Totally agree with this post - and as I said, this direction is off-putting for me as a potential new customer…
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It is pretty clear that the forum people here would not want to use the online-based features. But, we have heard over and over again from all our sales and support channels that profiles are difficult to find, device is difficult to use, and thus the FFB is not optimal due to these reasons. Our guess is that the feedback is coming predominantly from new users, but of course some old users can be seen being lost at times. By introducing this online system, we can solve this issue for new users and those that do not want to tune settings at all. There is an increasing amount of these users during this simracing boom who are upgrading from their Logitechs/whatever, and want to have a great user experience out of the box without ever going to forums, Facebook groupgs, or whatever service.
However, the current first version implementation of the online system is nearing completion, and overnight I’ve had more than a few ideas on how the online system can be circumvented and the device continues to be able to be used almost like as before without working Internet connection. These cannot be introduced at the first beta version, but more than likely we will have a have a solution on the table that is as good as the current profile management system, or at least comparable in features that matter.
But this requires a bit more development time to get accomplished. I hope you understand that continued progress in software development is a process similar to launching people to the Moon. One can’t reach the Moon by building ladders on top of ladders, and a new approach must be taken sometimes.
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This is great and makes sense. Thanks for being committed at this level.
Any chance filter development will pick up more speed? Or we should expect this last year to be representative?
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Filter development has continued in the background. However creating good filters that work about the same way in more than one simulator has proven to be slower than expected as a process - once one gets something great working in AC, as an example, then the same parameters are not as good in iRacing.
On top of this, there has been some industrial projects that has taken our development time, but we do expect things to pick up speed via recent strengthening of our development team and via opening new positions.
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Simple as doing it OPTIONAL
Anyone wants to pay for profiles like VRS setups, OK you have the option to do that by subscription to the new SC2 Profile App but please, dont do it by brute force.
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One must careful consider to manage the development resources. Having two systems that do the same thing is not viable option in the long term. But solution is being designed right now, that would take advantage of the rewritten code etc.
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Talking about making profits…
All of us knows that a “good” profile requieres time, and the willing to consent to transfer your work. How about some remmuneration for Pro drivers or Profile developers? Like subs to the User you like with actualizations an all this things
Edit
Not thinking on doing myself, but like customer in search of the less effort to drive on iracing for example. I will pay to creators that i like if they are working on that every patch of the game
Interesting idea that one, but requires setup. Not in any plans at the moment. And I must reiterate, that the online system users’ profiles are private until they decide to share them in the system. There are already fields to fill in Twitch links etc in the user’s profile, so proficient drivers can self-advertise themselves in our system. Its not like we would use any uploaded content without consent.
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Hi Andrew agree 100% with you on this matter.
@Mika do not force this on me
PS i have the worst internet connection .as i live in a remote location
Example download 300mb can take up to 6 hours.that is if i can even connect to internet
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I think everyone can remember when that day xbox release their xbox one with a force online”function”, they loose the whole console fight until now, so one thing is clear, DO NOT FORCING PEOPLE ONLINE.
But I do agree there needs to be a online profile system that for the users don’t want to fiddling the settings like myself. The solution is also simple, just make a offline mode so people will not complain to you when your server is down. We don’t want another ea or ubisoft lol
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There are people willing to pay for SC2 profiles, which is what, 3 sliders and in the end most likely not exactly what you want, too strong, too smooth, too weak, too grainy, etc…?
The business will be booming. 
It was addressed already in previous post, the profiles on their own are nothing, most of them can be close if not exactly the same for different titles, some people (mostly newcomers) are making way too much out of this, not sure why, perhaps confusion due to poor documentation.
Other, critical parts of how FFB feels are:
- In game settings (uppermost critical)
- Wheel diameter and weight including button box
- Rim hardness
- Physical fitness of the individual
- Personal preferences
That online profiles dumpster is not a silver bullet that magically going to solve all this. There is no substitute for learning the system, reading documentation, experimenting and finding effect of individual filters and interaction between them.
Good documentation with primer on FFB setup process and how to address shortcomings like oscillation, digital noise, etc, will go a long way and IMO needs to be done anyway with much higher priority than this online initiative.
“Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime”.
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I always thought that the next big step for the DD wheels is a refined profile management. Beeing able to try out profiles of users effortlessly would be awesome. Because of this beeing online, simracing pros and other simracing personalities could share their profiles without a hassle. I can imagine this beeing a nice selling point and a revolution in DD wheels if implemented nicely, especially since no other DD seller implemented a good online profile system. (The online profile system on the Accuforce v2 I had was awful)
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What made it bad, exactly?
