Reiza Studios Inks Partnership With IMSA For Automobilista 2

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With endurance racing set to be a focus for 2024, Reiza Studios have announced a sizeable partnership with none other than IMSA: Automobilista 2 will see the arrival of additional tracks and cars run in the series.

Reiza Studios ended 2023 on a high note, releasing Le Mans and the Endurance Pack Pt. 1 DLC on New Year’s Eve. The December Dev Update talked about how endurance racing would be a focus moving forward, including historic Le Mans content. First was the present, however, with three IMSA GTP and four current-gen GT3 cars being introduced to Automobilista 2.

If you liked this content already, get ready for more like it: Reiza has struck a partnership with IMSA for Automobilista 2, meaning more cars and tracks are inbound. “Content is always the big flashy thing. We are happy to have closed the partnership with IMSA”, said Reiza Founder and Lead Developer Renato Simioni to OverTake/RaceDepartment.


Automobilista 2 IMSA Content: “Pretty Much Entire 2024 Season Represented”​

This means that “we’ll have pretty much the entire 2024 season represented”, Simioni continued. “And we are closing in on some deals with manufacturers to have most of them represented.” A rather exciting outlook, considering the rising popularity of the real series and the circuits it runs on.

As for cars that are currently running the IMSA season, only the Acura ARX-06 and the Lamborghini SC63 are missing from the GTP category in AMS2. For the GTD – so GT3 – classes, additions could include the Chevrolet Corvette Z06 GT3.R, Lexus RC F GT3, Lamborghini Huracán GT3 Evo 2, Aston Martin Vantage AMR GT3 Evo, Ferrari 296 GT3, Ford Mustang GT3 and Acura NSX GT3 Evo22. Meanwhile, none of the Oreca 07 or Ligier JS P217 LMP2 racers are in the sim.


Simioni is excited for the IMSA partnership, stating that “it is looking good that we’ll have a sizeable representation of the grid throughout the year.” When can sim racers look forward to new content, features and other goodness? “The plan is for v1.6, with more coming after that”, said Simioni. The next milestone update looks to be on track “towards summer”, according to Simioni, who adds with a smile: “My New Year’s resolution was not to give time estimates, because I tend to fail miserably with that. They are hard to assess at the best of times.”

IMSA Content With Next Milestone Update​

The next big update to Automobilista 2 is not only going to introduce new content, however. Simioni shared a few improvements and features to look forward to, including a revamped UI, which is set to be “a big step up, more powerful and customizable as well as more aesthetically pleasing.” More physics improvements (Simioni: “They are always a priority, and there is always room to make things better”) and “developments on the audio front and the shader front to make the game look fresher” are also underway.

Automobilista-2-2023-IMSA-Liveries-Porsche-963-Mercedes-AMG-GT3-Evo-Daytona-1024x429.jpg


Circling back to the endurance-based content, AMS2 should also see new features catering to the discipline. Specifically, the option for limited tire sets and delays after crashing out (meaning you cannot simply teleport back to the pits and go out immediately again) are in the works.

But hold on – wasn’t there classic Le Mans content also coming up? That is indeed still coming up, but most likely a little further down the road, as the Automobilista 2 IMSA partnership takes priority for now. The fact that sim racers can look forward to the most in-depth first-party representation of IMSA outside of iRacing should absolutely make up for this, however.

Meanwhile, AMS2's Formula Ultimate Gen 2 is due for a refresh in the upcoming v1.5.6, and the 2024 Brazilian Stock Car Pro Series will arrive with v1.6's physics improvements. To find out even more details, check the latest Dev Update on the Reiza forums.

Are you looking forward to the Automobilista 2 IMSA updates? Let us know on Twitter @OverTake_gg or in the comments below!
About author
Yannik Haustein
Lifelong motorsport enthusiast and sim racing aficionado, walking racing history encyclopedia.

Sim racing editor, streamer and one half of the SimRacing Buddies podcast (warning, German!).

Heel & Toe Gang 4 life :D

Comments

Fantastic to see how Reiza have grown and managed this. Can't wait for Sebring and my favourite US track; Road Atlanta. Everything else is a bonus, especially a Mustang GT3 or an Acura. Fingers crossed some of that 'bonus' may include some more vintage content too, IMSA is not just 2024.

The 'Content Manager' to allow me to remove all the single seater, road cars, karts and RX clutter will also be very greatly appreciated.
 
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The Fox and the Grapes comes to mind.
Honestly there is no grape at all to be had. I'm more into MP so career isn't at all a priority of mine. PC's career was head and shoulders above in that you could choose your path have stats etc. AC is little more than repetition of 4-10 laps races at the same 5-6 circuits. There are a few longer races but still it gets pretty boring.
Take my grapes too if that is a career mode for you
 
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Source?



