Automobilista 2 April 2023 Development Update

On the theme of UI/UX I guess I'll add my biggest problems I have with AMS2's UI.
- We should be able to change our control setups from inside a session, it's weird that we can change all bindings, FFB settings and axis configs from a session but not our binding/FFB/axis presets. The lack of this may force users with multiple wheels like me to quit sessions because we forgot to select the correct setup before hand.
- Move certain gameplay settings to the session's menu, I'd rather have stuff like damage settings, fuel usage and tire wear in the session settings so I can change them quickly. I may want tire wear and fuel use increased for a time accelerated 24h race and have them normal for a F1 sprint and going back and fourth is tedious. This would also be more intuitive if race saving and resuming gets added, and have these set per championship save if that's not already the case.
- Make the settings menu accessible from anywhere in the race menu, as the two previous points suggests, there's a lot of going back and forth between the two and it's annoying as you always have to go back up to the main screen to switch between the two.

Bonus request: Not UI related but a feature I'd love to see in AMS2: adaptive AI, RaceRoom has this and it's honestly liberating. For me it's one of RRRE's most important features as it really motivates me to do longer races and actually do qualifications and championships as I don't have to worry about finding the correct AI skill level and wasting my time if I set it too high of low.

 

S397 took forever to update their UI because they replaced it with an embedded Web engine (which is a mammoth task), but it resulted in flexibility impossible before, with developing the UI largely identical to making a web site and all the awesome tooling and UI frameworks choice that go with it. And now they are reaping the benefits where making changes is probably a tad easier than in PC2/AMS2.

Nobody is asking Reiza to completely change the UI like S397 did, but to make small tweaks here are there that are not too time consuming (ie fonts, small annoyances) with a big impact to make it feel new and fresh.

Also, general presentation and polish of a product can be important for the public and prospective buyers. Currently, the UI is not bad by any mean and highly usable and functional, but can be improved without a huge overhaul.

 

I dont think s397 wasted their time with rF2, the rF2 ui was dire. They also added functionalities to their ui like a content manager, and a shop for content, which is all useful stuff

 

At least reiza did the most important thing: fixing the white dot in the ttotw menu

 

yeah, exactly, you need to prioritize in life.....

 

The UI in rF2 has been redone far too many times is my point...

A UI just needs to be functional... And until this last rebuild of rF2's UI it was better under ISI with all the features working...

 

Being sort of in the business myself I concur that you need to be very careful not to fall into the trap of always giving the users 'what they want', especially GUI-wise. It can indeed be a Pandora's box, and a major paradox.

Often after release the users realise that what they thought they wanted is not what they want, and then it's on you, and you can spend iteration after iteration trying to 'fix' stuff that was never really 'broken' instead of focusing on delivering actual features. It's like writing pop songs: If you try to make everybody happy and base all your choices on the charts, everybody will end up hating you.

I'm not saying you shouldn't listen to feedback, you've just got to be careful.

 

The first s397 attempt sucked, i always defaulted to the original isi ui. Their second attempt is much better

 

It strikes me S397 focused on UI because they had no clue what they were doing with the physics ISI left them. They produced a bunch of GT3 content that you had to drive by scandi-flicking the cars sideways into every corner. Those cars have only recently, years later, been updated to drive anything remotely resembling real GT3 cars. In a way, it's similar to Reiza's struggles to come to grips with the Seta tyre model.

 

With 1 major difference...

ISI knew what they were doing with the engine when they gave S397 their information on it... And so did the modding community... ISI also came off a development path with a similar engine that they knew like the back of their hands...

SMS on the other hand gave us the pCARS series and created their own new engine for it which until recently was largely closed off to the modding community... There was less of a focus on developing the engine and a focus on pushing out the content instead...

Whilst S397 didn't know what they were doing, they did not have the hurdles to jump that were in the Madness engine and they had the modding community there to help guide them through to where they are today...

It does make what Reiza have achieved to date so much more incredible when you stop and think about it...

 

One big gripe i have with the ui is that you always need to press two buttons to exit a session, there should be an option to turn that prompt off. The button hitbox in the settings should be increased as well, the little arrows are super annoying.

 

A thing I forgot to suggest, and even though it's arguably more gameplay related than UI/UX related but still.
I think it'd be nice if we could set race length by distance. Nothing super important, it effectively only serves to save you the time to calculate how many laps you need for a certain race distance for stuff like 305km for F1, 1000 miles of Sebring, 1000km of Spa, etc.
This would also have the side effect of allowing certain presets to automatically set the right amount of laps like for F1 and F1 sprint.

Being able to set a max race duration alongside a lap/distance based race like in rF2 would be nice too, though fairly niche. Many races have maximum time durations in case it takes too long to complete the race distance manually, like F1 for which it's 2 hours and 8 hours for the 1000 miles of Reiza please.

 

Honestly, if there’s anything that is furthest in my view from the list of priorities that need fixing in AMS2, then the UI is it.

Fixing the the annoyances in it like unable to scroll to the bottom of menus with the mouse wheel, or buttons like in the setup that don’t work until you’ve clicked other buttons etc are very valid and should have been fixed ages ago in my opinion.

But the overall functionality of the UI in regards to loading in and starting a race is perfectly adequate for the time being.

I’d much rather the team spend their limited resources elsewhere.

 

If you know that I have brought it up constantly then you'd also have read that, with the exception of that one time above, I have not only been specific about what it is, I have also elaborated why I don't believe it is only a cosmetic issue. I was fairly polite and clear the first 8-10 times I have mentioned it over the last 2 years, so I was half joking in this thread seeing as how it was about tires.

 

Why are we complaining about the ui and menus? thats one of the minor issues of the game rn, what we do have already gets the job done, i think the coding guys should spend time fixing bugs, improving physics and looking at the game performance under certain circumstances (fps drops for rendering 32 headlights) before even bothering that much with ui and gui changes

 

I am one of those that simply hates the UI. I think the issue is fundamental and can hardly be fixed.

The problem for me is that AMS2 has a game UI instead of a sim UI. What I would like to see is the possibility of launching a session programmatically (cli arguments+config files) so third party launchers can be developed (we could have an ac-like the content manager, or launching rco sessions from the web app, just to put an example now that everyone is talking about the service).

Of course, I can live with the current game UI approach. AMS2 in its current state is the sim I am using more. This is my perspective, though.

 

Not wanting to weigh in on this, but I really enjoy seeing your name pop up more in this thread at the moment and getting to read a little more insight. I know it's probably not going to stay that way, especially when crunch time arrives again, but to have the CEO of the developer be that open and active on its forums is a great thing!