Released The New UI is Here! (Instructions on How to Opt-in)

Discussion in 'News & Notifications' started by Christopher Elliott, Dec 19, 2019.

  1. Valber de Carvalho

    Valber de Carvalho Registered

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    Hi! Already performed the verification, uninstalled and installed in another directory and the same C ++ error happens
    I can only wait for the future development of the UI.
    Thanks!
     
  2. RKing

    RKing Registered

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    Sorry to hear that. I'm surprised with all the suggestions and what you have tried that it still doesn't work. I only have medium level knowledge about stuff like this and not an expert like a lot of these guys. Hopefully someone will figure it out.
    Good luck!
     
  3. Depco

    Depco Registered

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    Any idea when we might see an update for the UI? Lots of suggestions and I suspect a few log files and such sent to S397 so far.
     
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  4. TJones

    TJones Registered

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    Marcel wrote on Discord that they plan to release an update each month. So in about three weeks, I would expect.
     
  5. Emery

    Emery Registered

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    I'm starting to feel eager to try it out after this month's work. Fortunately I have this recliner seat project to keep me from being bored while I wait.
     
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  6. R.Noctua

    R.Noctua Registered

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    The opinion of the person who bought the game yesterday, accordingly, could not get used to the old interface.
    The new interface is terrible. That's it. I hope they'll reconsider all logic and structure.
     
  7. ThomasJohansen

    ThomasJohansen Registered

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    Suggestion, make a showroom scene for the UI, that resemble the car thumbnails.
    And make a rule for custom livery thumbnails which check if there is a custom thumbnail file then show this instead of default...
     
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  8. Ronnie

    Ronnie Registered

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    It really feels like super early draft. Like someone came and said: Ok... Let's replace the old ui with new backbone but since we don't have a clear idea what we want to do with the new UI/GUI, we will do it as barebones, simple and similar to old UI as possible... Then we will figure out what we actually wanted to do with the UI next.

    It's totally backwards thinking. I understand that creating a new UI is hard and all. Especially when you (S397 that is) want to do a swap-over from old to new, you want to do it relatively on common ground. Everyone's got it? No? Me neither. Why don't you start with a clear UI/GUI design (there are even people in game dev that are hired precisely as UI designers and their SOLE PURPOSE is to design an UI to be as intuitive, sharp looking, streamlined, feature filled in most logical way, elastic, future proof as possible with sizes, colours, functions, animations, placement for each and smallest button, tab. Once that is settled either on paper or in any other digital way, you start create your backbone (hell, it often happens simultaneously so when designing new GUI is done, most of the spine code that will be used to make all that happen is already there) and then recreate your front-end from your designs. Sure design can be prone to changes, which is ok if they are for the better. If you need to change a lot then your initial design was... well... crap. And all that time was wasted.

    This new UI feels like there was NO well thought work on actual GUI design. It really feels like they will "figure it out" as they go with each next month and further updates (which I hope at least will be to push the GUI/UI forward not fix same and same same bugs each month or even worse fix 1 bug and introduce 2 new ones that won't be fixed for another couple of months).

    But just to not be the guy that comes here and stockpiles on poor S397, I shall provide some feedback. The worst kind too. Constructive criticism.

    - Copy-pasting svm setup files to player/settings doesn't let them show up in setups once in game

    - Horizontal and vertical scrolling in setup menu... Not really well thought. If I didn't accidentally scrolled down from unconditional reflex, I would have assumed that someone forgot to put whole rear of the car into the setup options (dampers, springs, toes). Same for horizontal. If I didn't click the buttons that go right with tabs I might have thought the same on my very first try of new UI. Ideally you want all your tabs to be clearly visible and clickable without dragging yourself to a place where you finally can select it.

    - Don't fear to put more things in one place. Unless you have ideas to already place some new things into tabs like fuel, brakes, aero, electronics. If you don't then there's half a screen empty, for some more than half a screen. That's wasted place and perhaps rethink your content inside each tab and whether it requires separate tab just for 4 lines and 75% of blank space.

    - Consider creating a hover-over with mouse cursor tips for newbies. Sth what most modern sims do.