LMU est le jeu officiel du WEC. Il n'y a aucun intérêt pour le WEC/ACO de mettre un autre championnat dans ce jeu pour refléter cela en dehors peut-être de ce qui se déroule sous cette organisation. Ainsi, l'IMSA n'aura pas lieu dans LMU.
lmu is the official game of wec/ACO ok but beyond wec the game is based on endurance races like imsa

wec: lmh/lmdh - imsa: gtp

wec: lm gt3 - imsa: gtd



an agreement like in the real world would make it possible to see American "imsa" circuits in lmu and that would make a lot of sense, such as

-Daytona 24 H

- Watkins Glen International

-Indianapolis

- ROAD Atlanta Petit Le Mans
 

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Here's a snippet of that roadmap...

That should obviously impact tyre grip to a degree, but it's not a physics development that seems to be orientated around the fundamentals of tyre slip in general, as the article itself describes the update to focus on the asperities of track surface. If you think that this update alone is going to be more than a refinement or poilish of what's already there, then you might be disappointed. I'm not reading between the lines here, but actually just reading what's written and understanding that for what it is. They even said themselves...

...which is why I stated that I was disappointed that they weren't doing more.

Simple as that.

By not making physics a priority for 1.6 like they did for 1.5, this is a clear a statement as could ever be made that they'd rather work on other elements of the title, and can't be logically disputed. Maybe they wanted a break from improving the physics fundamentals, maybe they can't improve it further for whatever reason, maybe they feel that AMS2 doesn't need further physics fundamentals work.

Who knows, but yet again, my point still stands that I wished they continue their excellent work from 1.5 as it just seems like they climed a mountain to go up to 80-90% height and then said that's enough, and just continue to sit there doing something else instead.
I do not think the intent is to slow down or stop physics development. V1.6 might be a only a step forward, whilst v1.5 was a leap forward.l, but v1.6 might actually be laying groundwork for an even greater leap that is not possible without v1.6. But no one outside Reiza knows for sure yet.
 
I think you have not understood much of the statement.
Actually, I'm pretty sure that I understood what they wrote just fine thank you.
V1.6 is revolving around thermal behavior of the tires
Where did you read that? Tyre improvements are part of 1.6 but where did it say that the entire update is supposedly revolving around that?
thermal behavior of the tires (as well as the already debated hysteresis) which is probably the most critical part of the grip of the car and hence its physics
While hysteresis is undeniably important, in the specific function as Reiza wrote within the update relating to just that "rubber compound can sink into the asperities (cracks and crevasses) of the track surface" - that or those alone are definitely not the most critical part of the grip. It should be plainly obvious that general contact point & interaction along with tyre loads & deflection, not even going into physical forces such as inertia & momentum, are the fundamentals or what you could call the bigger picture. Cracks and crevasses are comparatively "just" smaller details / pictures within the bigger equation.
There isn't literally anything more defining of the driving experience than tire hysteresis and thermal behavior.
Again, just no. If you truly believe that small track cracks and thermal behaviour are the most crucial defining qualities of a driving experience, then I wouldn't consider making a racing game if I were you.

I'm not going to bother reiterating my points yet again if people can't understand my words for how the English language defines the proper usage of. I will however reiterate that the devs said themselves to not expect such a big change in physics (which by the way can relate to anything that has physical interactions) so I really don't get why you're not even listening to them and are seemingly expecting a significant amount from 1.6. Yes it'll hopefully be a step forward and I never said it wouldn't, but my statements of being somewhat disappointed was and still is completely proportional and reasonable given the devs own admission of what to not expect.

Geez, I spend more time on here explaining simple comments than actually discussing them in a progressive manner.
 
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I do not think the intent is to slow down or stop physics development. V1.6 might be a only a step forward, whilst v1.5 was a leap forward.l, but v1.6 might actually be laying groundwork for an even greater leap that is not possible without v1.6. But no one outside Reiza knows for sure yet.
That's an entirely valid and reasonable view. You could well be correct with that, and I won't presume otherwise. Thank you for sharing that.
 
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This news is pretty cool.
They only need 4 more tracks and a hand full of cars for the full season.
Sebring, Road Atlanta, CTMP(Mosport) and Detroit street circuit.
Acura prototype, Oreca07, and a few gt3s.
Mustang gt3 is what I'm hoping for.
5 tracks. Mid Ohio.
 
lmu is the official game of wec/ACO ok but beyond wec the game is based on endurance races like imsa

wec: lmh/lmdh - imsa: gtp

wec: lm gt3 - imsa: gtd



an agreement like in the real world would make it possible to see American "imsa" circuits in lmu and that would make a lot of sense, such as

-Daytona 24 H

- Watkins Glen International

-Indianapolis

- ROAD Atlanta Petit Le Mans

I love your thinking...

