Hi all, I have just released a Reshade preset that essentially remasters Raceroom to a more modern standard. In very simple terms it adds modern tone-mapping along with better lighting effects, all of which have been meticulously created, balanced, and scrutineered within Photoshop to ensure maximum quality and pleasing visuals. This preset was made with 2 main goals, to provide a professional grade step up in visuals, and to do this while not significantly reducing performance, which I believe I have achieved on both counts. No disrespect meant to other Reshade creators, but my preset isn't stylised or makes Raceroom visually inferior, it's just a straight up remaster so I think it should suit most people's tastes. Below is a short video demonstration, but please note that when viewing this comparison the blunt changes might look a little extreme however the impact when just racing with the mod yourself is a much more natural feeling!! The mod can be found below (attached to this post) with all versions contained within one small file. I've taken this mod down on what was RaceDepartment / now Overtake due to issues I have with their quality and integrity. I hope you all like it and makes Raceroom racing more pleasurable! Edit: For quick access, here's the videos for Versions 2, 3, 4, and 4.1 - the latter also includes an installation guide. More info on these version can be found throughout this thread!
It definitely looks prettier, but I can see better with "reshade off". Should probably try it myself and see it in action, maybe that will be better...
Thank you for your reply. Presuming you're referring to it being darker when in shadows, that matter can be a little complicated. I'm not going defensive here, but as some feedback... 1) Firstly, general advice is to always check that your display is accurately calibrated and doesn't contain any "enhancing modes" such as anything that changes contrast. To ballpark the display you need some test patterns (I've included some below, but also look up gamma patterns too) and can be setup by eye in a dark room. If say the lower end of someone's brightness / dynamic contrast / black levels are not calibrated properly then dark greys can become black (called black crush) or just darker than they should be. As my Reshade has darker areas in sunlight / sunrise shadows then your display needs to be spot on with accuracy otherwise any visual change could be a step too far and negatively effect visuals / practicality. On all my displays (1 newish OLED & 2 Sony LED) the "darkness" looks ok and is definitely raceable. 2) While in one regard the original / "reshade off" is obviously correct as that's simply how the devs made it and more importantly that's how it looks when using a graphics engine that's only linear-based (side-stepping gamma correction curves) one could argue that their shadows are too bright but had to be done that way as a linear-based setup doesn't contain enough visual information / range to pull off darker lighting while preserving brighter detail within low lighting (in other words, it's averaged out for balancing sakes). That's the whole point of tone-mapping, to get a much wider range of luminosity which is what my Reshade does. Admittedly when tone-mapping is applied to a "linear space" then internal lighting compensations are normally required, but this can only be done internally by the game's devs. All I can do is what this Reshade preset already does, in that I manually made some custom curves to ensure there was no black crush and that shadowy areas weren't too dark. Of course when it comes to what is and isn't too dark that all kinda starts to become subjective apart from when dealing with HDRi lighting, but that's well outside of Racerooms native scope / capability. 3) The visual differences between modded vs original look more extreme when shown in the blunt on/off way that my video does - when you just have my Reshade on it doesn't stand out anywhere near as much and (to me) looks more natural. As a perfect example of how my settings aren't very dark in comparison, the video's shadows at Laguna Seca on the home straight with original lighting have a luminosity / brightness of 26%, while my lighting in the same place is 21% (obviously not that different). IIRC from some HDRi analysis I've done, a sunny day's shadows IRL span a from around 55% upper limit to 15% lower - so for non-HDRi lighting set at sunrise / sunset then my shadow levels are definitely in the ball-park, even if very marginally lower (5% at most). I presented the video the way I did just for ease, time-saving, and I thought it just made it very clear what the difference was between modded vs original, but in hindsight I can see how that can backfire compared to just showing it as is and letting people see / try it for themselves. 3) The darker shadows stand out the most only in sunrise & sunsets settings - the morning, afternoon, and midday settings don't have particularly dark shadows at all. Again, I can't change their internal lighting engine for the extreme times of day so one Reshade preset likely won't be 100% perfect, but as said this preset already has compensation tweaks so no loss of detail happens. Before I made those adjustments you couldn't see most of the inside of the Indycar cockpit, which is now (just about) fully visible even with a tone-mapper that naturally destroys darker content. Last night I did a 3 lap race that was the last Raceroom race in the video (1992 DTM, Nordschleife in Afternoon) and it look pretty perfect to me. 4) Although I really like the look of having what I call more impactful lighting, I acknowledge that some people might find this (slightly) less practical. I ideally wanted to have the darker areas have even more detail and light in them than it currently has, but that would put me square in the territory of fix something by breaking something else. I could possibly make alternative presets that are easily switchable that could be more tailored to different times of day, but I thought this would inconvenience people too much, maybe completely break the general tone-mapping, plus I like the concept of making just one preset that does the technically & visually correct adjustments and compensations all in one configuration. Now that I have v1.0 released (which will remain to be the main version of this mod) I will look into how much I can brighten up some of the darker times without breaking the rest of the day. So long story not short - if / when I can make it lighter / clearer to see without breaking the tone-mapping as a whole then I'll update the mod to a new revision (both versions would be included) but these might be pretty big "ifs" and "whens"!!
