MotoGamesTV has posted a comparison of the 2 tracks with updates this month, besides the obvious looks like there are some more tweaks to lighting, the sky-box in particular looks to have a lot more contrast
Looks like the only kerbs that were actually tweaked are the inside exit of Adenauer Forst (raised it), and the first kerb in Wippermann (lowered it). The latter is quite positive as it's my favorite corner on the track and definitely allows us to use closer to the real line in more cars.
It would be interesting to see what a comparison on Series X looks like. The colors are definitely more vivid for some of the kerbs, as if they had a fresh coat of paint, and the dirt in many places seems to stand out more so initially it does look quite different on the console. Like at first I thought they added the hatchstones behind the first apex of Hocheichen but I guess it's just that they are much easier to see now, but I only had time for a quick lap yesterday before I had a league race so I definitely need to do a few more laps on it.
Sort of a weird move for them. They fixed two kerbs which is good, but left many others that are very obviously wrong and ignore some others that are pretty important for using real life lines, then claim it's to make the kerbs more accurate for 2024... Like overall it's an improvement, but to call it a 2024 update is misleading when none of the 2024 updates are actually in place (of which the Foxhole exit kerb is the most significant, but it's better that they didn't change it imo), meanwhile Wipperman's kerb surface (not height) was changed in 2023 and Adenauer Forst kerbs haven't been changed in 5 or 6 years if I remember right.
The lighting changes are positive though, and the dirt contrasting more does make the kerbs easier to pick out so it will probably help out a bit in low light conditions. Despite being inaccurate it was still fun to drive before so it's only better now. Even if it needs more work, their willingness to tweak it some is good and it will be interesting to see if we get more tweaks in the future.
I'd have to disagree, while this update is kinda light in terms of fixes, they did put out a blog with a roadmap of what they have been working on just over a month ago, I know we'd all like to see those changes in as quick as possible, but it's hard to fault that communication to be fair, I'd much rather they've told us a radar is coming as an example than stay silent up until it gets released.
I suppose they have given us a few "hey we are working on a feature" type of comments, but that just feels like throwing out a few odds and ends rather than a roadmap to me, as they don't really seem like cohesive additions or address the state of the sort broad "areas" of the game like career, Featured Multiplayer, etc and the questions people in those sub-communities are asking. Using the radar system as an example, while it is absolutely a great feature to have (assuming it works right), it's not going to do anything to revitalize the career for the single player guys who are losing interest, or make public multiplayer feel fresh, or make organized racing any less of a hassle to work around the issues and missing features, tide the drifters over while they wait for anything, etc.
When I think of a roadmap I think more about things for the individual sections of the game and their progression/evolution. For example, looking at something like the public multiplayer side of the game, all we know is that some splits for Forza GT are coming, and that's probably positive. Also this last update they changed the practice lengths, something that has been complained about but they made no acknowledgement of before that I had seen so it was kind of a surprise. What about the track rotations? Those have been complained about but no acknowledgement, and who knows, maybe they don't want to change them for some specific reason, maybe they just haven't got to it yet, maybe they are already being worked on, we don't know anything. If you dig deep into some 2 hour livestream, there was a brief mention of a weather forecasting system for public lobbies, how about a little more info about that? Addressing a few of those questions and rounding up some of that info into a sort of "the state of Featured Multiplayer and its roadmap" community post that is updated would be cool to see, and ditto for some of the other parts of the game.
Most seem to agree the game has a lot of positives and a lot of potential, but 9 months or whatever after release it feels like we are still just kinda sitting around saying that and hoping while we continue to work around issues that we have no clue if will ever be fixed. A lot of the impatient people have given up and left, but in the remaining more loyal part of the community you can see frustrations boiling up. This place is typically pretty positive and you can see it here about the single player side of things and probably notice a lot of people who were positive early days have stopped posting (which doesn't mean they are gone I guess, but it doesn't seem like a stretch to assume that means they aren't playing anymore or don't care). Look at places like TORA, their marquee enduro events had hundreds of players entering and a bunch of esports teams and tons of live streams, but they haven't even scheduled one yet given the state of private lobbies and the lack of clarity on what the future holds for them is a constant source of frustration there, even amongst some of the staff who have direct contact with T10 on the subject. I'd imagine the drift community is in a similar limbo, the painting community is still frustrated, and so on.
Maybe I'm expecting too much from T10 as some other games I play have devs that speak more openly about plans and actually answer questions. Game development is complicated enough and can change quickly even before you add in things like license complications that are more prevalent in racing games, so I understand there are some things they may not be able to discuss and other things that they would be reticent to bring up, but the effort to do so would help placate the community a bit I think. I guess it would be kinda tough too though, as the game does have several sub-communities all pulling in different directions that are sure that their part of the game is the most important.
