Automobilista 2 V1.4.5.2 & New DLC Packs RELEASED!

Following on from this post, which referenced just how good AMS2 Can be Online. I have to regretfully follow it up with this, as unfortunately its a rare thing, more often than not it is very problematic!

Its so sad to hear Metz here talking about moving his Sunday Endurance races over to another sim, which he does'nt want to do, and im with him on that, but had I have been in this server (could'nt attend this week as busy running a jam session), I would have been massively frustrated and probably have given up and just gotten on with something else, because even after the 2nd restart it would have just been a waste of time.

Its for reasons like this that AMS2 did'nt get onto LFM, its one of the most damaging things to the games reputation. I honestly do think with issues like this sorted, Reiza could sell so many more copies, still get onto LFM, and off the back of that sell even more DLC.

I'd say more but Metz has already said it, and shown it in the video here, and also he shows footage of exactly what happened, as it happened. What he says between 16:00 & 16:30 is so sad to hear!

 

Watched that video a few moments ago and i fully agree with him and i don't blame him for moving to a different sim. I had one time where i had to restart a server in my league and it was terrible for everyone involved, but having that happen twice in a row i would probably just give up at that point too.

I already experienced problems like people disconnecting after qualifying moves to the pre-race 2 minute countdown and they were thus unable to rejoin, others reported car setups not applying, and the dreaded pitstop bug that i've made a video of, or wheel/pedals randomly deciding not to work when joining a server ...
There are so many issues that no amount of extra new content will get people into playing if there are constant roadblocks happening.

 

Yep, all the problems you mention there we are experiencing on a regular basis!

My friend has a Thrustmaster wheel and it loses function alot when online in AMS2 but not in any other sim he uses.

The setup no applying bug is being reported all the time (luckily its not happened to me in a whille now as I went as far as a full reinstall to sort it, because its a really big problem).

You cannot rejoin as you say after the two minutes which is terrible for folks with limited time who may have been preparing in every spare moment they get for that race (I know folks who have cancelled nights out to be part of a race and then could'nt even take part due to this one).

"There are so many issues that no amount of extra new content will get people into playing if there are constant roadblocks happening" THIS RIGHT HERE! This is absoloutely spot on, I've had folks contest this saying nope, selling more content is what will give Reiza the funds to sort things out. No! Its the other way around!

 

I kept hearing this nonsense about "support the devs and the next game / update will be better" for years with official Nascar games, and that lead to us getting Nascar 21 (broken) Ignition. No, if devs want more money, they need to make the game better. Bugs will happen in every game, but it should not be to this extent and for this long time.

I will not buy any DLC that comes out this year until the game will get to a better state with the multiplayer and also with the issues like the glitched shadows on the track that keep ruining the immersion of night races every single time. It's been in the game for nearly 3 years now, it's about time to get this stuff fixed.

 

Im very happy to support my favorite sim developers and am lucky that I brought the season pass very early so I don't have to worry too much about DLC. But I've had to do the same myself before as when Circuit D Azur came out for RF2 the resounding response on the S397 forums pretty much straight away was that half the cars could'nt make it round the circuit so I held off, this went on for years and I'd pop in every now and then asking if it had been fixed because I'd like to buy it. It took a heck of a long time (like I said, years!), Then one day out of the blue they fixed it! (This im sure was influenced by a certain member of staff they brought in who started pushing to get alot of long standing issues fixed), so I bought it straight away!

 

ams2 will NEVER be usable as a multilayer platform, it's been this bad since PCars1, the game engine is just pure garbage

 

I too am of the same opinion as "Tom", the MP is pitiful and many leagues and not only, don't take it into account to make serious tournaments, but more than anything else to do Beta championship tests to see how AMS2 works.
- Even the classic online matches are painful, precisely because the P&P system does not allow you to have a fluent connection for all players, especially if there are players from very distant regions in the game. the P&P protocol requires that each member of the game is both client and server at the same time for sharing packets, and as long as there are long delays between the various players of different regions and continents here you have bad online games. Beyond all the problems and bugs of the MP, I ask Reiza to set filters on the parites of Regions and continents, America, Asia and Euro, and be able to set in the MP room of those who host the game only users of a certain region. So at least you will not have games with 300-400-500 ms of ping.

- Another problem to improve is the evaluation of the drivers, as I think online, must always be enabled on each game the evaluation, there must not be the possibility of disabling it, so that anyone who creates an accident, lowers the level of reliability of the pilot. In this way you can set up matches with a sufficient degree of reliability of the drivers and make the quality of online matches better.

so that said, not considering all the bugs that the MP currently suffers, if these two big changes were applied, on the region/continent of the connection, and make the online pilot rating always active, it would mark a substantial step forward for the overall MP online. Currently the AMS2 MP is a jungle, because there are too many lags, and the pilots' ratings do not work... IMO

 

I don't understand what you mean by this. Are you saying the game should be "always online" no matter what ? Or the driver ratings should always be on, or what do you mean by "there must not be the possibility of disabling it" ?

