Porsche Coming to rFactor 2 - May Roadmap Released

[Paul Jeffrey]

rF2 players will soon be able to enjoy official Porsche content in the sim - just one highlight from a very interesting May Roadmap by Studio 397.

With the next confirmed DLC coming to rFactor 2 already teased in part, many fans have been wondering which big name manufacturers were set to fill those remaining slots in the pack... and now we know one of them - it's going to be Porsche!

The 911 RSR GTE will be added as part of the upcoming 'Endurance Pack' DLC, joining the already announced Oreca 07, Norma M30 and Corvette C7.R. With Porsche now confirmed we just have one final car reveal before the pack launches!

Of course the Porsche is indeed a highlight of the new Roadmap, but plenty of other good stuff is in the works, which I'll let S397 explain in their own words below:

Over the course of this month we have released a few hotfixes for our fresh 1110 build whilst our team has been working on many of the features we’ve been talking about in the last few roadmaps. We also went to Zandvoort during the Jumbo Racing Days to showcase some of our content to the huge crowds that came to see several racing series and of course appearances from Max Verstappen, Daniel Ricciardo and David Coulthard.

Needless to say, we have plenty to talk about this month, and the first announcement we have is a new hire that starts tomorrow. Now we don’t always announce people that we add to the team and, as a reference, our total team in Studio 397 is about 30 people, currently. With our focus on building the competition infrastructure and releasing that later this year, we welcome René Buttler to the team. He has been working at ESL on projects and esports tournaments with a strong focus on racing simulations, and we are very happy to have him at Studio 397!

Content
Last month we already announced that our next pack would consist of 5 cars. This will be our “Endurance Pack,” and we are ready to announce one of the two previously unannounced GTE cars that will be part of it. All cars are in the final stages of approval by the manufacturers, which is a process we don’t have full control over, but it does indicate we’re getting close to a release now. That said, it is time to announce the Porsche 911 RSR GTE! Ever since the start of Studio 397 we have had a great relationship with Porsche, so we’re very happy to finally be able to share the news. We’ve licensed the very latest spec of this car to race alongside the other GTE’s, and we are confident this car will be a joy to drive. And it certainly looks great!

Earlier this week, we also visited the offices and test track of Duqueine Engineering again and validated both the Oreca 07 and Norma M30 models in their simulator with their drivers and engineers. We are also including liveries of various teams racing these cars to ensure we end up with a great looking field of cars, as you can see from the shots below.

That’s of course not all the content we’re working on. There are a several more things under construction.

The March and Brabham cars are close to completion now. We’re adding the final rain and damage effects and doing the driver animations. Physics wise we’re very happy. Each car has it’s own distinctive character, yet they are very competitive. The McLaren is still in the middle of production, so it’s expected to come a bit later.

Those of you who visited us at Zandvoort have seen the progress we made on that track. It’s still not quite finished, but it’s looking better, and we addressed the performance issues that people reported, so we’re in good shape.

For Botniaring, all 3D work is done, and we’re currently working on texturing and optimization. That work and the AI lines will be finished this month. Then we are going to be giving the track its final shakedown before releasing it.

For Sebring we are currently in the middle of adding all the track side objects. As you might know, building a track can be roughly split in two phases. In the first phase we’re building the roads and everything “up to the barriers,” and in the second phase we do everything beyond the barriers and things like AI lines, night lighting and various other details. We’d like to share our current progress with you, bearing in mind that not everything you see here has been properly optimized yet, so “things might change”.

All of them have won a free pick of any rFactor 2 DLC pack, on top of that Rudy also won €100.

rFactor 2 is available exclusively for PC from Steam now.

Check out the rFactor 2 sub forum here at RaceDepartment for all the latest news and discussion with regards to the simulation. You can take part in lively debates with fellow rFactor 2 fans and take part in some great Club and League racing events..! Head over to the forum now and share the love this simulation so very much deserves...

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What do you make of the Porsche announcement? Happy to hear the German brand are coming to rF2? Any other highlights from the new roadmap? Let us know in the comments section below!

