Automobilista 2 September 2024 Development Update - The Road to V1.6 Pt2

I'm sure the update won't live up to the hype train expectations as those are basically seeking an end product with everything perfected.
It's a solid upgrade on many aspects. And we'll still get 1.7, 1.8 and so on.

I love it, even with some issues here but it's much better state than 1.5 is. We're still on a journey, it's not the final destination yet. But haters gonna hate, players gonna play and trolleys gonna troll. And I'll continue to happily be in that middle group

 

• As for Yannick - apparently, he was really forced to launch the broadcast at the last moment, without any plan or preparation - it was a bad idea, but I personally have no complaints about him, he did everything he could, he was very worried, it was obvious, but the management decided not to postpone the stream and it all resulted in what we have.
• AI. Although I absolutely do not need AI in games, I still noticed that a miracle did not happen. It still behaves quite clumsily, linearly, recognizably, aggressively. Personally, I did not notice any improvements at all, although they may exist. Therefore, my bet is multiplayer. LFM should not let me down, I still hope that it will raise the online and AMS2 rating among other sims. Yes, not to the level iRacing, but at least to the level of ACC (online).
• Graphics. The quality was terrible, but I still saw some nice new scratches on the windshield, plus I liked that the green-blue haze effect in the distance was reduced, the clouds looked sharper and brighter, more realistic. Reflections, glare and rays were better, but all of this was very hard to see among the pixels of the 720 broadcast.
• I liked the sounds of the new cars, but I hardly noticed any changes to the old ones. All the new content looks very good, I have no complaints here, Reiza did a great job.
• Interface. Personally, I liked it, yes, it is not perfect, and also a little uneven, but overall it looks fresh and more or less on par with LMU and ACC. Only again, the HUD does not fit the new interface style. It needs to be reworked in the next update, the font was changed, but overall it is still a bit old. As for the color - it's a matter of taste, one of the main colors of the AMS brand is red, so it looks logical in the game menu.
  
• Bottom line: This stream was not the best way to advertise the upcoming release of v1.6. I would even call it anti-advertisement, since new players who are waiting for the update to start playing are, to put it mildly, not thrilled with the stream. And that's sad. To fix this, you need to release something of your own, or give access to other streamers this weekend, so that as many people as possible can find out and try it.
  I really hope this stream doesn't push the release date back and we get the update in early October (Ideally this weekend) People need time to get used to the new tire physics and new cars before they can start driving in LFM. Please don't push the release date back because of a bad experience from this stream.
  
  
  
  

 

Inexcusable, they should have delayed the stream. I am not complaining about him because as you said it was a last minute decision but that blame falls fully on Overtake for doing it this way, huge failure on their part. It also showed that they gave the job to someone who does not play AMS2 since he was using mostly old content and especially doing that F1 night race was a facepalm moment, no idea what was the thought process there.

I'll be sure to do a full AI breakdown video once the update releases to the public and test all possible aggression and difficulty combinations with as many cars i will be able to.

 

As someone said it would be nice to give GPLaps and SimRacing 604 the go to make some proper videos on 1.6, it would be better than the stream for sure.

 

Yes hopefully Reiza can give green light to a few of the streamers in Beta to publish a more thoroughly planned content preview ahead of release to balance up this suboptimal stream (no disrespect for Overtake intended). I think it would be a good way to do justice to the amount of improvements this update brings

 

I don't see why personally, I enjoyed the stream more than not having it (had to turn it off at F1-night though, was killing my eyes trying to watch that).

I don't think anyone out there thought its issues were to do with AMS2 rather than the overtake stream (no-one thinks it's going to run in 720p) and most comments were divided into

• criticism for the stream
• folk who don't follow AMS2 learning about some new content (and being generally excited for it)
• the usual muppets who spent more time championing rF2/iR/ACC than actually playing those games
• a lot of people seeing the new features like the UI/larger grids/new AI/flat spots/shader tweaks.

No doubt there'll be a bunch more 'normal' video previews when the release date is actually known at higher quality, but the stream did a fine job of saying "hey, some big content and updates are ok their way" to an audience who might not have known but are clever enough to know that the stream didn't showcase all the fine details and will now watch some of the content previews coming soon(tm).

 

This will be me when 1.6 and Sebring is here

 

Cars look a lot more sticky on turn ins, no longer seems to be in that constant sliding state. That looks really impressive!

As for the streamer, I think it was very unplanned and honestly he can't really drive and having him complain about AI when he just divebombed corners or moving infront of racing lines with AI just next to him was kinda hard to watch, I think a prerecored stream or showcase video would have been better but hey atleast we got something!

UI is more of a evolution than revolution and thats fine I guess. Im just happy the track selection is sorted out! Finally an in game image and track overlay, freaking PERFECT!

Car selection could be improved however though, rather have a wider selection of cars then the actual car covering most of the screen, but im nitpicking now.

 

This is just silly then. It's not a freaking investors call that has to be published, literally no one expected a livestream so why this HAD to go out is beyond me. They should for sure prepared this a bit better.

 

Also record some of the current AI behaviors as comparisons!

