The Importance of Modding in Sim Racing

Modding is great and all, but the fact that the most popular sim for modding, AC, is so lackluster in so many areas besides moddability and physics is a buzzkill. Awful AI, no real organized online system, no night or rain racing without the CSP, poor damage simulation, wonky pitstops, etc. AC by now is just a cruising/hotlapping simulator where I basically never do any actual racing. And that's fine, and AC is really good at that, but I sure wish we had a moddable sim that wasn't incredibly poor at offline AI racing.

It'd be interesting if RD could get an interview with the guy who pockets almost 25 thousand US$ a month for his AC rain mod. Imagine what a team of developers like Kunos and Reiza could do with that kind of support.

Kunos would be kinda stupid if they do not hire Ilja some time.
IMHO he's one of the best developers on earth.
Did you see that new (Patreon members only) version what he has done now with VR ?
He's a wizard !
If you like to see what he has done you can have a look at a video I have linked to my media page here at RD :

joemendel said:

I tend not to use mods. To me it seems like stealing from the original developers.

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When creating a mod, rebuilding a real life car or track in a sim, what exactly are you stealing from the original developers?

Modding is very good, but I don't have a positive outlook on the modding scene of the future. Let me explain why.

As graphics, physics, etc. get more and more advanced it is becoming harder to match what developers are able to achieve in one's free time. We can already see with AC how the modding scene changed from the "old" model, where pretty much everything used to be free, to the current model where it's very often monetized.

Don't get me wrong, I understand that an extraordinary amount of work goes into making the latest RSS and VRC cars. And they are truly high quality creations. However I really don't want to see simracing becoming a platform like flight simulation, where the price of the whole sim is the same as the price of a single, albeit high quality, piece of content. But as the fidelity of content is getting higher, the amount of work is also going to get higher and the price is also going to get higher.

At that point I would no longer call it "modding".

I would also like to touch the subject of conversions. I am not against conversions. The majority of high quality free mods in my "library" in the last years come from conversions (GT, FH). I usually also own the original game the car came from so I don't feel any guilt or anything by using those mods. (As a side note I view selling scratch made unlicensed cars where only the name/badge/livery is changed at the same level morally). But unfortunately even conversions are getting monetized often, which is very very out of line.

So as a TLDR modding scene is rather becoming a business scene, where you either sell your scratch made content or in a worse case converted content for prices that far exceed the price/content in the original game and I fear it's only going to get worse in the future.

My compliments to the awesome Assetto Corsa modding community.
Only hope the next Assetto Corsa (which I'm calling "Evoluzione" , will support all the mods already out there.
Cheers y'all

Miguel Amorim said:

My compliments to the awesome Assetto Corsa modding community.
Only hope the next Assetto Corsa (which I'm calling "Evoluzione" , will support all the mods already out there.
Cheers y'all

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Assuming 'Evoluzione' will have a more evolved physics model etc. I wonder how this would work.

I assume with just support, it'll be like using AC with only outdated mods with old tire models etc.

Though it would be nice to have a lot of mods out of the gate, I think I'd prefer mods given the proper attention by their creators, to make them up to par or just plainly better within the new limitations.

Let's just hope they'll make it just as easy as AC to mod. Then I figure the best mods of AC will show up in ACE eventually.

I thank anyone that's created a mod, even 'bad' ones. Without mods I'd never be tearing about High Force in VR, pretending it's still the 90s when I used to drive around like an idiot in real life or driving around a 60s GP car at some long dead German circuit at dawn.

Bravo modders!

Me preparing for yet another attempt at tackling Content Manager.


It never goes well.

Peter Kerényi said:

So as a TLDR modding scene is rather becoming a business scene, where you either sell your scratch made content or in a worse case converted content for prices that far exceed the price/content in the original game and I fear it's only going to get worse in the future.

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Talking from my (very limited) experience as a circuit modder:

On the one hand, I agree with you. People need to survive and making high-quality or even mediocre-quality circuits is very time intensive and hard to get into. Information is very scattered in the more fine details. So from a modders perspective, I understand making paid mods.

However, in that regard, I have hopes for the "Donation based business model" especially talking Patreon. As in, when the track is ready, it gets released for free. Before that, Patreons get beta access. In this way, everyone gets the content in the end, and the modder can sustain themselves a bit.

Also to quickly touch on the "increasing quality" subject:

Yes, photorealism means everyone needs to up their game to be able to hold up with professional studios' content. But the tools used for making content also become more powerful. Talking about my favourite modelling program: Blender now (which is completely free btw). And with Blender, you can create pretty much everything as realistic as you can.

The problem with the high-quality standard is how much time a modder wants to spend to learn the tools they can use. With that, it becomes more and more a test of patience. Resources are everywhere but you need to spend hundreds of hours already to get a basic grip on the possibilities within modelling programs. That is coming from me, a person who in the past worked as a professional 3D-Modeller, though with other, parametric, programs.

