R3E news and rumors

[Case_]

So we have a general discount thread (though it's often missed), but as far as I know, there isn't a general news thread to post various small-ish pieces of information that have come up, so I thought it might be a good idea to start one?

So information about the upcoming December patch are starting to appear, and we now have a confirmation that three Porsche cars will indeed be coming with it, with first one being...

Porsche 911 GT3 Cup 2017

The latest incarnation of the Porsche 911 GT3 Cup is based on the seventh generation of this sports car icon, and it lives up to its calling: uncompromising performance on the race track.
The four-liter six-cylinder boxer unit delivers up to 485 hp.
The drive force is transmitted to the rear axle by six-speed sequential dog-type transmission.
The fate of the 911 GT3 Cup is played out in the Porsche one-make championships, where the only thing that counts is the performance of the individual driver.
While carrying "GT3" in its name, the car has quite different driving characteristics compared to its bigger brother, the GT3 R.
The lack of ABS & Traction control makes it quite a challenge to drive and will put your skills on track to a test.
A special feature of this car are the purple LED lights on the data display, that will warn you about traction loss & locking brakes.

https://forum.sector3studios.com/index.php?threads/porsche-911-gt3-cup-2017.9881/#post-137245

The other two cars should be announced in the coming days according to S3, but it's fairly obvious one of them will be the GT3 R, aka the "proper" GT3

 

[Case_]

So yeah, as I'm sure everyone is now aware, they have been released. 15 euro for the whole pack, 4 euro per car with one livery. Exactly as expected, I was kinda worried they might be pricier with the exclusivity and all.

http://game.raceroom.com/store/cars/wtcr-2018

 

[Case_]

https://steamcommunity.com/games/211500/announcements/1707314854845639298

Today we're bringing some performance balancing to the 7 cars within the WTCR 2018 class. After careful analysis of the performance of the cars since their release, we have tested and applied the below modifications.

These will come right on time for the opening round of the Esports WTCR OSCARO, you can watch the live stream on Sunday, 26th August, at 17:00 GMT (19:00 EU) with live commentary either on the Facebook Page of the FIA WTCR or on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/TheFIAWTCCworldtouringcarcup/live


Apart from the balance of performance, we're also patching in a few art fixes that we didn't have time to include on release day. More will come in a later patch.


Update details:
Download size = ca 235 MB
Client version = 0.3.0.6417
Client BuildID = 3056970



WTCR 2018 - Balance of Performance

• Alfa Romeo Giulietta TCR - Reduced ballast weight
  
• Audi RS 3 LMS - Reduced ballast weight
  
• Cupra TCR - Reduced ballast weight
  
• Honda Civic TCR - No change
  
• Hyundai i30 N TCR - Reduced ballast weight
  
• Peugeot 308 TCR - Reduced ballast weight
  
• Volkswagen Golf GTI TCR - Reduced ballast weight

Sounds

• Volkswagen Golf GTI TCR - increased cockpit coast volume and external gearshifts volume

Art:

• Added the remaining suits and helmets textures to all WTCR cars
  
• Alfa Romeo Giulietta TCR - Various tweaks to the cockpit, attached the window net a bit higher, fixed over-reflective objects in the cockpit.
  
• Cupra TCR - Fixed over-reflective objects in the cockpit. Added missing logo on the flanks of car #66.
  
• Honda Civic TCR - Data display modified to MoTec C127 (Black), fixed over-reflective objects in the cockpit.
  
• Hyundai i30 N TCR - "H" logo now sits on the upper radiator grid. Shift lights in the cockpit are now better adjusted.
  
• Volkswagen Golf GTI TCR - Tweak to the position of the driver's fingers

See you on track!

 

[Case_]

("Tweak to the position of the driver's fingers" is my new favorite patch note.)

 

[Case_]

About yesterday's unplanned maintenance:

"Quick update on this as we now came to the conclusion that we suffered irremediable data loss in the process. Two disks have failed simultaneously at the server farm hosting our services. Data loss is affecting graphical assets, avatars for player profiles and some of player settings (such as which track/car combo was last used). We are working to get back online as soon as possible and want to apologize for the obvious inconvenience of not being able to access the game immediately."

 

[Olivier Mandavy]

Need VR optimisations, don't know how but please make the VR experience better...

 

[Kurupt CDN]

They have been having server issues since the launch of the game lol

Need VR optimisations, don't know how but please make the VR experience better...

I fully agree but until they move to a new engine or implement dx11i doubt there is much that can be done.

 

[Case_]

BTW, in case you are not aware, following the data loss mentioned above, you might find some of your friends have been lost, so you'd need to send a new friend request. Also, avatars and header images have been lost at least in some cases, so you may want to reupload them.

And game related - it seems that as part of this issue the game falls back to Amateur difficulty, so before you go race in any single player mode, be sure to check if you have the correct difficulty set (I assume most people here would want the Get Real option). I was running some leaderboard challenges earlier today and only after looking on the leaderboards and wondering why there were so few people on there I noticed I was in Amateur, so I had to start again.

 

[Eckhart von Glan]

thx for the info, appreciated

 

[Deleted member 387850]

And game related - it seems that as part of this issue the game falls back to Amateur difficulty, so before you go race in any single player mode, be sure to check if you have the correct difficulty set (I assume most people here would want the Get Real option). I was running some leaderboard challenges earlier today and only after looking on the leaderboards and wondering why there were so few people on there I noticed I was in Amateur, so I had to start again.

I had this exact problem. Went onto Leaderboard Challenge and couldn't understand why there were so few laptimes and why I couldn't change my setup! Everything had reset back to what I assume are the default settings, but it had me scratching my head for awhile before I realised.

