Inside Sim Racing Interview With Tim Wheatley Coming

Q1- Why you consider that modding groups are not picking up rf2 as they did with rf1?

Q2- What are ISI plans for the upcoming years. What is your line of development.

Q3- Since the last developments about licenses, will ISI adopt the fictional way or will continue to persue interesting licenses.

Q4- How you see the upcoming oculus rift. How can this new hardware change the way people use their simulation software and what you think it will change in your way of doing things.

Q5- Any plans on implementing a career system similar to IRacing?

Q6- Looking at present simracing developers we see small teams, alpha-beta releases, members funding.....Do you think simracing as we know it has a future or it will continue to be a small market focused on hardcore players?

Q7- What are your (ISI) interaction with simracing communities?

Q8- Plans for 2015.


This are the ones i would love to see answered.

 

After watching the video, excellent questions Joe.

My question : Any possibility of a integrated telemetry system as part of the game, i.e : data saved similarly to replays but with a motec style interface to read it, so basically a built in Motec style program.

If I remember correctly F1 Challenge or one of the EA F1 series had something built in and they were ISI based weren't they.

 

This is very good question too. I am currently using Sim Commander SW from Simxperience, which supports real-time charting of telemetry data, see my video below. The Commander will be enhanced to have a store/save capability for all telemetry data, as they said. If you bought their Simvibe, you may update their Commander SW to include this capability I believe.

 

It is asked on a post above but not straight forward I think.

Question: Is ISI planning (and at what stage of the evolution of RF2) to focus on the visuals of the game, especially cockpits, where now the opposition (pCars, AC) has a clear advantage?

 

Streetcars and more historic cars ?

I like slowmo riding and cars with great movements/inertia in a virtual environment, like the historic vehicles. It's what i get the most out of immersion wise in a static environment. Super fast cars are boring in this case where G's are the only one can give you something but can't be well represented in a static environment. I get more out of a Fiat500 than an automatism like F1 driving. More historic and streetcars is what i like to ask for, showing of the capability of the rf2 engine. I like to drive cars i may know better than something i never droved or will be able to drive.

Gesendet von meinem GT-I9300 mit Tapatalk

 

Thanks, first of all. We know it is a constantly evolving product. for me
this simulator is already a work of art . My question is, to what degree might consider this the game now 40%, 60%, 80%?

 

Are there plans to market rF2 beyond the relatively anemic marketing? Any thoughts of joining Steam or similar mass marketing gaming site?

 

I think the huge majority of these questions will be answered by SimHQ Q&A....

 

I would be extremely interested in learning a bit more about the guys who work at ISI, who they are, what they do, how they do it, etc.

Sendt fra min LG-E400 med Tapatalk2

 

I'd like to know how Tim keeps his Buddha-like patience on these forums

 

+1

 

Me too! me too!

I'd like to know if ISI is equally or relatively as concerned about the state of Multiplayer (amount of active users pushing the sim) as users seem to be, and what their ideas and plans are to tackle this issue.
If they feel there is one to begin with.

Great initiative William, looking forward to it

 

That's easy: read, explode, close, come back in 2 hours, reply.

 

rouke why you know this so exactly

 

Its not for nothing our league has the rule 'complaints can only be filed 24H after a race'

 

Will their be any improvements to triple screen setup in game?
Being able to adjust screen angles etc in game would be a big improvement.

Apologies for the mention but something along the lines of the AC method.

 

Hopefully I'm done chipping in my questions after this post!

- When did you start in the sim industry and how did your role progress through iRacing and rFactor 2?
- What are the 3 main areas you'd like to see improved/worked/developed in rF2?
- Is there anything being developed for better default AI setup at least on ISI tracks? Or variants that could be loaded (low-mid-high speed) to at least ensure better competition?
- How many years do you think rF2 will be developed? Would it be acceptable to believe there'd be no need for rF3 (or whatever the title of rF2's follow up) until 2018, or would there be too much of an improvement with gmotor 3 from 2.5 that it'd be out - even in beta - beforehand?
- What are the funniest american accents you've heard since moving here?

 

Might be worth keeping in mind, especially in the light of some people 'complaining' about lack of marketing, that trying to ask questions along the lines of "why is it taking so long to ..." or "how come we don't yet have ..." won't exactly help with attracting people to rF2. There have always been a lot of positives with rF2, enough for many of us to switch to it from rF1 despite numerous drawbacks, and many of those drawbacks have now been eliminated. So let's not talk it down too much.

1. No, it uses the AI physics same as all other AI.

2. Anything's possible, but I think you're underestimating the difficulty here. Having a single AI car (the player's car under AI control) at player-level physics is obviously possible computationally, otherwise the game wouldn't be able to handle you driving the car yourself. But the more complex the physics simulation the more complex the inputs are to generate - obviously that part is completely free (no CPU-expense) with a human at the controls. Even in a game with all known tracks and a single car it wouldn't be at all easy to generate those inputs to produce 'real' performance, let alone a platform like rF2 where both tracks and cars are completely moddable. Look at the level of discussion around AI when rF2 first came out, and even after numerous improvements there are still aspects that need more work - and that's with simplified AI physics.

3. Even if 1 or 2 were 'yes', you've arrived back at a core difficulty with rF2 - 'a track' isn't just a track, it's all tracks, with all cars. Even if you had full player physics running on an AI car and had it driving in a completely realistic fashion (that's a very big assumption, don't want to make it sound trivial) trying to produce the artificial intelligence required to comprehend things like how to attack a particular corner when every single corner is effectively unknown and can have almost limitless variations and subtleties would be a massive resource drain... and for what? It could never be shifted across to improve the standard AI.

AI for racing against need not be all that complex; the hard part is already getting performance to consistently realistic levels and then giving them situational awareness. I'm sure that's something ISI will keep improving on, and it's something a lot of users will actually see the benefit of.

I think your goal of being able to compare to a 'perfect' AI is unrealistic. It's not just beginner drivers using data analysis to become good race drivers; the very best and established race drivers in the world continue using data analysis to improve their driving and compare themselves to faster drivers (in many cases a teammate, and only in a particular corner) in order to improve. This shows 2 things: professional level drivers, dedicating their lives to the pursuit of driving quickly around tracks, armed with years of experience and the natural instincts and problem solving ability an actual brain possesses, still can't get it quite right; and what is in some cases a team of tens of engineers (mechanical and software) can't generate 'AI comparisons' to show them where they could be better. Of course those teams can interpret data and find some places where the driver can improve, but that's 'just' telemetry and data analysis.

 

approximately for the ISI team how much % of time is spent on rfactor 2 VS other work (that's not rfactor 2)

eg rfactor 2 takes up approx 20% of ISI's time (approx based on number of people & who/how long it's worked on per month)

 

Just one question: when wiil the long-standing problems (weather, rain drops!) finally be fixed/implemented?