I just crossed 300 hours in Blender for example and I feel I'm STARTING to get to grips with it and its workflow.

But then again, every creative field is highly competitive nowadays. If you look on fiverr for anything creative really, there are hundreds of low-pay-grade gigs where some of them even deliver great content.

I dunno what the point of this comment is anymore. Just my 2 cents.

TheRealCeeBee said:

I wish modding for RF2 was as simple and well documented as it is for AC. I have several hundreds of hours in AC but mostly testing mods.. I tried creating track mods for RF2 but its a damn nightmare by comparison.

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I come from a modding community where the whole process is alot more trial and error and I am allways amazed when people complain about the lack of documentation for rF2. There is a complete official dev guide with a wiki for car and track modding, alot more than I could have dreamed about when I started modding. The biggest difference between rF2 and AC is propably the lack of official Blender support for rF2, wich sets the entry point quite alot easier for AC. And rF2 is still an evolving product wich makes it obviously a bit more challenging as can be seen with the new sound engine.

That said, a very good track works in AC as it does in rF2 and there are a few nice examples for this. The hard part - the content creation itself that you do within 3dsmax/Blender/Maya or whatever is most likely pretty similar and when you take a look at the high quality stuff for AC and rF2 you will notice that it simply takes alot of time. There are a few exceptions with people like ChieffWiggum who is pumping out car models in a asthonishing high frequency, but generaly speaking modding is a very time consuming hobby that also requires knowhow and talent. I find the statement in the article that everyone can do it a bit funny as you could get going with zero knowledge.

Modding for rF2 shouldn't be that much more difficult, unless you aren't going with 3dsmax, which is my case. However member svictor, is a great modder, works with blender, and he has shared lots of advices, so it is possible somehow.

On the other hand, rF2 modding could never be easier, because it simply is an advanced sim, it just does more, and with increased complexity, work needed to prepare stuff is increased as well.

Just2Laps said:

Kunos would be kinda stupid if they do not hire Ilja some time.
IMHO he's one of the best developers on earth.
Did you see that new (Patreon members only) version what he has done now with VR ?
He's a wizard !
If you like to see what he has done you can have a look at a video I have linked to my media page here at RD :

https://www.racedepartment.com/media/users/just2laps.1859588/

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Well judging by the post of his patreon, they clearly can't afford him!

joemendel said:

I tend not to use mods. To me it seems like stealing from the original developers.

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There is a point to it and there isn't.

Modding isn't just the addition of content, it is also content management, utilities that improve on the game where the developers of the game stopped.

I can agree to stealing in terms of ripping tracks from one game and adding it to another.
Where I don't agree when a mod is for example a livery that is custom made, a piece of software that adds additional functionality to the game.

Quality over quantity !! 90% of the mods out there do not worth the download, sadly.
I would rather get myself a good cash worthy realistic laser scanned track or car rather than a fat kid in his basement modding a crappy version of what I want

Nothing comes close to what AC has to offer because of modders. My hats off to all of them, because without AC, I wouldn't be in this hobby. rF2 on the other hand just broke the sound not only on mods, but their own content.

If you haven't already, just try any of @Fat-Alfie 's tracks for Assetto Corsa and there's your answer!

R Soul said:

I think rFactor deserves much of the credit for being so open to modding. Assetto Corsa is based on that game of course, hence its own ease of modding. Being a newer game seems to have helped AC, as well as (assumed) better marketing and a good choice of cars/tracks, but there's also the matter of difficulty. Based on my own rF experience, and assuming AC is similar, the game strikes a good balance between being realistic/detailed, while still having a low enough barrier to entry to allow hobbyists to make their mark.

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Your assumption is wrong.

It is huge difference actually. I would not even say rfactor is open to modding. For example you can't do sound mods at all and making any kind of additional content to existing content is almost impossible without few cumbersome exceptions. Not to mention in ac you have a totally new ui, new physics addons created by community and all kinds of totally undoable things in rf2. Where ac modding shines is not its better marketing at all. That is just typical rf speak.

Difficulty is a weird concept anyways. You probably mean difficulty with physics and driving but difficulty is not even a good measure of realism. Iracing is super difficult compared to rf2 for example? More realistic? Don't think so. And I'm not claiming ac is better than rf2 at physics. But I'm claiming a ton of other things.

With modding difficulty is a non-desirable trait. Gpl was difficult to mod but it wasn't even meant to be moddable. It was not difficult to mod by design. It was unmoddable by design. But people reverse engineered it to make it moddable. And there were tons and tons of mods made for it. Thousands and thousands.

What makes modding easy then? Good tools, good documentation, quick and fast workflow from 3d editor or excel into the game, good error handling and well designed framework with good folder structures, naming conventions and file associations. All that allows for fast iterative development, fast concept to in-game progression and linear learning curve that doesn't try to kill you at every step. And all that and more makes it just plain convenient for high skilled professional artists to put their art into the game without having spend years getting a phd in game modding for one game.