So are they not able to recover the data that was lost? Seems a bit crazy in this day and age... Also, there doesn't seem to be much in the way of communication that people might want to upload missing profile information again. Maybe I'm just not looking in the right places, but it might have been useful to communicate that to customers?

 

[Case_]

So are they not able to recover the data that was lost? Seems a bit crazy in this day and age...

Apparently not. And it doesn't seem that crazy to me - if two drives fail at the same time, there's not much you can do, and it's a scenario that is pretty unlikely to begin with, so it might not be feasible to account for it while planning your data safety strategy. Especially if it involves some less crucial data.

 

[Deleted member 387850]

Especially if it involves some less crucial data.

I just hope they have built more redundancy in to wherever the user purchase data is stored

 

[Case_]

In case you're not aware, the Mount Panorama (Bathurst) circuit and the Touring Classics cars are all 30 % off right now.

 

[Yetch]

Just to update my rather useless update news last night (I'm old & medicated & old & medicated), I forget all the time, Georg mentioned that pitch adjustment will be available after the next patch, not earth shattering but yet another step on the path to Nirvana I guess. Damned useful for some cars and although small, a much needed addition.

 

[Case_]

Today's update is focused on bringing the fixes and improvements that we can provide without impacting the performance of our cars, as various esport competitions are still active.

We're introducing a revised slowdown penalty after many voiced frustration over not being allowed to choose where to serve the penalty, but also to prevent unrealistic situations where players could just go through a ghosted opponent, risking a collision if the penalized car was to suddenly become solid.

A modification to Adaptive AI logic was also discussed within this forum and you will find that we now ignore laptimes that are clearly slower than the player's known pace, allowing for less volatility of the calculated AI Strength.

We're also bringing improvements for situations found in your streams of multiplayer races, sudden framedrops at race starts should no longer be a thing, and if you're hosting a multiplayer session, racing and streaming in HD all from the same computer, you should now see less problems related to saturated communications.

And for VR players, we've reviewed the HUD elements to allow for better readability overall.

Full details of this update :


Update details:
Download size = 201.9 MB
Client version = 0.3.0.6424
Client BuildID = 3241815
Dedi version = 46.0.733
Dedi BuildID = 3241888



Game

• Player can now serve a slowdown penalty anywhere and will not be forcefully slowed down. The time illegally gained has to be given back within 60 seconds. Failing to comply will result in a drive-through penalty.
• Cars serving a slowdown penalty are no longer ghosted.
• Slowdown penalties are now displayed as part of the flag HUD element.
• Sorted the controller assignments by categories in Controls settings menu.
• Removed "Clutch Biting Point" from Advanced Controller settings, as it is no longer used.
• Adaptive AI logic now ignores laps that are clearly slower than player's known pace. Any lap slower by at least 3% compared to player's average laptime in a given race session is now ignored.
• Improved network communications in cases of extreme saturation. Should solve some timing issues spotted by players who are hosting a multiplayer race, racing themselves and also streaming in HD on the same computer.
• Some performance improvements for situations where many cars are leaving skidmarks on the track.
• Added key bindings allowing to move the cockpit camera perspective horizontally. This allows for setups with very large screens where the player isn't sitting exactly in the center of the display. This setting is remembered per car.
• VR - Improved readability of the various HUD elements
• VR - Mirror to screen option is now remembered between two game startups.
• Fixed HUD messages not dealing with UTF-8 (accentuated characters will no longer be missing).
• Chat font color is now a tiny bit darker yellow for better readability.
• Fixed a HUD overlay showing up when switching between cars in a replay.
• Fixed an exploit where players would leave the pitlane in the opposite direction and be allowed to cut corners after completing 2 laps.
• Fixed the centering of the mouse cursor when driving with the mouse as a controller.
• Fixed success ballasts not being properly transferred or applied between two championship races.
• Fixed a live timing issue during a race start on the VLN and 24H layouts.
• Fixed input meter being visible while flying around in free camera
• Fixed a failure to start the executable if installed inside a folder structure that has a \Game\ folder inside it.
• Fixed various reported game crashes

Content

• Audi RS 3 LMS - Updated the steering wheel to the 2018 version.
• Various small visual fixes on WTCR cars
  
  https://forum.sector3studios.com/index.php?threads/october-2018-update.11738/

 

[DND]

All good stuff, so @Georg Ortner said B I G changes/additions near Christmas time in an Sector 3 post recently. Let's speculate on that for a while.

Dear Santa Georg please bring me:
Crew Chief/Mechanic to aid in setups
More world class tracks like Mosport, Sebring and Watkins Glen
Offline Selective and Multi Car Class
Continued improvements to AI
God bless us everyone

 

[Yetch]

Well one things for sure, big changes to car setups, adjustable ABS (at last) for one, big changes in the UI by the looks of it and of course updated GT2's, gonna have to wait though, esports comps have to finish first.

 

[Kenny Paton]

And please an update to the Touring Classics, a fix to MP to properly allow multiclass again, joinduring warmup and it will be a good Christmas.

 

[Kenny Paton]

gonna have to wait though, esports comps have to finish first.

Think they finish second weekend in November.

 

[Yetch]

Think they finish second weekend in November.

Damn I'm still in 24,593rd, best get at it. Always the raffle I guess!

 

[Stephen Spackman]

Well one things for sure, big changes to car setups, adjustable ABS (at last) for one, big changes in the UI by the looks of it and of course updated GT2's, gonna have to wait though, esports comps have to finish first.

Is the added car setup options (seen in picture above) only available to certain car classes?