Greetings everyone!
As you all probably have noticed, late July has come and gone and with it the not-so-great news of v1.4 and Racin´ USA Pt3 being postponed to the end of this month - there has been some very good reasons for this decision however, and in this Dev Update we´re going to cover that and also expand on some of the key features we have coming up.
Since our last catch-up in late June, we have merged features and content into the game that had been in gestation for months - the extent of these developments are actually beyond our original plans, which will make v1.4 an even bigger milestone than we had originally antecipated.
Some of these new features did still need further troubleshooting in order to be release-ready however, so taking it all into account we decided to keep working on it for a few more weeks and effectively merge July and August into a single cycle for an update later this month, with no public releases in between.
Normally we would have been happy to deploy what we had then and continue working and expanding on these new developments in subsequent weeks just as we have been doing every month up to this point - this update however is so much bigger than what we´ve managed in any other period during AMS2 development, that we felt not going the distance before official release or even letting it out as a public Beta at this point would be a disservice to AMS2 and our users on the long run.
So let´s take the time now to go over some of the key features that make AMS2 V1.4 such a literal game-changer - hop in and hold tight!
[h3]Racin´ USA Pt3 - Ovals arrive for AMS2![/h3]
Racin´ USA Part 3 will be released for Automobilista 2 with the deployment of V1.4, introducing oval racing to the sim in a Pack featuring two new speedways and one new car in three different configurations.
As mentioned in the previous dev update, the two ovals will be Auto Club Speedway in Fontana California, a two-mile, low-banked, D-shaped oval superspeedway that have produced the fastest average speeds every produced in open wheel racing in America; and the WWT Raceway in Madison Illinois, a 1.25-mile short oval with uniquely asymmetrical corner angles and banking. Both tracks will feature their respective road course layouts too.
Racin´ USA Pt1 & 2 also receive a boost with this new release - the famous Daytona 2,5-mile tri-oval will be added to Racin´ USA Part 1, while F-USA Gen1-3 from Racin´ USA Part 2 will now also feature short oval & speedway configurations and in the case of Gens 2 & 3 also the Superspeedway configuration in which cars ran the infamous Hanford device - the barn-door, massive drag-inducing rear wing which produced huge drafting and some epic slipstreaming battles in the late 1990s.
It´s worth pointing out that the game will automatically handle selecting the correct configuration for each track type in every game mode.
With the introduction of oval racing, inevitably comes the need to add full course yellow support to the sim - AMS2 v1.4 introduces this essential feature with appropriate oval racing regulations.
The system was still proving somewhat glitchy in Multiplayer during our tests late last month, which ended up being the leading factor in the decision to postpone v1.4 as naturally you can’t successfully bring oval racing to the game without proper full course yellow support - luckily good progress has already been made since, with our more recent tests already going quite smoothly.
The system will receive further developments in the near future, with additions of a visible pace car, flag waving marshals and integration with the track’s lighting system; it will also offer components and regulation variables from the road racing side of things, such as virtual safety cars.
Racin´ USA Pt3 price is still TBD, but it will come a little under the prices of both Pt1 & Pt2 as it features less content. This DLC is already included for owners of the 2020-2022 Season Pass, the Premium Expansion Packs or Racin´ USA Expansion Pack bundle.
And for those who might have been eager for other North American content to make it into AMS2, there´s no reason to despair - we have already decided to expand our USA trip with plans for further components comprising both road and oval racing to go a fourth Racin´ USA pack further down the line.
[h3]Automobilista 2 V1.4 - The Biggest Update Yet
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AMS2 has seen a lot of progress since its original release and a couple of major milestone updates, but no single update so far packs a list as long or as significant as v1.4 - while Racin´ USA Pt3 alone introduce a whole new type of racing to the sim with dedicated features, cars and tracks, the update is huge in scope even beyond that - several free new cars, a number of substantial simulation developments and major improvements to literally every area of the game - it´s not an overstatement to say there has been new franchise game releases over the years that packed far less progress relative to the previous iteration than AMS2 V1.4 brings relative to V1.3.8 just over a month ago.
