rFactor 2 Moving to DX11 - New Company Partnership Announced

[Paul Jeffrey]

With the build up to this weekend’s Sim Racing Expo, Image Space Incorporated have announced a strategic partnership with the Dutch software group Luminis. The new alliance has been created to help increase development in rFactor 2, including a number of exceptionally exciting announcements in relation to the sim.

The partnership will be brought together into a new company: Studio 397. Studio 397 will have its headquarters in Apeldoorn, the Netherlands and will operate under the leadership of Marcel Offermans, a fellow sim racer and the man responsible for bringing both rFactor and rFactor 2 to the Steam platform.

Gjon Camaj, Vice President of Image Space Incorporated:

“We at ISI are very pleased to have found a partner that shares our enthusiasm and vision for the continued growth of rFactor 2. We look forward to working with Luminis to expand the reach of rFactor 2 both in Europe and beyond. After having worked with Luminis for some time and seeing their passion for motorsport simulation, this partnership was a natural next step. By leveraging each of our company’s individual strengths, we will be better able to serve our current customers and further expand our reach into the world of motorsports”.​

Marcel Offermans, Luminis Fellow and Managing Director of Studio 397:

“I’m really excited by the opportunities that our partnership with ISI offers; rFactor 2 represents the best of breed, stable simulator platform in the industry. Online simracing has been my longtime personal passion, so the opportunity to combine my passion with my business feels like a great privilege. By infusing the platform with some of our own technology we see great opportunities to accelerate development in general and specifically in the areas of competitions and training”.​

The new partnership have released an ambitious roadmap for rFactor 2’s further development including the stated plans to move over to a DX11 compatible graphics engine, including VR support for both Oculus Rift and HTC Vive. With the move to DX11, Studio 397 have committed to bringing performance improvements for high end video card users as well as maintaining compatibility with current content.

Other highlights from the announcement include a proposed new HTML based front end interface and Matchmaker support, in game UI updates and a promise to make more frequent car and track releases, working on racing cars and series as well as "popular and challenging" tracks. The new partnership also promises to work more closely with the community to support development of free and paid mod releases...

Oh, and the game has a new logo too....


All in all, this is fantastic news for rF2 and the sim racing community. I can hardly wait.

Check our rFactor 2 sub forum for news, discussions, mods, club and league races and everything in between!

What do you think of the announcement? Excited about DX11, VR support, new content? Let us know in the comments section below!

 

[Will Mazeo]

Sometimes it is really a pain to make an accurate car custom skin, because of (IMHO) wrong positioned parts...

ISI templates have the same problems, at least a lot of them.

Excuse me, I have no knowledge about this, but why aren't people doing 3D painting in rF2? In the EEC GT3 mod for AMS Patriot made it available for all cars

 

[Deleted member 130869]

We are talking to all modders (also the ones you mention specifically here) about their feedback towards rFactor 2. To be honest, the format of PSD templates being such a pain to people is new to me. What is the biggest problem you have with them? Is it the UV mapping of the 3D car onto a 2D texture? That is a complex process and always a tradeoff between accuracy (making sure each pixel distorts as little as possible) and ease of use (having reasonably large surfaces you can paint at once without too many seams). Are you saying modders should move more into the "ease of use" direction here? Or something else? Please elaborate.

Hey! Some of the issues were already mentioned regarding the bad mapping but there are some we just don't have anything adequate. I meant them not being available like the historic driver or helmet, or the time it takes for some to be made available like gloves. .psd is good .

Updated driver model and a set of motions would be nice. And a definite guide on wipers, i don't know how many times people struggled with setting the bone and getting it to function properly, etc.

Thanks Marcel.

 

[Adam Farmer]

gJED isn't finished yet. Modders still need to use 3ds Max 2012 or older. 3ds Max 2012 or older isn't available any more. Even if you have the money.

Another vote for this - please finish gJED. I don't think it's too far off done, but it's buggy and quirky and missing some features to get everything working. I'm using Blender to make my track so it's great we have gJED - but it needs some work please!

 

[Deleted member 130869]

Excuse me, I have no knowledge about this, but why aren't people doing 3D painting in rF2? In the EEC GT3 mod for AMS Patriot made it available for all cars

Feel free to provide the latest painting software for all of us, or learn about topics before venturing into the discussions.

 

[Ghoults]

+1 for more gjed work. It can be amazing tool and it is essential for modding but at the same time it is far from amazing as it is now. The issues it has is lack of documentation, usability, graphics and missing features. I can't say anything about track making but for cars it definitely needs some love.

Shaders simply look and work sometimes completely differently in-game, most of the time just differently so it is very annoying to work with it. It requires constant restarts when you change shaders, change alpha test or invisibility options or change cube mapping +some other things. The gui misses a lot of basic stuff. The user is supposed to assign textures without knowing which of the uvmaps is used for which texture slot and when you switch from one shader to other the gui won't even tell you what kind of texture the different textures slots want. Is it specularity map, normal, diffuse, cube map? Most of the time you have no idea. The shaders seem to be named somewhat consistently but the syntax is not explained anywhere. Really really basic stuff.

