What features do you want to see in AC?

[Requiem84]

We know that many features won't be available in V1.0 of AC.

I'd like to know what features simracers want most. Give your top 5 of features that you desperately want to have in AC, and explain us why.

I'll kick it off;

In random order;

- dynamic weather
This made league racing in GTR so awesome. If you'd see the clouds coming you were already anxiously thinking about your strategy

- some form of 'iRating'. Call it 'Assetto Punto's'. Implement this in AC, and it will guarantee much more online activity. People are simple beings. They need rewards to do things. It gives a good feeling if you finish high in a strong field and then get rewarded with many 'AP's. It keeps the sim alive and busy! Desperately needed!

If it's done by a modding team, perhaps we can do it better than iRacing does (i.e. rating per car).

- Sharing setups; essential for pickup racing as well. If your driving with friends online, it's convenient to share setups straightaway while practicing, or also helping other drivers you meet online.

- Mechanical damage based on driver input. Be hard on your gears or brakes, and you'll suffer some damage. For example, missing a gear or brake fading. Too much curb hopping and you could damage your suspension. Adds an element to races.

- Tire wear based on driving style. Makes racing much more tactical.

I'm curious to know what other people deem important.

 

[Hampus Andersson]

I don't want to sound rude, but I'm glad that the AC devs have a brain, because there's an idea in there that keeps popping up in every thread that's absolutely stupid....

Who the feck cares about toggling the control for the turn signals with your mouse (How practical when driving eh ?), it's not important that all the toggles inside the car work, it's bloody useless. It's NOT a flight sim with a million of controls and it's not like you exactly have the time while on the move, most of them aren't used in racing anyway, and not exactly needed behind a monitor (Heater ? lol). Stuff like brake bias, ARB adjustments are around in most high end race cars, actually useful stuff for racing that can fit nicely on standard wheel/pedal sets. And then you got F1, but yeah... Unless you have a button box there's no way to have enough buttons to fit all the different controls of a F1, and using a bloody mouse is not a viable option, unless you have a death wish. So I guess it's out of the question to have all the fancy controls they have nowadays....

Every features should got toward improving the realism of the racing, be it weather or dynamic everything else.

While i agree i think definitely turn signals for racing cars that have them.

You would want to know which side the lower class car is going when you are hitting 250km/h on a laserscanned Nords

Flashing lights as well!!

 

[betterstranger]

it's a racing game, not a driving game.

For me it will be a driving game more than racing game I always dreamed about Forza, GT or Test Drive Unlimited with serious physics.
And it looks like that with the help of all these talented people who make mods I have a chance to fulfill my dream! ;-)

 

[Luke Russell]

Wet track is top of my list!

 

[2CV SUPER GT]

AC is not "a racing game" like Pcars or others, it's "our simulator", we are free to use developement tools to create what we think it's good to do from a racing simulator based plateform. There is lot of players orphans from Test Drive Unlimited now the online is dead, they will like AC if they feel things accurate and realist, if some modders create little open road envrionement looking like Trento B., and the money they'll spend on AC will help Kunos to work on the features that you want for the next 1.1 update and more.

 

[Diogo Ramalho]

Pitcrew (with proper pit stops) and stewads, so we can roll over them! eheh

No seriously, it adds a lot to immersion if it is well implemented, however it might be very bad for fps.

Just a suggestion since everything a proper sim needs is already in a to do list I guess, probably not for the first version but I'm sure Stefano wants the same crucial features as the majority, weather and day/night races.

I could name a few more but I think this ones are not totally essential taking into account the number of persons working on this title and the resources they seem to have at this point (this is a fact we shouldn't forget), but here it goes:
- dynamic track (track degradation, rubber accumulation, oil, leaves, parts from crashed cars, etc..);
- proper damage system (being car vs car or car vs rail/tires);
- proper championship mode (with a nice background history, for offline players);
- resume from replay (witch seems a nice feature, also for offline players)

I'm really confident in KS work and dedication. Wish them all the best.

