Please help with strange graphic issue - NUCLEAR skid marks

[Dirk Steffen]

- vanilla Assetto Corsa installation
- all settings maxed out

- installed good and bad weather SUITE 1.3:
https://www.racedepartment.com/downloads/good-and-bad-weather-suite.19484/

The issue showed up after this installation (but I see no-one else having such an issue, so surely there seems to be something amiss with my specific configuration).

- installed gbwS Reshade 1.0
https://www.racedepartment.com/downloads/gbws-reshade.20468/

I installed the ReShade mod with hopes that the issue is "bloom" setting related but no dice :-(

I have this issue on all tracks with all cars with skid marks:
(This is just a single spot where skid marks are located on a kerb at a chicane at Imola - in some places on other tracks you will have several places close together with skid marks and it will have this issue much more multiplied)

All skid mark textures will seemingly reflect sun light and flash and glitter extremely.
The longer the session, the more skid marks are there, the more flashing lights I see.
This is especially bad when coming across the grid at the start finish line as all cars pulling away for the start will leave a healthy little skid mark at their grid spot, so the start finish will look like a 1970's disco playing :

It is a really horrible issue and everything I tried so far could not get rid of the issue.

What is the cause of this?
Is it the gbWeather Suite mod and the specific shader settings used with the mod?
Is it some strange setting I am not aware of?

It completely ruins my racing as you just cannot drive through this flickering mess :-(

 

[Dimis]

Hi, i hope you are using the content manager with the weather mod?

 

[Dirk Steffen]

Yes I do.

The effect is also independant of which “weather” CM uses.

I see it with realistic (the extended gbw) weather the same as when racing online (CM uses the normal vanilla replacement textures only).

 

[RasmusP]

Yes I do.

The effect is also independant of which “weather” CM uses.

I see it with realistic (the extended gbw) weather the same as when racing online (CM uses the normal vanilla replacement textures only).

Please try to use a different pp filter to make sure it's not that. Then deactivate reshade to check that too.
When both aren't the cause it's either a problem that occurred while installing gbw or a broken file in the base installment. In that case uninstall gbw, do an integrity check, download and reinstall gbw and see if it persists.

Hope you'll figure it out! I use gbw suite + reshade without any problem...

 

[Dirk Steffen]

Thanks Rasmus, I will do that.

I am fairly new to using Content Manager as a total replacement for the AC launcher although I use CM since it was released (and it’s awesome !) - will I loose certain settings that are written in the ini files or will Content Manager preserve those settings even though the integrity check will replace them?

I am used to the integrity check replacing all relevant settings regarding proximity display (I HATE it), Fanatec display settings, damage indicator, session info and many more ...
It was always a PITA to go through all those ini files again and again to reset where you want them after an integrity check.

 

[RasmusP]

Thanks Rasmus, I will do that.

I am fairly new to using Content Manager as a total replacement for the AC launcher although I use CM since it was released (and it’s awesome !) - will I loose certain settings that are written in the ini files or will Content Manager preserve those settings even though the integrity check will replace them?

I am used to the integrity check replacing all relevant settings regarding proximity display (I HATE it), Fanatec display settings, damage indicator, session info and many more ...
It was always a PITA to go through all those ini files again and again to reset where you want them after an integrity check.

I don't really know sadly. It won't touch the documents folder but it will overwrite all files that are created by steam and are modified. So additional pp filters or the gbw suite will stay there. Mods too.
If you want to back up all ini files but keep the folder structure you can use xcopy.

You would need to do this:
xcopy "source\*.ini" "destination" /S

/s -> "Kopiert Verzeichnisse und Unterverzeichnisse, die nicht leer sind"

(sorry for German, type in xcopy /? to see the translations)

So for my PC it would look like this:
xcopy "B:\Spiele\SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\assettocorsa\*.ini" "B:\AC_Backup_INIs\" /S

The "" are only needed if you have spaces in the paths and the destination folder will be created if it doesn't exist.

You can then put the ini's with your custom settings back in easily
For me that's 8000 files but only 25MB.

If the Fanatec settings are in different file-types just repeat the xcopy with a different type. Nothing gets overwritten, just added.

Make sure to not throw ALL files in again immediately. Test it one time before doing anything to see if the error persists.

 

[Dirk Steffen]

I wiped the folders, gbw mod files are installed in completely then made a Steam file integrity check which reinstalled all deleted files.

It did not work :-(

I still have nuclear skid marks.

Changing PP filters has no impact on this issue btw.

Also should anyone have to make a file integrity check and hopes the ini file tweaks of AC files that reside in the AC installation folder (not the ones in the document folder) - Content Manager does NOT retain those settings and all those settings have to be tweaked again.

Make a copy of the assettocorsa / system / cfg folder after you have tweaked your files and keep those safe for when you have to make an integrity check again.

 

[Stepy]

I think it has to do with driver settings, i had it for a while until i turned off Sparse Grid Super Sampling.

 

[Dirk Steffen]

I have found the cause for the issue but not a correct fix to bring it to Kunos factory settings.

There are two settings that are directly related to this issue:

1)
Assetto Corsa / Content Manager video settings / post processing / glare
If I set the glare settings anything other than MAXIMUM the issue vanishes immediately.

