Automobilista 2 November 2023 Development Update

I thought it was due to livetrack not being able to sync

 

Do we have a date for the update to drop? My F5-finger is getting tired.

 

People who play multiplayer games are often fundamentally unhappy and miserable. I wouldn't take it personally. Equally though I wouldn't hold out much hope that any code you write or updates you release will change that.

It's not always the case I'll add - I note the people that play online on Tuesdays and Thursdays that I've seen streaming on youtube seem reasonably happy.

 

Seeing as we have to wait for this to be released(I foolishly assumed this was coming out on Sunday lol), can we get some videos of Barcelona '91 in the dry, Interlagos 1991(to compare with 1993) and the Montreal revisions too? I know I'm impatient.

 

Hi @Renato Simioni I am wondering if the AI will avoid the racing line in wet as well at 1.5.3 or this won't be part for that release?

 

Reading this thread there seems to be two opposing sides regarding MP, about its current viability. As admin of a discord with 1.3k members who regularly attract 20+ racers up to 3 times a week, and run some of (if not the most) longest races found in the MP landscape, we’re pretty much at the cutting edge of pushing the sim online. Let’s put to bed no online racers want full length races with weather/pitstops etc, many MP racers want to do the same experiences as SP players, just want to do it with humans for various reasons not relevant to this post.

I’ll summarize my thoughts here regarding some of the myths as hopefully people can use the knowledge we have gained in the past 2 years.

To start with, there’s two fundamental systems:

1. P2P - commonly used known as the in-game servers
2. Dedi - this is the dedicated server option brought across from PC2

Both systems share the fundamental P2P protocol where each user is connected to every other user. The “dedi” is essentially just funnelling system which servers to automatically generate and populate a P2P lobby, with some extra data reporting functionality.

In practice, this means that server stability (both types) is dependent upon user ping. If you have lots of users in the same locale with great internet, it’s a stable system. If you have longer distances, more variable pings, then by proxy of every user being connected, then just a single poor connection will cause issues. This has been improved with various updates. This may be anecdotal but it seems that stability generally is effected by the connection of the server “host”, in reality the first user in the lobby with the controls.

The dedi, as it is another layer on-top of the P2P system, causes extra load. Some friends in communities friendly with CanAm SimSport have dug into some of the dedi and tested things, finding that the distance between the dedi server and the first user in the room adds to the ping penalty the dedi seems to bring. The dedi also auto assigns the first user to the lobby without concern to their connection quality.

What we have found in practice is the the P2P system with a manual human starting the server is pretty robust for run of the mill races. That’s what we use every single time. We have tried the Dedi several times, through 3rd party services (JR, SGP etc), having it configured by others who use it a lot to eliminate user error on our part, and configured and located it ourselves. Every single time the dedi has a significant negative impact on the stability of the server. Mass disconnections and desyncing often happen. As I’m sure people can see that due to peer to peer protocols, the added dedi drag means it fundamentally cannot support more than a certain number of users. In our experience, it’s 13-14. So for our numbers it’s a no go.

What does this mean in terms of MP in general?

1. Dedi experiences vary due to a few things. We’re USA/Canada based, so the distance between dedi and first user can be large, which puts it in a bad position. This creates the “it works for us what is your issue you’re doing something wrong” lines from some users, which don’t help anything. The issues are known, gaslighting others saying everything is fine for everyone isn’t helping.
   
2. Getting the P2P system running for league purposes requires a lot of planning and knowledge. This isn’t feasible for all leagues or communities of various sizes. For championships, we worked with the devs of Second Monitor and RaceApp to bring a standalone json generation method and league championship tracking system to bare. This works really quite well.
3. The lack of reliability of the dedi impacts the efforts of any third party hosted system. We’d love to use one - trust me, using the P2P system as we have to is laborious and has taken its toll on the admin team. We’ll ditch our homebrew methods for an auto service the very moment it is viable for us. This lack of reliability in the off the shelf option means leagues struggle to invest trust and time (remember leagues survive on membership numbers - we/they can’t afford to drive our racers away).

So what does this have to do with this update? We clearly, the more robust dedi system and MP server logging tools will directly help the issues outlined above. The logging tools will help the devs find an isolate the bugs to solve, and the updated dedi will help third party services in their goal of assisting communities. It’s a tangible positive deliverable - it’s clear MP is not being abandoned. Weekly test in the beta branch are being conducted.

I hope this post is received well - it’s not intended to tell devs things they don’t already know, just to give the league admin perspective to augment the user perspectives being shared. The above is based on our experiences, so is somewhat anecdotal - please devs if I’ve got any technical detail wrong, correct me so I’m not pushing misnomers.

I’ll end by saying I’m happy to discuss and share specifics of how we are able to successfully run races of 2 hours plus online. It’s a unique homebrew process we’ve developed and perfected over time.

TLDR: We make do and mend, understand and try and mitigate the flaws as a league, lots of people still have a good time and enjoy MP at a hardcore level, we appreciate Reiza’s commitments to continue improving it, we see exactly how what they have announced is going to rise the tide for all MP boats, and look forward to the updates.

