0.39 Discussion Thread

Next time, save people the trouble of having to ask you what your system specs are. You might be short on VRAM

 

but still no mods makes sense i am doing the same

 

Wow! The new lighting system is really cool and I'm excited to see how it will further evolve in the future. Also, I play on controller and the UI changes and especially the walking/interior mode controller updates are fantastic. It's probably been logged already, but I did notice a few lighting things I've found so far that could be tweaked a bit:

The Wendover's digital dash doesn't glow like it should in the daytime. It looks pretty nice at night, but in the day, it doesn't glow like it would IRL.



On the other end of the spectrum, the cars with digital screens emit too much, and it blinds the player during the nighttime. Here's the same scene with an Ardente, and Vivace, and an I-Series.







I've also noticed that the turn signal and high beam lights on the dash of the T-Series truck are very dim at night and invisible in daylight.

 

My GPU have only 2GB of VRAM
Maybe it's time to upgrade my GPU.

 

Yea, that's absolutely not going to cut it. The game is trying to load textures, but there isn't enough memory on your GPU. Take a look at the minimum and, more importantly, recommended specs to get an idea of what's required.

 

I'm lucky to not have as many problems as some of you, the biggest one is maybe that for me the game only runs with about 60 FPS now (which is perfectly fine, it feels smooth too. But I'm worried about this performance hit). I overall like this update, even if it feels rushed at times. The devs should dedicate their resources to graphics fixes now.

 

Try to disable new clouds and runs on dx 11.

I have 3 fps on dx 12, 20-30 fps on dx 11.

GT 1030

 

Well, I'm sorry... it's the grass again xD

Many grass materials don't have their blackface normals inverted as is it should be for subsurface scattering (at least if following this documentation) I wonder if this is intentional?


Also, Subsurface Scattering breaks the normal maps:

 

Update's doing pretty okay, although one of the few gripes i have with this version is that the bloom is... very bright (obviously caused by the new lighting engine, which I do like alot despite the over-and-under-bloom for many things). I think in the next patch, or so, there should be a bloom adjustment option in the graphics settings

 

I don't know, i've really only run into a few bugs on my end, but i've heard of countless things going wrong. I'm sure there will be at least a few hotfixes coming in the next few days.

 

Well done on the update! Make sure you get plenty of rest. Tdev says optimisations have been made, but in reality, on the West Coast the FPS has dropped from 50 to 30, whilst the biggest drop was on the East Coast, where it fell from 60 to 30.

 

How to dowgrade to the 0.38.6?
--- Post updated ---

And mod manager is broken, UI apps on HUD is cleared.

New UI not good.

New car is good but… boring.

I don't like 0.39.

 

I know, don't get me wrong my laptop is a potato compared to your computer but I used to get 40-50 fps on grid map and now I struggle to get 25 fps

 

The devs should add 0.38.6 to this menu:

 

Comparing framerates when the hardware specs are different makes no sense. If the FPS drops sharply on both high-end and potato computers (when compared to themselves), the optimization has gone worse

 

Also, one more issue I found is that the "TunerEngine" part for the Simple Traffic's BX-Series config is still broken, doesn't work. Is it going to be fixed in one of the v0.39.x hotfixes?:

 

DJ Khaled, another one: I run Vulkan, and small gridmap is pretty bugged. The paint on the car flashbangs me repeatedly. The sun seems unusually dim? And the ground pattern has a weird randomness; it spazzes out. I don't know how else to describe it.

 

Windows of traffic vehicles glow blue if illuminated by headlight:

 

Don't know where to start with all the issues I'm having, but I will vaguely list them in order of importance/impact. All tested in safe mode.