 

[avenger82]

I like there's still active development and lot planned, but why everything is so slow. In Assetto Corsa they released car packs and tracks at much higher pace. At the same time Kunos upgraded physics, cars, graphics, fixed bugs etc.
Team of 30 people is not that small, but they struggle for a few years to develop new UI. Even the simple things like HUD took quite long to be released (good third party HUDs where available much sooner). There are no in game apps like track map, only recently they added delta best.
Also S397 very slowly upgrades mods to use latest tech (i.e. update to latest CPM tires). The last significant was DX11 update, but still somehow graphics are far from pCars or AC.

Having said that rF2 is the sim I play the most, because of it has best physics and FFB(at least potentially - some mods use older tech or are not accurate). Also it has some great features like Real Road , dynamic weather, day/night transitions, flag system, but they are more appealing to hardcore simmers. I think they should setup official servers and develop online competitive multiplayer system similar to iRacing. This would attract much broader audience that releasing new cars.

 

[dave kirk]

30 staff? how are these guys making a living? I doubt they sell many new copies and the DLC is infrequent. It also shocks me how slow development is with a team of this many, I assumed since I started playing the game there was a max of 10 staff

 

[Alex Townsend]

Could the speed of development from S397 plus the lack of decent 3rd party content show how tough the current engine is to code on?

I vaguely remember people talking about the mods being more difficult on this engine than on rF1 which is also why mods on AMS are more plentiful and AC there are just tons...

I could be wrong obviously but it would explain things.

 

[BazzaLB]

Having bought their previous DLC and it being the worst performing of all rf2 content in VR, I will keep clear of any paid DLC as Studio 397 don't really seem too fussed about optimising any of it.

As for rain effects... well, I doubt I'll be running them in VR any time soon either given the general lack of performance. This with an i7 7700K@4.8 with GTX1080ti Xtreme.

 

[Leonardo Ratafiá]

I have heared that S397 have very talented sound developers on board...

hey man! we miss your work on AC!

 

[tr1v1um]

I like there's still active development and lot planned, but why everything is so slow. In Assetto Corsa they released car packs and tracks at much higher pace. At the same time Kunos upgraded physics, cars, graphics, fixed bugs etc.
Team of 30 people is not that small, but they struggle for a few years to develop new UI. Even the simple things like HUD took quite long to be released (good third party HUDs where available much sooner). There are no in game apps like track map, only recently they added delta best.
Also S397 very slowly upgrades mods to use latest tech (i.e. update to latest CPM tires). The last significant was DX11 update, but still somehow graphics are far from pCars or AC.

Having said that rF2 is the sim I play the most, because of it has best physics and FFB(at least potentially - some mods use older tech or are not accurate). Also it has some great features like Real Road , dynamic weather, day/night transitions, flag system, but they are more appealing to hardcore simmers. I think they should setup official servers and develop online competitive multiplayer system similar to iRacing. This would attract much broader audience that releasing new cars.

Car and track packs released at a much higher rate? In AC? Atm I don't really see much difference, besides the fact that approval by the manufaturers is holding up the release a bit. And the last batch of bug fixes and optimization was a month ago so I don't see where they are slow. The last track release for AC took over a year iirc aswell, so in that regard what we seeing now with rF2 is a pretty normal pace. Also given the fact, that most of the stuff you mentioned as being nice to have in the sim requires a bit more work, it shouldn't be a suprise that high quality content for rF2 is not as fast to produce as in other sims and that updating the content will require more time. Just the rain update alone shows that pretty well and considering the big amount of content I don't see the support slow or anything. You don't need to deal with real road, flag systems, puddle maps, wiper animations, night lighting and similar stuff in AC. And SMS simply has more man power and a big publisher backing the development, so that argument is mute.