 

Great post. I've done 70+ online races in the last 6 months on Racecraft online, and a handful on JustRace as well, 95% of them have gone well. The dedicated server can be a bit flaky when player numbers go up ( as then it becomes more likely one will have a bad connection I guess ), but it's very far from unusable.
I have a ton of content on iRacing and have played all the major sims. I gravitate towards AMS2 because to me, it's the most fun and the best all rounder. It does almost everything well, and many things exceptionally well. Keep up the great work.

 

Trust me when I say I'm very bitter about the direction simracing has gone but come on have some respect. Multiplayer is fun and it is absolutely valid for someone to want better multiplayer in AMS 2.

The problem comes when they pretend work isn't being done, especially if they quite literally have access to the Paddock Club. Everyone in the Paddock Club who even vaugly pays attention to multiplayer knows that every week there are tests that goes on and people report bugs. But even without that access, it's such bad faith to keep banging on and on about the same basic critisim and pretending it's the be-all end-all. No acknowledgment of the work it takes, insinuation that no work as been done at all, things that are all very easy to avoid with a simple sentence. Comes off like they just want to complain, and it's very easy to not come off like that.

That's the problem (atleast for me), not some fundamental issue with people who play multiplayer.

 

I didn't gaslight other users. I said they are doing smth wrong. Cleary, half of your own lengthy post is about using the correct methods for setting up a server and what are the do nots - like users with high ping, that I referenced.

 

The point is, the dedi doesn’t work for all use cases. Gaslighting is saying “you must be doing it wrong”.

We’re not, we’ve approached it from more than 4 different directions. Eliminated user error. Had people deep dive into it see if we’re missing something. I’m glad you’ve had good experiences with it, but it is misleading to say any issue is user error, when clearly it is not.

The process I described we use with P2P in game servers is not fool proof, there’s still issues, kicks, starting light bugs, etc. It’s just the method we’ve found to mitigate the worst issues and occurances to a level which is acceptable to our racer base.

It would be simple bullsh*t to say there’s no errors encountered.

 

Yeah that’s precisely the case which drew my frustrations out into the post. The dedi has uses cases where it does the job and is fit for task. Unfortunately there’s cases where it isn’t, which Reiza is working to address. It’s a case of the concepts of “it works and it doesn’t work” exist in duality.

I really do think once Reiza cracks the dedi then MP usage will go up a lot. Services like JustRace make the admin experience so much easier and things like RaceCraft and LFM will give users who want the structured system what they need too. Exciting times for the sim!

 

Looking forward to the AI improvements. I'll be "off-line" for the next 3 months and will rely on creating my own championships. I hope the consistency of the AI from track to track in the the same car/class will be closer. Up to now, I usually do a short practice session, assess where the AI is, and then adjust the level up or down to be closer to my skill level. Also, overtaking of slower class cars in multi class races are causing the AI to lose a lot of time. I wish they could overtake other AI with the same efficiency they overtake me.... Great work Reiza. There are great improvements with every release.

 

@Renato Simioni keep it up! It's obviously working.

 

As you are one of the guys doing the camera stuff, could you have an eye on the replay cameras (instead of watching good looking Renato )?
On many tracks (i.e.: Spielberg 77, Hockenheim 88, Curitiba Outer, Snetterton and some others) the game just loves to switch to weird camera angles in replays, showing buildings and trees instead of cars on track.

 

Weeeell, there is always Live For Speed
Talk about patient gamers on their forum...

 

Yuuup, really looking forward to see what's different, besides those weird mini-sausage kerbs they had in '91.

 

At least conserning GPL or NR2003 part of their success was because they ALSO had a very strong and reliable(!) MP platform. And was extremely stable because at least in GPL the netcode was created based on dial-up-modems from that time
The NR2003 netcode was a further refinement of that - ending up in iRacings even further refined netcode.

ByTheWay: Personally I dont think a modern racing game will survive if it doesnt include a reasonable stable MP part. Even SP users of a game will be influenced if they know or hear that their games MP part sucks.

 

Just on this 'multiplayer focus', there's a reason I don't buy any content for games like ACC these days and it's because so many features and updates are based on MP and the SP side of the game feels completely forgotten.

I love modern GT racing and ACC should be a dream game for me, but the complete lack of engagement with the community and the fact that basic SP features aren't available years later kill it for me and I haven't bought anything since the IGTC pack. I'd love to be able to edit AI driver abilities and create a grid with cars/drivers of my choosing, but can I do this? Nope. The new WRC game feels half-baked in its offline experience and it's killed that one for me too.

SP gives me a pause button, grids I want to race against and a field of drivers who can brake at turn 1 and that's what I'm looking for at the moment. Reiza making vintage content with matching period tracks would do nothing for MP, but adds so much immersion for me. There's room for games focused on both, surely?

The focus on AI in this blog gives me more excitement and interest for the game than any update for ACC ever has done. The focus on endurance content next year doubly so!

 

Man these 90s circuits are gonna be fantastic in the 1990s endurance cars…