 

[XN-Sigma]

For me it will be a driving game more than racing game I always dreamed about Forza, GT or Test Drive Unlimited with serious physics.
And it looks like that with the help of all these talented people who make mods I have a chance to fulfill my dream! ;-)

AC is not "a racing game" like Pcars or others, it's "our simulator", we are free to use developement tools to create what we think it's good to do from a racing simulator based plateform. There is lot of players orphans from Test Drive Unlimited now the online is dead, they will like AC if they feel things accurate and realist, if some modders create little open road envrionement looking like Trento B., and the money they'll spend on AC will help Kunos to work on the features that you want for the next 1.1 update and more.

Gotta agree with these posts, I have always loved racing games, but I've always been more of a driving fan than racing fan, problem is though, typical driving games like NFS or TD always let me down with their poor physics/realism, now with AC's modding possibilities I can get to make it my own driving game.
About this, I've been planning some road cars to make for AC, and it would be great if I could do things like use turn signals or the horn.
I'd like also to make at least one road course for AC, though I dunno how I'd go about it, seems much more complicate than making a car.

 

[William Levesque]

Right, you get a road like the Transfagaran or something, maybe even a small city with a countryside, but where is the traffic ? You're still alone, maybe you got a friend or two but that's it.

Only control that is not "racing stuff" that could fit, the way Hampus said, turn signals, to make faster class know where you're pulling off, or if your car has a problem and you're creeping alongside the road. Only for cars that has them though. But then it should fit on our available controls, which will most likely not when you consider what we'd need to fit too, without a button box it's impossible. And as I said, in no way should the mouse be used to click on the dashboard.

Maybe the keyboard could be used, but the way the keys are spaced will cause you to look away from the screen too long to press the right one.

 

[2CV SUPER GT]

I have many friends just waiting to join for a ride, I feel more alone one the track. About traffic, now I don't thought that is so important. TDU has 8 player max + 8 traffic car max even in the city (and 8 only in rare moments). Is it not better to have 25 players and focusing in interesting country roads where you rarely find traffic?

I took these pictures from this site : http://arthomobiles.fr/GTO Tour/gtotour.htm

At the same event, 1 picture from the ride, 1 other from the famous Lemans track.

Do you want so much drive on a 30meter wide flat asphalt?

Do you prefer use your PC ressources for total commercial instead green trees?

Why everyone love so much Nordscheilfe better than any tracks? maybe because it feel like an open road more much than a track...

 

[XN-Sigma]

I think traffic itself isn't really necessary, for example, suppose you are in a road course that is a loop and you are driving with another 63 cars, be them AI or players, you'd always find some cars around you driving along, and this is fine with me, pCARS has 2 road courses that are amazing to drive on, even alone it's great, I just wish they were loops with some "2 ways sections" to make them more interesting. Now thinking about this, I remember some Kunos guy saying the quantity of vehicles on track would be mostly limited only by the user's PC, I wonder how the engine would deal with the player using a highpoly car and another 100+ lowpoly AI cars or something, I can't wait to do experiments like this. hehe

 

[William Levesque]

2CV SUPER GT
FFS.... The kind of features you are asking for are only needed when you cruise around as in daily driving.

You don't need those to haul butts on a country road.

 

[2CV SUPER GT]

You replyed for me, I need it cause I'll cruise around as in daily driving

 

[Dinca Andrei]

Right, you get a road like the Transfagaran or something, maybe even a small city with a countryside, but where is the traffic ? You're still alone, maybe you got a friend or two but that's it.
.

Hell,thats one of the greatest place from my country....the words are poor to describe it.You have to be here to feel it.
I am not a track builder but if no one will do this wonderful road course,i will start learning the building procces of tracks.This must be done.
Also we had for 2 years a short city race track called Bucharest Ring

 

[nothke]

I would like to add to your second point: Dynamic sound environment in replays. I think this is an area that has gone largely undeveloped and the bar needs to be seriously raised. Aside from basic reverb and doppler, little has been done with reflection and directional orientation of sounds - not to mention proper downshift and backfires.

