AMS 2 Development Roadmap - More News, Videos and Pictures

[Paul Jeffrey]

Reiza Studios have released their 'Development Roadmap' for September, and it's packed full of exciting Automobilista 2 news!

Proving themselves to be as versatile as ever, Reiza Studios have released a new development roadmap for the month of September. This month, the Brazilian studio have shared plenty of details about the upcoming Automobilista 2 racing simulation, plus further news about the ongoing work that is taking place for the (fairly) recent rFactor 2 'Reiza Pack' DLC.

Full roadmap post from Renato Simioni below:

Hello again everyone

September has been another busy month in an ongoing run of busy months that shall continue as we push flatout with development of Automobilista 2 - so let´s cut to the. chase and go straight into what we´ve been up to this past month.

AMS1 / rF2 Bundle Updates

We still have a few updates and fixes pending for these two releases which (at the risk of sounding repetitive) are due out soon. Please bare with us a little longer here

AMS2 Community Skins

We have recently announced in our development forum (restricted to Reiza Backers) that those who joined the AMS2 Early Backing Campaign will have the opportunity to become part of Automobilista 2 by submitting their own paintjob and driver name for any of the various fictional or semi-fictional series which will be present in the sim. and for which backers can apply to become one of the official drivers in Automobilista 2.

If you are a Backer and a capable skin painter, check out the various topics in Reiza51 for instructions on how to apply.

All talented skinners are welcome to come showcase your skills by submitting your application for any of the many series in Automobilista 2 open for community skins, such as this revamped Formula V12:

For the more prolific skinners out there, be advised we are also on the lookout for someone to join the team in an official capacity - if you´re interested in taking this a little more seriously, shoot me a PM

New and familiar Brazilian Series for AMS2

As previously announced AMS2 will see the introduction of Brazilian Sprint Race Series. Powered by a 260HP V6 engine with RWD, sequential 6-speed shifter and with a central driving position, this car serves as an excellent training tool for several types of racing and should be a perfect option for door-to-door action.

AMS2 will also continue to feature the popular Brazilian Formula Vee, the popular trainer now in its latest model featuring a new engine and suspension geometry.

Making the Game Engine Tick

Back when we were developing Stock Car Extreme into Automobilista, a small but significant adjustment we made was bumping the physics tick rate from the original 360hz to 720hz, along with controller rates from 90hz to a (potential depending on setting) 360hz - what this effectively results in is noticeably higher fidelity from physics and better feedback for the controllers, as the game is running physics calcs and outputting feedback at a faster rate.

With the Madness engine we have been looking into it again and finding some good room for improvements. Tick rates are a simple thing to change but something to experiment with carefully as audio, physics and controller rates all interact within the game engine and ought to remain somewhat in sync, so a good deal of testing is needed to find the balance between what rates bring significant improvements without causing problems or performance issues.

The original tick rates had to mind performance on lower end consoles where there are more performance bottlenecks - given we don´t plan to release AMS2 in these consoles and PC hardware has continued to evolve over the years, combined with the fact our assets are generally lighter on resources has given us a little more leeway to tune up those tick rates and get a bit more fidelity all around.

The biggest boost this time so far has been on the audio front where tick rates have been bumped to substantially higher rates than it was and higher than the AMS1 audio engine (which ran @ 120hz) - the difference is even visible when analyzing the graphs below, showing two 100ms chunk of audio curves under the old and new rates:

Old Audio Frequency

New Audio Frequency

This naturally also results in substantial higher fidelity audio in-game, particularly with high revving F1 engines which are capable of covering a respectable RPM range over 100ms.

You can hear what we´ve got so far in the video below featuring 3 of these high-revving engines over a lap at Interlagos - (please keep in mind the usual WIP disclaimers):

On the physics front, the margins for upscaling tick rates were smaller as both physics and controller tick rates were already set at 600hz,but physics has also been bumped up to AMS1 level @ 720hz, as when you´re trying to tame a 1000bhp monster on slicks over standing water you need all control you can have - see for yourself

As before all videos are captured with fairly standard system specs (i7-3770k CPU @ 3.50GHz, 16gb RAM, Geforce GTX 1070) so rest assured we´re not planning on blowing any gaskets here on the contrary, AMS2 should remain very accessible in terms of hardware requirements.

Grinding the Tranny - Manual Transmission Model

Further development on the physics have been made on the drivetrain model, specifically for cars with manual boxes so as in AMS1 the driver can´t get away abusing his gearbox speedshifting or skipping gears without clutching or rev matching.

Here again we´re fortunate to rely on SMS legacy code which was somewhat similar to what we had in AMS1, so re-enabling it and merging with our own model has been relatively straight-forward - it´s already working reasonably as can be seen in the video below:

Obviously everything seen and heard here is early WIP and subject to a lot of fine tuning, but the good news is that this compounds what is overall a more advanced model which will among other things eventually include damage to gears and gearbox altogether from recurring miss-shifts.

London Team Meeting

One of the catalysts for the recent developments has been our team meetings in London - for those not aware Reiza doesn´t have a physical studio so devs work from their own location worldwide, and all team work is done remotely. This is suits us fine generally but we also find it productive and personally rewarding to get together once in a while to perform a few days of intense in loco team work.

