RaceRoom Racing Experience: Development News...

[Paul Jeffrey]

Sector3 Studios have revealed something of their plans for the future of RaceRoom Racing Experience.. with plenty of information revealed.

Having not quite managed to keep up the tradition of regular developer video streams, Sector3 have taken the decision to open up to the community their plans for RaceRoom in the near future - revealing plenty of very interesting and exciting things coming to the sim soon..

The blog post in full:

Back in the days when we were SimBin, we had a dev blog. Then later we had dev streams. The downside is that it all takes a long time to prepare and we're busy making RaceRoom better! So we figured a written and more modest update from time to time was probably the best approach.

So I'll be posting every now and then to update you about what we have in the works. I need to make it clear that the fact we have something cooking that gets presented here does not mean it's around the corner, or that it will definitely come out in the next patch.

Without further ado, here's your March 2019 dev update !

1. Adjustable tyre pressures

Yes. You've read this right. We're finally adding it.

As you can understand, this means a lot of development and testing of the physics engine and its variables to ensure the effects of pressure adjustments are proper and do not lead to exploits.

As a result, we will be turning this feature on following a per car basis, after each has passed QA tests.
Priority is set on the new car as well as car classes that are receiving a physics overhaul or are just popular.

The sub-optimal aspect of this feature is that we haven't had the opportunity to re-design the car setup menu yet. Therefore you'll find the buttons for it have been crammed in there. The way this menu is laid out at the moment didn't really allow for a clear presentation of asymmetric pressure settings. You'll have to pay close attention that you're adjusting the correct tyre. We want to re-design this menu altogether whenever we have time.
​

Here's the list of the car classes currently in beta with tyre pressures:

• Formula RaceRoom Junior
• Unannounced Formula car
• Touring Classics
• WTCR
• Porsche 911 GT3 Cup (991.2)
• Porsche 911 Carrera (964)
• GTR2
• GT4 Clubsport Trophy
• Group C
• Group 4
• Mercedes DTM 1995

2. Flat spots

When locking a tyre for too long, the caused friction can eat through your rubber and create a flat surface on the wheel.
This not only has an effect on the grip and wear but will also induce some vibrations depending on the size and depth of the spot. Flat spots usually get worse over time as you will find that the affected tyre will lock up even more easily, eventually leading to a puncture.

Here's the list of the car classes currently in beta with flat spots:

• DTM 1992
• Formula RaceRoom Junior
• Group 4
• Group C
• GT4 Clubsport Trophy
• GTR2
• Porsche 911 Carrera (964)
• Porsche 911 GT3 Cup (991.2)
• WTCR
• Touring Classics
• Unannounced Formula car

This new feature is currently being tested for bugs but also feedback is being collected regarding how easy it is to get one, how much the wheel should vibrate, how it sounds like, and so on. Currently considering making it optional, which you will read about in chapter 4 below.

3. Suspension damage

Back in 2013, RaceRoom wouldn't let your wheels come off your car, no matter the force of the impact.
In recent RaceRoom updates, you might have read about optimizations to the damage code, improvements to the collision detection and its effects on mechanical components.
​

And if you play regularly, you probably noticed we have some bugs to fix with regards to that. (Debris on track not clearing out from the track for example)

We're not done yet. What we have in testing at the moment is a brand new system designed to accurately render effects of bent axles and broken springs.

Impacts will deform the alignment of individual suspension parts and affect the handling of the car in sometimes dramatic ways.

This is of course another feature that needs to sit in beta long enough to ensure you won't suddenly receive unwanted camber or toe-in from harmless door to door racing.

Look at this driver... Will he even make it back to the pits to repair?
​

We are reviewing the code deep down, making changes such as damaging your powetrain if the impact affects a powered wheel. Also, the more worn your tyres, the bigger risk of getting punctures from collisions with other cars, from driving on dirt, gravel or grass, but also from driving over pieces of sharp carbon fiber left on the track by your fellow racers. For that, we'll also have a caution flag warning to signal the presence of debris.

4. Revisions of damage settings

Because the above mentioned features can lead to added frustration for the least hardcore simracers among us, we will make sure those new ways of ending your race prematurely are optional.

One of the early design choices from back in 2013 that we're now set to overcome is the way damage settings are defined. Right now there's a separation between Visual Damage, and Mechanical Damage in the menu. This doesn't make much sense any longer and we'll change to have something like this instead:

• Damage setting: None - Minimum - Complete
  • None = no visual damage, no mechanical damage, no punctures, no flat spots, no parts falling off.
  • Minimum = mechanical damage and visual damage are on. No punctures, no flat spots, no suspension damage or wheels falling off
  • Complete = everything on

5. Dedicated server features

Our dedicated server has been lacking when it comes to features you'd expect as part of a base package.
We're fixing this, and adding more.

