Worried about the future of rF2

[Richard Eriksson]

As the topic suggests...

As a long time ISI supporter and follower, i am now feeling a bit worried for the future.The number of new users coming in to rFactor2 seems to be dwindling.

Also there is a long time between the new official content. And even when there is official content released, it seems to fail to gather an interest (Civics in December) amongst the yet unitiated.

Also, the mod community seems a lot more reluctant than for rF1, with very few members adding content.This is even more worrying as it was the foundation of rF1 and a big selling point for bringing more people to the franchise (race anything you like).

ISI now also faces a stiff competition as the "sim" genre has become "hot" again with more titles in the works, that seem to gather a LOT more interest: AC, pCars etc.

The old veterans like myself are finding ourselves drawn to the likes of GSC, and newcomers are moving towards AC and probably DTM Experience.


I start this topic to see if someone shares my worries, and also to discuss if something can be done to once again bring more interest to rF2?


My personal idea is to go for Steam greenlighting (i actually REALLY like Steam as a platform), to gain exposure and also simplify the purchasing as well as updating.
Connecting it to Workshop makes modding interesting again, like what AC proposes.


I want rF2 to succeed, it is by far the most comprehensive take on simulating the actual race mechanics and based on that it should be the goto title for the serious sim-user, but right now i fear it is not.


Discussions on graphics i will however discard personally, as a) rF2 is pretty enough and b) the prettiest of settings in something like pCars is inaccesible to 95% of users.


So, what is your view of the status of the product?



Points of improvement needed going forward as identified in this thread so far:

* Better GUI (incoming)
* Steam integration and release
* Possible new distribution method that would automate updates and sync, if not steam
* New official content
* More transparent development
* Shorter build intervals
* More efficient code and optimization of codebase
* A possibility to "lock down" the core functionality, to deliver something considered stable and final
* New updater that allows automatic updating of content as well, including adding NEW
content

 

[Richard Eriksson]

Well apart from my worries for the future, it has to be said that rF2 to me, is still the pinnacle of "simulation" as far as racing is concerned. AC is getting there, but there i am worried about the will to bend to marketing purposes and mass market appeal.

As a simulation enthusiast in general, realism is my thing. Variables has to be correct and algorithms top-notch in this regard. The rest is a bit superficial to me.

For this reason i see AC and rF2 as direct competitors, but pCars as something else for instance (nice flamebait, heh).

rF2 is still the top thing when it comes to accuracy, but this, as i said is irrelevant if it can not capture the interest of leagues, club race organizers and wel... new fans. And for that mather, the all important modding and custom scene.

The problem is that most of the critiscism directed at rF2 does not address my concerns, but superficial things like graphics.

For me simulation and the spreading of that hobby is most important, be it racing, flight, milsim, what have you.

Hence my discussion about a long term platform.

The discussions that DO exist is a bit too focused on the superficial. For instance, looking at random "outside" look at pCars (such as PC Gamer or forums) reads along the lines of:

OMG! GRAPHICS! WOWZOR!

blah blah... some cars, racing is kewl, doing donuts in ya face!

blah... OMG! GRAPHICS! WOWZOR!

blah blah... Forza 5.... blah blah

OMG! GRAPHICS! WOWZOR!

blah blah... More donuts, yeah crashing into stuff, parts flying!!! Crashes are cool.

OMG! GAPHICS! WOWZOR!


No wonder i am cynical

 

[Bez]

I'm VERY new to the sim racing genre but after buying a t500 at the beginning of the year and buying all available sims out there I find myself returning to rf2 over all the other titles.
The way it makes my wheel feel and the "feel" in general is head and shoulders better than all the rest, gsc2013 imo is a close second but still a long way off the feel of rf2.

 

[Richard Eriksson]

I'm VERY new to the sim racing genre but after buying a t500 at the beginning of the year and buying all available sims out there I find myself returning to rf2 over all the other titles.
The way it makes my wheel feel and the "feel" in general is head and shoulders better than all the rest, gsc2013 imo is a close second but still a long way off the feel of rf2.

Nice! This is an example of when "simulator nerds" are formed

When it "clicks" and you get hooked on it.

Yet for others this never happens and the comments are instead:
"Complex"
"Boring"
"Too hard"
"Too much like real life, i want GAMEplay"

etc.

