General AMS2 Release & Feedback Topic

What an amazing update. The G55 GT4 is my absolute new favorite. I had never before so much fun driving a sim car on its limits. Downhill at Bathurst, I could really feel the weight from the car pushing me in to the corner. Absolutely incredible. I also like the new Toyota (I didn't drive the Chevy) and the Ginette G58 is a absolute Beast all by its own. I didn't really try the Retro F1 except of the Lotus for 2 Laps.
While there are still some little bugs here and there, all in all AMS2 1.0 is amazing. I really wasn't able to find anything in this Sim that I would consider "frustrating" (as I have in other Sim's). The Reiza Team has done some great work here and I'm looking forward to more.

 

The cars and tracks are amazing as usual. The championship mode... Well, they did say it was going to be limited, but what's there is barely even functional. Sure, you can probably get through the entire championship against the 10 AI it gives you, but that's about it. It even took me a while to figure out how to actually drive a stock car, since it just seems to load you into whatever car is selected in the single race menu.
It's kind of strange that it was added at all in the state it's in, other than for Reiza to say that technically they added it in 1.0 as promised.

 

Thank you! i was just wondering why it loaded me into a Kart haha

 

Wow! Ginetta G55 at Bathurst, as Micropitt says the weight transfer of the car downhill is a brilliant sensation. I've only tried that for ten or so laps and a few laps at Brands in the McLaren M23 plus some in the Retro Gen1 at Kyalami. The cars now seem far more forgiving below the limit, as you would expect, and only bite at or near the limit, which is what you would also expect. This seems to have reduced the wft moments when it wasn't possible equate what you were doing with steering brakes and throttle with the actions of the car, at least now you know it's because you are driving faster.

 

Formula Retro is fun, but pretty challenging to drive. Not sure if it just needs a lot of setup tweaks but it feels like a lot of understeer with very sudden uncontrollable oversteer in the high speed corners.

The suspension on the Mclaren M23 is amazing to watch, and the Lotus inboard discs and half shafts also look amazing. They need to fix the Mclaren driver model, though, the foot sticks out of the nose!!! Body models in several of the other formula cars are still not fixed, but the other FRetro cars did have that addressed and it was very cool. I can tell they’ve put a ton of work into it, but also slightly disappointed the other driver body models didn't get updated yet. I also noticed the Mclaren M23 has a working water temperature gauge! Many of the gauges on the other Formula cars (vintage and retro etc) are not functional, so that was interesting to see. Curious that the water temp gauge would work but the driver model doesn't, but the opposite was true of the other F Retro cars I tried. Either way, initial impressions are that Im not good enough to drive these, but they look incredible.


And in VR... also had a weird issue that felt like a head tracking issue where it seemed like the vr head position would slightly snap in and out of place, it felt like my head was teleporting up and down a very tiny amount intermittently. I never noticed it before but the game crashed out of the menu while I was looking at camera settings. I tried some other sims after and didn’t get that feeling at all so I’m not quite sure what’s going on there. I don’t remember it from before. Hopefully it either fixes itself because it’s just my setup doing it or it gets fixed quickly. Edit: Looks like a combination of things, but there was a glitchy tracking problem that came and went. At this point, I dont think it's AMS2 that is causing it.

I think my biggest disappointment is that they havent reset the time trial mode. I LOVE time trial mode. But the new cars and tracks are not eligible for time trial mode yet, and the old ones still have all the old times which on some tracks I think were set before many iterations of tweaks occurred and are impossible to beat as it currently stands. I was really looking forward to a clean slate to see how I stacked up. This may be intentional so as to avoid consistent perpetual re-wipes of the time trial boards over the years... You probably want to get the cars 99 percent dialed in before you unlock the time trials mode for them, and the new cars and tracks may not be in a polished enough state for them to feel comfortable with it just yet. So it may be by design.

 

There is something wrong. Even if you setup the LSD to as low understeer as possible on entry, it will just drift off. Switching to geared diff makes it rotate but slides off the road in a similar direction, its weird. I tried the retro formulas in rFactor2 for comparison and although they arent easy to drive, they are much more balanced. I just dont believe anyone testing these before releasing them thought they drove well?

EDIT: so after more testing, unlike the historics, the retro actually works quite well on geared diff. Clutched LSD here is terrible though.

 

the pitwall needs a patch at Bathurst.

Estoril (Cascais) looks stunning, probably the best looking track in the game.
Brasilia is not my kind of track, but the trackside details make it look amazing as well.
the new kart track is too confusing for me

regarding the cars, i can not complain, loving the quality of the interiors.

 

Im going to try that... It seems like it's always bouncing between annoying understeer, but mild, uncatcahble snap oversteer on high speed corners. They're all pretty similar on this I've noticed, but I've spent the most time in the Brabham. I made a few pretty major tweaks, and I've dialed out the high speed snap oversteer for now, but I dont think it really helps the behavior of the car in other situations. Now I just have to figure out how to get it to rotate on corner entry a little better.

Just as an example, I had issues with the car dramatically depositing itself into the inside guard rails at Imola 72 at 1. Tamburello, 2. the right hand bend into Tosa, and 3. the variante alta bend before the braking zone in the Rivazzas. I had a hard time using opposite lock to save it when it happened, which was much more often than I'd like to admit. Tosa is a total pain because the car just doesnt want to steer through it. I think the key is in the diff settings.... I was definitely using a clutched diff. I think theoretically the geared diff should act like a very aggressive (locked on power, open on decel) clutch differential, just with smoother transition from power to decel.

 

In BT44 I set Geared diff to Power 3.2 and Coast 4.0 ratios and it was quite nice. Also a bit more negative front camber maybe to get more grip at high speed.

