the next step at netkar development ?

[kunos]

no, adding the osella is pretty straightforward. the problem is that the car is, compared to other cars in netkar, subpar in both graphics, audio and physics department. we believe it will be meaningful only coupled with the hillclimb track.

[Guest Hoshi]

Ah ok, thanks for the reply. Keep up the good work on this great sim :-)

[Guest McSaltens]

hi kunos how are you, im writing because i see here new stuff coming as you say wich is good, but may i ask, can we have some bugs sorted out aswell? for example in replays your steering looks exaggerated the steering wheel turn too much thats a bug, and one that is very very annoying is driving the formula r 2.0 you crash and you loose your wings and then in the replay when you fix your car its still without wings..ok in the fr2000 is easy to press the d button and gets fixed, but in the formula target it does not happen in fact you do it and you even loose the front wing then, and then your replay is destroyed from that point onwards because your car is all the time without wings...

would like that to be fixed

p.d. having a new formula would be cool f3000 for example

[kunos]

sorry perhaps I wasn't clear

I didn't say those things are coming out.. I said those are the things we might decide to work on but we really have no idea what we'll be doing from next september.

As for the bugs, we'll surely have at least one bug fix release.. most bugs appearing in replays are pretty hard to fix without a massive rewrite of the entire system.

[Guest McSaltens]

sorry perhaps I wasn't clear

I didn't say those things are coming out.. I said those are the things we might decide to work on but we really have no idea what we'll be doing from next september.

As for the bugs, we'll surely have at least one bug fix release.. most bugs appearing in replays are pretty hard to fix without a massive rewrite of the entire system.

i understand but they really have to be fixed... at least the on in the replays otherwise its nearly usefull having the replay :S

[Guest nicolas30on]

Hi there ! It's my first post here and i decided to give my thoughts on the game after i tried the latest test version.To be honest i have not followed development of netcar since it moved from the namie to pro status...a long time ago..

I was pleasantry surprised on some aspects of the game but also i was dissapointed on other aspects i thought would have been covered.In any case its nothing sort of amazing a sim of this caliber was made basically by Kunos himself and that is an archivement by itself.

What i love in simulations is being able to drive real normal cars at ways i wouldn't in real life or to drive cars i could never afford to drive in real life.I hoped as netcar namie had real normal cars the same would eventually apply to netcar pro .(If there were not enough money for licensing real cars the solution could be as simple as having fictional names and badges for the cars ).Sadly it didn't and i lost any interest i had for the game...

What i realised after playing the latest test version (with 1600 and the older with abbarth ) is that netcar pro is probably the most "realistic" simulation i have played or at least it feels to me that way.The tire feeling is incredible and i liked a lot the incredible detail given to the cars.The sounds are incredible too.To put it in simple words the core of the game is close to perfection.

But at the same time i felt the game is missing many things that people expect as standard,many things that need a LOT of improving and also maybe the most important thing for a lot of people like me ,normal real life cars.....

-For example the cockpit view.Its really good but its missing animations for the driver gloves/suits and also its missing some physics based head movement (like look to apex and agle view movement).Its clear from the external views that some programming went to make a driver and moving hands but it was not evolved to having full blown wheel turning,shifting,handbraking,hand high speed gripping animations.

-Or another example is through the damage model in really really good (probably perfect mechanically) it could get all that better with body deformation.(you could make it real time or have specific altenative models for crumpled car body's depending of the force of the impact.

-Graphics are good but really some bloom and hdr lighting could really improve graphics by a huge margin.Having real time lighting and having options to choose time of day like in rfactor would be a huge plus also.

Also having some grass on the tracks would be nice too.By filling the green "grass" empty textures with fields of 2d's bumpmaped bitmaps for grass graphics would be improved a lot without significant or any loss of perfomance.

About 3d trees and plantation i don't know how costly it is as perfomance goes but there are generators like speed tree that can feel a map in milliseconds with 3d trees.

A final graphic improvement is having more cones,barriers and signs and make them breakable...

