All true but when I launch the game and find a nice lobby then I kind of forget about all these issues. I've had so many great races last year despite everything you mentioned.
The VR implementation is so immersive, the cars and ffb feel great to me, AMS2 gives me really the feeling of sitting in the car more then other titles(but I must say ACC feels awesome too since I bought the 4090); the bass shakers work better then in all other titles, the graphics are top notch and the online drivers; even while there are not many; are more professional than in most other titles(less rammers; more respectful).
Somehow the Automobilista 2 community is enthousiastic and positive despite all the clear issues that Automobilista 2 for sure has. The enjoyment factor is simply great at AMS2. So it can only get better from here on and I believe that it will.
Let's hope that Reiza focusses in 2023 on the core issues, so that the AI and MP issues will finally get solved(and indeed the QOL issues, sound cracks, shadows jaggy(serious issue indeed, why not give us more tweakable shadow settings??), all the tiny bugs, the small errors in the tracks etc.). One that's done: the sky is the limit.
well some like Metl are completely deluded not that I blame them - they are trying to gather back the lack of control they have in their world by living vicariously in the sim and they only wish it to be a sweet sim - which it is not - and they get angry when told its not actually a sim... its not those people's fault, its a confluence of many things... but in the meantime they act like they are an authority in the automotive world when the reality is they barely have control of their own lives probably and you wouldn't get into a vehicle with such people let alone let them tell you what they think of cars in AMS2 - so beware who you listen to since you wouldn't know they probably might not even drive a car very well or at all for all we know even though there's a reason they are acting the authority on the issue -
Meaning its far too difficult to tell who is having a lend of you a lot of the time.... and doubly hard when most people will tell you despite there being not many players in AMS2 how great it is and if they build it 'they' will come. Most of that was not because of how good it was but because people were trying to salvage what little they could from the title. If you conducted a survey during those years you would have found more than 50% of the player base was having major frustration with the title down to each and every car. Yet those same people were more than half the time demanding multiplayer progress, even prioritising it about QoL issues and bug fixes.
Others like steel reserve are clearly compromised and biased in the extreme to almost cult-levels of delusion, deflection and apologetics, while dodging every issue ever about the actuality of a given topic ( i. e the suspension is off =either no its not or you don't know suspensions, or silence and deflection) even if they have contributed significantly to a flawed but once-promising title, but also they are not alone: underneath the surface everyone is trying to grapple with this title and the way it is.
So that despite what they may say - they are merely gaslighting you for their own gain in some way.
Make no mistake every single one of them knows and understands how under-done the title is compared the AC and RF2. The game engine is not cut out for this kind of title as it still needs what will amount to years of development on that front. Reiza have stated time and time again that they are not provided enough literature on the game and how the engine works fully, even the people who made it originally say the same thing.
The way the sims stack up is basically AC and ACC are number 1 and rf2 is number 2, AMS2 is basically down at number 7 or something. edit: as you have found despite all that you can still enjoy the game; however, note:
2019 "This is the most awesome and most accurate game!"
meanwhile major physics bugs and engine flaws existed and still exist.
2022 "it just keeps getting better and better" < keeping you on the hook, no change
2023. After almost no change "This game is amazing and super accurate!"
So what is it? 2019's 'super accurate' or 2023s? They wont be able to tell you since they simply do not know.
They would need to admit 2 things since you showed us, and myself can, its possible to enjoy a bit of AMS2 before its flaws ruin things, but they would have to admit 2 things
1 its simcade to the Nth degree
2 its not a simulation on the level of Assetto Corsa.
3 That its best to develop the game only and not make claims and just enjoy it as simcade with decent VR, because
4 it will never reach the heights of assetto corsa; the bar was set with that game, no.... it wasn't an especially high bar in some things but it nailed the core so hard its difficult to crack. Its only improved since 2014. They even had manufacturers cooperating fully and those guys basically lived at the track.
And mate - the shock horror of simcade is my acceptance, from the first time I booted it up til now I have understood its super simcade... i have literally 500 hours or something in this thing - thats ok, but they can't admit that. So what - its 'simcade', big deal, and they should just get on with it under no pressure. The engine is bad, the physics are way off, the cars are loose, and the values constantly change and SETA is not even fully baked, and there was a project-ruining focus on DLC at the expense of QOL and bug fixing.
The truth is about tech and simming - tech is only so good. Raceroom showed it and rfactor2 did, and AC does - who needs oodles of dynamic bend-to-bend, turn-to-turn road and car detail when the car does what it should do anyway? And road detail+ ffb in AC is perfectly fine. If you have any kind of car drive fast on the highway and your dynamic steering wrack will tighten up.
