It is just the way it came across in the post: "I am better than ISI, these fixes are so easy... I can do them in five minutes!" The sound of elitism and snobish attitude... at least that is how it came across in the post... maybe not the way they intended, but that is how I interpreted the words.
What version of rFactor are you discussing? You always have been able to do small edits like that in dev mode, which is what it is for. Editing 'installed' files with rF2 isn't workable, never has been supported.
I can understand it, because after I bought my last car (which I like, ran good, drives great, etc) they asked me to take it into the dealership for a free tune-up a few months later. Now it feels even better, but the list of things they did to it while there isn't long enough, and can't possibly include everything they did. So I'm going to file a complaint, because the paperwork is why I bought the thing in the first place.
That's called expectation, when in reality ISI chooses what ISI does. We're not doing every wish list item that was posted simply because of want. Gosh, I think it's only been four years but, nobody has said you'll get everything you want. Bug fixes too are done when they make sense, and when timing allows. It also makes no difference to us how many times the item is posted. We've actually asked people to keep posting bugs in the past, and hope people still will.
Thanks ISI! Good build, not a great one but solid, good bug fixing. My personal top feature/improvement is "wet saturation speed fine-tuned", driving in wet now, is a lot more enjoyable and realistic.
I can feel your pain Tim... how will you feel in a few years time if you still don't have all the features of the previous model
I quite clearly did not imply this. I'm no expert software engineer, and haven't completed any large projects myself. I have dabbled with adjustments to some medium size projects, and adding small features (built on an existing framework), and as I said it's not rocket science. You do not need to reinvent the wheel (pardon the pun) to make small changes, and I certainly never said I'm better than ISI. ISI have done some amazing things with rF2, and in as-yet relatively untouched areas I'm sure they'll again do more amazing things. It's a waiting game, ISI does things to their own plan and at their own pace, and for the most part that's not harming rF/2 at all. But from a racing perspective, and as a league admin, there are small things (yes! small!) that would help make the game feel more authentic without needing the groundbreaking advances they'll eventually get to. One example: wet racing line. Watch almost any real racing series, when it rains, and the drivers start using the 'wet line', which generally avoids the normal racing line. People mistakenly say this is because they're avoiding the rubber, but as a discussion on this forum very informatively pointed out (said discussion involved Tim, helping to point out the real issue) it's more about avoiding the worn road surface. A real race driver, and indeed anyone who's watched any decent amount of real racing, will expect the wet racing line to reward you in rF2. But it doesn't. Is this going to take hundreds of hours to 'fix'? Well it will, because ISI will eventually implement a whole advancement on realroad that calculates track temperature at each part of the track (same resolution as the rubber, presumably) based on sunlight, wind, rain level, evaporation, possibly drainage, plus some proper aquaplaning simulation of some sort (right now there is no aquaplaning, and I can imagine it'll be very difficult to get it 'right', which will be subjective because I doubt it's fully understood in a dynamical sense) with a proper water depth, and that will combine with the surface properties (roughness, maybe more) to arrive at a final condition where running around the outside of a tight corner gains you laptime. No scripting, just a simulated environment that gives realistic results. That's very cool, when it happens. So we've had rain for years now, and still no wet line. Right now there are two ways to get it happening: First, track makers can work out the normal racing line for their track, put smoother tarmac there, and then progressively make more distant tarmac more rough. How much distance, how much rougher, that's all up for debate (and would probably vary from corner to corner, and down the straights). From what I've seen of track meshes (again, I've only dabbled) this wouldn't be a particularly easy or quick process. At least it's now possible, because for a long while there was no surface roughness impacting wet grip. Second option: Have a parameter that defines the grip effect of the groove (rubber groove) when the track is wet, allowing you to not only negate the positive grip effect of the rubber but to even make it a little more slippery when wet. It's not ideal, because the groove will move based on where people drive (which might 'feel' right, but doesn't reflect the effects of long-term driving on the aggregate roughness), but it wouldn't be a bad approximation that would produce fairly realistic results to look at. I.e. you watch a race, it rains, people start using a 'wet line' to go as fast as possible. This second option could have been put in place 3 years ago. Would it be difficult? There are already a number of parameters defined in the tyre files that determine tyre grip based on contact pressure, road rubber level, the tyre rubber temperature, degree of sliding, etc etc. All that information is already there, being used every single physics update. 10+ parameters are already applied to the calculation, every single physics update. All I've proposed is to add 1 parameter, using two existing (and already utilised) pieces of info (track rubber level, as used by GrooveEffects, and track wetness, as used by DampnessEffects). This is simple. Of course it would be superseded later by a more advanced system, at which point that single parameter can be ignored. Little details, not difficult to implement, could make a big difference to immersion. And rF2 would feel like less like a technology demo and more like a simulation of racing. (Take the 'fine-tuned' evaporation rate that's been belatedly added to the first post - I haven't tested yet to work out the details, but the almost non existent evaporation has made wet racing very strange for quite a long time) Truth be told I'm not half as wound up about this as it now probably appears. I only made a small comment regarding long-time users and how we might actually feel about a number of small things that haven't seen any advancement (or stop-gap measures), without belittling the stuff that has been fixed. This chapter is only about defending myself against allegations of elitism or trivialising the complexities of game coding. No offence to anyone and not downplaying what ISI has achieved, but let's not avoid calling a spade a spade eh? At the end of the day, there are some games which have nothing on rF2 in terms of 'simulation', but actually provide more complete 'racing' experiences. Some aspects (example: tyre allocation. Probably a minor nightmare in a multiplayer situation) would certainly be time consuming to implement. Others, not so much. Anyway... sorry for the novel. I hope I've at least explained myself.
