Hey PD... Turn the smoke density back down!
- Thread starter porschedrifter
- 117 comments
- 5,043 views
I agree with Porschedrifter.. The bottom line is that some pple like more smoke density and some pple dont. A slider on the quick options menu would definitely make EVERYONE happy. Simple as that. think about it, if ur behind 5 or 6 cars tandeming or in a drift train, wouldnt u like to be able to see the clipping points and the road in front of you.. or ever other cars..
- 6,293
- Canada
I thought some more about the slider idea after my last post, mainly about the online aspect of it.
If PD did actually implement a slider (highly unlikely IMO), I don't think it would be that difficult for them to give an option to the lobby/lounge host to adjust the smoke density.
The host would have the option to either "Lock or Unlock" the slider. "Unlocked" would allow individuals to set their own density. "Locked" would give the host sole control of the slider, and everyone in the room would be forced to use the same density (to ensure fairness in comps and what not). To me, this is not much different than any other option that a lobby host has control over (PP, HP, weight, drivetrain, aids, etc).
If PD did actually implement a slider (highly unlikely IMO), I don't think it would be that difficult for them to give an option to the lobby/lounge host to adjust the smoke density.
The host would have the option to either "Lock or Unlock" the slider. "Unlocked" would allow individuals to set their own density. "Locked" would give the host sole control of the slider, and everyone in the room would be forced to use the same density (to ensure fairness in comps and what not). To me, this is not much different than any other option that a lobby host has control over (PP, HP, weight, drivetrain, aids, etc).
- 2,298
- Sauga City
- Bluntified
porschedrifter
I don't think anyone here claimed the smoke was "realistic, authentic, and perfectly fine". The claim here on both sides is that its not! I personally (as well as others) don't think its perfectly realistic BUT don't find it that big of a problem as many seem to believe.
PD should at least base smoke depending on HP limits and/or tires. Anything under 300hp should be low, 300-500hp medium, and 500hp+ should be more. They should also base smoke on class of tyres (comfort, sports, and racing).
- 229
- xdemoncamberx
- porschedrifter
Twitcher, really well written post on the last page.👍
I agree with you.
In terms of the slider control online, your ps3 is still rendering smoke of each person's car in real time, and the density levels and other parameters can be modified and changed per console so the slider could basically set a global max limit of smoke density and put that towards all cars in lobby online.
So you will only see what level you set in game.
In terms of competitions and etc. Yeah, people with lower smoke density levels will be faster, because they will see more of the track and cars, so, the lobby host should also have the ability to lock to any smoke density per room or unlock ability to adjust the slider.
Other than that, it should be fairly easy to implement into the game itself.
I agree with you.
In terms of the slider control online, your ps3 is still rendering smoke of each person's car in real time, and the density levels and other parameters can be modified and changed per console so the slider could basically set a global max limit of smoke density and put that towards all cars in lobby online.
So you will only see what level you set in game.
In terms of competitions and etc. Yeah, people with lower smoke density levels will be faster, because they will see more of the track and cars, so, the lobby host should also have the ability to lock to any smoke density per room or unlock ability to adjust the slider.
Other than that, it should be fairly easy to implement into the game itself.
- 1,268
- Porto Alegre
- LazyLiquid
If we had smoke density based on the car capability to produce that amount of smoke (low for -300hp, medium for -500hp and large for +500hp), we would see more people training with low power cars, what would be nice.
But that doesn´t solve the issue. The ideal is smoke deepness and behave should be based in the wheelspin drift and speed purely. Its not fair a +500hp car produce a large amount of smoke no mater what speed it is, same as a -300hp car producing a thin smoke amount in a hairpin in full throtle.
- 6,293
- Canada
I know nothing about the programming aspect of games, but common sense leads me to think it wouldn't be that difficult to implement. It would be very similar to people who play MMORPGs having the ability to completely customize their UI, wouldn't it?
Like you said, the slider would provide a "cap" on how thick the smoke can get. The host's ability to lock/unlock the slider would control the minimum value the cap can be set to.
