3 "Small" Things That Kill rF2 for me and Their "Fixes

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Empty Box, Nov 26, 2013.

  1. Empty Box

    Empty Box Registered

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    Probably could go in wishlist / feature request but discussion rarely happens there, but there is a reasoning behind things. What are your 3 small things?

    I'm not a huge rF2 fan. I'll say it, I could say it again if you would like. It's been a love / hate relationship the whole way, and a lot of this stuff I'll mention really is kind of silly. Just as quickly as it has a flash of brilliance, it seemingly always comes back with a flash of "have these guys even played their own game?" I've spent a lot of time with rF2 in the last week out of the blue, and I cannot believe how many rather small things there could be done to immediately and rather massively improve rF2 and the experience attained with it.

    1> After spending probably 4 hours just working on FFB for this one sim, from reinstalling the whole thing rather than updating, updating and down grading firmware on my CSW, tweaking profile settings and sim FFB settings and of course car setups - why is half this stuff not in the menu and changable in sim in the options? rF2 FFB's settings are rather simple with not that many settings that are changable that matter, yet small tweaking takes ages because it's a game of "fire up the sim, test, exit, make change, fire up the sim, test, exit .....". Yes, "we'll work on the UI later", but if you allow me to turn on FFB in the menu, why can't I tweak it in the menu? It's like requiring someone to manually edit the graphics options. Sure, do the UI later - but this is one of those things that really should be done sooner rather than later, especially considering we don't have car specific FFB settings, only multipliers.

    2> Weather - rF2 has cool weather. Rain, humidity, temperature, cloud cover - awesome. Except when I'm the guy choosing the weather. It takes all of the fun out of it, it makes that feature nearly pointless to me. There is no adapting, there is no excitement, just expectations. I'm not on edge for rain, because I know when it's coming and that it will hit, or that it will rain, stop, and then rain again. Sure, I may not know how long, but the fact I know already is a put off. It amazes me how much more fun weather was in GTR2 for the simple fact I had no idea what was going to happen with it set to "changeable". Weather is awesome. The changeability is awesome. Setting it up defeats the whole thing IMHO.

    3> Give us various AI workarounds. I'm not asking for the AI to be rebuilt, I'm not annoyed by it being fairly poor at this point, yes I realize it will be touched on when the time comes, but at the same time it feels like rF2 does everything it can to point out how stupid it can be, and many of these things were present in rF1 and F1C, so this is nothing new at all. Don't bother with the "race online" thing, I just finished up 2 hours with the Howston at Le Mans, a combo without population online. That is why AI exists. The AI isn't that bad once things settle, but until then... Again, it's like rF2 goes out of it's way to point out it's flaws. Mind you, with mod tracks the AI varies a LOT, so more control in game is a MASSIVE pro.

    AI qualifying STUPIDLY fast. Now, I've never been a qualifying one lap magic guy, but in my experience the AI is always mega fast in qualifying. Come race time, they are stupidly slow. If you don't run qualifying with a mixed grid of cars, you get a grid of who knows what in who knows where. Slowest car on pole? SURE! Why not! Of course, this causes issues as the AI is aggressive in unnatural ways when it comes to passing slow cars. So to fix that, you are back at running a Q session. Set their strength on Q and the Race is zero challenge at all, set it based on race and they become Jim Clark. To fix / workaround this issue, why not have separate sliders for qualifying and race? Or alternatively allow "Grid position" in race setup to override qualifying positions. I can guess where my speed will actually get me around decently, and passing 10 cars in turn 1 to get to where my speed is doesn't exactly make me enjoy the game. Either way would be a massive improvement. Separate sliders and overriding would be ideal, though either one would be tremendous.

    Single file rolling restarts. I run anything in rF1/rF2 from a standing start, as the AI has always given me better results from that start, usually they filter into their places a bit quicker than rolling starts which usually result in a lap of double file racing. However, I would run a single file rolling start in anything and everything given the choice as it removes the very annoying "AI contemplating the meaning of life" phase of a race with them that always happens. It's amazing how different things are from when they are at the start to how they are when they settle in.

    Ramping strength / aggression. There may be a setting somewhere to control this (though again, with mods easy control goes a LONG way), but at the start of the race getting single file should pretty much always be the priority. At the end of the race, holding position should be the priority. I never get that impression. Set them aggressive they attempt to smash you up from the start, set them passive they basically let you by. At some stages they should be aggressive, some stages they shouldn't. It's not off on, except in ISI AI.

    There you go. 3 things that really aren't huge features, yet hugely taint the experience from rF2.
     
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  2. PRC Steve

    PRC Steve Registered

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    1. Can you not adjust FFb on the fly with your Fanatec or do you mean changing stuff in the PLR?
    2. I found the real weather plug in is awesome for randomising (?) things
    3. Ai is stupid :)
     
  3. CRex

    CRex Registered

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    This gave me an idea. How about real-world weather (from online weather services) as an option? It's done alot in FSX (flight simulator). Could be a cool feature in sim racing as well. The weather will be what it really is.
     
  4. TIG_green

    TIG_green Registered

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    As a racing driver you have your team's weather forecast in your use. So the rain never comes out of the blue. You'll know beforehand that there is some % chance of rain and you can set this probability in rf2. But I agree that random wheather in a way that those probabilities would be set randomly would be good. But even then you should be aware of rain probability in some way.

