Automobilista 2 Auto Director for Broadcasts

I noticed that indeed, it often reverts back to displaying the first driver’s info while actually showing another one. I’m happy to try fixes if you get to implement them

 

I went to put this commentary into the UI suggestions thread, but as it's been locked and I dont want to waste the effort, I'll post it here. It would be most useful if we could map buttons or keybinds to the mouse controls in the director view. This allows for ease of integration for apps like the Auto director seen in this thread.

 

That would be awesome if they could add that indeed. The keystokes sending via a script is very limiting, especially when recording a replay like I did. I couldn't alt tab on something else for those 40minutes

 

This is 100% what I’ve been looking for as I host alot of events in AMS. Awesome job and awesome content. Perfect.

 

Auto Director has had a couple of updates.
Some quality improvements:

• Space pauses camera keypresses,
• Esc quits nicely,
• Slight boost for leaders 0.02 of a second added per position,
  
• Overlays should now always be on the driver in view

In a field of 26 that's 0.52 seconds gap penalty for those at the back
Download here Automobilista 2 Auto Director

 

Update is working flawlessly and the logic is working better now for sure with the leader bias. Thanks Rangey!

 

Hi Rangey, thanks for all the recent changes to your tool, it's become really good and I can't wait to use it for our next community event!
I just saw the latest changes you pushed and wanted to ask if you can elaborate a bit more on those three specific ones, it's not clear to me what they mean and how they affect the whole process

• Added Camera Hog feature to share the camera around
  
• Added Pit Lane Penalty
  
• Added Camera Boost at changeover to new driver.

 

Working well. This one is 2-3 updates old but here’s a video.

 

Hi Mate,
Below is how it works roughly.
Camera Hog should prevent one racer from always being in view
Pit lane penalty, pits are boring so if you are in the pits you wont be chosen to be in view
on camera changeover, to prevent the camera flicking immediately to another racer, it will hold the current racer for a while.

 

Thanks for the explanations, it makes more sense now
I'll post a video next week with this new version, we have a 40min race on Le Mans GT3+LMDh

 

Coming along with some overlays in development for the broadcast tool.

 

Looks awesome, can't wait to see it! Did you manage to make it work without the UI being displayed? Or is it still there but just hidden under your overlay at the top?

Yesterday I used the latest version to make this replay

It works very well now, the only "glitch" I could notice was when lots of cars pitted, the cam stayed a long time on them (check around 24:40 for example), it also switched for a while to the safety car in the pit at 22:49, but besides that it worked flawlessly (the very beginning of the race is messy camera wise, but that was my fault, the script was paused because I pressed space and it took me a while to realize).

I wanted to do it live during the race but I never managed to get UDP telemetry at that time, whether it was during the qualifications or the race, as a spectator or a race director, I had no data.
I saw in your video you had telemetry in race director mode, so it should work. Did you have to do something in particular for that?

 

Yeah the AMS2 stuff is all underneath.
It currently isn't programmed to ignore the safety car, so I definitely need to work on that.
The pits thing it selected most of them on entry and then its locked in for 15 seconds, plus you had a lot of people coming in at once, I think that's expected.
Persuading simhub to use UDP sometimes can be a struggle, it does work in broadcaster mode, but I've had failure's to connect too. I have no answer for that.

Just checking, you are using the latest version from overtake.gg?

 

I thought so as well, it worked quite well actually, since it was a mandatory pit stop with everyone coming in at the same time, there was not much else to show anyway

No problem, I was just asking in case there would be some magic trick that I missed and forgot to apply, since it was my first time ever trying it outside of replay mode. I'll keep trying and hopefully it will work next time.

Yes I'm using 0.3.2.2

 

THANK YOU!
The info about UDP working with overlays was gold! Solved a very annoying issue, with AMS2. The broadcaster very often did not show the leader in the leaderboard list, but started on no. 2 and down. Now I can run Simhub on the director and forward UDP packets to the Broadcaster, and use my own leaderboard overlay, and hide the built in one.


Couple of questions.
Is it possible to Start testauto with the OBS Adress as a parameter?
(or read it from an ini file)
Will the program autodetect number of drivers at some point?
(The data should be available in the UDP stream)
Does if funtion so that it needs you to click on the first driver, in order for it to navigate properly? So if you manually click on a driver while it runs, it will loose its bearings, and be unable to choose the right driver, or does it go to top, and navigate from there each time?

Suggestions:
When the "current value" is unchanged, it should not send any keystrokes.
Pause keystrokes when not in session. (Same data that Simhub uses to show/hide overlay)

Is it so that you have to copy the dash to an overlay in order to get the onscreen graphics?
In that case, why not export the overlay as well, and add it to the download.

Attached the overlay I ended up using after some edits.

 

I'm pretty sure that I can do that, I will look the next time I update the exe.

That's harder than you might think due to simhub or AMS2 retaining ghost drivers (I'm not sure which), and them showing up in the participants. I think I'm closer to a fix, but I wont do it until it's 100% reliable. The UDP stream has 0-31 participants always

No, it always returns to the top so it doesn't lose it's bearings. I have a reliable means to get the driver in view now, so that's actually behaviour that I can change.

It did not do this previously as I was unable to track camera position to race position. That's solved now, so probably will change in the future

I think I have this fixed now too

the dash is copied to the exe as the exe uses the browser window to get the next driver to focus on, from transparent text thats in the window as well, but you cant see.

Some questions for you, how do you make the director-broadcaster work? 2 or 3 computers? I thought I would need 3 computers, 1 to host, 1 to direct, 1 to broadcast, which I don't have available. Please let me know how you make that deal work

 

You only need 2 computers. One that host the race and be the director, and one that broadcast.
You just start a multiplayer race, invite the broadcaster, and then you assign director role to the multiplayer host, and broadcaster role to the broadcaster.
There is also some differences to how you set up the multiplayer host settings:
Public - The lobby is listed for everyone.
Friends Only - Only friends see it.
Private, it is not listed on Steam at all.
If you choose Private, Director will not use up an available driver spot, so if you run RallyCross, you can have 6 drivers. In Public and friends only you are limited to 5 drivers with director enabled. I whish Dev's would fix that.

 

Here's one with the latest version and overlays, everything worked great <3

 

This is a question to the devs or anyone who's been deep in the AMS2 file structure.

I am wondering if there is a way to change the coordinates of on screen info during replays or broadcast.

@CrimsonEminence, sorry to tag, just trying to reach the right ppl.

 

Hi All,
Linked is AMS2 Auto Director running in Python.
Automobilista 2 Auto Director
There are limited keyboard commands available, Up, down, enter for drivers, u to change across to cameras, left right, enter for camera type. Thats it.
Auto Director runs in Python monitoring AMS2 in UDP mode.
In UDP mode it can give data in Spectator, Broadcast and Replay.

Auto Director has some basic rules.

• Smallest gap is the most dominant
• It also looks for Rate of change between cars

To Install:

• Run AMS2AutoDir15-08-24.exe

To Operate:

• Start AMS2
• Run AMS2AutoDir15-08-24.exe
• Be in Replay, Spectator or Broadcast mode
• Start the race
• Click driver 1 and leave the game in focus
• Press Space
• AMS2AutoDir15-08-24.exe will press the buttons for you.

If you want overlays for your broadcast, run simhub in UDP mode and rebroadcast the packets