Lol, and your team does? No offense but, if you’re going to make a blanket generalization like that and insult your own users, you’d better be doing it from a position of strength. Where I’m sitting, I’ve never once looked at TD or SC software in general and thought, “Wow what an amazing use of modern UX”.
Signed, senior UI engineer for an application company that has millions of MAU and is very much up to date on “UI design and modern software trends”.
Also, insulting peoples’ understanding of software trends when defending the decision to roll out a completely online profile management system without foreseeing that people would want an offline conversion tool or building a simple “cache” for offline use is kind of hilarious. My junior engineers learn how to build a cache for offline viewing in their first three months of employment…
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Will a similar online profile system come to the SC1? To be clear, I’m not requesting anything.
Perhaps there’s a cultural divide that we’re dealing with here. I don’t like buying a product only later to find I’ve really bought a service. I don’t like when changes to a product introduce new limitations on its use.
I don’t think the Fins understand how poor our infrastructure is in the US and how susceptible we are to power and internet losses. I’ve got a whole house generator so I can keep racing offline, but not if my wheelbase has to phone home.
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Difficult topic, hmm… I do agree in the sense, buying something, then getting something unexpected change, not so easy to accept. However, in the case of SC1 the selling price for the board was/is 169€ (+ IONI), it has very long lifetime based on how the hw has been designed, the hardware itself should be good to use for a long time. The product itself that has been sold from 2016 was a success but initially we did not even offer a firmware & software to it, only later that came. The firmware came later once we realized that no company wanted to design firmware to it for which we would sell the hardware. We never touched the price that was set without the firmware & configuration tool. I don’t have definitive answer here, but thinking that SC1 would have similar service, the purpose for it would be to lengthen its lifetime to the customers but also bring profits for the work to our company as it also brings value to the users.
Hmm. our understanding has been that the amount of users in the US is relatively small, not the smallest though, but our intent however is to grow also to the US market and such aspects should then be better taken into consideration.
In smaller towns here in Finland the power losses are possible here during some storms, lightning etc etc, at least about 10-15 years ago those were quite typical even (I used to have UPS for my PC while living in smaller town), but after law was introduced in 2013 that mandated electric grid companies to improve the reliability of the grid, that resulted that those grid companies put the power cables underground. The power cutouts have been vanishing as a result in smaller towns, but cutouts still do exist in the areas where the cables are hanging supported by the poles. In the city where GD is located, I actually don’t remember even a single power cutout over the past 15 years, there might have been 1-3 cutout that lasted ~1-5 seconds, but it is nothing compared to earlier times in countryside where it could last an hour or so, sometimes longer. However this is likely the case in almost any relatively large city in about any country that there isn’t power cutouts. I think that unplanned (outside of normal maintenance) internet connection cutouts during the past 15 years are also calculable with one hand fingers, at least with my internet service provider. So, it might be so as you suspect, in the first designs we may have neglected certain aspects that do affect the usability, but I believe the software team here will make changes based on the feedback.
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HI Tommi In my case where i live in the Philippines in small provincial town we have power out nearly every day Also only WI FI Internet that VERY VERY UNRELIABLE
So please do not FORCE this online update on me … As i can only race offline. Also the cost of my SC 2 Pro by the time i received it here $2700 including duty. shipping etc .and i do not want to use SC2 Pro as a paper weight if you have to be online to use…
PS. Will you refund me all that money
Regards Denis
I would be concerned this is going in the direction of a tiered subscription route. You will have to update the software when it is rolled out and once you agree to the EULA, that’s it.
Subscriptions will be basic/free which will be 1 default profile and 2 other profiles stored online. Access to others profiles if they are also in the free subscription tier. Next tier will be default profile and another 5 profiles stored online, access to the free profile tier. Top tier will be unlimited profiles and access to all profiles in basic and all other premium tiers and also an online profile builder. Fusion 360 users are up in arms to what’s happening to them, don’t let it happen here.
I would not like to use a system that would limit the number of profiles.
@Mika I think there is a simple solution to the issues people have: Show the currently loaded online profile in the existing profile management page in TD. This will allow people to make a local copy of the profiles they like and use them offline. You keep the simple 1 step online process you mentioned but give people the ability with extra steps to backup locally. This should all be currently available unless you hide the online profile for some reason from the TD profile management tab.
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