 months ago but I will post it again (regarding the AC ai) because it's interesting.

When you build a season around just one or two base cars (and use like 10 team skins) you will get superior AI. Always. That's why 2002 (1 base car), 1998 (2 base cars), 1990 (1 base car) 2004 (1 base car), 2005+2007 VRC (2 base cars) drive so well and the season is so stable and realistic (result wise).

Whenever you add base cars (like have a full grid of all teams) you get much more variables and potential issues of the race / season stability. That is just a fact.

ASR 1991, 1992 and 1993 are so high quality that you don't get many issues. But generally this is the case. I've noticed this because I tinkered these seasons for years.

I understand the attraction of having full grid of individual cars but when you play the season you only control one car anyway. And with careful driver aggression/AI skill adjustments you get the best season results and the exact same "genuine season feel". You have the correct helmets, car skins, gloves, etc. What does it matter if the AI controlled cars are based on the same car as yours?

I never got much success with Content Manager grid presets. They reset randomly and will not give consistent results in the full season (at least I never got them working).Using championship JSON files gives perfect and consistent results (well as perfect as AC allows them to be).

Overall I'm quite surprised how little attraction there is to play the authentic season modes (generally). I think most people just hotlap or play individual single races. I only play seasons. I never understood why people want "as realistic grid as possible" and then they play career mode with Joe Blow which is total fantasy stuff.

So once again, if you forget the blue flag / QF outlap issue, the ai CAN be very good.

This is a repost from my actual 2002 season that I finished. I drove with Montoya against Rubens and Schumi at Monza (ai 97 and 100).

This is not to say "Look I made this ai so good with my great settings". I didn't do SQUAT. Just made the 2002 Eurosport graphics and gave these drivers and cars correct values so that they respond as realistically and consistently as possible. Watch these laps and tell me, can you see the positives.of the ai behavior and get my point? And could this be the result of Content Manager AI tweaks too, because the AI is actually very good. Not as good as F125 which actually has utterly superior AI but I wouldn't call this "bad ai" by any means. Sure the ugly blue flag issue comes up when you have full length races but it works great with 20 lap settings because you won't get many backmarkers if the driver values are properly set up.

PS: My 2002 season ended like this

1. Schumacher
2. Barrichello
3. Montoya
4. Ralf
5. Kimi

I would say it was pretty realistic outcome.

More details in the video description.

And last: Some of my seasons have over 10.000 downloads but I rarely hear any feedback of them. If you have played them, what kind of experiences you've had? Yes I know the SD based seasons aren't that great but we don't have other 1982, 1983, 1984 and 1988 cars available. But I would say even they are playable and semi-decent after making radical changes to the crap SD cars.

 

[MARKDENNY]

Anyone else seeing horrendous shadow banding on cars and tracks in CSP 0.3.0 p212, mostly on vertical surfaces at high sun angles?
Nothing in CSP Smart Shadows settings or AC video settings seems to fix it, so unless a random tickbox elsewhere is causing it I assume Ilja maybe broke something.

View attachment 1503169 View attachment 1503170

Same here, seen it on trees aswell and various cranes and other objects around the track 😡 reverted back to 2.10 preview 1 🤦‍♂️😢

 

[Tetri]

I swear I'm not trying to wind you up, but I used to have this (much worse) on the car paint in any external view, on earlier versions of CSP. Seeing you say it, I realised I haven't seen that for a while (around the same "while" since I updated to 0.3.0 p212). So I went back and checked. Sure as nuts, gone. (No, I haven't made any CSP settings changes recently, either. Too scared to.)

I don't know man, I just don't know. It's like a sadistic, complex, puzzle at this stage.

About all this, one of the great things with AI, Claude or any LLM can extract and compare all the values and checkboxes between CSPsettings.ini file.

Prompt something like "draw an excel comparition of all the differences per CSP settings type you spot between 2 preset files", then join presetA.ini and presetB.ini, and you get something like that :



Meaning you can share presets presets with a fellow simracer and spot the differences that could create your issues.

i've done it multiple times to detect and debug new additions on CSP that would be ON by default on updates.

