Just in case you missed that part
Never had an issue with graphics, and the physics are pretty excellent in my book.
But content-wise, still a way to go, either for offline or online players.
The silver lining being they have to sort both those out if they want any chance of console success.
Fair enough online players can now just about manage a league with a dozen or so 3rd party plugins to fill the gaps, but those won't be an option for console players, and the career/sp experience needs a major rework to appeal to offline console players.
I'm happy enough to wait I guess, just every time it gets close to update time, a lot of people get hyped as though they think this is "the one" that will deliver it all. I was just tempering with caution, I think there'll be a couple of minor improvements and we won't see "the one" until the console build is done. imo of course.
RD managed to gather many simracers for SCE lately. It is indeed more popular than rd club events in ac. But are other league communities for SCE as or more popular than leagues in racedepartment? Where did SCE simracers race before they came to RD? However I noticed more popularity here since V8 stockcars release. It may not be popular in SCE's public mp, but seems that is for league, possibly that is a hard car and only the more skilled are prepared to race it for real. And also benefits that SCE's main forum is hosted here.I really hope to see some substantial improvements to the Multiplayer aspect by the end of the year.
If not, then it's my personal opinion that we ditch the idea of running leagues with Assetto Corsa entirely, and use our time more productively with games that do have the features to allow us to run proper leagues, like GSCE and rFactor 2, as is currently being done with the RDTCC in GSCE.
Otherwise we are just wasting our own time.
Progress on MP has been so slow, that I'm not really all that optimistic that we'll see MP improvements substantial enough to facilitate proper league racing. But I hope they prove my pessimism wrong. I really do, because Assetto Corsa has by far the best physics and force feedback, it has all the content necessary to even replicate the real life Blancpain GT series, and yet it can't be done because right now the Multiplayer is akin to that of a race horse with no legs.
I really hope to see some substantial improvements to the Multiplayer aspect by the end of the year.
If not, then it's my personal opinion that we ditch the idea of running leagues with Assetto Corsa entirely, and use our time more productively with games that do have the features to allow us to run proper leagues, like GSCE and rFactor 2, as is currently being done with the RDTCC in GSCE.
Otherwise we are just wasting our own time.
Progress on MP has been so slow, that I'm not really all that optimistic that we'll see MP improvements substantial enough to facilitate proper league racing. But I hope they prove my pessimism wrong. I really do, because Assetto Corsa has by far the best physics and force feedback, it has all the content necessary to even replicate the real life Blancpain GT series, and yet it can't be done because right now the Multiplayer is akin to that of a race horse with no legs.
Certainly mateCould you @Chris Stacey point out what exactly is missing from the mp of AC.
It's doable, but it wont result in a high quality product. Look at our last league run in GSCE, the Virtual Stock Car Championship, that was absolutely incredible because the live broadcast was done very well. In Assetto Corsa, the live broadcast is substantially more difficult because the "broadcasters" are spawned on the bloody grid when the race starts! So you have to miss action while the poor broadcaster exits back to the pits. It's not at all a smooth process and is incredibly ungainly.So most of all, you can very well run leagues in ac. But the interest here is to 'televise' these races. And that's where RD is finding difficulties with AC's online platform, with what the spectators see in a stream/broadcast and the ease of tools usage from the streamers to spectators.
I want to make it absolutely clear that it's absolutely not at all about money. It makes my blood boil that just because we want to make a really high end experience for not only the drivers in the league, but the viewers too, and somehow we get accused of corporate greed and only doing it to make a profit.But RD is afraid of not making profit with AC?
Simracing will likely never be the highly spectated e-sport that League of Legends or any of those other gamer games are, as simracing in general is niche market, however to those viewers we do have, we want to offer a high quality product, I'm amazed that you're actually criticizing us for wanting to provide high quality leagues. Look at the awesome presentation that iRacing puts on with their F1 World Championship, it's really incredible and is very much similar to watching a real life race.are you interested in turning AC in a highly spectated e-sport or are you doing it for the drivers who want to race with other fair/skilled drivers?
Well, I wouldn't say they rebelled, but many complaints have been made by the drivers in leagues due to the shortcomings of the MP. Heck, complaints are made even in club races.But did the AC-RD drivers rebel against league racing here because of netcode/server data/replays so you're not running leagues here because of that?
No.So you're not organizing league races because you're worried about spectators not seeing all that fancy general race info and driver telemetry on screen?
That's a fair point, but it's not our fault that Assetto Corsa is lacking in the fundamentally required areas that I have outlined above which we require for high quality leagues. Believe me, I wish it did have them, but it just doesn't.Just because according to your standards other sims have better platforms/tools for your needs, doesn't mean that AC simracers don't want to league race here in RD.