For discussion purposes, let's give the slider values 0-5 (0 being no smoke, 5 being max). When the smoke option for the lobby is unlocked, everyone can select their own cap. When the host locks the room at a value of let's say, 3, that means that the minimum cap anyone in the lobby can have is 3 - forcing everyone in the room to have smoke thickness of at least 3. If the lock is set to 3, and some people want to use a value of 4 or 5 (to give themselves more of a challenge, or remain true to their authentic roots, or whatever), then they can.
- 2,298
- Sauga City
- Bluntified
Long post alert!
The slider idea that everyone's talking about is a neat idea but not practical in the sense of ease. If everyone had different smoke opacities, how would that affect replays? How would you determine how replays should look? How would that affect room buffering for new entering a room? Having PD implement a slider to increase and decrease opacity based on user request would take a lot more work than one would think.
I just did a 3 hour sit down to read about smoke particles and spirits. After reading all that, I personally think they turned the smoke up to clear ram in the ps3. The ps3 has a very limited amount of RAM, as everyone can see, so having less dense smoke to the point of "true" transparency would overrun the buffer causing "frame skips" etc., in the RAM. This to a point would cause a lot of crashing and over heating of the ps3. Having thicker non-transparent smoke reduces rendering of other cars thus freeing memory.
This is definitely an issue that PD needs to address. It might take a lot of work to do BUT to keep the "simulator" title, they need to address these issues. This seems to affect a lot of people.
As a side note, if you drift offline in drift mode, the smoke is at a more realistic level. Here the ps3's RAM only has to buffer one car's attributes and enhances physics. The more car's that are in the room that needs to be in memory, slows things down. Do a test, enter a room that has only 1 other car then try a room that's full, you'll see a huge difference.
People who are interested in reading more on how smoke is made in games, check here:
www.gamedev.net
The slider idea that everyone's talking about is a neat idea but not practical in the sense of ease. If everyone had different smoke opacities, how would that affect replays? How would you determine how replays should look? How would that affect room buffering for new entering a room? Having PD implement a slider to increase and decrease opacity based on user request would take a lot more work than one would think.
I just did a 3 hour sit down to read about smoke particles and spirits. After reading all that, I personally think they turned the smoke up to clear ram in the ps3. The ps3 has a very limited amount of RAM, as everyone can see, so having less dense smoke to the point of "true" transparency would overrun the buffer causing "frame skips" etc., in the RAM. This to a point would cause a lot of crashing and over heating of the ps3. Having thicker non-transparent smoke reduces rendering of other cars thus freeing memory.
This is definitely an issue that PD needs to address. It might take a lot of work to do BUT to keep the "simulator" title, they need to address these issues. This seems to affect a lot of people.
As a side note, if you drift offline in drift mode, the smoke is at a more realistic level. Here the ps3's RAM only has to buffer one car's attributes and enhances physics. The more car's that are in the room that needs to be in memory, slows things down. Do a test, enter a room that has only 1 other car then try a room that's full, you'll see a huge difference.
People who are interested in reading more on how smoke is made in games, check here:
www.gamedev.net
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- 2,624
- The Hague
- Duman079
Using more grippy tires will reduce the amount of smoke, because it probably will increase speed and descrease angle, if you drift a 250 hp car with comfort soft, the amount of smoke will be reduced, but if you use a mad tuned car like in this video with a turbo and descreased body weight, you will get the smoke. I admit, it is too much sometimes, but this is the last thing I would complain about in a list. I´d prefer no pixels in photos and videos when there is smoke for example.
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- 6,293
- Canada
I don't think everyone using different opacitiy would cause as much trouble as you think.
Remember, everything you see is generated by your PS3. If you and I were drifting together in a lobby, the smoke you see coming off my car is generated by your PS3 (as opposed to being generated by my ps3 and sent to yours via the interwebz). So, if I were to select a certain opacity, all the smoke generated by my PS3 would conform to my selection, regardless of what your opacity selection is.