Hope this would help.

 

[Cozy61]

View attachment 1502926
Losail (Qatar) Circuit FNR - Action/F1-Cams

A high-speed circuit (particularly with F1 mods), with many turns at no less than 100 km/h... and the last three turns feel insane at 200+ km/h. The effort in concentration whilst blasting around this track is on another level - managed to work a sweat after 20 laps.



DOWNLOAD

Happy racing & have a Prosperous New Year!!!

...don't forget to set a few new year resolutions, @Masscot is on the money here!

Hi racealot - Hope this finds you well - I might be being snippy but you forgot to add the Drivers girlfriend cam-shots - Oh well 🙃 - Happy 2026

 

[andrevr]

About all this, one of the great things with AI, Claude or any LLM can extract and compare all the values and checkboxes between CSPsettings.ini file.

Prompt something like "draw an excel comparition of all the differences per CSP settings type you spot between 2 preset files", then join presetA.ini and presetB.ini, and you get something like that :
View attachment 1503229


Meaning you can share presets presets with a fellow simracer and spot the differences that could create your issues.

i've done it multiple times to detect and debug new additions on CSP that would be ON by default on updates.

Hope this would help.

That's a great idea 👏

 

[Masscot]

Had similar issues with track objects (banners, pit-walls) - displaying diagonal shadow-stripes... and whist ingame, opened CM and began to tinker with settings, trying to eliminate or reduce the cause/effect.

Came across this settings-page which seemed to help. These are my current settings (post-fix), try and see if this helps at your end.

View attachment 1503174

Hope it helps.

---------------------------------
Another annoying issue with latest CSP (all 0.3.0 versions) relates to the lap-timer app not showing the 'best' lap time - only on replay-mode. If anyone has come across a fix please let the community know, thanks.

View attachment 1503183
Reverting to a previous CSP version (eg. 0.2.12) fixes this issue - go figure!

Thanks, but I pretty much had things set like that already, and even after more tweaking the shadow stripes are still there.
You do well to disable 'chunks optimisation' entirely, I'd recommend this to everybody. Even on 'basic' I was getting things like cranes suddenly appearing in the middle distance as if beamed down by Scotty. I think Ilja in his wisdom has this defaulting to 'advanced', which is even more broken.
It's a shame he gets distracted by these pointless experimental optimisations that just add complexity to the code (and often seem to cause more harm than good) also removing toggles for things he considers fixed at the same time (when they are not fixed at all), rather than fixing things that actually need fixing, like memory leaks, preview generation, and the various random crashes. And I'm still at a loss as to how annoying things that were fixed a long time ago (like these shadow bands were) suddenly reappear at random again, and make it into release builds. It's been a continual pattern since CSP's inception, and it's a little bit tiresome.

 

[Perico Lospa]

Anyone else seeing horrendous shadow banding on cars and tracks in CSP 0.3.0 p212, mostly on vertical surfaces at high sun angles?...

Yes, me too, with the last versions of CSP, which I upgraded from 0.1.79, the version I was using... And speaking of shadows, another annoying issue I've noticed since updating CSP has to do with the shadows on some cars. Let me explain...

Well-made mods have two shadows: a primary, darker shadow that's projected directly under the car, and a secondary shadow that rotates depending on the direction of the sunlight. Well, since installing the latest version of CSP, there are cars where the primary shadow isn't visible, and when driving through shaded areas, those cars seems to float, as if they weren't touching the ground.

Has anyone else noticed this and knows how to fix it? What's puzzling me is that it doesn't happen with all cars, so I don't know if tweaking the CSP settings will help, or if it's a per car configuration issue.

(I know this message would be clearer with some images, but the Photo App isn't working very well for me either... 🤷‍♂️)

 

[Carpocalypse]

Does anyone have a better AI path for the Sochi Autodrom by SMP? The AI frequently crash out on the Fakel corner. I'm on lap 9, and literally only 4 cars are still running.

 

[Perico Lospa]

Delete. (Forum is making stranger things when editing or attaching files, like Assetto...)

