Paul Jeffrey

Premium
RaceDepartment interview Studio 397's Marcel Offermans and test out the upcoming Circuit de la Sarthe Le Mans track for rFactor 2.

Although we are soon to be hosting a community questions interview with Marcel Offermans here at RaceDepartment, we couldn't resist the opportunity to have a chat with the head of Studio 397 and head out onto the outstanding new Circuit de la Sarthe soon to arrive in rFactor 2.

Driving and interviewing is certainly an interesting experience, and our thanks go out to @Marcel Offermans for access to this incredible virtual version of the track, and for spending so much of his time with us and the community recording this video.

The footage you can watch above is the 'as live' recording of yesterdays broadcast on our RDTV Twitch channel, and our apologies for the slight audio issues in the open minute or so of the broadcast...

Enjoy seeing this incredible track in action, and hearing from the boss of Studio 397 about Le Mans, rFactor 2 and plenty more besides..

Oh yeah, please do give us a like and subscribe on our RDTV Twitch and YouTube channel too - we really appreciate each and every subscribe / follow we get!

For more from the world of rFactor 2, head over to the RaceDepartment rFactor 2 sub forum and connect with your fellow rF2 fans today!

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Ok, that could change my plans :D
i had a hard time to decide weather buy f1 2019 and renew my iracing for 1 year or buy new GT3 pack(i have the previous one)+Sebring track in RF2 and wait for Nordschleife, and now i heard Le mans is coming too, damn , the most up to date version of it in all sims?
now it's even harder to go with my previous plan lol
 
This looks really good. Not raining, not lens flare godrays :)
Only in times when old UI pops in, you see that they have much work cleaning the legacy stuff. Wish Marcel and team that iconic new UI finally finished so they can concentrate on more topics from the interview.
 
Is the UI really that much of an issue for everyone? At this stage it just feels like some kind of meme to go on about it. Like VR
It's not that much of an issue. It's just that at this point, the new UI has become a mythical thing that is going to solve every single issue anyone's ever had with the game. Just hold on a few more months - it's coming soon, after all, we're almost there! - and the new UI will finally come and solve the annoying problem you're experiencing every time you run the game.

Of course...it won't. But you have to believe in something, so we believe in the new UI. And then, one day, it will be released and the reality of it will break us.
 
Good interview. I was a little taken back when he didn’t seem aware of AI, safety car or gt3 bugs. That was pretty disappointing. I also don’t agree with him that rf2 has put out mire content than any other studio.

Still hoping the focus gets shifted to cleaning up bugs like the Porsche yellow stripe on the steering wheel, Mercedes ffb and the safety car.
 
Is the UI really that much of an issue for everyone? At this stage it just feels like some kind of meme to go on about it. Like VR
The rf2 ui has a ton of big and small issues. But marcel also made a good point in the stream about how you get used to things being the way they are. Like if alt-tab crashes rf2 then you just get used to it and work around it. Same thing with the ui. If you only use rf2 and don't play anything else then for example finding cars from the list doesn't seem very bad but if you come from somewhere else the car list folder labyrith is pretty awful process to find cars in rf2. Just to go through the rf2 gt3 cars means you need to know exact brand and model of each car so you can dig them up from the pile of long nested list. And to add a full field you need to know and remember all the cars... Same thing with adding ai competitors, skins, server browser.

And for mods it is plain awful as well. All of these have really poor usability but if you only use rf2 you have sort of learned to deal with it and do things slower. But if you come from ac or any other game for example where you can just drag and drop to install cars, tracks and skins and it just works or you can find cars and tracks extremely quickly with a simple search or clicking a tag then rf2 feels incredibly slow and cumbersome. Even ams is far superior despite being done of the older engine. And it is not just wrong color of buttons or placement of them. The very limited rf2 structure just doesn't allow elegant solutions to these problems unless you rewrite parts of the engine itself. Rf2 ui can't add tags (gt3, gt3, lmp2, endurance) for finding cars and tracks unless it changes the veh files and its systems or add a new file that actually contains some data about the cars because rf2 does not even have that kind of file! And because every file needs to be packed and rf2 can not into folders you just end up with an unorganized mess that users can not even fix like they can do in ac where you can just open a ui.json file and add anything you want to a car.

