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Hi max, is there a way to enable all widgets in replay mode? I've been trying to troubleshoot some game bugs and been doing some oem bike testing and it would be super useful to be able to see the suspension, inputs and joypad widgets during replays. Going through the ini file there doesn't seem to be any way to do this myself, but could this feature be added to a future update?

I guess it'll just take time to get back the finesse required to hit ruts hard and not loop out. There's been a lot of changes to the traction since B15, and only thanks to the newest oem pack and tyre mods is it playable again now, but it will still be different to what you're used to. You'll just have back off a bit until you can predict when you're about to loop out, but you'll get the hang of it eventually. if you're playing on 450s they'll definitely loop out more than they used to cause they actually have grip now lol.

When you say "bought" do you mean "downloaded without paying"?

Just wanted to add that I absolutely didn't mean this post as an attack on PiBoSo, and that I only want to (sternly) encourage him to spend his time wisely fixing the most significant issues, especially if that time is limited due to outside factors. As well as this, I think the community would greatly appreciate a rough roadmap outlining when and possibly how some of these issues are planned to be fixed.

We would like to know what's being worked on, or if something isn't being worked on we would like to know why. If someone offers a suggestion of how to fix some part of the game, we'd like that suggestion to be seriously considered, and if it's decided that the suggestion won't work and won't be implemented we'd like to know why exactly, and have some discussion with the community if that's the right choice.

The goal is transparency, good communication and cooperation between development and the community. I'm not asking to be updated on every little thing as soon as it's done, but we'd like to know a few more details and specifics about what's being worked on. Maybe even a less frequent but more comprehensive dev log instead of the daily dev log we (sometimes) use now. 

TL;DR, I've found what's probably causing the slow physics issues, flat corner bar dragging ability, and other weirdness, and have offered potential solutions. I've also said we're getting sick of waiting for fixes to these issues, so if we don't see progress soon we'll probably leave.

If anyone else has any other concerns please feel free to share here. Gotta be heard somehow.

I've had several things on my mind about some key physics issues and the general state of development at the moment, and I think they all need addressing. Starting with the physics issues...

While testing some new tyres I made some discoveries about the ground physics of the game, specifically the issue of being able to bar drag on a flat corner. For a long while I thought this issue was caused by the traction model having too much grip, allowing you to lean all the way over without sliding out like on tarmac irl. But while testing a tyre with very low grip I found this wasn't the case. Here's a video to demonstrate:

Despite having almost no traction, you can still bar drag on flat ground. So obviously the issue isn't traction. Rather, it's more likely due to the "legs simulation" holding the bike up at unnatural angles (thanks to Ruubs for bringing this to my attention initially, he's known about this for ages and has asked for fixes multiple times in the past). From my experience the legs simulation causes a lot of weird "slow physics" behaviour, like the bike flopping from side to side without falling, standing itself back up after falling over, drifting across the ground on it's side, allowing you slide sideways while upright without high siding, allowing you to land jumps completely sideways without high siding, I could go on. Basically it stops the bike from falling over in many situations when it absolutely should. It does make the game easier and less punishing in a lot of ways, but sometimes it causes the bike to behave unnaturally and actually makes things harder. So I propose some major reworks to the legs simulation to fix this.

Legs simulation should be either disabled or heavily toned down at any speed above walking speed. It does make sense to allow it when riding very slow so simulate the rider putting his leg down, but this could still lead to a lot of weird behaviour and typical slow physics issues, so I'd even tone it down or adjust it at slow speeds. At medium to high speeds it should be largely disabled. This will mean flat corners will become entirely dependant on traction and body positioning, and landing sideways will make you high side and fall off realistically. The game will be a lot more difficult with it disabled in this way, but it will be a simpler physics system overall, and once you learn to balance yourself properly it will be more predictable and realistic. I think it's a necessity in the pursuit of realism because this heavy use of the legs simulation seems to be doing the lion's share of holding the bike upright instead of relying on player inputs and tyre traction. Irl the only things holding the bike up at any given time are the combined effects of traction and rider balance. Take either of those away and the bike will fall. Evidently that's not how the game functions at the moment. EDIT: Also, calling it legs "simulation" isn't exactly accurate because irl the legs don't do anything to hold the bike up unless you're stopped. So i'd say if the goal is a simulator, this "simulation" needs to be removed.