Unfortunately not many from Reiza could make it this time but the London setting wasn´t accidental as there we also got the opportunity to meet some of the key people at Slightly Mad Studios, and for a few days consult with some of their lead devs over various topics regarding the development of Automobilista 2 with the Madness engine.

From left to right: SMS Andy Garton, Myself, Reiza Dom Lovric, SMS Ged Keaveney and Reiza Dave Stephenson

From the start of the relationship SMS has proved themselves to be great and enthusiastic partners, generous with their time, knowledge and assets, without which we wouldn´t have a chance of meeting the very aggressive development schedule we have set for ourselves with Automobilista 2. This again proved the case in London where we were treated with great hospitality and able to feed on their expertise, for which we are most grateful.

That cover it for September! We have a couple more updates to go so expect things to pick up steam from now onwards with more info about the development of AMS2 and our longer term goals for it, the premium licenses we are in process of securing and everything else we´re aiming to deliver for it´s initial release and continuous development over the coming years.


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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[Neils on Wheels]

It's looking really good & only a few months till we get to try it.

 

[Stig's Portuguese Cousin]

Seems a lot better then before but I still don't really like the sounds, and hopefully they improve.Physics, colors & graphics were better as well, specially the colors in the first videos it was too yellow and too colorful but everything overall seems to get better in game, ofc this is still WIP, expecting to get even better.

 

[UnixRoot]

Don't forget the Nordschleife

 

[ShredatorFIN]

From videos, looks like it has 2D trees. I think this is actually good thing, saves performance and they look very good on video. Even with good GPU, why waste power into trees, when they look perfectly fine as 2D. The trees of pCars 2 look worse, and they are 3D

 

[Neils on Wheels]

Well i'm not a fan of 2d trees as in vr they look unsurprisingly 2d. That said the solution in pcars2 wasn't so good either as the lod was heavy & shadows could look messy. So yeah maybe it would be the best way to go.

 

[Jivesauce]

Show us the Mini!

 

[Dethrone1427]

Just a bit more depth and bass in the engine and I'd be a happy chappy!

 

[David Peres]

These videos show quite a visual improvement from the previous ones we saw. The color pallete and lighting are looking much more natural (like it was said a few posts above, the previous videos looked a bit yellowish) and the trees look better as well.

It seems like 2D trees might still be the best solution for simracing (outside of VR), providing they have proper textures and shaders. At least that's how I feel when considering all the graphical artifacts we see on ACC and PC2 3D trees.

Overall I'm so hyped for AMS2. I was a very late arrival at the AMS (small) party, but it's propably the only sim I own that feels like a proper finished product.

 

[eg01st]

I very much prefer these graphics - clean and crisp in all distances. Unlike Unreal that kills the performance and still looks bad, especially trees.

 

[G_B]

No problem with trees, let's take advantage before the forest disappears in Brazil.

In my memory, the external sound is of quality on the engine of PJ2 but the inner sounds are a little laborious, I note an evolution compared to the first videos. To see if that is enough on long sessions and not to have a headache.

Good luck to the team and Renato.

I'm waiting for this game before the arrival of Flight Simulator, who knows one day I will have the sailor's foot ...

 

[G_B]

I very much prefer these graphics - clean and crisp in all distances. Unlike Unreal that kills the performance and still looks bad, especially trees.

Why not but ... you can change filter, change color, change setting in ACC, also with NVIDIA Filter, you can have very nice effect on the game. The perfect simulator is the reality : )

 

[UMC 22]

It seems like 2D trees might still be the best solution for simracing (outside of VR)...

As a VR user, I'm perfectly happy with 2D trees in my racing sims. As someone else mentioned, why waste processing power on them? I honestly don't know how some people even notice this kind of thing while actually playing. I mean, they're supposed to be racing, not sitting still staring at the scenery. Put the detail where it's really needed, that's what I say.

 

[aantonioo]

One very very minor thing that bothers me are the rev LEDs on the Formula Ultimate. Would be nice to have them as in real life, with the green ones for DRS and so on

 

[mantasisg]

Thats slicks on water ? They seem strange. But it is getting interesting, can't believe time goes so fast.

 

[Jayblue]

Looks like a big step from the previous video previews. Looking forward to seeing how far Reiza can take the Madness game engine given their amazing work with gmotor 2.

 

[dreamer al]

Counting down the days.......wooohooooooo!!!

 

[Jonathan Young]

Getting more and more interested in this. Looks excellent to me. Hope it gets her before the Christmas break so that I can indulge myself I’ve been playing ACC almost exclusively for a while now and, while I absolutely love it, it will be great to have something that’s hopefully similar in quality. As a bonus, there’s very little content overlap between. AMS2 and ACC in terms of cars or tracks. I’m hoping they’re goin to make for excellent complementary sims.

 

[kamtcho]

Don't forget the Nordschleife

Does not need to be included on release, but Reiza please look at possibilities with licensing that green hell. It is only think i miss in your best car simulators/games.

Imagine it. Damp daily on nord after work - chill online like in AC.

 

[Flip-Flop Driver]

"Grinding the Tranny"

On a similar subject are we getting karts? So we can tuck in drag.