James Baldwin comments on the McLaren 720S GT3 Evo in AMS2 1.6

James Baldwin went from sim racing to racing GT3 in real life, and here are his first impressions of AMS2 as of version 1.6.3:

A quick summary of physics-related comments in the video, where he drives the McLaren 720S GT3 Evo in Time Trial with a setup from of the fastest TT entries:

• 1.6 feels slightly better than 1.5 in the sense that you can't abuse the front and rear slip angles anymore
• When coasting through a corner, it feels like the car is losing more speed than in real life and in Le Mans Ultimate, and that you need to apply throttle to compensate, which lends itself to a driving style where you feel like you're drifting out of the corner
• Good sensation of the suspension movement
• Brakes seem a bit weaker than expected, but he does qualify that statement with the fact that it could be due to setup
• Overall thoughts is that AMS2 is fun, although the driving style is not the most realistic based on his driving experience with the (same?) car at Spa

My own thoughts: While I don't spend much time driving GT3 (not at all in RL and not much in sims), I still understand where his comments are coming from, based on how this car feels to me when driving it in AMS2. That said, I've done a bit of regular amateur kart racing in real life, and the GX390 Race kart in AMS2 is in my opinion the closest-feeling to real life of any kart in any sim (there's still some improvements to be made, though). And in fact, the kind of driving style that James Baldwin is mentioning in his video is what is normally beneficial in karting, where it's quite normal to apply throttle long before the apex. Not that I think that means anything about the realism of this McLaren in AMS2, I'm just sharing what little experience I have from driving somewhat at the limit in real life.

Let's see if we can hold a conversation about the comments in the video without overgeneralizing and hyperbole!

 

This could maybe be by engine braking IMO

 

that's a really subtle crit. Sounds to me like Reiza's nailed it, given the limitations of the tech.

 

I think to be pedantic he went from racing karts as a kid and then cars to sim racing and then back to racing cars.

Did he make the video using the GT3 car before or after the latest patch? My guess would be before given time for recording / editing / uploading etc. So there's a chance his perception might be changed with the tyre changes that just dropped?

TBH I think some of what he said about the driving would be explained by the difference of looking at a flat screen and sitting in a car. For a racing driver and one that's used many sims he seemed to struggle a bit driving a clean lap - and he can obviously drive IRL and he's raced sims - so it didn't make a lot of sense watching him struggle. Except looking at a 2d flat screen is always going to be more difficult compared with being in 3d (whether that's a 3d pretend world or the real one)

And the wheel ffb oscillating away - it's an expensive wheel and DD base - brings tears to my eyes that does. I'm sat here with a DFGT and I put more effort into setting it up than he has thousands of pounds worth of kit. Especially given the "Hi, I'm a racing driver and this is how realistic the game is" with his wheel making vibrating and shaking movements like my sisters favourite toy (No, it was https://www.amazon.co.uk/Dancing-Bo...tional-Toddlers/dp/B08GC39RF8/ref=sr_1_3_sspa not sure where your minds went)

Same with the setup. I've done a ton of driving around in AMS2 and I note even quite subtle changes like the steering degree make a marked difference to how well I can control the cars with my hardware - they have some impact on FFB feel too. So "here's a setup I got off the TT board" didn't make me think he'd put in a great deal of effort either.

How is the wheel vibrating like that going to feel realistic? Equally though saying "It's not realistic because of the ffb look at this wheel vibrating - it's like someone's sister's favourite toy - no, not that kind of toy" makes no sense. He's set up the ffb. Or hasn't. "Out of the box there's a dead feeling, a complete lack of ffb even going over bumps" "You need to plug it in" "Yeah, I could plug it in but I'm testing it as it comes out of the box"

And FFB like sound is a choice. We have threads a mile long catering to different choices. It's a bunch of sliders you set. You can slide the tyre noise up and the engine down.

What is the realistic slider settings for sound and FFB? Well who knows. In many ways they're not really meant to be realistic. They have additional noises and vibrations to make it easier to drive given that we're not in a real car. But there are obviously a ton of custom ffb files, including the infamous 4-line one that will remove those additional things too.

I mean when you sit in a racing car IRL you generally have a big helmet on right? So even if it sounded realistic it won't sound the same - and I suspect under the helmet they wear earplugs right? I remember I took my son to an F3 meeting at Silverstone (mostly when I discovered they let kids his age go in for free) and unlike F1 days you could pretty much go anywhere on the circuit - and nothing is busy, it's practically empty. We walked around the pits, chatted to the people and stood around watching the races from various corners and start/finish straight etc. For one race we sat in one of the enclosed seating areas - completely empty apart from us, and we nearly went deaf the reflected sound was so loud. 5 minutes of that we realised our mistake and relocated.

So if AMS2 hasn't damaged your hearing it's not realistic - but thank goodness.

Has he not got a VR headset to try? I don't see one listed in his specs. That would be my first thing - try VR, spend some time to actually dial in settings for your hardware, carefully look at the setup you're about to use (specifically things like steering rack, ffb gain and, given his other comments, engine braking) and then I think potentially he would provide some insight from someone who has raced GT3 in real life.

Other than that, fair enough, he said it wasn't facts just his opinion and I too would presumably find racing a GT3 car IRL compared to playing AMS2 would be very different experiences.

 

When it comes to these youtubers, AMS2 seems like ABBA music. No-one wants to public say how great it is because one has a reputation to uphold in order to seemingly be taken seriously.