Of course, making these changes will mean more reliance on the traction model, and because that still needs a lot of work as well you're likely to slide a lot more until then. I'd suggest some changes will have to be made to the "intelligent" virtual rider to help manage this. At the moment, the way the virtual rider corrects oversteer can often make it worse. Here's another clip demonstrating that:

Obviously this is a serious issue. The way the virtual rider is able to steer the bars in an attempt to stabilise the bike actually makes the situation worse more often than not. It's the reason we have never been able to do hill climbs in this game, which is just absurd for a dirtbike simulator. Following the trend of my previous suggestions, I and others believe the way to fix this is to make the rider physics more simple rather than more complex. Remove the virtual rider "intelligence" and replace it with a simple, unscripted spring and damper system on the bars, so unless the front wheel is on the ground, the front wheel will simply return to a straight position. Ruubs explained this idea in the discord the other day:

"AFAIK, the 'virtual rider' has 'intelligence' of what to do with the handlebars. This virtual rider also turns the handlebars to achieve the bike lean angle we put in on our joystick (direct lean). What I'm trying to say is that as far as I know, the virtual rider has 'logic' for when to turn the bar and when not to

"I don't think the virtual rider should have much hard-coded 'intelligent-logic'. The fact that the virtual rider is aware of the front grip and does actions depending on this sounds very unpredictable and 'clunky' (and that's kinda how MXB's front end feels to me)

"What I think is a better way to keep the front-end stable, is a spring and damping system on the front-end/handlebars. The damper would dampen any sort of forces on the front-end and could be seen as the rider's arms absorbing the forces. This will help in situations where the front-end/handlebars tend to lock-out easily now, like at sharp terrain transitions.
The spring would basically be the virtual rider which at all times tries to keep the handlebars straight. This obviously means that the forces which the rider applies to turn the bars should be increased due to having to work against this spring. But I don't think that's a problem."

These two mechanics appear to be the cause of the most significant physics issues that have plagued the game since its inception. Us long time players have been asking for these issues to be fixed, or at least investigated, for years, yet still they remain. We've already offered a lot of feedback and potential fixes for a lot of the physics issues, and we tend to know our stuff because most of us have been riding irl for years, but most of this feedback is just refused or ignored with no elaboration. Ruubs, Insane, Jesse, myself and many others know a lot about the physics of riding a bike on dirt, and not to offend, but with your background being in road bikes you could use our insight.

Honestly, we are starting to lose patience. We know the pandemic and life in general has made development very difficult, but it's incredibly disheartening to see you putting time into unimportant things like freestyle tricks, particle effects and backfire sounds instead of fixing the fundamental issues the game has had forever. The community does so much for this game, giving it an endless stream of free content to attract new players and keep existing ones interested, but there's only so much we can do ourselves. We have even resorted to trying to make a full set of new tyres to make the inadequate traction model manageable on each different soil type, but this is difficult because we're working blind with values we don't understand. Collectively we have put thousands of dollars and tens of thousands of hours into making content and organising the community for this game, yet development seems slow and misguided with minimal communication of what's even happening. It's getting very hard to justify putting this amount of time, effort and money into a game that will supposedly never be fixed. And now there are other games on the horizon with very active and transparent developers who implement player feedback the day they hear it. They're in very early days now, but give them a year and at this rate their games will be easily competing with MXB.

I hate to say it, but the bottom line is this: if we don't start to see either progress in fixing the major issues in the game or at least much greater communication of what's going on behind the scenes, many long time players and modders will leave for other projects. And without the free bike packs, tracks, skins and web services provided by these people the rest of the player base will soon follow. So please, use these points as valuable constructive criticism and spend some good time fixing these major issues with the physics and the netcode, or if that's not possible, tell us why not.

I wish you all the best

- The Community

Sure you've probably worked this out by now but did you check you had the sit button binded in settings? I'd try rebinding it just in case

[Air Controls:]

After taking plenty of time to actually get used to the changes before slamming them for just feeling unfamiliar like so many others have, I'll give my 2 cents on the update.