The lack of documentation is pretty much 100% with gjed. Absolutely not one single word for it exists anywhere on the isi documents. You pretty much need to decode the 3dsmax plugin tutorials to be able to use it. Some of it translates into gjed somewhat well but for new user it is pretty hopeless situation. And misses 90% of the basic stuff.

It is not hopeless but it would be super amazing if the gjed was worked into something that actually does what it is intended to do.

 

[Will Mazeo]

Feel free to provide the latest painting software for all of us, or learn about topics before venturing into the discussions.

Was just an innocent question, not wanting to hurt anyone's feeling, just wondering if it's something modders could provide in rF2

 

[Gijs van Elderen]

it takes for some to be made available like gloves. .psd is good .

Here you go: Glove template for the rF2 2014 driver: https://www.dropbox.com/s/tcx2laa9ru9g4gr/Gloves.7z?dl=0
the gloves make use of the "EXTRA" suffix. For example EXTRA1 and EXTRA2 for left and right glove. But this depends on the car. So you'll need to check EXTRA0 to EXTRA9.

Any spefic car you are working on? or is it a general request?

 

[Deleted member 130869]

Here you go: Glove template for the rF2 2014 driver: https://www.dropbox.com/s/tcx2laa9ru9g4gr/Gloves.7z?dl=0
the gloves make use of the "EXTRA" suffix. For example EXTRA1 and EXTRA2 for left and right glove. But this depends on the car. So you'll need to check EXTRA0 to EXTRA9.

Any spefic car you are working on? or is it a general request?

I was going to paint driver suits for yoss' 917. It may be worth it waiting for the Brabham driver to be made available. I was able to extract the .dds and make it into .psd but it isn't worth my time to recreate real life content if ISI itself won't bother giving me a file with a few layers on it.

 

[Gijs van Elderen]

I was going to paint driver suits for yoss' 917. It may be worth it waiting for the Brabham driver to be made available.

Templates: https://www.dropbox.com/s/xy2nq3nk2g1a932/917_Driver.7z?dl=0
Gloves are EXTRA4 and EXTRA5, Scarf is EXTRA6.

Have fun.

 

[ronniej]

Well that's just stupid, than nobody will ever go forward if they are afraid of the few that don't budge... sorry but as a company you need to move forward and not get ankerd by the few.

I completely disagree. However I see your point and it would normally make sense, but W10?....NO, just no. In fact, one could argue it is the few who decided to follow the pied piper (DX12 + free upgrade) that gave the virus aka W10 some undeserved steam in the first place and no, I don't want anything to do with that thank you very much. (Unless Microsoft wants to start paying for my hardware) I'm glad that developers and companies will keep ensuring that we still have choice.

 

[ronniej]

Exactly what was needed, and I'm really looking forward to this as I've recently come to realize the strength of rF2 and if they can implement new graphics with an already superior physics engine, well............Damn.

 

[Patrik Marek]

What I would like to see from modding point of view is something similar that Assetto Corsa did and that is , some kind of EDITOR, where you would setup everything, rather then setting everything up during export

biggest benefit to it is that you see shaders/tweaks and all that in real time in the game engine, as you do things like multilevel opacity and what not, so it's much easier to properly polish the car, rather then keep re-exporting and loading up in game

also, while it's great that rf2 is really opened to almost anything/any settings, it could be bit overhelming ( stuff like picking you own reflections for certain objects, different for others ) , so I would personally like that to be bit more simplified , and again doing this in editor, there might be checkboxes for things like static envmap, vs dynamic

you can't really create new shaders in AC, which is a shame, so it can be bit limited, but on the other hand,it's easier to get things done more or less right ( with few options, fewer things can go wrong)

if the editor is the way to go, you could explore some file formats like Alembic, or something else that retains most of the things from your 3d software, and is universal enough that any software could be used ( maya, modo, 3ds max ..etc)

it's also nice that I don't have to worry about driver and that is provided by game, but again, limitation if I want to use something that doesn't exist

as far as UV mapping, .. yes sometimes it's not easy to paint it , but other things needs to be considered for UV mapping then just ease of use

for really really difficult ones, you can always explore 3d painting option too

 

[Gijs van Elderen]

What I would like to see from modding point of view is something similar that Assetto Corsa did and that is , some kind of EDITOR, where you would setup everything, rather then setting everything up during export

biggest benefit to it is that you see shaders/tweaks and all that in real time in the game engine, as you do things like multilevel opacity and what not, so it's much easier to properly polish the car, rather then keep re-exporting and loading up in game

also, while it's great that rf2 is really opened to almost anything/any settings, it could be bit overhelming ( stuff like picking you own reflections for certain objects, different for others ) , so I would personally like that to be bit more simplified , and again doing this in editor, there might be checkboxes for things like static envmap, vs dynamic

you can't really create new shaders in AC, which is a shame, so it can be bit limited, but on the other hand,it's easier to get things done more or less right ( with few options, fewer things can go wrong)

if the editor is the way to go, you could explore some file formats like Alembic, or something else that retains most of the things from your 3d software, and is universal enough that any software could be used ( maya, modo, 3ds max ..etc)

it's also nice that I don't have to worry about driver and that is provided by game, but again, limitation if I want to use something that doesn't exist

as far as UV mapping, .. yes sometimes it's not easy to paint it , but other things needs to be considered for UV mapping then just ease of use

for really really difficult ones, you can always explore 3d painting option too

http://wiki.rfactor.net/index.php?title=GJED

I think gJED is what you are looking for. It has been created a year ago.