 

[Tetri]

Well, since installing the latest version of CSP, there are cars where the primary shadow isn't visible, and when driving through shaded areas, the car seems to float, as if it's not touching the ground.

Has anyone else noticed this and knows how to fix it? What's puzzling me is that it doesn't happen with all cars, so I don't know if tweaking the CSP settings will help, or if it's a car mod configuration issue.

(I know this message would be clearer with some images, but the Photo App isn't working very well for me either... 🤷‍♂️)

I had the same issue but it is also related to some windshield shader materials : the Shelby cobra ie have a tiny glass that erases the ground shadows on some cars, with some shadow settings.

To go further, latest CSPs seem to use a simplification/optimisation system on shadows, which can lead to your issue.

can't remember how i fixed it, but first step :

ingame, type "views and video settings" in the task bar, increse or decrease shadows resolution :






This will definitly enhance or worsen your issue. If not related, no changes.

Then in CSP, 2 main settings affecting the shadows :



properly project and realign shadows are sometimes buggy.

And



Where "Automatic splits" can fix the issues,

or "consider distance to ground if miscalculated",

"Shadows opacity" can fix an overbright lighting from Pure settings (so many new settings in latest Pure are not set up properly for old ppfilters, where their default values would intensely brighten shadows),

or "custom shadow matrixes" are sometimes messing up mid range shadows.

Last step, compare bonnet view and driver's view to see if the windshield is involved. Most of the time it's an error between some windshield materials and shadows calculations/applications, but i always ended up fixing it using CSP settings.

And finally, as Masscot brought up, the chunks optimisations and related stuffs, but i'm absolutly not familiar with the whole thing and have them shut down by default since they showed up.

 

[Perico Lospa]

I had the same issue but...

Thanks for the quick response, pal! I'll take a look, thanks. 😍




By the way, I managed to take some photos, poor quality but sufficient to illustrate the problem I'm referring to, in case anyone is interested and the written explanation wasn't clear...

In the Lotus 3-Eleven, you can see the primary (darker zone, indicated with the red arrow) and secondary shadows...

... in a shaded area, logically only the primary shadow is visible, since direct sunlight does not illuminate it...

...but in this Koeniggggsenisseggsegnignigsegigiseg (as Jeremy Clarkson would say), the primary shadow does not appear, only the shadow cast by the sunlight...

... and when passing through shaded areas the effect is strange, like something from a half finished cheap 80s video game.

 

[Rodger Davies]

Anyone else seeing horrendous shadow banding on cars and tracks in CSP 0.3.0 p212, mostly on vertical surfaces at high sun angles?
Nothing in CSP Smart Shadows settings or AC video settings seems to fix it, so unless a random tickbox elsewhere is causing it I assume Ilja maybe broke something.

View attachment 1503169 View attachment 1503170

I've had this on all versions of CSP V3 - went back originally but Tetri's AI tweaks are worth having to overlook some graphical annoyances for me personally, so hopefully one day it figures itself out again.

 

[Nuttyboy812]

There was an IMSA GTO pack on Overtake posted like...2 years ago? that was quickly taken down due to it just being Forza Motorsport assets. But i believe it was uploaded here?

Was put together by some guy called Alpha89 if the Author is correct, It's decent. Not perfect but it's the best pack atm that i can think off.

I can't seem to find that one at least under the name Alpha89, searching for it mainly brings up dead links from when it was up on Overtake.

I'm trying - only model missing is the Buick but I cba lol

Unfortunate, the Buick and Olds were the two I was most hoping for. I've been meaning to try porting a car to learn more about modding, maybe I'll give that a go eventually.

 

[Tetri]

View attachment 1503250

Definitly CSP related. I had this as well, and it's so uncanny you can't just ignore it 😂. It needs to have a sticker post, 'cause we had this issue fixed and discussed a long while ago (CSP 0.2.1 to csp 0.2.4 or something like that). If you pinpoint the issue, write it in bold so we get it in the search results, i'm absolutly sure i will encounter it again at some point.

I've had this on all versions of CSP V3 - went back originally but Tetri's AI tweaks are worth having to overlook some graphical annoyances for me personally, so hopefully one day it figures itself out again.