 

I had that issue last night with my rift s. I re read the update and it says to delete ams2 folder in documents. Make sure you photograph all your graphics set ups then delete folder. Verify integrity then restart pc problem solved vr amazing again !

 

First I appreciate Reiza will continue working on this game and it will improve a lot from release over coming months/years.,
However, my first impressions after playing the EA versions and now the release.

1. Cars generally feel way to springy, and not just something you can fix with suspension setup. I mean if the Stock cars are supposed to be equivelant to DTM cars then they are more like driving a bed mattress on wheels.That might be fun for some people.

2. I have never played any driving sim that I couldn't plant my brake pedal to the floor on heavy breaking and only get any lock up in the last part of braking distance. This gives off the sound of brake locking almost immediately on high speed braking. Actual brake locking seems to happen later irrespective of brake balance (@90% pressure). I have no confidence in braking with any of the cars I have tried.

3. AI. Whilst they are fairly decent in terms of speed. For the purposes of immersion they do not convey driving against people.
They wiggle unnaturally when racing side by side with other AI or perhaps myself, such unnatural movements would result in a spin if I moved the steering that fast.
With skill and aggressiveness at 90/90 I found that once I got alongside an AI he would simply throw his arms in the air and say, 'here you go first, I don't want to fight you'. They don't put up any fight any more.
They never make mistakes that I have seen so far. Is there any point in yellow flags? Take a look at Raceroom and during races you will occasionally see drivers getting the back out, tank slappers, overshooting, spinning, bumping etc., but no more than a human race. This makes things so much more immersive in a AI race, catching a couple of cars battling and taking advantage of that.

 

AI still stinks, no surprise. AMS1 is still king of Reiza sims

 

I had the same feeling. I was testing with a friend at Cascavel and it was almost impossible to pass through turn 1 without spinning in an odd way.

We tried several setups changes, height, camber, dampers, bump stop, but the way the car lose the rear was unpredictable.

The general behaviour of the cars is great, but that sudden oversteering doesn't give you any confidense to drive.

I'll try that LSD geared settings.

 

Well the extra cars are nice including tracks.

I have had the Ginetta out at Donnington National. Driving over the curbs thro the chicane at the start of the start/finish straight I am getting penalties (2 wheels still on the track)

I thought they were going to sort this out a this was the one thing I hated about PC2!!

Also yesterday was racing the P4 and was still punting people off without even touhine them. This has been on going since the release. Not tried any close racing in V1 but I do hope they have sorted this out

 

Only tried Bathurst tonight, it is obvious the track is not finished yet, one thing I really noticed was how smooth it was, I think this is a general thing in AMS 2 or Sim commander is not making use of all the available data as all I really feel are gear changes.
I hope they implement mandatory pit stops for timed races, not sure why it would not be an option. In game menus still seem laggy, I noticed you can't change the date for weather and sunrise, sunset times and it was 54 degree track temp at 8am.
It would also be nice if they were able to implement multipliers for tyre and fuel usage and proper assignments for increasing and decreasing TC and ABS. I priced that part of the HUD In the bottom right still isn't implemented yet too. The stick shift gear animations don't work yet either.
Some track length and corners in the menu still aren't correct.
Still a long way to go but I am sure it will get there.

 

I'm left underwhelmed.

Graphically it's great... But I just can't get a feel for driving this game...

There's a large lack of predictability and feel that has left me spending ages in the menus trying to find something to fix the lack of feel. Then when I think I have something that gives me a little something, I end up spending ages in the garage trying to figure something out.

AMS1 was a blast and I loved so much of the content. Sadly the same content in AMS2 just doesn't have the feel to allow me to get into a groove and actually enjoy driving. The new stuff looks great, but unless there's a fix or I can find a fix for my set up this one just doesn't have the shear driving pleasure to keep me coming back.

 

There seems to be something completely wrong.

In any other Sim, cars start to rotate if you lift off your foot from the throttle. That's because of the weight transfer. Even my real world car does this on the track.

In AMS 2 there is no lift-off oversteer at all. The exact opposite happens, the car starts to untersteer like crazy, even at really low speeds and with heated up tires. If you try to counteract with some throttle, the back of the car snaps completely uncontrollable in fractions of a second.

There are only two things in AMS 2, massive unrealistic understeer and uncontrollable oversteer if you counteract. There's not much in between. You can't really control the car in a realistic manner.

Just compare the Brabham BT44 in RF2 with the AMS 2 one. The AMS 2 one is completely undriveable for me, while in RF2 I don't have any problems at all.

 

My Summary:

Content: 7/10 - Lots of unique cars and tracks, most of which we know from AMS1. I'm not a huge fan of fictional content and there's a decent amount here, but I understand why that is so I can't knock it. Track selection is great as well. The main complaint here is more of quality rather than quantity. I'd much rather see less content of higher quality and the volume we have today. For example, traction control settings: I want to see actual steps in TC 1-12 instead of a value of 0.99-0.01. I'd rather see less cars of higher quality than all the similarly low powered brazilian cars we have.

Graphics 9/10 - Rather than some aliasing in shadows its pretty darn good. The color seems a bit too vivid for me, but that's a small gripe.

Sound 5/10 - Boring and in some cars feels synthesized. Really underwhelmed so far in the sound.

Physics/FFB - 7/10 - This is the big one for me. The cars look like they move realistically in replays, but the steering feel still isn't great to me. I never feel the wheels dig in and the wheel force from >20 degrees ramps up really high in a lot of cars. It's much better than PCars2, but it's not the top compared to the current crop of sims.

All of this being said, I think ACC started out in a similar spot so i'm sure the Reiza team can improve. Looking forward to more updates.