rF2 February Roadmap: Corvette, LMP3, Sebring and More..!

[Paul Jeffrey]

The February Roadmap update from Studio 397 is here, with plenty of exciting new content and improvements announced...

With plenty of work and features still on the horizon from Studio 397 and rFactor 2, the developers have revealed one or two interesting new pieces of information in this February roadmap update, not least of which is confirmation of a laser scan version of the epic Sebring International Raceway is under production for the simulation, alongside the 2017 announce Chevrolet Corvette C.7R GTE/GTLM that is set to release around April time alongside a couple of other interesting new cars...

For the full lowdown on what's happening in rFactor 2 world, check out the latest roadmap below:

Another month has flown by! The February 2018 roadmap is here! And as usual we haven’t just been twiddling our button boxes, we’ve been furiously making improvements and creating new and exciting content and features, some of which we are happy to share with you now. This short month has been a whirlwind of activity, which included competition infrastructure, getting in some new features for the new UI, testing performance optimizations, and building new content, both track and car.

Performance
We mentioned last month already that performance was being worked on, it’s still one of our main priorities, we’re continuing to chip away at it and have come even further, it should not be long now until we can release these improvements to you. It’s safe to say you’ll will be very surprised at the end results. In our internal testing we’ve seen a substantial performance boost and higher frame-rates across the board. As with anything though we are cautious, it’s in the hands of our internal test team to make sure it’s all working as expected.

Content
The content team has been keeping very busy, as usual, which is not hard as we have a lot of new content in the planning.

Corvette C7.R GTE/GTLM
Recently, on social, we teased this car with a short movie with a roaring V8, and the license for it has been announced over a year ago, but now you can finally see the car during internal testing at Silverstone. Scheduled for a late April release, this car will not come alone and will be part of a new upcoming pack.

Norma M30 LMP3
We’re super chuffed to see an LMP3 enter the grid! The Norma M30 is a fairly recent car that has already built up an impressive record in the races it has competed in, such as in the ELMS race last year at Spa, where we took this picture of it. We’re sure this new class will become quite popular in rFactor 2!

Sebring International Raceway
Last but not least, we can now proudly announce that we have licensed America’s oldest road racing track, host to many historic endurance races. Sebring International Raceway is being built based on a laser scan we did last month. This is a first for us and although we have made many tracks based on CAD data and other information that have been quite accurate, this scan will allow us to get every little detail right. It will take us a couple of months to finish this one, but we are working on it feverishly!

HUD
The official Studio 397 HUD is still being polished and refined, we know you are impatient to get your hands on it, while working on it we’ve come across a few bugs that lay dormant deep in the code that we needed to address, this is a win-win for the HUD in general and we decided it needs attention. It will certainly be part of the next build.

UI
Our UI is making leaps and bounds, we’ve got most of the basic features in and some new slick features. For starters we’ve looked at making triple screen setup much more intuitive, with a full set of controls via the UI settings screen. This will be an additional functionality to go along with the on track pop up widget.

Next we overhauled the live replay screen, controls are now not only selectable via controls as before but also via mouse clicks.

Also we’ve added in a modern drop down standing ticker, for easy access to driver times from the live replay. This incidentally also shows our capabilities to overlay HTML with live camera feeds, a technique we will leverage in other places such as broadcast overlays.

Competition
In the realm of competition we have our full time team actively hacking away at a very inclusive and encompassing competition structure, which is a big task not done overnight! We have big plans and that’s why we want to do this from the ground up the right way. Our next big task has been the implementation of full race series, including sign ups, practice, qualification and multiple race heats over a set period of time. These new features are ongoing and need a lot of testing so we are looking at a little while more to get this up and running, but it’s not that far off, we can see the horizon!

KartSim
We already announced that a consumer release of KartSim is coming soon. Currently this version is undergoing final testing and polishing to include our visual damage model and the latest rain effects. Just to show you how good it looks, a few more shots to keep you entertained until its release.