So i get that it's not for all, but i assume by your post that you are going to keep in it.
Give it a while and you will be upgrading your 1000 dollar racerig every other week and discussing tire physics formulas at obscure forums all nights, like the rest of us

 

[Bez]

I was on the RD server last night until after 3am trying to hone my skills with the WSGT Megane Trophy mod (great mod!!). The club racers on the rf2 RD servers have been helping me with my lines and sharing car setups, im still well off the times but loving every minute of it.

 

[Tim Meuris]

I'm always amazed by how many people "write off" a title after one short session. I've read a lot about that in rF2 and AC. There are many who label AC as "Arcade" but, I can't remember rF2 ever getting that label. Some do say that rF2 is too slippery or the graphics just too dated. I think it all depends what games you are used to playing but, I always like to give a title that I'm interested in a few good try's before I make a decision about how it fits into my library.

yup

that's why I always wait with early acces until it's in a more evolved stadium.

 

[RaceNut]

yup

that's why I always wait with early access until it's in a more evolved stadium.

For the most part - I don't have a problem with the early access - at least not in AC's case. I think things worked quite well from the get-go. Pcars on the other hand - is very hard to get a good read on where the physics and FFB will end up although, I do feel it's moving in the right direction. rF2 has been quite playable for me from the start as well. I like different aspects of both AC and rF2 but, won't hold having "good graphics" against Pcars if that turns out to drive well in the end.

At the end of the day, I want to have a believable and immersive racing experience. Ideally, it will include great physics, FFB, sound, AI and graphics. Missing one of those isn't a deal breaker for me but, with the current titles in development having so much to offer - I won't have to look too hard to find what I am craving. I already have all of these titles and will continue to play them anyway, it's just a matter of which one develops into my primary obsession.

 

[Richard Eriksson]

Ok. This discussion has led me to do a full performance profiling on rF2 as of b494. Been a long time since.

And i now have to add another point. I used a reference test of 24 cars, starting at the back, with different cars all ai, except me. Then i used my usual combination of free and commercial software for monitoring threads and performance.

The graphics i do not object to on a prettyness factor, as is said, it is not that important to me. But what is important... Is performance. And this is still pretty bad as far as my readings show.

The rendering pipeline when monitored by hooking it with Ccm Profiler shows signs of high congestion and ineffective memory management.

The card i use to profile is a single GTX680 oc @ 1050 mhz. With 4 gb. Of VRAM... And 24 cars is on the limit of this setup, with usages going to 85-90% vsynced at times. And vram usage at a staggering 2,3 gb. at Mills with civics. That is really absurd.

Also the rain... Oh dear, the rain. The effects and spray crushes gpus like a sledgehammer.

CPU is still locking at two threads (physics and AI). It is still highly dependant on CPU clocks.

I would say a system forr unning vsynced rF2 in all it's glory would be around 4Ghz. And up for cpu, and Titan or 780Ti or more for GPU, at 1920x1080...

And this, unlike the general prettyness actaully IS noteworthy. It indicates that the core engine has code problems, because i see nothing in the platform justifying the outrageous demands on the hw.

My congestion numbers supports this, with GPU buffer measurements and main bus readings showing crazy RAM usage and spikes in pipeline.

I measured similiar values for AC and these turned out to show a lot less spiking and congestion as well as much faster throughput. And rF2 is much longer into its cycle of life.

Needs development time on the code as well.

Worries not calmed yet.

 

[Ho3n3r]

I agree. I'm a bit worried as well. It all just seems too stagnant. Assetto Corsa has shown us what development speed really is recently, especially with a small team.

 

[John-Eric Saxén]

The Civic ram usage is due to car model textures chosen. I think the 3d modellers went a bit overkill with that car, as it uses much more RAM than anything else. For the rest I agree, the gMotor 2.5 engine which rF2 uses seems to be basically gMotor 2.0 from rF with added HDR and real-time reflections. This is probably why it doesn't perform very well on today's hardware. Visually it looks ok with latest build, I have not much to complain about that.

