Real-time weather discussion

[Pilitev]

I’d like to hear your opinions about adding real time weather, like when it’s raining in real life at that specific time at a real world circuit, it will be raining in the game too. To me this would be a really cool feature to the game and adds another dimension. Imagine that you do some online racing in GT6 and that you discuss the harsh circumstances on that particular circuit the day after with others here on the forum. Or for example a special weather forecast section on the forum with the latest weather news for each circuit.

- Do you like this feature and do you think it will be worthy for the game?
- What do you think of the implementation (will it be difficult?)
- Are there any other racing games which have this feature and have you played them and how was your experience?

 

[Samus]

Let's get weather on every track for starters.

 

[avens]

It adds nothing to the game and I don't see weather getting decently implemented in racing games/sims for the next 10 years anyway.

 

[iRevelationz]

PD can barely manage having weather on 10% of the tracks as it is. I doubt they'll ever get to something like this.

 

[Griffith500]

Yeah, I think it's great - GT5 hinted at it. I might be expecting too much, but I reckon it's PD's intention to have it fully implemented in GT6 across all tracks. Obviously not all of them have real world locations to look up, but that needn't matter too much for what should be an optional feature. A "random" (but believable) weather selection thingy for those tracks, and for when you're playing offline, would probably be a necessity, and fits in with the sort of systems PD seem to like.

 

[another_jakhole]

Yeah, I think it's great - GT5 hinted at it. I might be expecting too much, but I reckon it's PD's intention to have it fully implemented in GT6 across all tracks. Obviously not all of them have real world locations to look up, but that needn't matter too much for what should be an optional feature. A "random" (but believable) weather selection thingy for those tracks, and for when you're playing offline, would probably be a necessity, and fits in with the sort of systems PD seem to like.

👍

Like you said, too, we were kinda expecting this to be in the final version of GT5.

 

[CodeRedR51]

Let's get weather on every track for starters.

Word.

 

[Exorcet]

It adds nothing to the game

It makes the tracks more accurate. Right now, tracks in GT5 have some generic weather setting for the most part, and even with rain, there isn't a whole lot of variability.

Add true dynamic weather and all the real tracks suddenly, on average, have their true wind, precipitation, pressure, temperature, etc. All of this will impact how you have to set up your car and how fast you can possibly go on the track. It's also nice to have it automated in this way as it will be realistic by default and one of the largest factors in tuning and race strategy would finally be included in the game. After all, while in GT5 people can set up a car for a track and then never change their tune, that does not happen in real life. If you take the same car to the same track more than once, it might like one setting the first time and some other setting the next time.

 

[Griffith500]

That's also an excellent point, regarding realistic conditions track-to-track. It also means I'm even less likely to change my tune, so to speak. But then I'm lazy. Or rather, I don't mind driving the car I'm given, for the most part, so adding extra variability without my input might be nice for me. Some of my best online experiences, when the game first came out, were when the track evolved (just track temperature, and rain) as time progressed.

Of course, those that want fixed conditions should be able to specify that; it'd obviously be necessary for leaderboards. That said, it'd be nice if those fixed conditions represented some kind of "average" for the track, and so would still differ slightly, making each track a more or less unique challenge with respect to chassis settings (maybe even engine settings, e.g. for wet tracks go with a peaky / linear tune instead of torquey).

 

[IceMan PJN]

It makes the tracks more accurate.

No, it doesn't. You're saying that, to be accurate, it needs to depict the real-world track conditions at that moment. Okay, don't limit that to weather, because if it's 3:00 AM at the real track but daytime in the game then you still aren't depicting it as it really is at that moment so now you also need to make it the correct time of day/night.

"Even better! What's wrong with that?" Well, we aren't pro drivers who do nothing but race for a living. We have normal jobs and race when we have time revolving around more important things. If you work in afternoons and the best time for you to game is at night after work, 100% of all of your races are now night races. Well..., except for tracks half a world away. Maybe we don't all want all of our races to be depicted at the same time of day all the time.

 

[Samus]

If they were to do something like this there is no need to go crazy and have it set to the real exact weather and time of day at the same time, all they need to do is have a calendar system and base the possible weather on the date. Go to a Spanish track in June and there is a very high likelyhood of a dry, hot track, low chance of rain. Go to the Nurburgring in November and it's likely to be cold and more chance of rain. They're just random examples but you get what I mean.

 

[doyley101]

The only game I've ever played with this feature implemented was Mario and Sonic at the Winter Olympic Games so I guess I'm not really in a position to say wether it's very useful or not...

