Did a couple of quick races today trying out the latest update (so happy that double-shift prevention has been implemented, it works great!) and noticed something really, really odd during a few laps in the wet. These were the conditions: Car / Track used: V8 Supercar / Donington National AI Strength setting: 80 AI Aggression setting: 50 Race Distance: 8 Laps Weather: 3 slots (heavy cloud, light rain, haze), sync to session enabled Type of session: Single Race The race went on pretty much as expected for the first two laps. During lap 3 light rain set in. As expected, only a light drizzle shows up on my windscreen, so imagine my surprise when, at the end of the lap (after ~half a lap of light rain) I overshoot the braking zone approaching the final chicane (Roberts / T9, iirc) because of aquaplaning! The track looked like this: And this is what the finishing straight looked like by the end of lap 4: I managed to stay out on soft slicks and finished the race in P2 because the race leader didn't pit (while everyone else did), but large parts of the track would end up covered in lots of water despite only ~3 laps of rain. What's worse, driving through those parts sounded like I was going through deep puddles, which wasn't (or shouldn't have been?) the case here. From my understanding, light rain is just a light drizzle. Given enough time there should be some water on the track, of course, but puddles deep enough for aquaplaning after half a lap? That doesn't make sense unless there's a real torrent coming down. The car's behavior on the non-flooded parts of the track seemed mostly okay, though, if a bit overdone (for a light 3-4 minute shower, that is). Anyway, those are my findings so far - if I come across more oddities related to rain and water build up on the track I will post them here. Feel free to add your own observations as well. And as always: Keep it civil.
From the experience and what I tested so far the progression actually seemed very good. Including puddle forming etc. The above might be due to syncing to race maybe? That would accelerate a lot of things I assume due to the need to progress through 3 stages in 8 laps. I think a 60min race with 3 slots might provide a more natural envoronment. I havent seen wet normal wet track sounding/feeling like a puddle yet though.
BINGO! An implausible scenario was requested in the race settings and we get exactly what we ask for You would never normally use three weather slots for such a short race. When you accelerate things that much, sometimes strange effects occur with clouds, moisture, drying speeds, etc. And the amount of rain is somewhat randomized, so the game may have picked the heavy side of "light" rain that would sprinkle for half an hour in another scenario and dumped it all on your race in a very compressed time frame.
The thing is this: The rate of precipitation - and thus, build-up of water - should not be multiplied, no matter the length of each weather slot. This is a design flaw (inherited from PCARS2, if memory serves right). Besides, 3-4 minute rain showers aren't unheard of, so I don't see why the scenario in itself is implausible.
If you don't pick Sync to Race, you might get a 3-4 minute rain shower some time. I do quite often. Light rain could be fairly brief or almost the entire session. Each weather block is default of an hour. If we sync to race (or time period for P or Q sessions), and that session is less than an hour, assume oddities will occur directly corresponding to the length of the session versus the number of blocks selected. Just imagine a one lap race with four weather slots. Or, a one hour P session with one weather block. Which one is likely to produce something approaching realistic?
Thanks a lot for that bit. What settings produce these random showers? So far I've never seen these, though, neither with fixed or changing weather set to non-random. Does it need to be set to random? Because I never use that setting as I don't want to end up racing in a thunderstorm (i.e. conditions that would not be considered safe to race in the real world). That much I know. I also know that, with weather progression enabled, the actual length and intensity can vary a bit, I think it is something between 33 and 50 percent? The point is not how much duration for a particular weather block is considered realistic, the question is if it is a good idea to multiply the intensity of the downpour based on timescale? Light rain should *always* stay light rain. The same for rain, heavy rain, thunderstorm, etc. Imagine the same would be true for fog and the fog's thickness would be amplified based on how much the weather block is being accelerated compared to real time. That wouldn't make any sense either, would it? Although I could see how this would give birth to a new kind of challenge... Reminds me of that one 24h race on the Nordschleife a few years back, which had to be stopped due to the sudden appearance of thick fog across most of the track. Maybe we should look at this from another angle: What do we have to gain by intensifying precipitation based on weather slot duration? And what do we have to lose? Not everyone is able to run a single race for several hours at a time for a multitude of reasons, and simply using a single random weather block at real time or no progression setting for shorter races is also not necessarily a good solution (partly due to extreme weather like thunderstorms, partly due to the risk of very little variation in actual weather, which is just as boring as racing in fixed ideal conditions). The rationale behind this is we don't gain anything by promoting this crazy weather behavior when using sync to race. It isn't realistic and I don't think too many people are enjoying it. Making sure the conditions are at least stable and realistic - no matter the weather block length - on the other hand would make their AMS2 experience a whole lot more enjoyable.
There are threads on here already about random and realistic weather. Bottom-line is that we do not yet have truly "realistic" weather and hope that Reiza will provide it. All the gory details in those threads.
Ill chip in on this as i was driving yesterday in a "light shower" at Monaco and the car was virtually uncontrollable at 25/30 mph, seems overly slippy, i can drive my road car easily round bends at those speeds.
the problem here is probably in the setting. 3 very differrent instances in 8 laps. Maybe if you change it to time it works better, but especially with Laps instead of time the game has probably issues adjusting. in some cases you dont even get the full weather effects if it is so short.
I suppose we have to accept there is more than one type of rain and we don't know how Reiza model it. A light drizzle can wet everything very quickly, or larger raindrops can fall that you can almost walk between, but the amount of rain falling can be the same in both cases. I imagine Reiza have consulted the standard model of classifying rain which Wikipedia tells us is.... Rainfall intensity is classified according to the rate of precipitation, which depends on the considered time.[105] The following categories are used to classify rainfall intensity: Light rain — when the precipitation rate is < 2.5 mm (0.098 in) per hour Moderate rain — when the precipitation rate is between 2.5 mm (0.098 in) - 7.6 mm (0.30 in) or 10 mm (0.39 in) per hour[106][107] Heavy rain — when the precipitation rate is > 7.6 mm (0.30 in) per hour,[106] or between 10 mm (0.39 in) and 50 mm (2.0 in) per hour[107] Violent rain — when the precipitation rate is > 50 mm (2.0 in) per hour[107]
