AMS 2 Announced - MADNESS Engine Confirmed!

[Paul Jeffrey]

The announcement is here! Read on for some very big news regarding the next racing game project from Reiza Studios.

Having earned considerable good will from the sim racing community thanks to their outstanding work on GSCE and Automobilista, Reiza Studios confirmed they planned on developing and releasing a new racing title in the very near future. For various reasons that "very near future" turned into a couple of years or so, and the original working title of 'Reiza '17' quickly became obsolete.

Well folks, wait no more - the announcement is here!

Let’s be honest, we expected this to be good... and good it is. Firstly, let’s talk about the surprise aspect of the announcement today – the game engine.

Most folks would be willing to throw down money on Reiza taking hold of the rFactor 2 ISI gMotor2 and bolting on an external graphics engine… but Reiza have surprised us all with an announcement we didn’t expect – AMS 2 will be using the Slightly Mad Studios developed Madness engine!

So what does that mean? Well it means day-to-night transitions. It means dynamic weather and it means VR! Yes, all those things that sim racers ask for, wrapped up in an impressive graphics engine that gives good framerates. Oh, and with the Reiza magic touch regarding physics and force feedback thrown into the mix. Awesome.

So, what else do we know? Well looking at the new trailer, we see the now legendary StockCar Series and Interlargos circuit, giving us a couple of exceptional pieces of content, and leading me to believe that AMS 2 will once again have a focus on the Brazilian racing scene at its core – which is excellent news in my opinion.

Other highlights from trailer has to be the incredible 1991 Ayrton Senna McLaren Honda! The Brazilian legend, a legendary Brazilian development studio - how awesome is that!

All in, this announcement sounds like fantastic news from Reiza, and well, well worth the wait!

The Reiza announcement in full:

Automobilista 2 is the culmination of a project developed over the course of nearly a decade. At its core, it is a comprehensive simulation of the Brazilian motorsports scene, featuring all major Brazilian racing series, race tracks and manufacturers.

Automobilista 2 will also celebrate Brazilian motorsports heritage by featuring some of the country´s most iconic heroes and achievements through its rich history in the sport.

Packing an even larger roster of diverse cars and tracks than its predecessor, Automobilista 2 will venture further into the best of international motorsports, including prestigious brands such as McLaren and BMW along with iconic venues such as Brands Hatch and Imola, at the same time continuing to explore the more exotic and exciting forms of motorsports from around the world.

Boosted by a new technical partnership with the developers of the award-winning Project CARS series, Automobilista 2 is built on the MADNESS engine, providing incredible graphical quality, the most advanced dynamic weather and track condition systems in a racing simulator and superior VR support, to deliver a substantial realism upgrade and a fully immersive visual experience.

With Automobilista 2 we aim to combine the strengths that made its predecessor unique with major evolutions in all areas. The sim will offer some exclusive features for both single player and multiplayer, which we look forward to sharing over the remaining months of development!


AMS 2 is set to release December 2019.

For the latest news and discussion items in relation to the newly announced new racing simulation from Reiza Studios, head over to our brand new AMS 2 sub forum, and never miss a thing again!

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[FTRRacing]

as long as we get all the cars from the first game ill be very happy

 

[CrimsonEminence]

When it looks and runs like pCars2, when it feels like AMS, when it has so much content, like we saw...f*** me i'm pretty hardly impressed right now!

Even already in december.

I think, there is a little bit of hype on board

 

[Dragon60]

OMG, i think i need a new graphics card.

 

[WallyTP]

 

[Dethrone1427]

Really good news. I’m excited and it’s a much better choice over UE4 and rf2. The question I have is will they be allowed to overlap content with project cars 2?

AMS was wonderful but needed more official hard top content. I’d love to see gte and lmp2 but those were present in pcars2. Will they be able to use them?

Doubtful... They're using the engine, not the content they created for another game entirely!

 

[Logan812]

Considering all of the improvements Reiza made under the rF1 engine in Automobilista, I can't wait to see what they can do with the Madness engine!

 

[Neils on Wheels]

Been crossing my fingers all day hoping they picked the MADNESS Engine...this is the best sim-racing news I've heard all year by far! The only thing that could come 2nd now is if ACC delivers proper triple screen support before Christmas . People are already putting up their skeptical flags...but seriously, is that really deserved?

Every time the AMS fans ask the community "well, where's the love for AMS?" (for example, not enough RD races in AMS compared to AC, RF2 and R3E), everybody cites one of 4 things that keeps it from the big show: No VR, Lack of modern graphics, no weather and very few officially licensed cars.