Community
In our ongoing effort to encourage more of that community vibe, we will be adding a new forum area to showcase your original paint artwork, screenshots, and videos. Additionally, we will also be adding all templates for existing cars to the base install, that way everyone has access to the latest updated templates. Our plan is to streamline the templates and their extra parts so there’s less guesswork and more creative time!

rFactor 2 is available exclusively for PC from Steam now.

Check out the rFactor 2 sub forum here at RaceDepartment for all the latest news and discussion with regards to the simulation. You can take part in lively debates with fellow rFactor 2 fans and take part in some great Club and League racing events..! Head over to the forum now and share the love this simulation so very much deserves...

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Happy to hear Sebring is coming? Pleased with the current development and future prospects of rF2? Let us know in the comments section below!

 

[Deleted member 503495]

Sebring is one of the few non-boring flat tracks, looking forward to experiencing the bumps! I however do not understand the arguments against Real Road's limitations, as it is being shown by lilski and has been mentioned by other track modders*.

Curious to see the so-mentioned new track tech. Maybe the shortcomings are being addressed?


*Assetto's Nordschleife's rFactor2 port can't be used as an argument since it's a weak conversion, not the source.

 

[Alex72]

Wow an article about a game on a gaming website. What a concept

News sounds interesting. Be curious how laser scanning translates since rf2 doesn't utilize a high res mesh to drive on like iR and AC. Unless they fixed it so you can run a dense mesh and still have realroad work.

rF2 has great and powerful detail in the FFB so i wonder if it was as detailed as AC we would shake our arms off.

 

[RichardHessels]

I hope there is going to be a massive update on the general visual damage model, rfactor one still has alot more going on in that department (anyone remember the Ultimate Control Drift christmas present from Gjorn, that had some great visual damage). Also what about the new rain puddle and stuff? I love the news about Sebring. However this is a game that Ive bought and still can't play because performance has improved but i still get half second freeze's sometimes, differ's from day to day.

Many damage features are done by the creators of the car. Just a lot of extra work. Most features are there already.

 

[RichardHessels]

The invisible laserscanned mesh of the AC tracks is not that dense at all. rF2 would have no problem showing that fully textured. The Nordschleife does not even use a invisble mesh, that track you drive on the same 3D model as what you see.

Who disagreed me does not know what they are talking about.

 

[Jockey]

Who disagreed me does not know what they are talking about.

 

[John-Eric Saxén]

Who disagreed me does not know what they are talking about.

Uh. Have a look at the track yourself in 3DSimED, it's a matter of seconds to check that it indeed uses two meshes (the rF2 conversion might not, but that's another story). But you are right that rF2 could probably use these AC type meshes for physics and a separate visual mesh. I guess the reason they don't do it lies in the realroad tech.

 

[Flip-Flop Driver]

Pulling a question out of my a.
Would it be possible for ISI to write something similar to TerrainServer from that other company that uses the rf2 graphics engine in rfactor pro?

 

[M D Gourley]

Happy to hear Sebring is coming? Pleased with the current development and future prospects of rF2?

Happy that any new track is coming to rF2...and more than pleased with the current development that Studio 397 are doing...keep up the great work.
SIDE NOTE: Race Sim Studios absolutely amazing RSS GT Pack is going to be available for rF2 at some stage...I allready have it for AC and it is amazing...Awesome news for rF2
http://racesimstudio.com/formula-hybrid-2018-rss-gt-and-rf2

 

[Flip-Flop Driver]

@LilSki
It doesn't make sense to have such a dense roadmesh as the physicsengine can't handle it anyway. In that sense rF2 has just the right density to go along with the physics. Niels Heusinkveld and a couple of other people have explained this allready very well. In that sense a mesh as dense as the AC mesh would propably be a waste of ressources within rF2. Given the fact that rF2 is even ticking at a faster rate I wouldn't be be surprised if most of those collision points are obsolte within AC. But it's all very theoretical and both sims are working different in that regard.

Could point me to that Niels' talk about the subject?
Its always nice to hear his opinions.

