News Live Interview with J-F Chardon on This Week Inside Sim Racing

Thank you @J-F Chardon for a nice interview, and also @Darin Gangi for hosting this and for picking some of my questions!

To clarify I think the DSP for older cars are to lame / weak.
I would like it to be a harsher engine brake, locking up the rear wheels + easier to suffer transmission and engine damage with over revving and making to fast down shifts.

I don't know if there is a difference between using manual clutch with the gear shifter and just having a button addressed as clutch?
It was ages since I had my wheel assembled.. . So I usually use my 360 with the LB as a clutch.
And like that I' mostly just being ignored to downshift if I try to do it to fast even in the old cars..

And also, the "must use clutch" option for the old cars with gear grinding (risk of getting transmission damage) and put to neutral as a cause if not using it was referring mostly to SP. (or just the way it should work if you choose manual clutch instead of automatic imo)(not forced)
I have tried, and I can hammer that transmission in the TC, DTM 92, IMSA, NSU, M1 class up and down as a mad man without using the clutch and nothing happens..
In this situation I would like the game to refuse me to shift, and also cause damage if trying to much.


My last question was if there are any work being done on in depth damage that have effect on the races and the handling of the cars, like radiator issues and over heating, oil leak / pressure trouble, engine blowouts, suspension damage and flat tires?

 

I was discussing this with the guys myself the other day.

The dsp on h-pattern cars works like J-F described, it makes that scratching noise and doesn't actually engage the gear until save revs are reached (kinda auto-clutches it). Then the gear will be put in.
But this only applies if you have damage disabled, like in lb challenges, competitions or on servers or in sp races where mechanical damage is off. If mechanical damage is on that won't kick in but instead the gearbox will be damaged. That's how it is and I guess that's how it's going to stay for now.
Now as you rightly say that doesn't work all that well atm cause the damage isn't that severe.
That being said, you should see some improvements in that department in the future.

 

yeah thx JF for the interview (and Darin)....

a nice chap I must admit...

great to hear about the STTC tracks!!!

 

Well what did you expect him to be like? This?

 

Seems that this Q/A session was pretty neat. Interesting insight on things from @J-F Chardon

Although, seems most of the questions asked were just ripped from this thread without being looked over before hand to pick the best/most unique, but that's how it goes sometimes I suppose

This one wasnt asked in the stream, but is probably the most interesting from my perspective. Always interesting to hear how the vision for a game changes over time, and that is quite apparent with R3E. Perhaps one of the devs will be around to share some thoughts

I dont really see this coming back. It would require a ton of work for little benefit. J-F mentioned that some features are pushed by their business clients that have the RaceRoom simulators at events. I dont really ever see that happening with them because they are more a pick up and race sort of thing with friends.

Apex Hunt was a mode that helped guide you through tracks, but that was scrapped a while back because seemingly few people used it, and constant development of it was too time consuming. There are other more important things the devs can work on that benefits everyone, like flag rules for instance, than a driving school mode... as cool as that sounds to some.

Well, I know in the past months that AI has been worked on. Actually, I guess you can say they are constantly looking to improve it, but as J-F mentioned, things like the AI seeing a "blue flag scenario" wasnt possible before. Such as when you are on a hotlap in qualifying, and the AI just came out of the pits in front of you... They wont block you anymore, so you should be able to get a real hotlap in without fighting the AI. Not only that but awareness of the player car to the AI is also being improved upon. So they dont just drive into you and bump you off track.

Mistakes, spins, and retirements though? This may have been a by-product of the changes being made, but the AI has had a few more spins than before. And honestly, I thought it would be wonderful for immersion to see more human-like behavior, but let me pose this question to you. How would you feel if the AI is in a bunch early on in a race and one of the lead cars spins and creates a pile up? Realistic, maybe. However that would be frustrating because it would interrupt the race and you might need to restart. Im not sure I would want even further human-like behavior of random crashes and such.

This might be one of those issues people think is bugged, but may not be. I agree that in some instances it seems like the AI has better braking, but I know that I dont break to optimal efficiency. Whereas the AI can brake perfect, which would cut down braking distance. Although, many games AI's ability is amplified a bit to get them competitive. Perhaps this is just a limitation for the AI, where if you gave them exact behavior like the player... that this would provide terrible racing for one reason or another.

Every game has AI kinks and idiosyncrasies that you can learn about from racing them. Maybe just know that the AI will sometimes brake better than you so plan your braking distance accordingly. Think of it like an MP session. Some people brake perfectly and can outbrake you, whereas others brake miles early and throw you off. Just brake a moment sooner if you are worried about running into them.

This is a very interesting question for general usability sake. Look at what happened with the steering rotation. Now it is automatic when you change it in the car setup so you dont have to go to another menu and adjust the virtual wheel. It just happens automatically.

Perhaps this is one of those features that can be looked at in the future

 

+1
Those Scandinavian tracks will make my year, whatever year that will be!! (hopefully this year!)

 

You make some good points here. It's not just you that likes to have a deeper understanding of things. How BoP works, how the cars are developed to be balanced, how the physics improvements happen and what changes, how features that affect gameplay are progressing or improving, etc.

However, how could J-F have been asked about any of that if no one asked those questions here? None of those questions were asked, so Darin didnt ask J-F questions that no one thought of. Perhaps if you wanted an answer to some of that, you could have made a comment sooner so Darin could ask those questions you had.

GTR3 development would be something better left for the devs to talk about in detail, since there have been lots of improvements. BoP was looked at and taken into account, even if certain cars people thought were OP actually werent. Not only that but even further improvements to the physics...

