rFactor 2 DX11 Previews and January Roadmap Released

Paul Jeffrey

Premium
rF2 DX11.jpg

As we head towards the end of the first month of 2017 Studio 397 have released their latest Development Roadmap update for rFactor 2, sharing with fans many new and exciting things due to come to the sim in the weeks ahead.

Following the announcement back in September that Studio 397 will take control of all future development for the rFactor 2 racing simulation, the team have maintained a commitment to heavily increase their customer interaction in an effort to expand development transparency between studio and players of the game. One of the first tasks promised by the studio back at the Sim Racing Expo announcement was an update to DX11 and Virtual Reality implementation, something that has continued to be developed behind the scenes in the last few months. It appears from the latest roadmap update that DX11 implementation is progressing better than expected, meaning players could well receive a first build update featuring DX11 in the very near future. Sadly no new news with regards to the implementation of VR has been forthcoming in the new roadmap post, however expectations that VR and DX11 will be delivered at the same time remain.

Continuing the new tradition of taking on board community comments in relation to the simulation, Studio 397 have confirmed they are also looking to release an update to the recent Nissan GT500 machine launched just prior to the Christmas break. This upcoming build of the car will include many of the improvements suggested by the community following its much anticipated release and should also include a much needed painting template for gamers looking to create their owns liveries for the car.

The full January 2017 Development Roadmap post can be read below:

"2017 is well underway! We hope you all made a great start to the new year once the lights went out Here at Studio 397 we’ve jump-started our new year full of ambition. In with the new, out with the old: don’t forget our migrate to Steam for free offer will end on January 31st, 2017.

DX11
As we have already revealed last month, DX11 development is ahead of schedule. We have migrated much of the engine, and although there are certainly still quite a few things to do and it’s far from a straight port, we’re taking advantage of this opportunity to fix some long-standing issues. We are updating the overall look of the graphics. Lighting improvements include a new HDR tonemapper to achieve better color balance and more saturated colors, which interacts nicely with our dynamic sky model (adding contrast to our clouds). We are also updating the entire shadow system (faster and better looking shadows) and adding some ambient occlusion techniques that provide more dynamic shadows in areas such as engine bays, the underside of tyres, and parts of the inside of the marshal hut. Here are some sneak-peek shots of our work in progress. They do not, of course, reflect the finished product, but we wanted to show you where we are right now (top of post).

These upcoming graphics improvements should be a big step up for everyone in the modding community, giving you a stronger and richer visual base to build from. We will provide a set of guidelines on how elements should look to ensure as much consistency as possible without impacting on your creative freedom.

Next month we are starting a new beta program exclusively for modders to facilitate a smooth transition to DX11. So far it looks like we’ve been able to port all existing shaders, which means existing content should continue to work. Some mods that rely on custom shaders as well as plugins that request to render to the screen (such as some overlay plugins) currently expect a DX9 graphics context and will require an update to work with DX11. In both cases, we will actively help any modders whose work is affected.

UI
We’ve spent this month building the technical foundations for the new user interface, which allows us to link the game logic directly to an HTML5 front-end that we can embed into the simulation. At the same time, we’re putting the finishing touches on our interaction and graphical design, which means we can start building, user testing and refining the actual screens now. The new user interface offers far more flexibility, which gives us the freedom to create additional functionality down the line such as incorporating single player championships and results.

Here’s a look at the new home screen with simple sliding panels to reveal deeper options.
rF2 UI.png

As part of the new user interface we are developing the in-game competition structure. We all know that competition is at the heart of all racing sims, and rFactor 2 has a long-standing relationship with some of the greatest leagues in simracing covering multiple racing disciplines. Building on this strong foundation, our new competition mechanics intend to encourage frequent racing and greater accessibility, offering a rich career progression coupled with new aligned content.

We are focused on building competition mechanics that are unique and embrace leagues and competitions.