If a car service company would provide me with a 30 item list of what they did and forgot to mention the three most important things fixed, I would be a bit confused. Wet road saturation rate fix, LOD fix (30% more FPS sometimes), Steam player count fix, are perhaps the most critical fixes of this build and all left out. If these changes had been communicated better, I think ISI would have avoided all this bitching on forum about "meaningless build". No big deal to me, but it does surprise me as the log mentions micro-level changes such as "Replaced ‘_’ characters with spaces in opponent filter list display."
The biggest issue for me with rF2 for me is it's placeholder state for many things. We all know that before official release there were prototypes of many things that we haven't seen till this day. We saw situation which looked like changes of plans. As if like the original plan was altered several times during development time after release. Taking away sth, disable sth, implement placeholder for this and that. Then slowly advancing and implementing new stuff while many things that were disabled or scrapped ages ago still missing. I remember very clearly that few years ago there was this memo from ISI on the forum that they changed the way of implementing stuff. From getting things inside the sim whenever the guy that was responsible of making it felt like it. So it stopped being like: developer xyz developed new rain spray, he adds code for next build and improves it with each build. And started to be like: developer xyz develops new feature that waits for sth else that is in the oven and waits for green light from everyone else at the dev team. I love what ISI is doing with rF2, especially lately. Enjoying it more than ever. But I have always thought that procedures and planning isn't very fan friendly. What I mean by it. ISI knows what people are waiting for and sometimes instead of trying putting valuable time into sth that everyone would love to see, they develop few things that only few use or need. That's a good thing, because any progress is a good progress. Just things like wet driving physics and visual aspects of it could be a priority since the very begining. We can see sth happening on physics side of it, which is very encouraging, maybe next one will be for the visual side of it. I can't complain entirely because some things that were considered by most as not top priority, I was very glad to see. What I think would help things greatly. Roadmap. Doesn't have to include dates or anything.Maybe just estimation for which Q will it be. Q1 or Q4 etc. Letting people know what ISI is planning to do more or less. People could then have an adult discussion about it and maybe help ISI change here and there few priorities if it's possible and suitable for them and develop further with many more smiling faces around. I like how iRacing does things. They don't promise anything, they usually don't say accurate dates. Only if they are confident that sth will get into the next update. Make a video talking about what is going on inside the dev team. I still consider rF2 to be in it's late teenager stadium. When you are old enough not to act like a bully in school, young enough to be still asked for ID when buying beer. For me this year will be make it or break it for rF2. If by the end of 2016 rF2 will be in a state where 90 % of the features that were meant to be working, will work then I'm gonna call it a gooooood year. Rest 10 % will be stuff that is still broken. In that 90 % i'm counting in stuff that could still be developed futher but are already in a state which could be described as funtional. As for the build 1052. I like it. Spent a lot of time testing one WIP car in the wet and it was a blast. Loved how wet groove works now.
I agree to Lazza I followed his posts about the "wet line" in the past. Anyway I think nobody (I definitely do not) here want downplay what we have or what ISI deliver. But it must be also OK to post a own opinion. Even if this is not only positive. We all know in the meantime that ISI follow their own roadmap but that should not lead us to a point at where we stop with giving proper and honest feedback. IMO the community feedback should be a helpfull tool for ISI = also in our own interest. IMO only possible if we point out how we see the things.
SLI Issues in Build 1052 are still not addressed. No improvements to Nvidia SLI performance with multiview+ HDR. Still experiencing stuttering, low framerates and GPU loads -+40% with GeForce Game Ready DriverVersion: 361.75-WHQL.
Lazza, the problem with new features is not that ISI don't know how to trow things into the mixer, is that they clearly stated that a feature will be put there when they have a simulation for that effect, and not just a canned lookalike. You cite aquaplaning for exampe, just like with everything else, they could trow a canned thing that look like aquaplaning to the driver but it's not. Or they can hold the feature (if it ever see the light) until they can base their aquaplaning to some math model that has a correlation with reality. They many times clearly stated they choose the second path, slower, frustrating but more rewarding in the long run.
Tim I sorted this out by downloading and installing rF2 lite. I think the original problem was related to the sync or somenthing. Sorted now thanks. BTW my rF2 is not being used through Steam
Do you think having no feature at all is better than a simplified one? After 4 years I'm finding I'd prefer the latter, because that's 4 years (so far) without it (in some cases, a feature that rF1 already had since 2008, or a feature that got added with a simple ram hack addon) and waiting more years doesn't appeal. I'm aware it's their design choice... I'm just increasingly not agreeing with it. At initial release in 2012 I thought ok, there's a lot missing but they'll get to it in the ~6 month 'beta' phase. Mid 2013 I thought ok, it's not there yet but they just need more time (and money), it's a small team, be patient. 2+ years later and more progress has been made but some basic stuff still isn't there. I'm just openly wondering whether this approach continues to be the best. I don't expect them to change because of my opinion, but it's still my opinion
Must be a sign of the times or the lack of anyrhing new cause I rember when a new build would have 5 pages of responses by day2