• They just checked off all 4 boxes quite beautifully in one trailer.
• They have a proven track record of delivering amazing FFB, Physics and AI.
• The Madness engine has Triple Support built in already.
• Anybody who has followed AMS knows that Reiza is a very dedicated bunch of guys that listen to the community
• I'm glad for more obscure tracks...seriously, how many Spa's, Nurburgring's and Laguna Seca's do you need in your life?

AC gets Sol and the Shaders Patch: "OMG it's AC 2.0!!" (I'd say AC 1.9 but it is deserved praise)
AMS gets everything we asked for: "Hmmm...I don't know man...." (what?!)

This community always cracks me up

Can we give them a chance? Even though I don't have one, i'll say it: YES VR, YES BUY!



Two reasons why:

1. I didn't realise it's the MP4/6...I thought it was the MP4/8 which RF2 has already. More excited now for sure, although I'm still waiting for the day we get a McLaren endorsed MP4/4...it's almost criminal that the F1 car with the highest win ratio in history hasn't been modeled with the McLaren seal of approval.
2. Regardless of which model it is, it's an F1 car (and Senna's no less), made by REIZA...it will be awesome by default, no hype required

My scepticism flag is flying because of all the potential issues from using this engine. Visually in VR it could look very nice but at certain times of the day with longer shadows across the track and certain tracks with fences is so distracting. Also they use very drastic culling in one eye that again was distracting. I was very hyped for pcars2 and very disappointed by the game they put out and eventually abandoned. Obviously Reiza has a great reputation but so did kunos but ACC is not good in VR. If you are a pancake gamer then not of that will concern you. Also live track 3.0 sounded amazing in the run up to pcars2 but the result is unusable in one player mode. One reason for this is the ai using very different physics to the player resulting in hugely inconsistent ai performance. Hopefully Reiza can perform deep surgery on the FFB ai and physics but I guess gfx will be out of the box.

 

[thepharcyde]

AA in pcars is a right distraction, hopefully they can fix the sticky car syndrome

 

[blot]

Really looking forward to seeing how AMS2 pans out. I expect Reiza will nail it, I hope they keep us regularly updated with progress.

 

[mr Sw1tchblade]

Now i hope to see this graphic engine in r3e

Also new poll:
Automobilista 2 vs rfactor 2 ui. What comes 1st?

 

[Paddler]

Great News. Contrary to most other sim drivers, me thinks pc2 is mazing once you fiddled aroud with the settings in FFB. To me its No1 and I always was a RF2 fan. So I am excited that Reiza has chosen madness and livetrack. I was a little concerned thinking they would go with RF2.

 

[pitkin]

There's a lot to dislike about pCars2, but seeing what Reiza has done with RF1 gives me confidence.
It's an instasbuy for me because it's Reiza, the best sim producers out there IMO. If they can fix the awful AI, and add custom championships, I'll be very happy.
Sadly I can't play AMS or any ISI based games because of weird stuttering / pausing during races despite high frame rates, so the switch to a different engine is a blessing for me.

 

[Kostis Crazy Cat Guy]

So what does that mean? Well it means day-to-night transitions.

AMS already had day-night transition... Why does everyone not know this? AMS has 24hour cycle and it's better than rF2 in my opinion. Goes to night smoother.

 

[thepharcyde]

AMS already had day-night transition... Why does everyone not know this? AMS has 24hour cycle and it's better than rF2 in my opinion. Goes to night smoother.

It's via shaders though, so not the same

 

[Simon Gardner]

Sounds good although I couldn't care less about VR but the rest seems promising, even if its not moddable their stock content is a lot of fun.

 

[mr_belowski]

Overall I'm excited, there's a ton of untapped potential in the pcars2 engine.

I hope reiza have access to the code as well as the engine, and the resources to address the glaring issues with pcars2 / Madness engine. As pointed out before, livetrack and dynamic weather don't really work offline because the ai use different physics to the player and it doesn't really work online either because the track state isn't properly synchronized across players. So it makes this big selling point kind of useless in reality

 

[MarcG]

Does the madness engine have native Oculus support? Or is it all done through SteamVR?

 

[Dave Stephenson]

Does the madness engine have native Oculus support? Or is it all done through SteamVR?

supports both natively

 

[schrep1964]

Yes, Niels Heusinkveld tweak the **** out of that MADNESS-engine.

 

[CC]

I hope they decide to open the doors to modding and provide the SDK on steam,
will be a total game changer, but going by there previous games and then running the SMS engine I doubt it be possible with the licenses lets wait and see,
very very impressive using this new engine for the graphics + FMOD + Live Track