Here is what we're working on adding:

• Session info block:
  • Added list of connected players with their user ID, with a live count of their incident points.
  • Added ability to kick a certain player out
  • Added current session and timer
  • Added a "Next Session" button and a "Restart Session" button
• Car selection list:
  • Added car specific weight ballast (for your personal BOP adjustments)
• User management block:
  • Added user specific weight ballast (for leagues with success ballast)
  • Added management of banned users

The weight penalties will also be visible from the game itself, through the addition of a ballast column in the timing screen.
​

6. Shared memory API - Massive update.

As I've touched somewhere on the forum, our next update will break 3rd party applications that use our shared memory block.

If you are a developer of such applications, please have a look at the attachment " r3e_sharedmem_preview_march2019.zip " to get an early look at the changes.

The goal of this update is to expose all the possible telemetry you can dream of, and extend the possibilities for apps and overlays.

7. Support web-based in-game overlays

If you have watched or streamed a multiplayer race with your game client started as spectator, you are probably familiar with the fact that the overlays showing are done via web. We are adding a transparent web page on top of the game and we make it show whatever feels relevant at the time.

With this ability to overlay webpages on top of the gameplay and thanks to the sheer amount of data we're adding to our shared memory block, we are experimenting with fully customizable HUD's.

Just like for the broadcast overlays, we will ship the feature with an example app that will showcase some of those new possibilities.
​

8. Oschersleben - New layouts

We wanted to get this out in time for the ADAC esport championship, but with the time constrains and the track being featured early in the series, we couldn't make it happen in time. But good news is that it will come eventually, and for free to anyone who already owns the track.

• A Course (already available)
• "Motorcycle" A Course (fast turn 1 chicane)
• B Course (shortcut after turn 3)
• "Motorcycle" B Course (fast turn version)

9. Physics updates

@Alex Hodgkinson is always busy. When it's not about upcoming cars, it's of course about bringing improvements to the ones that are already out there, to re-ignite interest in them as the often suffer from the comparison to the feel of the newly released cars.

One of the updates currently in development is the DTM 1992 & Touring Classic classes.
In order to respect the true specs of these cars, we had to sacrifice the balance of performance between those two classes. This means that the BMW M3 E30, present in both, will eventually be present in two different flavours. More on that will come from Alex himself when we're closer to release of these.

We are also busy adding support for electric vehicles in both the physics and sound engines in very close partnership with a major player in the industry. More on that soon!

A lot of things have to change when you suddenly don't have more than one gear and no fuel to burn!

10. Fanatec SDK updates

We are spending time with our friends from Fanatec to implement their latest SDK and make use of nice features they offer on their hardware such as special switches or ability to show yellow flag warnings through the steering wheel LED's.
​

RaceRoom Racing Experience is a PC exclusive racing simulation, available now.

Check out the RaceRoom Racing Experience sub forum here at RaceDepartment for news, discussions and community engagement and our awesome League and Club Racing events.


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[Kenny Paton]

update I wait on the most is dynamic weather, day/night etc

Not going to happen, current engine won't allow it.

 

[Deleted member 637371]

Not going to happen, current engine won't allow it.

Thanks for heads up Kenny.
I feared as much... that feature really would be the icing on the cake for me in what i consider to be one of the best all-round sims.... Will there ever be a perfect sim eh?

 

[OzzyNeil]

Wow all these features, who knows one day it might even have as many features as GTR2.

 

[BrunoBæ]

First I saw this:

Without further ado, here's your March 2019 dev update !
1. Adjustable tyre pressures
Yes. You've read this right. We're finally adding it.

And then I thought yesss after all these years they finally does acknowledge that they HAVE TO include this basic feature if they want people to consider Raceroom as a sim.

But then I saw this:

So I'll be posting every now and then to update you about what we have in the works.
I need to make it clear that the fact we have something cooking that gets presented here does not mean it's around the corner, or that it will definitely come out in the next patch.

And after reading this I realised that all the following described missing features in the blog is just some kind of ‎imaginative wishlist inside Racerooms dev teams heads.
Nice but why do we have to read about all this when its obvious that most of it will probably only be relevant some years from now.
And some of it will probably never be relevant inside this niche racing games lifespan.

