Dev-Talk Feedback and Suggestions

Discussion in 'News & Notifications' started by Christopher Elliott, Apr 23, 2020.

  1. Christopher Elliott

    Christopher Elliott Registered

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    Thanks for your comment.
    I think there's sometimes a misconception that 'devs' don't care or listen. We are aware of issues and follow along on social media and other, but we can't address all issues at once, we have to set priorities. Recently we started some weekly updates, and those went down well and we intend to keep doing those. For the last weeks however we had to refocus on the UI to give it a big push. We found some deeper issues that required a very focused effort to solve.
     
  2. Arwin T

    Arwin T Registered

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    Im looking forward for you devs answering all those questions from Risto!
     
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  3. Pales

    Pales Registered

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    I like this direction. Keep it up.
     
  4. memoNo1

    memoNo1 Registered

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    Thank you for this interview. Even though I unfortunately didn't understand everything. I haven't started rF2 for a while. Yesterday a race with the Cup BMW and I was back in it. I really hope that the UI will be up soon and that we will get all our wishes fulfilled.
     
  5. John R Denman

    John R Denman Registered

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    Glad to see a face and hear a voice, thats what extends our perceptions of others with humanity beyond the boundaries of internet text.
     
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  6. Lazza

    Lazza Registered

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    I hadn't had time to watch this video yet, so reserved making a comment.

    Now that I have, I have to say I disagree - this is the first real dev discussion we've had for quite a while (I guess I'm going back to some video of Chris or Marcel talking at some event - I never watched it, ~30+ min videos are painful when you just want some info). People on this forum talk about the devs never paying attention or being around, and we don't get any indication of how many people are actually working on what they're doing instead of attending to my very important issue - so to actually see some faces and get some idea of the problems they're facing, what they're working on, and their ideas for the future, is a good thing.

    Hearing from developers of other titles, regarding their opinions about rF2 or simracing in general, doesn't seem to be anything relevant to this dev-talk style video. I'd much rather occasionally hear from 3-4 rF2 devs about what's happening in their areas, and cycle through them again, than hear from people not involved in rF2 - as part of an official talk series. Of course if I want to know what other devs are doing with their games I'd go to them for it, and if someone wants to try and talk to various devs (current and past) about the general state of play then that makes sense in that context.

    Regarding the video, I like Rene being there and his approach. Of course he's not going to talk the game down too much, but he can ask some questions (with prior warning and approval, I'm sure, but that's expected) that somewhat reflect concerns of the users and give us some idea of 'what' and 'why'. Just having a person talk about 'stuff' will tend to be less revealing and gloss over things a little more. So I like it, and I look forward to future editions.

    @DrivingFast I don't know how true it is that the majority of rF2 users don't speak English well enough to follow a video like this - but that aside, the point of a video is it's not a prepared written statement that can be referred to later with an indignant "but you said THIS!!!". Things said in basically live-chat need to be kept in that context. Language barriers are always going to be an issue, but hopefully with the captions you can get enough idea of what was said.
     
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  7. hitm4k3r

    hitm4k3r Registered

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    I think, you missunderstood my point about the talking to other sim devs abit. This isn't something that I would like to see exclusively done, but next to all the other topics that have allready been mentioned. Next to the fact that some of the people, who I mentioned produced content for rF2 in one way or another (Reiza pack for example), some are even part of the credits and others might be just interesting to get to talk with to show up possibilities and chances for this product. This idea is just one of many options you have to fill such a format. And if they can really keep up with the format, to have a dev talk every month or what so ever, then why not have a quick chat with Renato, Niels or the guys from Kartsim or one of the active modders in one of the future episodes? Why not ask AC modders what they would like to see improved? That would be a win win for us as users ;)
     
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  8. Stefan_L_01

    Stefan_L_01 Registered

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    Talking lots about UI, but not a single word about Freezes in online gaming killing fun for so many players, continously raising frustration level even for long time rf2 players?
    How far are you devs and "managers" are away from reality?? Even latest roadmap do not mention efforts to get Freezes fixed, lags and however you want to call it. In a fun race yesterday on the NS multiple people encountered 2-5 sec freezes (video) and found themselves crashed into wall naturally when display recovered. I for myself encountered "only" some stutters, enough to touch the wall at least.
    .. Do you have an idea how even long time enthusiastic rf2 players talk meanwhile about rf2 and it's development in teamspeak??
     
  9. burgesjl

    burgesjl Registered

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    Interesting first attempt. Few things to discuss.

    If we're going to discuss the UI, we need to have some discussion on how it is structured. For example, on the first screens, there are tabs with 'Race', 'Watch' etc. One debate that has come up is that people want a multiplayer race vs single player race/AI race, so as not to have to go get the list of servers. Why was this design decision made, to combine them? In the iRacing beta UI, they've separated AI racing into its own menu item on the left side; i.e. at the same level as categories of official race, time trial etc. and I think this is a better approach. This is going to become all the more important as you add in the competition infrastructure i.e. how do you configure an online event and launch it. I keep asking but to this day, nothing has ever been shown for the competition creation UI. iRacing have begun to modularize the design of sessions etc. and it now has a wizard-like interface that leads you through tabs for car, track, weather etc. in a clearly defined sequence, with a button on the bottom of the dialog to move to the next section/tab. They allow for the creation of 'championships' and rosters of AI drivers etc. And they are beginning to take a similar approach with user-defined online sessions (league races and such).

