Wow.... So I just went back to Assetto Corsa for a little break.....at Green Hell of all places and it really felt like this : Perfect, not a leaf out of place, but shallow, passionless, digital, boring. Then I put on the RRE version and it felt like this : Imperfect, organic, unpredictable, exciting, wild, uncertain and possibly about to end in a huge crash. ...I know which one I'd have wanted to take home to the parents house, but I sure know which one I'd have rather spent time with
The forum needs an "interesting" rating for posts like this. AC has turned into my hotlapper of choice recently. I like driving the rx7 around different tracks.
I like the AC Nord more, because of the better road surface and more realistic bumbs. And the tourist version makes no sense in R3E, because there are no road cars.
I must admit generally speaking I'm a bit dubious of some of the claims of 'laser scanning'. I also admit that I've no clue what I'm talking about, therefore I maybe have no right to pass opinion. But I've driven 4 versions of Nords now in different sims that all claim to be laser scanned. All are very different. Not in scenery, that *could* fall into the realms of interpretation or artistic license e.g. 'a big line of generic trees'. But if laser scanning is - as we're told - an exact to the mm measurement, then all should be identical. And I'm not talking about different FOV's etc. Just one example - iRacing and RRE are *very* different regarding width and undulation. They can't both be correct. I'm just glad we're spoilt for choice. I've never driven on the real one and likely never will. I prefer the RRE one for some things, the iRacing one for others and at the moment for me - subjectively speaking - the AC version is like the first picture. Perfect, clean but no soul. But I'm sure thousands more will prefer the AC one - we're all winners in that respect
laserscanning is not that accurate as you think. they have to do a lot fine shaping by hand. the laser is mounted on the roof top of a car. when the car drives over a bump, the laser goes up too. under optimal conditions the tolerance should be around +-10mm.
The biggest thing most people don't really understand about laser scanning is that ultimately it is just an enormous number of points in empty space. Once you have that data it then has to go through 'interpretation' for each game/studio/developer in order to get that data into a workable 3D model. Then once it's been through that process it has to be optimized so it isn't 2 billion polies/tris (Polygons or Triangles) per meter as laser scan data is usually very dense. Next it is poured over to make sure there aren't any holes, bad seams, or 'incorrect' normals that would cause severe problems. After this it finally would be at a point where you'd be modifying the FFB feeling to get the bumpiness into the right area for the particular title. Then you add the textures and begin your heavy QA testing to verify everything. As you would imagine, this whole process can take identical initial data and end up with drastically different end results which is why you see so many differences between all the versions. Not to mention the differences in how each game feels to one another in the first place and any individual tendencies/leanings from the track modeler
While I do prefer r3e nordschleife, I agree about road cars. That is a big reason I still play AC from time to time, for hotlapping and such.
If my pcars game had a box, it would have a thick layer of dust already. I'm not even sure why as it's far from bad.
I like all (R3E, AC, iRacing) versions of them. Looks different and its interesting for me, like to drive in slightly different part of year. But main is i can drive with the same speed, same gear e.t.c I don't need to learn it again (like i need if i what to drive pCars version). pCars i use only from time to time only at the night or/with rain, just for fun. AC probably for Japan pack and road cars, R3E is main for me and iRacing teach me to drive more stable and safety
When iracing shows videos of them scanning tracks the scanner it isn't on a moving vehicle. They setup scanners in groups and scan sections at a time. These are on giant tripods. But I realize all the devs have to buy the laser scan of the nordschleife from one company allowed to do it. I prefer the iracing version of the nord to r3e because of the track surface, and I feel some of the elevation changes are more accurate. But everything past the guard rails looks better in r3e. Plus they added a true 24h atmosphere to the track. I don't own AC.
I would imagine scale or % come into question also, if one team scale a car or track @98% another 102% or the car @102% and the track @98% the track would seem smaller but if a slightly smaller car size is used the the track would look slightly larger, if they were all drawn to the same scale across the board i dont imagine there would be a big difference.
Yes, i think they use static scanning equipment when they laser-scan the track, the moving equipment is (i think) when they do a GPS-scan that's not accourate enough to need a static scan. Also as already said what you drive on is not the laser-scanned point cloud, but a much simpliefied polygonal version of it, so it's all about how well developers interpretate the scan. I remember during WMD that the artist that was modelling brands hatch misinterpreted the laser scan, making the road narrower than the RL one in a turn, and realized the mistake only when Nic Hamilton told him that the road should have been different in that section, so making a laser-scanned track is not really error-proof as many people think.
Laser-scanning makes for a great bullet point feature (lasers!), so fair play to the devs who use it to advertise their games, and have to talk about it since their competitors are. But without an understanding of what it really is and how it works, too many fans seem to think it's this magical method to transpose tracks into games with 100% accuracy (whatever that means)—with the corollary that all other methods are necessarily inferior. So you have the case of the Dirt Rally forums, where some fans believe the stages should've been laser-scanned (because it's laser-scanning and everyone laser-scans!), and Codemasters patiently explaining why that's not the best method for modeling gravel goat tracks.
Before everybody is convinced laser scanning is done by a rolling-by car (like for Google maps), it can be done in a more precise but time intensive way: stationary scanners are moved around the track. This was done for iRacing at Oulton Park: http://news.motorsportvision.co.uk/3203.aspx So, please think before you post.