Visually The representation of drizzle is excessive, especially when starting a session under these conditions. Although the Livetrack system is progressive, the windshield gives the impression of rain instead of a light drizzle. This is also reflected in the appearance of the track, which often looks very wet, sometimes almost soaked. Puddle Formation I read a comment mentioning that puddles don’t form on the racing lines of modern tracks, which would make sense. However, they also don’t appear on historic tracks or off the racing lines, such as on some curbs or specific surfaces where they should. After several hours of testing, even with active storms, I noticed that puddle simulation is essentially gone. Physics and Force Feedback A critical issue is that curbs should be more slippery in rainy conditions. Additionally, there isn’t a noticeable difference between driving on the racing line or off it. This lack of accuracy doesn’t properly convey sensations through force feedback, which affects the immersive experience of driving in wet conditions. There’s no feedback to indicate grip changes when driving off-line. What are your feelings and thoughts?
Puddle formation: i much prefer the current simulation over V1.5, but I don’t know if it isn’t realistic for older tracks FFB: how should the FFB feel differently when driving where there’s more grip?
But the current simulation of puddle formation is completely unrealistic; puddles don’t even form where they should. I don’t know, I don’t feel any difference in grip when driving off the racing line. The force feedback feels very flat in wet conditions.
Can you show me some examples? I’ve only tried Silverstone and it looked much better the grip difference will be felt at the limit. I don’t see why it would be different
I don't like how rain looks at night in v1.6. It's odd. And you can actually turn off your headlights when you're behind the water spray of another car. Serious, you can see everything as if you had your lights on. I hope Reiza will take a look at it. But during the day I think I prefer the v1.6 rather than the previous one. Now, about the physics and stuff I prefer not to say anything and let people who understand it better do the talking instead. But so far I've been enjoying it.
In my experience rain is a step down in many areas where it was in 1.5, puddle formation seems off, I expect puddles not to form in the racing line in most Grade A circuits, but they don't even appear in classic versions of the tracks, even after hours of heavy rain. My guess is that either track drainage is too high or there's something else at play. Grip on wet conditions is another matter, I'd guess it will depend from car to car but it seems to me like slick tyres have way to much grip on wet conditions, making wet tyres only worth it when the track becomes fully soaked, and even then there's too much grip still IMO. Racing line being less grippy than the wet line is another matter, I don't feel it. My guess is that it should affect both Longitudinal and lateral grip, but trying to brake at the exact same spot in both the wet line and dry line on the same track at the exact same speed I get basically the same result. The car stops at the same distance in both lines on the track. My guess is that the wet line should be better for stoping the car. General driving on the wet in wet tyres on a soaked track is good, I like the wet physics but atm it feels like a switch. Either drive on a fully dry track or drive on a fully wet track. Everything in between doesn't seem right. I have faith Reiza will work to correct this in future updates
I wish the rain would interact more realistically with the windshield, the same goes for the wipers. Sometimes you can drive in the rain without having to turn on the windshield wipers, as you can often still see enough. Rain noises and windshield wiper noises would also be desirable, but at the moment I don't think that's enough.
I am missing the puddles as well. Not all modern circuits are the same and small puddles will form under heavy rain even in some of the most famous ones. Maybe what we had before was excessive, but what we got now is not enough. I am pretty sure tracks like Ibarra under heavy rain have way more puddles, close to what we had before.
I agree with the graphical tthings mentioned above, it is pretty difficult to make any sense based on visuall alone, also I havent seen any puddles after latest update. However the feel of car is very different on wet well rubbered track on and off line, On rubbered up line the cars usually feel slimey and unstable under brakes and definitely have much less grip through cornes in general. Thing is though that benefits of wet lines are very much affected by other drivers also. In an an average radius, camber, elevation and speed corner (yeah "average") against ai wich usually takes very conservative line it´s not worth it to take to off line but against human players all trying to max out lap time it can work out due to better line dryng out.
Rain drops hitting the windshield is one of the aspects I pay most of my attention in racing games. So far I've never seen any sim recreating it with perfection. Not even LMU or AC EVO. But there's an old and obscure simcade game from the PS4 era called "Driveclub". I never played this game, but I've watched dozens of hours of gameplay. In my humble opinion, Driveclub has the best rain visuals ever. I just love how the water reacts to the car movements. It goes left, it goes right. When you accelerate they hit you hard. When you brake they settle down. And the wipers throwing water left and right. It's just mesmerizing.