1. Performance: My relatively high end system (i5 12600kf, 32GB DDR5 6000MT/s CL30, RX 6800) has experienced an extreme loss in framerate compared to 0.38.6. I used to be able to play at 4k, with traffic, ultra graphics (w/o dynamic mirrors), relatively consistent 60+ fps. Now with 0.39, same settings, I get an EXTREMELY inconsistent 30-35 fps with dips below 20 fps and highs of around 40 fps. This is completely unplayable and isn't what I expected when devs said the graphics overhaul will have "minimal impact". This is half the framerate, and it isn't even stable which could make it semi playable. I tested this with all renderers and in safe mode, no changes. Going to lower graphics settings does not help either, since the low frame rate is caused by a fake CPU bottleneck the game somehow conjured up. The in-game performance graph says CPU and GameEngine are bottlenecks, meanwhile my CPU never sees a utilization above 20, and no cores even near 50% usage. 70% memory usage and 80% GPU usage, 8/16gb vram used. I also tested lowest graphics on small grid, and barely churned out an average 120fps (lows of 80, highs of 180, 100fps difference which is honestly unacceptable). For reference, my Macbook M4 Air 16GB 15 inch ran the same settings at over 200 fps. A high end gaming setup should not fall behind a macbook because of a graphics update.
(I am aware this does not apply to everyone, and that some people experienced improvements or no change)

2. Graphics: The new graphics are cool, but very flawed in almost every way. The new volumetric clouds look very low quality (best described as just blurs in the sky) instead of looking semi-real. The clouds also could use more adjustment like height, density (so we can have more clouds but not necessarily dark stormy clouds), and quality.
The automatic exposure also needs a lot of work. It reacts too slowly, it is way too sensitive, usually too bright in the day (especially in the interior, everything becomes intolerably bright and blown-out), too dark at night (and way too bright at night in the interior, gauges and the navigator are basically blinding). It feels like it is doing way too much and should just be dumbed down, or have some level of adjustability for every scenario. Best way I can describe it is that I'm looking at the game through some phone camera rather than my eyes. I want the game to feel natural, not like I'm constantly looking at a recording of it.
When it comes to shadows (especially when the sun is completely behind terrain), they seem to get completely eliminated by the automatic exposure system (or there is somehow light from the sun completely bleeding through terrrain). I can be in an area completely shielded by a large mountain with the sun behind it, and there will still be little to no shadows over the entire area, and the exposure system brightens it all, making everything worse. This is especially obvious once you enter a tunnel, and it'll still be illuminated as if there's sunlight beaming straight onto it, when in reality it's buried under a solid 300-500m of pure terrain and rock.

3. New vehicle lights: Brake lights, reverse lights, blinkers, lightbars, police lightbars, all too dark in the day. Brake lights and headlights are all way too bright at night and look almost comically blown out. Comparing the brake lights to real life, they turn into a literal blindingly pure white light instead of an illuminated red bulb. They should be darkened, the light ray/blur around the lights should be increased, and the color should not lose saturation. Headlights are a similar story, where even the daylight running lights are completely blinding to look at (just take a look at the headlights of the etk800, pure blinding neon white, even in DRL mode).
Also, when pointing headlights at ai traffic, their windows turn very blue. Not sure how this didn't get caught in playtesting.
Just found an absolutely awful case of this, barstow with the flip-up headlights at night. They shine through the body mid-way through the flip sequence, blind you because the auto-exposure can't keep up, and then shine comically brightly and look almost deep-fried

4. The UI. It is tolerable, and I understand it was changed with consoles in mind, but it really could still use some work. The top bar that we had in 0.38 worked great (where you could access the main menu, mods, vehicles, ui apps, options, and environment all in one click), and I cannot seem to wrap my head around why it was changed. There is still plenty of room at the top of the screen to have tabs like that, which would drastically decrease the amount of ui interactions someone would need to do to access something. options, mods, and "HUD Apps" should really all be at the top. These are all way too important to be hidden behind a "systems" tab. Might as well put the "exit game" in the freeroam tab as well, and then the entire "systems" tab can be removed. Unnecessary clutter that hides important functions.
The new HUD Apps system is also extremely convoluted, buggy, and overall significantly more frustrating to use than the previous version. Instantly being hit with 50 different HUD layouts is quite overwhelming, especially when they were all previously hidden away behind a drop down menu. I suggest making drop-downs for various layouts (Drift, Race, Crawl, Career, Scenario/Time Trial, Freeroam, etc.). Speaking of freeroam, add more UI layouts for hood cam, orbit cam, etc. Only being able to change the layouts for first person makes no sense since not every layout will work for first person, third person, hood cam, relative cam, etc. To simplify customization, also add a "default" layout that you can apply to every single layout to have them be identical, instead of painfully copying the same thing 50 times. Adjusting a layout itself is also now significantly more difficult than in the past, now you have to find your desired layout to edit, then click edit (would be nice to just double click and go into edit mode), get hit by a random screen that has a duplicate list of all the ui apps you visibly have on screen, which seems to solely exist to let you have another way to delete apps (????), then FINALLY click "add app", and get sent to the full list of apps (previously you could just click "UI Apps" on the top bar, be sent into your current layout, hit "Add Apps", and you're done, no reason to make it so much more awful to use). Once you decide to add a UI app, you now have to go through the less responsive system that lets you move them around, scale them, and hide them in interior view (hiding them is completely broken and doesn't work half the time, and completely breaks when you move a UI app all the way to the bottom of the screen).
The vehicle config/tuning/paint/debug ui also got changed for no reason, and got worse. It was already modernized recently and worked just fine (paint system should still revert to the old one in my opinion), but now it got changed again. The "Live Updates" feature should NOT be turned on by default, especially on pc. It is incredibly frustrating when you just want to change a bunch of values/parts all at once and be stuck with a frozen game for as little as possible (Live update instantly applies edits and freezes the game for a solid 2-5 seconds each time, which seriously gets annoying and adds up over time). The license plate adjustment also got moved all the way to the "other" tab, which is slightly frustrating.
Last thing with the UI is that there is absolutely no way to get to the regular main menu without exiting the level. Such a simple function should just be easily accessible.