 

[Richard Eriksson]

The Civic ram usage is due to car model textures chosen. I think the 3d modellers went a bit overkill with that car, as it uses much more RAM than anything else. For the rest I agree, the gMotor 2.5 engine which rF2 uses seems to be basically gMotor 2.0 from rF with added HDR and real-time reflections. This is probably why it doesn't perform very well on today's hardware. Visually it looks ok with latest build, I have not much to complain about that.

I also believe the codebase is mostly gMotor2 base, with the added visual effects. However i have to say that said effects seems to be implemented ineffeciently as they tax even modern hardware. For reference, one can look at GSC2013 that visually is a modified rF engine, with added effects. This looks similiar to what has been seen in rF2, however in that case the effects seem nicer on the hw than rF2.

At least now the HDR profile looks a lot better. But as stated, looks is nice but you would also prefer performance. Something that is still lacking given the new effects put in.

I think the engine itself also has issues with high poly objects, such as the cars, as they eat away substancially at the performance. Incidentally the same thing is true for GSC where you could see GPU usage around 10% only to add some high poly classic formula cars and hit 85% just like that...

It will be yet another problem for new adopters i think. The ones most sensitive to optimization issues. People like me with long relationships to simulation as a whole are kind of used to all the tinkering involved, not to mention some INSANE hw demands in some cases (Flight Sim X and Arma, i am looking at you).

New adopters, are most likely just fed up when their new machine with say a spanking fresh gtx770 or so (same card as 680 basically in the new fresh packaging), is not enough to drive a game they percieve as 'ugly'. Or for that matter, when their 8 cores, has too low clocks to not stutter at the starts of races, despite being 2 months old.

So yeah. I can see this being an issue going forward.

 

[Stefan Mizzi]

I'm not worried at all. It has been stated many times that rF2 is a project planned on a very long timescale. True, progress is a bit slow and with every built issues come along, but it's still improving and I have already taken part in many events which were super super fun.

So I'm sure that at some point (many months I would say) rF2 would be in a great state.

AC is coming along very nicely too and can't wait for MP as that's where the real fun starts for me.

IMO, these two titles will be the top sims at some stage, but great sims don't come along easy, these are complex projects and it takes lots of time, effort and resources.

I also do not want to discard pCars and SimBin's sims and these surely have the same potential to be at the top. We'll see what happens, but I am always hopeful.

 

[Richard Eriksson]

Updated the first post in the thread with points of improvement identified in our discussion so far.

 

[Ho3n3r]

Great list. Unfortunately, most of those things are out of us as a community's hands... It's really the devs who are responsible for faster builds, more transparent development etc.

I really loved this game about a year ago, but the other big sim is just doing more right at the moment.

 

[Frederic Schornstein]

In the recent times I see the racing club coming along better, but still there are not that much leauges out there. For me the official content cars have a lot higher quality than most mods, which I hope will change over time.

I haven't tried AC for a while and sitll need to tweak the FFB, because I don't get a good feedback through my wheel, which makes it a bit annoying to drive.
I wouldn't say rF2 is the best sim as I haven't played AC a lot and never tried pCars, but it is the only of the new sims, that allows me to have nice online racing. Just 1 day after release I was able to go online and race and you can simulate most aspects of reallife racing.
One of the big advanteges for me at the moment are the tyres, which punish overdriving the car and realroad, which punishes going offline and make overtaking that bit harder.
Really realroad and tyres are what I miss in the other sims.

I totally agree, that the mod, update, multiplayer needs to be fixed. Mod download is not always allowed on the servers and then still you miss a lot of tracks and the get component feature doesn't work most of the time.

I hope we will see all these chaning conditions in other sims. For me it is a big plus, because it rewards actual skill over endless practice. With ever steady conditions you can practice 1000Laps to find the last bit of performance. In rF2 you need a good feel for the car, the conditions and how you are able to push.
In the last VWEC race we had qualy starting on lower grip levels and like F1 qualy in Bahrain the laptime tumbled down and you really needed to be on the track at the right time, in the right place to avoid traffic, you needed the tyres in the right condition and temperature window plus the pressure of only having one attempt in good conditions.

Still to this day that was the best buzz I ever got from simracing. Finding the correct balance between safety and pushing and delivering a top time. @Andrew Ford will most likely still remember how pumped up I was after that sessioin. That is what I want from a racing sim. I don't get that buzz from AI racing or hotlapping.

