My Mind Is Made Up. Don’t Confuse Me With the Facts.
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The whole simplifying firmware to not have to store profiles is completely separate from cloud. Instead of going cloud, TD could store profiles on PC file system and send current profile to SC2 at connection time or whenever a new profile is selected or current one is tweaked. All this cloud storage and cloud access must be more complicated than that.
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I have mostly kept quiet on this whole topic.
I do have to ask how is this going to effect people with really crappy internet connection that only race non-online sim games?
I know a few guys that can not use iRacing because their internet is very slow.
And our friend who lives in the middle of the jungle in the Philippines!
I know he is the minority, but I was just wondering?
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There is a place there to write about the in-game settings. It is possible that we will add support for screenshots in that portion. Links to image sharing sites and forum threads already work. So, I fail to see how this is somehow worse than what it was with the old profile system.
Yes there is. One can link to a forum thread, for example. Or even a Youtube video.
Looks like you haven’t taken a look at what is possible in Paddock?
No. But we faced issues with firmware and PC software being too complex and “hard-coded” in long term, thus the need to move the profile management to cloud, where we can leverage modern technologies, and in fact a completely new set of web developers to build and maintain it.
Hi Phillip, nice to see your post here. The fact is that this is not changing at all.
Well, we have at the moment implemented enough features and fallback modes, that this becomes a non-issue in daily usage of the product. What are the “other delays” you mention?
Have haven’t removed a single enthusiast feature, and likely are not planning to do so either. So if the user interface is just more modern, that is somehow moving away from enthusiasts? Are PC enthusiasts still widely using Windows XP because it looks more like Windows 2000 than Windows 10?
I do understand that some things (as of right now) take one click more than they used to, but we are working on that. And some things already take less clicks than they used to.
I think there has been a misunderstanding somewhere. There is one (1) profile in the device that will get used by the device. Default parameters for this can be set from the Paddock already, so at power-on, no connectivity will be needed. The True Drive then just sends new parameters from the cloud to the device when profile is switched.
There is one-time registration, one can create profiles during that one session and they can then use those (and edit as well) in the offline mode. So, for this very small percentage of people, we have implemented already a perfectly acceptable way to use the product.
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Apologies in advance to everyone for the long winded and rambling post.
The way I see things at present, Paddock profile sharing in its current form is destined to never achieve what GD think it will. To do that, it would need to incorporate the tools required to share a users settings in full.
Sharing only a TD profile is unlikely ever going to be the magic bullet for FFB that new users and ourselves alike are constantly seeking.
Ideally, it would need to have a compulsory mechanism in place whereby a user goes through some process of uploading their in game files and displaying their in game settings as a mandatory step before their TD profile is allowed to be published.
This is where I think the problem comes in and things might get messy real fast. It’s going to be difficult to have this system tailored to ensure a consistent way of uploading and displaying the many various tweaks that are used outside of TD and vary from game to game.
This circles back to my argument that even if it’s possible to have all this stuff included in Paddock it’s not going to make things any more streamlined than simply doing what we do now.
Here, we share screenshots and write a description with our reasoning behind the settings we’ve arrived at. To get a full picture, it’s often important that we need to show our Content Manager settings, upload JSON files or share a link to a particular rFuktor file for example.
How do you add all of this into (as I understand it) a simple dialogue box?
What this forum has and Paddock doesn’t, is the added bonus in that users who go and try out the posted settings get to come back and add their critique, suggest further tweaks and sometimes through that process of back and fourth, arrive at settings that improve things for many.
I wonder how will this will be replicated within Paddock? I don’t think it can be without it turning into another forum which doesn’t add any advantage for new users.
Without having the full picture, I can see users going through a process of click profile, doesn’t feel good, delete profile, move to next profile, doesn’t feel good, delete profile… rinse and repeat. Isn’t that going to be more frustrating and time consuming than giving the forum a visit to voice concerns or ask for tips and pointers?
It makes perfect sense that GD want to devise a way to improve the product reputation and increase sales as a result. I’m totally on board with that vision. I just don’t see this as being the best way to achieve that.
