Developer Q&A 8/13-11/13

That article was an interesting read. Thanks for posting.

 

If player "waves hand" for pitting/slowing, can we have animation of hand in the air from exterior of car?

 

Accelerated track rubbering was mentioned some time ago. I think this is a good thing at the moment. Yes we are in beta, and we get to see the whole effect.

My question on the same area.

Does realroad grip change follow a fixed path on all tracks?
Or is it programmable on a track by track basis?

I have spoken to a few guys regarding grip changes on ovals in Nascar. The question comes about due to the changing lines drivers take during a race. They start low on the track, then progressively run higher during the race. If realroad only adds grip, there would never be any need to run a higher line to find grip. In fact the line should get narrower as the maximum grip line is somewhere near the centre of the main track usage area.

It appears in Nascar, grip does increase as rubber is laid down. Then too much rubber, oil and a rough surface reduce the grip again probably somewhere similar to where it started. Depending on the surface, more or less I guess.

Is realroad grip changes on a surface currently modelled like this at all?
If not are there plans in the future to make realroad grip levels editable?
And finally, if there are no plans, there needs to be.
Grip levels need to be programmable on a track by track basis, probably a material by material basis as many tracks have either concrete inserts or new tarmac patches.

Grip levels are also dependent on the tyres also. Some tyres lay down more rubber thus the track grip goes back down quicker. Some the opposite. Rubber is more dusty and tends not to build up as much and the track is unlikely therefore to lose grip again.

 

FYI this game came out of beta earlier this year.

 

The same effect should work in rfactor2. I have no way of knowing for sure, of course. I worked in real-world oval racing for about ten years (grew up with it before that), so I can comment on what happens in the real world. More rubber accumulating on the track does not always equal constantly accumulating grip. The reason the drivers will move up/down/wherever on the track is to alter the handling of the car. On an oval, if a car starts out moderately tight on a track with no rubber as the rubber builds up the car will generally, usually, get tighter. The driver will then move to a different lane with less rubber to try to get the car to loosen up a bit. There are exceptions for everything in racing, but this is how it generally works on a normal day.

A tight car on an oval usually means you have to back up the corners more and you lose some speed - if you don't you'll usually burn off your right-front tire and soon meet the wall. If you can move to a different lane to loosen the car then you aren't going to lose as much speed and you will be easier on the RF tire. When you get to your next pit stop you can make an adjustment to better fit the conditions on the track.

 

Thanks Doug, needs pick your brain. Or anyone else for that matter. And I keep this in this thread as an idea I would like to see implemented in some way.

In my racing in Sims, lower grip levels leads to a higher line being used, though not so much as in real life. The momentum being the key. Once grip diminishes, the higher line allows for more speed along the straights.

Lets do a bit of theorising.
Bristol for example. Totally green track - grip level = 1.
Lets totally bypass the laying of rubber down until the whole track is rubbered in and they are driving on the wall so to say. According to added grip, it may be now 1.1. Assuming it is now fully rubbered in and constant accross the track. Now this is interesting. Now added grip does not mean lower, but higher!
Logically, in my mind, if the track tighens when it gets more grip, then loosen the car up and drive where the grip is. Now we know that the real guys generally dont do that.

There is something in there that cannot be simulated.

 

You are totally right that running in the high lane does give you a little more speed down the straight. In general, you're accelerating in a slightly straighter line so this gives you slightly more momentum down the straight.

For the idea of moving the car around the track to alter the handling think in terms of "tight" means the front wheels of the car want to slide, and "loose" means the rear wheels want to slide. If you move to an area on the track where there is less rubber then it can cause the rear of the car to slide more. It can as easily cause the front tires to slide also.