Export to FBX. Select your shader, assign the textures, fine tune ambient, diffuse, illuminance and specular fresnel settings in realtime.
It also makes use of fixed list of shaders. Some shaders are a bit complex and require vertex colors to blend 4-5 textures.

It's a cool program, but It didn't recieve any updates since. You can create a track with it and get 90% done. But it misses some final things.

 

[Deleted member 130869]

I was actually wondering if the 3 artist roster could be replaced for a "better line-up."

We have tosch, mianiak, yoss, patrik, woochoo, ASR artists, all providing higher quality work. Heck, even the stuff I have painted, from driver suits, to helmets, to vehicles.

 

[John-Eric Saxén]

I was actually wondering if the 3 artist roster could be replaced for a "better line-up."

We have tosch, mianiak, yoss, patrik, woochoo, ASR artists, all providing higher quality work. Heck, even the stuff I have painted, from driver suits, to helmets, to vehicles.

I don't think it falls short of skill, main problem is that car development is very slow, so they just need more people. If you look at the latest cars and tracks, they are not short of detail compared to other sims. Lots of the historic carmodels for instance were made 5 years ago, so you can't really compare those with the latest content.

 

[Patrik Marek]

http://wiki.rfactor.net/index.php?title=GJED

I think gJED is what you are looking for. It has been created a year ago.

Export to FBX. Select your shader, assign the textures, fine tune ambient, diffuse, illuminance and specular fresnel settings in realtime.
It also makes use of fixed list of shaders. Some shaders are a bit complex and require vertex colors to blend 4-5 textures.

It's a cool program, but It didn't recieve any updates since. You can create a track with it and get 90% done. But it misses some final things.

yeah never heard of it till now
this could be what I was looking for

 

[Spinelli]

- DX11
- VR support
- PC performance improvements
- HTML based front end interface
- Matchmaker support
- In game UI updates
- More frequent car and track releases

Complete opposite of what I want to hear. Many of us are "racers" not "gamers", we would prefer the list to say something like the following:

- Tons of physics engine development work since that is, by far, the most important part of this game/genre - this includes the physics engine itself, the tyre model, combustion engine modeling, drivetrain, chassis, aerodynamics, and working with the core ISI PMotor engine in order to improve it massively from the ground-up.

- Sound engine improving / new sound engine with much more physics based stuff and much more connected to vehicle physics

etc. etc.

Anyways, it seems they are only concerned about the shallow stuff in order to bring in money.



Wish we could go back to the Netkar Pro, Live For Speed, etc. days when single guys, or tiny dev teams, only cared about making the best technical racing sim possible. They did it out of passion and hobby and didn't care about massive car lists, graphics, etc. All they mostly cared about was constant deep physics work. Now it's just the same few racing engines being re-hashed on game after game after game.

The engine is what makes a game...If your engine is the same as another game then the driving experience doesn't change much. I can't be fooled by different UIs, different graphics engines, etc. PCars, RRE, Race07, RF2, AM still have many moments where they have the same fundamental character due to all being based on the same engine (partly different too, don't get me wrong). Whereas when you jump to, say, AC, or IR, or Piboso, you instantly know you're playing a completely different sim as the driving experience is completely different from one-another.

Looking forward to KartSim (vapor ware?). The couple videos I saw of it showed oversteer physics extremely like reality and completely different to how the ISI engine behaves under the same situations.

 

[Alex Townsend]

Anyways, it seems they are only concerned about the shallow stuff in order to bring in money.

And if they don't bring in money? Who gets paid to do what?
How do these people, (yes Devs aren't robots they are human beings), put food on the table for themselves and their families?

I think a lot of people somehow think that the only thing that drives these studios is passion for the hobby. If that were the case these guys would need normal day jobs to support this free work that people expect from them.
We live in a capitalist society where people need money to survive. If they did all this work for free and just concentrate on the physics how long you think it would take the small teams that have a day job and family to support. You'd be waiting years for it at an educated guess...

 

[ls13coco]

Plus, the "game" elements of RF2 are really lacking compared to some other sims, so I don't see these improvements as a waste at all.

 

[vee10]

I understand and respect Spinelli's argument but the history of RF2 suggests the previous way of working does not work either with regard to a viable business or content as both are obviously lacking.

I loved NetKar Pro and love RF2, AMS etc but the 'GAME' that has me at the moment is F1 2016 due to it having a structured and engrossing career mode. Physics wise it is fine but as a mainly single player gamer apart from some iRacing the is the kind of structure all racing sims should be aiming for.

Lets not kid ourselves we are playing games with plastic steering wheels sat in our house on a screen. There is only one true simulation of anything and that is actually doing it.

If games had nailed simulation there would not be variances in how a simulation is interpreted they would all feel the same.