Help - Does AMS2 drivers really want to race online?

Hooray I finished my first race! Pace 50 Safety 57 Consistency 58
I am really really a rookie - this is my second online race ever in any sim. The weather conditions really threw me. I've only raced against AI, and they don't mix well with weather in single-player, so I do all of my AI racing on partly cloudy afternoons in the summer. I have also tuned my graphical performance settings for such simple races, so my framerate (in VR) was pretty bad during this race. The qualifying session was stormy with a soaked, cold track - the race was just very cold, but even that was enough to make it very difficult for me. My primary goal was to keep the car on the track and not have any contact with other cars; I mostly succeeded. I had 2 minor off-track mistakes on the first and last laps. I also got to practice being overtaken safely when the AI lapped me near the end of the race

If you are aiming to make the service accessible to real, actual rookies who have little or no racing experience, you may want to consider restricting the weather in the rookie series. I would imagine there are other people like me who have avoided the AMS2 weather features because they are too graphically intensive or they don't work well with single-player AI. If the weather is going to be random, I will have to put in a few hundred more hours of practice before I can race competitively in all weather and seasonal conditions. Again, this is just my personal perspective, I probably don't represent most users.

I see that you updated the FAQ with information about the weather, which I think is a good idea.

 

1. What do you mean by AMS2 built-in offering?
2. Do you mean "Steam"?
3. RCO hosts servers around the world and it hosts them on demand. There is no race server before race starts at given hour and I don't know in which region it would be hosted, so I can't show "ping".
For sure building some functionality around the ping is a good idea, something to think about in the future.

 

Thanks for feedback You had really bad luck with the weather
The thing is that AMS2 weather engine is quite nice, it gives you realistic weather for given location and season of the year, it would be a shame to not use it. I will think about it.

 

I agree, it would be a shame to not use it - I was just taken by surprise in this instance. I think the issue is really combining the weather with the AI. There was a thread recently about all the problems with AI and weather effects: Slicks tyres grip in rain & other problems in AMS2 The consensus seemed to be that weather was unusable with AI.

It seems like you should obviously use all of the available weather effects in the RCO races. But, I personally have a practical problem with racing in different weather conditions. I don't want to just jump into online servers with randomized weather because I will probably end up crashing out. But I also can't effectively practice racing in single-player because the AI interacts poorly with weather. Maybe I will see if I can monkey around with the AI and get it to work.

Do any of the experienced racers have advice on how to learn to drive competitively in all possible weather conditions? How did you guys learn to do it?

 

As member of JR team and one of AMSU admins I really appreciate if there is some competition around, more options, more ideas, all is welcome.

On the other note I read all your posts here and while I really like your enthusiasm I found a lot of similarities between your job and our...specially being the "free-iRacing" alternative.

So the main point is...why just don't get in touch and see what can happen?

We are planning to add a lot of stuff on top of what we already do (and let me say...really pretty well)...maybe would be interesting a merge or a collab @Nobkins ? (I am a PR guy or kinda so...not my choice )

Btw, I remember you posted about it on AMSU some time ago (we are really open to all even if we run our platform) but I would like to leave just a suggestion for the future... don't compare your platform with the others on forums listing what the others don't do, just list what you do more in general. Makes the presentation more classy (similar to push some promotion starting from a post about community not racing on MP, that is a very good PR move).

Feel free to get in touch with us of course

 

@DaVeX thanks for input

Concerning this reply:

I didn't had JastRace in mind while writing this reply, but it could looked like i had, sorry for that.

I am impressed with what you built, I even did second look lately and I liked what i saw, to the point where I start to reconcider my idea about league management tools in RCO, I don't think I can be competition to you in this area

About comparing multiple platforms, imo if it's honest comparison then it's nothing unclassy in it.
In fact I don't think I was comparing anything. For sure I was categorizing and for sure I was explaining why I don't use other platforms. Oh I was comparing LFM to RCO, but it was on request.
Idk, I will double check my comments.

I believe that "classy" can have different definition in each culture, for example in some cultures saying that something is not classy can be not classy
But let's not dig in to that

So going back to my quoted replay. This is my view on current state of sim racing daily races services (ranked multiplayer, or however we call them) and not on league management tools. I am not satisfied with what I've seen, otherwise I would be racing instead of writing my own service.

Yeah, I am open for cooperation too

 

You got a point here, maybe winter racing is not the best idea for entry level series

Didn't know about AI and weather problems, thanks for info.
In my wildest dreams AI will not be needed in RCO, but now it is :/ I will figure out something about the weather during next few days.

 

Lol no idea, in mi culture (Italian) my comment was more a suggestion than anything else, it was more aiming about how to promote stuff, I would say it was a tip from a seller (it's my job). Nothing personal from my side, sorry if sounded like that.
To be precise I wasn't referring to you speaking of JR but it was intended as general advice, you have no idea how some users can be very vocal if you scratch accidentally their favourite sim/portal/etc and this can potentially move them away from testing your creation.

 

I will also do a few more races and see if my anxiety is overblown. I did the Formula Vee race and even managed to finish not-last.