 

Sorry I explained myself badly. I mean that in all online games and sessions the player rating must always be active, instead if you watch online now, many lobies don't activate it, because you have the possibility to disable the player rating. So anyone can enter even with a low pilot reliability rating, expressed in letters "U-E-D-C-B-A-S", and be able to do anything causing accidents because the game is not classified by the ratings but it's all free, and therefore you will see players who do mostly what he likes.

 

Also @Ettore

Just a quick Google search but there is a ton of literature on the topic....
DisplayPort vs HDMI

 

Ratings are pretty meaningless in any online environment... As this LFM video shows, people have some strange ways of having fun at the expense of others...

But in AMS2 where the rating system isn't as polished as good drivers get punished for the terrible driving of others far too often, it's merely a number at the top corner of the screen... Just take a search of the term "rating" and you'll find a lot of posts with drivers complaining about the decisions the rating system makes...

Turning the rating system to always on will not make the racing that much better... As I've found plenty of yahoos in the rated servers...

As for keeping it regional, that's a bandaid for a broken arm... It'll help short term in keeping pings closer together, but would also shrink grids as there's just not much attention in AMS2 due to the p2p shortcomings...

 

iRacing has a prominent "Safety rating" and it never made the public races better so i decided to opt out of there. Only thing that improves racing online is joining a LEAGUE. Being in a random online lobby is always a mess because you don't know anyone there, therefore you got no idea about their driving style, speed, aggression, or even if they have their FoV set up correctly.

Only people organizing online races can make the racing actually good in terms of how clean everyone involved drivers and no amount of changes to any ratings will do anything about it. It might as well not even be in AMS2 with how much of an affect it doesn't have on the experience.

The things making online worse for everyone involved and why the number of participants is always low, are all the bugs that were mentioned already numerous times over the years since the game has released. How can i recommend AMS2 to anyone new, if i have to add "But be prepared to randomly disconnect from online servers after qualifying and be unable to re-join" ?

 

Cannot say that about the Iracing rating system: yes, I had bad races there with the usual a**hole here and there but very often I had good and clean races. The system is not perfect but it is much better than having no system.

 

Thank you for this. A good read and points out the potential issue of using "non-PC gear" such as a TV without a DisplayPort (which was my configuration). Maybe the combo of using a PC monitor and DP can make such a difference.

 

It can´t be on when fill with AI option is otherwise there is mayhem and we get penalised for stuff they provoke.

 

As Fabian says, I also think it's better to have at least one filtering system than to have nothing, at least you reduce the strikes in the first corner.
Precisely because AMS2 inherits the same MP as pCARS, with P&P protocol, it is necessary to have low pings to have a decent race in the session between all the players. Going above 200 ms of ping, means that two cars fighting close to a curve, means an insured accident, because each driver will see different things compared to the other driver who is driving (cars that disappear, cars reappear from nowhere, cars that they are in another totally different position than they were moments before.
Ultimately then any sim-racer will misjudge the MP of AMS2.

I know very well that there are few online players on AMS2, but it is also true that as it is now it is a jungle, because people from all over the world participate in the same lobby, all seasoned with a P&P connection system, where everyone is client and server at the same time.
I hope Reiza gives the possibility to set the games according to the continent of origin, and put filters for users with too high ping, in order to avoid and ruin the games of all the others who have sufficient ping.

 

Ratings are disabled in most servers because it has been proven that it's a cause of game stuttering/freezing for many users.

And this leads to something else: as you gain experience on AMS2's issues, if you want to get a league up and running with it, you need to do lots of work, lots of tests, to work your way around the many bugs this game has. We are willing to do it because we love AMS2 and what it has to offer when you get past those problems. But thing is, this is 2023, and we live on an era of instant gratification, and that's not going change. Many simracers out there simply don't want to deal with all of this, and that includes not even taking part of tests, specially when they have other sims out there that they can do two clicks, and get into an online race that they know it will work.

There is no other way forward than to bash your head countless times against different invisible walls until you splatter your brains out. And those walls may come either from how you setup your online sessions, to tiny individual problems at users's ends, which you have to troubleshoot one by one. Any league succesfully running AMS2 events on a constant basis today is a testament of endurance and force of will, and I'm not exaggerating.

 

Is there any other source for this ? Videos or some other discussion where people made tests that prove it causes the freezing problems ?

 

On my end, empiric evidence that online experience was worse everytime it was turned on. CASS league tried several times and it never ran as smoothly as with it turned off.

 

I can say this was one of our issues at simracingonline where turning off the ratings definitely cured the screen freezing and pausing that 80% of the players had .. That said the rest of the constant MP bugs & issues all mentioned a thousand times here forced us to shelve AMS2 as a usable platform for our sim racing needs..