Automobilista 2 | Update 1.1.3.5 Now Available

[Paul Jeffrey]

Celebrating the 1-year anniversary of Automobilista 2, Reiza Studios have deployed build 1.1.3.5 of the simulation - with plenty of fixes included and a new historic F1 Lotus!

• New update adds Lotus 79.
• A further complementary update to follow.
• Significant physics developments.

One year on from release into Early Access, Automobilista 2 has been updated yet again as Reiza Studios continue to work hard to bring the simulation up to the level its obvious potential deserves. In this latest build release, the studio have brought together a new officially licenced historic Formula One car in the form of the legendary Lotus 79, alongside their own fictional F1 machine, plus have laid the groundwork for further substantial improvements to the title going forward, as Renato Simioni from Reiza Studios explains:

This release comes exactly one year since our initial Early Access release on March 31 2020, and we have been pushing hard as we have through this whole year to celebrate the occasion with another major update!

Unfortunately some of the new features and core developments we had hopes to wrap in time for this update didn´t quite make it in time, but the work obviously isn´t lost - while this update isn´t quite the beefed up step we had hoped to deliver, our users can still look forward to these valuable developments making into the game in the coming weeks and months.

Our March update still packs a good punch with another sizeable list of improvements & fixes, additional layouts for the Historic Jacarepagua circuit, and a new historical class - the Formula Retro Generation 2, featuring the iconic Lotus 79!

The most significant physics development in this update is the substantial reduction of driveline friction levels, resulting improved functionality in LSD cars, better driveability and slightly higher top speeds. The default preload and ramp angles have been adjusted for most cars, so setup resets on cars with LSD is recommended.

Championship Mode has also received an important update in preparation for the Custom Championship feature, as now players are able to have up to four championship seasons in progress. A batch of new championship options will be added in an complementary update before the weekend. Custom championship itself is still under development for additional features and has been pushed to May.

We´ll share a bit more details about the ongoing developments in this update and upcoming ones in our upcoming Development Update.

CONTENT

• Added F-Retro Gen2 Series (featuring Lotus 79 & generic F-Retro Gen2 Model1)
• Added more Jacarepagua Historical layouts (2005, Oval, Sul, Stock Car Roval)

GENERAL

• Reduced Multiplayer safe join buffer time in practice / qualifying from 180 to 90 seconds
• Added option to set maximum limit on the number of AI in official championships
• Fixed GT1 Championship lap length race sessions incorrectly treated as timed sessions

UI & HUD

• Updated HUD (will reset customizations): Restyled car info and added vehicle damage widget; Restyled tacho unit
• Added hints and tips to loading screens.
• Added warning to opponent settings screen when the number of opponents is grater than the number of available liveries
• Fixed championship AI aggression input not clamping to correct range
• Increased loading screen tip refresh time to 20s
• Added 'Wheel Only' option to 'Display Cockpit And Driver' setting
• Added extra vehicle info to Vehicle Selection screen informing availability of tire compounds, DRS, boost, adjustable turbo, adjustable onboard brake bias & roll bars, head lights, pit limiter on the currently selected vehicle (accuracy of current info pending further revisions)
• Restyled Race and Test Day settings screens
• Fixed untranslated 'Opponent Aggression' label on opponent settings screens

PHYSICS & FFB

• Fixed FFB pulling to the left under braking or to the right on power (FWD vehicles only)
• Substantial reduction of friction levels for various wheel bearing models for reduced overall driveline losses, improved functionality in LSD cars, better handling entering & exiting corners, better driveability under traction and slightly higher top speeds
• Adjusted default preload and ramp angles in most LSD cars (setup reset recommended)
• Updated engine torque / power curves to suit new wheel bearing values
• GT / Stock / Proto / wet tire wear adjustments
• Adjusted F-Retro, F-Ultimate, F-Classic, F-V12, V-V10, F-Reiza, F-Ultimate tire carcass inflation shape
• Slightly steeper engine compression curve for Cosworth 1974 engine in F-Retros
• Slightly higher wear rate for soft compound in GT3 / P1
• Minor rear wing efficiency adjustment for F-Retros
• Revised aero drag in formula cars
• Added customized values for tire pre-conditioning per car (replacing old global function)
• Increased damage rate for grinding & clutchless shifts in manual boxes
• Adjusted StockV8 2020/2021, Montana, F-Retro, Omega StockCar, Mini UK aero yaw sensitivity
• Disabled onboard roll bars in GT5, GT4, GT3, F-Retro Gen1, F-Reiza, F-Ultimate
• Disabled redundant turbo range in Hot Cars / Copa Classic cars
• Lowered Opala CoG height; stiffened suspension rates to minimise issues with lifting inside wheels
• Minor adjustments to H-pattern gearbox syncro parameters