If it doesn't sell your car immediately. I am talking only about ffb here, not f1s or exotic cars. The madness engine has never done that out the box. The game engine and way the controls are is not designed for that kind of input-physics combo. Thats a REAL problem. At 200km's hour think about how much friction and rolling resistance you have to overcome to even budge the steering wheel - and in AC thats not a problem. Thats only the start.
On a motorbike go 160km/hours - then lean over... lol, you won't move BUT if you lean harder you will literally VEER OVER THE OTHER SIDE OF THE ROAD.
Ams2 can't do that. It just can't model that. AC can, rf2 pretty much depending.
The detail in driving that you can get out of a super fast lap with AC is good - it didn't need 500 contact points or changing temps to do it though CSP is working towards that. The point is it already does it.
May be (not sure) but may be AMS2 is actually designed on flawed assumptions on how a game should be?
Amgia 500 and PC, 1992 - geoff crammond f1. To this day.... Well when someone tells me that AC is not real and the ffb is naff - I laugh to myself and wonder if they set up the FFB properly - however in AMS2 you got no chance, even if you
did set up the ffb as properly as you could, it wouldn't help much. Its not going to surpass AC even if you did.
Some people say they don't like AC, or Rf2 - look !!!! lol!!!! omg I get it - but also we must understand thats driving - we can't change it, so we should be making games to the driving not driving to the game.
And thats where I think AMS2 is - driving to the game, its simcade and that is fine [enough]
So why did the game even get out of early access. This was done due to the economy looking down but the US dollar being very stable, and so capital influx into the region was something they could not resist jumping on - so anyone getting sound advice on capital investment unless they were desperate like maybe SMS was - at the time - was told to do something but whatever a company does to 'do it quick'.
I think the project would need a dramatic shift in both culture and implementation to achieve a true sim from here. Maybe the next madness engine game will be much better.
I am not even sure we have seen 1 single car that is 100% fleshed out max-what-the madness engine can do. You have not seen that and you probably never will in AMS2, maybe the next title, not sure. I am not even sure at this point with all the flux and movement in the engine with various components meshing together like corner to corner temp and entry and the differential and the tire wear (all of which are in flux and change month to month and more besides including how a setup handles - how many times have people deleted setups so far)... that anything approaching 100% 'solid' representation of a car in a computer game can exist for the cars. At this stage AC2 and Rennsport are your better bets. Even in this period of time with AC getting CSP 1.8 (3d trees and various things like longitude dynamic contact patch and latitude later and dynamic track temp etc [which is NOT as big of a deal as many seem to claim in terms of simulation continuity/enjoyment], etc and Sol+Pure) its gone way out beyond what AMS2 could possibly do for now.
Maybe you think what I think: I think a lot of time was wasted on superfluous things that didn't add to the end product all that well.
Like for example, even now given that backlog how long would it even take to re-do 125 cars in the game to 95-100% 'done', and keep the lights on, I don't see it reaching such heights - everything we all know about project development suggests it won't. Even the latest f1 cars which are loads of fun are not even there like they should be. They can't handle braking or hairpins and things like that - its almost as if the aero is way off on long bends or some such. Then the entry and exit is a real head scratcher, and no matter what you do with the game its no where near as smooth as AC, so when you enter a corner or a complex or turns, you are going to mess one up - entry/middle/exit - its a very 'off' type of game. And the diff is often in need of loosening up and sometimes redoing entire setups.
Thats not to say I think they are incompetent - rather I think it shows how massive and unwieldly the problems have become. You might/some people may think that its come a long way - let me tell you the game was in a 20% state when it arrived at 1.0 - we know this now - people thought maybe 50% done - we now know due to flaws etc it was about 25%... it might have got to 60% done - well thats the easy bit - with all projects often the last 20% or 40 in this case will be much harder to get to. I don't think you're going to see that but while it may not be at AC's level, which is frankly sublime, it does not mean AMS2 is totally bad, it is a lot of fun until you realise how sloppy the cars can be, how cardboard the accel and braking is, and notice all the flaws - but I guess there's always VR. So I would enjoy it in between other titles and only from a simcade viewpoint. Yes I know lol haha........of course I know - cue the whole 'It sims things so how can it not be a sim?'..... this is circular logic used against us at best. We got to get over the fact that its not a sim, how can it be since its not even accurate - but it can be fun and they did a decent job on the AI.
But all the bleating and shadow boxing over the game is needless, the reality is the reality and the longer a narrative goes on the more you can see the true story underneath.
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