[DISCUSSION] F1® UDP FUTURE REQUESTS

Hey,

I'm the developer of Pitbox, a real-time telemetry companion app for F1 games that just launched today on the App Store.

Two things that would make a huge difference for third-party developers like me:

1. Native delta to leader right now we calculate this from m_totalDistance which works but it's a workaround. A native delta in the packet would be cleaner and more accurate for everyone. It would also allow apps like mine to correctly reconstruct the delta even when connecting mid-session, which currently isn't possible reliably.

2. Consistent lap numbering currentLapNum starts at 0 on the out lap and only becomes 1 when you cross the start/finish line. But SessionHistoryPacket uses 1-based lap numbers. This mismatch causes real headaches and forces every UDP developer to add special case handling. Just making it consistent across all packets would save a lot of pain.

These two things alone would meaningfully improve every third-party UDP app out there.

Thanks for opening this thread really glad EA is actively listening to the community on this.

It would be good to get auto repair too (i.e. Auto, Yes, No) 

Hello Groguet! Thanks a lot for having created this thread and for the attention EA/Codemasters always dedicates to this feature of the game.

One nice-to-have feature to add would be the "left/right distance of the vehicle from track limits".

While we know the car "relative position" along the track thanks to the "LapData::m_lapDistance" field, we have no insights on its lateral position. Knowing the left/right distance from the track limits, we could improve both the visual reconstruction of the circuit and the effective racing lines of the vehicles.

Ideally they should report the distance, in meters (or centimeters in this case), of the vehicle's center from the corresponding track limit, with a negative value when the track limit is crossed. The values should be computed at the vehicle position determined by "LapData::m_lapDistance", along the right vector of the corresponding spline. But any helpful and practical variations are welcome! :)

hello i would find it cool if we got realistic dashboards especially the ones above the halo with speed,rpm,gear...it would be cool if we got it for F1 27 

Pitboxapp wrote:

Hey,

I'm the developer of Pitbox, a real-time telemetry companion app for F1 games that just launched today on the App Store.

Two things that would make a huge difference for third-party developers like me:

 

1. Native delta to leader right now we calculate this from m_totalDistance which works but it's a workaround. A native delta in the packet would be cleaner and more accurate for everyone. It would also allow apps like mine to correctly reconstruct the delta even when connecting mid-session, which currently isn't possible reliably.

 

2. Consistent lap numbering currentLapNum starts at 0 on the out lap and only becomes 1 when you cross the start/finish line. But SessionHistoryPacket uses 1-based lap numbers. This mismatch causes real headaches and forces every UDP developer to add special case handling. Just making it consistent across all packets would save a lot of pain.

 

These two things alone would meaningfully improve every third-party UDP app out there.

Thanks for opening this thread really glad EA is actively listening to the community on this.

Hey ​ Pitboxapp​ 

Native deltas were added in the F1 23 format to the lap data packet. Is this insufficient?

You are referring to a lap-numbering problem. Can you supply more information about it? Specific game modes, tracks?

-Groguet

EA_Groguet​ 

Pitboxapp​ Sorry to "high-jack" this partially.

As Groquet said, the "Native Delta to Leader", the delta to leader is already in the lapdata for F1 23, F1 24 and F1 25.

On the lap numbering

The lap number is bit odd, when comparing with all other sims.

Here is how I would like it to be (and how it is in all the other games my Tool supports)

On P/Q/freeroam etc. (ie. non-Race)

- Session starts, current lap for all cars 1, when all cars are in pit

- After that, always when a cars passes start-finish line (on pitlane or on track), the current lap is increased by one. (One exception: If the start-finish is crossed on first outlap on pitlane, i.e. before driving out, then there is no +1 to current lap.

For Race Control, in typical Q session (with 1 + 2 fast laps) the data would be shown:

LAP 1 (outlap)

LAP 2 1:35.34

LAP 3 (inlap)

LAP 4 (outlap)

LAP 5 1:35.13

LAP 6 1:35.35

LAP 7 (inlap)

For a P session, the same would apply, i.e.

