Hot off the back of the Motorsport Games announcement, we have a new blog about the competition system again! We are probably going to go to a bi-weekly format from now on, which is more in sync with our normal development cycle.
Thank you all for participating in the last couple of months, these months have brought us valuable data from more than 1500 races we have held, and we are now preparing for some new formats and experiments. That means we will be suspending the competitions for one week to review data, formats and how we can improve, and we will be back next week with new competitions and new formats.
Note that our BMW qualifiers and GT Challenge series will still be running, so it’s not like everything is suspended either.
Part of this data analysis is to apply all of it to our rating algorithms. The results of that are definitely encouraging and prove that our base algorithm works well enough to start building on. So an important part of our internal discussions will be how to proceed with this and finalize the UI designs for such an integration.
So watch this space, and for now, let’s move on with our questions!
Q&A
Would it be possible to implement a national flag to display the competitors country of origin in the standings results?
pab3183
Certainly. At the moment the driver profile we store for everybody is more or less the bare minimum, but we always intended to extend it going forward.
Are any GUI overhaul planned for rF2 that would play into both single player/multiplayer side of things. Notifications, more customizability for everything that we see to get the desired information or lack thereof if someone chooses not to get anything on their screen either offline or online?
Robert
Making the new UI the default at the start of this year is a starting point for us to keep extending, tweaking and otherwise improving the UI. So yes, a lot more is planned, and internal betas already have a few new and interesting features that are directly based on community feedback.
Can anything be done for the overall lack of snappiness of the overall UI, track loading, changing aero kits etc which competition system relies on a lot? The amount of sheer slowness of the whole experience turns off many people from being more active online. After trying 1-2 servers and waiting for everything to load, then getting to a third server which doesn’t load because of how things are packaged within rF2 system, turns off even the bravest users. Having swift, smooth experience encourages more persistence in people.
Robert
Yes, we are looking into profiling and improving the performance of several sections in the code that are considered by many to be “slow”. In general the competition system should help here too, by making sure you have all content ready to go ahead of time.
Has anyone thought about developing a live telemetry feature for teams that take part in the Competition System? Something like a pit wall during races for members of a registered team during an event. There were mentions 2-3 years ago about having options for teammates having remote control of their teammate’s setup/race car settings while they are on track which are applied as soon as he/she comes in pits (during practice or during a race if it’s a change that is available in real life like wing angle change, brake duct blanking). Is it still on cards and developed to be used in competition system once endurance races and team features get implemented?
Robert
We indeed first need to implement the team/endurance racing, but once the notion of a “team” is in place, we can consider several of these proposed features.
Are there any plans for an official live timing app for phones, PC, browsers both within the game and on the website or like I mentioned on app on phone, so anyone can follow how any particular race is developing wherever said person is. Follow gaps, sector times, weather conditions, sector flags etc?
Robert
The new UI was designed in such a way that it can also work on phones or other browsers, so you can expect to eventually run all relevant parts of the UI on your phone (watching races, live timing, signing up for competitions, etc.).
I like the idea of the Competition System, however I am nervous to get involved based on my speed – do you have anywhere one can see the fastest / average lap times of drivers? If not, do you plan on adding something like this is the future?
Unknown
Dear unknown, the best way to find out is to just participate! We all started some time, and I can tell you, you will find fast and slow drivers on any server. Don’t worry about your speed. As long as you’re consistent and, even more important, predictable, you are totally fine online.
A few blogs ago it was mentioned that the next big thing we will see are safety ratings. Now my questions would be: How will the rating work and look like? How will the player and their driving effect the rating? How will the rating effect the player? (keyword: perhaps different safety levels) Any ETA?
Stevy
That’s a lot of questions rolled into one! Our next big item on the list for development is definitely ratings. That could include a form of safety rating as well. There is another question about this below. We have not decided on what the best algorithm for us is. Ratings in general for example allow you to access specific competitions, so we can build a bit of a pyramid and climb a career ladder. I don’t have an ETA yet. I do feel we need to write a separate blog on this soon, to explain these mechanisms a bit more.