Now if only Reiza would make this IMSA content as part of LMU like they did for their prototypes in rF2 I'd be a very happy camper...

Pipe dream I know... Hypercar deserves the best representation in sim racing, we have it in LMU and that has the many features needed for proper endurance either in game already or being reworked from rF2 in the pipeline...
 
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I get that some people really like career modes but I'd be interested as to what percentage of people actually play them.

I like to do pre-defined or custom championships but I doubt I'd play an actual career mode.

We must have had a RaceDepartment poll on this at some point :)
A more complete career mode is the one thing I feel is missing from AMS2.
 
And why isn’t it really a simulation ? Do tell . Based on your real life racing experience or extensive motorsports engineering knowledge . And what is your definition of simulation or are you just lazily echoing some random YouTuber like the rest of the trolls on here ?
Sounds like someone has been watching their favourite tubers and not been really paying attention to what has been happening on track...

Far too many defenders of this title spend more time defending it than playing it...

Let's focus on tyre wear for a moment shall we?

Tyre wear is not repeatable in this title, it's very random... Go to test day or offline with the AI with a rubbered up surface and do a race stint, and then go online with more than 10 people and do the same stint in the exact same conditions... Tyre wear is drastically different... The more people on track the less tyre wear is an issue...

There's really no point to running the hard tyres at all as a result... As you can do a full length race at Interlagos on softs in an F1 car if there's more than 20 people...

Plus if you have to do a warm up lap to avoid the green light not being the same for everyone, you get almost double the tyre life as someone who keeps their tyres warm by moving from side to side if you simply heat the brakes only by dragging them (which barely works in the madness unlike other engines)...

Then add in set ups...

No one should be able to rock up on default set ups and have similar tyre wear to someone who has done the whole tyre patch of the tyre recommended by the devs in their set up guides... It doesn't matter how smooth you are on defaults, if it isn't in that contact patch zone it should effect wear quite harshly... And yet so many will rock up on defaults and not have an issue...

Tyre wear is a big issue for endurance in this title, as is the lack of proper fuel maps... Where it's currently just a throttle percentage and there's lots of holes in the Madness engines version of the pmotor physics that leave it behind any other pmotor platform that is just as simple as that fuel map issue... Because the pmotor was merged with Shift 2 physics...

The advanced damage model Reiza added is really cool... But really feels out of place with the rest of the physics engine for any type of endurance race... And that's before we broach the subject of Hybrid and brake migration which is essential for Hypercar and is one of the reasons Reiza's LMDhs were so lacklustre for so many sim racers...


TL : DR version...

The Madness engine still contains a lot of left over Shift 2 physics in it's pmotor and the SETA tyres just don't work with how little is simulated on the track side with the predetermined rubber states... It's only really where the puddles are that are live...
 
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Where did you read that?
From Reiza's developer's log (which you obviously did not read), see if you can read the red part:

Last but never least, we have further PHYSICS development incoming - even though the V1.6 revisions won´t be as profound as last year´s V1.5 overhaul, there are still significant improvements with the focus once again on tire development - more specifically tire thermodynamics, wear & hysteresis.

While these updates will only arrive wholesale with V1.6, two classes will already feature v1.6 physics in V1.5.6 later this month.
004 (9).jpg


Our man @steelreserv is leading the charge with these new tire developments - below is his summary of what the hysteresis developments entail:

"There are two aspects of hysteresis - the first and operative way we are using it simulates how rubber naturally compresses and rebounds from compression, allowing (and hindering) how deep a specific rubber compound can sink into the asperities (cracks and crevasses) of the track surface. A soft compound sinks into the cracks more quickly than harder one, with more rubber in the cracks adding friction / grip. The same rubber compound can compress and rebound at different rates as well, generally allowing for quicker compression, but once the rubber is free of the track surface, the rubber rebounds (of flexes) back to its original shape slower.

The second aspect of hysteresis is basically related to how heat is generated in the tire as this constant compression and rebounding on a molecular level generates energy.

Effectively with STM, hysteresis helps us simulate the falloff of grip caused by the lack of time the rubber has a chance to "sink" into the asperities of the track as slip / slide velocity of the tire grows higher. Simply put, the more the tire slides, the less time the rubber has to sink back into the cracks and crevasses of the track. Less rubber sinking into the track yields less friction, leading to less grip from that sliding tire."

The work on hysteresis directly relate to the thermo / wear / damage revisions also incoming with v1.6, but we´ll get to those in a later dev update.


And then I don't even go into the fact that tire thermodynamics is what mostly dictates the behavior of a tire as it determines the level of activation of it and its capability to grip or slip.
Again, if this is not a key part of a car physics then what would that be?
 