LAP 1 (outlap)

LAP 2 1:36.34

LAP 3 1:36.12

LAP 4 1:35.55

LAP 5 (inlap)

LAP 6 (outlap)

LAP 7 1:36.25

Now in P/Q during the outlap/inlap the lapnumber is "all over the place", i.e. after quali lap, it can show 2, but when you enter/leave the pits, it jumps to 1 etc.

For R, the lap numbering is ok as it is now.

Cheers

I'm not sure if this is related to the UDP features, but I use the Jeff 2.0 app whilst I am racing. I'm just curious to why a lot of these amazing features and tools are left to 3rd party developers when EA/CM have the Racenet App. Should things like an in-race telemetry dashboard not be available in Racenet on an official platform?
Players would really appreciate real time telemetry as well as having access to instant information on a second screen. 

One useful feature of the Jeff 2.0 app is being able to see how many corner cut warnings all the drivers are currently on. 

If they have their telemetry visible, you can also see their tyre wear, fuel, ERS, and tyre life. In Qualy it also tells you which drivers are on an In/Out/HotLap as well..... Really useful! Let's get these in the game as standard!

I've even mapped UPD buttons to switch between screens for Race Control, Player Dash, Trackmap, Leaderboard, Tyres and Weather.

There are some amazing apps and programmes out there, but not all are accessible to console players. Racenet is seriously underutilised.

Also, let's get the telemetry for Time Trial, Practice and Qualy sessions on the In-Game pit garage screen so players can look at their performance in real time during the session to compare! If the game can send real time data to a 3rd party app, then it should be easy to display this to the player in game, right? 

What do real F1 drivers do when they get wheeled back into the garage between runs? They get handed telemetry data to see where they can improve! 

We are over 16 years into this franchise now, and the garage screen is still as limited as it was on F1 2010. Get that info in the game, let's do more with it, and let's make use of the racenet app to bring new features to the player for ON-Track action.

The "SimRacingTelemetry" app even records and displays real time telemetry lap by lap showing your traces for acceleration, braking, steering and even load and forces through each tyre around the lap. This is incredibly useful for competitive players to help them adjust and adapt to looking after tyres, creating setups and improving race pace. It even shows you how each aspect of the car setup effects performance. 

With the new F1 regulations, I'm sure it's a horrendous challenge for the devs, and I'm sure there are concerns that players will not enjoy driving these cars off the limit and having to adapt to battery charging and deployment. Accessing and using the telemetry is a great way to help competitive players understand what is happening with the car and how to optimise race pace.

On a basic level it would also help casual players understand how to improve and not get frustrated with their cars constantly losing power. 

Over the last few years there has been far too much focus on OFF-Track new features, and I really fear that the franchise is heading towards the EA FC style focus on how your driver is dressed in the game menus rather than focusing on the ON-track racing features that put the player in the cockpit of an F1 car in a race. 

I don't expect the franchise to go full sim, like iRacing, but with the tech and resources available, and a competitive league racing community that keeps this franchise alive all year round, there is so much more to offer, especially with the UPD telemetry features.

I agree with the lap numbering in quali. It's very difficult to consistently get when the driver starts a lap after the first outlap, so you have to do complicated things like looking at the lap number and the lap distance which can easily be damaged if someone decides to do donuts on the start / finish line! 😂

I think the main confusion is that a second outlap is classed as the same lap number as the first in lap. Fix that, and it will probably be less complicated.


Having some of the values set as -1 initially would help things as well. Take pit status. 0 is on track. When you start a session the default is 0, but then it changes to 1 to put the car in the pits.


I understand due to DPO about not being able to include most driver names, but having a good way of linking a driver in the lobby, to the session would help greatly as the index isn't fixed. The best you can do is nationality and team, so if two drivers have the same nationality in the same team, it makes it impossible. Maybe giving a driver a unique number to the lobby when they join, and keeping that available somewhere for all sessions would really help.

A little addition, which would make cross compatibility across versions more fluent, would be to add actual Team names, Driver names, track names etc ... as string (in addition to existing ids) etc ... This would avoid issues when some gets added  moreover during transition times where some apps might not be updated yet  and might require to use "N-1" telemetry format (usually with outdated "mappings").