Automobilista 2 December 2022 Development Update

This shows a lot of what I mean, including my constant wish for less rotation on the steering as it would really help get these things to drive better for a lot of people... It's the same as people setting up their throttle and brake sensitivities as no throttle set up is accurate you have to use what suits you... And for a lot of people, especially the oval runners 6 degrees is needed...

I think there's a lot to do with the tyre model in how we interpret this... I'm waiting until lap 4 before I think about my set up properly and then waiting until I'm happy with the set up before judging what the car is doing and therefore the physics... Because of the air in the tyre that has to build up that the simulated heat blanked do not provide... And they do slide when they are cold a bit too much, just like they slide too much when they are overheated... Another problem across a lot of sims... V8 Supercars have tyre temps of 130C plus at some tracks...

Each sim has it's own way of doing this and for me this is the largest difference between them and how lateral grip is interpreted by the drivers... And I happen to really like the edge grip that AMS2 has instead of that peaky edge grip that others provide... It's more like the times I've pushed cars and karts to their limits, there's slip but there's a grip point that is easy to find for me... Except for a few of the street tyres which to me give that peaky grip sensation too much that I don't find realistic in other sims...

There's a flow that you have to get right throughout each corner in a different way to rF2 and if you get it right you find gobs of time... Get the flow or the set up wrong and you slide and lose time... It's much less about sliding through the corner and controlling the four wheels as they slip off the edge of adhesion...

There's a lot of technology doing work behind any on board camera even the older ones to make it look better for TV...

This is something that needs to be improved in a lot of sims... But it's just like VR at the moment... It's good, but not where it could be... But where VR is a technology problem, the drivers view is something that can be worked on with software and will hopefully be improved in AMS2 in the future...

 

Yes, I know that those cars are rarely used online.
However a participation in a league is hardly feasible for me due to time and organizational reasons. That's why I'm also counting on a steady development and improvement of the AI. And if I'm lucky and stumble across Group C or other, rarely seen vehicle classes online: all the better.

 

Here is where I disagree: in many of the reviews I watch from different users, almost nobody tries to differentiate slipping and sliding, and they are two different things (and IMO, both get confused). What I think can be criticized of AMS2, is that the tyres slip maybe too much sometimes before entering into the sliding phase, specially with more contemporary cars where that phenomenon is reduced. But the cars on AMS2 can be easily put in a state where the 4 wheels are drifting through a corner thanks to the tyres slipping, and the best way to control the angle through a corner (talking about RWDs) is your throttle input (IF you entered the corner in a controlled manner that is). But on this state, you are not sliding, or maybe not nearly as much as you think. The tyres are slipping on the tarmac, deforming and expanding the contact patch, and the car wants to follow a trajectory that is different from the one that your steering inputs are showing. The lateral grip is not reduced, but quite the contrary: it is increased. If you can keep it on this state, you can hustle through corners and exit with more momentum. And Automobilista 2 allows you to do this with way more ease than any other sim.

The key to being fast on races at this game seems to be about being able to carry momentum through corners, with enough slip to increase grip, but not excessively to overheat and degrade your tyres. It's up to the driver to play with how much slip you generate on the tyres, and there is a good window to do that, specially on cars with not a lot of downforce. To me, that means that Automobilista 2 gives the driver a room to express him/herself with their own driving style, something that I don't see happening in many other simulation games out there, where either you do things as expected or you die.

Some may think that this makes AMS2 an arcade/simcade/botched product. Others, that it makes it more realistic. With the amount of content covered by this game and others out there, I don't think there is a 100% right answer.

 

One of the main reasons of this is that the tire models of all sims use the same model from zero km/h to lighspeed. Principally(!) this means that its possible to get a car to slide at example in a corner at 10km/h.
But in RL this is completely impossible .
In RL going slower than as example 40-50 km/h its more or less impossible to get even grandmas car to slide sideways.
But in every virtual racing games this is pretty easy.
This include ofcourse also AMS2 .
This completely unrealistic behaviour will not be better before sims include one TM for low speed and another for higher speed.

 

There needs to be more variety in what classifies as a gripped up state as well...

Nearly every sim if you go over 110C on the tyres it's like driving on ice, whilst it is slippy in real life it's no where near as pronounced as it is in sims where it's to the point the tyres lose all grip... And there are specific race tyres that handle those conditions well...

 

A couple of notes

I'm not the most knowledgeable guy in terms of camera settings, but what I can tell is that what an old onboard camera shows you is not what human eyes see, because those can compensate for things that these old cameras would not. You get a lot of vibrations that are felt in the body but are not truly affecting eyesight.

Second, this is footage from the 1993 season, which is when DTM introduced the Class 1. Cars were much more sophisticated and fast, and bodywork did not need to be homologated as with the Group A era the car in AMS2 is from, in 1991. Spot the differences:





Finally...planted? The car on that vid is wiggling entering every corner! I guess we have different definitions of what planted means, or you are seeing something that I'm not seeing, but that is definitely unruly in the corner entry phase.

 

I'm relatively agree with all of us, and from my part there are wrong words and explanations from what I want to say. The difference of slipping and sliding concepts is needed to speak properly and I don't get it. Yes, I agree with the comment about the room AMS2 gives you on the lateral slip before the drift.

Another important thing about the camera: I set all movements to 0 and use the legacy camera, so the cockpit is fixed to my screens. The default settings give me a bad perception of the movement's car, like if the car is behaving more exaggerated amplifying the perception of the slide.
Do you have/prefer fixing the camera to the horizon or to the cockpit?

