Very timely post J-F, and I'm sure very welcome news. Posting first thing in the morning with breakfast? I almost have nothing to say. But for those who've watched me at GT Planet, they know I always have something to say... I'm not going to pile on you guys, especially after making such a downer post this morning. I will have to say though that I think the items you listed above really should have been a priority a bit earlier. I think the lack of basic racing sim elements like those and more were about as damaging to the reputation of RaceRoom among the sim community as your pricing model. I have to say that I'm amazed this superb racer isn't more popular, especially considering that one of your "friendly rivals" in the racing genre is Project CARS, a game I consider far inferior in many ways. However, it does offer the essentials in what people want to see in a racing sim such as rules, setups, pitstops and strategies for them, etc. Custom livery capability on PC, dare I say. And weather, ZOMG does it have a lot of nasty weather, but that's another story... I highly recommend putting out some sort of roadmap of the essential, non-top secret things people will expect to see in RR along the lines of your list above. I'd mentioned this myself before, and it would give the restless natives something to cling to. It's stuff like this which give the sim fiends offline and online the essentials of a functioning racing sim they consider dealbreakers if they aren't included. I understand that you have to keep those darn "money guys" happy too, because they essentially write your paychecks, so I have little doubt that a certain level of priority will be given to producing a DTM 17 when that time comes. But I'm very, very, VERY hopeful that you guys will have the leeway to broaden the racing spectrum of RR in ways I want to see advance, such as including more iconic race cars by Lamborghini, Aston Martin, Ginetta... Ferrari eventually, more leagues such as GT4 and even the fantasy racing I posted about previously. Open wheelers aside, I think there are a few significant gaps in the "experiences" RaceRoom offers, and I'm gently going to harp on them in the coming months. Drag some of the money guys to threads like these to show them what we want. Let me reiterate that I'm sorely impressed by an unfinished racer that tickles my fancy as much as Gran Turismo does - I must admit that GT and its wealth of cars is my first love and BFF. But now I have a racing game I love just as dearly, and a developer to admire as much as I do Polyphony Digital. It takes a lot to impress me that much. Keep fighting the good fight.
Hello I'd like the car setup had the possibility to memorize the controller profiler, I have 3 of them: pad sequential and H, I have to swap them many times during a evening
Sipping freshly brewed coffee while browsing the forum is part of the morning routine when arriving to the studio Nothing to say for our defense, really. There are TONS of things this title has been missing from day 1. Since Sector3 times, we're trying to address that as quick as we can. It's been a wish to provide a roadmap, but since that devstream where we said we wanted to and today, we had many things "coming in the way", so to say. Now things are a bit different and it's not impossible that we come out with a roadmap soon.
I was going to mention coffee or tea, but thought it was about time for you to be rising. Obviously the world is bigger than I thought it was. I expect you will be getting a lot of Likes and responses to your post. The sim structure improvements is one area I haven't really worried too much about. You clearly know how to build a great racer, many of you remaining from SIMBIN, so I was a bit baffled by the few people who were afraid that there would never be pit stops. Odd people these humans. I do fret a bit about how RR will grow. I know that Mini Coopers are a possibility/probability, Audi TT is coming, open wheel cars and LMPs are coming. But my ongoing fling with P CARS has left me hungry for you guys to grab some of the cars and leagues in in the game, because SMS hyped up their racer, like a TON, and in some ways it's not even as good as Gran Turismo. Certainly the physics are weaker than in Forza 6. If anyone can do GT4 cars like the Ginetta justice, or even something like a Nissan 350Z racer, it would be you guys, and you've captured the essence of the racing environment superbly. Well, do need to get in a nap. Thanks again for a fantastic racing game. By the way, I hope someone Likes you very soon... 666...
Thanks for the replies @J-F Chardon. I appreciate the difficulties faced over the past year or so. I guess we just want to know these often-requested features are being worked on and aren't far away.
Hi J-F, Thx for letting us know, makes me feel a lot better knowing the team is working on these things. Really appreciate all the good work you guys are doing. As I said, I really love this game and just worried and got a little impatient Any news on the progress Robert Holm is making with the AI to make them more prone to overtaking again?