With the release of the Tatuus cars we also saw the release of a few NZ tracks. They seem to be properly licensed, are done with real data and use the official track names. But they are released by a 3PA like the Alpine. Can they be used in the CS?
Stevy
They can, since they too were properly licensed by that third party.
Will we be able to use custom skins in the CS? And if yes, when?
Stevy
We are still looking at the best way to implement this, so I don’t have an ETA or specifics on how this will work.
Knowing there were talks about having permanent hot lap leaderboards, a few questions in that direction. Namely, is this still in the plans, and if yes, how far off is it?
Remco Majoor
Most likely those will be implemented as separate, long-running competitions with qualification sessions. I think we could start experimenting with those today. I’ll forward this suggestion.
Do you see it being more like Trackmania (except for 2020) and the legendary Live For Speed, where the records stay forever and WR’s will be saved (until the physics get updated of that car :D), or will it be more towards something like a weekly thing?
Remco Majoor
I think I answered this in your previous question. We keep updating our software and car physics, so records that “stay forever” would not really work as you point out. But I’m sure we can come up with some other, interesting concepts around this.
Will it be possible that the CS can be integrated into the HUD, for seeing live standing for example, or to see the sector times for the WR’s for example?
Remco Majoor
Technically, yes, when we finish our new HUD technology as well as implement some of the underlying designs we have to generate “live standings”. Those we would also use in our broadcast overlays, to have displays like “what would the championship look like if the race finished like this”.
Would it be a fun idea that instead of having just hot lap combos, also to have time trials (for example multiple laps, or even as many that you need to lift and coast in the FE car for example), which would give different challenges than just exploit single lap physics to get that last 0.01 second?
Remco Majoor
Yes, I would like both those ideas, the longer time trials and the challenges where you would need to drive as economic and fast as possible.
Will there be a separate hot lap/time trial rating?
Remco Majoor
Ratings can be applied to single events (like we do now) or competitions or even globally. So if we have separate competitions that consist of such types of events, we could also create separate ratings for them. So those would be linked to the competition and based solely on your results in that competition.
Will we get a setup sharing option? Let’s be honest the default setups aren’t always the best, so if some users could post their setups for everyone who wants to use a different setup but doesn’t really understand how they work have one. Mayne they could even be sortable by the user’s rank later on?
Goncalo Costa
First of all, we do try to create good defaults. I won’t pretend all cars are good, but recent ones should be decent at least! We might add an option down the line where you can decide if you want to share the setup you used in a session with others. It would certainly be nice to have a collection of them to choose from if you don’t like the default.
Would it be possible to do a 60-minute solo race on a Saturday for example? Something that is scheduled and advertised a few days before. For example the 60-min Spa race a weekend before the WEC round, etc… Or 2h24 of Le Mans in 13 June with GTE Class.
Julien Lemoine
We’ll consider that. It could be one of the new things to start trying after our one week break.
At what point of the CS development do you devs think we are? How much it developed since January? What points are the next priorities?
juninho tilambucano
Development is done using an agile methodology, where we have teams that work in sprints. Our code team is working on both competition, UI and other areas. I would argue our biggest topics for discussion now are around ratings and how to integrate those into the UI. I think we’re still reasonably close to our original roadmap posted at the start of the year, but we are discussing some priority changes. I’m pretty happy with where we are.
I already read some questions about the specifics of the rating system. Can you specify a bit more about the development or approach of a safety rating system? IMO the SR systems in other simulators are far from accurate, and they heavily influence the driving style in an unrealistic manner. And next to that it doesn’t adapt to the type of cars/race classes. Collision detection, and damage model seem to be the only factors coming in to play to subtract a certain amount of SR from all involved drivers, regardless of the situation on track. Will we see an improvement in that field compared to other simulators with the main focus on race craft, race type and in general…realism?
EricW
Good question. iRacing has had a safety rating for many years now and they still seem to stick with a model where your rating is based on the number of turns between incidents, where incidents are either you going off track or being involved in a collision. No blame is assigned, it’s just a stat. It seems to work reasonably well, but I too have been thinking there must be better ways. If you’re willing to share any ideas, we’re open to suggestions!
