Feature Request: Random, yet realistic weather progression / weather forecast

[twistking]

Hello,
with Project Cars 2 coming along nicely, i feel there are only few features left, that are either still missing, or just not yet talked about.

From the Previews, that are available, it seems, that the game is still missing a way to set weather progression, that is somewhat random, yet progresses realistically and gives you a simple (!) weather forecast to work with.
Instead of having completely random weather that can result in "thunderstorm / sunny / heavy rain / sunny", i would like to set up a general weather theme and a chance for it to realistically go in some direction from there.

So maybe you could set "heavy clouds" with a "15% chance of of light rain" and "5% chance of getting caught in a passing storm/heavy rain at a later time".

The game would then create a realistic progression with many slots, but instead of showing the actual progression to you, you would get only vague updates while in the session, where the forecast gets more precise over time, while you yourself, or your AI crew monitors the actual weather and forecast. I think the forecast would be the important feature. Having some information what lies ahead of you, but not absolute knowledge over progression. In pcars1 you could basically count the minutes of each slot and could calculate when the next weather shift would occur, even with the slight randomness to slot timing. (While this could be fun to troll the AI with perfectly anticipated tire changes, it was neither realistic nor challenging).

I think having a system like this would be essential for using the new weather features in a meaningful way without exploiting the system (knowing exactly what comes next), or being unrealistically f***ed by random weather putting a 10min thunderstorm between clear sky without warning other than the "we are expecting rain in the next 10min or so" (which would trigger with the first rain drops, when you had weather progression on faster speed).

As a big fan of project cars from the beginning, i really hope this feature could be included
If you also can improve tuning-setup-UI and tuning-setup management/sharing/help/documentation, than i'm sure pCars II will be a dream come true!!!

[Itsdoomsday48]

Not really going to see how this will make a difference unless all you run is endurance races. You would still have to tell the game what weather you want to start the race under (because you don't want to do random). So for example if you start the race under heavy clouds and was using the realistic system you're talking about, wouldn't you expect it to rain at some point? Same if you start the race with clear skies, would you expect it to rain anytime during the race? The only way weather can work I believe is the way PC has done it by allowing you to set the weather for how you want it during the race

[twistking]

I don't know, what's there to not understand.
Sure, you'll set the starting weather. If you want to play it safe, you'd set it to 0% chance of rain, but if you'd like to have a challenge, you can set it to a 10% chance of rain (over the next hour). So if you run 5* weather acceleration, a 12min race, would give you a 10% chance of rain at some point. Or it would rain in 12 ut of 100 races you do... (you get the point)
So most likely you'd be safe, but it would still dramatically change your pit strategy even if it turns out, to not rain at all.

You may have noticed the "random" weather slot, that should make the weather more unpredictable. Only that this is a stupid implementation, since it chains up slots arbitrarily and therefore unrealistically and does so without giving you any hint (forecast) to work with.

[Itsdoomsday48]

It's just not realistic weather though. If you start the race with clear skies or heavy clouds but set chance of rain to 10%, its not going to rain in either scenarios, even though realistically heavy clouds would call for more than a 10% chance of rain. I think you're stuck in the bind of wanting to have random weather but have it happen realistically and I can understand that. The only solution I could see would be to have real time weather at the tracks ( something that was experimented with past EA Sports games for example) but that would be asking a lot from the developers. Real time weather also means only being able to run the race in real time, so I don't see how it would ever work, again unless you were running much longer races

[Mahjik]

That was talked about for PC1. Keep in mind, it's a sim for cars, not weather.

[Mad Al]

Not to mention, it's a bit late in the day to start a complete rewrite of the weather system

[Itsdoomsday48]

That was talked about for PC1. Keep in mind, it's a sim for cars, not weather.

I'm just trilled to finally have a racing game that not only lets you adjust the weather but gives you so many options for weather. It's frustrating how with even their newest installment FM7 is still behind in this re-guard but hey their loss

[Mahjik]

I'm just trilled to finally have a racing game that not only lets you adjust the weather but gives you so many options for weather. It's frustrating how with even their newest installment FM7 is still behind in this re-guard but hey their loss

Wait until you play with the seasons. It's awesome to be able to run a race with all the trees green, then flip to a different month and all of the trees are brown..

[twistking]

If you start the race with clear skies or heavy clouds but set chance of rain to 10%, its not going to rain in either scenarios, even though realistically heavy clouds would call for more than a 10% chance of rain.

Ok. now you trying deliberately not to understand me. That was obviously just a crude example. Also i don't see why heavy clouds would not have rain probability under 10%!????

It's perfectly fine, that not everyone is interested in this options, but i can't understand how to argue against it. This is a feature request / wish by a humble fan and not the official development roadmap. So even dev priorities are not really an argument.

So, to simplify it for everyone to understand. I'm not asking for a dynamic weather simulation, but a clever way to automatically fill up random slots and additionaly a logic (that is the only "complex" part) that allows to give a "forecast" type info to the player without revealing the weather slot setup.
As an example:
You choose starting weather and pick random for one or all remaining slots.
You choose a rain probability (f.e.: NO rain, very low chance, low chance, medium chance, high chance)
The game populates the weather slots depending on the rain probability. It would only consider your "rain probability" input, the number of slots already populated with "rainy" weather and also it would also rate the "rain level" of a weather event (light rain = 1, heavy rain = 3, thunderstorm = 4 etc.)

Up to this point we are talking about some dozen lines of code and one additional UI element.

The most complex problem would be, to feed back the assigned slots to the player in form of a forecast with some kind of error in it, so that the player can not easily reverse-engineer the assigned slots from the forecast, that is presented to him.

[microlomaniac]

Feeling the need to chime in here.

I think a realistic way to enhance the weather selector would be an improvement of the "random" slot. No more, no less. Maybe multiple, different "random" settings to choose from.
i.e. a list of weather types to choose from would be:
- Sunny
- Light Cloud
- Heavy Cloud
- Overcast
- Rain
- etc (what's been there in PC1)
and in addition:
- Random: 0% rain probability
- Random: 20% rain probability
- Random: 50% rain probability
- Random: 80% rain probability

Obviously, with a random weather slot, it would be nice, if not absolutely necessary, to also randomize the time it takes for the weather change to kick in.


Last but not least, some answers to a couple of posts:

@Mahjik:
Cars do drive in weather. The stunning seasonal conditions simulation in PC2 would obviously be pointless otherwise.

@Mad Al:
Nobody asked for a rewrite of the weather system, as far as I can tell. Let's not assume things, shall we.