Haha, this is exactly what I wanted to write. I wrote an article at ISI forums about the similar thing and my proposal was to have more samples according to orientation (not same if you stand behind exhaust or stand in front of the bonnet) and distance and blend between them. However it would be heavy cause it would quadruple the samples. In real life, if you are far from the loud sound source what actually gets to you are hundreds of little reflections of everything around the source. It is not the same listening in a tunnel (everything reflects), open field (clear sound), forest (partial absorption), or snow (almost everything is absorbed). It would take a lot of processing power to emulate that. Some games use reverb in certain areas (tunnels) and sound occlusion (low pass filter if sound source is behind an object), but most of other reflection effects are neglected. If you have a smart enough programmer/sound designer (which I am not.. yet) I think a great sounding and fast performance-wise compromise could be found!

I am more, an "immersion" kind of guy then someone who competes. For me, it is very important that the track feels ALIVE. I love just driving around the track, then entering the garage and leaving the computer for a while (to ponder on the meaning of life xD), but then listening to pit noises and cars just passing by.. Listening to rain and watching the clouds floating above the garage.. =) What I always found the problem with rf1 is that it always felt dead, tracks are ghost towns filled with cardboard still people, and visited sometimes by drivers. Pit crew animations for me are absolutely must, but I think GTR2 quality is enough, you don't need to use a lot of detail, uselessly using up performance. You don't have to make a crysis3 dx11 tessellated people to make it look alive.

You guys added a lot of stuff already that I wanted to mention anyway.. =) Except one more thing, if you could make trackside cameras not just 100% follow the center of the car, what I can see in the previews. Just like in rF. This thing is something that really goes on my nerves, you make a game look like a candy, with mega high poly models, motion blur, dof, and all the post effects, but then, all eye candiness, awesomness and realism goes down the drain when the camera movements come from the 90s video games.. It just ruins the real and makes it too artificial. Make it feel like a real cameraman is holding it. Slight random humps and shakes, inertia from camera mass etc. And also make parameters configurable for cam editors. rF does contain inertial or "lag" following but still it's primitive, even RBR has a very good camera shake system. And I AM SURE it's just a few code lines to add... just like the grass shader thing =)

 

[betterstranger]

Hmm... what about a showroom in the game? Like in GTR2 (PnG style) or in early NFSs or even in Forza Motorsport?

It would be nice to read something about the car specs and history, check carefully 3d model, watch some real life photos or even videos!
I like very much stuff like that

 

[XN-Sigma]

Oh man, I loved that in early NFS games, I had NFS2, 3 and 4 for my old PSX and I'd spend a good while just looking at the pics, watching the videos and reading the info. with no internet at the time, that was a blast.

 

[betterstranger]

Oh man, I loved that in early NFS games, I had NFS2, 3 and 4 for my old PSX and I'd spend a good while just looking at the pics, watching the videos and reading the info. with no internet at the time, that was a blast.

Early NFSs were proper fun. I truely miss them. TDU1 was actually the only similiar game after NFS6 (HP2).
I'm not a simracer - I play sims because only they give you the feeling of driving somehow similiar to driving a real car. And driving is a fun!
These days NFSs are sooo poor that actually I don't even look at them... (ok, also because there is no way back after driving a proper sim with a wheel...)
But yeah, I like those oldNFSish climate and I prefer road cars to race cars. So for me the more street cars in AC the better.

But watching vids, pics, reading the history of the car/manufacturer always gave me a lot of fun and additional climte to the game.

So XN-Sigma something for you

 

[Hannes-Joshua Thor Barthel]

Haha, this is exactly what I wanted to write. I wrote an article at ISI forums about the similar thing and my proposal was to have more samples according to orientation (not same if you stand behind exhaust or stand in front of the bonnet) and distance and blend between them. However it would be heavy cause it would quadruple the samples. In real life, if you are far from the loud sound source what actually gets to you are hundreds of little reflections of everything around the source. It is not the same listening in a tunnel (everything reflects), open field (clear sound), forest (partial absorption), or snow (almost everything is absorbed). It would take a lot of processing power to emulate that. Some games use reverb in certain areas (tunnels) and sound occlusion (low pass filter if sound source is behind an object), but most of other reflection effects are neglected. If you have a smart enough programmer/sound designer (which I am not.. yet) I think a great sounding and fast performance-wise compromise could be found!

