“ are rfactor2 physics broken” video

Well, couldn't agree more but when I replied on this very forum to someone asking for a better gamepad handling in rFactor 2 that is shouldn't even be a thing, many ppl blamed me.

 

Excuse my ignorance, but I wouldn't consider a complete rewrite of the graphics engine and other parts of the engine as slow progress.

The reason why we haven't seen that many improvements on the core physics front is pretty simple. They weren't the biggest points for complaints. Graphics, the UI and the lack of easy pick up MP racing on the other hand were in that category, same as the lack of high quality lisenced content with a clear focus. Now guess what people are complaining about nowadays? "There is too much focus on graphics, I don't need a new UI, I only race offline and they should release less content because DLCs are too expensive and physics that were good enough until one years ago are suddenly broken for the whole game" As much as we all want to have our own main concern fixed, they will never please everyone. And there is a reason why games with less advanced tire models have more active online racing. Just as a little reminder.

 

As the post above explains a rewrite and implementation of a Graphics Engine including the move to DX11 and VR is not an easy task, it appears you have no experience of this matter so are therefore using the same old argument that it's "slow" without any knowledge of the task at hand.

As for the UI again it's not just a UI, there has been a monumental effort to entirely write the underlying code from scratch, to help include Systems now and in the future that the old UI would never of been capable of in the first place. Sure the "front end" of the UI could've been quicker perhaps, but the under the hood changes needed time to come to fruition and to be integrated into the UI. It may seem "slow" but you really do need to appreciate the work involved, Rome was not built in a day!

In your final point about users having "a role to play" well again as above they have, the Graphics needed improving and that was the #1 complaint before S397 took over, the Old UI was the number #2 and arguably the AI was #3. It was always regarded that the Physics were very good and didn't need much improvement bar a couple of Specific areas, which we're still waiting on.

 

Post 140

 

I believe that one of the issues with making a whole range of setups behave realistically, is getting real life data.

Therefore, the simulation is probably very correct when it is used with a good realistic setup. Particularly the setup used for the real life car when recording the data used in the simulation.

To add data for bad setups, real life cars would need to be set up bad, then driven or some other tests, get the data, and put it into the simulation.

This will multiply the amount of data required for a single car many times. Maybe some kind of machine learning can be applied to this complex process.

 

Except tire model there were zero improvements on the physics engine since S397 took over. I think they only added few simplified models for Formula E and perhaps active suspension model for historic McLaren.

There have been many requests to improve physics, fix long standing issues, implement decent drive train and gearbox simulation etc. But 99,9% of cases you don’t get response from devs. Maybe on Discord you get answer that it’s on TODO list, but there are other priorities. Even on official roadmaps physics engine improvements are never mentioned. So no wonder you didn’t get much discussion on forums.
I understand strategy is to improve graphics and UI while releasing new DLCs, because it brings new users and biggest income. But I think that if rF2 claims to be most realistic commercial sim then having at least one dev working on physics engine is reasonable when other sims are improving (besides Michael Borda who supposedly constantly works on tire model).
It’s just now when other sims physics improved, especially ACC gets endorsed by many pro drivers (not paid by ACC) , more and more people start to realize something is not right.

 

On another note, there have been a lot more requests back in the day about graphics and there were a lot wanting a comp system like iRacing. There are lots of different people wanting different stuff. Sometimes it's not the thing you want that they are working on, sometimes it is.

There is no doubt that there is work to be done, but will the next big thing they work on physics, or AI (which has been requested a lot too)? Only they know. There will definitely be changes, as they said they've been working on some stuff (Oreca and FE for example), and I hope this will help the racing part too on the simulator. But I would understand too if they put more resources into AI too (even though I don't care about it).

 

To clarify, on the graphics engine, however, my ignorance is not total :

Contrary to what you say, with the arrival of S397, my main wish has always been to improve the physics engine.

Then, I'm sorry, but although the graphics have improved significantly, frankly except for the rain, the differential between before S397 and now is not huge, far from it.

Then, although I appreciate the visual improvements, great majority of tracks and cars don't benefit 100% from these improvements, the deployment of the improvements is extremely slow.

The graphics engine is incredibly poorly optimized. RF2 is supposed to be ideal for endurance, but the "low sun/night/24h cycle", rain and AI conditions are incredibly poorly optimized.

All of this in 4 years ...... While others are doing beautiful graphics, and almost everything better (ACC).

No guys, don't be satisfied that S397 choose in its top 3 priorities the graphics : it's a partial failure.

Objectively, just like the UI (at least partial failure. Several years late and an objectively very disappointing result, no, at least partial failure.).

Then personally I am an offliner, so the multi does not interest me :

As you can see it is very frustrating to be in my position. The fact remains that I am a fan of rF2, just overall disappointed with the priorities of S397 for the past 4 years.

I would like users of this forums express more openly and "loudly" their desire for S397 to prioritize over the physics engine. Apparently that will not happen.

Sorry for bad english.

 

The only reason I could think of S397 starting moving physics is if all of a sudden it wouldn't be good for eSports anymore and their potential events would be turned away to other simulation. Almost everything there seems to be done with eSports in mind...

Ironically eSports drivers are those who are most capable, and for them overly forgiving stuff is not necessary and even makes the sport more flat and less exciting.