Edit: I like using today's date as the race date. There are tracks from all over the world, so using the current date doesn't confine us to winter racing during the winter of one hemisphere, because you can always race in the tropics or in the other hemisphere.

 

Yeah, that's a valid and even great idea. Thanks
Do AMS2 have enough tracks in warmer world regions? Enough for few race series. RCO cycle 6 tracks during 6 weeks season.

 

Thanks for advice, it's a good one, hopefuly we're good. Sometimes original message is lost or skewed during translation, we need to keep that in mind. Sorry for any misunderstandig

I would really like to join forces, but I don't have idea how we could do that. Let's think about it together and if one of us figure out something we'll PM the other. Ok?

 

I would like to gather all interested people under one roof, so it would be easy for us to find decent grids. I don't want split, I would like to unite. But, as we Poles say, "The road to hell is paved with good intentions." so I don't know what will be outcome of all of this, probably nothing will happen and everybody will still be gaming as they do atm

Give me more details about error page you have encontered. Can you PM me the screen shot?

 

Guys, can you explain me why we're worried about splitting community?
RCO have specific target audience in mind, and since there are no other services like that (for AMS2) there is no community to split.
Or am I missing something?

When there will be ranked multiplayer service which will convince me that I can't do better, then I will stop asking you to join RCO
Or if you downvote my ideas enough

 

As a naive user, it seems to be that RCO provides a unique service for AMS2 - it's not league management but rather for solo players who want the possibility of an online pickup race with safety standards. Maybe there are other tools like this, but I don't know about them or the functionality wasn't apparent to me.

I will also say that even if I never find another human opponent and always race against AI, RCO is already a straight upgrade to single player races. There is a built-in progression and performance tracking system, which makes it like a career mode - I love this. I now have long-term goals of improving my ratings and statistics, all without ever racing against a human opponent. Like I said, it's a straight upgrade to single player.

As for warm tracks, you can just use the Brazilian ones. They are mostly amazing. For a series of 6 Brazilian tracks I suggest Londrina, Curvelo, Goiania, Cascavel, Interlagos, and Velo Cittá (this would be perfect for a thematic Brazilian series like Copa Classics B for example . There are also many other south American and Australian tracks outside of Brazil.

I feel like I am talking a lot, but that's because I think I'm part of your target demographic: single player racers who haven't raced online before, want to do online races in AMS2, and want to track their progress, but can't commit to a scheduled league. But I'm going to try to be quiet for a little while so you can get a perspective from other people. RCO satisfies my needs for now.

 

Pleas don't be quiet - you're the source of great ideas besides we need to get this thread going to increase RCO visibility

In the future there will be more ways to analyze driver performance, compare to other drivers and to view data. I believe that I barely scratched the surface of what is possible, but it will take some time to implement.

Thanks for great feedback, I will change tracks to warmer ones, but it will not fix the AI rain problem, so we need to live with that for now.

Let me know when you get promotion to bronze license, so we'll figure out some new race series for you

 

I’ve just completed a P4 race at Kansai West against an AI grid. Unfortunately for me, as a VR user (with the PC specs listed in my sig) I have to use OpenXR toolkit to be able to race in stormy weather or night races without running into FPS and visual acuity/sharpness issues.

So wasn't it just my luck to discover that my qualifying and race was at night and OpenXR toolkit has suddenly stopped working for me today - technically yesterday looking at the logs but that's another matter.

Qualified first, finished ninth as everytime someone was behind me the headlights caused stutters and I missed my breaking point at turn two. Nevermind, it was fun regardless.

Two things stood out for me as a result of this race.

1. I agree with comments earlier regarding weather and day/night settings. I think we need to know the scheduled race start time and what weather the race will have before registering for the race. With so many differing PC systems and VR users like me some people simply won't (or can't race) under certain conditions. If someone has completed the three clean lap challenge, practiced and then found the race conditions are too challenging for their system they may get frustrated very quickly and move on from RCO.

2. This one may just be my own stupidity or confusion. I was making the most of the practice server prior to the race and, being in VR, wasn't paying too much attention to my monitor. I got a message in-game saying the race was due to start in 5 minutes and at that point didn't know whether the practice session/lobby would become the race lobby or if I needed to end the practice session and wait for the race lobby to start up.
In the end I came out of the practice lobby and could see on the RCO website that a race lobby was attempting to start up and once it did there was a 'join' button at the bottom of the screen that would show up. The 'join' button didn't show and it kept showing as attempting to setup a lobby, even after I found the race lobby within the game - at that point I just joined in-game and don't know whether anything changed on the RCO website as I was wearing my HMD after that. If I missed information on this within the FAQ then ignore me and this comment - I do have a childish tendency to jump into things!

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With regard to 'splitting the community,' I think that's a concern purely based around the relatively low numbers of people 'online' within AMS2, compared to some of the more established sims, and not wanting to lose people from one platform to another when the numbers are already sparse.

I'm with @Coldsalmon here completely. The other platforms and 'random lobbies' (often) don't offer me what I would like, namely ranked races at a time that I can join in and the freedom to 'drop-in' without being a league member. I looked at joining Just Race, for example, and it looks brilliant - it just doesn't schedule races at a usuable time for me. The other example is that the majority of lobbies that are available to me have the rating system turned off which isn't what I'm looking for.

