rFactor 2's Quarterly Content Release and UI Refresh Out Now

rFactor 2 Quarterly Content Release 01.jpg
An update to rFactor 2 is live now on Steam, and the sim now welcomes four new pieces of content.

Studio 397's social media has kept us busy over the past weeks with the implementation of a new user interface and teasers of upcoming content. That content is now live on Steam for purchase, and the UI has been given an update.

The rapid-fire nature of the content release is part of a new strategy from Studio 397 and Motorsport Games for rFactor 2. Rather than release each bit of new content as it is becomes ready for release, there will be quarterly releases of multiple projects the team has been working on.

The four pieces of content welcomed this quarter include three new cars and a racing circuit. The first and perhaps most notable release is the Dallara IR18 INDYCAR. Studio 397 has bundled all of the teams, drivers and liveries from the 2021 NTT INDYCAR Series for this release.

Along with the INDYCAR, another impactful piece of content released today was Daytona International Speedway. This track has seen a recent boost in popularity in sim racing, with Automobilista 2 and iRacing already having official versions of the circuit, plus a popular mod for Assetto Corsa and an upcoming appearance in Gran Turismo 7.

Two more cars to join the sim this quarter are the Ligier JS P320 and BMW M4 GT3. The former joins a Norma competitor in the LMP3 class, and the latter helps fill out the GT3 class. If you've yet to try the LMP3 class in this title, you may enjoy the ease of use of the car thanks to its aero package and low, wide stance. The BMW has proven to be a popular choice of car in Assetto Corsa Competizione, and should find itself many fans in rF2.

With so many new choices now on offer in rFactor 2, it may be tough to decide what to purchase. If you've bought and experienced any of the four new pieces of content, let us know your thoughts below in the comments.
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About author
Mike Smith
Mike Smith
I have been obsessed with sim racing and racing games since the 1980's. My first taste of live auto racing was in 1988, and I couldn't get enough ever since. Lead writer for RaceDepartment, and owner of SimRacing604 and its YouTube channel. Favourite sims include Assetto Corsa Competizione, Assetto Corsa, rFactor 2, Automobilista 2, DiRT Rally 2 - On Twitter as @simracing604

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Comments

G
Wes Brook said:
Daytona:
It runs like utter garbage: stuttering/FPS is horrendous in VR.
AI hits the wall on pit exit before even reaching the pit lane: comprehensively play-tested then, good job.
Exposure/saturation/gamma still is not fixed: will it ever be?

So glad I bought this DLC day 1, again. Delighted.
Click to expand...
Exactly this, and the worst part of it is: the dev's DONT CARE. They will remove your post on their forum or simply ignore them if you talk about these major issues.
I don't understand that rf2 gets the most attention here on RD, because it simply came never out of pre-alpha state. The game is and stays unplayable for most of us. You must be a hardcore rf2 lover to ignore all these things, for me it was just wasted money because of exactly what you stated here. And I forgot to mention, besides non-working VR with the G2, not working AI, gamma overbright indeed; there is no surround sound support, and that in 2022 for a sim racer! You cannot even hear where the cars are coming from! It's only stereo and that for a RACE sim.. it's unbelievable, and they still have the sound setting in the new UI where it states surround 5.1, but when you enable it, what comes out of the speakers: STEREO. They are even to lazy to remove the setting. They simply don't care about their users. I bought the game, some parts look awesome (M4/Sebring for example) but when you really try to play it, you will quickly realize that it's unplayable.
 
G
Rastas said:
No one cares about your opinion,im not happy whit rFactor2 too in some things,but im not like a kid thats keeping repeting the same thing.
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Maybe some people do that, in the hope that the DEV's will start to listen finally?
They keep releasing paid content while the biggest issues of the game remain unsolved.
By not talking about it anymore the bugs will NEVER get on their agenda.

So I don't agree with you at all. I care about his opinion, and the dev's of RF2 should definitely care about these opinions !

Proper developers like Reiza and Kunos do, they always give great feedback and give the users what they want, at least they TRY to do it. But S397? They simply don't seem to care at all, they seem to hate it when their user base starts complaining.
 