 

[counter345]

In real life, weather is everything in a race, especially in an endurance race. Weather can completely turn a game around in terms of win or lose, and the fact you have to dynamically change driving styles during rain/snow is brilliant fun. Currently, the few tracks that include this in my opinion, whilst good, aren't nearly a big enough selection.

 

[R0ssingt0n]

As long as they can make rain tyres that actually work in the rain than I cant see how real time weather would be a bad thing.

 

[Pilitev]

If they were to do something like this there is no need to go crazy and have it set to the real exact weather and time of day at the same time, all they need to do is have a calendar system and base the possible weather on the date. Go to a Spanish track in June and there is a very high likelyhood of a dry, hot track, low chance of rain. Go to the Nurburgring in November and it's likely to be cold and more chance of rain. They're just random examples but you get what I mean.

Of course they can make it as sophisticated as they wish but a more simple system will suffice for a start. I think it isn't even that difficult to implement for normal single player races, all they need is a weather server communicating with the game. You've got those weather sites which tell you for example:

10 am cloudy
12 pm cloudy heavy rain
14 pm light rain
16 pm heavy rain
18 pm sunny
etc

The game can use these as inputs to make a pattern for the race. Of course the weather prediction will change during the race and the game can use these changes from the weather server to make a new pattern.

 

[Samus]

I don't really see a need for it to be completely accurate to reality though, unless you're actually at the real track you're not going to know what the weather is doing so it makes no difference, nothing feels more realistic as a gamer.

 

[R34EVO9]

Of course they can make it as sophisticated as they wish but a more simple system will suffice for a start. I think it isn't even that difficult to implement for normal single player races, all they need is a weather server communicating with the game. You've got those weather sites which tell you for example:

10 am cloudy
12 pm cloudy heavy rain
14 pm light rain
16 pm heavy rain
18 pm sunny
etc

The game can use these as inputs to make a pattern for the race. Of course the weather prediction will change during the race and the game can use these changes from the weather server to make a new pattern.

You example is the best ive seen so far...

 

[JackC8]

It would be a neat feature, but I don't know if it wold work with single player. Does the AI drive ridiculously slow when it rains? Does it use the proper tires at the start of the race? I also think you'd have a lot of people waiting for a nice sunny day to do the career events because most don't like to deal with reduced traction.

I've never seen that in a game, but F1 2010 had it so that if it rained quite often at a track in real life, then there was a very good chance you'd see rain when racing it in the game. So for instance you'd never see rain at Bahrain but you were pretty much guaranteed a downpour at Kuala Lumpur.

 

[Exorcet]

No, it doesn't. You're saying that, to be accurate, it needs to depict the real-world track conditions at that moment.

No, I'm saying that using real world data is more accurate than a generic preset weather condition. This is true.

"Even better! What's wrong with that?" Well, we aren't pro drivers who do nothing but race for a living. We have normal jobs and race when we have time revolving around more important things. If you work in afternoons and the best time for you to game is at night after work, 100% of all of your races are now night races. Well..., except for tracks half a world away. Maybe we don't all want all of our races to be depicted at the same time of day all the time.

Turn it off.

If they were to do something like this there is no need to go crazy and have it set to the real exact weather and time of day at the same time, all they need to do is have a calendar system and base the possible weather on the date. Go to a Spanish track in June and there is a very high likelyhood of a dry, hot track, low chance of rain. Go to the Nurburgring in November and it's likely to be cold and more chance of rain. They're just random examples but you get what I mean.

It's not like it would be impossible to constantly update weather. FSX does it at 15 minutes intervals all day, everyday, for the entire planet Earth.

 

[Samus]

I never said it wouldn't be possible, I'm just questioning the point of it over just generic weather forecasts and probability.

 

[Pilitev]

It would be a neat feature, but I don't know if it wold work with single player. Does the AI drive ridiculously slow when it rains? Does it use the proper tires at the start of the race?

Why will the AI drive slow when it rains? When it rains in the game now they drive normally too, so they now how to cope with a wet track. Also the AI has the exact same weather prediction as we have, so they can act to it. Furthermore I think this will be interesting if they introduce character types like in B-spec. For example one team which drives very defensive will put rain tyres on to take out risks, and another team which is far back on the grid will take a gamble and put slicks on and it turns out they where right because the weather was indeed getting better, etc.

I also think you'd have a lot of people waiting for a nice sunny day to do the career events because most don't like to deal with reduced traction.

Nope, I know it's PD and you can never be sure, but there should be a simple 'turn off real-time weather' option in the options menu.

 

[Smoke&Slide]

If anyone can remember Flight Unlimited 3 on the pc, it had a customisable weather feature.Could use this in GT6, if PD can't use RT weather.