 

[David O'Reilly]

Yes to that.

 

[Dave Robinson]

I was a huge rf1 fanboy racing it nearly every night for 5 years. Rf2 was a huge let down for me when it was released and remains so today.
IMO when the annual renewal for online services come up in June then it will be dead. As someone said the last update messed up the ability to join servers for most of us and there is still no fix!!
The modding teams seem to be holding off until AC is out of Beta, the amount of mods for rf2 released in the last 2 years are few and far between.
I wish the future looked brighter for rf2 but if AC nail the multiplayer side of things then IMO that will be the go to sim for online racing.
Over 2 years in Beta!! I cant believe that ISI think this is acceptable.

 

[Richard Eriksson]

Yes. The simulation engine itself is amazing, and is mostly the reason it still gets away with its flaws, really.

However, to get the most out of online play, with this fantastic race simulation engine, you have to be on forums, or in leagues. Closed group racing, elitist users, total aliens. That comes with the territory.

And this is a problem, as it becomes very uninviting to a newcomer. It becomes a product only to be fully enjoyed by said elitist group of people (myself included ) and not something you can sell to
new adopters. It needs to be more friendly. It needs matchmaking. It needs an ingame community. And it needs content adapted to suit all ranges of users.

Steam, as i have said would actually solve those pointe, apart from content.

Works wonders for AC. And will show it's true potential when MP arrives for that title.

rF2 is the most unfriendly and "stiff" product of the bunch, and that is ok, but if it is, then at least give a WAY for new people to properly learn to use and enjoy it, built into the product.

 

[Ricardo Edelmann]

@Rupe Wilson @Franklin Stegink had a nice discussion yesterday after the Megane Race on Poznan. I would like to see everyones Opinion here in this thread again. if we get a good List of points that we think are the first to change things we could try to set up a thread in ISI Forums... with a link to this Forum and hopefully they will think about this...

Cheers
Rico

 

[Stig Bidstrup]

Hi
The above post is what I am thinking of this sim ...rf2 unfriendly and stiff....
if you have some time off and want to do some racing with Fellow racers in multiplayer..
....you have to download mods install cars download tracks...and the rigth versions by the way..
....when you get to the racing part....they are all gone.. NeXT time evrything have to be upgraded...
its a fun killer...
! I think ! ISI ran out of Money for this sim a looong time ago...and some key persons in Development
....found something else to do with their talent a looong time ago.....
My rf2 purchase runs until jun 2014...and I wont renew it....2years of installing and downloading..
simbin and the race07 series have by far the best multiplayer system around.....look at that
and do the same....
Stig Bidstrup

 

[Frederic Schornstein]

@Rupe Wilson @Franklin Stegink had a nice discussion yesterday after the Megane Race on Poznan. I would like to see everyones Opinion here in this thread again. if we get a good List of points that we think are the first to change things we could try to set up a thread in ISI Forums... with a link to this Forum and hopefully they will think about this...

Cheers
Rico

Good idea, but I think the community can do a bit more as well. We see in almost every race a relatively great spread in performance, which could be reduced by some sort of mentoring. You cant turn everyone into an alien, but you can get most drivers within 1 or at least 2 seconds of the top guys, which would result in much closer grids. For example most public races, which I do from time to time on the ISI servers are just booring at least in the Megane or Civic, because there is only one or maximum two drivers, who are really fast, so I start doing things like starting from the back to get a bit of racing going.

It is really sad, that ISI have missed out on the "userfriendliness", but on the other hand all new sims RRE, AC, pCars are missing the multiplayer at the moment.
There are basically two scenarios when AC Mp comes out: ISI gets on top of the mentioned issues or a lot of drivers will do the switch and rF2 will loose even more players. If AC screws up the MP or the options will be limited for a long time, it could be a diffrent story.

One thing I realised is, that AC vs rF2 is a bit like Apple vs Android. Even the flaws (like the super aggressive AI in AC) are defended by most community members and with rF2 people are always super negative about everything. AC does much better PR than ISI and competitors are coming, which could be costly for them. I have no doubt that Kunos would have brought in a proper solution or would have just reverted to an older version, if they had such a MP issues like rF2 has at the moment...