Durge Driven
Great content but has introduced a bug

Till now when you update 5KB rfmod with any Reiza content you get re-packaging error

Same thing happens with Woochoo's Endurance packs

Until now bug never affected ISI/S397 content

Now new DLC fails to update packages

You can see the problem when you go to select skins or layouts they are all unchecked when they should all be checked by default

Making new rfmod works of course

edit: No biggie but be nice if they could fix and ask Reiza to fix their pack ...................... and update my F3 Eve :p

oh and more Reiza DLC please ! :coffee:
 
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B
TurboT said:
Maybe some people do that, in the hope that the DEV's will start to listen finally?
They keep releasing paid content while the biggest issues of the game remain unsolved.
By not talking about it anymore the bugs will NEVER get on their agenda.

So I don't agree with you at all. I care about his opinion, and the dev's of RF2 should definitely care about these opinions !

Proper developers like Reiza and Kunos do, they always give great feedback and give the users what they want, at least they TRY to do it. But S397? They simply don't seem to care at all, they seem to hate it when their user base starts complaining.
Click to expand...

So true!
 
Dady Cairo
TurboT said:
They simply don't seem to care at all, they seem to hate it when their user base starts complaining.
Click to expand...
I wouldn't say the Devs hate complaining,more the hardcore userbase.I understand that it is annoying for them to be reminded again and again.
But to regain trust they had till 2018 will not be so easy with putting out DLC's without fixing the core game engine and the older stuff they released..As a RF2 "Oldie user",i see many new users who did not know about the whole story,when Paul got S397 PR man and he does his job well,as a PR man.
PR is not about telling the truth, it's about selling ;)
 
B
Dady Cairo said:
I wouldn't say the Devs hate complaining,more the hardcore userbase.I understand that it is annoying for them to be reminded again and again.
But to regain trust they had till 2018 will not be so easy with putting out DLC's without fixing the core game engine and the older stuff they released..As a RF2 "Oldie user",i see many new users who did not know about the whole story,when Paul got S397 PR man and he does his job well,as a PR man.
PR is not about telling the truth, it's about selling ;)
Click to expand...

Careful, he's friends with RD! :redface::redface:
 
MJQT
Durge Driven said:
Great but has introduced a bug
Till now when you update 5KB rfmod with any Reiza content you get re-packaging error
Same thing happens with Woochoo's Endurance packs
Until now bug never affected ISI/S397 content
Now new DLC fails to update packages
You can see the problem when you go to select skins or layouts they are all unchecked when they should all be checked by default
Making new rfmod works of course
Click to expand...
That's wonderful (not). So via a content release, a bug that was already there for some content is now worse. And rfmods, if I understand correctly, are important parts of some rF2 online racing. Yikes. 397 does not have a good track record of fixing other regressions in the game (*cough* AI throttle and brake behaviour) so I wouldn't be optimistic that'll be fixed quickly, even though it should be. Or maybe it will, since 397 seems to care about online racing at the moment - whereas they don't (for now, at least) with the AI.

EDIT: my comment may be unnecesarily salty. If the idea of rfmods is to ephemerally package up related content for a league race server (e.g. track, ruleset, and skins) and situations like that then it makes sense you'd want to always create new ones. So maybe the "bug" is such a minor quibble it's not worth getting worked up about?
 
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Wes Brook
BloodSinking said:
Nope, still prefer rF2 of them all... call me crazy. Thats why I care so much, can't you see?
Click to expand...
This is exactly my position too, for the record. I've been a genuine fan of rF since the very start. I've learnt to live with the UI over the many revisions, and even now, though much better overall, it still does have significant issues (buttons not working, poor scaling/shimmering (in VR), for example). I even bought my Brother a copy of rF2 in the recent Steam sale, so he had it ready to go when he gets set up.

rF2 is great, but right now there are just too many persistent flaws to keep me engaged.
 
B
Havner said:
Well, he was introduced as community manager, not a PR spokesperson, but I guess that's just more PR :O_o:
Click to expand...