And here is where ac shines and rf2 fails hard. Not with marketing or physics quality.... It is always sad how people who know nothing of modding at all think that ac is better modding platform just because of its simpler physics. That's not the reason at all.

Ac is an easy game to mod because it supports modding really well. It supports modding proactively. It has amazing excellent documentation. No, the documentation doesn't teach how to 3d model or how to texture or uvmap a car or track. The guide is pretty much 3d-software agnostic. But it gives the absolutely necessary information about how you make a tach, what are the tris targets for the car, how to set up damage or make animations. Ac also has tools for creating fonts for car lcd displays and an sdk to import 3d models into the game using ANY 3d program you want, including blender, 3dsmax, maya, zmodeller whatever.

I suggest everyone who owns ac to go to their steam folder:
...\Steam\steamapps\common\assettocorsa\sdk\dev\car_pipeline_2.0rev
And read that pdf. Rf2 has nothing like that. This is all rf2 has:
(There are couple more but the dev page gives service unavailable error currently)

95% of all that information in that ac document is something that in rf2 you need to reverse engineer like in a 24 year old game that was not meant to be moddable. In rf2 you have no idea at all about file types and rf2 uses all kinds of new and old file types including dds bc1-7, tga and bmp. Just blindly try things until it works, maybe. Because of huge number of unknowns it can take weeks to figure out even the simplest things. For example the only source in rf2 for the upgrade file for a car is a 15 years old rf1 (could have been f1c) document which is partially not up to date with rf2. Which parts are up to date.... blindly try things.

Rf2 has no sdk, gjed was half baked and totally undocumented. Well, they posted screenshots about it, maybe that counts. No tools for any of the rf2 specific stuff. Only things that exists are barebone guide to make a lowpoly car and couple of really well made tutorials for setting up your windscreen wipers. And basically rf2 modding expects you to pirate 3dsmax because their plugin only works on that. All that and more is what makes rf2 HARD to mod and that is what makes ac easy to mod.

So the modding in ac is just looking up that document and seeing how to name things, how to set up your object structures, uvmaps and object names and you're done. This is what allows professional 3d modellers to make high quality content for ac relatively quickly for example. They have a technical document they can look up to see how the game wants things set up. They are after all 3d modellers creating content for a racing sim. Not some data hackers who enjoy figuring out computer puzzles.

Ghoults said:

Your assumption is wrong.

It is huge difference actually. I would not even say rfactor is open to modding. For example you can't do sound mods at all and making any kind of additional content to existing content is almost impossible without few cumbersome exceptions. Not to mention in ac you have a totally new ui, new physics addons created by community and all kinds of totally undoable things in rf2. Where ac modding shines is not its better marketing at all. That is just typical rf speak.

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You could do all this in RF1 you know...

And what you mean you can't so sound mods? You can, in both rf1, rf2, AMS1, etc...

Sounds to me you dont know much about rfactor.


EDIT: i do though agree with the unnecessary difficulty in rf2 documentation and processes.

Ghoults said:

Your assumption is wrong.

Where ac modding shines is not its better marketing at all. That is just typical rf speak.

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I'd like to put my assumption into better context: I haven't played AC and I don't really follow gaming/sim racing news, so I was assuming they'd done a good job with their marketing. I wasn't using it in a negative sense. Your comments about a good UI etc are more or less covered by 'being a newer game'. To further clarify: My post has no criticism of AC or the developers at all.

Ghoults said:

Difficulty is a weird concept anyways. You probably mean difficulty with physics and driving

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No, only the difficulty of modding.

Ghoults said:

What makes modding easy then? Good tools, good documentation, quick and fast workflow from 3d editor or excel into the game, good error handling and well designed framework with good folder structures, naming conventions and file associations.

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Agreed. When Bob's Track Builder came out it was great. It can export the track directly to rFactor* and will set up the folders and supporting text files too. It wasn't long till it got the ability to use custom models (grandstands, buildings, and other trackside objects) and that's when it really came into its own. It even does basic AI elements (racing line, grid/pit spots etc). For true quality it's necessary to use the official AIW editor, and another program, 3DSimEd, for more advanced shaders and some track tweaking, but in general BTB is great for the fast workflow you mentioned.

*It also supported RBR and there was another version for GTR Evolution

Ghoults said:

Rf2 has no sdk, gjed was half baked and totally undocumented. Well, they posted screenshots about it, maybe that counts. No tools for any of the rf2 specific stuff.

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Yes, a wasted opportunity. This is the sort of thing I meant by 'barrier to entry'.

Ghoults said:

So the modding in ac is just looking up that document and seeing how to name things, how to set up your object structures, uvmaps and object names and you're done.

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They seem to have done a better job with their version of the gMotor2 engine and the people who own the original gMotor2 engine.