R3E Callaway Corvette Next Week and Sector3 Studios Interview

Paul Jeffrey

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r3e Callaway Corvette.jpg

The long awaited Corvette C7 GT3-R will be released for RaceRoom Racing Experience next week... over a year after it was first announced!


Fans of Sector3 Studios RaceRoom Racing Experience title have been holding their collective breath for quite a substantial period of time in anticipation of this new GT3 specification car coming to the sim, and not the Swedish development studio have finally confirmed the car is on its way.. scheduled to release to RaceRoom next week!

Marking the occasion and giving gamers their first glimpse of the car out on track, Sector3 have released a very nice new preview trailer for the vehicle, which you can see for yourself below;

Presumably the new Callaway Corvette will come bundled together with a fairly major update to the simulation, Sector3 having mentioned that the new cars set to be released will feature a brand new physics reworking, something that will be trickled down to the not inconsiderable number of GT3 cars already in the game and leaving one to assume it would be sensible to see the update to the remainder of the cars dropping at the same time as this exciting new vehicle.

With Sector3 not yet sharing specifics as to exactly when next week the car will drop, nor how many liveries will be included or an estimated price, plenty remains left open to speculation while we wait for the new car and build to drop in just a few days time...

Curious to know what the upcoming update might include? Check out the preview article HERE.

RD: At long last the Callaway is coming! Are you pleased with how the car as turned out?

J-F Chardon: Of course! I remember when we saw the first real pictures of this new C7, fully covered in carbon, it looked fantastic. And I have a thing for V8 sounds as well... it was evident we had to bring this car in the game!

The process was long but we made it, and both the Callaway team and ourselves are happy about the end product.

RD: It's been over a year since announcement, why has it taken so long?

J- F Chardon: It’s a long story... are you sitting down?

First of all it’s important to know that when you want a Chevrolet in your game, you speak with General Motors through the licensing company taking care of their IP’s. If you want the regular C7, it’s easy and straightforward. But the Callaway version is custom made. And Callaway also can claim rights to the car. It’s what is called a shared license. Without going into details, I can just say part of the delay lays there.

We also had a busy production pipeline with projects that had to take priority and were unforeseen at the time of the announcement. I think some lessons were learned and you won’t be seeing announcements from us anymore unless we are sure we are very close or close enough. Notice how I have managed to not say “soon”? It took some effort...

And then we also had to take time to update the physics of all the GT3 cars in RaceRoom. At first we were supposed to ship the car a lot earlier and make it use the same tire model as the one you are currently enjoying in the game. But as we got delayed and delayed, the new model we had been working on with Alex, our new recruit in the physics department, was getting ready. It came to a point where I thought we might as well just wait a bit longer rather than release a new car only to change its model a few weeks later.


RD: Callaway are something of a rarity at the top of GT racing, a true private team. Has this allowed greater collaboration for with S3 for the build?

JF: The relationship with the Callaway team is terrific. We were supplied with unprecedented data, and all questions we had were always answered. They have access to beta builds and have been testing with us throughout the development of the car, making sure the data we had was translating properly in the handling. For example I remember receiving notes where they had compared the real and virtual cars on Hockenheim and it allowed to find and correct some issues with the aerodynamic and the power of the car. It’s been a tremendous pleasure to work with them. It’s not over yet (winks).

RD: The car has the new physics logic applied, what sort of differences are we talking about here, and what will that feel like to the players?


JF: The best would be that you speak with Alex directly, maybe we can arrange something (edit: Coming soon.. Paul) . What I can tell you for now is that they are still GT3’s. I think it’s mostly when driving the cars at the limit that you will notice something’s changed.

The update is coherent with the evolutions and refinements we have been doing to our cars since 2015, if you liked the way the GT3 cars were modified back then, you will like this update as well.


RD: One assumes the new physics will be applied to all GT3 spec cars when the Callaway releases?