Content
Our content team is still working hard on the Radical and starting work on the Corvette C7.R. Last month we gave you a little Christmas present with the Nissan GT500, and we were overwhelmed with the positive responses to the car. At the same time we also got a lot of feedback from the community about little things we could improve. We’ve tried to fix all of them and our goal is to release an update before the end of this month. This update will also include a paint template. The following shots show many of these improvements.
rf2 Update 2.jpg
rF2 Update.jpg


NOLA Motorsports Park will likely be released around the end of February. A lot of work was put into showcasing the aesthetic possibilities, and we spared no effort to bring you those 10 different layouts of the track and kart track, giving you plenty of variation and suitable configurations for all classes of cars. As more and more trackside objects are being added, we can now share some high resolution (4k) shots that show you different areas of the track. We chose to give you the full experience and modeled the whole garage area, so it’s actually a little bit of a drive to get to the actual track from there. Don’t worry though, we’ve put up some signs to guide you!
rF2 NOLA 3.jpg
rF2 NOLA.jpg
rF2 NOLA 2.jpg


That’s all for our first monthly update of 2017. We wish you all the best and hope you will enjoy the many updates that we will bring this year."
rFactor 2 is available right now for Windows PC exclusively on the Steam platform.

Additional third party content can be downloaded from a variety of sources, one of which is the RaceDepartment rFactor 2 modding archive. Head over and check out the latest releases for the sim, or alternatively join in the discussion and keep up to date with the latest news at our rFactor 2 sub forum right here at RD. If downloading mods or keeping up to date with the latest news items aren't your thing, you can always sign up to one of our epic Club and League events using the software. We hold regular club racing events in our schedule, however the jewel in our crown in no doubt the RaceDepartment Le Mans Series. This is our premium endurance league using rFactor 2. Head over to the RDLMS forum to find out more!

Did you like the January Roadmap from Studio 397? Looking forward to DX11? Are you encouraged by the direction rF2 is taking? Let us know in the comments section below!
 
Last edited:
I agree to an extent, but the problem is that rF2's outdated graphics and presentation probably prevented large numbers of potential customers from getting behind the wheel in the first place.
It was sort of a joke. ;) But yeah, you know too how awesome this sim drives, and i take that over flashy graphics with less realistic physics and crappier FFB any day.

The new Zandvoort mod track looks really good though. Good improvement over many other mod tracks due to great textures. Hopefully with DX11 shaders/textures can go a bit bigger and better, and ultimately polish the surface a bit.
 
  • Deleted member 113561

What they really need to do is overhault tracks, cars, textures, particles (especially) etc.
The stuff has just not enough polygons.

Making the jump to DX 11 is a good beginning, but it needs much more until it becomes decent looking.
 
I think they should do similar to what AMS did, just keep improving/updating this game and then release an Evolution of the game under a new name in like a years time. This game desperately needs a graphics update and something substantial, add to that a proper championship/career mode and this game could be the best in the business
 
Above all what rF2 needs, other than obvious staffing changes, is to be easy to use at least for basic functions. For example, championship functionality is worthless is content does not work together. The only testing that should be required for basic functionality is strategy and vehicle setup testing ; not testing what will work together and how to get it to work together.

Aside from the pain and frustration involved in getting things to work (or, worse, finding out they can't work), no immersion or meaning is possible after having to construct the Hoover Dam just to do a single race.

In real life, you don't know how a race is going to turn out. Why engineer every aspect of a sim race? I can't help but wonder how someone who has done enough testing to land exactly on 53% (not 52% ; not 54%) aggression for a race (and who knows what other tweaking like VEH and RCD and TBC and XYZ) can actually feel like the outcome of the race is anything less than engineered.

That blinding, redundant and space wasting UI better at least remember my settings, tell me what works together and not expect me to (1) click AI driver, (2) click on garage, (3) select setup file, (4) click AI setup, (5) click Standings 45 times.

And until S397 solves the mixed bag and abandoned content problem by either disowning or fixing buggy, incomplete and ancient legacy content ; none of any of the rest of this matters.
 
As long as they keep the un-rivalled physics and superb FFB, they can tart it up all the like in my opinion. Just don't make it into another Pcars or Forza pretty game with rubbish physics. Nice graphics do not make a good sim every time. But I do welcome the new changes so far.
 
Last edited:
This itself depends on optimizations, too, yeah.
Depends primarily on what your renderer does. If you pretty much just port the DX9 engine to DX11, the difference will usually be minimal both visually and performance wise and this was evident in the early days of DX10/11 when many games had both DX9 and DX10/11 APIs supported. Differences were in many cases non existent because they usually were coded for DX9 first and very little features of newer APIs were implemented .