    - Some tracks load quickly. Like 10 s. Some are closer to 1-2 minutes. You know what I do even for the 10-20 s ones? I alt tab and wait to hear the old-school megaphone announcer and that freaking vuvuzela like trumpet to tell me the track has loaded in the background. You placed an animated track map(sort of... instead of dynamically trailing the progress and fluently travel in line of the trackmap we get 3 instant pop ups of 3 colors. Yay. I guess). Why not use this time, especially if it's for the bigger tracks to for example do a showcase of that place you are loading? Like actual panning videos (cinematic style) that hover over certain places of a track that you are loading right now with perhaps some cool trivia about that corner, that track.
    [​IMG]How's that as part of background for perhaps one day official Laguna Seca loading screen?
    [​IMG] [​IMG] Slow mo shots of iconic corners or at least iconic buildings around the track to bring us the atmosphere. Panning over from helicopter/drone camera at night of beautifully lit start/finish straight. If you don't have access to such shots, maybe one day once you feel confident enough about your visuals in game you could create your own slow motion panning over track in daytime or night, showcasing the place user will be driving at.

    Give us please sth interesting or at least cool to look at.

    - Whoever thought the overall design for car and especially track selection was good or even decent enough should stop drinking ice-cold water in big gulps quickly. Quick search seems to get more confused than not most of the time when I try to find a track, putting first letters in and I get 10 other tracks that have such 3 letters in their name. It doesn't matter that those latters are IN THE MIDDLE of a word. Like really what is that?

    - When your title is supposedly an "open modding platform" and it often leaves some users that are very eager to try all content that is on workshop, a wall of tracks. Some of them are duplicates made by different people or different versions for different leagues. Think about making very clear entry to track/car selection. How about 2 buttons that says: Official 397 content and next to it big button: 3rd party content. If you click first one you get only official 397 content and all of it latest spec. If you click the other one you will get the other ones. They don't have to be together from the start, it just creates more confusion for new people and more hustle for the rest.

    - Community tab - I mean. Yeah. It's cool that I can see what's trending on forums without opening my Brave Browser... But maybe it shouldn't put everything there? Maybe just 2-4 subforums like news and notifications, technical support, official competitions and contests. The rest are just like twitter feed. If you open up the game it's obvious you don't care to see in your feed topics like: STEAM KEY FOR RF1, How old are you (from off topic), How much money did you spend on your simracing hardware or someone's wish from wishlist subsection.

    - Creating a tutorial section in GUI that teaches some things in rF2. Like driver swaps or operating some advanced functions on a car or in game functions like restart from replay. Making it more newbie friendly should be high on your list since you clearly eye getting new people that perhaps left iracing for their next sim title and online competition there.

    - Watch tab - for now it gives us replays. Why not do sth like this in the future: If there are any hotlap competitions going on, once someone does a lap on a official server and it becomes in top5 you can see that lap in Watch tab. Or even allow people to upload almost vine-like short videos of crashes, cool saves on track, near misses, 10 s of brutal 3-way battle. Another idea... Maybe if someone selects rF2 on twitch as their broadcasted game why not let someone watch that broadcast directly from that tab? Showing people who broadcast it now so you can browse through them. All official 397 competitions could be watched through there with pop up notifications working in UI. For example you are in menus, changing some things and you get a pop up (like on mobile phone) that Official S397 stream has started and you can click on the notification: take me there in UI/ take me there in my browser (loads up your default browser)/ ignore

    - Back button often works as cancel key if you don't click select and with UI not being ULTRA snappy makes you sigh a few times trying to get back and select what you wanted again.

    As you can see I could go on and on and on. Those are only 15% of things that I could think of just for this medium sized post. Shows you 397 how much work is still in front of you. I would like to see logic behind many stuff like track selection, clicking select, horizontal/vertical scrolling to be fixed/improved/replaced first before I see some of the other suggestions I wrote earlier.

    I don't keep my hopes up because I'm likely to be disappointed like many times over last 2-3 years but if you actually do some actual work and make huge progress without many hiccups and bugs, I might come back and congratulate you. Right now there isn't much to congratulate for. Sorry.
     
    Last edited: Jan 11, 2020
  9. Paulo Silva

    Paulo Silva Registered

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    Guys, when I change the difficulty of AI strangth it does not save even after leaving and entering the game. does anyone know how to solve?
     
  10. ADSTA

    ADSTA Registered

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    Don't use a broken UI.
     
