rFactor 2 October Roadmap Update

[Paul Jeffrey]

Studio 397 have revealed their very first official Development Roadmap for rFactor 2, bringing news of a couple of new pieces of content, a brand new licence and insight into the ongoing development surrounding rFactor 2.

Following the recent Sim Racing Expo announcement that a new company, Studio 397, will be taking over development of rFactor 2 going forwards, Marcel Offermans of Studio 397 promised the community a greater level of interaction regarding plans for the simulation. Offermans has today made good on that promise, with the release of Studio 397's first public roadmap for the month of October.

The full October Development Roadmap post can be seen below:

"A car we’ve teased before is the USF2000 and we are happy to report that it is almost ready for release. We are particularly proud of this car as we were able to build it with a lot of support from the series and teams so we’ve ended up with a car that is extremely accurate in terms of both physics and car model. On top of that it is also a lot of fun to drive and has become a favourite of many people on the test team.

Our next track release is going to be NOLA Motorsports Park. Both the race and kart track will be available in different configurations. We’ve been working on it for the past couple of months. Most of the 3D objects are done and we’re currently assembling everything in preparation for further testing.

On the development side a lot has happened. In the background we have moved everything over to new infrastructure that allows us to work on new features in parallel, ensuring that they are only added to the next release when done and tested. We have also spent time automating our processes and intend to use those improvements to deliver updates more quickly.

Over the last year we have been working hard in close cooperation with the Stock Car community to improve the rules for oval racing. That work is still ongoing, and we feel we’re on the final stretch now!

Announced a month ago, the development of the DX11 engine with VR support is still ongoing. This is obviously a big project and apart from building and integrating the new engine we also need to make sure that we stay compatible with our existing content. Our current timeline for getting this integrated is by the end of Q1 2017.

We are also moving closer to the first public release that will be Steam only. It will definitely be released this year and is scheduled to contain a whole list of bugfixes and improvements to the codebase. I would like to take this opportunity to invite everybody that is still using the non-Steam version to take advantage of the free option to migrate to Steam. Future updates will start leveraging more Steam features so the only way to take advantage of those is to move to Steam.

Finally, we have an announcement to make. We have secured a license with Radical sportscars and will be bringing those into rFactor 2. With full access to CAD drawings and performance data we can deliver these cars with a very high amount of accuracy. Work on this has just started, but we are very excited as these are great cars to drive and race!"

The October Development Roadmap contains some pretty interesting content, not least of which is the announcement that Studio 397 have secured a licence to bring the rather tasty Radical brand to the simulation. As many of you will already know, Radical are a sportscar manufacturer based in the United Kingdom and are renowned for developing a wide variety of low weight, high power prototype race cars that are a favourite on the national club racing scene. As well as such classics as the SR1, in recent years the manufacturer has designed and developed ten different models that take part in a variety of one-make and multi-class championships throughout the world.

Further news indicates that the recently revealed USF2000 car is close to release, hopefully coming before the Christmas holiday period. As mentioned in our recent exclusive interview with Tim Wheatley, the USF2000 has been built with unprecedented access to the teams and drivers of the championship and could very well prove to be one of the most concentrated and realistic first party cars seen in rFactor 2 to date.

All in all, it looks like the future of rFactor 2 is very bright indeed. I for one can't wait to see how it all develops.


The rFactor 2 sub forum here at RaceDepartment is the place to go for all the latest news and discussions regarding the simulation. We have a great modding archive, some excellent user created setups (more of these would be nice please folks and of course of great racing club events! Head over today and join in the fun.

Are you happy with the news in the October Development Roadmap? What are you looking forward to the most? Happy to see the community engagement from Studio 397? Let us know in the comments section below!

 

[Deleted member 130869]

This option would mean that the initial download is minimal in size, but then you get a game with no content and have to wait many hours again if you want the content as well. Most Steam players want to jump into the game directly after they have bought/downloaded, this adds an extra step.