You start to see the the benefit of newer APIs when you use the features introduced in them render certain effects and such. It is here, that newer APIs and GPUs supporting them start to shine and stuff that would be very GPU intensive on DX9 to render (or very difficult to implement in code), can have much smaller FPS hit on DX11.

There are some important "under the hood" features also in DX10/11 like new VRAM management and so on. All in all, newer doesn't mean faster, but there are so much more features that you can easily make DX11 slower :)
 
It's very exciting that DX11 support is coming along ahead of schedule, but I hope that the saturation pendulum doesn't swing from its current washed out status to the cartoon-like oversaturation of Automobilista.


I agree to an extent, but the problem is that rF2's outdated graphics and presentation probably prevented large numbers of potential customers from getting behind the wheel in the first place.

Agree about the AMS colours and saturation. But that issue can be solved in 60 seconds with community-created SweetFX profiles. I use one that returns everything to a pleasant and naturalistic look. As long as rF2 is adjustable, I don't need to care if a majority or minority like a particular tone and saturation because I can adjust for myself. Hopefully that same logic appeals to everyone else, too. So far, no matter which HDR approach ISI took, and it varied over time, there were about the same proportion of people complaining about it. Make it adjustable.
 
  • Deleted member 130869

Agree about the AMS colours and saturation. But that issue can be solved in 60 seconds with community-created SweetFX profiles. I use one that returns everything to a pleasant and naturalistic look. As long as rF2 is adjustable

If the base rendering is off, I don't see how SweetFX can solve it. It will always be a matter of compromise, looking ok under certain conditions, but "falling apart" in others.
 
If the base rendering is off, I don't see how SweetFX can solve it. It will always be a matter of compromise, looking ok under certain conditions, but "falling apart" in others.

I don't perceive that AMS is fundamentally imbalanced, just a bit too vivid and over-saturated for my liking/my monitor. The alternate SweetFX profile works perfectly. It may not be such a simple task, though, when you have dynamic lighting. But I am sure a couple of in-game adjustments should still be possible.

Oh, and I should remind for those who don't have AMS, it already comes with multiple SweetFX profile options from the publisher. I just prefer a third-party one. Of course, if you have talent, you can make your own, too!
 
Agree about the AMS colours and saturation. But that issue can be solved in 60 seconds with community-created SweetFX profiles. I use one that returns everything to a pleasant and naturalistic look. As long as rF2 is adjustable, I don't need to care if a majority or minority like a particular tone and saturation because I can adjust for myself. Hopefully that same logic appeals to everyone else, too. So far, no matter which HDR approach ISI took, and it varied over time, there were about the same proportion of people complaining about it. Make it adjustable.
I use a custom Sweetfx profile to desaturate and warm AMS too, but there's a limit to what it can do when Reiza have settled on such garish car shaders :)

I've actually come to appreciate rF2s naturalistic HDR lighting even if it is a little washed out. rF2 visuals improved quite a bit with tonemapping adjustments several builds ago which removed the drab grey/green feel to everything. I appreciate that the DX11 work is seeking to infuse a little more richness to the palette and I fully agree that some saturation/contrast/gamma adjustment capability in rF2 would be the best way to keep everyone happier.

At the end of the day though, improvements to lighting and rendering are less meaningful if the assets being lit and rendered aren't consistent and up to scratch visually. There's a lot of rF2 assets that simply aren't, but I don't know what the roadmap entails for these.
 
Not sure if I detect sarcasm or bragging about monitor. Probably a combination of the two. :p

FWIW, I notice a huge difference with dx9 and dx11 comparison on a shitty old Benq monitor.
 

Latest News

Online or Offline racing?

  • 100% online racing

    Votes: 86 7.4%
  • 75% online 25% offline

    Votes: 123 10.6%
  • 50% online 50% offline

    Votes: 170 14.7%
  • 25% online 75% offline

    Votes: 322 27.8%
  • 100% offline racing

    Votes: 455 39.2%
  • Something else, explain in comment

    Votes: 4 0.3%
Back
Top