  11. RKing

    RKing Registered

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    It's a beta UI. It's optional. If is was perfect it would not be. Let's hope it's not released as a v1.0 until it works.:eek:
     
  12. John R Denman

    John R Denman Registered

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    Maybe I've missed it, but is there a presentation that offers images of the GUI's and a list of new features?

    Seems like a pretty standard thing with software development.......
     
  13. Maarten Nauta

    Maarten Nauta Registered

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    Late to the party but yes this is bad. Not perse the "alpha" state it is in, that is expected, but the conscious design choices that have been made to use the screen real estate in the least effective way possible, mainly in car and track selection but also in MP server screen.

    The only positives I see are that the "look" is ok and that there is a "no AI" box in the MP servers.

    Studio397 should have just looked to the best UIs for this type of application (raceroom in my opinion they have gotten many things right) and copied lots of things from there. AC content manager is also a great UI for advanced users but I understand that's not the way to go.

    I hope the new framework allows them to easily change layouts etc. to remedy some of the choices made.
     
  14. hitm4k3r

    hitm4k3r Registered

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    You have some fair points but there are few things where I strongly disagree with your thinking. First of all the loading screen for the tracks is just perfect from my perspective, despite a few little details and bugs. And there is a simple reason why: it simply works for every freakin' track in the sim allready, may it be official content or 3rd party content. Even without one single touch from the people who created those mods. Aren't you insisting on more modder friendly ways of support? Doesn't get any better as it is right now in the new UI. What you are looking for is something that looks cool and shiny, but makes it a mess and requires track modders to update their tracks simply for the loading screen. That's the same situtation that we have with the old UI and it is one of those little points that makes the sim feel unconsistent. The new loading screen is the full opposite: whenever I load a track I know that I am playing rF2 with the new UI. I hope S397 never changes this again, because I would like to see those ressources spent somewhere else on important stuff. Tbh, I would like to see a similar approach for the car selection, so that we don't end up with those funky looking questionmarks, because as it stands right now, we will end up with tons of those if people don't update their mods. The good old rF1 showroom comes to my mind when I think about nice automated ways of showing a car selection screen.

    Second point is the quick search: what you are looking for makes it actually harder to find a track when you don't know the exact spelling of the track. In that regard it is perfectly fine to use combinations of letters even if they are in the middle of the track name. People searching for Circuit de la Sarthe instead of Le Mans is a perfect example why your approach would make it worse. The thing that is actually bad about the seach function right now is that the search tab doesn't indicate any info about being active or not and that it isn't implemented on more screens.

    About the rest of your points I can agree, some of them even being very good ideas.
     
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  15. 3377

    3377 Registered

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    I've got some questions about the new UI:

    There is no more tracks menu icons and track loadings screen, are the loading screens totaly obsolete now? The loading screens made for trackpacks in rfactor (ex F1SR-1992, F1SR-1994, GP-Team 1998 Carrera4 1988 and so on...) were a nice touch.... Its sad to see them disappear..... Does the track layout for each tracks in the game menu are done automatically by the new UI (using AIW files I guess)?
     
  16. Daniele Vidimari

    Daniele Vidimari Registered

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    Forget my first sentence ahah.
    Sadly it didn't work good, first my mate was not able to see the list where you select the drivers, then another one got the ffb strenght reset to default after the swap (with a direct drive wheel :eek:).
     
  17. ADSTA

    ADSTA Registered

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    As in the Car Specific FFB Multiplier got set back to 1.00? Ouch.
    Did he have a Reset FFB button assigned? I don't know if that would have helped but I know it works when you don't have any FFB.
    FFB isn't linked to car setup either, as far as I've ever known.
     
  18. Daniele Vidimari

    Daniele Vidimari Registered

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    Yeah it went back to 1.00 (100% with new UI), not a big problem with the common wheel bases, but a pain with direct drives.
    No the reset doesn't work in such situations sadly. I've heard someone had the same issue but it seems to be very rare and i'm nots is related to the new driver swap system.
     
  19. elbo

    elbo Registered

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    Is there a place in the new UI where you see the upcoming race parameters when you are in a server...right now you have to wait for the race to start to have an idea of how much fuel you are going to need because nowhere do you see what the upcoming race will be in terms of length
     
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  20. DrivingFast

    DrivingFast Registered

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    This may seem unimportant, but I want S397 to remove the "Credits" when we exit the game.

    It's useless and makes one more click.

    We don't need to know who the people who work on the game are, as a simple user.
     

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