rF2: KartSim and GT3 Power Pack Updated

Paul Jeffrey · Apr 5, 2018

New KartSim and GT3 Power Pack updates released for rFactor 2.

Studio 397 have released not one but two updates to rF2 content today, adding some quick fixes to the new KartSim content and a new set of community liveries to the popular GT3 Power Pack DLC from back in November 2017.

Firstly on to the recent KartSim karting add on that came to rF2 just last week. As with anything new in the world of software development one can always expect the odd bug or two, and this new pack of karts and tracks would prove to be no exception. Having come across a few areas for improvement, Studio 397 and their KartSim partners have released this small but useful update, addressing changes on both category of karts as well as various other miscellaneous improvements, which can be see below:

KartSim Update Notes:

KS_X30 v1.13
Rental v1.13

Changelog

Changes to naming parameters
More adjustmentment on seating
Updated Skins
Tyre telemetry switched on as per request from forum
Default gearing fixed

In other rFactor 2 news, the developers have also dropped a minor update for the GT3 Power Pack DLC, although this one doesn't have any affect on the actual cars and physics, but focusses on adding a number of community created skins for the five cars contained within the pack, viewable below:

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...

Like what you see here at RaceDepartment? Don't forget to like, subscribe and follow us on social media!

RaceDepartment YouTube
RaceDepartment Twitter
RaceDepartment Facebook
RaceDepartment Twitch
RaceDepartment Instagram

Enjoying KartSim? Happy with rF2 so far? Looking forward to more updates in future? Let us know in the comments section below!

Jockey · Apr 5, 2018

The skins with the blue, green, orange stripes are looking very cool. Very good job IMO.

Davy Jones · Apr 6, 2018

The implementation of the DLC store for rF2 on Steam is a mess. Unless I'm missing something I would be able to purchase again that which I already own, which I had to check the installation folder to confirm. It's really not helping...

[EDIT] Marcel (who I think is from Stuido397?) replied in this thread that you can check which items you already own on Steam by going to steamcommunity.com/id/<your_username>/inventory/ or visit the same area in the Steam client.

I don't think that helps as such, at least not for new users and it still allows you to purchase the same items again. And the Steam items store as far as I can tell is meant to be used more for in-game items such as skins e.g. http://store.steampowered.com/itemstore/252490/

Marcel Offermans · Apr 6, 2018

If you want to easily check what you already own, in the steam client or on their website (if you log in) you can look at your "inventory" which will list (per game) everything you bought or otherwise collected. So there is no need to check your installation folder.

vee10 · Apr 6, 2018

Is there any particular reason why the DLC is implemented this way and not just as DLC through Steam? I refunded the Kartsim DLC and now I have £17.58 in my Steam wallet that I can't now get back.

A disappointing purchase all round partly because of the convoluted purchase system. It would make me think twice about buying any more DLC again purely for this reason.

mibrandt · Apr 6, 2018

Really disappointing that 5 months have passed where these skins have just been gathering dust at S397 - instead of being released immediately after the skin contest which ended 6. december 2017. First of all you ask money for a DLC - and it turns out no skins are included.. Then you ask the costumers to make the skins lol. But worst of all is that you then wait for so long to release them. What a joke. I am not making the mistake of insta-buying DLC from S397 again thats for sure.

Davy Jones · Apr 6, 2018

Lazarou said:
Is there any particular reason why the DLC is implemented this way and not just as DLC through Steam? I refunded the Kartsim DLC and now I have £17.58 in my Steam wallet that I can't now get back.

A disappointing purchase all round partly because of the convoluted purchase system. It would make me think twice about buying any more DLC again purely for this reason.

I have often wondered the same... Actual Steam store page DLC setup e.g. for AC
http://store.steampowered.com/app/526060/Assetto_Corsa__Porsche_Pack_I/

And the equivalent for rF2 http://store.steampowered.com/itemstore/365960/
Used mostly for in-game cosmetic items from what I can tell https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/inventory/itemstore which I suspect is a cost saving thing for S397..