I'd hope to race against other humans via RCO but like Coldsalmon racing the AI in a ranked setting with stats and a feeling of progression is quite adequate for me whilst, we hope, numbers of RCO members increase.

Thank you for the work you've put in so far, it's a very interesting project.

 

Thanks for feedback it's really valuable to me, keep it coming.

1. Let's try to race in more sunny locations first and if it will not fix weather issues, then we'll use more predictable weather, unfortunately at the expense of AMS2 real weather engine
2. It's great comment, I will improve in game chat messages to guide user actions a little better.
   1. I think RCO "Join button" has a bug, need to look in to that. For now manual page refresh would be required. Thx for pointing that out.
   2. IMO good UI/UX shouldn't need a FAQ. There is a lot to improve in that department, but we'll eventualy get there

Thx for kind words

 

Hi,

I signed up yesterday to try the service, so here is what I experienced. Beforehand I want to say that I don't race online because time constraints. I have only a couple hours to race and it's impossible to me to know when I will race, so league and/or scheduled races is a no go for me sadly.

I really like the idea of hourly scheduled races because I can just jump in and have one or two races online when I have the time. I really need an iRacing like service, but for AMS2.

Now without further ado, my first impressions with the service:

- Sign up was straightforward. Only minor annoyance was the service refused to validate the Chrome suggested password, and I don't know why. Once I entered a password by hand, all was fine. I'm from Argentina so I selected Brazil as location.

- I choose the P4 Cup at non Suzuka West as my practice session to do the three clean laps, planning to do the next hourly race in advance. Prepping the practice server took around 5 minutes as stated and after that, I joined.

- It was in clear weather and daytime, so I assumed the race would be in the same conditions (more on that later). It was my first drive ever in the MCR and also on this track. It was a lot of fun and your service has made me to discover that this car is a joy to drive, both fun and at the same time hard to drive on the limit to get a somewhat competitive lap time. Thanks for that . It was so fun that I missed the hourly race, so I had to wait to the next hour. In the meanwhile, three or four other people joined the practice server. I tough they were there to drive the three mandatory clean laps to enter the race. Things went good, no disconnections and/or any hiccups at this point.

- Time for the race. I registered for the next hourly race when I left the practice server, about 20 minutes left. No one showed for the race, even when there were some drivers on the practice server so I left wondering if they decided to only drive the mandatory laps without going to the race, or if the service put me in a different server due to timezone constraints.

If it's the latter, I think it would be better to mix drivers in different timezones at least until the service has more users. I would prefer to deal with high pings and adjust my racecraft to that instead to have to race alone with a bunch of bots . I know not all people will like the idea, and it has the potential to ruin everyones race, so it's not something I have a strong thinking, just an observation.

Another thing to mention is this time the server took about 6 minutes to become available. It's not a problem per se, but it can be annoying for anxious people when you had to wait 20 minutes for the race schedule, only to be greeted with another 6 minutes wait time. I'm being really picky I know. May be server prep can be scheduled to start a couple minutes before the hour the race is scheduled on? Just thinking out loud, not a big problem at all after all.

Anyway, back to the race itself, I started qualy and noticed it was set late afternoon, and the race itself took place in the night. By my luck it was in the dry and I had a good race against the bots. I was not aware the race would be held at current time and real weather by the information I was presented when I registered to. I don't know if I missed that info, or if it was not present at registration time. If it was not present, it would be good to put that extra info in the race description screen. I drive in VR, so I have to know in advance if the race will be night time for performance reasons. I have to lower some setting in order to get the desired framerate at night, or if it's raining.

Another thing I want to say about that is I don't think setting a rookie race at night and/or wet conditions is a good idea. Wet or night is not friendly to rookies, and I bet a lot of new drivers will be avoiding those races. May be configuring those races to be held at daytime, clear weather (just like the practice server by the way) would be better for starters.

At last, I was able to finish the race against the bots without any problems, and it was just a very good experience overall using the service. Sadly, I had to race against AI drivers instead of human players, but I aknowledged in advance it would be tough to get some drivers to show up on my timezone and day time I was able to race yesterday.

I will look forward to this. Thanks for providing us with more options to race online.

 

Reading the feedback from @Fernando, above, alongside that which myself and Coldsalmon reported it would seem there’s value in users knowing what race conditions will be. However, I don’t think long term all races/servers need to avoid random conditions or even races set up specifically for bad weather, night starts etc. I bet there are skilled drivers out there who have both the skills and the PC tech to take on challenging conditions and would like the opportunity to have the same ‘drop in and play’ ease that RCO is set up for.

Besides, the ‘Rookie’ start is no different to iRacing or even AMS2s current online implementation. It’s just a starting point.

Anyway, like Coldsalmon said earlier - I’m beginning to talk too much. I’ll jump into another race or two tomorrow (having now fixed my VR issue)

 

Glad you discovered the MCR, it’s one of my favourite cars in game and great fun once you tame the open diff.