I don't know where you'd get hours from given Steam's fast download speeds. It's not as if all content in the game is of the same standard, tech or visuals anyway, to compare to other games. This discussion however is indeed a bit of a luxury since I do not know of other games that offer an option to "ship partially" ... but again I don't know of another game where the content isn't standardized.

I don't have enough games on Steam to use the Workshop so I can't speak in general, but the 10-15 seconds the launcher takes while it checks for subscribed content, is mildly annoying.

 

[Denis Betty]

I must admit, the point about Steam not supporting a light version is something I hadn't considered. It doesn't make sense to me really though, because I don't see a difference in how that would affect their profits compared to the current system.
Have to say however, I disagree with pretty much everything else John-Eric had to say. eg. Most Steam users... ref?

 

[Marcel Offermans]

Steam does hardware surveys of their userbase. Whilst this is obviously not in any way specific to simracing, it does give you some idea of the "average" system people have:

http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey

Some interesting statistics there:

• Of the people that have specified their network speed, over half of them have speeds of over 2Mbps (meaning an initial download of 20GB takes roughly a day) and over a third have speeds of over 10Mbps (reducing that time to under 5 hours).
• More than half of the people on Steam have a total harddisk space of over 750GB.
• Over 75% of Windows users runs a 64 bit version of the Operating System.
• Almost 85% of all Windows users have at least a DX11 capable video card.

That said, we are looking into ways of improving the initial download experience, as this is not the only discussion about that topic. There were good reasons why we chose to include all content in the initial download, but times change and there are options (and also some limitations) as to what we can do on Steam. I do appreciate the feedback, we'll try to listen!

 

[Marcel Gerber]

Is it possible that we can test the beta build with DX11?

 

[RustyDriver00]

Hell yeah sign me up for beta

 

[Alex Townsend]

Hell yeah sign me up for beta

+1

 

[Peter Stokman]

Well said, that's the first time I've ever agreed with something you've said, and it's the reason why I question this team made up of bedroom modders not professional coders.

YOU SHOULD START YOUR OWN TEAM MELANIE UK GRUMPIES ALL YOU CAN DO IS SPEAK positive about arcadish AC the arcade game that looks indeed graphicly very good but thats all to say about it driving ac showing on screen 300KM/hr but for immersion it feels 20 k/hr in reverse please stay at the AC forum and away from all others You are even to gready for premium membership

 

[Peter Stokman]

Steam does hardware surveys of their userbase. Whilst this is obviously not in any way specific to simracing, it does give you some idea of the "average" system people have:

http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey

Some interesting statistics there:

• Of the people that have specified their network speed, over half of them have speeds of over 2Mbps (meaning an initial download of 20GB takes roughly a day) and over a third have speeds of over 10Mbps (reducing that time to under 5 hours).
• More than half of the people on Steam have a total harddisk space of over 750GB.
• Over 75% of Windows users runs a 64 bit version of the Operating System.
• Almost 85% of all Windows users have at least a DX11 capable video card.

That said, we are looking into ways of improving the initial download experience, as this is not the only discussion about that topic. There were good reasons why we chose to include all content in the initial download, but times change and there are options (and also some limitations) as to what we can do on Steam. I do appreciate the feedback, we'll try to listen!

20Gb takes me about max 10 minutes and even them iam restless while waiting , ppl quickly getting used and spoiled by things

 

[Kevin Knorpp]

Obviously I am following the ongoing discussions. We are looking into this. As @Emery stated, we've already updated a lot of first party tracks. For cars we need to look at data we have available for them, which will influence our decision to try and update them. It is something I will get back to you all about.

Just a thought but in my case for example with the 60s OW and Howston G4/G9 physics are not the problem but rather VEH files, RCD files and (in the case of 60s OW) lack of skins and number of vehicles and (in the case of the Howstons) terrible sound. I think there are also graphics bugs, especially where 60s OW looked good originally but need to be updated for graphics changes because dials don't reflect, etc.