Jockey · Apr 6, 2018

Lazarou said:
Is there any particular reason why the DLC is implemented this way and not just as DLC through Steam? I refunded the Kartsim DLC and now I have £17.58 in my Steam wallet that I can't now get back.

A disappointing purchase all round partly because of the convoluted purchase system. It would make me think twice about buying any more DLC again purely for this reason.

Marcel said valve limit the amount of DLC you can sell for one game. This system has no limit.

Davy Jones · Apr 6, 2018

Marcel Offermans said:
If you want to easily check what you already own, in the steam client or on their website (if you log in) you can look at your "inventory" which will list (per game) everything you bought or otherwise collected. So there is no need to check your installation folder.

Ok I get it but I had to post a question here to know that?

What is seen as DLC should be in the game library page (like in AC below) and not in http://steamcommunity.com/id/<username>/inventory/ which is purchased via the items store usually reserved for in-game cosmetic items?

Don't get me wrong but it always baffles me how rF2 has the workshop implementation for installing and updating mods and which is truly excellent. And it's functionality that other titles don't have. They have DLC though where as rF2 DLC is in some clunky items store where it should not really be. Car skins maybe but not the cars and tracks.. I don't know, I guess it allows you to reduce costs or something... Can't be helping in attracting customers though...

Flip-Flop Driver · Apr 6, 2018

Lazarou said:
Is there any particular reason why the DLC is implemented this way and not just as DLC through Steam? I refunded the Kartsim DLC and now I have £17.58 in my Steam wallet that I can't now get back.

A disappointing purchase all round partly because of the convoluted purchase system. It would make me think twice about buying any more DLC again purely for this reason.

You need to ask for another refund after getting the money in the wallet.

You're right. This system is not nice.

There must be some reason why it is used.

GT VIRUS · Apr 6, 2018

Jockey said:
Marcel said valve limit the amount of DLC you can sell for one game. This system has no limit.

That's absolute BS, just look at Train Simulator's DLC (The vast majority being 3rd party as well). No excuse there

Jockey · Apr 6, 2018

GT VIRUS said:
That's absolute BS, just look at Train Simulator's DLC (The vast majority being 3rd party as well). No excuse there

I know. But that's still the official statement:
https://i.imgur.com/LvtXrvJ.png

natedogg1867 · Apr 7, 2018

Yeah, that whole 'item store' instead of just normal dlc like nearly every other game has is a pretty weird decision. Certainly not intuitive going through the purchase process either. I have 300+ games on steam and cant think of a single one that uses an item store instead of the normal dlc listing on the games store page. Dont even think CSGO has that.

Reading up on the refund policy when this was first implemented, those item store offerings count as in-game items, which traditionally arent refundable. Which is the initial reason I thought S397 did that. Of course, plenty of people have said they have refunded items, so that isnt it.

Marcel Offermans · Apr 7, 2018

Let me give a bit of background and history about this. As some of you might or might not know, before starting Studio 397, one of the things I for ISI was to bring rFactor 1 and 2 to Steam. When we did so with rFactor 2, we looked extensively at what would be the best model for a game with lots of first and third party content items. We were looking for a system that would allow us to:

Offer our own cars and tracks in a modular way. Before Steam, a lot of people liked the model where they downloaded the rFactor 2 "lite" installer and then added the content they liked themselves.
Allow third parties to offer their content in an easy way, preferably the same way we could, so there would not be two (or more) different ways of dealing with content.
In the future, sell premium content, and let third parties do the same.

At the time, there were two options: DLC and Workshop. Since everybody was using DLC, we looked at that first and soon discovered that we were only allowed about 20 DLC items by default. There was a way to increase that number, which was to talk to Valve. We did that, and explained what we were trying to do. They assured us that although they could increase the number of DLC items, they would not allow us to have "hundreds", nor would there be a way for third parties to provide them.