 

[another_jakhole]

Why will the AI drive slow when it rains? When it rains in the game now they drive normally too, so they now how to cope with a wet track. Also the AI has the exact same weather prediction as we have, so they can act to it. Furthermore I think this will be interesting if they introduce character types like in B-spec. For example one team which drives very defensive will put rain tyres on to take out risks, and another team which is far back on the grid will take a gamble and put slicks on and it turns out they where right because the weather was indeed getting better, etc.



Nope, I know it's PD and you can never be sure, but there should be a simple 'turn off real-time weather' option in the options menu.

haha Fifth Gear? I saw that this morning.

They added the options to change the weather settings when you're playing offline. Obviously they won't be taking that out. Just saying, I was surprised as hell to see the surface water percentage setting. Not surprised to see that we were finally able to change the weather settings offline (I have to say this or people think, "uhh, apologist!")

 

[I Am Yellow]

It would be a very cool feature, but I don't think it's necessary. If we get realistic time and weather change for all tracks, I'll be satisfied.

 

[another_jakhole]

I think what we need to remember is that we're not using the PS2 anymore. The "future" is now, we're now able to do things in gaming that seemed improbable, or something along those lines, only ten years ago. Getting these features at this point in time might seem unnecessary, but you ALWAYS have to think about the future.

 

[Griffith500]

I never said it wouldn't be possible, I'm just questioning the point of it over just generic weather forecasts and probability.

What PD should do is call it "generic" and use the real weather anyway (the "system" for grabbing the weather was already in GT5, and it's certainly not "crazy" by any stretch). You'd be none the wiser and anybody living near the circuits will be amazed at the uncanny connection between the game and the real world.

The irony is that developing believable climate models for each track (the "probability" part that you glossed over) is probably much more work and far more likely to do annoying / unbelievable things. I could see them including the real weather option and then just using a straight-up random button along with the manual settings. Once that's established, then I could see them trying for statistically "accurate" climactic variations (based on a very limited data set that is constantly being "surprised" by so-called unprecedented events).

Including real-time weather is the easiest, most authentic way to represent these variations, and you're saying there's no point to it?

 

[another_jakhole]

The irony is that developing believable climate models for each track (the "probability" part that you glossed over) is probably much more work and far more likely to do annoying / unbelievable things. I could see them including the real weather option and then just using a straight-up random button along with the manual settings. Once that's established, then I could see them trying for statistically "accurate" climactic variations (based on a very limited data set that is constantly being "surprised" by so-called unprecedented events).

 

[sporkface69]

My copy of NCAA has what they call "Weather Channel Live Feed" as an option. No reason PD couldn't do that.

 

[eran0004]

- Are there any other racing games which have this feature and have you played them and how was your experience?

It was done years ago in Microsoft Flight Simulator with pretty good results.

 

[Foxiol]

I’d like to hear your opinions about adding real time weather, like when it’s raining in real life at that specific time at a real world circuit, it will be raining in the game too. To me this would be a really cool feature to the game and adds another dimension. Imagine that you do some online racing in GT6 and that you discuss the harsh circumstances on that particular circuit the day after with others here on the forum. Or for example a special weather forecast section on the forum with the latest weather news for each circuit.

- Do you like this feature and do you think it will be worthy for the game?
- What do you think of the implementation (will it be difficult?)
- Are there any other racing games which have this feature and have you played them and how was your experience?

It will be a standard. Old games have it and if PD intentions is to be a simulator, this should be implemented as on every other PC simulator.

The list:

-rFactor (generic but you can set the cycle as you wish)

-rFactor 2 (you can set the time, the amounts of clouds, type of rain, etc)

-pCARS (it will have a fully customizable weather system with storms included and volumetric clouds in motion -GT5 should have this-)

-GTR 2 (customizable weather effects)

-Race 07/GTR Evolution (customizable and the effects are very similar to what we saw at GT5, but better)

-GTLegends (random weather effects as rFactor with cycle)

-EuroTruck Simulator 2012 (not sure if you can set the weather because the game works different but it has an amazing weather system with storms, fog and very cool realistic effects)

Then you can find more games and even flight simulators and sail simulators with volumetric clouds and very cool effects added to the simulation like wind and stuff like that. (imagine the wind depending in the direction, it can change the aerodynamics of the car, rFactor 2 has this)

We should be able to have weather and day night cycle all together and with the possibility to change at our will.

Of course we have snow effects in GT5...no one mention that, not so many games have it. With a proper tyre model the whole thing could be pretty cool.

P.S: Also i almost forgot about F1 games from Codemaster...not being a fully simulator because physics are not that complex, still the weather system is very cool too, realistic and with great effects.