Automobilista 2 V1.4.1.0 Released - Now Updated to V1.4.1.3

When you switch to AMS2 from AC or ACC (where the vehicles are much closer), some of the AI moves blow your mind - it's really noticeable on the ovals when you see a car switch from the high line to the low line mid corner. I get that it's a compromise though, because this does obviously allow them to evade contact, to create a more dynamic race and to save on CPU load and overall the AI is a lot of fun to race against - there's just those few moments where you go "hey, that shouldn't be possible".

 

I do think the audio, on some cars more than others, sounds quite synthetic. Don't know if it's a Madness Engine thing or they can improve it with time. Especially noticable on some cars if you rev from a stand-still.

 

Also to keep in mind Renato runs the studio and is probably involved in the admin and commercial side of things, including licenses.

 

Audio is tough because you have so many people with different headsets, speakers , sound cards or not. It is kind of odd how one sim can sound one way compared to the other. Are the sounds recorded from inside the helmet , inside the car or outside the car(s). The RSR Porsche was a big difference compared to iracing but the RSR here has the exhaust out the sides not the back.

 

This night I tried indycars in iRacing AI, to compare the experience. While the IR18 has nothing to do with 90s CART, I think the comparisson is still useful. While iRacing is more refined in some points (obvious, much more time) AMS is quite there at some points, for instance in iRacing there is an annoying difference of pace between qualy and race (even with suitable setups).

iRacing has arguably the best AI atm, but the cars don't share physics with users. That is not the way things are done. Simulating 31 self-driving cars is not feasible and if it would, it would be a huge project needing more research and development that the proper sim.

 

I find the iRacing AI to be lacking. Try qualifying against them and be blocked every time you're on a hotlap by a car coming out of the pits.

For all the ridicule it's received over the months, I still prefer ACC AI overall. ACC's AI isn't the most racy, but it is on the player's physics so it's consistent track by track and it behaves in a predictable manner. rF2's AI is also good if tuned right. Unfortunately it varies track by track: at one track you need X difficulty and on another track you need to tune that way up because you're 10s a lap quicker. rF2's AI also has annoying issues that they need to fix (pitting cars refuse to overtake other AI, even if it's a slower class, etc).

I'm confident Reiza will get their AI to a high level, as I said: for me it's the only thing (+audio) that stops it from being my exclusive sim.

 

Just make sure your source audio is of sufficient enough quality and the rest is, bluntly said, not your problem.

 

The inconsistencies track by track are way noticeable also in iRacing. At the moment in iRacing there is an also a noticeable difference with weather. AI has a lot of grip in cold surfaces.

 

Totally agree with this, they're amazing now (they were pretty good before aswell), really good, A.I. with them at Oulton is fantastic!
On the big kerbs at Oulton you can get em up on two wheels, and its very realistic, just like you see at the real races!
I've been damn impressed with them at home and also went round to a friends whom i've just sourced a rig for (Got him a Ryzen at nearly 5ghz, RTX 3080 Suprim running at over 1900mhz, Terabyte SSD, 32GB of Crosshair 3600 ram, liquid cooled PC. A Samsung Odessy G9 screen. And a Thrustmaster TSCP wheel & base with Thrustmaster loadcell pedals. All for..... Drum roll..... £2400!!!!!!! WTF have i done! Shoulda got it myself and sold him my current rig! (apart from my fanatec wheel and pedals).
Wanted to try out the rig and he is buying first of all AMS2! So thats what we fired up. I asked him what shall we drive and he immediately said "I love the Mini's, they're so much fun!" (guess whats sitting in his driveway and is his daily drive), so we took turns doing laps and races, it was awsome, infact I think its now one of the best cars in the game, and with the refinement to the new tire heating it works so well now! Bravo Reiza!

 

Just a thought on this but are there any Windows registry settings that could be in play here that get messed up somehow (being windows)

 

Important thing to note on the Indycars, as could be quite confusing to new users especially. So, at noral road courses the cars have an LSD which is of course adjustable in setups.

At the ovals if you go into setups you can see they are running a spool, but all of the adjustments for the LSD are still there, so you would immediately expect that you have the option of running with either the spool or the LSD.

Now here's the thing! The spool is on by default and the LSD is off, yet none of the adjustments for the LSD are greyed out. You'd expect they would be until you turn the spool off and you'd expect the LSD to automatically turn on and all the adjustments to light up, letting you know you are now running the LSD and can adjust as you see fit, right?

Not so! You can actually turn them both on at the same time! (Which is of course impossible!). Also when you turn the LSD on, I'm pretty sure it's just a left over in the UI, because the car seems to still be running a spool anyway. See how this could be mighty confusing until you've figured this out?

This is a problem!

 

still missing in game spotter... I know chrew chief and etc but have we any info about?

 

LOL not sure why Madness Engine seems to be always the culprit for whatever isn't right. I believe Madness Engine is using fmod which is commercial, not a dedicated/exclusive thing of madness engine.
That being said, I find sound quite good in many cars and sometimes a bit average.
I find a lot of depth in sound has been added recently with track reverbs and other effects. In terms of engine sounds, some are great some are less great but I don't find ACC or RR free of things that irk me quite a bit or anyway so decisively better in general.
It is anyway something very much about personal taste.

 

I was never a fan of P-Cars sounds either, thats why I mention it specifically. Yea it uses FMOD, but FMOD doesn't have a "rev the engine" feature, it has pitch adjustment etc. It may be that the interface into FMOD runs through a Madness Engine wrapper that has limitations. Or it simply could be, the guys are a small team and have limited time.

It's still good, some more than others; I don't think it's bad. The caterhams sound a bit synthetic compared to say RF2 for example.

 

Uhhh…wait…what??

 

More to the point, has anyone around here heard of Assetto Corsa? Or Content Manager? Have you ever ticked the box in CM that let it have access to your wheel’s SDK? It’s marked “Experimental” for a reason. Don’t get me wrong, I have enjoyed AC as much as anyone and am sincerely appreciative of every modder’s efforts—especially Ilya’s—but to pretend that installing multiple simulations, especially heavily modded ones, cannot impact the user experience across you PC’s sim universe seems to be giving any Microsoft OS way too much credit. On my harddrive, AMS2 does not exist in a vacuum, and at some point I’ll invariably end up deleting this item or re-installing that item or tweaking something else to yield the most consistent results. Compared to the time spent wrenching in the garage, it's nothing.

 

I've had most of the week to test and discover just how this update is panning out, I was gunna make a video but, there is just so much to cover I've decided it would be better to go live instead as its gunna take a while, that way any fantastic things that occur whilst testing can get picked up in the stream, also any bugs or problems that occur will be live so you can get an honest in the moment view of how things are going.

I'll be trying to cover what i've discovered and things that have been brought up in the forums, and you can join in!

Hope this Is useful and informative... Or at least entertaining, when you see how bad my driving really is with certain car track combo's whilst testing. That and the fact I can't seem to control my hair today!

AMS2 V1.4.1.2 Hopefully Useful, Informative User Review, After A Weeks Testing! LIVE!

 

Thankyou, could do with it maybe greying out the LSD when spool is on, just to save confusion. So if i turn spool of, have i physically got LSD?