Featured Automobilista 2 V1.6.5 RELEASED!

I only care about cars that are like what I have raced. The V8 Supercar is close enough to the GT3 for direct comparison. Not one slick tired car I have raced is anything like what the AMS2 tires allow. (all sedan type cars - most with low/no aero)
LMU is WAY closer to realism - but doesn't have near as many tracks to race at. (esp Nordschleife and Bathurst). So AMS2 has some uses..... less uses if unrealistic though.

Spa is the ultimate 'test track' as it has every corner type. So it is of course the best to use for testing simulation/realism.

If you want to feel like you raced a real car, then for the best realism.. race LMU... and for 'fun' and semi-realism, race AMS2.
Pre V1.6.5 it used to be more neck and neck... each having some slight issues, but now it has swung a lot (to LMU) with each having their latest patches/changes.

 

Have you tried... trying the V8 Supercars in the game?

 

I'm also interested in cars that I've already driven, including old cars and rally cars. I agree with you that Ams2 is one of the most complete packages. I've never driven a real GT3, as probably 99.9% haven't, except for the road version, the 911 GT2. For me, however, there's always the fun factor, because a simulation will never be able to replicate reality 100%. To each his own

 

@PeterV Any chance you could just record some videos on Spa of your driving? I just don't see any of the things you claim. Could it be that you have camera movement on, so what you describe here as drift you can't see - whatever that even is - is just your camera turning into corners while your car is planted?

Of course you can rotate the car by throttle, but your time temps and wear will easily punish you for it across a whole race. 1.6.5 increased the realsim by a huge amount by making trailbraking relyable and planting the cars, 1.6.4 was way more slippery. I would even argue some cars like M4 GT3 feel pretty much identical between AMS2 and LMU with AMS2 now having the lead since the cars don't fly off on slight slipangle randomly.
Honestly it doesn't seem like you've played a lot LMU before Patch #5 if you think AMS2 has a problem with slip angle abuse

 

Big LMU fan here as I'm a big WEC fan.
Prior to this patch my game time on AMS2 had declined massively as I was focusing on LMU and the days where I thought I'd hop onto Ams2 I lasted about 10 minutes. Since the latest update i have sorted myself out with a custom ffb profile and it's feeling so much nicer to drive. So much so ive completed two 1hr 30 minute multiclass races over the weekend. Feels really good now I cant emphasise enough the Importance of getting the feeling right.
That being said we dont have a working flag system as yet and this far along I cant say I'm hopeful for it , FCY worked well at Sebring but I feel this is a massive ommission from the game.

 

Yes, you really need to 'add' a decent FFB custom setup in AMS2... and always have had to do that really. You NEED that extra information - to enhance consistency (by having more feedback that matters), and realism also (again via some extra feedback aspects as for consistency, but also adding some road texture, suspension motions etc).
Default+ is pretty good, but still quite lacking versus better custom setups.

I have no AMS2 camera movements etc on.
It is very easy to 'FEEL' what a car is doing - and the rear end. You learn 'feel' via vision, mainly of the car's rotation/angle relative to direction of actuial travel. And then more so with decent FFB which then lets me KNOW how far I can go before losing it. For the quite extreme rear end rotation I use (pretty well at a majority of corners), I never lose the rear end if on the track surface itself and only rarely if I run a curb that I KNOW can cause that, but I am experiencced enough to still use it fine almost 100% reliably.... until that rare time I don't quite use it right. But if only on bitumen it is highly reliable, pretty much 100% reliable. And if it is over-done you can pretty well always save it anyway.
You can do entire races like that, for no tire wear that matters... no overheating. You only ever get real over-heating if it DOES slide off beyond control.

