Automobilista 2 August 2020 Development Update

I see there are 23 tasks approved on the "taskboard", but only 10 shown on the picture. I'm curious to know what are the other 13 approved.

 

What is the track at the bottom of the post? I have never seen it? is that a teaser?

 

I started sim racing during the start of Covid and purchased a couple sims during a Steam sale. This is the only one that sits in my library as of today. I'm all in with this game for the long run. Don't need or want anything else. Gratitude for the work Reiza is creating and so glad I found this great little community. Can't wait for what's in store for us.
Renato for president!

 

Congratzzz, Loving this game. Best VR / immersion sim i tried.
Since im a F1 fan i would love to see more tracks of the current F1 , and the new one in Portugal Portimao! Next i would love to have a good online mode that we can have rankings and good F1 leagues. I know that havinga Online like Iracing is very difficult but at least with some more tracks someone will be able to create a league like ACC have with actrolvision.

 

Check message 2 of this thread.

If you are not familiar, you can check it out from AMS (1).

 

On the topic of audio immersion, both for VR spectator cams and especially for VR cockpit cams:

Please say it's true, Reiza, does this mean 3D audio spatialization!? e.g. by implementing Google's Resonance Audio SDK for FMOD, or Steam Audio? This would be a paradigm shift for immersion and would put AMS2 in a completely different league compared to other racing simulators. 3D audio spatialization with head tracking has been done in numerous VR exclusive games (particulartly for Oculus and PSVR because of their built-in APIs), but to my knowledge not yet in any racing game. To put it in a visual analogy: It would be like the difference in visuals between Doom and Quake… going from fake 3D with sprites to true 3D with polygons, opening up for huge improvements further down the line.

There is a reason why none of the other big sims out there have done this, and it's more of a creative problem than a technical one. Implementing an HRTF-based audio SDK into AMS2 is the "easy" part. The time-consuming part is tuning the audio experience, knowing what sounds to spatialize and how. This is where resources can be wasted on stuff that doesn't matter in the end, both wasted development time and wasted CPU/memory.

Don't worry too much about audio fidelity. A low-pass-filtered delay is more effective than a convolution reverb. Focus on low-hanging fruit such as having just the closest sound sources being spatialized: Engine sound, tires, transmission whine, exhaust, collisions, particles hitting the car floor, and the 1 or 2 closest non-player cars. These sound sources can be dry, i.e. non-reflective. Head tracking would then take care of the rest of the immersion. Road and wind noise could be a simple non-tracked binaural stereo recording, but for tire skid sounds: Imagine being able to use audio cues to identify if it's the left front or left rear tire which is losing traction… just wow.

The second key to an immersive 3D audio spatialization is how reflections are implemented. Otherwise, the difference wouldn't be that big compared to traditional 3D surround panning. In a racing sim this would mean sending a mixdown of external car sounds (player and a few non-player) into one of several pre-determined reflective spaces. This will have to be implemented on a track-by-track basis, which takes time. I don't know how this can be done in the Madness Engine / FMOD, but with Resonance Audio and the Unity 3D engine you would create different rooms and place them on the track. So you could have one room type which is the garage, and then some other room types placed along the track: Pit stall, tunnel, nearby walls (much like in ACC), and open field / forest for all other areas of the track.

I imagine that this would likely take one developer several months of work, but if this is something that Reiza has already started to work on… holy $#!7 I'm about to crap myself with excitement. Fingers crossed…

 

Since VR is my way to race i always wished that a sim developer would make something like this. Sitting on the grandstand in VR and watching a multiplayer race.
And now Reiza is doing it.
Awesome!

 

Outstanding dev update capping off another great month in which AMS2 crept ever closer to perfection. I'm not ashamed to say it, I rarely fire up the other sims for more than a few minutes nowadays, and coming back to AMS2 feels like pulling on a comfy pair of shoes.

VR Spectator Cameras
We´re working on a new feature that should considerably enhance the experience of watching replays or spectating online with a VR headset...

Does this mean we can eventually expect some ambient crowd noises to make an appearance? I find the eerily silent crowds a bit of an immersion breaker to be honest.

 

Having a 30-second loop of an announcer voice muffled and full of slap echo would help a lot, especially if some tracks could have the announcements be in a localized language! Portugese announcer for Brazilian tracks, etc.

"…Would the owner of a brown Fiat Panda with license plate ABC123 please move your vehicle, as a construction worker in the manhole underneath your car is hoping to make it to his daughter's dance rehearsal…"

 

Great commitment to improving on an already excellent SIM.

 

Thank you for the monthly update!

 

Or we could meet in a middle with a slider for crowd noise

 

Awesome!

just can not wait for great vr cams for watching replays.
Plz just think of cool cam positions which would be also not possible in real life. Thats the advantage of vr, to stand and watch races at locations, which would be to dangerous in real life. So do not fear to go near to the cars.