    Next, I'd suggest a 'focus' for each one of these dev talk sessions, rather than bouncing from topic to topic. Lets have a deeper dive. The roadmaps by definition usually give an overview of 'each of the things being worked on' status update and then a focus on those things about to be released. The dev talk can take a different approach, not focus on 'whats the next thing to be released' but a deeper dive into a single topic. Areas could include, how they have decided to build esports events and what that has taken from the dev teams to support them (e.g. the Formula E stuff this weekend, I'm seeing possible track updates/sponsor updates on cars and tracks, releases hours before the actual event etc.). They could then discuss how they've approached that with their different partners as well e.g. difference between Mclaren WFG vs FE vs Historic F1/retired real-world drivers series. What were their goals, how did they approach satisfying them etc.

    Finally I'll suggest a dev topic on the structure of the game, and how that overcomes certain problems and limitations to giving us what we want. We know that most of us now have multi-processor CPUs (4 cores/8 threads, or many more) and the game only utilizes one or two heavily. We also know that there is effectively one 'master game thread' and that has to accommodate player physics, AI physics, graphics calls etc. etc. If we look at the topic of "how do we get better AI", we know that we are bound to X number of simulated cars which have reduced-function physics (different/simpler tire models etc.). I think its been stated, we could not see the AI cars use the same tire models/physics as the player physics. But thats because, that one thread effectively has to do both. To my mind, the answer has always been, to effectively have an equivalent to the 'dedicated server' that even runs the local/single player event/sessions, which would by definition be on its own cores/threads. If the AI run on that instance, they get more thread time to run AI physics (and are not burdened with graphics chores either). In my mind topic "how to improve element X" allows ends up coming back to "what's the processing budget to do it". Want a better tire model, taking account of track temp? See that question.

    You could also do a 'deep dive' into how a specific car was built. Example, either the BMW M2 or the work with Duqueine on the Norma or Oreca. Show how the physics telemetry gets analyzed from the real-world car to the simplified virtual car. Pick one car, do it end to end: how they got 3D models or scan data, how the artists build that model, how they build the suspension/engine models (and any unique code dev e.g. for P2P or special modes), and then how they put it all together into a package at the end that is on a virtual track and being tweaked by the vehicle dynamics people. iRacing have done these a few times.
     
  10. lagg

    lagg Registered

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    Thank you very much for this video.
    It would be interesting to know, how are the leagues going to fit in the competition system (championships, races, hotlaps, drivers rating, rules, servers, etc)
    And what S397 think about the future of moding, support, examples, tools, etc.
    Thanks.
     
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  11. Christian Wolter

    Christian Wolter Registered

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    I really like the shape of the video. Since Rene takes over the questions he could also record the most frequently asked questions in the forum, that would be very interesting, for example:



    Where are we with AI development

    What is planned in physics

    What is planned in singleplayer mode
     
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  12. Christopher Elliott

    Christopher Elliott Registered

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    Thanks for your comment :)
    Rene and I wanted to stick to one area for this first dev talk: the new UI. So many things to discuss it would take days if we wander off into all areas.
    But let's see, we will for sure do more of these. ;)
     
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  13. Patrick Schumacher

    Patrick Schumacher Registered

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    Don't make everything dependent from the new ui. Hop on the server on Sunday and have some fun in doing community races with us :)
     
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  14. Ayrton de Lima

    Ayrton de Lima Registered

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    Hybrids.
     
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  15. Adrian Blasco

    Adrian Blasco Registered

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    One of the things that was lacking is in the hud knowing which car I have ahead and behind in the relative, especially in endurance races, knowing if a dubbed or a faster category car is coming, here I put an example that I just do so that you take into account that this information will be very useful and not all the names of the same color and poor. It would be nice that just as you change the UI also redesign the hud of the menu in the car. Thank you @Marcel Offermans @christopher Högfeldt hud rfactor2.jpg IMG_20200609_135420.jpg
     
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  16. Patrick Schumacher

    Patrick Schumacher Registered

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    Do we still need topics? :D
     
  17. dazzer

    dazzer Registered

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    the video and the idea were excellent..
    what happened?
    :(
     
  18. McFlex

    McFlex Registered

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    The same as with everything S397 comes up. Start with it and than abandon it and never finish/continue :rolleyes:
     
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  19. Remco Majoor

    Remco Majoor Registered

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    probably busy with the upcoming 24H of LeMans virtual. In this time it's especially busy for sim racing devs
     
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  20. Jon Walter

    Jon Walter Registered

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    I look forward to the next videos.:)
     
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