It is a level of 'pushing' that in a real car you could only do for one hot lap etc.... or one lap (or two) of push in a race. Then you would HAVE to let them recover, or you are just wasting your time causing more harm than good. In AMS2 races I have only one 'mode'.... flat out all the way, all the time, as there is no regard required for wear or heating. It sort of makes you feel like a 'racing hero' in the way you have a car right at the edge of its capability, and how you must be so good you can do it non-stop (but it is really just AMS2 allowing that manner of racing) - which in a real car you rarely risk doing, maybe at any time(!). I had always raced cars and bikes to 98% ability.... I only needed that "2%" to assure I didn't have an error, or cause damage or death by accident, lol. Most other racers would run at 90% regions.... pretty surely for their own safety, with lesser skills - yet would have more issues/incidents anyway! (skew off track etc). The range of race drivers that even truly know what they are doing is pretty much the same as car drivers on the road!! Not many....

I have Simhub overlays for tire surface - 'big' tires, with Inner, Mid, Outer divisions of color so I know exactly what they are doing at all times. The colors, and size, are enough to 'always' see them in peripheral vision so you know when to be more cautious IF you did overheat them (send them to red). I also have the AMS2 tire display on, plus an 'average temps' tire set..... which really NONE all agree in any manner that I would consider they are truly accurate, but the three zone, colored, set give what you really need to know.
But it is also not critical information at all, as you rarely do anything that makes them matter anyway

I have watched my replays (I always do) and it has pretty well always been the case that it LOOKS 'normal' from an external perspective. But so does any level less of slip usage - because the END RESULT LINE is the racing line around that area. But it is HOW the car achieved that which differs.... in whether or not it was realistically possible, or done that way in a real car. It is almost that only the DRIVER really knows that, because he knows what inputs and 'feelings' it had - though I guess I also analyse other fast drivers laps, via vision, and ASSIGN what they must have done for the car to do what it did. I know what I do.... what I could do there.... and when they are faster you fill in the picture of what would be NEEDED to go faster there. And usually the whole pathing etc LOOKS identical to your own anyway.

eg Imagine you headed into a turn, 'too fast' in your normal thinking, but headed on the racing line with a BIT of extra turn in - possibly started a fraction sooner than you would, or expect would need to. Then use rear end rotation (trail braking) so it WILL make the turn. The end visual result is the car travels around on that racing line - even 'linear' to that line. But in reality the rear tires were side-stepping a LOT, to get the car 'turned' to end up on that racing line. For that level of speed you could do - and a more realistic acting car could not do that.
Thus you do not SEE anything externally. Plus you also then used power, throttle, on exit to maintain rotation - and again it just stays on that racing line, from an external view point. But the driver KNOWS how much came from very large amount of rear end slip/rotation.
This amount possible - per game, sim, reality - is where the 'error' is. You can use WAY more than realistic. It is easy to feel/measure that anywhere, but something like Spa/Rivage and its extremely extended rotation run that you can do really shows it up.

In a replay, as far as car cornering sequence goes, the AMS2 GT3 path/manner does not LOOK any different than a LMU GT3 doing that corner.... but the rotation used is very different. You cannot use 'excess' in LMU, just as you cannot in the real car. Use anywhere near the same amount in LMU and you are gone.... rear end loss. (mind you they have a bit of an issue with that being overly severe, if it happens, since the latest patch - but the trigger point of loss is not amiss much, if at all). And in end result, AMS2 is EASY to race top laps times incessantly with pretty well no chance of error, versus LMU (and a real car) requiring much higher accuracy/skill to maintain such a level reliably.

Whilst I am not at 'ultimate top lap times', alien, level, I am quite fast. Requiring USE of all car dynamics effectively to achieve that AND remain almost crash free always. In real valid terms I think 2:16's at Spa for AMS2 GT3 is the fastest.... and I am 1 sec and a bit behind that (mid high 1:17's). Mostly very low 1:18's in a race (say a 20 to 30 lap race), which is the fuel weight slowing it down.
And if you are not in that sort of speed region then you probably don't know enough, or know how to use the car well enough, to even comment on what is what, or how things should, or should not, be in physics/tires etc.

 

Yes the diff clutches made a difference early on but there still was some of that centre pivot turning that people used to talk about still, I found the engine braking to then eliminate it when set to 8.

 

I’m getting to the point where I wish AMS2 didn’t have GT3 cars at all. I don’t mind driving them occasionally but they are a long way from being the most interesting content and they just seem to take up far too much of the discussion about the game.