The physics are great IMO so I'd hope that if you didn't have the data that you need you could still bring these up to snuff as much as you can.

Also, with the possibility of the rF1 tire model being available maybe this reduces the reliance on data if the rF1 tire model is used for these if, for example, the vehicles can't be supported on the new tire model without being on CPM if bugs arise?

 

[Peter Stokman]

Would also great if they change the workshop a bit because i dont want all those corvettes standard road cars and boxmaster and some other ISI cars/tracks but if i delete them from installed map and unsubscribe it in workshop then it is automaticly downloaded again as i log in to the launcher. Plz change this .

 

[Gijs van Elderen]

Would also great if they change the workshop a bit because i dont want all those corvettes standard road cars and boxmaster and some other ISI cars/tracks but if i delete them from installed map and unsubscribe it in workshop then it is automaticly downloaded again as i log in to the launcher. Plz change this .

Unsubscribe from the RaceEvents...

 

[Peter Stokman]

Unsubscribe from the RaceEvents...

is not that cuz the ones i deleted arent in any race event , its about ISI standard items

 

[Gijs van Elderen]

is not that cuz the ones i deleted arent in any race event , its about ISI standard items

All ISI cars and tracks are in use by RaceEvents.
Workshop items can't be unsubscribed, uninstalled, or deleted when they are still in use by Race Events, or Server mods.
Unsubscribe from the Race events first, then unsubscribe from the individual cars and tracks
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=547589245

Deleting, uninstalling workshop items doesn't work. Only Unsubcribing. It's annoying?
But i think the new UI will bring more clarity.

 

[Peter Stokman]

All ISI cars and tracks are in use by RaceEvents.
Workshop items can't be unsubscribed, uninstalled, or deleted when they are still in use by Race Events, or Server mods.
Unsubscribe from the Race events first, then unsubscribe from the individual cars and tracks
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=547589245

Deleting, uninstalling workshop items doesn't work. Only Unsubcribing. It's annoying?
But i think the new UI will bring more clarity.

Unsubscribed them but they keep comming back when opening launcher
and extra also deleted them in rfactor2/installed but no result

 

[Denis Betty]

Unsubscribed them but they keep comming back when opening launcher
and extra also deleted them in rfactor2/installed but no result

Did you unsubscribe from race events first Peter? I agree, this does need looking at. But Marcel has stated earlier in this thread which it is something that is being assessed.

EDIT: I was refering to post #63, where Marcel mentions looking into the initial download process. It's not the same thing your talking about Peter, sorry.

 

[Peter Stokman]

yes i did, i am used to it was only pointing it out as a much anticipated upgrade

 

[Deleted member 130869]

Unsubscribed them but they keep comming back when opening launcher
and extra also deleted them in rfactor2/installed but no result

On the launcher, click around the Settings for launch parameters. Or on Steam. Make sure there's no +workshop anywhere.

 

[Peter Stokman]

Deleted files / unsubscibed from Workshop and guess what at first new restart the launcher is loading them all again , waiting asap for new UI cuz this is

 

[Slyfrequency]

Deleted files / unsubscibed from Workshop and guess what at first new restart the launcher is loading them all again , waiting asap for new UI cuz this is

This happens to me too, I unsubscribe from the stuff I don't want but it just downloads it again, a bit frustrating

 

[John-Eric Saxén]

Deleted files / unsubscibed from Workshop and guess what at first new restart the launcher is loading them all again , waiting asap for new UI cuz this is

New UI won't help unless they plan to change the package structure itself. Make sure from launcher package manager that you have no "mods" installed/subscribed. Even if you have unsubscribed all race events, you might still have leftover virtual mods from online sessions that will prevent uninstalling of any referenced components. I agree that the system is a pain, it seems it was made for the computer scientist rather than the average user in mind.