5. The Ardente: Not actually much to say here, just small gripes. It is a little tiring for it to just be another addition to the FCV chassis, which just has even more transverse front engined quirky French FWD vehicles. not exactly the most fun to drive...
The gauges seem to be confused whether they want to be lowercase or uppercase (drive modes are half lowercase, gears are half lowercase, everything is half lowercase. Also a wacky font so its very jarring when you go into what should be reverse marked by an " R " but it turns out to be more " Г ". same thing with "sport" in the drive modes, you expect "sport" but you get "spoгt". A more standard font would be nice. The gauge cluster overall is also very dim in the day, and blindingly bright at night (probably has something to do with the darned auto exposure).
The Ardente also obviously came out after the sunburst remaster, but for some reason is not up to sunburst levels of quality. No extensive differential tuning, no extensive suspension tuning with upper/lower camber and caster adjustment (which was very useful), no easily exchangeable gears in the manual transmission like the sunburst, etc. There needs to be a consistent standard for quality, customization, and tuning across all vehicles.
Handling is acceptable overall, but could seriously use sport plus 2r tires on the wheels. Regular sport tires just do not have enough grip for the higher trims. Factory tunes for most configs could already do with an overhaul (you guys SERIOUSLY need to hire a tuner from the community to redo all these tunes), and the brakes seem too-far rear biased, since the car is very eager to spin around on the brakes. Impressive for a front wheel drive coupe...

6. Major unfixed bugs from previous versions: Oversteer assist is still broken for ALL people who use it, and it only starts working above 13m/s (as per the game files) since the 0.38 update, which ruins the experience when doing any sort of low speed drifting where the car would realistically still be self-steering (since that's the entire point of the oversteer assist)
ETK I, 800, and K series all still have broken caster and SAI readouts in the advanced wheel debug UI app. This is something that is absolutely unacceptable to still be broken, especially since there are already mods to fix this bug. I already know that the reason for this is supposedly that the values "wouldn't be accurate" but any value would be better than none. Caster and SAI are vital values for any kind of tuning, especially drift.

7. Vehicle Thumbnails: After 0.39 the vehicle thumbnails look extremely bad compared to what they looked like previously. All the cars look like they are in pre-PBR beam. The lighting in the showroom should be adjusted, and the default paint colors for the vehicles too (lots of default paints are still 0% metallic and 0% clearcoat, making cars look like pure plastic)

Apologies for the strongly worded wall of text, but it is incredibly frustrating when such a major update comes out after such a long wait, under-delivers, has unplayable performance for a significant portion of players, and adds new content instead of fixing major bugs. I think a significant portion of this trouble would have been completely avoided if the update was simplified into DX12 compatibility and the Ardente in April, and the major graphics overhaul a quarter later as usual. This update tried to change way too many variables all at once, and broke a whole lot.

 

I hate artificially inflated "natural" lighting. I kept "Ambient occlusion" off because it makes the dashboard too dark to read. I'll probably switch off autoexposure as well, since autoexposure feels like anti-HDR.