RaceRoom – May 2019 Developer Notes

Sector3 Studios published the May 2019 Developer notes for their RaceRoom Racing Experience title bringing us up to date with the latest progress made on the racing simulator.

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Summer is short in Sweden, so we try and make the best out of it, and that means quite a lot of vacation days have been taken, and therefore a significant slowdown in development for a few weeks.

But here we are, back at it, skin maybe still peeling off from sunburns. I hope everyone had or might still be having a nice time out! I for one visited family and friends back in Belgium.
Is this relevant for these development notes? Well, sort of, as I landed in Belgium the very week of the Spa 24H. I went there on the practice days, 23rd and 24th in order to collect references for no less than 7 or 8 cars.

Transmission sounds still set to 11.

After those refs were taken, it was time to go up and pay a visit to Aris (Kunos), Paul Jeffrey (RaceDepartment) and Chris Haye (Check his Youtube channel) did queue to qualify for the ACC event, but suddenly had other opportunities to seize.

Anyway… Here is a quick rundown of the items listed in the notes from May, and where we stand for each:

1. Cars: The WTCR 2019 car class that we were working on is out and the eSport season has started (Check out the first race stream).
   We had a couple of small updates since the release, and also WTCR 2018 car class received their physics update to match and be raced alongside the 2019 cars.
   What we still have not shipped is the BMW M1 Group 4, which is awaiting liveries, and the updated Volkswagen ID.R, remade according to actual telemetry for which I also need liveries. Discussions are to resume soon with Volkswagen Motorsport regarding livery designs and final sign-off of the new physics. As you may have seen, Romain Dumas and the VW crew have been busy breaking records in China as well!
2. Tracks: Two of the tracks we’ve been working on are now finished and being prepared for public use, so expect announcements and previews in the coming weeks. Our artists will immediately move on to new projects as we have reached agreements for four more in the meantime.
3. Force Feedback updates: Static friction and pneumatic trail effects have been in testing for a while now and I have to hold them back for now as we have to wait for a gap between two competitions before we push changes that affect handling and performance of the cars. Those effects are physics-based and the pneumatic trail effect has an impact on the car handling, especially coming out of corners. The next period between eSport competitions is December 2019.
4. Moving / resizing HUD elements: Issues reported on ultrawide monitors are considered fixed. Let us know if you still have any.

So, what’s new?

• @Thomas Jansen has been recruited to help in the physics and AI department. After proving his worth as a beta tester and delivering flawlessness™ in BOP, Thomas is now a consultant, working hand in hand with @Alex Hodgkinson . He is tasked with things ranging from damper tuning to critical AI physics improvements, such as preventing AI of recent cars from losing the rear so often.
• Renato Lipi has been recruited as our new web backend developer. Renato will have a lot on his table with very big tasks awaiting him, such as a migration to AWS, development, along with the rest of the team, of the scheduled multiplayer /rating/career features, improvements to competitions, menus, and so on. I’m confident that his skills, in combination with a true passion and excitement for the projects, will help bring RaceRoom much further.
• @Anthony Monteil and @Robert Holm are cooking up some nice updates to the tyre sounds. A completely new set of recordings from Anthony, along with some code changes in the engine from Robert (allowing tweaks per car but also more randomness in the samples) should bring you a lot more information regarding grip levels while you are driving. I tried to demonstrate the progression in this video :

What we need to avoid is for this job to put us in a spot where AI cars differ quite a lot from the player’s car, making racing feel unfair as AI appears to have a much better cornering grip, braking or power.
To prevent this but also improve AI in general, @Robert Holm has experimented and came up an interesting self-learning AI. The way it works is that we take a car and we throw it on a track, then we tell the AI to drive and run tests to autotune itself. It all happens in a few seconds and the following measures happen:

• DECELERATION / BRAKING
  Performs brake tests and compares the measurement with what AI thought would happen. Useful for preventing AI from hitting you in the back.
• ACCELERATION|
  Performs acceleration tests and compares measure against prediction, this will, for example, improve the calculation of slowdown penalties or the decision of when to issue a stop-and-go penalty after cutting the track.
• LAP
  AI performs a timed lap and logs it for developers to gauge the effects of their changes (for example, matching real-world lap times)
• CORNERING
  Keeps track of how far off the line the AI went and the amount of understeer. Used to prevent AI from cornering too early or too late.
• RADIUS
  A complex set of tests for grip levels per corner radius, allowing AI to be fine-tuned so they are not dead slow in hairpins or lightning fast in medium radius corners.I’m very much looking forward to seeing what the team achieves with this new tool.
  Watch it in action here:

1. Physics – Current projects are:
   • GT3 overhaul (Release December 2019)
   • DTM 92 / Touring Classics (Release TBA)
   • VW ID.R modifications for an eventual release in store (Release TBA)
   • Working on new cars as well that I can’t disclose.
2. Art – Always complicated to talk about what our talented artists are working on as they’re always the ones with the top-secret stuff in their hands… Just know that we have 7 or 8 cars in the pipeline at the moment, along with official liveries of the 2019 season of three racing series (for cars that we already released). As touched above, two tracks are in their final development phase. Two more are lined up afterward, currently receiving art polish and tweaks.
3. Damage – As you know from previous notes, we have suspension damage and flatspots in beta, and the only thing that was holding it back was the need for a modification of how damage options are handled. Right now, you have two settings to set for damage: visual and mechanical. That will go away and in the future, you’ll only have one damage setting with three choices: “Off” – “Minimal” and “Full”. If you want suspension damage and flatspots, you’ll have to go on “Full”, while “Minimal” will give you damage like you currently have it. That modification is now done and we only have to wait until a gap in eSport to push these game-changing updates. The next gap is in December. So that is when we’ll push those.
4. Dedicated Server – The following doesn’t require a gap in eSport competitions and therefore will hit your server machines very soon.
   • Chatbox – The server admin can now read and send chat messages. Messages from the server admin will be shown as originating from ‘SERVER’, like in this example:

In the server interface:

And in-game:

MOTD – The server can now be set with a Message Of The Day, a text-only short message that will be shown to players joining the server (in practice and standing start qualifying). Communities can now use this to show server rules or their website / Discord URL, etc.
There is some basic HTML formatting available. For example, the following:µ

Will result in this aspect:

Weight Manager – We’re adding an example of what can be done using the Dedicated Server’s API with this tool. Feed it with a results file from a previous race and in a matter of a few clicks, you can set success ballast for the next championship round, saving you the trouble of manually going through their ID’s and usernames.
We’re adding a field to input a formula allowing for quick automated weights attribution. Example here with this RRVLN race result where we give ballast based on the finish position in class, with a maximum of 50kg:

Official Webpages – game.raceroom.com – sector3studios.com