F1 Arcade Set to Open in London November 24 Using rFactor 2-ish

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Remember the days of physical arcades? You would waltz into an overrun back room with a pocket full of quarters and just wait to go onto your favourite cabinet. F1 is trying to bring that back, just a lot bigger.

F1 is set to open its "F1 Arcade". An "experimental venue" set to sell consumers an experience of driving F1 cars. But contrary to what you might think, this will not happen using Codemasters' games.

Motorsport Games and Studio 397 supply the motion-rig-filled venue with their platform of rFactor 2 and will allow "individual, team-based and all-venue racing formats, along with different modes for all ages and abilities."

Every user of the arcade would have their own player profile and an "experience currency".

Adam Breedan, a designer of some activity venues within London also devised the F1 Arcade.

From an FAQ on Twitter, it was said:
  • A variety of food will be served as well as drinks from a "40ft champagne bar"
  • "We plan to launch Grand Prix Sessions and All Venue Race modes which are perfect for the sim racing fan!"
  • "All F1 teams are represented at F1 Arcade"
  • "We sprinkled a bit of F1 magic (thousands of hours of dev time) and built our own game from rFactor2's engine"
  • "We’ve got an exciting global rollout plan in the works"
An F1 game in rFactor 2's engine? If that sounds interesting to you, better save up that money to travel to London, because there has been no news so far for an extra release of this "own game".

Or wait for one venue from the "global rollout plan" to surface in your local capital.

What do you think of this news? Are you ready to race in London? Let us know in the comments down below!
About author
Julian Strasser
Motorsports and Maker-stuff enthusiast. Part time jack-of-all-trades. Owner of tracc.eu, a sim racing-related service provider and its racing community.

Comments

the low knowledge about difference between game engines and games is frustrating.
you can even develop a Mario Kart clone with RF2 engine if you want.
 
Why they call it arcade when using rFactor2?
Makes no sense to me.

Because no one can replicate rF2 feeling when using the same engine.
Why that is I simply have no idea but it is like night and day.
ISI genius.
 
Premium
I really hope Formula One renews their license with a different company. Codemasters have been copy pasting for too long ans the bugs in the game make it unplayable. This is looking like a step in the right direction!
Yeah, because that worked out so well for NASCAR!
 
Some of you guys urgently need to get your hands on a dictionary because the word "arcade" does not just mean "not a racing sim" in all contexts.
 
Literally pick any other sim and it looks better - though I meant the UI
yup, yup, I base ALL my sim decisions on how menus look. 100%. Oh! and those beeps and bops when the mouse moves over an action item...except for the F1 codemaster series which doesn't seem to understand mices.
 
yup, yup, I base ALL my sim decisions on how menus look. 100%. Oh! and those beeps and bops when the mouse moves over an action item...except for the F1 codemaster series which doesn't seem to understand mices.
Yep exactly what I said, I base it all on the UI. That's why Gran Turismo 7 is my favorite sim because of it's super nice UI. You really extracted a lot out of my comment there! Nice job!
 
Premium
There is something like this in The Netherlands already, in Utrecht:

That center is actually based on the Codemasters F1 game.
 
I went to this in London today. While the kit looks nice - lovely ultra wide screens, cool-looking wheels and really fun full motion seats, the driving experience was disappointing to say the least.

It may have been rFactor2, but it’s been so cut down that it plays more like those old Daytona machines. I played on “pro”, the hardest of four levels, and the one which supposedly had all the assists off, but it was impossible to spin out or lock up so abs/tc were clearly on. Auto gear shifts the whole time. No damage simulation, permanent dynamic racing line enabled. Nothing “sim” about it at all, even set on “pro”. I wonder if “rookie” level gives you some bananas to throw?

The worst thing, though, was the time you actually get to play - for just under £14 you get four 4-minute races on four different tracks - mine were Bahrain, Spa, Monza and Silverstone, not sure if there are any others. Each race is only a 10-car grid, and as a solo player I always started at the back. AI pace is woeful to say the least - you can easily be first in two corners and that’s that. A four-minute timer starts as the starting lights slowly come on, so you only get 3 min 45 secs of actual driving each race, and once the counter counts down to zero the race just stops - no chequered flag or anything. It all seems a little pointless.

To be honest I’m not sure I was expecting much else, but my suspicions were confirmed before I even started driving when I asked the person who checked me in and explaining to me how to get going which button opened the DRS, and she said… “what’s DRS?”
 
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