Paul Jeffrey
Premium
Reiza Studios recently confirmed work is still well underway to enhance the recent 'Reiza Bundle' DLC for rFactor 2 - including some additional free versions of Imola...
The 'Reiza Bundle' DLC for rFactor 2 came out back on March 28th to much anticipation and fanfare from players of rFactor 2, the well regarded Brazilian studio having a first crack at creating content for the venerable racing simulation by Studio 397 (ok, Interlargos aside).
First Look: Reiza DLC Puma P052 Talk 'n' Drive.
With plenty of cars and tracks included in the pack, I think it fair to say that the new content has been pretty much universally enjoyed by the sim racing community. Despite the initial success of the new release, Reiza have recently confirmed they have a new update in the works, and will continue to work on the pack to bring further refinements and improvements in the coming weeks.
First Look: Reiza DLC MCR Sports 2000.
As well as generally enhancing the already released cars and tracks, Reiza have also confirmed further historic versions of the Imola track will be brought to the simulation as a free bonus, available for anyone who owns the current Imola release via any of the existing packages offered by the team.
Pretty cool.
Below you can read the full communication from Reiza, released in the last couple of days:
Although the rF2 engine is in many ways still similar to our AMS engine (and even big differences like tyre modelling have eventually delivered surprisingly similar results on both sims), there are still a number of differences, not just with the physics engine but also configurations and how FFB, audio, controllers are set up which can add up to very different experiences.
The goal has always been to make the transition both from AMS to rF2 as well as from other rF2 cars and tracks relatively seamless, and we´ll point out a few ways to better bridge those gaps.
Since release we´ve also found some ground to cover in order to get closer to that goal and generally improve the quality of the pack. Quite a bit has already been done in the 3 weeks since release - we currently have an update in testing which should hopefully be deployed soon, below is the summary of the main points of what it will include and also what the plans are beyond it:
GRAPHICS
The main change for the 1st update will be that all car skins (except the F-Vee) have been upscaled to 4k, added regions to customize different type of materials within each skin.
On the preview below you can see for ex. the chrome on the splitter pillar and carbon on the splitter itself - these along with the higher resolution make the cars look substantially nicer and add some extra room for those looking to get creative in their skinning
The higher quality skins come with a small FPS hit when running larger fields, but this should be offset by the fact we have also lowered mirror resolution to use rF2´s standard, so performance should be slightly improved overall specially from cockpit view.
With the tracks, the main change is that we have fixed an exporting problem with VIR, Imola and Ibarra that caused road / curb texture sorting issues through the windshield of certain cars.
Generally our content is less resource hungry then recent rFactor2 releases, specially the cars as our models have been optimized to run on AMS which is still a 32bit app. Some glitches have been reported while running lower graphical settings and while we have been fixing these, the gains from running anything below high detail for cars and tracks should be relatively minor.
PHYSICS
Although the physics have remained largely unchanged, we´ve done some refinements to all cars, mainly to FFB by further reducing clipping reported for some cars. The steering lock range has been adjusted to allow a minimum of 10deg, and the default setting has been reduced for a slightly slower steering ratio in all cars.
Default setups have also been adjusted so cars are generally more comfortable to drive out of the box.
We´ve been observing some discrepant feedback on driving feel depending on the player´s wheel. We´re still investigating why that is, but one recommendation that has proved useful for many users is to increase FFB smoothing setting, specially on Fanatec wheels (or at least stay within default values for your wheel).
It´s worth noting there are some differences on the Pumas relative to their AMS counterparts; The Puma P052 runs on slick tires in rF2 (semislicks in AMS); the Puma GTE is based on original 1970s specs and runs on radial tires with softer suspension rates (vs the slick-shod, stiffly sprung AMS version which is based on modern Copa Classic setups). The goal being making the content more diverse and filling gaps better within rF2.
AI
We have revised the AIW for all tracks to correct some issues that have been reported since release. The AI physics have also received some fine tuning for more consistent performance across all series.
It´s important to point out that unlike Automobilista, rFactor 2 has a bigger range of AI parameters that can be overridden by player configuration (through the UI or player JSON file) - straying too far from default may lead to unforeseen issues with performance, behaviour and fuel use and strategy from the AI-controlled cars.
AUDIO
The main changes on the audio front have been to sound effects - here again we have been following S397 lead with their recent releases and applied the samples they have kindly supplied for wind, road, rumble, tyre scrub & skid and did some volume balancing to bring it closer to rF2´s standard, aiming again for consistency in those fronts relative to the experience with other rFactor2 cars. We have also adjusted engine volume levels for player and opponents following that same logic, and done some polishing to some of our engine samples.
BUG FIXES
On top of these updates we addressed various graphical glitches that have been reported since release.
In the post below you´ll see the current changelog for the upcoming update, which may still be updated as we undergo some final testing before release.
If you run across bugs that haven´t already been covered so far or even after the update is released, please continue to use the Bundle release thread to report them so we can try address them as we´re able.
FUTURE DEVELOPMENTS
We´re working on adding some special bonus content to the Bundle: Imola 1988 and 2001 layouts will be added free of charge to all who bought the Imola track or any pack that included it.
These however won´t be quite ready for the upcoming update, and will instead most likely will be released in a following update towards the end of may.
The plan is to continue to refine and look into incorporating new features as they are introduced to the sim as well as trying to discover ways to get the best of these cars and tracks in rFactor2 - as we do we´ll continue to keep you informed through this topic
In the meantime please feel free to continue discussing this release, your suggestions and bug reports in the rF2 Bundle Release thread.
rFactor 2 is available exclusively for PC.
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