Happy New Year mate! Btw, i got the inputs working and managed some new attacking behaviors, if you wanna betatest the next update 😉

 

[Perico Lospa]

Definitly CSP related. I had this as well, and it's so uncanny you can't just ignore it 😂. It needs to have a sticker post, 'cause we had this issue fixed and discussed a long while ago (CSP 0.2.1 to csp 0.2.4 or something like that). If you pinpoint the issue, write it in bold so we get it in the search results, i'm absolutly sure i will encounter it again at some point...

I tried check some of the settings you mentioned in your previous message, but it didn't work... We'll just have to keep waiting for someone to fix it or for some kind soul to remember how do it.

Anyway, thanks for taking the time... 😉

 

[Vipla284]

Try turning Fake Shadows FX off and see if the underbody shadow reappeared on Koenigsegg.
The problem is that this setting massively improves the logic behind underbody shadow projection, so for me it's not worth turning it off because of some cars. Why doesn't it work on them? My guess would be that it has to do with how the 3d models were exported, so it projects the shadow under the track surface because some parameter of a car in question is telling it to do so, aka the shadow is there but you don't see it...

 

[fleskebacon]

So what are all the best IMSA GT (GTO,GTU,GTS) mods considered to be these days? I know of the two VRC cars and a user here just updated the RX-7, but what about any of the other cars, anything decent for those kicking around?

Zin5ki's cars are probably the only choice, but they are mostly old models. Worth checking out, if you haven't done so.

Assetto Corsa mods

IMSA GTO / SCCA Trans Am cars

sites.google.com

The Porsche 924 GTP by TonySS is nice, and F40LMLover's Ferrari F40 Comp is awesome. Greg's 300ZX looks good, but it doesn't drive well for me.

 

[Tetri]

I tried check some of the settings you mentioned in your previous message, but it didn't work... We'll just have to keep waiting for someone to fix it or for some kind soul to remember how do it.

Anyway, thanks for taking the time... 😉

I can recreate the situation in overcast weather. Some windshield materials just hide the shadows (here showcased with the Shelby Cobra).




"There must be a setting somewhere interfeering with the windshield material" would be my first clue, but i might be wrong.

Otherwise, Fake Shadows in CSP/Cars/Visuals is one of those settings you cannot turn on/off ingame without resetting CSP shaders. For my issue, it is involved :

without :

We got used to be able to switch CSP settings on the go while the game is running, but i suggest for some tests you make sure you click on something that really restart CSP shaders, like the boxes in Lighting FX ("high quality headlight shadows" and "include car shadows in trackblablabla". Those ones reset everything, making you double check you don't end up with a false negative on testings graphic issues with CSP.

 

[Gabriele]

I posted this 5 months ago but I will post it again (regarding the AC ai) because it's interesting.

When you build a season around just one or two base cars (and use like 10 team skins) you will get superior AI. Always. That's why 2002 (1 base car), 1998 (2 base cars), 1990 (1 base car) 2004 (1 base car), 2005+2007 VRC (2 base cars) drive so well and the season is so stable and realistic (result wise).

Whenever you add base cars (like have a full grid of all teams) you get much more variables and potential issues of the race / season stability. That is just a fact.

ASR 1991, 1992 and 1993 are so high quality that you don't get many issues. But generally this is the case. I've noticed this because I tinkered these seasons for years.

I understand the attraction of having full grid of individual cars but when you play the season you only control one car anyway. And with careful driver aggression/AI skill adjustments you get the best season results and the exact same "genuine season feel". You have the correct helmets, car skins, gloves, etc. What does it matter if the AI controlled cars are based on the same car as yours?

I never got much success with Content Manager grid presets. They reset randomly and will not give consistent results in the full season (at least I never got them working).Using championship JSON files gives perfect and consistent results (well as perfect as AC allows them to be).

Overall I'm quite surprised how little attraction there is to play the authentic season modes (generally). I think most people just hotlap or play individual single races. I only play seasons. I never understood why people want "as realistic grid as possible" and then they play career mode with Joe Blow which is total fantasy stuff.