 

This is like saying that pretty much only 5 star Michelin chefs are allowed to comment on my baking outcomes

 

AMS2 USER 1 = the cars feel so much better now
AMS2 USER 2 = there is still too much slip and abuse
AMS2 USER 3 = GT3 feel the same as LMU now
AMS2 USER 4 = GT3 feel so arcade, nothing like LMU

 

And for each one of these you have no idea what kit they are using, the hardware settings, hardware FFB settings, the in game FFB settings etc etc.

Reiza could send out a free sim rig perfectly configured and optimised by them with every copy of the game and still no one would agree

 

So true... Hence forth I shall identify as USER 1, and do battle with USER 2/3/4 until my keyboard fails from wear!

I've a question for @PeterV though; if we can go into a specific class which seems to be universally loved in the ams2 sphere.
The lmp2 class, more specifically the Oreca 07, either gen.
That thing is planted beyond anything.
In light of the findings you posted earlier, I'd be very interested what your thoughts are with regards to that.
I'm in the camp where I see some significant variance between classes when it comes to expected/believable handling still.
I also think that delta has shrunk appreciably with the last 2/3 updates.

 

Custom Championships are broken! I set the number of opponents to 20 and save the championship, but when I launch it, I only have 1 opponent. I go back to the setup and find that the championship is not saved.

 

Thanks for clarifying. Appreciate it!

 

First of all, I reserve the right to be wrong.
Although I pretty much agree with @PeterV observations about driving a car, I think this update is a step forward.
Perhaps different FFB systems/settings have divergent results? (I'm using....uhmmm... FullFFB v23! )

I still think it's easier to get away with overstepping the limits of the car in AMS2, but it's going in the right direction.
An ideal sim would have a Rookie-Standard-Pro switch, with slightly different tyre ramps/curves (temps, grip, etc), to please a large spectrum of tastes and needs. No sim does that.

In this dream world, AMS2 would have it's Rookie level with v1.4 like physics, and the Standard level applying v1.6 physics. A Pro level would be the confluence of the best areas of all existing sims. I think AMS2 is doing it's path and it's just a pity a piece of software cannot evolve that way, leaving space or all kinds of commitment levels.

 

True.
If it were up to me, the entry list would begin at circa 1960 and stop at race cars from the mid-2000s —nothing newer. Back then, the machines were still wonderfully analog: no drive-by-wire layers between you and the throttle, no overbearing electronics smoothing out every twitch. You felt every vibration through the steering wheel, every shift in the chassis, every scent of hot brakes—like the car was alive and you had to earn every tenth of a second.

That raw, mechanical connection is exactly what hooked me on racing in the first place. Anyone else miss that visceral edge, or am I just getting nostalgic?

 

It's the same all across the board (not just that car), it's a creative choice, it won't change, although I also think it's a bit on the cartoonish side.
Just like with food... it's not just about how it tastes; it's also about how it looks.
To me, AMS2 lost the "seriousness" war against less capable graphics engines.

Engine braking is a central part of my setup, mostly because I carry the bad habit of downshifting too early. Locking the rears was a constant until I found the cause.
The first car I drove a lot (my father's car at the time) was a Renault 12... breaking was just a suggestion. Without an aggressive gear downshift, it would be rolling until today.

 

Yes, Engine Braking (if you can set it) in ANY car/class is as critical as many other major settings. Linked closely to trail braking - it is used to create "trail slipping", thus corner entry rotation, and also linked to Differential settings so that it "steers" the way you want it to. And it is also real-time 'adjustable', by your controlled use of the Accelerator pedal!
Using the throttle on ENTRY is as important, and useful, as the braking use!

Plus it is something that each 'different style' driver can tune to suit THEIR driving manner. "This" setting for a harsh down-changer... "that" setting for a tamer driver. Sometimes to cover bad habits... sometimes to extract that extra miniscule benefit from the car/tires.

 

And there's people like me who still think Porsche Cup and Lamborghini Supertrofeo are more fun to drive than GT3.