rF2 | November Development Roadmap - Formula E 2019/20!

[Paul Jeffrey]

Studio 397 have released the latest of their monthly 'development roadmap' posts about the future of rFactor 2.

Maintaining a welcome tradition of updating the sim racing community about the goings on in the world of rFactor 2, the November roadmap post is here - and contains interesting insights and hints about where rFactor 2 is heading in the immediate future.

On the content side of things, the key highlight is of course the introduction of the 2019/20 Formula E content update - adding the new teams, drivers and liveries from the premier electric open wheel racing series in the world. Other key topics from the new post is news that the long awaited UI update for the sim is indeed on target for a mid-December release, and plenty of talk about E-Sports and competitions within the simulation.

You can check out the full roadmap update post below:

As the weather gets cold all around Europe and the northern hemisphere, everyone at Studio 397 is currently in motion and working on exciting projects cranking up the heat! It’s already November, but we’re not finished yet bringing you updates and new content for rFactor 2 this year. Next month we’ll look back at the year, but for now we are dedicated to working on the future of simracing and bringing everybody together for exciting and thrilling digital motorsport action. So get off the track, slow down and park your cars in the pits for a while and let’s talk about what awaits you in the rFactor world this coming month. Spoiler alert: before the clock strikes twelve, you will have heard back from us at least three more times! That’s how much we have planned to end the year on a high. And as you will see, we are already announcing a big event in 2020!

Screenshot Contest Winners
Last week we announced a screenshot contest, featuring our Nissan GT500. Thank you everybody for making an effort and submitting screenshots of your own liveries! We could not decide on a winner, so we picked two! And the winners are…..BrianB and ek0z from Discord – Congratulations! We will be in touch next week.

Formula E 2020 Season Release

Just last weekend we saw the ABB FIA Formula E Championship start into its 6th season, with a grid so packed and full of big names that exciting racing was inevitable! Not hyped enough by what happened at the Diriyah ePrix, or missed it? Check out all the action here! Let’s start off with an interesting fact before diving into our actual announcement. Season six of the ABB FIA Formula E Championship is the first ever championship that sees all four German premium automotive brands battle it out on the same tracks, namely Porsche, Audi, Mercedes and BMW. Of course there are even more manufacturers in this season, with Nissan and Jaguar both coming back to strike hard against the German brands.

But enough about the new season. How does that relate to rFactor 2? As you probably guessed by now, we’re proud to continue our relationship with Formula E, and we’re releasing the 2020 season teams and liveries! Intense street racing with quick and agile open wheelers is waiting for you, featuring the new debutantes, Porsche and Mercedes, as a free upgrade to the current Formula E Gen 2 car. Go get it here!

And check it out, we also added the top wing cam!

Sim Formula 2020 at InterClassics in Maastricht

On January 16-19th, 2020, the MECC in Maastricht will host the biggest simracing event in the Benelux. In collaboration with InterClassics, Sim Formula will host a 4 day long event, focused on simracing. The event is freely accessible every day. Known brands in simracing will be showing off their latest developments and products. There is also a simracing arena featuring various activities. For example, on Saturday there will be a hotlap competition on Circuit Maastricht (which is freely available in the rFactor 2 workshop if you want to come prepared). On Sunday afternoon you can witness the finals. René Hoogterp, a professional Dutch commentator, will participate in the live broadcast of this race.

Qualifiers and Prize Pool

December 2019 will feature an online qualifier competition using rFactor 2, consisting of both hotlaps and races. In the first week of December we will open up a hotlap competition where the top 25 (with 5 reserves) will qualify for a series of races in the week of December 10-15th. In each of those races, a qualification session will be followed by two short sprint races, one with a reverse grid, to determine the fastest driver of that day who will then qualify for the final. More information on how to join will be published here on Monday.

The 5 fastest from these qualifiers will be invited to compete against each other on January 19th at the MECC in Maastricht in full-motion simulators provided by Upracer to determine who wins the first edition of Sim Formula. The total prize pool for this event is €10.000. Note that we are not covering travel expenses, so make sure you are able to travel to Maastricht to compete in the final if you join the qualifiers!

Masterclass and Congress

In collaboration with Adrenaline-Xperience by Atze Kerkhof all visitors of the event will be able to win one of three masterclasses. To participate, you can fill in a card during your visit to the event and drop it in a spot on the podium of the racing arena. The winner of the hotlap competition on Saturday will win the fourth masterclass. On Thursday evening, there will be an esports congress (for which you do need to buy a ticket). If you want to learn more about the world of esports, this is an excellent opportunity to listen to and discuss with an impressive line-up of well known, international speakers. For more information and tickets, visit this page.

Co-Hosted with InterClassics

The Sim Formula 2020 is full of action, but there is a lot more to see at InterClassics, the biggest car show of the Benelux, featuring many classic and fast cars. Just what the doctor ordered!

