Graphics aren't that great

[Austint30]

Despite what they advertised on the website, the graphics definitely aren't a "Visual Masterpiece". That title goes to Gran Turismo 7 (still) in my opinion.

Something feels 'off' with how the graphics look in Evo. Not exactly sure what it is, but the lighting has an unnatural feel to it. There are a few things that I can point out that I think are contributing to the 'off' feeling:

1) Low view distance due to fog even in clear weather. This gives the game an ominous feel almost like those old PS2 games back in the day that use fog to obscure the low render distance. In real life, you can see ten's if not hundreds of miles in the distance before you are unable to see.

2) Cold lighting temperature. Everything seems to have a blueish-green hue, especially in the shaded areas. While it's true that ambient light takes on a blueish hue in reality during clear weather, AC Evo seems to overdo it. EDIT: Switching to the natural post processing setting seems to help a lot.

3) Sky color doesn't look quite real. The color of the sky almost seems too much like an aqua color rather than a deep blue like it is in reality. EDIT: I think it's just the excessive atmospheric fog that's making the sky look weird, especially towards the horizon.

4) Volumetric clouds are very soft and lack form. This looks especially weird when you're in a partially cloudy weather as it looks like the blue sky mixes in the clouds in an unnatural way. I would greatly appreciate it if AC Evo would allow us to switch to HDR skyboxes like in the AC Pure mod which not only looks strikingly beautiful, but also improves performance. EDIT: Again, I think it's the fog making the clouds appear too blue in the shaded parts of the clouds.

On another note. I wouldn't say that this game has much better graphics than ACC. Unfortunately, AC Evo's performance is horrid, especially in VR. Let's hope that the performance improves as we near 1.0.

[Lens007888]

I don't get what you are feeling, sounds more like Forza Motorsport 8

You can change the visual affects in the control panel like Reshade does but built in which is a nice addition

[Nettie]

my moded AC looks better and is smooth, this early access needs lots of work.

[007..]

I was not going to buy it, but I was at the very least curious regarding how it compares visually to motorsport or grand tourismo. No, it looks inferior unfortunately. On the positive side, I watched a lot of streams people playing ACC or AC, they have their thing that gathered them a solid fanbase. I do not think this game when it is finished will be a visual masterpiece. Therefore, they need to do exactly what they did with their previous game.
If the game is very succesful, it will be not because of top notch graphics.

[Some Call Me Tim]

I find the graphics are OK but nothing special and don't feel it's a like a step up from ACC, Project Cars 2 or even modded AC. I'm not too fond of any of the colour pallets available atm in post-processing settings. It's running fairly well for me but I do drop a lot of FPS when running other cars in a race and it's only really playable with about 11 opponents atm.

[frankv]

Do you think the graphics will be better after EA? Or is this it, and they will just fix a graphics issue here and there?

[xCAPx]

Graphics will improve and get fixed. Nothing is finished in this early access release which should be obvious since it's an EARLY ACCESS release...

[Some Call Me Tim]

I very much doubt if the graphics will improve visually from now but I'm sure they will improve performance. Maybe they will add more options to improve the colour palette (or LUT)

[Enraged Legend]

After playing this game for a bit Forza Motorsport (latest release) looks pretty bad in comparison so maybe something is misconfigured on your end…

[Brainspasm]

rain looks weird, like in a cheap movie where they just sprinkle rain over the car, the rest of the scenery is dry ^^

[underd0g]

Originally posted by Brainspasm:

rain looks weird, like in a cheap movie where they just sprinkle rain over the car, the rest of the scenery is dry ^^

The rain sure needs some work. Also the rain FX effect immediately making your windscreen go full wet with visible wiper trails at first drop of rain must be a bug.

[gimlikos84]

If this racing game doesnt lookg good, the I dont know what does.

[Loves To Spooge]

There is definitely this haze that ruins the clarity. It doesn't have that crisp look like GT7. Many also like the high contrasty and oversaturated look of GT7. Yes, it'll immediately draw your eyes to it and make you think it looks better but if you look beyond this you'll see ACE has better lighting, track details and further draw distance. However it still isn't pushing the graphics envelope and the differences are quite minor. Not enough to warrant the huge penalty in performance at the moment. Hopefully they get things ironed out and optimized.