I didn’t want to loose the full glare PP settings as other effects might also be reduced this way, so I dug deeper.

2)
assettocorsa/system/cfg/skidmarks.ini

This file in the AC installation folder has currently these settings:
[GRAPHICS]
SPECULAR=0.15
SPECULAR_EXP=0.01
AMBIENT=0.58
DIFFUSE=0.58
TEXTURE_STEP=0.2
HEIGHT_FROM_GROUND=0.0201
QUANTITY_MULT=2.5

The issue is caused by the specular reflections on the skid marks textures.
The glare postprocessing level controls if the tire skidmarks do have specular reflections active (MAXIMUM setting) or not.

When the issue was apparent the SPECULAR_EXP value was set to 15 (!!!).
I am absolutely certain that I never ever touched that file, ... ever!

What is the standard value (I figure it is “15” as I just have done a steam file integrity check and all ini files in that folder that are tweaked are always replaced with vanilla versions)?

I have set it while testing to “0.1” and after a 1/2 h session the issue would be isible again (albeit much reduced). I have set it for now to “0.01” and see how I like it.

See that I have changed the skid mark setting in Content Manager to 250% for testing purposes, making the issue more apparent, resulting in the QUANTITY_MULTI=2.5 value in the file - standard is a value of “1”.

So far I consider this a workaround (as I am convinced it should work correctly out of the box). I am curious what could have REALLY created the issue in the first place but for now am very happy that I can race again without listening to the Bee Gees any longer ;-)

 

[Dirk Steffen]

PS: just for completeness: in this case the issue seemed not to be graphics card settings related. After the tip above - thanks, much appreciated ;-). I went to bone stock NVIDIA settings and tried every possible setting alteration which did not result in an improvement, which ultimately lead to digging in the installation folder ini files until a fix / workaround was found.

I hope someone else can benefit from this.

 

[Deleted member 197115]

What driver and video card are you using?
I haven't observed this phenomena on 1080Ti with 397.31. Using latest Gbw suite and Gbw Reshade, only MagicBloom is off as it's quite GPU taxing.

 

[RasmusP]

What driver and video card are you using?
I haven't observed this phenomena with 1080Ti with 397.31. Using latest Gbw suite and Gbw Reshade, only MagicBloom is off as it's quite GPU taxing.

He has a ti like you. Shouldn't be the card or driver.

I have to say I remember having some glaring flickering like camera flashes over the last year...
The skidmark settings seem to be normal though:

I'll change it and report back when I'm sure I'm not experiencing them anymore either.
Top tip Dirk!!

On a 1070 with SGSSAA activated. Not sure what caused it then...

 

[Deleted member 197115]

He has a ti like you. Shouldn't be the card or driver.

Same driver as well?
Like I said, I have not seen this on my system with default settings in skidmarks.ini.
Has anyone else besides OP experienced this?

 

[RasmusP]

Same driver as well?
Like I said, I have not seen this on my system with default settings in skidmarks.ini.
Has anyone else besides OP experienced this?

No idea. I only noticed it every now and then, thought it was a bug and didn't really care about it. Driver didn't matter for me, I updated a few times since I got the card and this flashing comes and goes.
It's quite an interesting thing apparently!

 

[Stereo]

Just for reference the way specular works is a base multiplier and a base exponent. so you have SPECULAR * (SPECULAR_EXP)^angle, where angle is 0 if you're looking at a reflection of the sun, higher the farther it gets from the sun.

To reduce the brightness, SPECULAR closer to 0.
To change the size of the specular spot, adjust exponent. It should never be less than 1, realistic numbers are probably in the range 10-80 for 'rough' surfaces like tire rubber. (higher = smoother surface - for example car paint uses 1500 since it's essentially a mirror finish)

Generally a higher exponent will mean it's dimmer but its main intent is to make it a smaller spot.

 

[RasmusP]

Just for reference the way specular works is a base multiplier and a base exponent. so you have SPECULAR * (SPECULAR_EXP)^angle, where angle is 0 if you're looking at a reflection of the sun, higher the farther it gets from the sun.

To reduce the brightness, SPECULAR closer to 0.
To change the size of the specular spot, adjust exponent. It should never be less than 1, realistic numbers are probably in the range 10-80 for 'rough' surfaces like tire rubber. (higher = smoother surface - for example car paint uses 1500 since it's essentially a mirror finish)

Generally a higher exponent will mean it's dimmer but its main intent is to make it a smaller spot.

So when I understand this correctly, Dirk basically just reduced the size of the (annoying for him) reflection into the sub-pixel dimension whereas he should better reduce the specular from 0.15 to maybe 0.01 to really reduce the strength?

 

[Dirk Steffen]

Thanks Nick - that is great info!
I didn’t have the time to further test on this but realised that although my experimental settings (stabbing in the dark really) have reduced the annoying effects substantially, they were not gone or realistic looking.

I will experiement more with the input you gave and find some settings I like.
As Rasmus has mentioned - it looked like a bug to me and I just wanted to find a way to fix it ;-)

The more detailed knowledge we have about this, the better ;-)

@Andrew, I am not entirely sure about the driver revision. The PC was build a few weeks ago and the driver is whatever version was the then current full release on the Asus website ( I think the manufacturers are usually a revision or two behind NVIDIA so it most likely is not the current NVIDIA release).