The same goes for replays. If I record a replay, all the smoke generated by every car on the track would conform to the opacity setting I have selected. There wouldn't be a problem of seeing different smoke opacity from different cars on the track. The only "issue" would be that 2 people who record the same replay, but with different opacity settings, would have different looking replays.
Most online PC games have several options in the video settings that allow each individual user to adjust what they see based on their preferences. In games that have a lot of flashy effects (take WoW for example), each player has the option to select the intensity of the effects they are seeing. Player A, with a PoS laptop, would probably choose a minimal setting, so that their computer doesn't grind to a halt. Player B, with a liquid cooled nitro burning gaming machine would probably select a high setting, since their computer can handle the intense graphic load. So even if these two players, with very different computers and visual settings, are standing next to each other in the virtual world, watching the same explosion, they will see different things. In actuality, the graphics are always being generated to their maximum potential, but person A's (crappy comp, low settings) computer uses a "filter" of sorts to prevent the intense graphics from being displayed.
Could not agree more sir!
Even though I've been ranting about the opacity for a few posts now and going off about the "slider", I'm just sort of spit-balling. There are many other things that I would like to see improved first.
- 6,598
- United Kingdom
- MSTER232
- PS3 =/= Xbox 360
But the point that other people are making on this thread that how would it work online? And if people are using different levels of smoke, wouldn't that be very hard on the RAM drive? And if the slider feature does get implemented, I think game crashes would be a lot more common.
That is unless the sliders for the smoke levels in an online lobby are set by the host and it will effect every single player in the room. That's the only way I see the slider idea will even remotely work. And if you ask about offline drifting, that wouldn't be such of a problem because there isn't another drifter in front of you creating smoke.
- 6,293
- Canada
Every single one of my posts on this subject has been in regards to online drifting.
I think you are misunderstanding the way the graphics are generated. When you are in an online lobby, everything you see, from the track, to the cars, to the visual effects, is generated by YOUR PS3. It is not generated by each individual PS3 and then sent to yours.
If two people with different opacity settings are driving on the track at the same time, each individual sees all smoke generated according to their opacity setting. The opacity setting would not control the amount of smoke created by your individual car, but rather it would control the opacity of ALL the smoke YOU SEE.
The RAM does not have to juggle all the different opacity levels being used by each individual player. The effect of the slider is that it tells your PS3 "all smoke generated is to be displayed at an opacity level of value X"
Example: Two players in an online lobby with different opacity settings.
Player A has his opacity set to 0 (ie he sees ZERO smoke...nothing, nadda, zilch).
Player B has his opactiy set to MAX (ie he sees smoke as thick as can be).
When these two players drift on track together, each of them would see different visuals on their TV. Player A would see both cars creating zero smoke. And player B would see both cars creating maximum smoke.
...
As I tried to explain with the World of Warcraft example (nerd alert) here
A slider that controls the intensity of any kind of visual effect acts as a type of fliter. Generally, as you move the slider towards its lowest setting, the stronger the "filter" becomes. As you increase the strength of the filter, more and more visual effects are blocked out. But adjusting your slider controls only what you see. You adjusting your slider has zero effect on what other people see.
For GT5, the ability for the host to "lock" the slider would control the minimum value that each individual can set their own slider to (in other words, it controls the maximum value of the filter). This forces everyone in the lobby to see at least a certain amount of smoke.
I apologize if I am not coming across very clear. Explaining technical things has never been a strong point of mine
- 2,298
- Sauga City
- Bluntified
In reference to the first paragraph, its true that everything we see is generated from "our" ps3 BUT, not everything is rendered when playing online (hence people with low connections have funny movements as their car is not properly rendered and calculated). Maps and textures are used from our own system BUT cars and smoke are not. In a sense, I can have a car that you don't but you still see mine, right? Smoke is also generated from the car so indeed the smoke is made on my ps3. Its in fact a mirror image from yours that is included in the buffer (as I said before, the ps3 has very limited RAM so cache size is also limited).