In my opinion, the best way to sell a wheelbase in the sim market is for it to have a no competitor, best in class FFB as opposed to throw away profile sharing that pleases the give it to me now social media crowd. Then again, I’m an old fart that probably just doesn’t get it 
In my view, there are different ways in which to arrive at that point. I’m speculating here that GD think that getting a massive pool of users to share profiles and filter out the worst ones will have us end up with some nice click and go templates for everyone. Maybe it will, maybe it won’t, I don’t know.
I personally think it would have been far more advantageous to have spent that Paddock development time on improving filters, unlocking filters and then handing those off a small group of the most experienced and community trusted tinkerers (what a waste of Beano’s talent, by the way) so that they could go off, do what they do best and come back with with some great profiles that then become the default templates for new users to use and have a great first impression.
Once you have those in place, that in my view would be the optimal time to launch Paddock with more established templates already in place and watch your reputation sky rocket.
I’m sure there’s some flawed thinking on my part and some holes in what I’ve said. I’m happy to have those pointed out to me if you see them 
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This is where I see no benefit.
As of now:
- Open TD
- Open GD forum
- Replicate settings from a single post
- Drive
As opposed to:
- Open Paddock
- Read notes dialogue box
- Look for screenshots
- Click links to go to image sharing sites
- Click links to go to forum thread
- Replicate settings from multiple places of origin
- Drive
What I am not seeing in your point?
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@Mika So it seems that the online sharing of settings will now become more complicated as at the end of the day there will be 2 places one needs to look at. Ultimately will have to go to the forum where all the action is. Again I fail to see why you have spent so much time, effort and resources on this instead of something that could have given real value. A lot of us have given you feedback on this a lot time ago.
I have not bothered checking the paddock yet cause regardless of what you have said about it being stable I still see people complaining about issues. I just don’t have the time for troubleshooting. Once I see it is stable enough I will try. I am not opposing so much to changing the software even if that means that It will take me a few more clicks and more hassle realizing that this is something that GD needs to do. I am just opposing to GD not taking full advantage of its product capabilities. That’s what differentiated you from the competition (customization and ability to tune) but lately I feel that you guys are losing the ball when most discussion is about a practically half baked pointless online sharing system…
I have asked in the past many times to at least enable the 2 more filters missing in the pro/sport as I have not seen an other filter development happening. I believe with these I could achieve a better feel. Your response was that people do not use them. Well I am using all the filters (part from peak notch, haven’t figured that out) if I feel the need to (go check my latest posted settings for AC) and some people will try them and use them. So more people will use these useless filters eventually. There are other sims that I still cannot get them to feel right. It is not not SC’s fault, its the sim’s but still with a piece of hardware like that I should be able to reach where I want to go (that should be differentiating you from the competition). Give us the option to do this, it will be good for us, the community and at the end of the day the SC brand where people will be enjoying at the fullest their investment either by tuning their settings or copying good posted settings.
All we are trying to do (the grumpy gang) is to give you some constructive feedback on how to improve your product where it matters. We want to see this product shine together with GD as obviously we have invested in you. Enthusiast/power user opinions should matter, we have been your loyal customers after all… and basically we know how to operate your product and give help and advice to new comers as well…
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so how would it be any better than take those settings with the correspondent td profile from the forum in the first place? talking about semplification…
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Don’t be sad. Is like when you have a Ferrari you can’t harvest with it but to drive a race with a tractor ain’t fun aswell. Maybe these games are not up to date in general but can understand that you have special feelings about them
I trust in Granite. If they would totally depending on customers testing their products that would be more than strange. Filters testing is, I assume, more on the technical side. Stability, unexpected failing, precision. I learned that the use of filters is different from person to person
(–Messy post warning & disclaimer–)
No disrespect meant,
I think you are fairly new here?
You are telling a bunch of guys, with expert knowledge in sim racing, sc2 setups, software development, UI/UX knowhow, many many years of many kinds of experience, all that provide valuable feedback as hardcore users, that are doing their best to take what is there and help others enjoy it more, that you “trust in granite”.
That is fine, but why even post that.
(I do have to wonder how since “learned that filters is different from person to person”, that you can trust in a path of sharing those exact filters online, with no good way to discuss & it being only a part of the equation as the sim side settings are fully missing without the forum links being involved.)
