Hello everyone, a long-time lurker here. Haven't been able to race much over the course of the past few years due to health issues (can't seem to get a break these days!), which is part of the reason for my extended absence (and inactivity). The sudden announcement of AMS2 was unexpected and really got me. It's rare for me to be really psyched up about a game release, much less a racing sim these days. But considering Reiza's past track record (see what I did there? ) I am going crazy about AMS2 right now. Wow! What was even more surprising to me - in a good way - was the little bit of information that Automobilista 2 will be using the MADNESS engine. That, to me, is a very pleasant and unexpected surprise. Let me say this: I was an early backer of PCARS1, and thoroughly enjoyed the earlier phases of development. Everything was shaping up nicely, IMHO... until the new tire model came around. From that point it became a back and forth in terms of issues vs. actual improvement. After all those patches and DLCs, the resulting game, for me at least, remained deeply flawed and bugged - which was a shame, considering how ambitious it was. When the development of PCARS2 rolled around, I wasn't taking part in it. My hopes weren't too high, and after playing the demo shortly after release it seemed I was right to be cautious about it. However, due to Humble Bundle I managed to get PCARS2 dead cheap, and when I tried it for the first time late at night I didn't even bother connecting my G25 setup to the computer and went with a gamepad instead. Even so, rocketing around Hockenheim in a Porsche 962 got me hooked. The next day I set up my wheel and everything and was pretty much blown away. In terms of physics, PCARS 2 had come a long way since its release (and even further since its predecessor). Unfortunately, there remains one huge issue for me (and as far as I know, many others), and that is the way rain and water on the track is handled. Even moderate rain (which isn't uncommon in racing) usually leads to large amounts of standing water on the track that just won't flow away from it (or dry on its own). And this, in turn, usually leads to lots and lots of aquaplaning. So much, in fact, that I can recall no race in actual motorsports history that came even remotely close to it. At first I thought this was due to time acceleration, i.e. when race length was set to a shorter duration than the default or maximum (which I assumed had an impact on rainfall as well). I spent extended amounts of time testing this and was shocked to find out that the issue persisted even at full race length, usually making races impossible quickly because the racing game suddenly turned into a boat simulator... Long story short, what I would like to hear about from the devs at Reiza is this: How will you handle rain with this engine? Are you going to use your own parameters and tweak the simulation of rain to achieve the most realistic result? Or are you going to use a solution similar to Project CARS 2? In any case, I am immensely thrilled about the announcement of AMS2 and have absolute confidence that, at least for me, it will be the most amazing racing simulation in existence.
I found that raising the ride height took care of a lot of the aquaplaning in PC2. But yes, the amount of water on track seemed to be very unnatural. I'm hopeful Reiza can do something about that.
Yeah, I did a lot of testing and it seems the water just doesn't recede by itself. So even light rain will quickly lead to deep puddles everywhere and thus a lot of aquaplaning. Yup, saw that. It looks to me as though the car is jerking a bit left and right, but the external camera views make the racing in rain seem much more normal and realistic than in PC2. Thank you Dan!
It does vary from track to track and it does get worse if you don't stick to one weather state per hour which the weather system was designed around. Using light rain or rain is useable in my experience and I know a number of leagues use rain too. But I agree the draining is the weak link. This may be because the drains are not implemented properly e.g. at Monza you get puddles on the inside of corners where the curbs (in real life) have drains. I also wonder if as puddles were PC2's "party trick" whether their was any pressure to make sure you got them. There is a tendancy when you have a "unique" feature to over-play it. When rF2 came out, track rubbering was one of its new features and was set to 5x acceleration combined with a very green default track so you knew the game had this feature. One of RaceRooms party tricks is suspension sound over bumps. I was initially very impressed until I compared it to an onboard of the same car on the same track going over the same curbs and found there was very little suspension crashing sound IRL. One of ACCs new features (over AC) is track rubberig and marbles but again it seems overdone compared to footage from the real races.
Is the random weather option scaled to each track (i.e., less chance of rain for a desert track), or is it just truly random (e.g., you could get snow in the tropics)? If PC 2 did not, will AMS 2 do the right thing and make variables for each track so that random is "plausible for that track" random?
this is the one im using at the moment.. PC2 Weather Generator : pcars works ok. so you don't have to have snow and all that rubbish. although having just been playing acc it blows pretty much every sim out of the water (pun intended) regarding wet weather and a sim as a whole atm, reiza have a high bar to reach. Im sure they will do it!
I haven't looked in depth on the code side yet so cannot say with any authority atm what the current behaviour is or how we may change it.
@Dave Stephenson -- looks like a big chunk of the coding is already done! See the link immediately above your reply. The issue is that realistic/probable values need to be encoded for each track based on climate and weather data and then presented as a generic "Realistic Weather" option in the UI for people who want realistic probabilities by track. The existing random option could be left in, though I doubt many find it useful. And, of course, manual control needs to be there, too, for when anyone wants a specific scenario. Maybe a built-in screen to set all these yourself could be useful (as with the app), but it if so it should be hidden in some sort of advanced options area so as not to overwhelm the regular user.
Since you guys (like me) are worried to drive on snow in a desert track I would go for something simplier, leaving snow active and disable rain only for snow tracks. This means on snow tracks we can select from sun to snow but no rain options, on common tracks we can select from sun to storm without snow options.
Random is a must. But give us the option to see t certain weather like the mod above. I don't care for snow or even a storm where a race would get red flagged. I don't want a project gotham experience AMS2 Weather ideas/suggestions
