Update 1.14 and RTR DLC impressions

After only testdriving the cars yesterday, this afternoon I had several 5 lap races, on default and on mod tracks, with a close eye on AI-AI behaviour and AI-player behaviour.

What should I say that has not already been said before by others. Stefano finally has nailed it. It has been a very long wait, but he eventually NAILED it. And that makes this 14th update probabaly the most important of all updates in AC's history.

Chapeau, Mylord! The white line has been passed - with flying colours. All is good.

 

Yes, it kinda was darker but colors might have been more colorful. I also thought pp filter had been activated automatically after the update but nope, i wasnt alone about thinking that then Didnt see peoples brake lights better but the color all around were different.

 

As soon as i entered the pits after the update i notice the improved clarity of the text plus everything seemed to stand out a little more in the colour department ,,, i'm using the DK2 btw

 

I have a question, now especially with the nationality shown in-game... how does the sim determine this for the AI with custom skins?

In the ui_skin.json of a livery you can for example determine several names

"drivername": "Driver AAA, Driver BBB, Drive CCC"
will show in-game as one of three by random - except for the real-time app where this stuff clips and makes lap times hard to read (would like to see this fixed)

"country": "Country AAA, Country BBB, Country CCC",
driver nationality (I've previously regarded it as team nationality)? Is it also picked by random?

 

Tried a few of the cars but what has amazed me most is the AI, its actually fun and cleaner/tougher racing then nearly any league race I have ran.

I setup a short race 5 lap race with 36 cars at Barcelona(OSRW mod) me in the old audi gt3 field has all gt2/e/3 cars and the lmp1 cars starting at the back. Amazed at the pace of cars in my class and overall race craft is pretty darn good now for AI. The way the LMP1 cars make it through the field and even a sneaky little z4 $%^er snuck past behind an lmp1 car to gain a spot on me lol.

Here is an onboard of a 5lap 36 car gt and lmp race.


Same race from static TV cams.


I also tried the lotus 98T at Silverstone 67 as we have a league race there this week, In the practice server I have barely had any sort of battles but loading up the AI gives better race practice then what most people can give you which I never thought would be possible. I dont think the AI can use turbo boost so I just kept mine down at 70% to match their pace but I had some great wheel to wheel racing in these and there are only a few people I know I could have such battles with so whatever is in those cookies @Lord Kunos keep up the dosage.

I havent tried all the cars yet, had a run in all the audi's and the video above I actually loaded the old r8 GT3 by accident but just stuck with it as the races were good fun. The new lotus is good fun and I look forward to running more laps in them all.

MP wise I do like the addition of accelerated time of day, wind is interesting Ive ran with it and noticed a few corners change in the aero cars which is pretty cool even if its fairly subtle or just full placebo. Having temps adjust through the day would be nice to really make time of day more then just a cool visual effect.

All the new cars are great additions and the extra code just took it up another level.

 

So we are even more that notice a difference. Could @Lord Kunos tell us what he have changed?

I dont see how this change have anything to do with the colors?

 

Regarding line passing... now the AI take a little too much liberty crossing lines, or more accuratly track limits. Running a 10 lap Nords race (only spectating, laundry needs to be done), and by the 7th lap 5 cars out of 18 retired, all of them Kunos cars (M235i, 911 GT3-R, Z4 GT3). I witnessed the Z4 traying to overtake on the outside at Flugplatz, ofc running wide, three wheels on the grass, spinning out. No trains are forming whatsoever (I added a few slow bros as driving obstacles, Countach and R34). Aggression is at 30% I think.

Turbinchen on 1st, only barely as it needs to pit more than the R8 GT3 right behind

 

What we would need is some kind of synchronization between the client and the server skins. Just speculating/dreaming here:

- A user connects to a server, the client app fetches the skin name by all the players on the servers and downloads them from the synchronization service to the client machine.
- Then, server side, when a client is connecting, a plugin could (could it? not too familiar with server side plugins...) read that same variable and fetch the synchronization service to then install the skin on the server. But then again that would cause issue with server disk space management. And I'm not even sure it would work in the first place without a server restart so...

Damn, I wish AC would use an iRacing (or LFS) like system for this.

 

Quickly tested the cars last night. Initial thoughts both Toyotas are really great & a bit of a surprise for me as didn't expect to enjoy them so much, lots of fun on the Nord with both the lmp & rally car. Same with the Audi vln that car was great to drive on the nord, cup was a bit boring when i tested on Brands Hatch in comparison but not really given it much chance. Maserati GT1 is also wonderful, not what i expected as turns in so well as is pretty easy to drive, just wish it had a friend or two to race against. The other cars are all great but i guess drive how i expected. Great value DLC absolute no brainer to get this imo. Only issue for me is i'm not fond of the sound but this is really an issue with all AC cars. Did not get to test the Ai yet so looking forward to doing that.

 

Did they retire because of track limit crossing? Does AI actually get penalties too? And do they retire in case of this, instead serving penalty?

All in all, many car/track combos. Some unforeseen issues may surface. But whatever happens I hope AI does NOT get neutered ever again, just because with some combo they crash. I truly hope there is some other solution to such possible issues, like some AI hints, slow down hack or something, that only covers that specific issue and doesn't change overall AI performance.

This is most fun I ever had in racing sim offline, please keep it permanent @Lord_Kunos ! Why I'm worried about this, is because in 1.7 AI was already good (not this good tho) and they got neutered to their slow state in which they were over ½ year. From what I've understood this was because some combos caused incidents.

 

It also appears under the delra app. Put where you can see it

 

Yeah, I think that's what we all are dreaming of, I guess.

The main problem I see there is that some users will misuse that to show off inappropriate or offending skins.

I doubt this would be a big issue.
First, it might make sense to only transfer a lower-res version of the skin to prevent a huge bandwidth impact.
Second, at least for multiple servers on a single machine (like most servers are set up I think), you would rather create a central skin cache on that server.
If you have a good file system, it does support deduplication anyway, so saving the same skin twice wouldn't even result in an increase in disk space.
Also, it would make sense to put a decay tag on the skins, cleaning up after a day/week/month or when a specific quota was reached.

So, I doubt that disk space would be the big issue.
IMO, bandwidth would be the problem. So servers might be more expensive than they are right now.

 

No, I think they retired because of crashes (looked pretty bashed up). Also, the AI seems to ignore the reverse gear completly, when they end up in an armco corner or just 90° to the armco they are often stuck forever.

Don't think they can get penalties. And if, it should be way easier to just trigger them to come to the pits.

 

Unfortunately not solveable by plugins and apps, it would need some support from KS. Otherwise I'd already have coded this

 

This 3-Eleven is just stonking. Cant get enough of it. Faster than a LaFerrari around Silverstone, but a whole lot more engaging and visceral to drive.

This may be the perfect trackday car.

 

I think it's just to give leaderboard apps a little more information - so instead of just displaying the type of car each person's driving they can show the colour of the car or the car # on race liveries.

 

I approve greatly of the addition of race position against opponents names, it means I can reduce the need for race position apps. The flag of country is also a nice touch. However I don't agree with the decision to get rid of the connection ping measurement in numbers, I personally think that is a backwards step.

PS, I also think that the the AI is massively improved, so kudos for that also.

 

Much appreciated Aris Knew it would happen eventually, always seemed an odd one in the first place.

 

Thats what I thought too