....and also AI mistakes, accidents, mechanical failures and retirements? AI still feels a little lifeless. Actually, I ran a DTM 2015 race last night which I had to quit out of and noticed on the classification screen that two other cars had a DNF. Not sure what happened there as that's something rarely seen.
Hey James, Could you look at the replay and find out what happened to the 2 DNF's. Would be nice to know what made them retire.
I ask for this roadmap several times. If believe the community will not ask every day for some new features when they see that you are already loaded with a lot of work and what is on your todo list I think it make no sense to do the same thing like other race sims. Each sim has it again strength. For me, RRE is just just fun to drive this sim. The most important factor for the experience is the immersion from the RRE sound and RRE has this awesome classic car packs. Thats the USP (unique selling proposition) of RRE. If you have some space on your todo list, think about adding some iracing features / services. Iracing sucks for me, because I dont like the content (too much US stuff) and the driving feeling. In Europe its also difficult to play iracing. Often bad pings and strange event times So why not thinking about to add a new player on the market for online racing. But I love the concept of organized event based races with rankings. Just ask gamemuscle (I think you know this guy): RRE has a solid base for adding this feature. RRE has own servers, a very good online racing, very good content. All needed is a ranking of racers and some special events to earn points for their ranking. From a business perspective this could also be interesting you (S3) . This could also increase the number of people playing RRE online. So this leads to a win win situation: S3 could earn more money and the community have more players online
Thank you very much for the clear words @J-F Chardon! Looks like you might need a bit of agile development, like e.g. scrum... I'm not an expert here too but I worked with it in software projects that got so big that the scrum method helped us a lot to get everything organized. Otherwise the dev team got drowned in the sheer amount of tasks to do.
S3 sure has some work ahead until R3E feature list is somewhere around RF2 for example. There are still few reasons why I like to support S3 and R3E: -Game has a good focus (GT racing mostly, both modern and historic) -Production quality is good or excellent (sound and graphics assetts) -It has decent or good set of features already (offers decent experience both SP and MP) -Both the dev team and community are the best ones in the field (devs really care about their product and customers and community is helpful without any elitism or blind fanboy attitude) Those qualities are really the strong points IMO. For example, I uninstalled AC a while ago, because I just don'get the product: no proper game features, odd selection of cars and I can't see this situation improving in the near future. Physics are outstanding, but I just don't get AC's popularity as it is. It feels like it's stuck in the beta limbo, although it is a year since full release. pCars also suffers from mish mash content without proper focus anywhere. Community feels a bit weird to me both in PC and AC and both dev teams have shown some pretty awkward customer handling in the past. GSCE and rF2 have a good set of features, communities are pretty good and that is why they are my "other" modern racing sims. They aren't without faults either. If R3E seems to lack features, those sims seem to get (official licensed) quality content really slowly. And for the cars, for example, it seems that it takes ISI several updates to have their stuff really working like intended. Both sims have some good mod content, though, which is a plus (more so with GSCE). Sure, I'd like to have proper flags, full setups, weather and night racing and more tuned AI ASAP, but it is now what it is. To me at least, R3E is bazillion times more entertaining already compared to AC. It also wipes the floor with rF2 and GSCE when you look at the official quality content. pCars is a mixed and strange bag having few outstanding qualities, but few not so ones (like aforementioned mishmash content, FFB). To me it seems that pC devs didn't exactly know whether to aim for Forza style simcade or full HC sim, so they tried to combine those two. End result is not necessarily something I personally find particularly appealing. Just my take on to the position of R3E in my virtual garage. I fully understand the complaints about the lack of features, but in my point of view, alternatives that offer far better experience in single product, are also quite non existent.
Has anyone seen the latest video footage of iRacing Now we are talking! Are you allowed to reveal how big Sector3's team is, in heads? At studio founding last year not even half the size of SimBin in the past, that much I understood, but - well?
they said in a recent interview they are in about 11 people at Sector...(well now 10 if they haven't replaced Jay Ekkel yet)