JF: This is correct. It’s part of the reasons of the little delays we are showing. We have been working on the BOP. And we are still fine tuning it this weekend

RD: We know other GT3 spec machines have been confirmed over the past few months, can you remind us what they are, and when we might expect to see them in the store?


JF: The Audi R8 LMS, the Mercedes AMG GT3 and the Callaway. We have a fourth one that will follow within weeks. And the GT3 licensing never ends. I thought I could finally take a breath and enjoy the fact we have the latest models, and now they announced a new Bentley, new McLaren, etc.

Stay tuned to RaceDepartment in the coming days for something pretty cool around these new GT3 cars. Just sorting out the details at the moment, but hopefully it should make for some interesting and slightly different content... watch this space!

RaceRoom Racing Experience is available exclusively to PC on a free to play platform with additional content available at a further cost.

Love RaceRoom? Want to share the excitement with your fellow community members? No worries, we have all this and more at the RaceRoom Racing Experience sub forum right here at RaceDepartment:
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Excited to try the Callaway? Looking forward to seeing how the new GT3 physics work out in the simulation? What other cars would you like to see added to the simulation in future? Let us know in the comments section below!
 
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Notice how I have managed to not say “soon”? It took some effort...
Aww...com on say it, say 'soon'...'Go ahead make my Day'...LOL...
Excited to try the Callaway? Looking forward to seeing how the new GT3 physics work out in the simulation?
I am personally 'chomping at the bit' waiting for this update, another superb Sim in my collection...it is indeed great to be alive.
 
Currently re-installing R3E just in case.

But can someone ask them why custom skins are close to impossible apparently, when all the other big sims enable you to? Quite sure most simracing teams are disappointed they can't use their own colours.

Would love some minor GT3 cars and fan favourites, like the Emil Frey Jaguar and the Renault RS01. Even the VLN SP-X categorised Glickenhaus SCG003 woud be cool.

Bored by all the same Audi, Merc and so on.

:p
 
Some shadows or something under the tires would go a long way seems like its floating ,
but the car looks great! :D
My educated guess is that R3E’s DX9 graphics engine is already pushed beyond it’s outer limits by Sector 3 Studio’s... :D;)
Of course there will always some things to be wished for, but imho R3E is by far the best looking (and sounding) race games which still have to do it with a DX9 graphics engine. :thumbsup:

And I have to say that Reiza is doing a great job too wit the new AJR proto and update to 1.4.9. Maybe not totally equal to R3E on graphics, but they come closer and closer. :thumbsup:
 
i may genuinely have to buy this game just race in this car. love me some corvette. GT3 is one of my favourite race classes.
There's a 25 % discount on pretty much all content until Monday. Best time to get some tracks and cars and get ready for the Callaway! Be sure to not pay for the content directly, but buy vRP packs on raceroomstore.com first, it's cheaper that way. And also remember you can pick and choose what you buy to not overspend - for example, you only need a single car with a single livery to be able to attend any race in that class, and that you can test any of the cars in the game for however long you like before buying, and it's possible to test the tracks as well by participating in the hotlapping competitions that usually run.
 
Going to be doing a live stream with the new cars tomorrow and interviewing the new physics dev, probably around 2.30pm UK on our Twitch channel :)

Pop in and have a watch if you fancy it. Plenty of probing physics questions will be asked and lots of lapping in not one but three new GT3's.... Oh and it will be my first live stream ever, so its bound to go boobies up ! ! !

I'll probably post something on pg1 tonight or tomorrow about it,

Cheers
 
I didnt run R3E in sime time but do have it fresh and ready installed just waiting for the triple screen update to drop.
Now if R3E would also run nice with multi GPU setups, THAT would be amazing (always had to run it with one GPU disabled if I remember correctly).
 
