Automobilista 2: More News Dropping Tomorrow...

Paul Jeffrey

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AMS 2 News Tomorrow.. .jpg

Reiza Studios have teased some more news is heading our way about the upcoming Automobilista 2 racing simulation...


I suspect it is pretty fair to say that the announcement of AMS 2 and change of engine to MADNESS has stirred up the community somewhat, dividing opinion and causing various levels of excitement within pretty much everyone with even a passing interest in the world of virtual motorsport.

With something of an impressive track record in our little niche hobby, I'm sure I'm speaking for the majority here when I say how hungry we are for new news on the title.. and that hunger looks set to be fed tomorrow, so stay tuned!

Automobilista 2 will release for PC December 2019.

For the latest Automobilista 2 news and discussions, head over to the AMS 2 sub forum here at RaceDepartment and get yourself involved in the conversation today!


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As a 3D artist, I'm not sure anything has caused more self-reflection for me than seeing sim racers react to new graphics engines, because I don't know that I've seen a more clear example of how widely varied are the priorities of people when it comes to graphics. To be clear, I'm not making any judgements on those opinions, I'm just trying to understand them all to hopefully make me a better artist.

When ACC launched I was really surprised at the reactions to what was, to me, a clearly technically superior graphics engine to AC even with Sol/Shader Pack. I spent a lot of time reading posts, examining screenshots and video, and playing the games myself, and all I determined is that different people have very visceral reactions to AA type/quality, color saturation, and lighting consistency.

That last one is the most interesting to me because I have come to believe that oftentimes sim racers seem to value image clarity above everything else. The problem with that is that switching to a more realistic lighting model will create way more variance in lighting and shading as you move around the track (due to more objects casting dynamic shadows and having more realistic specularity), so the goal of more realism comes into direct conflict with the desires of at least a portion of the community. It is not an easy problem for the game developers and I don't envy them the task :D

All that philosophical rambling aside, the things I immediately notice in AMS2 is the much more realistic interaction of the light and the track surface when the light is at a low angle, the real-time shadows of many components (watch the shadows from the cockpit itself, the rear camera monitor, and the side mirror from the interior view, and the rear wing in the exterior view compared to the same in the AMS1 portion of the video), and the more realistic shaders (brake lights are probably most noticeable). Again, you don't have to be mad at me if you don't like those things, your opinion is valid, those are just technical advances I noticed immediately :) I'm excited by how this is looking so far, but I sure hope they keep the Mini Challenge car!

You hit the most important piece there. Visual clarity. That is a top priority for me as well as anyone using VR. ACC for example with their UE4 engine and TAA basically just blurs everything to give you the illusion of image clarity but it ends up making billboards and dashes blurry which ruins it for me.

I think the madness engine may be a bit better here, but image clarity is so key to a good experience when you're racing.
 
As a 3D artist, I'm not sure anything has caused more self-reflection for me than seeing sim racers react to new graphics engines, because I don't know that I've seen a more clear example of how widely varied are the priorities of people when it comes to graphics. To be clear, I'm not making any judgements on those opinions, I'm just trying to understand them all to hopefully make me a better artist.

When ACC launched I was really surprised at the reactions to what was, to me, a clearly technically superior graphics engine to AC even with Sol/Shader Pack. I spent a lot of time reading posts, examining screenshots and video, and playing the games myself, and all I determined is that different people have very visceral reactions to AA type/quality, color saturation, and lighting consistency.

Honestly, this stuff is why I've hated the move to deferred renderers in games. You're literally better off playing on a 1080p monitor and then super sampling 2x to get the sort of clarity you would've had from MSAA.
 
Graphics are interesting. I actually think the AMS1 graphics are sharper and have less aliasing, but it's still early days so not sure if this will improve.

Agree, and it worries me a bit. pCars 2 has crappy AA options, there's annoying shimmering in certain edges unless you use "Melt your GPU" tier AA. Which is basically unusable, due to FPS cost

Sound and color palette also better in AMS1, I don't like the yellow tone that is all over AMS2, similar was in pCars 2. The colder, more subtle colors of AMS2 look more natural

I know it's WIP, looking forward to AMS2

However, I must say AC looks better in VR than pCars 2, due to better clarity. And ACC is not my favorite sim, due to blurry VR. Clarity is pretty critical, since the resolution of (most) HMDs is limited already
 
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I know when I'm sitting in my chair, Holding onto a plastic wheel, Using a small flat screen to look out at the world form a digital representation of a car in motion, That FFB better be realistic in a way I can never hope to verify.

Keeping it real since ages ago.
 
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I know when I'm sitting in my chair, Holding onto a plastic wheel, Using a small flat screen to look out at the world form a digital representation of a car in motion, That FFB better be realistic in a way I can never hope to verify.

Keeping in real since ages ago.
I specifically said physics/ffb calibration.
But only true SIM racers care, granted there's quite a few of us these days.
 

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