This is not a matter of trust or not, it is a matter of end user feedback being provided. End user feedback from highly qualified individuals, imho.
Many of these people posted these concerns a year ago or so, right when online was announced, and their feedback was factually requested.
Now a year later many of those concerns are so far validated in so many ways and people are still trying to help Granite make decisions that actually would help them, the end users.
The fact is it is not the grumpy club holding Granite back from delivering. The grumpy club clearly stated that some of these things will possibly hold no value to end users and would hold back Granite from delivering important improvements with real value.
The response was that there would be allocated enough manpower to provide the actual painkillers while the operation would be in process, for example the filters, but this has not happened. Our worst fears have only been confirmed so far.
Hopefully it turns around, and hopefully the long play to make the software simpler to write and maintain will pay back.
But in relation to some other developments, like replicating part of the forum in the paddock software, that just seems very weird to some of us, believing it has no hope of doing anything but cause worse experience and more paths of information hunting, I think it is STILL VALUABLE feedback to say: Better skip as early as possible if it ain’t gonna float! Later will be only worse, also 6 months from now, where so much extra time will have been spent on those functions.
There are many other reasons for the online parts that prob. make a lot of sense & nobody’s saying “skip online” for the sake of skipping online. I have only heard it as a concern since it seems this addition of online comes at the cost of the end user experience and advanced features, which 100% is the case so far.
I would like to add that going for the broad market seems weird to me without a $399 end user product. If that one is coming any day now, then some of the decisions could make more sense(still with the exception of a bad forum replica with links to the forum inside the paddock software).
Sorry for the mess, but I am too busy otherwise right now.
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No no no, is not like that!
Games are done and left behind, so its hardware manufacturer’s responsibility to do retrocompatible hardware.
Dont forget that we are talking about interfaces, not about cars, mobile phones, Operative Systems, or tractors…
Doing a compatible interface in PC enviroment is mandatory on my “rules book” and talking especifically about FFB Devices/interfaces is a bit more easy because the Code from Microsoft didnt change since… 1999?
But after more than 20 years, in 2021 is still plausible that some hardware manufacturers dont know how to intrerpret that Code from last century.
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i fell for it, i came back to sim racing after a while, i had been running 2020.10, i have been here a while. i just like to spend time on sim, not on forum or tweaking all the time, turn on and run
just updated to 2021.8
registered and picked iracing general profile to test
and TD crashed and keeps crashing
reboot time
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What kind of “modern technologies” are needed for freaking hardware device driver control. Not everything has to be MSaaS, there are different tools for different jobs.
“Complexity”, “hardcoded”, excuse me, isn’t it your own code, make it better, if you can.
Dumping development on 3rd party company and moving it to the cloud is not going to simplify anything. If anything, your in house team will have no idea how it actually works and how to maintain it. Designing and developing secure and reliable open to Internet traffic MSaaS applications is 100 times more complicated than C++ desktop app living in a client computer sandbox. Operational cost is even more than that.
As a software field professional it just kills me to even think that someone is crazy enough to even come up with the idea that few sliders HW driver control panel that college graduate can build in less than a week is warranted to be cloud based. Speaking of killing fly with the cannon.
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Did you miss the memo? This is the most stable version.
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It depends on how one defines as being the most stable. All versions can have known or yet unknown issues. But from the issues we know about, 2021.8 is the most stable.
Does the Classic version also crash for you?
How many Classic profiles do you have in the device (approximately?)
New to this new interface - I went in with paddock, picked up Bshon’s iracing general
It crashed TD and iracing after rebooting tried it again, super strong and heavy
changed in iracing to lighten and updated to latest profile from bshon - much better
lightened in iracing again Still too strong
copied profile in TD, edited and reduce 100% power to 80%, much better
1 min in testing and TD crashed second time and won’t start. so I just shut off for now.
Something to do with iracing UI as both TD and iracing won’t start
When I have time again I will try again and will try the classic
I have like 8 profiles in classic, not big on changes just want to run the simulator not play with setting all the time
I’ll keep you posted, all windows software is up to date
I would put my “money” on a GPU or GPU driver issue.
possible - will update that next login in, 1080Ti FTW3
Will also test with AC next time