Road to V1.6 Hype Train (cont.)

Crunch...

 

Yeah, a pretty sizable graphics update has been mentioned in the September update and it honestly looks even better in action than it does from the stills shown there in my opinion:

"AMS2 V1.6 features the first stage of a substantial graphics overhaul, including revisions to environment lighting, vehicle materials, along with new and updated shaders. The end result is a significant upgrade to the game’s visuals, delivering a more natural and cohesive integration of cars and tracks in different weather and time settings. These improvements are to the benefit of every track and car in the game with negligible performance impact."

 

The other thing to remember is that 1.6 is the first stage, even more improvements are planned.

I still have fun getting my head round such updates / improvements. I'm of an age where I remember getting the latest Geoff Cramond title, and any issues that there were, were there until I bought the next game.

 

I know this, but it is indeed noticeable, specially on the cars itself. A lot of the times when games announce shader improvements you can rarely see the difference lol.

 

I've been gaming since the early eighties, and back then we enjoyed them for what they were, we just dismissed or ignored any faults and bugs (there were many).
I'm really happy with the sim as it is (especially in vr), but really looking forward to 1.6.
A gift that keeps on giving.

 

All I would say is since on multiple occasions Reiza has said release is imminent, is come out and say what’s holding it up and just explain it, because of the footage I and anyone else can see if you can find it, looks really good and you would think wouldn’t being to far off being how Reiza want it, cause take the overtake stream, ok wasn’t the best showing but they were happy to organise it.

TLDR, Just explain the hold up, any reasonable person will understand.

 

Keyword being " reasonable" unfortunately this be the InTeRneTS, not many people care to be reasonable in it. The Montreal Expos fan has clearly shown that many times already, he's given me plenty of entertainment, I'll give him that .

 

You may still not like V1.6 once it's out, this is always a possibility, but in the Super Trofeo vid, yep the tires were cold, he never really got them up to temperature, the cars can get pretty squirrelly then in V1.6 and the ST in general is quite lively, compared to the GT3s anyway.

Most of the oversteer issues in the videos were self inflicted: too much steering and too much throttle simultaneously in lower gears, it's just a traction loss issue at that point, it's not unavoidable by any means. Nor is it very fast in V1.6 since the speed loss by getting involved in some drifty stuff is quite high, while in V1.5 the car will just keep accelerating often.

I just took the Audi R8 Evo II and Rexy around Road Atlanta on default setup and the only times I ever had to counter-steer was at turn 7, because I really love messing up the corner entry there, so my exit option is then the grass or step on it and hope for the best. I am truly awful at it. When by miracle I got it right I had no oversteer on exit there either.

Lines and car attitude in Rexy were pretty much identical to some quali lap I watched later in youtube, ok so I was a second slower than the real life time, I'm not very good, what can you do?

There's still hope, and if it does not work out, blame Nils!

 

As I (not a Reiza employee) already wrote before, what seems to be holding it up is that Reiza are not as far as they want to be.

All cars are aimed to have a full physics overhaul, but some cars are still due their final checks. All car's AI are to be recalibrated but you can only do that once physics are fully done. All sounds are to be updated, but some still show inconsistencies.

It's not as far as it needs to be to satisfy their quality standards. As far as we all know, there is no "big one issue" holding it up.

Renato constantly implying a release date that's closer than it actually is is very unfortunate, but due to the fact that the man can't assess timescales to save his life.

 

Perhaps Reiza should re-brand this update 2.0, instead of 1.6. Seems to correlate more appropriately with the significance of the revision.

 

E

Exactly, you have unreasonable people now, so as it is now, you’re punishing reasonable people. It’s doesn’t matter what changes come to AMS2, now or in the future, you’ll never win over everyone, and this goes for anything.

 

And how long its taken....

 

If the improvements are significant, I am sure I will be happy with it. I am not a hardcore fan of any single sim, I frequently bounce around between iracing, AC, ACC, AMs1, etc, and don’t really have any major complaints with any of those, even though they are “different” from each other.

As long as 1.6 brings AMS2 into the same ballpark as any of those, I will be pleased.

 

Prefacing my post with the following: I mean all of this in respect as someone who wants to see AMS2 succeed at what it's doing, and is NOT meant to be interpreted as an "attack" in any way. I'm just offering very honest and constructive criticism.

TLDR - I entirely agree. I really would like better community communication and transparency in terms of owning up to blowing well by the estimated release time with little-to-no acknowledgement.

Renato said in the March 2024 Dev Blog that 1.6 would be released in the Summer. Dev blog 1.6 part 2 arrives and there's no mention or apology of blowing well past the mentioned date except for, "We hoped to share more about it but we had little concrete info to share." Which, huh??? That's a huge change from what was initially mentioned to be a release. Yet in the same thread with his recent comment, he says that his posts aren't meant to be taken as announcements??? It's just all so confusing and frustrating.

All I really want is just an actual acknowledgement as to why 1.6 is roughly 3-4 months overdue, that's it. Just be honest with us. Was too much being done at once? Is there burnout? More bugs than anticipated? Some partners wanting specific adjustments? Physics providing more trouble than expected? What's going on?

Now, ideally, I'd love to see Reiza do something like opening a Release Candidate for stuff that's approved, or even allowing a specific Beta branch to be shown off in videos/streams by select/known users; all of that would be substantially better, especially if it's getting to the point where someone's desperate enough to lose their Beta access to show what Reiza isn't, for whatever reasons we aren't being told.

Again I'd even suggest showcasing stuff that was teased on the official YouTube channel. Even if the video doesn't showcase literally everything new for 1.6 and has an in-video comment of, "Hey there's also some stuff we can't mention yet, but we're excited anyway" it would be more than enough.

 

I have a wonderful time with AMS2. Pcars was my sim to go for but ever since AMS2 was born, I switched thoughts and now AMS2 is my sim to go for. No matter what is told about this game, I have really a wonderful time with it and that is the only thing that counts.

time for some laps on my favourite Track Oulton Park. Happy discussions about the game. I personally like to play with it.

 

I’m not sure what specific details about the delays would do for anything , and I honestly don’t think we are entitled to that info. I can’t think of any game studio giving updates on employee burnout , poor decisions by management, or specific challenging bugs that are causing issues/delays. This information would change nothing.

That said, I do like the idea of a release candidate because I really want to play this thing, lol.

 

Well, all that is sure is things did change, whether that is good change or not is subjective I guess.

It’s a shame you can’t switch between versions unless in beta. I just drove the McLaren F1 GTR back to back in release and beta on Oulton Park. To see if I just imagined it having improved a lot or time clouded my judgment. The difference was quite remarkable.

It felt a bit like a flying carpet and auto-rotate was on in V1.5, while in V1.6 the car felt much more connected and also more understeery, you have to induce rotation yourself much more vs the car inevitably wanting to do it by just turning in a bit. Still did very similar lap times but the experience was very different.

 

If I said I will be at your house around 3pm but I arrive at 9pm and act like nothing happened would you have a few questions? Maybe want to know why?

Edit:
After reading Crimsons last post I am happy.