Content-wise, there are free new additions such as the Mercedes AMG GT4 pictured which arrives to become the 6th competing car in GT4 class.
We also have the Ginetta G55 GT3 added to the new GT Open class, where it will share the grid with the Ultima GTR - the GT Open class in AMS2 has been loosely based on British GT regulations where both models raced at one point, running slightly smaller tires and less restrictive BoP regulations than usually seen in GT3 classes.
There are other existing classes receiving additional contenders (a trend you may expect to continue for the next few updates) - a slick-shod 1965 Mini Cooper is the new competitor in Copa Classic, while the fictional Vulkan Truck will join the Copa Truck grid.
Copa Truck incidentally is one of the series receiving most attention for V1.4, with revised tire, engine, turbo and suspension physics.
[h3]AMS2 Massive Physics Overhaul Continues
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Physics are still one of the areas receiving some of the most significant updates for v1.4 - the tire carcass revisions and other associated developments that have been ongoing in recent months have now been completed for all cars in the sim; parallel to that and of equivalent magnitude is the ongoing tire thermodynamics revisions, which will correct various inconsistencies with tire behavior into and out of its ideal operating windows.
Still on the topic of tires, several series have received additional medium and / or hard tire compounds to better represent the series they´re modelled after. Wear and performance for all compounds as well as intermediate, full wet and extreme tires have also been revised and inconsistencies ironed out.
Moving on to engine & drivetrain physics development, a lot of time has been spent revising engines, covering torque & compression curves, inertia, turbo models, fuel consumption, heating & cooling rates & associated wear rates. We have also fixed a bug in restrictor code which caused naturally aspirated and turbocharged cars to be too wide apart in some classes, which along with barometric pressure dependent turbo pressure downscaling in heavily BoPed classes like GT3 & GT4, has resulted in BoP being retained in high altitude tracks, so turbo-powered cars no longer having substantial advantages in tracks like Kyalami or Ibarra.
On track physics, there are some substantial revisions to LiveTrack presets, covering the level of existing rubber within each LT preset and the way the track progresses over time both on and off the racing line. We have also added support for custom LT parameters per individual tracks, which allows to simulate specific-track properties such as quality of tarmac, maintenance regularity and dirtiness levels.
All of these physics’ updates add up to a driving experience that´s considerably more refined & cohesive even relative to the current public V1.3.8.3 - they have all been massive undertakings under a relatively short window of time (Afterall V1.3.8.3 just turned one-month-old as of this Dev Update posting) but they do require careful fine-tuning and testing to ensure everything is working as intended - further reason for deciding to keep working on it for a few more weeks.
A big part of the reason why we have managed all these revisions in such short time is due to our physics team having evolveed from as few as one at one point to as many five devs who now are involved with physics development over various fronts - there is even more fertile ground being dug for further substantial, longer term physics development in the future as we speak, so you may expect things to continue to progress even further on the longer term.
The big revisions packed into this update along with the ones preceding it however do move things along enough to bring AMS2 physics to a state of sufficient maturity, from which point no further significant physics changes will be needed in the regular monthly updates - from now on every other physics development that may have a significant impact on handling, performance or setup of the cars will be constrained to the big milestone updates, which means you don´t have to worry about your Time Trial times or setups being affected until v1.5 sometime between late 2022 and early 2023.
We do need to clean up the slate again with setups and Time Trial board upon v1.4 release unfortunately as the changes are just too deep in too many fronts - you won´t need to worry about manually deleting your setup folder this time though, or wonder whether someone´s issues with a given car may be down to legacy setups messing things up somewhere, as with V1.4 and other such milestone updates in the future will automatically ensure legacy setups (including autosaves) no longer apply and that everyone is rest to the appropriate baseline defaults.
[h3]Advanced Mechanical Damage Modelling
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Another cool new physics developments for AMS2 come in the shape of our Advanced Mechanical Damage Modelling (AMDM for short) – with v1.3.8.3 AMDM had already covered clutches and gearboxes, both of which have since been further refined. With V1.4 engines and tires are also part of AMDM, and the way you treat them will matter more than they ever had before in a sim.