Air Controls:
Many have said that the B17 air physics are harder to control, inverted or even just unusable, and I wholeheartedly disagree. If you think the air controls are unresponsive, you can't bring back whips and scrubs or think rider lean is inverted, sorry but you need to get gud.
The way rider lean affects the bike in the air did not change for B17, so if you understood how it worked before you probably won't have a problem. But if you're used to relying on bike lean instead of rider lean then B17 probably makes the bike feel unresponsive because bike lean no longer does anything in the air (nor should it). You may have tried using rider lean to adapt, but with hundreds of hours controlling the bike the wrong way it will take time to break old habits and relearn air control. It will feel unfamiliar, you'll probably think it's inverted, you will probably think the update is bad because you aren't as good as you were before, then you'll say the update should be reverted because you were impatient and didn't take time to learn properly. If this sounds like you, git gud and keep reading.

L/R rider lean in the air is not inverted, your perspective of it is. It controls the bike the same way F/B rider lean does. Leaning forward actually brings the front up because the rider pulls on the bars to lean forward. Leaning one way will always push the bars the opposite way. It's Newton's 3rd Law, equal and opposite reactions. The same applies with L/R lean. Rider leans left, he pushes bike to the right and vice versa. That's why when you do a whip steering left, leaning rider to the right makes it bigger (pushing the bars further left makes the rear swing further right) and leaning rider left again brings it back (pushing the bars back to the right straightens the bike). The same applies for scrubs.
Once you understand this the air controls become a lot more intuitive, and with practice you will probably have better control than before.
All that said, unfortunately the rider F/B lean is about 50% weaker than before because the assist basically doubled both rider lean axes. That is my only real gripe with the new controls, but I'm sure this will be adjusted in the future. The physics also need an update to fix the weird air gyro/momentum and 360 bug (this is why oppos don't work anymore. The gyro was never perfect but the assist was strong enough to overpower it.)

Traction/ground physics:
I think the traction changes are a big improvement, mainly because we had way too much traction before, but paired with the improved ground physics sliding feels much more natural and predictable. You can slide the rear into corners more predictably making steering with your rear a possibility, which I love. Ruts are also more predictable because you tend to slide back into them instead of climbing up the inside or outside edge, which I love. Throttle control is much more important than before, which I love. Sand also feels much more like sand (albeit very loose sand), which I love.

The only con with the ground physics is higher powered bikes are kind of crippled by the reduction of traction, and I think that's mostly down to the the large gap in amount of grip before and after you break traction. It's kind of hard to explain, but you look at this graph, the red line is how it feels now, and the blue line is more what I think it should feel like.
Basically it should be easier to break traction, but once you do you shouldn't lose so much. The way it is now kind of feels like tarmac or hard pack where you lose almost all traction once you break it, but soft soils there should be a smaller jump in traction level because the tyre digs into the dirt even when it's spinning or sliding. The softer or looser a soil is the easier it should be to break traction, but the less traction you should lose once you do imo. I'm sure this wouldn't be easy to simulate properly, but that's what I think we should aim for.

TL,DR: If you can't handle new air controls, get gud it's not broken. Lean isn't inverted, you're just thinking about it wrong. Ground physics are better. Traction is improved but could be much better. Update definitely shouldn't be reverted, it should be tuned and built upon.

You can somewhat adjust the position of the in game fonts for bike and rider with the font's config file. There are values for x and y position so do a bit of trial and error to make it look good. I think you can also adjust spacing and maybe size. Still, would be great to have all of this improved and implemented in game

It should be the Del or decimal point key on your *numpad*, not the usual ones. Pressing it once activates mouse controlled camera, pressing it again tracks the bike, pressing it again returns to normal

The speeds indicated in the garage are only theoretical, calculated based on the gearing. You still need adequate power, traction and other factors to actually reach those speeds

After nearly going deaf from wind noise in a big cross country race last week I'm in support of this. An important element of immersion imo.

Ayo idk where the old link to the model went but I've uploaded it here if anyone needs it: https://www.mediafire.com/file/7vlfhlg0ii385eq/2018_tld_se4.pkz/file

I like this idea. Would be cool to have more info on lap times and stuff online too

If you don't have any other skins installed it will only load your own. It will still need to load the stock OEM bikes unless you play on an MSM only server tho