 

[avenger82]

Maybe tracks weren't released in AC more often (but were laser scanned). AC development slowed at the end because they started working on ACC IIRC. But for the cars - they were definitely released at higher rate. Here is a list of cars including DLCs that were released (for each version): https://www.gtplanet.net/forum/threads/assetto-corsa-car-list.344997/
Remember that AC's shorter period of active development.
For instance they released 3 Porshe packs and S397 is developing one.
But I get that most probably it takes more time and effort to create a car in rF2(i.e. due to complexity of tire model) . Still for a customer the end result is that in AC you got more cars that also are high quality and even look better IMO.
Also I think rF2 has more legacy code. For instance UI has 100K lines of code in C++. That's why it's taking so much time to replace it. I get that AC doesn't have rain etc. but if you look at Steam's statistics AC has much higher user base. This tells something about what simmers actually care about.
As for online multiplayer system simmilar to iRacing - it's not nice to have. It would be a game changer. At the same time I'm skeptical about the new online competition system that's in development.

To sum up I'm criticizing rF2 development, because I care. I still play it the most and want it to be better, more popular, not niche game for hardcore simmers. Many people say it had a lot of potential, with arguably best physics - at least the most complex with highest potential (if a mod can leverage it) and FFB. It also has a lot of great unique features, but still it's not appealing for average simmers. I think S397 knows what to do to attract more users and why AC and pCars2, iRacing are more popular ( graphics, VR performance, good online experience, career mode etc.). It's slowly improved but I'm afraid too little to late.

 

[Emery]

but if you look at Steam's statistics AC has much higher user base. This tells something about what simmers actually care about.

Yes, AC's large user base is nearly irrelevant to race sims since easily 40% of online activity revolves around touge, drifting, super cars, & trackdays.

 

[thepharcyde]

Yes, AC's large user base is nearly irrelevant to race sims since easily 40% of online activity revolves around touge, drifting, super cars, & trackdays.

And rage quit post turn one

 

[avenger82]

Yes, AC's large user base is nearly irrelevant to race sims since easily 40% of online activity revolves around touge, drifting, super cars, & trackdays.

At least public servers are populated, but I agree most of races aren't clean to say at least, despite that some have ranking system. What's more important: AC has active SRS which is decent pickup race option.
At the beginning of 2017 AC sold 1,4 million copies. How many rF2 copies were sold?

 

[Ghoults]

Yes, AC's large user base is nearly irrelevant to race sims since easily 40% of online activity revolves around touge, drifting, super cars, & trackdays.

Whatever rf2 doesn't or can't do is irrelevant?

The excuses rf2 fanboys make are just rediculous at times.

 

[Gevatter]

Yes, AC's large user base is nearly irrelevant to race sims since easily 40% of online activity revolves around touge, drifting, super cars, & trackdays.

That leaves around 60% racing, which is still more than 100% of rFactor2 online activity:
http://steamcharts.com/cmp/244210,365960#1m

 

[thepharcyde]

Online RF2 public servers are non existent and those that are are full of AI. I cannot commit myself to a league for 'set times' racing as being a family man it just does not fit in for me.

Project cars since the introduction of the ratings has seriously made online public servers a lot more enjoyable and as a whole mostly noob free. AC, for me whilst good I just cannot get to grips with the nature of the ice rink physics.

RF2 online just does not work for the casual player like me. It's a shame as I really would like to see what the caliber/quality of racing would be like

 

[John-Eric Saxén]

That leaves around 60% racing, which is still more than 100% of rFactor2 online activity:
http://steamcharts.com/cmp/244210,365960#1m

Actually those numbers are not online activity, they indicate how many are playing the game both offline and online at any given time. If rF2 had up to 700 per day peak simultaneous online users, I wouldn't complain much. Of those 700 current players, I reckon something like 10% are online.

 

[Gevatter]

Actually those numbers are not online activity, they indicate how many are playing the game both offline and online at any given time. If rF2 had up to 700 per day peak simultaneous online users, I wouldn't complain much. Of those 700 current players, I reckon something like 10% are online.

That's right of course, I phrased it incorrectly. Although I'd argue that the higher total player numbers imply more online activity as well - if we stick to your 10% of players being online for both games there is still more racing online in AC even if we deduct the 40% for drifting and trackdays @Emery argued.

 

[Fritz-Kola]

And it gets even better: Fifth car of the pack is going to be BMW M8 GTE. So amazing imo

 

[thepharcyde]

Wow wow wow, thank you S397