Hehe even iRacings Steve Myers and Tony Gardner doesnt include ALL their imaginative wet fantasies about iRacings future when they try to block iRacers reasonable "why dont we have some of this allready in iRacing".

 

[thepharcyde]

Not going to happen, current engine won't allow it.

Is that the same won't allow like Assetto Corsa?

 

[budlix]

What a pleasant reading. Whole bag of news and plans. Good to know my favourite sim is not sleeping and I can continue to play it, awaiting even better fun
I'm little bit aware of tire pressures - I'm not a setup-guy so one headache more for me..
Go Devs! Fingers crossed!

 

[Kenny Paton]

Is that the same won't allow like Assetto Corsa?

I honestly can't remember where it was said before, but I know it has been said. It may well also be down to the needs of KW Suspension.

 

[Alex Hodgkinson]

And after reading this I realised that all the following described missing features in the blog is just some kind of ‎imaginative wishlist inside Racerooms dev teams heads.

Actually everything JF listed are things which are very much in progress and are up & running on our own systems.

 

[Andrew Harper]

Which ones? I don't know of a current sim involving real cars that has fully realistic damage to be honest. Losing a wheel, nose cone, or bonnet, setting your engine on fire, sure, but fully deformable cars that crush and fall apart on impacts a la Wreckfest? Nope, unless I'm missing something?

I agree. I don’t know if a single sim that has actual "real" damage. wreckfest gets away with it because if I remember rightly all the cars are "non-makes" so no damage to any precious marque image. However even that allows you to get away with murder. Having watched sand racing here on Guernsey the cars will break in ten seconds if you collide with someone the wrong way.

Gran Turismo is the most famous example of the no visible damage issue. The developers only manage to get all those makes when they promised that their precious cars would not show damage. Yes they did pick up damage you could feel (gt2 or gt3? Can’t remember) but that was it.

I suppose the other issue is how real do you want it? Most race cars are delicate machines. They are not designed to take too much punishment. In some cases if you hit a kerb too hard for example you’d bend the suspension, Instant puncture, etc. Run offline? You’ll pick up debris and your engine will cook itself. Bump into someone even slightly in a single seater and you’d lose wing parts, etc.

It’s very much a balancing act between what people want, what the manufacturers are happy to have, and what the racers are happy with as well.

However it may well happen as PCs get more powerful I suppose. If you look at a disintegrating carbon car body. That’s bloody hard work for a physics engine to work out. You also have the job of creating a car model that would fall apart in the right way. Taking into account the physics required of things like the speed of the accident. Direction of the car as it’s traveling. Etc. Having done rendering with damage models myself I know it’s easy to smash something up, but very tricky to make it look realistic (or good even!) lol. So full credit to wreckfest for what they’ve managed to achieve with their game engine.

Anyway back on subject, a nice couple of updates and news in the last few days. Looking forward to the update.

With regards to the server error. I’m wondering if it might be down to your ISP? I assume the game sends out a check signal to the server when you run it. If the response doesn’t come back the way it’s expecting you get the error. Difficult I know but do you have a friend somewhere whereby you can just check this? I’m not suggesting taking you whole rig obviously just the base PC. I was using a VPN once and forget to switch it off which caused Raceroom to non-start but I assume you’ve checked all those sorts of things already. Hope you get it working though.

 

[BrunoBæ]

Actually everything JF listed are things which are very much in progress and are up & running on our own systems.

OK Alex - you does allmost allways sound reasonable.
But I dont believe any of this before I see it launched/published.
I have a long lifes experience behind me and I have often seen a lot of dev fantasies published without finding any traces of it some years later.
So lets return to this shall we say 2 years from now?

 

[Andi Goodwin]

OK Alex - you does allmost allways sound reasonable.
But I dont believe any of this before I see it launched/published.
I have a long lifes experience behind me and I have often seen a lot of dev fantasies published without finding any traces of it some years later.
So lets return to this shall we say 2 years from now?

or sooner for your wake ?


Andi

 

[BrettSinclair1]

Multiple compounds are in the game for 1.5 years now for those cars that use them in real life.

Thank you! I didn't realise it was this long ago I last played this game

 

[Kurupt CDN]

Which ones? I don't know of a current sim involving real cars that has fully realistic damage to be honest. Losing a wheel, nose cone, or bonnet, setting your engine on fire, sure, but fully deformable cars that crush and fall apart on impacts a la Wreckfest? Nope, unless I'm missing something?

 

[Case_]

What my point actually was meant to be...I wish devs would say they don't want to do that particular bit of work rather than say the manufacturers won't let them....it's like they think we're blind and can't see other Sims implementing a proper damage model.

