Codemasters has shown off more images of its upcoming F1 2019 game – the latest in its officially licensed line of console and PC games – this time revealing lighting upgrades to provide a more realistic look for night races.
F1 2019 has taken a major step forward with its graphics, adding extra realism including lighting, reflections and smaller elements such as dust, kicked up by the cars.
Art Director Stuart Campbell believes these new elements give an almost "TV footage" realism to the game.
"Night lighting was one of our visual update priorities for F1® 2019. We took the atmospherics system that we introduced in F1 2018 for day time lighting, and further developed this for the night tracks.
"We now have full atmospheric haze on night circuits, giving a true sense of depth. There’s a lot of dust in the air on those circuits and, at night, the particles really interact with the strong trackside lighting. The atmospherics help pull the whole scene together and give a greater sense of realism.
"We have added volumetric lighting to the trackside lighting, which results in the cones of light falling off from the light sources – another key factor in making night lighting look more realistic.
"Finally, we added night time specular. This was not present at all in previous games and made the night time scenes look rather flat, and the surface materials ambiguous.
“The specular additions have made a huge improvement to the quality of the track materials at night. The extra surface information provided by this allows you to see all the surface details that were lost previously. The vehicle paint in particular looks amazing on the night circuits, and picks-up highlights from all those track-side light sources making it look incredibly close to TV footage of the sport itself."
The game is due for release on the same week as the Austrian Grand Prix – 28 June.
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