Automobilista 2 April 2023 Development Update

Since this term has been mentioned twice now in the most recent posts, it's time for me to put my pedantic hobby typographer hat on:
"Modern" in typeface design refers to typefaces stemming from the late 1700s, with designs such as Didot and Bodoni, where "modern" meant "unornamented". The font you use in your example is a neo-grotesque, which stems from the 1950s/1960s. And while rounded fonts have been around for a long, long time, and got a boost with Arial Rounded MT in the early 1990s but went out of fashion due to Comic Sans dominance, it's with the webfont movement in the 2010s that rounded fonts came back in fashion. Thus, the bold rounded sans-serif font currently in the AMS2 UI is not any more or less modern ("in fashion") than the alternative that you suggest in your mockup.

But what I think you really mean, is that you want a font with better hinting or at least with sharper edges. And also that you want a font that is narrower and lighter weight so that you can fit more characters in little available horizontal space, while at the same time looking more text-like and less display/heading-like.

My guess why we have the current AMS2 UI font:
One technical requirement is that it needs to be compatible with a wide array of viewing devices, especially when we take into account both old and new VR headsets. These can have lower resolution, lots of screendoor effect, and all sorts of different types of distortion. I suppose if Reiza decides that they will drop support for pre-2020 VR headsets, it could be possible to switch to a lighter and narrower font. Unfortunately, 17% of SteamVR users are still using Valve Index which has worse resolution, screendoor and glare compared to the most recent VR headsets. Nevertheless - ClearType-style sharpness and subpixel rendering is not possible in VR, due to the nature of VR headsets where the virtual subpixels never match up to the real display subpixels due to the movable nature of the 6DOF head-mounted display.

 

My biggest gripe with UI is that many options in race setup screens are-on separate screens & sub-screens:
- Separate screen for opponents (ai, classes; this o e is even logical)
- Separate screen for practice (with sub-window for practice duration, weather) & qualifying (again with sub-window for qual duration, weather)
- Separate screen for race (again with separate screen for race duration)
All these could be on one (or two) screens

Oh, one more thing. I miss an in-garage (actually in setup screens) info on tyres(IMO) and other temperatures (water, oil). There is the telemetry driving overlay, but I don't find that immersive.
My 2 cents on UI

 

I do agree with both of you in that.

 

I agree with whats been said about the replay menu:

- Some of the buttons are not clickable, until you hover over other buttons. A bit strange to go unfixed for 3 years.

However, I have another thing:

- Add clickable buttons for previous & next trackside camera in replay. I drive in VR and it is just a few days ago I realized I needed to map keys and use them. I always thought the trackside VR cameras are broken. But no, I just needed to manually switch to next camera.

 

Pandora's box has been opened.

 

Dare I say it, AMS2's Pandora's box is the FFB meter. It is the only real dialogue between the sim, the wheel and the player yet it has remained complicated, untouched, unexplained and awkwardly placed for years. If any part of the UI requires updating, it's the meter. It really should be a priority.

 

AMS2's UI may not be the prettiest but IMO it's the most functional and easy to use of all the sims out there, and I love that. In addition, the background music is relaxing and not loud or tiresome like in other sims.. Of course, there's a lot of room for improvements. I'd really like this for future updates:
- More vehicle info, ie. car manufacture date (car year please!).
- I'd love all menu buttons moved to central screen when the game is set to triple screen.
- Thumbnail images for all tracks in menus.
- Get rid of that pair of AMS1-style placeholder buttons that have endured since early access.

 

Yes please.

 

Replay screen could sure see an overhaul and some polish. Some buttons sometimes stop responding until you click somewhere else.

I hope we'll see a new font, if not in v1.5 maybe the next major release after that ?
A new font will go a long way to make the UI fresh again without major changes.
There is no shortage of games with good looking fonts to take inspiration from.

Oh and more coders should be hired

 

Yep but totally out of context....
Crickets and sea waves sounds...
With formulas engines screaming on background too...

Irl crickets would be scared and muted due the formula cars screaming on track which wouldn't be so close to sea to hear waves sound

I am all in for relaxing music but the actual sounds like a Spa one....and I am not referring to the track

 

The main thing to me that I genuinely do feel needs to be changed, is the car selection, and to a lesser degree, track selection. The car selection screen is just too cluttered as it is. Four Caterhams, over a dozen formula cars, multiple seasons of Brazilian stock cars, that sort of thing. It's a bit of a mess to navigate, and I haven't given a ton of thought to it, but the UI may benefit from sub-menus. Maybe there's a button for say, Brazilian stock cars, that when you click it, brings you to a sub-menu of the different years/versions of the cars.