I'm sure that muddies things up even more. Loose and Tight and the amount of rubber on the track do not have a linear relationship. There are a lot of other forces involved. Camber - this is the lean in/out of your tires and it affects the contact patch of the tire with the track. More or less contact patch can affect how much the tire wears and how hot it gets - if you have too much negative camber and you are running on the shoulder of your RF tire and get it too hot the car is going to get tight no matter what lane you're in or however much rubber is on the track. The camber angle is not always going to do the same thing from track to track. The more angle there is on banking the more or less camber angle you want. If you have a track like Iowa Speedway (been there many times) that has a different angle of banking on the bottom lane and the high lane - your camber angle could be good on the low lane but in the high lane it makes the car very tight.

Besides camber, you have caster, toe in/out, 4 springs, 4 shocks, 4 tires with different air pressures (tires have a spring rate changed by pressure), you have weight distribution of the car, body roll, aerodynamics. You'll notice on the nascar broadcast that one car benefited by moving up the track doesn't always mean the same benefit for another car. Another handles great on a heavily rubbered track. Because of all those variables and possible adjustments no two cars will ever be behave in the same way. It is a hugely complicated system that is very difficult to get right, or at least right enough so the driver doesn't complain so much.

 

Does ISI have any plans for implementing a "rivals" list similar to friends list on ps3, either in game or through a website, with functionality to see which servers your rivals are in and join them there, perhaps with message functionality. Additionally, an official ISI automatic database of lap times would be fantastic.

 

Which thread will the answers be on?

 

one that hasn't been created yet!

 

A news post like last time, and I'll start a new thread like this one with a link to it at the top.

Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk 4

 

sorry im lazy to go thru all of it, has anybody asked about KERS and the.. new 2014 one?

 

Any thoughts on supporting multiple controllers/keyboard mappable to same function in settings?

 

When are Wind and Humidity going to be added to the engine/game? High, Medium or Low priority?

Having just witnessed another awesome Bathurst 1000 the drivers all spoke about the troubles with the wind at various spots around the track, be good to finally have this in the Sim soon.

 

Oh yeah, along with a dusty track

I can't wait to see these features also. When it arrives, it will be great...

 

Yes, there are many factors within the car itself. I watched the Charlotte race this week & they said the high line was coming in. Their comment was it would come in after 15 laps once the track lost grip and got rough.

For the purpose of this thread we need a programmable grip/roughness similar to WearGrip1=(1.000,0.990,0.985,0.982,0.979,0.976,0.973,0.970) & WearGrip2=(0.967,0.964,0.961,0.956,0.948,0.932,0.860,0.760)

Maybe we should have: (in tdf)
RoadDryGrip=1.00
RoadWearGrip=(1.000,1.010,1.030,1.030,1.040,1.045,1.050,1.050)
RoadWearGrip2=(1.045,1.040,1.035,1.030,1.030,1.030,1.030,1.030)
RoadBumpAmp=0.001
RoadWearAmp=(1.000,1.001,1.002,1.003,1.004,1.005,1.006,1.007)
RoadWearAmp2=(1.008,1.009,1.009,1.009,1.009,1.009,1.009,1.009)

If it does not exist in some way I would like something like this implemented. Probably the only way we can simulate oval racing high and low lines. Roughness loses grip too.

 

When we get IMS/DW12, will we also get a proper audio spotter? I remember quite a while back Tim started a thread asking for requests for something like that for oval racing.

 

Is there any plan to update graphic engine? I think this is still the biggest "bug" of rfactor2. On our simracing portal there was around 100 peoples driving rfactor1 and now maybe about 5 of us who are using also rf2. The most common answer from those who are not using it on question why not is "****ty graphics, and bad optimization (to bad quality for such hardware demandings).
There is just not enaugh people using rfactor2 for some leagues, and we all know rfactor1 was such succes just beacause of this.. When the period of year will be over and will most of beta users have to bought a new "multiplayer" licence I am pretty sure that more than 50% will not buy it because they will have no leagues to race in. So please try to do something about this, beacuse for most peoples rf1 still looks better that rf2 with a lot lower performance..

Thank you for answer in advance!

 

How can we display currently used tire compound from within the plugin?

 

Will there be documentation, help, a tool or whatever for the UI modding interested modder!?