I am more, an "immersion" kind of guy then someone who competes. For me, it is very important that the track feels ALIVE. I love just driving around the track, then entering the garage and leaving the computer for a while (to ponder on the meaning of life xD), but then listening to pit noises and cars just passing by.. Listening to rain and watching the clouds floating above the garage.. =)

yep would love to see/hear a real nice sound processing/enviroment ... I am a music producer and kind of sound designer... so I am very much into that sound stuff and how to make a sound feels 3 dimensional and plastic (I mean the real term plastic like real.. not pvc lol)
it's for me the way to live to hear and analize the reflections all the time.. for example when you are walking through the streets at night and listen to all the differend reflections from the houses, walls, trees, even lamp posts....

I kind of know how to realize that on the "static" soundsource like in an audio workstation.. even there I have some little tricks and plugins how to do that on moving sound... (some reverbs use ray tracing, there you built a "virtual room" and the (moveable)sound source are emitting "sound rays" which are reflecting by the walls of that virtual room... but even that plugins doesn't feature all the stuff like differend materials on differend walls and differend height and so... and also only in a restricted area for example 200m x 200m ... it would get too heavy for the cpu to simulate "a real world" with all that stuff on a very big area... )

but I have absolutely now clue how sound especially the reverb and refelction creation work in a 3d game/virtual world ... I think things like the ray tracing methods are quite too heavy for the cpu in an application like that... so I think effects are needed to be triggered if for example the sound source is in a tunnel or close to a wall (how it is been made now I think.. when I drive for example through the tunnel in RRRE it's like a reverb on reverb off button... also in many other games but that is the example what comes first in my mind)

another solution would be (and maybe that is more the way it is did these days) placing differend kind of delays, filters and reverbs and so on, on differend objects/areas and the sound source... for example the car is traveling through them like through differend send channels in the mixing track ... but then you would also need to place the viewing/listening point in that.. if you are in the car you can just use the master output... but if you are on a differend place like a cam in replay... you need to mix the sources differend and also calculate the delay of the dfferend distances
(that would maybe the best way to do and I just got some inspiration for my tracks (audio tracks not race tracks ) out of that idea)

so I have some ideas how to do that.. but I have absolutely no idea how practical these things are.. to do in a game.. first because I have no idea how sound FX are done ingame... second I don't know if it is practical from the cpu usage... on just audio workings ok... but because this is a racing simulation not a sound simulation or Audio FX unit... I think there is quite less cpu spare for sound things because the main thing for the cpu should be the simulation and so....


however I stop now... don't feed a soundguy with sound topics ... I could go on and on and on...

 

[XN-Sigma]

Early NFSs were proper fun. I truely miss them. TDU1 was actually the only similiar game after NFS6 (HP2).
I'm not a simracer - I play sims because only they give you the feeling of driving somehow similiar to driving a real car. And driving is a fun!
These days NFSs are sooo poor that actually I don't even look at them... (ok, also because there is no way back after driving a proper sim with a wheel...)
But yeah, I like those oldNFSish climate and I prefer road cars to race cars. So for me the more street cars in AC the better.

But watching vids, pics, reading the history of the car/manufacturer always gave me a lot of fun and additional climte to the game.

So XN-Sigma something for you

Ahh tell me about it, I tried the new Most Wanted, it was like a Micheal Bay movie, too many "explosions" and no substance, NFS has been pretty much dead to me ever since Blackbox took over around 10 years ago.

About the showroom idea, something simple could be done, for example, use a small showroom-like environment to display the car, like in Forza 4's Altovista, but use the normal ingame models, they are detailed enough to display, no need for 1 million + poly cars, also it could just have text info instead of voiced info, this would make things easier for modders, one interesting thing to do would be add replays and screenshots from each car on their specific showrooms.

 

[kikie]

iOpener?

 

[Bekim.D]

I'm sure AC will have plenty of nice features, but all I want is a simple slow motion feature for the replays so I can watch my BMW M3 going sideways in pure bliss

This slow motion feature is available in NK-Pro so should be in AC