What are your general thoughts about mods?

[Dark Gio]

It was hard for me to start adding mods to this game. All my life I've been avoiding content that's not officialy supported and/or released by the original studio, because I thought it spoils the experience.

But then I tried a couple of tracks for this game and had a good time. Specially with made-from-scratch Donington Park by "Brun". It was a revelation.

But then again, I started trying cars, and I'm not very happy.

My first one was the Mazda MX5 Miata, and I think it's very accurate and fun to drive, but the rest, I don't feel like they're correctly adjusted to the simulation.

I tried the Ferrari 288 GTO and it's a beast. But it also beats the hell out of every other car that are, more or less, on the same class. Is this true with the real car?

Then I tried the Mazda 787B and happened -more or less- the same situation.

So, do you trust modders with the accuracy of their creations?

To be clear, those three cars are very fun to drive, and feel very realistic, but I don't know if this is the true experience of driving them, and I don't want to get used to something that is faking a simulation.

[Ragequit Inc.]

I'd say, I've been 'happy' with many mod-cars but not many tracks, if any. I suppose it comes down to the difference between laserscanning (by Kunos) and just 'winging it'. I think the mod-tracks just need more surface-variation, which would bring more 'liveliness' to them, even if it isn't 100% accurate to real-life.

[rudski]

With the car mods not so much. I personally thought the only car mod that was worth it was the Cobra that come out early.

But with tracks you just have to be selective and you're right a lot are just poor conversions from rFactor. But there are some very impressive tracks. Here's a few I'd consider close or equal to Kunos quality.

Barbagallo
Baskerville Raceway
Blackwood (reloaded)
Donington park
Gentrack1
Luccaring
Lippo street circuit
Prato
Paul Richard 2 layouts
Singapore night
Red bull ring spelberg

[Associat0r]

Publicado originalmente por Dark Gio:

I don't feel like they're correctly adjusted to the simulation.

Publicado originalmente por Dark Gio:

I don't want to get used to something that is faking a simulation.

Due to the fundamental phyics flaws in Assetto Corsa, every race car needs major fudging, even official cars. Read this http://pretendracecars.net/2015/08/24/what-virtua-simulazioni-struggled-with-when-creating-the-formula-renault-mod/

Also the handling is changing a lot with every update http://pretendracecars.net/2015/08/13/interest-in-assetto-corsa-appears-to-be-declining/

Also fundamentally it uses an ad hoc tire model.[www.racedepartment.com]

Fudging physics has also been confirmed by Kunos here http://ravsim.com/2012/09/02/simulating-the-racing/comment-page-1/#comment-37

[phoque]

dont reply to him

[Dark Gio]

Publicado originalmente por Associat0r:

Publicado originalmente por Dark Gio:

I don't feel like they're correctly adjusted to the simulation.

Publicado originalmente por Dark Gio:

I don't want to get used to something that is faking a simulation.

Due to the fundamental phyics flaws in Assetto Corsa, every race car needs major faking. Read this http://pretendracecars.net/2015/08/24/what-virtua-simulazioni-struggled-with-when-creating-the-formula-renault-mod/

So that means that the only ones that know how to fake the physics to get the closest realism is Kunos? That means that any modder that goes by the numbers, ignoring the end result, would end with a completely wrong car simulation?

That really sucks.

[Associat0r]

Publicado originalmente por Dark Gio:

Publicado originalmente por Associat0r:

Due to the fundamental phyics flaws in Assetto Corsa, every race car needs major faking. Read this http://pretendracecars.net/2015/08/24/what-virtua-simulazioni-struggled-with-when-creating-the-formula-renault-mod/

So that means that the only ones that know how to fake the physics to get the closest realism is Kunos? That means that any modder that goes by the numbers, ignoring the end result, would end with a completely wrong car simulation?

That really sucks.

Yes that's right, but even the Kunos cars change drastically between updates.

[Jok3sta]

I look at it this way. Since I have never and probably never will drive 90% of this cars in real life, I cant judge how it compares to the real car. As long as it looks to be good qualityand drives believably, thats good for me. A gt3 mod should be doing similar lap times as the kunos gt3 cars and so on.

[rudski]

Can someone correct me here but the AC engine works like this for car mods, in a "general" way.as long as the modder can find the real proper data for each car which is available on the internet all the modders have to do is plug in the correct numbers for example spring rates and every other bits of infomation need to be all accurate and the engine takes care of the rest.

If it takes Kunos three months to add one car then expect a modder to take much much longer, most cars are still a WIP.

There are lots of cars for example the Cobra that was so well made Kunos went into a partnership and the modder and Kunos made the Cobra you have in the sim today.

[SeriousSpy]

DON'T RESPOND TO ASSOCIAT0R.

[Associat0r]

http://www.assettocorsa.net/forum/index.php?threads/game-stock-car.22692/page-8#post-436917

AC physics feel incomplete when compared to GSCE or RF2.

FFB on AC gives way too much informations, that’s why the majority think “it feels better” or even worse “it has better physics”.