About my settings well, there is no magic: 30-50 gain (depending on the car and the weight of the wheel), 30-40 FX and 40-50 of damping. I use both kuku madog custom file (90% of the time) and default+ varying a little the settings value. On simagic all effects or filters to 0, 100% gain. Game sliders all at 100%. Ffb never be a issue for me and I like almost every simulator in this aspect (iracing and ac are similar, then r3e, ams1, rfactor 2, and ams2 have a similar ffb).

Also, I use 2 bass shackers with custom effects to get slip longitudinally and lateral, so really I'm very sensitive to this and I avoid a lot being fine on the driving and throttle.

 

There is no ffb in a real cayman The steering is quite light and precise, in fact even bit to light for my liking, but the steering ration is high (15:1) and there are barlely any vibrations from "road noise" In fact there is more going on in the steering wheel of a Golf GTI. The main thing in my opinion is traction control and ABS. The car never felt like I could get it out of control by neither throttle nor brakes, and there is no artificial
feel of understeer as if the front had no grip. (most notorious in AC, but also in AMS2)

in AMS2 I simply can't trust neither the TC nor the ABS, also braking feels weak in general in AMS2 particularly at speeds <50km/h. Also, in AMS2 the car still feels like the dampers are worn out.

 

To me this is a very interesting discussion, thank you. Like when you are in a car you feel those bumps but you don't get the same sensation in sight like in the sim, it is more physical and your sight stabilizes a lot. I personally think it would be better if the view would be around the same as the camera in that footage (low amplitude, high frequency and some left right thrown in, maybe I should try to alter your footage to show what I mean). Because now it tries to recreate something that cannot be really recreated, for that you need a rig where those oscillations can be put in.
That way you could feel those bumps that you see now.
It is clear that the pilot is shaking a whole lot. But imo it is not simple to recreate it in a sim and to make it believable. That is why I would go the camera route of the footage.
And with planted I mean it doesn't look like it is floating (that is what I immediately saw when I saw your footage). You basically see some directness to the road. And yes you see it wiggling and gripping and such. I am not really sure where the difference is.

 

When I read about tyre slip in AMS2 I can only think of one thing, the CARTs around IMS. Does anybody know why?

 

Good points. Personally, I don't feel it that way, maybe because I'm actually a VR user, and I don't get that floaty thing with the headset on. That onboard was recorded on flatscreen capture from a replay ofc.

There are several options for introducing head movement in the camera according to physics that should, in theory, bring things closers to what you want. But I've never delved into those things, as being on VR means I want no induced head movement on the image.

 

Certain knowledge on their problems can only be given by the staff. The rest of us can only make conjectures on what's going on

If you want to know mine (take it as the opinion of just another AMS2 user)...my theory is that on one hand the tyres are slipping much more than what they should. This is working on the sim because OTOH there isn't enough loss of downforce when the car is yawing.

Through a corner, a car will always have some degree of yaw. With tyres slipping and the car going 4 wheel drifting, yaw will increase. If the rear steps out, it is increasing even more. But it seems like the oval bodywork of CART cars does not release enough downforce when yawing. And they should, because usually a car generates more downforce when hitting the air straight up front, rather than going sideways.

I believe it goes hand in hand. Tyres must be designed to cope with downforce, support the stress and grip the ground, but not generate too much slip, because that will yaw the car and lose downforce, which will tip the car into a spin. As we have too big of a tolerance right now in both aspects, it's not happening.

 

I think a lot of it comes down to our own subjective interpretation of what is slipping on the edge of adhesion and what is sliding out of control...

However I still think the descriptions of others are really off when describing AMS2 as a " slidefest" and I'll always go to there's something wrong on their end because of it... It's no worse than rF2, there's just a different range of how long you can slip before you slide... It's small but enough to notice... So to call AMS2 a slidefest really means to me something is broken on their end... Especially if they enjoy rF2...

Fix to the horizon is terrible, makes Daytona RC and all the ovals hard to drive on...

I've never had to use a custom FFB file but I do find it interesting that all game sliders are at 100%... If they override anything in the custom FFB file this maybe where the issue lies...

Well I'm on a buttshaker and a motion platform... So I'm very sensitive to it as well...

 

It's simply 2 things...

1. The default set up on the "loose" chassis (usually the Lola) is absolute dog ****... The other defaults aren't much better...

2. The steering angle is far too high for an oval set up... We need 6 degrees of steering angle for the oval cars... No more than 10 degrees should ever be used...

Once I tune the CARTs they aren't a problem and a whole lot of fun on the ovals... The front right just struggles to survive with the steering angle being too high...

AMS2 really isn't one for the driver who just wants to drive... If you don't put in the time to adjust the set up you are going to have a bad time... Just like in an rF2 mod at a track where there's no default set up because it's not on the calendar or the modder didn't make a default for it...

 

If you've got some settings to try, I'd love to try them...

 

This. There is no universe where "AMS2 is an unrealistic slidefest" but "rF2 is the king of physics, nothing else comes close" etc. They are very close to each other on average in terms of grip loss and approach to the driving, and they both allow too much sliding (not slip) in some cars. Either they are both reasonable simulations or both completely wrong.

 

It's not a great set up by any stretch but it's better than the default and I can run 10 clean laps before the 47C track temp became an issue...

I think the biggest issue for most is that the spool diffs aren't simulated great on ovals... Turning that off, steering angle at 14, ride heights, bump stops and making the slow bumps softer really is the major keys here, the rest is all driver preference and of course the asymetrical set up...

It's for the Lola Ford 1995... Because really that gen is the only one that raced at Indy...

 

We haven't heard from you guys in a while.
I'm excited for the next development update

PS: Hopefully mouse lag is gone...

 

I experience terrible mouse lag during in-game menus. Like in the car setup page, or the replays. Not when pausing. I tried all screen modes and anti aliassing, but it's the same. I thought it was a known issue, but I could post it with more detail in the bug reports.