 

Well is it? It's not like the guy comes of as a credible type judging driving physics or AI behaviour when he can't even control the wheel let alone divebomb in corners.

I think a lot of people could just write off the AI as bad in his stream but a lot of times he was the one driving erratic and not the AI at fault. That's not a fair or good image for AMS.

 

Honestly the handling looks really improved, which was the main point a lot of people held against automobilista.
As for the AI, I already like the games AI in this state, of course could be improved but I trust the opinion of the testers I read here.
As for the stream... It was like throwing a piece of meat in a pool full of sharks, even if it had been of a better quality people would have still complained.

 

There were plenty of other moments in the broadcast where he didn't break the rules, followed the racing line, entered the turn correctly, but the AI wasn't driving very well at that moment. I especially remember the moment when he turned around, and the AI didn't know what to do next, they just stood there, although no one will wait for you in a race, if you turn around, then press the brake, wait for others to overtake you and only then move. The AI was confused at that moment, they created a traffic jam, although there was plenty of space on the left to go around. Then he went in reverse, this made me laugh, and the AI managed to go after him and start colliding with each other at a very low speed, huddled together.
I always say, you shouldn't expect anything from the AI in the next 5-10 years, it's still very, very crooked. Neural networks absorb information for years to be like us. So don't despair, if you wanted a better AI experience, we invite you to LFM. The more of us there, the more fun the races will be for everyone. And don't worry if you're a bad driver, there will be races for both newbies and AMS2 aces.

 

Hopefully a few lessons learned on the back of this.

Yannick it seems was thrown under the bus and probably isn't the most experienced streamer so we need to give the guy a break.

I think the logistics of the stream were what really let it down. Seeing as this was publicised at least 4 or 5 hours prior to it going live they should have run a test and got the stream set up to at least 1080p 60 on both Twitch and YouTube. It may have looked OK if you were watching on a tablet or a phone but on my LG TV App it was like watching a stream from 10 years ago. It was heavily compressed which made it almost impossible to pick out details.

As others have said they also needed to have at least a rough outline of the content they were going to show/were allowed to show. I expect an exclusive preview to be a bit more scripted. I either want them to be highlighting the new content and UI or showing the existing content in the best light possible. The latter was impossible due to the low quality of the stream and the former didn't happen in any coherent way. If they had permission from Reiza they would have been better off spending 10 or 15 minutes looking at the UI without the "streamer view" blocking a chunk of the screen. Then stuck to the new cars on a few tracks. I get that they were probably only allowed to show Road Atlanta of the new tracks but on a low quality stream running around Nords for example which we've all seen a million times is a bit pointless when you can't see it at the best quality.

Showing any AI improvement is very difficult in short races as they tend to take time to settle and with someone who seems to have limited experience streaming and driving at the same time this wasn't going to turn out to well.

My vote also goes to @gplaps and @SimRacing604 to be given a shot at a preview. They always seem to be really good guys with a positive attitude and have a lot more experience in doing this sort of thing (assuming either of them would want to do it of course )

 

Part 1 thread felt on the whole like a friendly thread.
Part 2 is feeling very toxic.

those posting criticism of the steam need be a bit more measured in their views. There are not prime time HBO budgets going into this. Take sometime to think about the human beings on the other side.

It’s good to offer constructive feedback. But personal attacks on someone isn’t necessary and makes us all look bad.

 

It just looked like a poorly planned, rushed presentation to be honest and exactly what 1.6 didn't need when "showing it's face" to the world.

No issue with Yannik as he was obviously having Internet issues and we've all had those just when we didn't need them and it was a high pressure situation exacerbated by the issues that occurred, but because it was rushed it was...

Poorly planned.
Stream quality suffered.
(1080p/60,1440p/60 for twitch/yt, multi rtmp plugin allows separate encoder/resolution/bitrate for each)
Should have been said right at the start "I'm limited to what I can show guys, so apologies if you don't see what your excited for this time" just to get everyone on the same page from the off ect.

Blame for me lies firmly on overtake as if things needed to be rushed to get the stream out, then that's the sign they wasn't ready and even just pushing it 24hrs would have given enough planning time to really nail everything and pin it down to highlight all the good things that 1.6 is.

Rant over, roll on the release!

 

Calling out a massive fail stream isn't being toxic...

Apparently we're "entitled" for wanting a semi decent stream showing off the content we've been waiting for months and months. Massive facepalm comment

 

I was struggling to see how we could get this new thread to 200 pages, but seems this will get us there effortlessly.

 

I dont know if he was nervous because he was caught by surprise by having to make a stream from his home out of nowhere, but his driving was pretty erratic, as I said before we need to give the guy a break because I would be all over the place too in this situation. But he did made some questionable showings, like the F1 at night to show the tire degradation visuals and the fireworks in a track he wasnt sure that had the effect, we know that Sebring is in and has the fireworks, didnt he have authorization to show it? It was just a bad, unplanned display, too casual for its own good, and this is not a direct attack on the guy or anything.

 

the stream was rushed and last minute because the public release is today, there was no time to wait for other tubers to take days preparing a polished review