In reference to the paragraph about PC games, this is not true for console games. When designing PC games, they take various hardware configurations into considerations (hence min and suggested requirements). They actually program various effects differently for different settings. Its not as easy as just making a slider to lower settings, they program pretty much a whole new texture map for it.
GT5 is a console based game with only ONE hardware configuration. Games developed for consoles generally make games for that one type.
The only way I see a slider working online is if only the HOST has control. If users have independent controls, this will cause issues.
Back to the topic, check this vid out, I saw someone posted this in another thread but pertains to this.
Insane smoke 2 car tandem.
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- 229
- xdemoncamberx
- porschedrifter
Everything you see on your TV in the game is being rendered in real time on your PS3 only. The only thing being transmitted from another PS3 over the internet to your PS3 is car position/speed/physics data. No visual items are being "brought" over from one PS3 to another, your PS3 is rendering all that in real time.
All DLC cars in game are already on your PS3 even if you have not purchased them yet.
In terms of PD making the smoke more dense to increase performance because of less things to render, is a very interesting point. It would be cool if we could have someone from PD in here to help explain how it all works. Anyone know how to get in contact with them?
All DLC cars in game are already on your PS3 even if you have not purchased them yet.
In terms of PD making the smoke more dense to increase performance because of less things to render, is a very interesting point. It would be cool if we could have someone from PD in here to help explain how it all works. Anyone know how to get in contact with them?
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- 6,598
- United Kingdom
- MSTER232
- PS3 =/= Xbox 360
Well we will need someone who can speak Japanese then, don't we? Anyone want to volunteer?
- 229
- xdemoncamberx
- porschedrifter
lol indeed. Google chromes translator works pretty well!
- 6,598
- United Kingdom
- MSTER232
- PS3 =/= Xbox 360
I want to be able to speak Japanese someday. But I guess that it would take a very, very long time.
- 229
- xdemoncamberx
- porschedrifter
Yeah me too. It's a cool language, and then I could actually watch all my Anime without subtitles.
- 6,598
- United Kingdom
- MSTER232
- PS3 =/= Xbox 360
Another good reason why you should learn Japanese.
- 2,151
- Germany
- x_XNyordiaX_x
People that have tandeming issues because of the smoke: Learn to anticipate. Know what a driver does before it actually happens. THAT, ladies and gents, is the strength of drifters.
People that spun, get off the track, people that rejoin the track watch for oncoming traffic. Basics from everyday driving which are forgotten quite a lot on GT5, would help bigtime while in a public lobby.
Everything in short: Using your brains > whatever setting possible.
People that spun, get off the track, people that rejoin the track watch for oncoming traffic. Basics from everyday driving which are forgotten quite a lot on GT5, would help bigtime while in a public lobby.
Everything in short: Using your brains > whatever setting possible.
- 2,298
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- Bluntified
Gonales
Well put my friend. couldn't have said it better myself.
- 499
- Pontiac/MI/US
- MegamarcX_84
How can one anticipate w/out seeing what the person in front of them is doing? Staying on track is easy if the track is learnt, but trying to predict the leader's action while not able to see them is voodoo, it's like telling a basketball player to provide adequate defense to a player they cannot see.. maybe in a game he's unable to follow the ball but at least he can see the body of the player that has it and predict the direction he is to travel based on bodily cues. If the smoke wasn't so opaque, maybe yes one could see some brake lights or even the outline of the leader and subsequently be able to predict their next action. As it is now its a measure of just looking into the smoke and travelling the track as remembered, hoping you dont collide w/ whatever wont appear out of the grey wall in front of you.
If you haven't guessed i'm one of those that thinks the transparency factor of GT5's smoke needs to be upped a bit, now its just ridiculous. Now for you Zen masters out there that have mastered the art of defense w/out looking, good for you...the rest of us just want to see something that we can react(or proact?
) to..