Same with the WTCC cars. They had a ton of work done to them as well as testing and they are certainly well balanced to eachother even while maintaining their own characteristics. One car may feel like it is the easiest to handle, but another car may be slightly quicker. That said, all of the cars achieve quite similar laptimes. The only real difference is the ease at achieving those times. A couple cars you may have to actually work hard at getting a good lap in, whereas another might be pretty simple to get a fast lap in.

Fuel was discussed in the stream... it is adjustable

Your other questions Im not sure about because Im not a dev with that information but as J-F said once again, never say never. Improvements to existing features are being made, as well as adding in new ones.

I think the main takeaway is that R3E is going to continue to be developed for the foreseeable future. Sector3 doesnt seem to have any intent to drop support and move on to something else. Which I can say is most welcome and I am thankful that they are sticking with it to keep on improving a game that all of us enjoy here.

Cheers

 

I'm pretty sure J-F would have been the "wrong" person to ask most of those questions anyway, those things are best known to @Marko Hartikainen, @Karsten Borchers and @Robert Holm, the people who work on the physics every day.

So I wouldn't mind having a dev stream in the future with (one of) those guys joining in and explaining some things, like Karsten or Marko did in the past, cause many people seem to be genuinely interested in how this stuff actually works.
Actually, maybe it's time for Robert now to step into the limelight. What do you say Robert?

 

Thanks for your replies @nate

Very good to know.

That's a fairly extreme example I suppose but that is racing at the end of the day. These things happen. I would rather see a more fallible, human-like AI with all the faults that brings than the slightly sterile AI behaviour we have now. And if a lap one pile-up isn't desirable then, as you said, the restart race option is your friend with nothing really lost in doing so.

All I'm saying is I would like more unpredictability in my offline races.

Let me pose this to you: how many real life races do you see where no cars spin/run wide/crash and there are no retirements through accident damage or mechanical failure?

(answer: almost unheard of)

This is the problem for me - every offline race is the same, almost completely lacking in incidents that make real races so exciting. Number of cars starting = number of cars finishing every time. There's no tension that the AI car up ahead might make a small mistake that costs him time or that his (or my) engine/gearbox may go pop when in the heat of a battle.

At the very least the AI should suffer mechanical faults as per the old Simbin games. Knowing that a few cars won't finish adds some interest to single player racing.

I take your point but I'm not entirely satisfied with the situation here. I would suggest that this occurs more often than "some instances".

All I can say is AMS allows me to hit the same braking points as the AI without me continually bumping into the back of them.

 

The challenge is to get it right, to be, as you rightly called it, an incident, not a regularity, and that's where it gets tricky. You want such things to happen but you don't them to happen at the exact same spots, or on every lap, or worst of all both.
That's the real difficulty, making it so it appears to be an accident, not something that happens to all of them all of the time.
But I'm kinda convinced you won't be disappointed.

 

I doff my hat to you, sir.

 

No need for that, but thanks for teaching me that wonderful phrase I hadn't heard of before.

 

You make some very good points James. Let's see if I can offer some more thorough thoughts when I made the above comment.

You are right that this is a bit of an extreme example, however it is one that was occurring too often while testing. Mainly this was happening with huge grid sizes where the first lap is packed bumper to rear, and the AI has some trouble navigating cleanly while still maintaining a competitive pace. Crashes were happening and as I was always starting in the back of the grid (testing their pace) this presented an awful lot of concern since there were more than just a handful of restarts.

Im mainly coming from a more casual players perspective here. Would someone new to R3E want to have the AI make faults and crash in front of them ending their race? Or have the AI be a bit more "on rails" so to speak, but be able to cleanly do lap after lap? While I agree with you that it would be nice to have more variety with the AI, faults, spins, off tracks, etc. I think the AI does also need to perform well so players dont get frustrated with the AI and stop wanting to do single player races because of it.

In this respect, I think the update will be positive for you. It seems there are a handful of DNF's for various reasons. And occasionally it feels like you can pressure the AI into outbraking itself in a corner just by your presence of being next to it, and make the AI overshoot a corner, or 'panic brake' and end up sliding.

Cant say it's perfect of course, but a modest step forward. Not only that, but to get the AI to be at as good of a level that you (and I) hope for, takes lots of development time, and I know they are continuing on with the improvements. So dont be concerned that this next patch is going to be as good as they get, or if any issues are present, that they wont be fixed.

Not sure if this will be improved upon. My hope would be the same as yours, that more depth like this would be given to the AI, but my sense is that something like this would be down the priority list (if it is even on it right now) simply because providing a more competitive AI would have a bigger benefit to more people than an AI car DNF-ing from too much damage incurred over "X" amount of laps.

Yeah, I know what you mean. It is perhaps a bit annoying when you are side by side trying to brake in R3E, but AMS surely has a lot of different code adjustments made. Maybe their AI code is more complex, or further developed. Im really not sure.

Cheers

 

Ha, my question was asked. Thanks @Darin Gangi

 

@nate

Thanks for the in-depth replies.

 

It could be an option as realistic damage etc, we could choose realistic "AI" behavior in the menu.
The most exciting races is when you see an accident up ahead, and you have to read the outcome really fast of how this will turn out, will the crashed car stop before I pass, roll forward or backward, should I try to pass right or left, or do I need to brake?
When you just miss an accident by an inch like that is super thrilling, and a big part of why you constantly want to go back on track over and over. imo..

 

Totally agree.

As you said, AI behaviour could have various settings, maybe even sliders to determine how likely incidents are to happen, how many retirements etc. I know this kind of thing takes a huge amount of work but one can dream!

You could have a 'purist' AI for those that want the AI to drive a straight race and a 'crazy' setting for the likes of Heppsan and myself.

 

Mmm, I really only want one AI setting, "as close to reality as possible".
Sliders, different settings and such could maybe be an option in the future, but only if we have a very sound base to build those upon.

 

So the update is next week? or did I miss understand?

 

That's what J-F said, yes.