Haven't been this excited about an update since VR started to make its way into our sims. There something to r3e that just makes is feel so much more like a true RACING simulator, rather than just a driving against each other simulator. And it looks just so crisp in VR compared to any other sim. :inlove:
 
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I had fallen out of love for Raceroom quite a few months ago :(
But I entered the Raceroom GT3 league here on RD hoping to rekindle some kind of hope that this Sim was still good to be part of.....
Boy oh boy was I glad I did! The racing was fantastic, cars & drivers were top class, the live stream & replays looked fantastic to watch :geek:
And the last race at Spa was one of my top 5 ever Sim races I have ever been involved in( although I ran out of fuel last lap:whistling:).
Ok, I'm off now to load up on vRP's, so looking forward to the new content & updates coming(GT3's mainly) :thumbsup:
 
Haven't been this excited about an update since VR started to make its way into our sims. There something to r3e that just makes is feel so much more like a true RACING simulator, rather than just a driving against each other simulator. And it looks just so crisp in VR compared to any other sim. :inlove:
Hey i got my Rift but no time to set it up so far. I heared by a Youtuber that R3E is considerably less optimized for VR then AC and Pcars2 for example. But now a positive comment by yourself about it. Just wondering. Do you slso do AI races? If so, which settings do you use? R3E is actually my favourite Sim, but after what i heared i already expected to shelve it until it's optimized
 
Hey i got my Rift but no time to set it up so far. I heared by a Youtuber that R3E is considerably less optimized for VR then AC and Pcars2 for example. But now a positive comment by yourself about it. Just wondering. Do you slso do AI races? If so, which settings do you use? R3E is actually my favourite Sim, but after what i heared i already expected to shelve it until it's optimized

You have a rift, r3e is free to install and try out. So just try it yourself.
Here's a link on how you set it up, it's real easy.
https://forum.sector3studios.com/index.php?threads/openvr-support.7109/

My impression of AC vs pCars vs R3E purely rating it's VR support on my i5-4690 with overclocked gtx 1070. Using HTC Vive. No reprojection used.

AC - Looks really good, performance is also good. I can supersample around 1.5 with full ∼ 15 car grids while keeping most settings on medium, some low, some high. Sense of depth and ability to judge distance is good. No menu support which means you'll be putting on and taking off your headset quite a bit. It's a small annoyance but overall the experience is stellar.

R3E - Here you have to tinker a little with video settings to get it to run well. Typically you'd want to lower shadows and reflections, and use high settings for textures and super sampling / AA. Mirrors on / off is a bit of a hit or miss at the moment depending on the video card drivers you're using. The latest from nvidia solved my stutters when mirrors was on. If you keep getting stutters, try turn off mirrors and see. Once you've got i all set up, crank up super sampling (SS) and wait to be amazed! SS has such a drastic impact on the picture quality in r3e, and it doesn't kill performance as much as in other titles. I'm running at 2.0 which still doesn't use more than 75% of my gpu. It looks super crisp, and the surrounding feels much more "there". Open wheelers give you a great sensation of speed and depth of field. With 2.0 and 2x AA there is no jagginess what so ever, and barely any screen door affect. For every increment of SS you go down from here, the worse the picture quality gets though. Also all menus are working in VR, a little hard to read sometimes because the text is kinda small but still works.

pCARS 2 - I have mixed feeling about this one. On the one hand, it works really well, all menus work perfectly. Mirrors adapt to your head movement, there is alot of settings within VR to customize and performance is a big step up from pcars1. But I have two main complaints, that is the aliasing is VERY BAD and everything looks blurry even when using SS. And performance doesn't allow much of it anyway. Even though the graphics are more "advanced" in pcars than AC or r3e, it looks way worse. And not only does it not look very good or perform very good, but there is a wierd sense of speed not feeling quite right, and depth of field is a little wierd too. Maybe it's only because it's so blurry and jagged. I don't know. I actually prefer to play pcars 2 on a monitor.


Anyways just give it a go and try for yourself.
EDIT: Yes I do race against AI. What kind of settings are you wondering about? DIfficulty? usually around 105
 
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