I really don't see how it's any better than what you said before. You are still suggesting the devs are actively lying to you. Why? I really don't understand why you would suggest the default approach for devs is either to invent imaginary issues just to avoid work, or to lie to their customers. Is that really what people consider the most likely option? Doesn't make the slightest sense to me...

Which ones? I don't know of a current sim involving real cars that has fully realistic damage to be honest. Losing a wheel, nose cone, or bonnet, setting your engine on fire, sure, but fully deformable cars that crush and fall apart on impacts a la Wreckfest? Nope, unless I'm missing something?

IRacing was working on a pretty realistic visual damage system I believe, but I'm not following it all that much.

Is that the same won't allow like Assetto Corsa?

I don't remember anyone from S3 saying the engine won't *allow* it in Raceroom. I only remember mentions that it doesn't seem to make sense to put in all the necessary work when a complete switch to another engine is likely to happen in a not-too-distant future anyway.

(And BTW, I don't really understand why people tend to be so literal and upset about the Assetto Corsa thing either. A fact that some mod is able to achieve something still doesn't mean it would be feasible to do from the point of view of the devs, so I don't see why they're getting upset at Kunos for this. It's just taking the words of the devs too literally without considering the wider picture and the context and then being upset about them not following that literal meaning, IMO.)

 

[m_mirk]

Glad to hear R3E is getting even better. It is my go to sim at the moment and I am looking forward to the new things aswell!

 

[vegaguy5555]

Not going to happen, current engine won't allow it.

I heard this before somewhere?

 

[Will Mazeo]

Not going to happen, current engine won't allow it.

AFAIK their graphic engine is capable of 24h cycle as said in a interview long ago, for some reason they didn't go ahead with it (base ISImotor is capable of doing that at least), one of the reasons maybe is the shadow bug like you can see randomly in AMS, Reiza said they found what caused it but fixing this for AMS was not worth it.
Rain is different but since it's based on isimotor I believe it's possible too considering what the community made long ago (and GTR2). Of course the effects may not be present in their graphic engine.
So idk.. I dont buy this excuse nor the game as they lack these features, if they had these + rejoin I'd classify as best sim in the moment at least for online leagues (except for iR).
First time I drove RR I freaking loved it.

 

[roadyroad]

Sorry, it should've been 502 " bad gateway ", I just tried it again just to be sure

Have you disabled your firewall? During a lot of time I had been experiencing huge issues with RRE after each update, having to reinstall the whole game and recreating the firewall exception. I was really frustrated with it. And these issues disappeared one time, like 2 years ago, after an update. So, I would advise you to go back to it after the next update. Firewall and antiviruses are often causing annoying issues with some games sometimes, depending of the system. To be able to lauch some games or to fix FFB strange behaviour (on Codemasters games), I had to uninstall my antivirus and firewall (even deactivating them did not do the trick).

 

[Kurupt CDN]

AFAIK their graphic engine is capable of 24h cycle as said in a interview long ago, for some reason they didn't go ahead with it (base ISImotor is capable of doing that at least), one of the reasons maybe is the shadow bug like you can see randomly in AMS, Reiza said they found what caused it but fixing this for AMS was not worth it.
Rain is different but since it's based on isimotor I believe it's possible too considering what the community made long ago (and GTR2). Of course the effects may not be present in their graphic engine.
So idk.. I dont buy this excuse nor the game as they lack these features, if they had these + rejoin I'd classify as best sim in the moment at least for online leagues (except for iR).
First time I drove RR I freaking loved it.

A lot of the code from the isimotor was removed and replaced with the current graphics engine they made, another issues or was, was that headlights don't work properly...believe it was they didn't cast any light on the track...so basically you would be driving around in the dark.
Pretty sure that's why on dash lights/tail lights don't glow as bright as other titles.

I haven't played the game of late, so not sure if this has been fixed.

 

[roadyroad]

Modding support would have been a wise choice.

I'm a huge fan of mods (and one of your customers) but I think it's better to have some titles made for modding and other absolutely closed to modding.

This allow more consistency in terms of quality of content. Raceroom includes a lot of different categories and original tracks. And with this existed content, there is still room for improvement, and the good thing is that Sector3 can implement updates whenever they want and update the existing content step by step. With an open sim, this process would kill the existing mods, as it does for rFactor2. AC and Automobilista are the perfect open sims, as they are not updated anymore.

I'im impressed by what is coming. The only negative I feel about RRE is the lack of weather feature, which would make sense and be logic for a non-open sim.