Again, just no. If you truly believe that small track cracks and thermal behaviour are the most crucial defining qualities of a driving experience, then I wouldn't consider making a racing game if I were you
You need a crash course on what hysteresis means apart from the example of the crevices in the asphalt. There is a fair bit more than that which ties in the thermal behavior of the tires which dictates almost all of the most important behaviors of a tire: grip/slip, wear, degradation, and other anomalies such as graining/blistering etc.
Without a good thermal behavior there is no organic feeling, there is no proper wear and no proper tire management necessary to avoid deg/graining/blistering etc.
 
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Premium
Sounds like someone has been watching their favourite tubers and not been really paying attention to what has been happening on track...

Far too many defenders of this title spend more time defending it than playing it...

Let's focus on tyre wear for a moment shall we?

Tyre wear is not repeatable in this title, it's very random... Go to test day or offline with the AI with a rubbered up surface and do a race stint, and then go online with more than 10 people and do the same stint in the exact same conditions... Tyre wear is drastically different... The more people on track the less tyre wear is an issue...

There's really no point to running the hard tyres at all as a result... As you can do a full length race at Interlagos on softs in an F1 car if there's more than 20 people...

Plus if you have to do a warm up lap to avoid the green light not being the same for everyone, you get almost double the tyre life as someone who keeps their tyres warm by moving from side to side if you simply heat the brakes only by dragging them (which barely works in the madness unlike other engines)...

Then add in set ups...

No one should be able to rock up on default set ups and have similar tyre wear to someone who has done the whole tyre patch of the tyre recommended by the devs in their set up guides... It doesn't matter how smooth you are on defaults, if it isn't in that contact patch zone it should effect wear quite harshly... And yet so many will rock up on defaults and not have an issue...

Tyre wear is a big issue for endurance in this title, as is the lack of proper fuel maps... Where it's currently just a throttle percentage and there's lots of holes in the Madness engines version of the pmotor physics that leave it behind any other pmotor platform that is just as simple as that fuel map issue... Because the pmotor was merged with Shift 2 physics...

The advanced damage model Reiza added is really cool... But really feels out of place with the rest of the physics engine for any type of endurance race... And that's before we broach the subject of Hybrid and brake migration which is essential for Hypercar and is one of the reasons Reiza's LMDhs were so lacklustre for so many sim racers...


TL : DR version...

The Madness engine still contains a lot of left over Shift 2 physics in it's pmotor and the SETA tyres just don't work with how little is simulated on the track side with the predetermined rubber states... It's only really where the puddles are that are live...
Poor or inaccurate simulation of specific elements no doubt (and all titles share this aspect to some degree) but certainly doesn't stop this title being a simulator within the exact same scope that similar titles are.

That said, I can fully understand that these aspects are important for your enjoyment and why not having them addressed would cause you to look elsewhere for a more suited platform.
 
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Poor or inaccurate simulation of specific elements no doubt (and all titles share this aspect to some degree) but certainly doesn't stop this title being a simulator within the exact same scope that similar titles are.

That said, I can fully understand that these aspects are important for your enjoyment and why not having them addressed would cause you to look elsewhere for a more suited platform.

I appreciate that you can understand...

It's all about what breaks our immersion within the simulation for each person individually... Each to their own... And for me the maths on track matters far more than other elements of the simulation...

For me it's more of a casual motorsports simulation, the maths on too much of the physics is just broken compared to other pmotor tiles... You can just arrive and hustle the car harder than any other sim and you can be competitive, all that needs learning is the track itself... Try and compare it to real life too much and you can easily get caught up in rabbit holes of bad math... Which just doesn't happen to me in other pmotor titles... Outside of rF2 when S397 was struggling with their tyres when they took over...

It's possible to have fun in AMS2, even with the way I carry on about it's lack of accuracy, any of the racing titles can allow you to have that type of casual fun these days... You just have to ignore the things that matter to most endurance racing fans and it's all gravy...

I've always been the type who prefers the 90-95% way of racing historic cars... Having to look after the car and make sure it makes the end of the race with smooth inputs... And I get that type of driving in other pmotor titles, but none as good as AMS1... And that's why so many people will say it's not as sim as other titles for them, not just because they've seen a video from Gamer Muscle, but because 90% is 120% in AMS2... My reasons just go a bit deeper into the maths than simply the ability to overdrive the car...
 
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Premium
Now, I hate math, My immersion comes from the experience, Hence, No VR no buy.

If the scene is set, the atmosphere has been created, the noise, the cars, the track, The visual experience, the challenge of the track and the feedback from the car, then I'm in the zone, and while I expect the likes of tyre wear to be present, Temperature, driver abuse, wear, etc to all have an effect on my experience, I don't care about the math behind it. If I ruin my tires I lose pace and adjust my driving accordingly , or I head in for a pitstop.

Alternatively I just continue to push until I hot a wall at 300km/h and the game engine demonstrates its lack of crash physics. Done plenty of that last night on Spa Historical as part of the weekly challenge.
 

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