Just a quick update - I've improved the lighting levels / details in shadows. They're a touch lighter / more realistic, giving them more range of lighting. It reduces the contrast between sunlight & shadows a bit too so the image / lighting is a bit less impactful, but it admittedly still looks really cool. I'll update the mod in the next day or two with this less-dark version, along with a less-contrasty alternative that I've been experimenting with for a different but still natural look. First pic is v1.0 (current release) - second pic is the lighter & more detailed shadows, and last pic is of the experimental version. Pretty sure that'll cover most people's needs.
Thank you for your comment, it's very informative! Yes, visibility in shadows is what I meant. After looking at the reference pictures you attached, I see that my monitor is set up a bit darker (1-2 and 0%-2% look the same, but in whites I can distinguish all levels) because I lowered brightness. Although that never caused a problem before. Your example of an adjusted preset (the second pic) looks great on my monitor!
@Maskerader: That's great to hear that you've found a little room for improvement in your display. Even though it's only out by a very small percentage, it can affect a fair part of the overall image once it's rebalanced. Thank you for your comment / compliment. I may have gone just a tiny bit dark with V1 of the mod, but I still think it looks appealing even if it's a little flawed! Good news though - the mod will be updated by the weekend latest! Not only do I have the new preset offering brighter shadows as I pictured (which is actually going to be V2 of the mod) I also have reworked V1 a bit and that's also technically better (more information / range in shadows as well but it still remains faithful to V1) which will be released as V1.1 and done so also by the weekend. They're essentially done now but I'm just play-testing and doing minor tweaks before release. As a taster, here's a "live lap" deliberately set in shadows pretty much all the time to show the improved range (note the video uses V1.1 as I'm simply assessing it).
Forget most of my big paragraphed comment above - I wrote it but don't recall posting it as I'd decided to cancel the YouTube video upload as I just want happy enough with it. Very odd that the message posted anyway. Anyhoo - here's a better update: I've rebuilt the mod from the very start today, I was very methodical in establishing a better baseline tone-mapping setting and then applied some visual niceties from V1. The result is quite significant - it's basically perfect (er, again)!! The new preset with brighter shadows I pictured before looked decent in that picture, but when racing in just shadows it still lacked range & detail and was just a bit dull, so I had to reapproach it in a new way. Not only is V2 even more of a "professional remaster" as I claimed before, but also by improving the way V2.0 is made I've not needed what's easily the most demanding Reshade effect that was only used as a compensatory tool - so now performance cost of V1 (10% GPU usage) has been reduced in V2.0 to around 1-2%. If I have time and if it proves worth doing I want to remake V1 using V2's developments (if this is actually possible) just so I have a polished version of that mod out and also therefore to just to do better job of it. For now, here's a couple of pics hopefully showing V2's improvements, and below is the video I mentioned above (also running in V2). I'm still yet to do one last batch analysis of V2 in Photoshop as I think one last little bit of polish of levels is required before uploading. Release will hopefully be tomorrow (Friday) or sometime over this weekend absolute latest! Depends on my OCD!
Watching this progress further, good work! I tried V1 and similar to the comments above had to make a small adjustment to shadows for my preference, as they was a little dark. Still a nicer result than what I normally use with RR.
Sorry to you both for not replying sooner, I've been completely focused on mod development as I've been very eager to try and fix issues from V1 of the mod. Thank you very much though for your kind words! It's really appreciated and has kept me incentivised knowing that people are taking an interest. The mod has now been updated at Racedepartment to V2! If unaware, just place the new .ini file where the first is / was and use the arrows in Reshade's user interface to change preset. https://www.racedepartment.com/downloads/raceroom-remastered-reshade-2023.62484/ It's almost identical to the images and video within my last post. This iteration has slightly toned-down effects but the lighting balance is definitely aligned with unmodded Raceroom, but the improved tone-mapping still makes it significantly more visually appealing IMHO. V2 is by no means perfect, but I can only do so much when I don't have access to the games internal engine. I've wasted a lot of time trying to manipulate settings but when I can't balance internal vs external changes, any changes made to just external (Reshade) settings massively compromise if not just break what Reshade is there to do. There may be a V3, but not very soon as I definitely need a bit of time off from this as I'm getting somewhat burned out. Here's the demonstration for V2 so you can see a direct comparison of "improvements"... Thanks again for your support, it does mean a lot to me!