    I agree that biggest problem with AI is inconsistency. Too slow in race compared to quali. I hardly race offline anymore. Would, if there would be career or championship mode.

    I don't tweak my ffb that much and I find it good. Not sure if there's possibility just yet to save ffb setting per car (I remember reading something about this but don't remember how it works if it's enabled)
     
  5. williang83

    williang83 Registered

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    Surely not, but in Grand Prix 4 (best series ever made if take in consideration everything and the tech at that time) you have a forecast before each session that might happen or might not and that is not set by you but randomly. That said the huge problem here that most people don't get is that the idea behind rFactor UI/interaction is completely casual.
    I'll be clearer, as a programmer we learnt two important things, software engineering and interaction man-machine. By using those important topics i can easily conclude that ISI provide a simplified and casual UI and features. What ISI provide are a pure and boring car simulator where all you are supposed to do are set the variables that you want to meet (length, time, weather, temperature, how many AI, grip, car, track, etc..) and try those variable together rather than provide you a racing simulator (ex. i had the opportunity to try one of those professional 737 simulator, what they do is to set a condition and try that, there is no simulation of a airport scenario with all their traffic, atc simulation and stuff like that. Now no one can argue that it is a high fidelity 737 simulator but everyone can understand that it does not simulate a day by day scenario).
    Racing simulator is another completely different world and in my memories the most complete was Grand Prix series, as from a car simulator you expect that everything you do from a time x to y would affect what happen from y to z (ex. aggressive driving from x to y would result in lesser grip from y to z), you should expect from a racing simulator that everything you do in a session would affect the next session (damage, amount of tires, pressure, etc...). Now since there is no connection between sessions, they feel that they don't have to do anything lesser casual and more connected specially in terms of racing simulator complete of championship.
    For me rFactor reminds a lot DCS World, where the first one is a good car simulator but almost none racing simulator and the second one is a good combat flight simulator but almost none war simulator (just random behavior and scripts).
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Nov 26, 2013
  6. PRC Steve

    PRC Steve Registered

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    Its already available real weather plugin

    http://isiforums.net/f/showthread.php/11398-rFactor2-Weather-Tool
     
  7. Black75

    Black75 Registered

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  8. CRex

    CRex Registered

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  9. crz

    crz Registered

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    The tool creates a weather file based on the input of a weather forecast service for a certain point in time. You still have to copy the file yourself and you will see the weather forecast obviously. But so can everybody if you tell your league mates which weather forecast service was used. It is a manual process for now but I would love to see this implemented as a server plugin if that is even possible.
     
  10. Minibull

    Minibull Member

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    I would love to see that end up as part of rF2 as well. Changeable weather was cool in GTR2/PNG. Something to just randomly mix things up.
     
  11. Spinelli

    Spinelli Banned

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    This one is easy for me.

    I don't care much about u.i. and showrooms and career mode, if the a.i. is a little too slow, or too hard, inconsistent quality of graphics from track to track, etc etc etc. Coming from some real life racing, the rest is all just a bonus for me as I don't look at RFactor (anything ISI based) or iracing or Richard Burns Rally as video games. I look at them as they were originally intended to be, as realistic as possible, "industrial training tools built for your home consumer, by passionate guys who are more science guys than video game makers, and just want the most technically realistic driving dynamics they can make, rather than worry about sales" sort of sim. However, if I had to become picky and choose a couple things, they would be the following:

    - Like Empty Box said. To have PLR options in game, not just FFB but all those other dandy things we can edit. Put the more basic stuff like in sub section called "advanced options" and within that section put another subsection (so a sub subsection) called "more" (actually think of a better word). In the "more" section would not be the basic PLR stuff, but all that real technical PLR stuff that so many of us used to adjust in RF1 and it's sims like GTR, GTL, GSC, etc. Make a pop-up come up every single time you enter the "more" section saying something like "changing these settings is highly unadvised, and may result in degraded and/or unstable gameplay, EDIT AT YOUR OWN RISK). Have that only for the "more" sub subsection, not the regular "advanced options" section. Also, make sure to NOT include the FFB PLR stuff in either the "advanced options" or the "more" section, they must be placed in the regular Control/FFB settings screen. Make sure there is a default button for every screen/section lol.

    - Go to post 8 and 14 http://isiforums.net/f/showthread.php/17189-i-said-it-once-and-i-will-say-it-again this is EXTREMELY usefull data for setup, and just general physics info. Maybe it's unrealistic as it might be too much info (eg. Perfect rake for optimal diffuser downforce) but at the same time high end series have extremely intelligent engineers and software to find these values out in real life too, so it's debatable how much info is unrealistically too much info. Maybe make an option for mod makers to decide which peices of info are displayed, so more complex info (and more info in general) for something like 1990 - Present day F1, and less complex info displayed (and less info in general) for a 70s F1 or a lower budget sports car series or something.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Nov 28, 2013
  12. marvelharvey

    marvelharvey Registered

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    Just a quick note, the 'Grid position' option only works if you switch qualifying off. Bit odd, but it works.
     

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