We already do this in GSCE with fantastic results. However, GSCE also provides the basics that enable us to showcase exceptional league races, and AC does not.Think about it, if there would be more leagues running for AC in RD, those single events in between the league days could have more attendance as well.
Well that's also a good point, but unfortunately the inability to properly broadcast and livestream a league is not the only factor in our reluctance to run a league.But do leagues have necessarily to be broadcasted and viewed by many? Ok so if you don't have the right platform/tools for that in ac, why not run "offline" leagues for the interested.
Most probably a stupid question: I guess you guys tried to make Kunos aware of these problems?High quality leagues can be done, as I have shown here and here.
Now, that league worked well because it was designed around the deficiencies of Assetto Corsa. The races were short and there was no live broadcast because such a thing still very much requires an ugly work around at the expense of slots on the server.
Believe me, I love the game, so I say these things out of love for it and the fact that I want it to deliver on its' potential. I'm not saying that my opinion is any more worthy than anyone else with a reasonable opinion, but it would be nice to have some more progress on MP. Heck, just a sign that the core functions of the game are being progressed on would be nice, even if it's not MP! But, my experience in organising 2 successful leagues with Assetto Corsa and weekly club races ever since MP was implemented has shown me loud and clear that substantial work is needed before we can run a BIG league that RD has become renowned for, for almost a decade.
Certainly mate
At RD, we require certain capabilities of a game if we want to run a full blown flagship league, as we are hoping to eventually do with the RDGTC and RDGPC, however Assetto Corsa doesn't handle these things well. We'd love for Assetto Corsa to be the game of choice for the GT league as is has everything required content-wise for a full replication of the Blancpain GT Series.
Fundamentals that we need from a game before a flagship league can be organised:
- A proper spectator or broadcast mode - One that does not require the usage of a driver slot on the server, thus reducing the grid size unnecessarily.
- A properly functioning penalty system - At the moment, Assetto Corsa's slow down penalty only applies to track cutting where the game registers a cut. There are many places where this can be exploited as the track limits in AC are rather vague and not necessarily defined by the white lines, as our league rules stipulate. If the penalty system could be configurable, then this would be the best solution. Yes penalties can be managed however it currently is only do-able manually and it requires a massive amount of free time of the league organiser, that the game could have otherwise handled. Drivers can also ignore necessary flag rules with absolutely no penalty (i.e. ignoring blue flags, not slowing under yellows, overtaking under yellows etc. etc.)
- Solid netcode - The handling of high pings and sensitivity to slight changes in ping is handled pretty poorly in Assetto Corsa. Even a ping jump of 1ms up or down can cause a large warp, which could result in a race ending crash for multiple people. Tied in with netcode is the less-than-good collision system that often results in heavy damage and large reactions just from light contact.
- Race finishes - When the 1st place driver crosses the line, anyone who crosses the line immediately thereafter has their race concluded, irrespective of the lap they're on.
- More server data output - This is one area that is seriously lacking from Assetto Corsa. There's no sector times, there's no registration of pitstops made and getting results into GPCOS is such a mess that it is pretty much impossible all of which makes livetiming not really possible, race positions are updated only once per lap rather than as they actually happen, and the opponent split-time app is sketchy at best.
- Lengthier Replays - Incident reports are commonplace in league racing, and if for example we hosted a 3 hour endurance race with a full grid of 24 cars (which is not enough by the way, so more slots should be added as well), and someone wanted to file an incident report from the first 10 minutes of the race, they won't be able to obtain video evidence (which is required in incident reports) because the replays in AC, for some crazy reason, are saved to the RAM memory, so a 3 hour endurance race is thus not possible because you cannot view an entire race on one replay even on the lowest replay quality.
Fundamentals that we need from a game before a flagship league can be organised:
- A proper spectator or broadcast mode
- A properly functioning penalty system
- Solid netcode
- Race finishes -
- More server data output
- Lengthier Replays
I've heard this is the main motivation behind the 64 bit build for 1.3.Lengthier Replays - Incident reports are commonplace in league racing, and if for example we hosted a 3 hour endurance race with a full grid of 24 cars (which is not enough by the way, so more slots should be added as well), and someone wanted to file an incident report from the first 10 minutes of the race, they won't be able to obtain video evidence (which is required in incident reports) because the replays in AC, for some crazy reason, are saved to the RAM memory, so a 3 hour endurance race is thus not possible because you cannot view an entire race on one replay even on the lowest replay quality.