Automobilista 2 October 2022 Development Update

Renato could help us with that

 

He was taunting the french fans who were jeering at him when he received the award

 

Have you considered starlink, that should work in rural ireland. Not sure how well it would it woudl handle online racing though.

 

But probably only with Teslas

 

Waiting for the day Tesla's come with a VR headset and you can use your car as a sim-rig.

 

Can we stop talking about things which are not related to AMS2?

 

ams-2-announcement-mclaren-honda-jpg.png

 

...whilst making himself look like a child. But this is off topic.

 

Rent a car and track simulator

 

Yet iRacing thrives above every other sim in the market.

What are they doing/have done right?

 

The don't thrive above every other sim in the market in terms of sales or customer usage. They do excel at organized online racing because that has been their specialty since inception. There are no competitors (yet) offering a similar service, so it's easy to be #1 in a group of 1.

Any speculation as to why no other dev or sim has been willing or able to replicate the iRacing online sim experience? Could it be that the market for it is not much bigger than what iRacing already has? Or, that to do it, you need a big investment up-front to adequately replicate all the systems?

 

Part of the problem is that if you're in the iRacing ecosystem you have no real reason to leave it. You probably already spent hundreds in the game, are incredibly used to how it works and it covers a really wide variety of bases that few other sims even come close to doing. Of course, part of it is also just that racing online in it is really really good and there's nothing that's really on its level in terms of features and structure.

Even if a perfect alternative of iRacing game out and had a more normal pricing model (say, base game of $60 and a few DLC), it would take time for it to catch on. Without the userbase you can say goodbye to the population of the more niche series too.

 

Are you sure? The stats do tell otherwise:


#1 iRacing with 104,000
#2 AC with 12,300 (wah!?)
#3 F1 22k with 5,700
#4 ACC with 4,300
#5 rFactor 2 with 860
#6 RRRE with 800
#7 AMS2 with 500

That definitely looks, smells and sounds to me like iRacing is thriving above all other sims in the market. Doesn't mean it is the best, it just means it is by far the most played.

 

Must be because of the mods, just saying.

 

To truly answer why this is we have to go back from the start. Iracing from the start had backing from (what i believe to be) the second most popular motorsport in the world, NASCAR and its most popular driver Dale Earnhardt Jr. It was also the spiritual successor of NASCAR Racing 2003 Season which is still considered to have some of the best AI in all of simracing along with a robust modding and multiplayer scene. Infact some NR2003 modders actually were personally invited to the Iracing beta (this does not mean they were supportive of those modders at all, they infact tried suing the creators of the Redline GTP mod and successfully sued the creator of the OWR 07 mod at around the same time).

They already had big ticket motorsports tied to them from the get-go. Combine that with the sorry state of NASCAR games and the lack of any proper stockcar sims since Nr2003 and it's clear how it got so popular. Already having NASCAR made Iracing have credibility, making manufacturers, racing series, and track owners be more confident in letting Iracing use their licences. Combine that headstart with being the one of the first truly online focused simracing titles and the genuine quality of the content it had. It's no wonder how it got so popular.

 

If you (or however those stats are generated) think there are 104,000 people participating in iRacing races each day, you haven't used iRacing. It's not even in the same universe as that number. People can't find good (well populated) races on iRacing on a daily basis DESPITE the great organized system.

I find most of those online usage stats highly suspect for many reasons. And besides, the use of sims is also offline. My personal usage offline is far greater than MP online. Where are those stats?

Is playing against the AI in iRacing counted as online or offline?

[I do believe there are 104,000 people auto-logged-in to iRacing each day, though...]

 

The Iracing case is as simple as the scene from Margin Call, where the CEO says there are 3 ways to succeed " being first, being smart and cheating". Iracing was the first to focus on a robust online racing sim, coupled with good marketing with pro drivers, Nascar, etc. And they have been smart in keeping it updated. They are far too robust for any small indie dev on the pc scene to topple them, only Sony with a more sim oriented GT on pc could do it.

That's why I think it would be smarter for Reiza to focus 90% on the single player experience and when that is as good as it can be, improve the online, port the game to consoles, do a big marketing push, and then keep improving the online experience. There is no point in comparing this game to Iracing, one is a mostly online competitive sim, the other is in development as a more feature rich(damage, failures, championships,etc) single player motorsport experience.

What I find weird though is, why did Reiza not release the game as early access, seeing how much development is being made on the game?

 

You can't sell DLC for an early access game can you? Without that extra revenue they probably couldn't have made the same progress as they have so far.

 

Yes, same goes for all the other games on the list. Basically the stats are how many people booted up the game in a day, even being in a menu doing nothing is considered online. And either way it does show Iracings popularity in the sim market. I don't remember Iracing booting up automatically when starting up my PC when I had it, so that must be something that has to be toggled. And even with all that it doesn't fully explain the player gap.

 

The financial investment in iRacing is a huge part of this debate.

People who have put/are willing to put large amounts of money into iRacing are:

• More likely to play it consistently to make their subscription worthwhile (battlepass syndrome)
• Likely to be people serious about sim racing who probably play few, if any other games.
• Less likely to switch to other sims both for the handling difference and the financial implications of changing.
• More willing to be forgiving of however outdated it is/becomes.
• Less willing to see any new contender in a positive light.

As others have pointed out, even if a better game than iRacing came out tomorrow, ticking all the boxes and adding extras, it would take years to get to where iRacing is assuming that would happen at all.

If a competitor did arise (it certainly couldn't be priced the same), iRacing might actually then have to be updated for the modern era and subsequently the player base would return, because it is pretty hard to turn your back on that amount of money sunk and have nothing to show for it once your subscription ends.