Dynamic weather / condition changes dont work and cause chaos.

Hey,

Just a note I have about the dynamic track conditions which change between sessions. It just doesn't really work given the current game structure and more specifically, causes chaos online. So, you qualify in 25C air temp and 30C track temp, great. So you set your car up for that. Then the session changes to the race and the temperature drops to 2C air temp and 5C track temp. This is the problem.

- Firstly, you dont get hardly any visible indication that this has changed. So I think a lot of people are oblivious to the fact that this has changed.

- Second problem, you then only have 60 seconds to frantically change the car for the new conditions (providing you have spotted they have changed in the first place). So really you are just "guessing" a setup for the colder conditions, hardly ideal.

- Thirdly, these kind of temperature drops / changes are not realistic. I very much doubt you would have 30C on one day, then 2C on the next.

What you end up with is 24 drivers who have qualified in much hotter conditions start the race on freezing cold tyres and then maybe 40% of the field end up in the gravel at turns 1 and 2.

Things I could suggest to improve this scenario;

1. Tie the temperatures of the two sessions together, so that they vary, but only when the first session starts, then it continues into the race. Or, keep the temp varience active, but include a variable so that the temperature can only swing say 5 or 10 degrees max.

2. Include a 5-10 min warm up if the temperatures change wildly between quali and race sessions so that you can set your car back up again for the changed conditions.

3. The problem of not having a warm up lap, compounds the problem of cold tyres at the start of the race in these scenarios. Under normal racing weekend, you would have 1 or maybe 2 laps to get the tyres up to temp (or try and get the tyres up to temp).

4. Give much clearer indications that the temps have changed between sessions. Half the time I dont spot this because the session info is hidden away on the chat menu. Maybe have the session info menu a permenant pit menu GUI feature, and when there has been a swing in temperatures, there could be a red flashing downwards arrow or something indicating the change, or a clickable menu which pops up just before the race showing what the temps were in qualy and what they are now.

Thanks for reading.

 

Regarding variance of the temperatures it's up to the server admin to setup that not in a silly way. And it's not difficult.
About warmup session i agree your point of view.
You can see temperature in pit menu and with the "relative" app.

 

Temperature variation range between sessions is a server setting.

 

Agree on that one.
If the temperatures between sessions were somehow tied to only allow realistic spread in between them, it would be nice.

 

I made a similar suggestion a long while ago.

I'd love to see something like this:

[WEATHER_0]
[PRACTICE]
GRAPHICS=3_clear
BASE_TEMPERATURE_AMBIENT=22
BASE_TEMPERATURE_ROAD=11
VARIATION_AMBIENT=1
VARIATION_ROAD=1
WIND_BASE_SPEED_MIN=1
WIND_BASE_SPEED_MAX=10
WIND_BASE_DIRECTION=135
WIND_VARIATION_DIRECTION=10

[WEATHER_0]
[QUALIFYING]
GRAPHICS=4_mid_clear
BASE_TEMPERATURE_AMBIENT=21
BASE_TEMPERATURE_ROAD=9
VARIATION_AMBIENT=2
VARIATION_ROAD=2
WIND_BASE_SPEED_MIN=1
WIND_BASE_SPEED_MAX=10
WIND_BASE_DIRECTION=135
WIND_VARIATION_DIRECTION=10

[WEATHER_0]
[RACE]
GRAPHICS=4_mid_clear
BASE_TEMPERATURE_AMBIENT=20
BASE_TEMPERATURE_ROAD=9
VARIATION_AMBIENT=2
VARIATION_ROAD=2
WIND_BASE_SPEED_MIN=1
WIND_BASE_SPEED_MAX=10
WIND_BASE_DIRECTION=135
WIND_VARIATION_DIRECTION=10

[WEATHER_1]
[PRACTICE]
GRAPHICS=4_mid_clear
BASE_TEMPERATURE_AMBIENT=23
BASE_TEMPERATURE_ROAD=8
VARIATION_AMBIENT=2
VARIATION_ROAD=2
WIND_BASE_SPEED_MIN=1
WIND_BASE_SPEED_MAX=10
WIND_BASE_DIRECTION=245
WIND_VARIATION_DIRECTION=10

It would kind of make the variation settings redundant but the session to session graphics changes bug me rather than setup issues. I like to include some more cloudy weather presets but it looks horrible when it switches from clear in qualifying to mid clouds in the race.

 

Well, even if it is a server setting, it needs to have a max variance control. Also there needs to be greater awareness of the conditions and when they have changed. There needs to be big flashing arrows all over the place and a million pop ups telling the user, a joke of course, but you get my meaning. Drivers need to be made aware that climatic conditions have altered.

Also, the session info is VITAL information. It should be on display at all times whilst in the pit lane menu.

 

For every player that wants a max variance there's probably one that wants no variance. Generally, more options are better and if some people want to play with wild temperature changes they should be able to.

Pretty sure the track conditions are always able to be viewed on the left side of the screen when you're in the pits. Go to the screen that shows session info and the list of people in the room and you'll see session length, time remaining in session, ambient temp, track temp, etc. I agree that those kind of large swings are undesirable but when you're going into random public servers who knows what you're going to get, but the info is there to make sure you don't get caught off-guard by it.

 

Other than tire pressures, what else has to be changed in a setup when going from 26° to 10°?

 

26° to 10° is still within realms of real life, and would not be an issue

But what I experienced online a few times already (I think it was a SPA GT3 GT2 server) was e.g. 41° track temperature and clear weather in quali, and then 2° and mid clouds during the race.
Also I believe to remember that in this case the starting grip varied quite violently ranging from 92-99% (not certain on the numbers), building up quickly during the session, but not connected to the preceding session
So (worst case) we ended quali with 41° and 100% track grip, and then race starts with 2°C and 92% track grip. And that really had people spinning out like crazy.

My proposal would thus be to make it mandatory for track grip to only increase going from quali to race (at least as long as we have no rain to wash the rubber away over night^^) and to also tie weather changes to realistic values. As I'm from Austria, my tolerance would be quite high anyway, but a spread of 40°C is somehow out of this world.

 

That's not very realistic though, is it? Lots of times in real motorsports there are big changes in track/weather conditions between qualifying and race day and sometimes they're worse on race day than in qualifying. People should be free to set up their server the way they want to, if you're not pleased with how a person is running it then just find another one to join.

 

Its entirely up to the server admin no point making or forcing hard limits just because some admins set servers up in a fairly silly way. All you can do if you dont like the way a server is setup is leave and go to another one or start your own.

Making weather changes more obvious between sessions would be a good thing, but then I would also like weather to be changeable in a session where temps can go up or down during the session so in a longer race you likely would need to make changes on the fly to pressures mostly.