Taken from a post I made in a different thread, but I thought it made sense to get it out there a bit more… Basically, I thought that all the Formula named classes(Vintage, Retro, Classic, V12, V10, V10 G2, etc) should have an abbreviated year suffix to them. It’d make their own abbreviations more recognisable too, instead of gen numbers, for more instant recognisability. So, for example: Formula Retro gen1 (FRG1) becomes: Formula Retro ‘75 (FR75). Formula Classic gen1 (FCG1) becomes: Formula Classic ‘86 (FC86). Formula Classic gen2 (FCG2) becomes: Formula Classic ‘88.(FC88). You instantly know where you are, when you have year numbers instead of initially-confusing gen numbers. I guess the same could be also done with Formula USA cars, to just a ‘95, ‘98 & ‘2000 on the end. Thoughts?
Yes. This also helps to prevent confusion when a new "generation" is later added in, causing an existing generation to move over (old F Classic Gen 3 is now Gen 4). Also the terms "vintage", "retro" and "classic" are nice, but also very arbitrary. I can imagine the 60s cars being called "classic" as well. And what would 50's or 30's cars be called, should they ever be introduced. Formula Golden?
Yeah exactly. It was the addition of Formula Classic gen 4, which initially got me thinking about it. And as you rightly say, it would mean not having to shuffle names around, which added even more to the confusion.
On the other hand, adding a year number also narrows the experience in a negative way. As if a generation is only exactly right for a single year. Like, the F classic gen 1 is also fine for a recreation of a 1985 or 1987 season. And if you're gonna call it strictly 1986, you take that possibility away.
I like that as a counter theory, if a whole class features generic cars, but it changes when specific real-world cars are added to a generation, like the McLaren MP4/5B. It instantly looks out of place when cars from 1991 are with it. Now that might not mean much to those of a more casual nature, but 1991 cars in general took a significant leap forward in front-end aerodynamic aesthetics, concept and technology, from the previous year. Any perceived negatives are vastly outweighed by the original thread thinking positives(in my humble opinion). 1987 also had far greater aero development than say 1985 and even 1986, as well as a mandated turbo pressure reduction(where boost was unrestricted in 1985/6). On the surface, the different years - whilst adjacent to each other and seemingly almost identical, had significant tech differences between them, during the whole of the 1980s decade.
This was asked from the very beginning of AMS2, March 2020, when only the closed beta was available. I hopefully don't overstep any boundaries, but this is what Renato said in a thread about the Formula cars back then: "Without going into details, we would be flying too close to the sun by adding the year to the cars, and it wouldn´t be accurate as although they have a core year for inspiration, the generation usually covers at least 2 years."
Maybe put the year in roman numerals to avoid licensing issues? Formula V10 MMI, Formula Reiza MMXII, Formula Classic MCMLXXXVIII, etc.
That is way too confusing, having to learn Latin to understand the car's year. I think any gen that has a real car - Brabham , Mclaren, Lotus etc can have the actual year for that model included. And we can then assume a 2-3 year grouping for the generics. The Retro Gen2s used to be 1978 but the addition of the BT49 pushes them out to 1980. But we know the range due to the 3 real cars.
to work around this problem, I enter the year in the livery name in the custom AI file. This gives "2022 - Mercedes #44" for Lewis's car in Formula ultimate 2022. I did this for all formula 1 .
And? We know the version in game is the 1980 version, as stated in the release: "The Brabham BT49 is the car with which Nelson Piquet scored his first title in 1981, albeit in the C version of this car - we went with the 1980 version as it´s more befitting of the F-Retro Gen2 "ground effect" class."
-1 Not for me the more general name makes it possible to use a car for several years and therefore for several liveries without breaking the immersion too much I prefer the opportunity to be able to change the relationship between the different models in a class so that we can omit certain models and supplement this by using more of a different model. Then they are even easier to use for several years
i dont think they are allowed to use the years for licensing purposes, but maybe im wrong. Would be a hell of a lot less confusing.
I like weird looking versions of cars... And with the generic F1s we have that in spades... And the generics are where this this thought ends for me... They aren't based on any specific year and as such the regulations of that class aren't based on any specific year either... Thus the real world cars slot in without the need for a tag of what year as it's a class that spans the years not a class that represents a single year... As licensing could well be an issue I don't think this will ever be implemented... It might be a better idea to create versions of the years without real cars represented where the AI file doesn't load the real cars... Sure it doesn't help the recognition issue you would like to fix, but it does help with the realism side...
I would call them all formula ultimate and put the year or decade as a suffix: Formula Ultimate 80s, Formula Ultimate 2000s, etc.
Formula USA year is part of each model name, so it's not necessary to add more info. But would be nice to know the year of each F1 car, even the licensed content. PS: I would like that EVERY vehicle info ingame to display the model's year.