AI

• Increased range of AI performance & some initial customization per series
• AI Callibration pass to account for new AI range parameters & new driveline physics update
• Slightly increased AI prudence against human drivers
• AI aggression is now scaled down during in/out laps of practice & qualifying sessions
• Fixed issue with AI skill range at extreme ends of the scale and effective lower cap of 84% in multiplayer
• Fixed bug where the AI skill from personality wouldn't load properly in first session (leading to reduced spread of performance)

TRACKS

• Weather, climate & HDR revisions for more consistency across the daytime and weather variants
• Minor adjustments to weather and climates for clouds & HDR behaviour
• Increased maximum render distance for far terrain at higher graphics settings
• Spa-Francorchamps: Fixed bad bumps at the outside run-off of Pouhon and Fagnes; Minor art & performance pass
• Jacarepagua Historic: Reduced road mesh noise; Minor art & optimization pass
• Interlagos Historic: Reduced road mesh noise; Increased poly density for outer link road
• Hockenheim: Reduced road mesh noise for all Historic layouts
• Cascais: Fixed fix flipped armco at T9
• Goiania: Updated trackside data
• Revised default date for all tracks
• Added VR cams for Campo Grande, Cascavel, Snetterton, Curitiba, Londrina
• Minor art pass to Hockenheim Historic layouts
• Minor art passes to Jacarepagua and Spielberg

VEHICLES

• Adjusted LOD settings for wheel and tires in open wheel cars to avoid gaps between transitions at lower detail levels
• Fixed dark external mirrors in several formula cars
• Corrected suspension animation to account for camber settings in F-Vintage cars, F-Classic Gen3, F-V10 Gen2
• Sigma P1: Fixed glitch on cockpit front end
• F-Trainer and F-Trainer Advanced: Fixed suspension artifacts on cockpit view; Added missing chassi parts to cockpit view; Fixed chassi parts misplacement in LodA.
• F-Vintage: Fixed engine damage issue
• Chevette: Fixed cockpit red paint issue

Original Source: Reiza Studios

AMS 2 is available now, exclusive to PC.

Start a thread in the AMS 2 sub forum today to get engaged with your fellow Automobilista 2 fans!

 

[muzikant]

I didn't touch this sim for six months. i love the historical content and tonight tried the lotus 79 but sorry reiza i think it's a boring car without life! the old rfactor gp79 mod i have much more fun every lap. I hope it ends well

 

[FernandoAFM]

AMS 2 is really fun. It still challenges and entertains me, and that counts. I don’t know if the physics are better or worse than x or y. I’m just a guy in my underwear pushing pixels across a screen, no matter which sim I’m driving. Keep it up, Reiza! And please bring Salvador back!

 

[F2020]

I just did some laps after the Easter weekend beer-a-thon and it feels great, but still IMO some of the cars dont, which is fine as it will take time of course, there are loads of cars to sort out.

I love merc GT3 in this sim.

Just did some laps on Nurburgring on AC then AMS2, same car etc, AMS2 has it for me on that combo, but then on others AC has it.

Which is fine, i can just switch between them.

Hope for the future would be the race day experience that ACC gives you, they have that in the bag currently imo.

 

[Durge Driven]

It's too close to the physics of pcars2

Try a Historic, @ 280kph, you can brake at 100 meters same as pCars, ridiculous

 

[Case_]

Silly question, does HDR work in virtual reality?

Is there even an HDR headset available yet? (Well, it seems like Panasonic have made one, at least, according to a quick search. So I guess there is and someone actually owns it.)

Have a look at this AC video with post processing filter. To me these colours look very realistic,
though I may like saturated colours too depending on the track and time of day:

Realistic is the last thing I would call this horribly underexposed mess with weird black blobs around cars. (And even if I limit myself strictly to colors, they are still way too weird - with blue and purple tint and overall very grey and far from realistic.)

 

[F2020]

Try a Historic, @ 280kph, you can brake at 100 meters same as pCars, ridiculous

What particular car mate? out of interest.

 

[Case_]

Edit: Nevermind.