So once again, if you forget the blue flag / QF outlap issue, the ai CAN be very good.

This is a repost from my actual 2002 season that I finished. I drove with Montoya against Rubens and Schumi at Monza (ai 97 and 100).

This is not to say "Look I made this ai so good with my great settings". I didn't do SQUAT. Just made the 2002 Eurosport graphics and gave these drivers and cars correct values so that they respond as realistically and consistently as possible. Watch these laps and tell me, can you see the positives.of the ai behavior and get my point? And could this be the result of Content Manager AI tweaks too, because the AI is actually very good. Not as good as F125 which actually has utterly superior AI but I wouldn't call this "bad ai" by any means. Sure the ugly blue flag issue comes up when you have full length races but it works great with 20 lap settings because you won't get many backmarkers if the driver values are properly set up.

PS: My 2002 season ended like this

1. Schumacher
2. Barrichello
3. Montoya
4. Ralf
5. Kimi

I would say it was pretty realistic outcome.

More details in the video description.

And last: Some of my seasons have over 10.000 downloads but I rarely hear any feedback of them. If you have played them, what kind of experiences you've had? Yes I know the SD based seasons aren't that great but we don't have other 1982, 1983, 1984 and 1988 cars available. But I would say even they are playable and semi-decent after making radical changes to the crap SD cars.

I play exclusively in custom championship mode; I try to reproduce a season as it was in reality as much as possible: same cars, same circuits (same layout if possible), same skins, etc. Obviously, it's not always 100% possible because the mods don't exist, or the circuit doesn't have the correct layout, etc., but I adapt. I use CM's settings for strength and aggression; I don't care if the final result is the same as reality.

 

[CTRL Garage]

Zin5ki's cars are probably the only choice, but they are mostly old models. Worth checking out, if you haven't done so.

Assetto Corsa mods

IMSA GTO / SCCA Trans Am cars

sites.google.com

The Porsche 924 GTP by TonySS is nice, and F40LMLover's Ferrari F40 Comp is awesome. Greg's 300ZX looks good, but it doesn't drive well for me.

Any recommended tracks for these cars/series?

 

[Perico Lospa]

Try turning Fake Shadows FX off and see if the underbody shadow reappeared on Koenigsegg...

Tetri already mentioned it, and no, it doesn't solve the problem... Anyway, thanks for the suggestion. 🙂

 

[Tetri]

Tetri already mentioned it, and no, it doesn't solve the problem... Anyway, thanks for the suggestion. 🙂

I edited my message for more details, have a look just in case!

 

[Perico Lospa]

I edited my message for more details, have a look just in case!

I hadn't seen your new message; I'll keep testing... 😅

 

[MasterFocus]

Thanks for the quick response, pal! I'll take a look, thanks. 😍




By the way, I managed to take some photos, poor quality but sufficient to illustrate the problem I'm referring to, in case anyone is interested and the written explanation wasn't clear...

In the Lotus 3-Eleven, you can see the primary (darker zone, indicated with the red arrow) and secondary shadows...

View attachment 1503246

... in a shaded area, logically only the primary shadow is visible, since direct sunlight does not illuminate it...

View attachment 1503247

...but in this Koeniggggsenisseggsegnignigsegigiseg (as Jeremy Clarkson would say), the primary shadow does not appear, only the shadow cast by the sunlight...

View attachment 1503249

... and when passing through shaded areas the effect is strange, like something from a half finished cheap 80s video game.


View attachment 1503250

Does it have any Cockpit_HR in it?

Ohterwise this might work?

[SHADER_REPLACEMENT_...]
ACTIVE = 1
MATERIALS =
CULL_MODE = DOUBLESIDED
CAST_SHADOWS = 1
DOUBLE_FACE_SHADOW_BIASED = 1

 

[fleskebacon]

Any recommended tracks for these cars/series?

Riverside, Laguna Seca and Mid-Ohio are my personal favourites, but pretty much all the tracks they raced IRL will do nicely - Road America, Road Atlanta, Sebring, Watkins Glen, Lime Rock, Mosport, Daytona..