For a while now, the vast majority of my racing is offline which suits me well because I can drive what I want, where I want, when I want. And the quality of the AI and racing is just fine for my purposes. The only thing missing is the sense of meaning and shared experience that I get from multiplayer races. I have been thinking about this a lot of the last several months and it occurred to me that a social network of sorts where we share what we are doing via our results log files, get notified when a 'friend' achieves a new single-attempt event personal best or someone beats our single-attempt event personal best so we can retaliate, issue challenges to each other, create and invite friends or anyone to an 'event' or series of events with combos they can select, etc. etc. etc. You get the idea. You could also set enforceable rules such as 'one attempt only' and consequences like you cannot sim race for two days if you damage your vehicle and even scarcity rules to increase the intensity like on the days you do the event you cannot do any other simracing, etc. etc. etc. Again, you get the idea. All users would have to do is upload their results log files and the system would parse the data, apply rules and even give immediate notifications such as 'you best DJC's event personal best for Spark F1 @ Nords'. There's really no limit to what you can do. I am a data guy and I also designed, built and operated a website for several years doing almost the exact same thing for Computrainer virtual reality bicycle trainers. The website was performancecentral.net and was fairly well known in the triathlete community.
I like this idea. I'd certainly be interested in joining up if such a service existed. Another 'feature' that might be really interesting is downloadable/sharable 'ghosts'. Say you drive one of your best laps, so you share that...then I can download your ghost of that lap, and race alongside you without you needing to be online. This has been done in plenty of other racing games over the years, it would be nice if ISI implemented something similar to rF2. Though I'm kinda off-topic now, sorry. But yeah, Simmunity is a great idea.
Could this idea be merged with rF2 rank? http://isiforums.net/f/showthread.p...-Looking-for-beta-testers?p=266704#post266704
Absolutely and users uncomfortable with this can upload periodically via the webpage whenever they visit to see what's new. Nope. Not even close. There's really no limit to what we can do if the demand is there. Use your imagination Absolutely! And you are most definite ON TOPIC. And I have this very thing for version 5.0 above but I don't know if it is possible. I wouldn't be surprised either way. Certainly someone here knows already. On the surface, everything is a file, right? But who knows how/what that file is entangled with on your system. Maybe nothing. Also, I did this exact thing for performancecentral.net also. People would share performance files and race against each other. They also uploaded performance files to submit their times for multi-stage events which was convenient for them also add some degree of authenticity to their times.
If this was an automatic sync (maybe a sync manager like someone mentioned above) when set to know where the required files are at first launch can sync whenever the game is started, shutdown or periodically. Sounds like a nice idea.
Good question. I'll let Hoover answer that They certainly are related somewhat but involve different a data sets, scope and purpose. Simmunity's mission is purely social and oriented primarily around recent activity, events, interaction and analysis.
Yes... the rank part kinda fits in with being a part of it. I like the idea of becoming more social with other racers, it can only lead to positive things surely?
Not that Hoover's type of ranking couldn't be part of Simmunity if everyone (especially Hoover ) thought it made sense, but I don't think people would have that opinion once they understand more clearly the specifics around Simmunity. This is all very new (< 24 hrs ), but what I envision when I speak of 'personal bests' is a driver's best time within an 'event' (I definitely should not use the term rank, that's for sure). So, for example, say I create an event called 'Extreme Driving' and assign several combos to it. At least in the first version to keep things simple, all someone needs to do to participate in the 'event' is drive the combos. That's it. Now, say Empty Box drives a few of the combos in the event after the event is created and gets the fastest time of all of the drivers for that 'event'. Then, he now has the 'new best time' of the times in the event for that combo. Same goes for lowest overall time over all the stages once he completes all combos. Now, from Empty Box's perspective he may achieve a personal best time which would mean it is the best time he has ever done including all of his times, but that is a very personal distinction and not a community leaderboard/ranking function. I sure hope I'm not confusing everyone and I do believe it will become clear once I can document and prototype everything but I can say for sure that I think Hoover's tool is awesome and valuable and distinct for sure and also it is using the right data for what he is doing. Am I making any sense. Sorry I am quite distracted with work (who do they think they are, anyway ?!?! ).
Many thanks for the feedback. I will move discussion to official development thread here --> http://isiforums.net/f/showthread.p...ffline-sim-racers-together-for-virtual-events