 

[kart1]

Try a Historic, @ 280kph, you can brake at 100 meters same as pCars, ridiculous

the F1 80's 90's are so stuck to the ground that you can drive like **** it won't move, put two wheels in the grass and accelerate, steer first and accelerate it's the same, a lot of physical inconsistency!
and next to some cars are sublime to drive ... to believe that there are 2 physical dev teams with a totally different vision!

 

[Durge Driven]

What particular car mate? out of interest.

Sorry, Formula Vintage Gen 1, the car has no downforce and older brake tech.... it should be hardest to pull up

 

[Racer3235]

to believe that there are 2 physical dev teams with a totally different vision!

Most probable is that the recent physics revisions were not done to all cars yet.

 

[F2020]

Sorry, Formula Vintage Gen 1, the car has no downforce and older brake tech.... it should be hardest to pull up

I Just tried it and couldnt stand more than a couple of laps in that.

 

[pai]

Did someone feel that topspeed on the Lotus 79 is too high? Loaded it up on Silverstone 75 and worked as expected, but before braking in the final chicane I was banging the limiter at 292 km/h. For a default setup that didn't seem to lack any downforce for the track, that was too high compared to the speeds registered from the cars of the era.

 

[2stains]

The real car also has quite some understeer on entry, but I just drive like this guy and not a problem

The key is to position the car early on entry towards the exit, mostly with trailbraking and throttle oversteer out. I tried some setup-changes as well, but the default is quite okay. If you make the car more loose for a better entry, the car is getting unstable on the exit. For mid-corner understeer a click less rear-wing might help.

I love the floating left hand at 0:59, he does most his steering one handed and often the other hand is floating over the wheel ready for something. Also tells me the wheel weight isn't as heavy as I'd have imagined.

 

[2stains]

Think you are adding 2+2 and making 5 here. Whilst it is certainly true that more people play other sims, it does not automatically follow that this means they prefer those other sims. It is far more likely that, as Reiza are a much smaller, lesser known studio, with far less resources for advertisement etc, less people have tried AMS2 in the first place and, therefore, until they do, we cannot truly say which sim they prefer or what their opinion of AMS2 would be.

As for your comment that you always see the same 2 or 3 defending or praising AMS2, I think this is completely untrue. On every AMS2 thread I see many praising the game, quite a lot discussing it's pros and cons and the different things that need working on, and the same 2 or 3 just trolling/mindlessly bashing the game.

As for me, I play and enjoy all the main sims, recognising their respective strengths and weaknesses. I think we are currently so spoilt for choice with the amount of amazing sims we have available to us.

I do have a soft spot for Reiza as a company though - I really admire the way they communicate with players, their incredible work rate and their long-term commitment to their games, which I think is unmatched in the industry.

This comment sums up perfectly the community imo. Thanks for posting my thoughts, you articulated my thoughts better than I could ever have

 

[2stains]

You are confusing him with "Niels_at_home", i'm afraid, mate

Haha I went looking for Niels's comment or emoji only to see the "fake" Niels gave a like lol

 

[2stains]

I never knew we could see estimated owners number, but estimated is the key word
as for AMS 2 it can be around 60K (playtratcker) or 200K (steamspy) it gives (total owners/average daily peak) .0016 adp (average daily player)

comparing to RF2 190K (playtratcker) or 500K (steamspy) so about double and an average daily peak of 1.046, .002 adp

or AC 2400K (playtratcker) or 2000K (steamspy) 7541 average daily peak, .0037 adp

even taking into account that their is less owners of AMS2, it still lag behing other SIM also from small studio, even though it is the more recent, but the gap is much smaller than just looking at average daily peak, very close to RF2 and about half of AC.

Interesting in many ways and AMS2 is (relatively) more played by their owners than I thought.

Not bad at all considering it's only a baby. When it starts to walk those numbers will overtake rF2 which by all accounts is doing very poorly indeed, especially when you consider its age and what one would assume "polish" lol

 

[Fi22le]

Just posting this from the official forums. A well written, measured perspective from the studio principle, Renato:


“Ah the usual cycle of update release threads - the excitement of the new features and improvements, followed by the crankiness with what hasn´t been yet done We welcome all of it - at the end of the day you guys help us make the game better.

