Automobilista 2 V1.1.3.5 RELEASED!

I just compared PC2 and AMS2 by counting the number of players in online lobbies with 2 or more people.

PC2 = 45
AMS2 = 75

The steamdb charts can be misleading. There are a lot of people that think multiplayer is what prevents the numbers from increasing but I think PC2 is a good example. Only 45 people playing in multiplayer with over 537 online currently. I feel that this points to the single player experience being much more important. As the streamers begin to enjoy spending time in AMS2 more than other games, they are going to begin to attract more people. To me, it is very clear that Reiza loves racing (F1 in particular) and I look forward to the next few years.

Also, everyone was saying happy birthday last week but didn't 1.0 come out in June?

 

I like the sound of that
And really it fits..

 

If you are talking about the visual cue it's arguable but I can see why someone may say this.
If you are talking FFB/physics I don't see or feel anything that feels floaty: the FFB has a lot of weight until wheels are locked or lateral grips is egregiously exceeded. If you are talking about the sensation of grip increasing and decreasing based on what the vertical motion of the car is, that actually is the strong point of AMS2 compared to other sims where the vertical motion has no impact on grip or steering wheel torque and why the undulations of the tracks are rendered so well in this sim IMHO. Everything can be improved obviously, but honestly I would not consider realistic a car that feels pressed to the ground by a big invisible hand through the FFB and the visual cues when there is no reason for that only because it shall not feel floaty.

Even the diff issues are quite minor by now in a vast majority of cars. Some still needs improvement for sure, but if before having issues with diffs was the rule across the sim now it starts to look more like an exception of a few cars IMHO.

 

Oh yes, the Escort! Fares pretty well against the 'Bavarian Beast' - the BMW 2002 (I usually remove the Merc SEL as it's way to powerful). I've spent many hours in the Lotus 25 as well - being the b in subtle is the key to success in that one for sure. For some reason I don't experience that weird floaty feeling of being disconnected in the vintage cars, and I love their looks and how they corner.

 

Maybe give that a shot - you've got two hours to do so, after all. I've always thought that pads, while not the most realistic input device, can offer some insights about the physics that wheels have difficulty to give a clear picture on, because the pad experience isn't "filtered" by force feedback.

As for the playability, this game is definitely on the harder side of pad racing, and the steering sensitivity in slow speed corners is not at all well optimized (especially for Formula Classic), which means you have to go for aggressive speed sensitivity settings, which requires a very smooth thumb. If you disable all the assists, the learning curve is going to be steep. It is, however, very much possible to keep the cars on track with a bit of practice, and achieve reasonable laptimes - I, for example, am ususally within a second (give or take a few tenths) of world record pace using a pad.

There's a lot of fun to be had with pads, especially because they are a much more relaxed style of playing racing games - sit back, move your thumbs, enjoy. It's never going to be as immersive an experience as a wheel, but if you don't want to spend the money on a wheel, pads definitely are a viable alternative.

 

Using the telemetry output from the real MoteC it IS actually possible to calculate grip objectively!
In any racing game that is able to output telemetry data to THE MoteC at least

I made such a grip calculating project for MoteC and succeded porting it to both iRacing and rF2.

And an interresting thing is that when I was an iRacing member I had a conversating with one from the iRacing staff - because they got interrested after an update where I could prove that the general grip was lowered.
Nobody else could feel that it was actually the grip that was lowered - but explained it as the balance and/or the FFB has been changed.
First when the devs admitted that the percentage lower grip I had measured via MoteC was about the same they had calculated could people suddenly also feel lower grip.

ByTheWay: I dont think any of the more toyish socalled "telemetry" aps for as example AMS2 is able to calculate grip - because it takes some slightly advanced calculations to do that.

Telemetry software with AMS2 - choices?

 

Define "grip" in an "objective" way and provide a mathematical formula to compute it.

 

No If I buy AMS2 then it will be because I also bought a wheel. I don't think I would have a good experience driving it with a pad. But thanks for the input.

 

Seems like Mogens found his way to AMS2, under a different nickname, hehehe.

While he can be a handful to debate with, he does raise good points: he knows his stuff when using Motec and can create complicated equations and formulas behind graphics that expose data which is not easily seen; his grip calculations were validated by iRacing staff. What's not true is that nobody noticed the grip loss, because it was evident from laptimes dropping. That's twisting from his part that makes him hard to talk to at times. Get used to it

 

British touring cars would be a nice addition but an even more special and unique addition would be a Mazda 3 sedan with this screaming rotary engine from Belgian touring championship !

Edit: Also they already shrinked the Camaro and we got such a fun car to drive the ARC Camaro, why not also srink a couple of DTM cars ? 200Hp/14.000Rpm GSX-R1000 at only 450Kg

 

But the question is. Can you know what is realistic and can correlate it to the game?
Because now it is very vague. Somebody says there is too little bite and grip and has driven some of these cars in real life. While others contest it.
I want something objective. That when all comes together you can overlay footage. Like if you take the same conditions of the tracks and let the same driver drive in real life and in the game that you see little to no difference when you overlay the footage.

 

Traction Circles??
My good man - do you know what you are talking about?
Eventhough your socalled "Traction Circles" are related to grip in some way - then you can never use them to as example objectively calculate the difference in grip between two setups as I show in my example above.
Try it. And be sure your circles does output real numbers to be compared
Hehe and are your "Traction Circles" also able to calculate the difference in front vs rear grip as I also does show in my example?

Yeah just a really "smart" comment to my post - but why should I?
Because if it should in any way be able to persuade you then you should first be able to understand it.
Because at least the mathematical formula as you call it took several months to figure out - and is furthermore not one(1) formula but several cooperating via MoteCs script/programming language.

ByTheWay: As a funny story from my iRacing days then several of the socalled pro drivers in iRacings "closed" highest league secretly did send me their telemetry outputs - so I could compare changes they made in setups. Hehe but they were so paranoid about it that I first had to promise never to tell others their names. And even more serious never exchange their personal telemetry data with some of their competitors.

 

Trouble is in AMS2 the grip depends on track rubbering, temperatures and many other things many of which can not be replicated consistently: for instance right now you can't force a certain track temp and percentage of rubbering to remain constant. So even small variations of total grip (1-2% is already appreciable number when driving) are hard to identify as reduction of grip that devs like iracing were hiding from track conditions.
Maybe time trial could be a generally more stable playground for this kind of comparisons, but again setup would come into play. Often times in the past months I found myself losing time after an update just to find out that I could regain that and more by improving the setup.
Why Reiza would lie to us on increasing/decreasing grip though? Can't understand why they would do so...

 

What was so funny about my post? A bit to naive

 

Why should that giving "trouble" calculating the grip existing on a certain lap "outputted" as telemetry data?
And why should anything needed to be "replicated".
If you just have the telemetry data from the certain laps then you can calculate how much grip the car/setup was producing at that exact moment.
Do you really think AMS2 is so much different from other racing games.

ByTheWay: Real life racing teams does also likewise calculate grip.
Hehe they dont rely on "I really feel this change did raise the grip".