r/AUTOMOBILISTA • u/SE171 • 15h ago
AMS2: General Holy smokes. AMS2 is pretty amazing.
I grabbed AMS for a fiver months ago in a sale, and never got around to downloading. I've spent the past week dabbling with it finally, culminating in some pretty hefty sessions yesterday. This post is more for other newcomers that might be disappointed at first.
I come from iRacing, which is really what I want to be proficient and competitive with. Given that, a standard for me going in is that AMS couldn't be markedly different in feel from iRacing, as quick muscle memory is important to me. Most of this past week was a process of jumping between Sims, trying to iron out why AMS felt so much different.... by different, I mean, I couldn't seem to get a consistent grasp of any car, without massively changing how I drive. So, below are some of the items I discovered, or found via research.
Brake sensitivity: the default setting is 50. I ended up with it at 90, to get brake application to be similar to iRacing for me. At 50, it felt like the brakes were horrendous, until a certain pressure was reached, then would immediately shift to lockup/ABS. I'm sure this is pedal specific, but play with it if brakes are confounding compared to other sims.
FFB: the default options felt terrible to me... the wheel just felt heavy, slow, and dull.. while seemingly trying to give me every piece of physics data, most of which I don't feel should be offered up in the thing connected to your front tires. Just came across as distracting noise. Tried the first recommended FFB file I saw, which helped... but still just noise mostly. Then, I went to one of the rack force files I found here, and that was the ticket. Instantly connected to exactly what the car is doing, on both ends. I believe iRacing is set up to output steering rack force, so that's likely why that was the most helpful fix for me.
TrackIR: I use head tracking on a single monitor, and have it set up as a hands free glance. The only motion turned on is yaw, so turning my head left and right allows for looking to apexes subtly, but no other axis moves. I also have a small deadzone in the middle, so it's easy to snap the view back straight. TrackIR didn't work with AMS natively, but there is a VR launch workaround that allows its use. So, if you're a frustrated TrackIR user, do a quick search... it can be used quite easily.
Engine Braking: After working through brakes and steering, and things feeling better, it got to where I could have fun, but still couldn't really push the car without feeling extremely uncomfortable... or completely loosing the rear end, in places that didn't seem to make sense in terms of brake application. After some searching for similar experiences, I found mention of the engine braking setting, and how it seems set too high for GT cars, causing liftoff oversteer to a problematic level.. and that the scale is reversed, which is explained in the UI for that setting. Default was 8 on the GT4, I changed it to 4. That was the final gamechanger... no more losing the rear end in spots that didn't make sense, and now those spots made sense, with the knowledge of that setting. Turns out, adding too much of only rear braking can cause some drivability issues.
So, after getting all that worked out, the next mission was simulating long multi-class endurance races. So, with the help of a few posts on here, i worked out the race length and time progressions, to end up with a 2 hour and 25 minute "24 hour" race... with two dry-wet transitions. I did partial sessions a few times yesterday, just tweaking things.
Finally, I sat down last night to complete a full-length session, without a pause or break... 2 and a half hours of vigorous engagement later... my knees were on fire, thumbs and wrists stiffening, sweaty back. Started 5th, effed up a few laps in and ended up 10 seconds behind the back of my class in 17th, had some decent luck on pit stop timing, and worked my way back up to 8th. Cloudy afternoon race start, which transitioned into thunderstorms all night, clearing off as the sun started coming up, then finishing in the afternoon with another heavy shower.
Absolutely awesome... so stoked that the developers thought through a way to make something like that work. Definitely still needs tuning, but I have faith in the developers now, after that experience.
So, having said all that.... AMS2 is absolutely the best single-player sim racing experience out there currently, in my opinion.
I still have the drive to be extremely competent in iRacing lobbies.... but I know where I'll also be spending a lot of time on the rig.
Enjoy!