The fact he loaded a random setup, didn't check it and then went on to review the handling was rather ridiculous tbh. After all, plenty of real drivers claim a car is undriveable until setup changes.

Perhaps he wanted to try and legitimise the LMU GT3s (which loads of people complain about btw) in order to feel better about his apparent input into their handling.

At the end of the day, NONE of these GAMES are 100% accurate and they probably all fit around the same overall percentage of accuracy. The differences are really in which area you want to focus on to then claim "Wow, this one is the best" or "Wow, this one sucks".

 

He most likely recorded the video before Thursday evening patch though as he was messing around that day in the afternoon. He clearly has some points, but the changes from that patch is quite noticeable for LMDh and GT3s. Also remember, and he state that himself, he helped developped the 720 in LMU... So much for a purely objective point of view.

He still got entertained by the time trial session (as well in his live), which, in my opinion, is the most important factor when playing a game, no matter the level of realism (I have 0 fun playing LMU, from my subjective perspective).

 

I love ABBA and AMS2. I play ABBA Gold at least twice a week...

 

I've heard the sound is good but the graphics are last gen

 

I tried his setup with the McLaren GT3 at Spa and it was definitely a goofy one, but I still agree with a lot of his points regarding grip and sensations through corners. The default setup is far more balanced but still struggles with the same issue he mentions. I feel like I’m still one of the few waiting for a few additional physics changes.

Should also be mentioned that he streamed the last two days on YouTube (for members) playing AMS2 and mentioned a lot how much he enjoys the game and how fun it is. He did a lot of LFM in lmp2 and lmdh. I think he has the WR on Spa in one of those and likes his setup there.

 

Maybe the ranges of settings need to be decreased somewhat, in order to prevent freaky setups which are somehow fast, but totally unrealistic?

 

I enjoyed his review. But the one thing that puzzled me was when he showed the ffb wobble when let go of the wheel…. and said, I guess I could tune that out? Then why didn’t you????
My personal wheel with a cFFB file doesn’t do that.
I liked his comment that it's Fun.

 

This. And then stating there is coast resistance without even checking the engine braking setting...

Otherwise I think his review is honest and he has some interesting bits there, but I would love to see some serious review of this kind setting up the car. What annoys me more is that this is pretty usual in sim reviews, it is like that they just don't know how. I suspect some serious sim-racers have much more knowledge to set up a car that those guys specialized in racing since their childhood. It makes sense, they have someone else doing the job and we usually don't

 

I think he had good points how the car feels when it turns on highspeed corners, the rotation of the car is to much like he said the downforce has to work on this type of corners… and i think that’s is one point of the weird feeling of AMS2. Now the Physics Team from Reiza had a good and serious Feedback from a real driver and one that helped developed the same car in LMU, and i hope they can do some improvements…

 

One thing I find odd when comparing AMS2 GT3 to other sims is why AMS2 has the differential clutches set to 6 by default when a setting of 2 seems to make the car a completely different beast and reduces instability in the rear. This isn't even visible or changeable in other games like LMU. Yet none of these youtubers even remotely reference such things. Oh.. and that tire scrubbing sound is really irritating in AMS2. Its incessant and constant and therefore seemingly pointless.

 

I’ve heard that decreasing clutches also makes it slower, is this true with the GT3s when lowering the clutches to 2?

 

Go ahead, I like AMS2. But I agree with many of the points he makes in the video.
My criticism is totally constructive and I hope that Reiza is able to improve all these points.
Many cars have strange behavior (GT3), mainly at corner exit and that loss of grip that is difficult to eliminate with the setup.
The ffb transmits a lot of background noise (for me unnecessary) and the steering wheel oscillations in default and default+ are there. To eliminate them you have to increase the filters a lot and important details are lost.
Unlike other sims with most cars I can't tell in most cases what the car is doing when I try to push it to the limit.
AI still has a lot of room for improvement.
In short, AMS2 is a fun game/sim but I don't get the immersion that I have in other titles.

 

I recently tested with current version most of the GT3 Gen 2 back to back with default setup (except TC at 2) on Termas de Rio Hondo and had no problem with these, understanding how to drive them. I fail to understand what is it exactly what people want ? GT3 on rail to churn lap after lap effortlessly ? GT3 that behave exactly like ACC or LMU seen as some sort of gold standard ? Not saying GT3 cannot be improved in AMS2 (everything can always be) but to me they feel OK, but I'm not an expert in physics either.

 

Also it boggles my mind why YouTuber would use a Time Trial setup instead of the default setup (that he would eventually tweak a bit to its preference).
Time trial is a very artificial activity where the contest is largely to abuse the car, physics and track limits in the most inventive ways that you can. Also the track is set to some optimal fixed conditions I think and the setup is done in accordance to that.
Not really representative of a race setup IMHO.

 

I've been driving ams2 since early access day one and as of 1.6.3.4,

GT3 content (all of them) are achilles heel of this sim. Literally every single other content feels very realistic (including GT4) but GT3 cars are still drifty, they still rotate too much under high downforce situations and you still powerslide out of apex.

As a massive GTP and CART fan, i couldn't care less. AMS2 is giving me what i want. I'm fcking loving the 1.6 update.

But the harsh reality is, GT3 is king and reiza need to get GT3 on the same sharp/precise level of other content if they need to shut up the "Eh mey gerd ams2 is not realistic. It's very floaty" crowd. (Because most of those dipsh*ts judge ams2 based on gt3 content)

 

So we have to wait till some snob youtube real racer driver give his ok to AMS 2 GT3's.
LMAO