With engines, we are working on a variety of different failure modes ranging from misfires to coolant leaks and outright sudden engine failures, which will be impact both player and AI alike. It doesn't stop at just random failures related to general reliability – with AMDM there´s an element of uncertainty that always exist in the reliability of real-life materials and components. For example: right now, engine wear and temperature are live variables that can be gamed to certain extent, you could for example calculate that 50% engine wear from running it too hot in a 30-minute race still offers plenty of headroom – but what if by pushing these limits you also raise the probability of something going wrong like a leaking coolant that doesn´t cool your engine enough? AMDM may force you to decide between playing a little safer, or take the extra risk for that extra little bit of performance.
On the tire front, limited tire sets are currently being worked on and also planned to arrive with v1.4 – with the option to restrict the number of tire sets you can use over a race weekend to a predefined amount, drivers will be forced to manage their tires without the assurance of unlimited fresh tire sets every time they escape back to the pits.
We do understand that players won´t always want to deal with these extra variables, so users will still have the option to restrict or disable them altogether via gameplay options.
[h3]Time Trial of the Week is Coming Back!
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With AMS2 hitting this new stage of physics maturity and the resulting stability in gameplay you can now expect, as of V1.4 we are bringing our classic AMS1 Time Trial of the Week challenge to AMS2 - TTofW basically proposes a given car/track combo with a dedicated leaderboard (which is also merged to the main leaderboard of said content) for users to compete over the course of the week - often purely for bragging rights, but on special occasions also for some real-life prize awards.
The events will be announced and run from Wednesday to Wednesday, with combos being announced in the forum and through social media; users will be able to set their times & then try to improve it over the week until Wednesday 23:59 GMT.
[h3]Other Notable V1.4 Developments[/h3]
With the game now supporting alternative configurations of the same cars to be used in different types of tracks, we have also been able to add various low aero packages for cars from F-Classic and up to the F-Ultimate Gen2 - this not only allows the cars to have more appropriate-looking wing configurations in tracks like Monza or the Old Hockenheim, but also offers a more suitable default setup for these types of tracks for player and AI cars. Like the oval configurations, these will be automatically selected by the game for the appropriate tracks in all game modes.
A much-requested development is the addition of real-life,
driver specific outfit and helmet liveries - AMS2 V1.4 introduces this, which will in turn lead to the opportunity for users to also customize these liveries to go along with their custom car liveries & AI driver names.
Audio is another area with major developments for v1.4, with external sounds updated to use more FMOD resources and better reverb effects; sounds from opponents and on replay now offer full effects as that of player´s, and there is a variety of new environment sounds added for a deeper sense of atmosphere both when out on track as well as when sitting in pits.
Multiplayer has also received some valuable improvements following a period dedicated to multiplayer testing & development over the course of July, some of which will significantly reduce chances for users getting discoed or sessions getting stuck during transitions; some updates to opponent smoothing also bring improvements to how other cars will appear in Multiplayer sessions - more is to come in this area beyond v1.4.
AI is one area we didn´t manage as much progress as we hoped over the course of July but it´s at the center of attention as we speak, with substantial improvements to AI performance calibration, racing and blue flag behavior as well as better & more elaborate logic for pitstop strategies very much still planned for v1.4.
Finally, some long-requested
Quality-of-Life developments have been added to AMS2 as of V1.4, some notable examples being the option to adjust rear view mirror position (as VR users already can), and customizing your multiclass races with a specific number of opponents per class.
There is indeed a sizeable list of other minor fixes & general QA work to be delivered in V1.4, which contributes to AMS2 feeling delivering a much more polished user experience.
All of this and much more not covered in this Dev Update (including at least one exciting surprise) are incoming with our next public release of Automobilista 2 later this month. It has been a long journey in more ways than one to get here, but we are really satisfied with the progress we´ve already managed to deliver which really brings the sim to a new level - we hope that upon its arrival you´ll come to agree, and find that the extra waiting time has been worthwhile!
In the meantime, we´ll remain working hard at it, and anxiously looking forward to sharing the results with you all later this month!