There is a joyful pride in knowing that you control a realistically behaving car and that it is not just simply a little game. But pride is diminishing once you start disbelieving stuff, especially if you suspect that physics are making "discounts" for you, you must start feeling more like casual desktop gamer than simulation athlete. I think the same should feel enthusiastic observant real red pilled simracers. Thought on iRacing as it is overly difficult. I suppose at least in iRacing they can be proud that they deal with even more demand for car control skill than they would be in real life, also if they improve cars in iR then they will follow reality improvement logic (improved=easier), while in rF2 the logic would be reversed and a lot of people wouldn't understand it. I have said in before... casual simracers only understand improvements in simracing in same way like IRL - cars has to become even easier... Lol good luck.

 

Your main Wish, not everyones.

Kunos used the Unreal Engine, which had been in development for decades prior, all they did was "bolt on" a Racing Sim. They did not write the Graphics Engine

As per Discord we understand your frustrations, many of us agree that it would be nice to see the Physics advanced soon. You need some patience and an understanding that this is not your Game to direct the Workload for, it is up to S397 and all they can do is take feedback from the community as & when required - just like they have in the past.

 

Oh..... if just ISI would come back to join S397 for a while to take partnership in physics improvement and also could produce and sell some of their DLC with actually interesting cars.

 

I think it has been communicated quite well and transparent what their plans and priorities are. If that meets you expectations or requirements is a completely different story. To give you my personal view on the subject: I would be pretty pissed if they left the UI and competition infrastructure in the state that it is now to reset their priorities after all this time of waiting for it, just to leave another construction site unfinished. There have been quite a few people active in recent threats about trees not looking good enough, and even though they might have a point, I promised them that this would lead to another new construction site oppening a completely new can of worms and adding delay to more important stuff. But people knew better. Now we have alot of tracks where vegetation looks subpar and a few where it looks good. So much about that topic.

Regarding the ever so popular upcomming comparison between ACC and rF2: did it ever come to the mind of the people bringing this argument that they are two very different products with completely different scales. One one site you have a sim with GT3 and GT4 cars with lemme guess - two type of cars and 4 sets of tires - and on the other hand you have a sim with cars ranging from Karts to Prototypes, F1 cars from the 60 to modern era, Nascars, historic muscle cars, entry level openwheeler and the list goes on and on and on. And on top of it you have 3rd party content and a huge amount of tire configurations with different compounds and weather configrations. Do people really think that it is easy to make fundamental changes to the physics engine with all that in mind? Kunos stopped developing AC1 for that very reason, with a much more simplistic physics model and game structure. Maybe Kunos was just clever as GT3 and GT4 cars are ze new sh1t on ze block and they produced the best representation of those cars, but there comes a time when I don't want to drive GT3 and GT4 cars for the whole day. It doesn't take a degree in software engineering to understand the differences in philosophies for the different products.

 

I assume you mean this thread https://forum.studio-397.com/index....or-the-controller-support.68178/#post-1051139
That thread had nothing to do with driving physics.

 

No, it has everything to do with ppl wanting to drive a SIMULATION with a GAMEPAD.

 

And nothing to do with changing the game physics to make it easier.

 

I don't see a problem, input device is what you have avaiable. We have all played Indianapolis 500 on a mouse, and Need for Speed with a joypad, and GPL without FFB wheel , the important thing is that there are no "helpers" to put joypad user on pace with people that use proper devices.

 

Live and let live.
We're all trying to enjoy the same game and genre, some with more resources and gear than others, no need for hate.
I dont get why people get so riled up and get lost in a mist of hate when #realism comes into play.
Kinda ironic that it all gets started due to a botched comparison by a youtuber, trying to showcase something that isnt exactly a secret within the community, and totally miss what's so screwed up about the comparison in the first place xD.

 

Funny how you mention that rf2 is poorly optimized, and then me too ACC . I am sorry, but if there is one engine poorly optimized it's ACC (definitely for VR).

I understand that you don't see the improvements in the graphics, i take you went back to build 1109 and directly compared it?

You are frustrated now because you want physics improvements, competitive racers and casual online racers were frustrated because there was no public racing for a long time. S397 could never do good here.

Ai is indeed one of those things that has been left alone to either for a long time, so I can totally see that coming before physics.

I'm short, a simulation can always improve, in all ways possible. It's just a matter of what is the worst part of the product. I can tell you, for rf2 that isn't physics or graphics.

 

I'm playing X-Plane 11 with keyboard and mouse. It doesn't make its physics less realistic. However, it's nearly unplayable with such input, but it's a matter of developers focus. They could make it easier without sacrificing the physics, but they don't care for an obvious reason (nobody sane plays this with mouse).

 

Source? Perhaps you’re partially right IDK, but I think there were more reasons.
RaceRoom has a lot of cars too with similar variety and is constantly updating cars’ physics as well as physics engine from time to time.
I agree for rF2 it will probably bigger problem because it also has many mods and if there are any physics braking updates many of them will be left broken.

It wasn’t always that clear what the priorities are. Many things were supposed to be taken care of or at least “looked into “ in reasonable timeline. If you read some interviews the replies suggested they treat some issues seriously, but little (if anything for many issues) was done. I understand UI development took much longer than estimated. But having one person working simultaneously on physics engine and one person fixing long standing bugs isn’t a bad idea. Meantime they hired another PR person.

The problem is also that when UI will be mostly stable most UI devs won’t be moved to physics engine, because it requires completely different skills and would be highly inefficient.