Those two "roadblocks" made us look closer at the Workshop. It allowed an infinite number of items, and both us and third parties could upload and maintain them. Also, at the time, there were plans to allow people to sell items via the workshop too. This was before "Skyrim" pioneered this feature, after which Valve cancelled it and told everybody this feature would not return. When that happened, we had already chosen the workshop for our content (at the time all of it was still free anyway). That said, this change did affect our model and we went back to Valve to discuss this problem. We had long conversations, and they advised us to instead use a new feature: the item store. The big plus of that feature is that it links to the workshop (so all content is still delivered in the same way) and Valve was committed to keep improving this new option over time. Plus, we were still told we could not have a lot of DLC.

Fast forward to the current day (this was about two years ago) and apparently there are some titles with a lot of DLC. So the question for us is, do we completely change our model again and go back to DLC (for paid content). For now we have decided against that (even though arguably there are still a few things that can and should be improved in the item store).

In general I do think the item store is working well. You can get a refund on anything you buy and it actually allows us to create and discount all kinds of bundles of our content, as well as allow people to buy just the items they want (except in the case of KartSim, where the creators of that content decided against having the individual items available in the item store).

Long story, I hope it helps understand where we were coming from and how all of it came about.

Ghoults · Apr 8, 2018

Marcel Offermans said:
We were looking for a system that would allow us to:

Offer our own cars and tracks in a modular way. Before Steam, a lot of people liked the model where they downloaded the rFactor 2 "lite" installer and then added the content they liked themselves.

You need to remember what was the actual reason for doing that. Rf2 just like rf1 can break if you add too much content because one mod can break another mod (two mods having a driver with the same name files for example breaks things...). So people need to download multiple lite versions to install all the content they want to avoid these possible issues. (Something you don't need to do with other sims). So you did not really fix the original issue here. Just went around it. Had you fixed the original issue the need for the lite version would be almost non-existent.

Marcel Offermans · Apr 8, 2018

I disagree: neither rFactor 1 nor rFactor 2 breaks if you add too much content per se.

rFactor 1 could more easily be broken because there was no universal way to add content and make sure it loaded consistently. Due to the way that you could freely construct search paths, it was not too difficult to make a mistake which could cause another mod to interfere. Chances of that happening were high, as there was no packaging system an people were often just unpacking zip files and updates right into their install. So it broke because the system was not "strict" enough and mods could interfere with one another.

rFactor 2 adds a packaging system and although you can argue it's not the best packaging system out there, it does help prevent the situation mentioned above. I would argue that by now a lot of people have a lot of content installed in a single "install" and that in general is working quite well. Also, the workshop system, which allows you to easily subscribe and unsubscribe, lets you try out and remove content without ever having to mess with hundreds of individual files which was quite common in rFactor 1.

Now I'll give you that if you commonly keep the "all cars and tracks" series selected, loading times will become a bit longer when starting up if you really have a lot of content. You can circumvent that by creating your own, specific series, that only filter out groups of content you often use together.

So in my honest opinion, people had multiple installs in rFactor 1 because mods were never clearly defined and the manual installation and deinstallation process broke easily. So you ended up installing mods to test them in a separate install, and then maybe moving them to your master install. So yes, you did end up with multiple installs. The need for that has disappeared though with rFactor 2.

For the record, in the Steam version of rFactor 1, I even documented how you could work with multiple installs. Check out this guide: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=402188900

For the Steam version of rFactor 2 you could do something similar by using "SteamCMD" to install different copies to different locations. You can then use the same command to get workshop content and "manually" install it via the package manager in the launcher. In practice I find very few people that actually do that, because it's really not needed anymore.

Raikku · Apr 8, 2018

Marcel Offermans said:
If you want to easily check what you already own, in the steam client or on their website (if you log in) you can look at your "inventory" which will list (per game) everything you bought or otherwise collected. So there is no need to check your installation folder.

And where you can find that? In normal "gamelist" you don't see addons in any way.