-A large dissapointment is the absense of normal cars (with the exeption of the fiat 500)

A couple of normal cars would bring a hell of a lot of people back to netcar.

-And the last is make some large tracks/roads like the hillclimb you had made.

What i said above is with the best intentions.I believe netcar has huge potential and its a pity if that potential is not realised.If the above aspects are improved/added i think netcar can easily become the dominant simulator out there.

Edited September 2, 2010 by nicolas30on

[Guest CAR]

Firstly a few of your questions can be answered by taking a look at Ferrari Virtual Academy (in regards to graphics and driver animations)

Regarding the damage model, are you talking about all cars, or mainly the Abarth cos if so Kunos has said before that manufacturers don't like it when the bodies of their cars are allowed to be all beaten up (or something along those lines)

If there was the dedicated server mode Kunos mentioned in this thread, then for sure we would see more hill climbs (which are particularly fun when run in reverse), and it would be interesting to see what all the community efforts would be like.

Finally this' the main point, lots of people reach the same conclusion, that nKPro has a really good core but then opinions differ greatly on the direction it should head in. Personally I don't find the prospect of fictional 'normal' cars very appealing (but then I know I'm not the target market (as I don't even drive the Abarth)), as you can drive exotic sports cars at a track day for not that much money, but a test in a proper single seater costs a lot more and is therefore out of most peoples reach.

[kunos]

Regarding the damage model, are you talking about all cars, or mainly the Abarth cos if so Kunos has said before that manufacturers don't like it when the bodies of their cars are allowed to be all beaten up (or something along those lines)

oh no, I could never say that... you must be confusing me with Gran Turismo devs

My take on car damage modeling is easy to recap in these simple bullet points ( i love bullet points):

1) Graphically it's really HARD to do. Some devs go for a vertex based deformations that could look ok on a 1930 metal body car... modern race cars have a fiber glass body that won't bend or deform.. it'll develop a crack or a definite cut... or carbon fiber bodies.. that, again, won't bend or deform.. they just explode in a cloud of debris. Applying vertex deformation damage to modern race cars is, IMO, pretty demented.

2) I doesn't add to the realism of the simulation itself, it's nothing more than useless eye candy. Now, eye candies do sell games.. so maybe this point shouldnt be made by a game dev... but in all honesty, a real race where a damaged car has a REAL CHANCE of getting anywhere near the podium are close to ZERO.... i think a race sim software should just promote the idea of clean driving and use damage as a deterrent not as a price for wrecker.

3) Physically it is HARD.. because a car isn't just a shell, it's got stuff inside. Think about last week's vettel vs button crash... in all honesty, which sim racer would have considered that a "realistic" collision? One car got a broken wing, drove back to the pits and raced on.. the other one had a radiator exploding in white smoke.

I see lots of crazy things here at Vallelunga track.... I saw a couple of 500 Abarth roll over in disbelief... I thought "that must be a bug in the universe code!"

[Guest nicolas30on]

Hi Kunos and a huge thanx for replying !

You are right that vertex deformations would look silly or out of place on todays race cars and carbon fiber f1 cars.But on normal cars its a good looking and easy to implement solution i believe.Also i don't know how difficult it is to implement but wouldn't a algorythm for glass shattering be perfect for carbon fiber parts with the exeption having the force required to shatter the glass increased.

I just checked the ferrari virtual academy and my god the f1 models are out of this world!

I cant wait to try it ! I hope the animations of hands/suits are as good as the models look!(As well as look to apex/angle of view implemented)

But i do hope that bloom/hdr lighting with time of day and grass covered tracks are things you are going to add in the future...I know its eye candy and physics are what matters but nice graphics do help the sim.

Also when i talked about "fictional" normal cars i meant real cars photorealisticaly modeled but with fictional names and badges to bypass licensing problems.

[Guest CAR]

Also when i talked about "fictional" normal cars i meant real cars photorealisticaly modeled but with fictional names and badges to bypass licensing problems.

Yeah, unbranded, but personally I don't think it looks very professional (it's a little different and a lot less obvious with single-seaters though)

P.S. I'm counting down the milliseconds 'til FVA is released