The great updates in the way Havner... UI! Physics features! P2P and weight jakers I guess... So much excitement this people get with more content without propper developemnt of the simulation first that sorely needs it! At least fix older content! I get it though, this guys must really need money, but somehow they've been doing the same mistake of letting the bugs and problems get behind and rF2 loses interest because of this! Hope they can fix this in 2022 at least! Some expert on board of S397 or something for physics and such... wish some ISI guys could come back and kick it up again!

They mentioned performance improvements... Where is that at least in the updates? Those are graphical things, something they at least show they can do well enough...
 
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B
Wes Brook said:
This is exactly my position too, for the record. I've been a genuine fan of rF since the very start. I've learnt to live with the UI over the many revisions, and even now, though much better overall, it still does have significant issues (buttons not working, poor scaling/shimmering (in VR), for example). I even bought my Brother a copy of rF2 in the recent Steam sale, so he had it ready to go when he gets set up.

rF2 is great, but right now there are just too many persistent flaws to keep me engaged.
Click to expand...

So did I man, and I didn't even mind the previous UI. I would keep it with some developed options for AI racing and good to go. I want to see core things done. Propper simulation advancements. It's the same since 2013 or 2016 I guess, while others keep on developing things much more.

It's disappointing man, it's disappointing.
 
Ghoults
I did finally do some racing on the new competition servers. There were actually other people to race with. I can't remember the last time I played rf2 and after exiting the game had an itch to come back to it later. The usf 2000 is very fun car to drive. The load times were clearly improved. I didn't even pay attention to it. Even though I just did couple of comp races with a single car class and older track. No idea what is the effect when you add more cars and track with more objects.

That being said I think the presentation could be better with the competition system. It still uses the old ui layout which has somewhat weird layout. Things are set in weird order and tiny amount of info is needlesly divided to 4 tabs. It works but is clunky. A lot of basic and necessary info is just not shown anywhere. Track configuration, race length, all info that should be right there is just buried away. It is clearly a bad situation if I need to go to bsimracing to read a news item about the game to learn which cars and tracks the competition system is using and what session settings... Also I think users should not register for an event just to see if there are other people there at all. Also there is no way to unsign from an event.

Also for skin selection and upgrades it would be useful to at least show the liveries as images so the user can make an educated choise. Instead of just showing text.

The transitions between sessions are quite rough. It feels like the game is sometimes trying to do a transition but just spazzes out.

The series names are for some reason very mystic. In the series browser it is annoying trying to decipher and try to find the most recent usf 2000 series for example as it is named 220207_CS_OWS. Why not name it as 2022_SEASON_01_OPENWHEELER_USF2000? Or any other name that makes sense for the user? The name is important as it allows players to quickly load a session with the right options preset for an offline practice session. Also a button that sets up an offline practice session with the right parameters would be useful right there instead of being hidden to totally different section of the whole game.

I think the game needs an alarm just like iracing, raceroom and ac srs have when the official session is about to start. All those other games show a message on screen or play a sound to tell the user that. Makes it a lot harder to miss a session. That way it is easier to sign up for a race and then go practice and the game tells you when to come back.

Occasionally the comp server screen in game gets stuck on "Checking content status" and crashes. The game really doesn't like alt-tabbing either...

The timing is also weird. The count down should be for the registering, not for the session start. Now it seems the registering closes when there is still 5min left which is just annoying.

I don't understand the logic why all tracks are downloaded and installed for a series that you just joined. Yesterday I did the last race of a 6 track calendar and it still downloaded and installed all 6 tracks, 5 of which were already ran. Surely it would make more sense to install just the car and the track for this week. Option to install all tracks could be there but chances are the user wants just the car and the track to go racing now. Also the way mods are downloaded and installed is clunky and locks down the whole game as you wait and watch progress bars.

The player names do not seem to work correctly. Only the first name is shown for myself. My surname is for some reason omitted everywhere. I can see others first and surnames just fine.

Had a weird error message that was fixed by just pressing that subscribe to content button, see attachment. Surely the error message could be more useful and why does the game give an error message that is literally fixed by subscribing to a content again which I was already subscribed to.

I think the new ui should have options available to make the look left/right buttons instant and adjust the degrees or radians to user preferred value. Still have to edit plr file manually. Also there is no way to toggle virtual mirror from ui settings, need to be on track and remember a keyboard shortcut for it.
 

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