Downhill Dino
Premium
- 11,754
- Maryland
- DownhillDinosaur
I went drifting last night to have a look at this smoke density problem. (Since its been weeks since I've drifted with others) No problems what so ever and same with the others. It really all depends on all the driver's entering speeds that will conclude to collisions, do it right and you're fine. Regardless of having only around 5% of the track that can be seen it was still extremely easy to drift through it. So... I still don't see the difficulty.
- 2,151
- Germany
- x_XNyordiaX_x
First of all: Predicting is possible WITHOUT view of the person you are tandeming with. Because they will most frankly do the most logical thing and travel in the same direction.
If you haven't guessed i'm one of those that thinks the transparency factor of GT5's smoke needs to be upped a bit, now its just ridiculous. Now for you Zen masters out there that have mastered the art of defense w/out looking, good for you...the rest of us just want to see something that we can react(or proact?
The reacting only comes when there is a view of the other person, untill then, keep to your line and speed, and you will be fine 95% of the time. The other times the collision will not be your fault. (and tbh, if you really dont trust the guy in front of you, drop a bit of speed if it is possible...)
Exactly! With 6 or 7 people in the long tunnel on Grand Valley, it was easy to see people in front and behind me. The times you are actually 100% blinded are very rare.
- 6,293
- Canada
I think some of you who are saying "tough it out guys" are kind of missing the point others (like myself) are making.
I drift regularly in the NEMESIS Night Slide lobby...almost always 10 cars in the train, and majority of the people are good drifters. Needless to say, the smoke gets very thick. But we all cope, and make due with the situation that we have.
But I see a lot of people in this thread saying "learn to drift in smoke, the smoke in GT5 is just fine"...and that's what I have a problem with. The smoke in GT5 is NOT fine...it is easily one of the most unrealistic aspects of the game right now. IMO anyone that thinks the current smoke model is realistic needs to get their eyes and head checked.
I completely agree with you that "Using your brains > anything". However, if I have learned one thing about video games in the 20+ years that I have been playing them, it's that more options are always better. Customization of a video game is always a good thing. A lot of the most popular video games to date reached their legendary status because of the ability for each user to tailor the game to their preferences.
Like I said in previous posts, until the day that PD gets the smoke model correct, an opacity option will do the most to satisfy everyone. If you want to drive through smoke as thick as pea soup, by all means, go for it. But just because that's how you like to enjoy your gaming experience, that doesn't mean everyone else does.
People who would be against this kind of option (due to the fact that they feel it gives other players some sort of unfair advantage) are far too concerned with how other people play the game.
Also, and I don't mean to sound rude by saying this, but all you who are saying "learn the track / just be better" are coming across as very elitist, and are not really contributing anything constructive to this discussion.
I drift regularly in the NEMESIS Night Slide lobby...almost always 10 cars in the train, and majority of the people are good drifters. Needless to say, the smoke gets very thick. But we all cope, and make due with the situation that we have.
But I see a lot of people in this thread saying "learn to drift in smoke, the smoke in GT5 is just fine"...and that's what I have a problem with. The smoke in GT5 is NOT fine...it is easily one of the most unrealistic aspects of the game right now. IMO anyone that thinks the current smoke model is realistic needs to get their eyes and head checked.
I completely agree with you that "Using your brains > anything". However, if I have learned one thing about video games in the 20+ years that I have been playing them, it's that more options are always better. Customization of a video game is always a good thing. A lot of the most popular video games to date reached their legendary status because of the ability for each user to tailor the game to their preferences.
Like I said in previous posts, until the day that PD gets the smoke model correct, an opacity option will do the most to satisfy everyone. If you want to drive through smoke as thick as pea soup, by all means, go for it. But just because that's how you like to enjoy your gaming experience, that doesn't mean everyone else does.
People who would be against this kind of option (due to the fact that they feel it gives other players some sort of unfair advantage) are far too concerned with how other people play the game.
Also, and I don't mean to sound rude by saying this, but all you who are saying "learn the track / just be better" are coming across as very elitist, and are not really contributing anything constructive to this discussion.