The one issue I have with some of the criticism about AMS2 here and elsewhere tho is that they often seem to be valid only relative to a non-existent standard. Obviously some of it is quite pertinent - the game still has a shortening, but ongoing list of annoying glitches (the replay files occasionally duplicating or the player car being replicated among the opponents being obvious examples) - these may seem like sloppiness on our part, but often times they´re in fact issues that either involve some deeper level investigation, or relate to a bigger project we hadn´t got to yet - while annoying, these are usually small enough that we believe we can live with them while we focus on delivering more attainable short-term goals.

In other fronts, things get a little more debatable - is the criticism about constant physics revisions valid for example? Sure they can be a nuisance, and ourselves didn’t expect we´d still be making such in-depth revisions to the physics at this point. With that said, what sim had "stable" physics within one year of its original release? Show me a sim that´s not tinkering with tire model version XX years from its original release, and I´ll show you a game not trying to be a sim. The worst thing you can say is that we move so quickly from one update to another that the user can barely settle in with an existing revision before it´s revamped, but is that really a bad thing? The faster we move the quicker it can actually get to a stable state, which is ultimately the goal

Does the criticism about production standards like the polycount on a given 3d model or overall audio quality on some cars have some merit? We´d be the first ones to admit there are cars we still want to update to bring them up to spec, but really even if you´re comparing us against sims that have a fraction of the number of cars, and / or charge for each and every one of them, I think we do a pretty good job of maintaining our older stuff, and they all add value to the game even if not for you specifically - part of the point of a large content pool is pleasing people with different tastes

Does the complaints about "lack of gameplay features" hold any water? Sorta kinda, but just a read through this topic will show that the kind of features people are looking for is far from unanimous. Most of them are valid desires, several are planned and will come to life at some point, and while they all might be absolute must-haves for the user making the request, they´re seldom as many people sharing that one desire as you may think.

The same can be said for the criticism about content - we have many opinions ranging from too much, too little, too Brazilian centric, too inconsistent - again are any of these really valid vs other PC racing sims? The thing to keep in mind at the moment is that the content roster is a big part of the game will ultimately become. Think of it as a puzzle - it´s hard to tell what it is early on while the pieces are still coming together, and trying to work it out can be frustrating - it will however make sense once it´s further along

But if that´s the case Reiza, why don´t you lay out your full plan so we can know what you´re going for? We try, with our roadmaps and regular development updates. But the nature of the licensing and development business means it´s hard to be too specific too far in advance, and trying to can create as much trouble, confusion an demands from the userbase as it solves - as again one can see throughout topics such as this We try to strike a balance - sometimes we say too much too soon, sometimes too little but that´s inevitable when working on this type of game.

To stress something we´ve been repeating from the very first announcement all through the various development updates: the game is a long term project that will evolve considerably over its shelf life. The implicit message there is that it was always going to be a work in progress over the years we were going to be developing it. If the game was everything it was meant to be from the get-go, there wouldn´t be much to evolve towards over time. In hindsight maybe we should have been a bit more explicit

Ultimately we will develop the game the way we find appropriate and can afford to, and the users decide if and when they want to spend their money and time on it. It´s a good system which leads products to their deserved destination, and so far we´re happy to say we´ve been hitting our goals pretty much as we expected, and keeping most of our users pleased along the way

For those that aren´t, I sure hope you´re not getting frustrated by it - if that´s the case surely it´s best to spend your fun time in something that is actually fun to you. Now if you do enjoy the game and just want to see things improving, please keep sharing your feedback pointing out the problems you still have or things you aren´t happy with - by now I think most of you know that even if this or that particular pet peeve hasn´t quite been addressed yet, it´s not falling on deaf ears. We´re happy and grateful to have you keeping us on our toes and pushing to make the game better as quickly as we are able, one update at a time “

 

[Fi22le]

That post by Renato ^ makes me feel excited for the future.

 

[Kenny Paton]

Later he added this:

"When evaluating the state of sim racing in general, it’s worth also considering the ratio of complexity / cost / return is not all that favourable for the developers compared to other genres. It’s not a huge market relatively speaking, and these days it’s crowded with good (if imperfect) options. The people doing it are doing primarily out of passion for the craft - which is not to say sim racers should be charitable with developers, by all means you should vote with your wallet only for the ones you believe to be doing a good job. Just some perspective from the other side of the counter"

On top of their work ethic their communication and interaction with the community is excellent and class leading.

 

[Fi22le]

He sure is good at his communications, and I believe very much in his passion for his product. The industry needs more people like him IMO.