I do agree with Martin Fiala. The ui (ui+ux) has been hyped up a bit too much and people expect miracles from it. Same with the new competition structure. Rf2 has a lot of issues and as bad as the ui is it is very much strangled by the underlying infrastructure which doesn't really allow the ui do or fix much. Unless the ui revamp also includes hefty changes to the underlying code and structure then at the most you can expect is slight ui improvements. New colors and buttons in different places. I also find it troubling how much noise is made about the option to not show ai drivers in server browser. This is not groundbreaking technology. This almost a bug fix and the fact that this tiny fix is almost all we know about the new ui at this point is very troubling.

I am afraid a lot of thing is going to be exactly same in the new ui with maybe the launcher and the ui itself merged into one with a barebones function serverbrowser instead of the total awfulness rf2 has now. And last but least any time there is a big change like this in the past it has always meant that the first iteration has a high chance of being even more restrictive and limited than the current ui. Making a new ui is not about just adding new stuff in but also adding the existing functionality in.
 
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The rf2 ui has a ton of big and small issues. But marcel also made a good point in the stream about how you get used to things being the way they are. Like if alt-tab crashes rf2 then you just get used to it and work around it. Same thing with the ui. If you only use rf2 and don't play anything else then for example finding cars from the list doesn't seem very bad but if you come from somewhere else the car list folder labyrith is pretty awful process to find cars in rf2. Just to go through the rf2 gt3 cars means you need to know exact brand and model of each car so you can dig them up from the pile of long nested list. And to add a full field you need to know and remember all the cars... Same thing with adding ai competitors, skins, server browser.

And for mods it is plain awful as well. All of these have really poor usability but if you only use rf2 you have sort of learned to deal with it and do things slower. But if you come from ac or any other game for example where you can just drag and drop to install cars, tracks and skins and it just works or you can find cars and tracks extremely quickly with a simple search or clicking a tag then rf2 feels incredibly slow and cumbersome. Even ams is far superior despite being done of the older engine. And it is not just wrong color of buttons or placement of them. The very limited rf2 structure just doesn't allow elegant solutions to these problems unless you rewrite parts of the engine itself. Rf2 ui can't add tags (gt3, gt3, lmp2, endurance) for finding cars and tracks unless it changes the veh files and its systems or add a new file that actually contains some data about the cars because rf2 does not even have that kind of file! And because every file needs to be packed and rf2 can not into folders you just end up with an unorganized mess that users can not even fix like they can do in ac where you can just open a ui.json file and add anything you want to a car.

I do agree with Martin Fiala. The ui (ui+ux) has been hyped up a bit too much and people expect miracles from it. Same with the new competition structure. Rf2 has a lot of issues and as bad as the ui is it is very much strangled by the underlying infrastructure which doesn't really allow the ui do or fix much. Unless the ui revamp also includes hefty changes to the underlying code and structure then at the most you can expect is slight ui improvements. New colors and buttons in different places. I also find it troubling how much noise is made about the option to not show ai drivers in server browser. This is not groundbreaking technology. This almost a bug fix and the fact that this tiny fix is almost all we know about the new ui at this point is very troubling.

I am afraid a lot of thing is going to be exactly same in the new ui with maybe the launcher and the ui itself merged into one with a barebones function serverbrowser instead of the total awfulness rf2 has now. And last but least any time there is a big change like this in the past it has always meant that the first iteration has a high chance of being even more restrictive and limited than the current ui. Making a new ui is not about just adding new stuff in but also adding the existing functionality in.

A bit TLDR if im honest. Seems more a you problem than ui

But different strokes. Im fine with it and couldnt really admit to giving two hoots about it.

I feel if it had never been mentioned it would be nowhere near the issue it apparently is to some
 

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