Alternatively, use what you guys already have for the event presets where it clearly shows the title of the series with an action shot of the cars within it, then when you click it, you're taken to the specific car selection screen we currently have.

 

All these UI ideas are... nice to have, and most of them should stay there. Unless Reiza already has an UI artist and a coder with nothing else better to do, this isn't a great idea. You shouldn't shift focus on things like that.

A nice, juicy menu is way more important for mobile games, where the UI can be part of actual gameplay. People are either gonna play AMS 2 or they won't, but not a single person will make that decision based on the UI. Keep focus on what sells (except GT3 ) and what expands the AMS 2 community at the moment.

I've been working as a game dev for like 10-11 years now, and i can tell you one thing. All of us devs have tons of ideas on how to make the games nicer, trust me. And we would love to take the time to make our games perfect, and exactly how we want. But ultimately, you only have a certain amount of resources (man-power, time and finances) and the release, dlc, update or whatever needs to come out to the public. Even companies like Rockstar Games, who have been pushing the boundries of game development for 25 years now, the greatest single innovator in gaming, a genuine trend-setter, a company who keeps pushing further when everyone else is saying "ok, good enough", are rumoured to have to cut content for GTA 6,to launch the game in time, even if the release date isn't even set. So you have to keep focus on what is important. And what is important here is content (cars, maps), physics and online multiplayer. The menu and GUI are perfectly functional, easy to use, and not lacking anything, imo.

 

This whole "modernise" the UI thing gets bandied about far too often on sim racing forums...

It's a waste of a developers time to completely change the UI to meet the standards of what a small portion of the community see as "modern"... Then when that small portion is happy, another portion is claiming that the UI needs to be more modern because everyone has different standards...

S397 have wasted so much time changing their UI over the years that they could of spent on more important areas... Functionality is more important over appeasing a minority who want a certain look and feel to their games, that ultimately others will not like...

The most pressing needs for the UI are better scrolling abilities (wider scroll bars and working mouse scrolling) and that everything works... The set up screen constantly loses the ability to click on things and would be game breaking to many people who try it for the first time...

 

Localization, support multiple languages are also important.
In case of PC2 publisher took care about localization well so user can read and write their language.
But Ams2 not support many languages yet.
I know about hardness of localization.
My company's SW supports about 190 types of languages.
that means UX and dev should consider all languages.
strict or stretching layouts, restrict translation string length, check font fall though table, glyph bounds...
anyway, how about support external language xml files to easy modding?

example:
reference sample file
<Language

code="en_us"
title="English"
fonts="default">
<String

name="main_menu_test_day"
maxLangth=20>Test day</String>​

...
</Language>

localization mod files
"/Automobilista 2/UserData/Fonts/korean.ttf"
"/Automobilista 2/UserData/Languages/korean.xml"
<Language

code="ko_kr"
title="한국어"
fonts="korean.ttf">
<String

name="main_menu_test_day"
maxLangth=20>테스트 데이</String>​

...
</Language>

If next UI supports this concepts, localization mod make more user helpful.
I'm sure whole world will dive into it when it comes real.

 

Not sure if this has ever been mentioned....

but the F Reiza tires need updating.

 

You do realise all the tyres are getting a massive update soon right?

I mean it's a major part of this thread... A little reading helps

 

See you think you are being clever, but what I'm talking about is the tire colors. Thanks for playing though.

 

Ah well that you can do yourself then...

 

The main problem of the GUI is the UX. Is a little bit buggy and unresponsive, and some elements are not the most suitable.

I will change the car and track selectors. In both screens i will remove the side parts, and only 2 components. The vehicle/track list, with fixed categories. When a category is selected, on the other side, al the cars/track avaible and on bottom the image/preview. So we only have 2 blocks, and neither of the 2 being clunky on select or navigate.

Then, on the session screen (test and race), i will force the design so the player can visualize and edit the session and the AI. Just removing the navigation from the buttons (ai, practice settings etc) and some fancy way to enable/disable from the main screen (race/test session).

Another thing I want to say, the responsiveness of the buttons are awful, sometimes didnt response until i shake the mouse heavily or stroke the keyboard.

And, the confirm dialogs on center, on triples is annoying every time we want to exit xD