 

[RichardHessels]

Uh. Have a look at the track yourself in 3DSimED, it's a matter of seconds to check that it indeed uses two meshes (the rF2 conversion might not, but that's another story). But you are right that rF2 could probably use these AC type meshes for physics and a separate visual mesh. I guess the reason they don't do it lies in the realroad tech.

rF2 drives only better on high poly meshes. And they can be huge in rF2. Splitting the meshes is also possibilty. Realroad does not really have a problem with that. I seen many converted tracks with realraod where the road was still 20 parts (rF1 style). So realroad shader attached to a higher poly mesh it is no problem.

 

[tr1v1um]

Could point me to that Niels' talk about the subject?
Its always nice to hear his opinions.

Not necessarily about track meshes but the importance of the physics tick rate stays the same.

 

[LilSki]

Who disagreed me does not know what they are talking about.

They disagreed because you are incorrect. I actually didn't see the part about nords in your original post as I was on my phone when I first read it. Sadly I posted shots of laguna seca. But since you claim you drive on low poly visual mesh on AC nords here is two more shots of nords.

Low poly visual only

High poly physical. Nothing in this image is rendered. It is all invisible to the user.

The rf2 rips of the AC nords indeed only took the visual mesh from AC. The high res mesh resides inside 25.kn5

rF2 drives only better on high poly meshes. And they can be huge in rF2. Splitting the meshes is also possibilty. Realroad does not really have a problem with that. I seen many converted tracks with realraod where the road was still 20 parts (rF1 style). So realroad shader attached to a higher poly mesh it is no problem.

It's not that rf2 can't drive on a higher res mesh it is the fact that from what I have been told you cannot have a non rendered high res mesh (no impact on performance) and a low poly visual road and still have real road work. In order for it to work the visual must be the physical mesh which is wasteful as far as using triangles.

For example why would you want a visual/physical road that looks like this

Where this

With an invisible (not rendered so no impact on performance) combination of this would be more efficient. You get to drive oh higher detail and gain performance as you are not rendering useless triangles.

And as I said from what I have been told real road (in its current state) will not work properly unless you drive on the same road that you see.

 

[John-Eric Saxén]

It's not that rf2 can't drive on a higher res mesh it is the fact that from what I have been told you cannot have a non rendered high res mesh (no impact on performance) and a low poly visual road and still have real road work. In order for it to work the visual must be the physical mesh which is wasteful as far as using triangles.

Yep, exactly what I tried to explain in my last post but couldn't put it to words as well. It will be interesting to see what they will do with Sebring, as one reason for rF2's performance issues could come from unnecessarily high triangle counts in graphical mesh.

 

[Emery]

Cool, will be good to get a laser scanned version in Assetto Corsa

If it is released as DLC, I think it will be much harder to convert as the content is held on Steam.

 

[Vapir]

All aboard the hype train, we're going to Sebring!

 

[Jim Liak]

Who disagreed me does not know what they are talking about.

We are not disagreeing dude. Just laughing.

 

[Paco572]

"In our ongoing effort to encourage more of that community vibe, we will be adding a new forum area to showcase your original paint artwork, screenshots, and videos. Additionally, we will also be adding all templates for existing cars to the base install, that way everyone has access to the latest updated templates. Our plan is to streamline the templates and their extra parts so there’s less guesswork and more creative time!"

With the showroom screwed up, in game, your only able to see the left side of the car, the right side is almost impossible to see, just how are we going to be able to check our paint jobs under those circumstances? Looks like the leader has dropped the ball again, or doesn't know a thing about it. At this point, the above quote from the road map is just that, just words that don't mean a thing.

1st Officer PACO

 

[Cote Dazur]

Sounds great, I am still waiting on LTH to enjoy this SIM in VR. No rush.

 

[Emery]

With the showroom screwed up, in game, your only able to see the left side of the car, the right side is almost impossible to see, just how are we going to be able to check our paint jobs under those circumstances?

Have you considered putting the car on the track and using the swingman camera?

For those who haven't noticed yet, the showroom lighting on the car renders the left side in a shadow, so even if you spin the car around, you only see the left side in a very deep shadow.

 

[KittX]

isn't there a car viewer available? for not even loading the entire game