When you enter real data to RF2, it works like real life to some extent, it’s not the case for AC, you always have to use workarounds and substitute models :)

Ofcourse, because most of your mods are within kunos stiffness limits … try to do some modern f1 with ULTRA stiff heave springs (400 N/mm +) and come back to me, i will show you a nice workaround :)

And i will say it honestly, tyre model is weak and is very limited … and you used P4/5 tyres on your oreca, why havent you used your real life data then ?

The first workaround any modder in AC meets in BrakingTorque : you always have to reduce it because there is no thermal simulation that changesfriction coefficient and so on …

[Dufoe]

I have always liked mods for any of my games that support it. My problem is with modders that do not update their fmods when Kunos makes changes. Many of my mod cars do not have sound in the newer version of AC, so I have to keep loading and unloading the older original sfx files and the new sfx files to be able to use certain mod cars or the basic Kunos cars.

[Ragequit Inc.]

Publicado originalmente por Associat0r:

Fudging physics has also been confirmed by Kunos here http://ravsim.com/2012/09/02/simulating-the-racing/comment-page-1/#comment-37

That's a VERY loose definition of 'confirmed', lol. Do you even read the posts you're linking to? Or did you just Google "Kunos fudging" and called it a day? (also note, this IS from 3 years ago)

"Kunos on September 4, 2012 at 09:32 said:

I think stating that current sims overly rewards mindless pattern repetitions over adaptations is way off the reality.
I will give you a simple example, Andre Botcher, incredibly fast iR “alien”. He came in at our booth at Gamescom and drove our F1 car in Assetto Corsa with no pratice time an unknown simulator, on a jumpy bumpy moving platform with wheels and pedals he never tried before.. he was incredibly fast from the first lap.. and I mean, CRAZY fast, I’ve never seen anybody driving like that… he did it on the F1, and then it did it again on a smaller single seater car… not a single mistake, on an unknown car this time.
That cannot be muscle memory, it is driving in a “reactive” way, adapting to the informations the simulator is giving constantly… and I think current gen sims are doing a very good job at that.

Of course practice time will make fast drivers faster, but that also apply to every other sport in the world, sim racing exposes a major difference wrt real racing because practice time is virtually free.

Another element to consider when talking about patterns and muscle memory is that sim racing allow a much finer and repeatable action on the controllers. I can open the throttle at exactly 72% exciting a medium slow corner on a sim, doing that while my car is pulling 2+ G laterally, bouncing and shaking all over the place for grip in a real car however, is a whole different story.. and I won’t even get started on the brakes side, where finding that “sweet spot” is made an art form in a car pulling 3,4,5 G during braking.

As for the “tyre modeling” thing… I think we’ve reached a point where, as developers, we’re hitting a huge bottleneck with real data availability; not because the data is secret or hard to find, but because what we need it’s mostly unmeasurable.. this is the reason why virtually all the new sims moved away from literature tyre model into custom tyre model… but without data to validate or unvalidate these approaches, it’s all speculation, marketing and fudging anyway.
10 years ago my forecast for the sim world was about a “convergence” in driving feel, back then, jumping from one sim to another was a patience exercise trying to rebuild the familar patterns and let’s not get started with more arcade games that featured ill custom physics.
Today we arrived to that convergence, you can jump from GT5, to Forza, to iR and your driving style remains pretty much the same.. there are very few examples of driving “games” that don’t expose a very natural driving style (yah.. codie, I’m looking at you :D) .

So right now, everybody and their pig can get a decent driving model, what’s next for driving sims? I think the match will be played in those areas where data are either unknown or unreliable.. it’s up the single devs to come up with a solution, and this solution can only come through experience.. driving, feel, drive again, tweak… this is why I just can’t believe my eyes when I see a sim engineer that cant drive on a race track.. it’s just wrong… and yes, there are many out there that can’t."

[Associat0r]

Publicado originalmente por Dufoe:

I have always liked mods for any of my games that support it. My problem is with modders that do not update their fmods when Kunos makes changes. Many of my mod cars do not have sound in the newer version of AC, so I have to keep loading and unloading the older original sfx files and the new sfx files to be able to use certain mod cars.

That's because AC doesn't support modding properly. No 100% backwards compatibility, no package system with proper versioning, no auto-syncing of mods online, etc etc and this is just the tip of the iceberg.

[kazereal]

Publicado originalmente por Dark Gio:

So, do you trust modders with the accuracy of their creations?

Some mods are good, some are plain bad. There's very talented people in the modders and then there's entirely opposite.

Some mods are in very early stages or anywhere between start and finish so there's in no single way to judge them either, they are mostly all in some stage of work-in-progress until modder gets hands on better data or help from other people and so on.

There is no single answer, it is all case-by-case which mods are good and finished.

[Associat0r]

Publicado originalmente por Ragequit Inc.:

Publicado originalmente por Associat0r:

Fudging physics has also been confirmed by Kunos here http://ravsim.com/2012/09/02/simulating-the-racing/comment-page-1/#comment-37

That's a VERY loose definition of 'confirmed', lol. Do you even read the posts you're linking to? Or did you just Google "Kunos fudging" and called it a day? (also note, this IS from 3 years ago)

Their fundamental approach to physics modeling hasn't changed since then.