Latest Roadmap Update - August 2017

Not so easy without my laptop!
I'll check it by the end of the week unless someone does first.

 

Do you have any links to these at just searching for setup guides yield limited or unrelated results.
Either way this aspect would be much better integrated into the game and should be a fairly easy thing to do.

 

So the UI teasers they put out in January and March where:


And now in August we have this

 

It's just a different color

 

Looking at the bottom pic it reminded me of the debate (at the time many years ago!) about the Opponent Filter Screen and how messy it would become with lots of mods, such a shame that many of us were right about that, just look at it now it's a right mess

I'm hoping that something could/will be done about it but I fear it's so hard coded into the game that it'd be a nightmare to change, especially considering the sheer number of community mods of which many won't ever get updated it'll always remain a "messy" area. The whole naming structure would need to be adjusted, everything in the VEH files with better terminology and additions to cater for clearer categories.

 

Yeah. What we need is rF3!

 

would that help? You must rename it to .xml

//Edit: and a result viewer scr


The two diff laptimes are done with diff wing settings.

 

I think people tend to overestimate what motec can do, or underestimate it.

People who have never used it often blame it for being a second or two off the pace, then when they finally use it they find it actually doesn't do any magic. I'm sure from a setup point of view it can help avoid setup errors that can cost lots of time, but other plugins can help similar areas (like ride height). Still, from a setup tuning point of view telemetry analysis can provide a tenth or two that can make a competitive difference in a close field, either raw pace or stint consistency. Most league fields don't reach that level of competition though, and driving is worth much more time.

The thing telemetry can do is show what you're doing wrong with your driving. Plenty of people do thousands of laps and never progress, because they can't see what they're doing wrong. A better driver can see it in replays, but the slower driver already sees their own driving and doesn't see the mistakes. Telemetry can help illustrate what they're doing and speed the process of improvement.

 

I was going to check tire temps and pressures which are usually the missing channels when you use AI to generate logs. Are they logging?

 

I agree. I use it mainly for most objective things.
Brake and engine temps.
Gear selection using drive output power.
Camber and pressure in order to have temps within acceptable ranges which help with tire degradation.
Fuel consumption.
Observing at which spots I trend to abuse the tires in order to be more gentle during race at those spots and know at which ones I can push harder.

However, you need to run several stints and check telemetry after each one and it is a bit time consuming.

For suspension settings I base more in the feeling and trying to make the car a bit oversteering. I wish I had more time to play with this. I have been thinking on creating a track just for testing purposes and learning how to better interpret telemetry.

 

As i told you above, i`m not using Motec. I guess those parameter you`re looking for, are logged into the Motec file. The rF2 log looks complete the same, as a log file driven by a player car.

 

This!!
They're trying to incorporate all these new ideas, changes and improvements to a mature game with lots of third party content that will never get updated and no matter how pretty it will look, some things will remain a mess, like the opponent filter.
Why not launch rf3 already?

 

Marcel previously explained Studio 397's DLC licenses would have to be renegotiated if the product name changes from "rFactor 2".

 

Adding a telemetry analysis program relationship to Rfacor 2 may only legitimize something that is already in use. Its inclusion, by itself, does not resolve understanding issues. Not everyone appreciates what squiggly lines to look at, what the appropriate data might be telling them and then understanding what they need to do to change either setup or driving style to realize an improvement. Data logging, regardless of the evaluation program, doesn't even do that in real racing applications. It does take study to learn what it can provide. Just like race driving benefits from driving practice, so to does learning and practicing the use of telemetry. And yes one can do things without it, as has always been the case in real racing. Use of data logging in real racing does make a difference to real racing, that is why almost every form of racing uses it. There is no reason why it shouldn't help in a sim if the sim has any semblance to real. Physics is still physics!

 

I think there could be a simple misunderstanding when it comes to what new ui means.

When 397 talks about new ui they talk about the code that runs the ui. They seem to want to add more online features (the race scheduling thing that has been hinted for example) to the ui. And they probably want to update the codebase to work with different way of generating code and packaging. This all could mean to switching different coding language and new way of doing old things more efficiently and more control. On the surface the old stuff still works as old stuff but new different kind of stuff can be added too that was not possible before. But on the outside it still looks like different color skin with mainly the same old interface and usability.

However when the users hear the words "new ui" the users expect new graphical user interface that look and works differently on the outside. But at the same time the users don't really care about the code. They want better ways to do things quicker and faster, they want to be able to control the game via the menus better. Car and track list that shows images instead of just list of text, new visual features for adding background images and other ui modding, new graphical representations for setup values, better categorized setup values, more config file parameters adjustable through game menus, tooltips, drag and drop features, better visualized featuresets instead of just hundreds of keyboard shortcuts, car info displays that show stuff like engine power, wheelbase, type of tires, driving and setup tips, better weather management, better scalable icons, race and series editors available without addons, better management of skins and car classes, easier usability for setting up online races and servers...

In the end both things are new ui but people may still be expecting different thing that is coming.

 

Do you really think so?
UI: user interface.
What happens behind that is not from our concern. We care about what we can do with it and how it looks. S397 should already knows its playerbase and what they care about.

The reason why the roadmap got so IT technical is beyond my understanding. I suspect that they didn't have much to include in it. We have been talking about the UI for 8 roadmaps so its probably difficult not to be repetitive.

 

Do you know what would be helpful? If in online server there could be the chance to access a simplified telemetry from other players and compare to our own. By simplified I mean something like speed, or acceleration and braking, at least you could see why the poleman is 2 seconds faster, and try to focus on those part of the lap... and those graphs are quite easy to read for everyone, so no need to take a graduation in physics to understand them.

 

@Comante Yep, that's about as much detail as most people need with telemetry graphs.

What I find strange is people can watch a replay of a faster driver - and I mean a high fidelity replay, not a server replay (still ok) or their own replay of another driver (anything from mediocre to terrible, depending what they were doing themselves during the lap) - and actually say "but that's exactly what I'm doing. How can they go 3 seconds faster?"

It's really hard for people to see how what they're doing is different. I think a lot of people never watch their own replays.

The problem you still have with things like throttle and brake traces is you lose the context. You can see someone getting power down at a particular point (and with things like Motec 'particular point' isn't an exact science - it's not made for games), and you can see it's earlier than you. So then you go out and try to put power down earlier, and spin. And again say "how can they do that?". You miss the difference in line, steering wheel position, attitude of the car at that moment. But all that stuff is already visible, in a replay, and people don't see it.

Anyway, at some point when the new UI and HUD system is brought in we might see more useful info (built-in or otherwise) that helps with these things.

And I'm not against a nicer/better UI - I just think it's a shame the core of the game (you know, that bit where you drive the car) develops so slowly.

 

For me the reason is clearly free advertisement. I suspect there are a lot of IT people here and it's a good way to spread the word about Luminis cloud solutions.

 

The difficult in watching replays from fast people is that their input are so smooth that is difficult watching from outside to understand when they start braking or accelerating or how they can keep a particular line while you miss it no matter what. It's difficult because inexperienced pilot think he need to late brake, throw the car into the turn and powerslide the exit to be fast (it feels like going faster than actually is, we know), so when he doesn't see the same "information" coming from a replay, he can't wrap his head about how it's done. In the simulator it takes a lot of effort and discipline to learn to be smooth because it takes a while to see the benefit, at the beginning its only difficult and boring: hard to keep focused for a long time doing it.
Especially in RF2 where weight transfer seem so important, it's not easy to understand why someone can do something and you not.