Looks very nice But for me, as an pc noob, to difficult. I wil follow this tread and hopefully you made it simpel in the future and working for VR. Keep up the good work.
@NL-Jos : I presume you're having difficulty installing the mod? It's actually quite simple and quick (can be done in less than 1 minute). My guide explains it step-by-step and the process is what it is, I can't make that any more simple. As for VR I can't comment as I don't use VR - that all just depends on if Reshade simply works in VR or not, and if it doesn't then I can't change that either. @Maskerader & @paultino666 : Many thanks for your continued interest in my mod. In all honesty I'm not entirely happy with how V2 looks - on one hand it meets its target of adding better tone-mapping and works especially well in low-light times of day, but on the other it's lost a bit of it's visual character that V1 had, and V2 could very basically be seen as just a contrast & saturation boost and I'd totally understand if people just preferred the games original graphics. My tone-mapping maybe could be better by combining V1's artistic style with V2's technical approach, but the two are kind of opposing techniques and V3 could just end up being a compromised mess. This is why I released V2 as it is as I was becoming very uncertain of being able to tick all boxes within one Reshade preset (without internal lighting changes possible) hence why V2 settled on the singular objective of "improving" issues & the tonal balance from V1. Maybe now that I have V2 as a technical basis I can build from that and make V3 even better, but right now I've gotten a bit sick of the sight of Raceroom so I need to step back for a few days at the least. Many apologies if V2 is a disappointment, I'll try and do better if there's a next time.
Hi largestyle, V1 and V2 give great results (i use V1 for laguna seca and V2 for SPA ) and as you say V3 would be a comprise of both so i feel V3 may not be needed. Thanks Again.
Hi Paultino, thank you for your feedback. That's very interesting as I totally agree that V1 suits Laguna and V2 suits Spa. I'd have to look into the games internal lighting more to see if that uses a lighting system / style / pattern that I can exploit within Reshade. Due to time constraints I've been unable to test lots of tracks with lots of times of day, so further investigation might reveal a consistent but variable basis (if that makes sense) that I can maybe tap in to. As V1's balance was shifted slightly toward "fake" lighting adjustments and V2 was more about strict tone-mapping (with one lighting adjustment effect completely disabled in Reshade) improvement could still be possible. Admittedly I wouldn't be surprised if I couldn't find or execute an exploit / way forward, but it's definitely worth another look (sometime soon). I was just eager to push V2 out of the door as V1 didn't seem to receive much positive attention, so now I've bought some time with V2's mainstream techniques I'm not feeling in a rush or even a necessity to release V3. See how it goes. Thanks again anyway and I'm really glad someone likes the mod enough to use it!
Dude. Thank you SO much for this. Picked up the game very recently and started fiddling with Reshade on my own, and while I was pretty happy with my own noob preset I just came across yours and what can I say... after 10 seconds of preview video I was like " okay gimme." Can't wait to run it!
Been busing Reshade for few years on other Sims namely PC2 AMS2 RF2 but for some reason just bother with the Game hidden presets will give your Reshade ini a go for sure now
Many thanks to all for your kind comments and support. I'm now working on V3 (couldn't resist it) and that's already coming along nicely with improved tone-mapping yet again. In fact I'd comfortably say that V3 will be the final version as I'm quite certain it'll be "flawless", but I'm still taking my time with getting everything 100% before release.
There's one thing that catches my attention and I don't quite like it, but I'm not sure how to describe it. It's as if brightness and color tone changes as I drive through different sections of the track, and not in a way that I would expect based on scenery, lighting, direction. My guess is that your preset tries to adjust each frame as if it's a still photograph and this results in different sections of the track receiving different adjustments - which is not what I would experience if I drove the track in real life. In real life, brighter sections will be brighter, darker sections will be darker, and all "adjustments" would've been done in my eyes and brain, and they are still capable of doing it for a picture on a monitor. Is my guess correct? P.S. I'm not using any auto-adjustments on my monitor or in OS, all settings are static. My monitor is LG 34GN850 which should be decent in terms of color accuracy.