Rendition of rain in Driveclub was out of this world, hard to believe this game was running on the base PS4. Regarding the absence of puddles in version 1.6, it's clearly a downgrade. You can't find them anymore, even with the highest rain setting. On modern tracks, it takes time (in real life) for the water to drain. The last F1 race at Interlagos is a good example.
Best would be, if you think rain was 'nerfed' too hard, to provide screenshots and video's. Maybe if you still have content from previous patches to compare with 1.6
Ok, lets debate this: 1. I'm open to being wrong but I've recorded a video (excuse the no editing.. 16 min of footage to ilustrate what I mean) of Brands hatch Indy, small track, club based, I imagine poor drainage compared to some bigger circuits, at 60 times speed and 60 times weather (Settings can be seen at the beggining of the video). Stayed there for a whole ingame day to see if the puddle at Paddock hill bend increases, the puddle can be seen when we arrive at the beggining and it doesn't grow any bigger during a whole day of a heavy thunderstorm. 2. Before 1.6 the puddle at the same corner could get REALLY big, so big in fact that the whole downhill section became very hard to navigate since the puddle would make you aquaplane. Below is a picture of the following video to show what I mean: 3. Now, we can debate if the puddle growing this big is realistic or not, I think before 1.6 it was exagerated, but now it's too little, 24h of a heavy thunderstorm is going to flood any track, we've seen the issues in tracks like Imola or Spa when they become flooded and those are very high standard F1 tracks. I also think atm slick tyres are too OP on the wet, but thats a discussion for another time.
I remember 3 situations where puddles would accumulate too much in version 1.5. I'll try to recreate those races again and capture some photos for you. 1) Silverstone GP. Corners 4 and 5 (the loop and aintree). I remember racing F1 Ultimate Gen. 2. Weather was set to historical, so I can't remember exactly. It was definitely not thunderstorm, maybe it was rain or heavy rain. I went for intermediates and they were all good. But upon exiting corner 4 there was this swimming pool covering all parts of the track. 2) Ibarra normal. Heavy rain. Last corner (the hairpin). Again, it was a swimming pool. You had to take the corner from the very outside because the apex was under water. 3) Spielberg Historic (no chicane version). Thunderstorm. Main straight. This one was very recent. In fact, I don't remember exactly if it was v1.5 or v1.6. I was recreating the 1967 season and switched Zandvoort for Spielberrg. Rain during the training, rain during the quali and thunderstorm during the race. There was this massive puddle just a few meters in front of the starting line. There was no way to avoid it. Every time I passed through there I was afraid of acquaplaning. And it happened. I lost control at +200 km/h and went straight to the ICU. When I have time I'm gonna recreate these conditions and post the results here.
I can say that IMO modern Silverstone looks a lot better now with reduced puddles. It used to be impossible to drive certain parts without aquaplaining
This is another one of those extreme examples of puddles being formed, later if I have time I'll try to see if I can replicate this conditions:
Currently hosts multiple national level championship rounds between the Indy and Grand Prix layouts (remember that the Grand Prix layout includes all but one short connecting section of the Indy layout), has hosted DTM in the pre-GT3 era, hosted F1 for years, is listed as FIA Grade 2 (both layouts) in the most recent FIA list I could find. But it's a "club" track, sure.
First I'd like to say thanks for listening Reiza, this always brings me back to testing things expecting to see change/improvements. Continuing with the previous post since there's been updates to puddles in 1.6.3.5, I've done the same test at brands hatch (Although I've also tested Ibarra since, like Corvus pointed out, brands is a Grade 2 track, my bad). And the situation now is different: - Brands hatch, options can be seen at the beggining, and we go to the same puddle as before: Now we can see that the puddle becomes bigger as time progresses, jumping from minute 1 to minute 7 clearly shows the difference in size, however what I don't fully understand is that the puddle, from minute 7 to minute 10 seems to reduce in size with, apparently, no difference in the rain intensity. I've tested the same thing in Ibarra and the results, although Ibarra shows bigger puddles, is the same, puddles seem to sometimes decrease in size with, at least visually, no difference in rain intensity. I assume there's a formula like: Rain intensity - drainage system = water on track. I'd love if anybody could clarify this. Personally I'd still be happy with a bit more water appear in this extreme examples, but I admit this is a very unlikely situation to occur in a normal race so at the moment I'm happy with what we have.