Finally

In case you’re wondering how the public beta of the new UI is coming along, we are on schedule to release that mid-December. It will be released as an “opt-in” public beta on Steam, so you will need to enable it yourself and you can quickly switch between the two. Both versions will be fully multiplayer compatible.

Enjoy the last month of the year!


rFactor 2 is available exclusively on PC.

Questions? Ask the community and post a thread in the rFactor 2 sub forum here at RaceDepartment! If you love racing online, why not check out our rFactor 2 Racing Club - a fantastic place to experience this sim with in a clean, safe and competitive environment.

 

[sonicviz]

It's a misconception to think that everyone has the space, money, or physical ability (or other reasons) to use a wheel. Arguably a good controller is also easier to use and a better UX than a crappy cheap wheel setup as well.
To be honest I also can't think of a good reason to use a wheel setup unless you can do it properly and of the right quality, so stick to a controller unless you can.

 

[Durge Driven]

You got your refund already yes ?

rF2 has crazy effect on people, like a itch they can't scratch

That is where most of the bad steam reviews come from, people that tried it for 2 hours, people whom have no business giving any informative review. It takes that long just to peruse the ini files and make needed changes


rF2 either grabs you and shakes you ......or spits you out

There is a dozen titles i would drive with game pad before this

Get a second hand Black momo and drive the Historics you will never look back

 

[sonicviz]

Sure refunded aok, just waiting on the DLC refund.
I really wanted to keep it, but I'm just not willing to invest more time troubleshooting it as I'm tight on time already. I gave it 3 hours and that's enough. It looks ok, and drove ok, but tbh I don't think it's any better than some others. They all have pros/cons, and they're all fun to drive.

Think I'll pick up MotoGP2019 as a replacement, as I've never played a Bike sim and it has solid reviews + full controller support. And I need to subscribe to AM2!



Thin

 

[Shad3R]

Sure refunded aok, just waiting on the DLC refund.
I really wanted to keep it, but I'm just not willing to invest more time troubleshooting it as I'm tight on time already. I gave it 3 hours and that's enough. It looks ok, and drove ok, but tbh I don't think it's any better than some others. They all have pros/cons, and they're all fun to drive.

Think I'll pick up MotoGP2019 as a replacement, as I've never played a Bike sim and it has solid reviews + full controller support. And I need to subscribe to AM2!



Thin

If you want to play with a controller, i would take project cars 2, ride series and f1 from codemasters, you can see top players on important leagues playing with controller there like vSirah

 

[Will Mazeo]

You got your refund already yes ?

rF2 has crazy effect on people, like a itch they can't scratch

That is where most of the bad steam reviews come from, people that tried it for 2 hours, people whom have no business giving any informative review. It takes that long just to peruse the ini files and make needed changes


rF2 either grabs you and shakes you ......or spits you out

There is a dozen titles i would drive with game pad before this

Get a second hand Black momo and drive the Historics you will never look back

Well the guy is using a controller, it's up to him to have more patience to set things up but rF2 does work fine that way, these settings are more personal than when you use a wheel imo so it's all on the guy.
For everything else rf2 could learn with softwares like Plex, despite needing a client/server install which is usually complicated that thing does pretty much everything for you, you could say it even does too much to a point where it may get annoying to set something in your own way lol but for the average Joe it's perfect

 

[sonicviz]

I already have PC2 & F1 2019 + AC/ACC/DR1/DR2/WRC8. Most were on sale for very good deals, and I enjoy them all. They all play very nicely with a controller, no hassle to set up at all and very customizable. Disappointed in rFactor2 lack of solid controller support given how long it's been out, but I guess it's only for "Wheely Pros" I did like the visual feedback for the rF2 controller setup, but the problem was further down in the driver somewhere, just a bad implementation - which they themselves admit to via "partial controller support". I should have looked closer before buying, my bad!

If they ever fix it I'll look at it again sometime.

Edit: oh, yeah, wreckfest for $10 was a good score. Great fun with the kid.

 

[Durge Driven]

the most fun I had with game-pad would be Wreckfest and Forza

I got first public beta of rF2 and I had that worn out Black Momo, I felt like you, ie: no use spending anymore

In a few hours i got a public server up, as I liked GPL I picked Belgium and Eve F3 ... ( same as GPL had F3 and F2 trainers )

I set up wheel much like I had in GTR/.GTL/rFactor menu / ui

To be sure I had never turned a wheel in it
While waiting for someone to join room I left pits turned into Eau , went into a 4 wheel drift and had a epiphany

In all the years past and since I have never felt so connected or felt such feedback it was on another plane

I been waiting for the next gmotor my whole life

 

[azaralamouri]

Some other devs only show up when they want to sell a new car or livery (besides occasional one real improvement every seven years). I impel, exhort, adjure or beseech them to tell the users about their monthly development roadmaps. That is if they are really working on the real physics and infrastructure.

 

[gianlucaP]

ì

 

[Denis Betty]

I've refunded it. That was a total waste of a sunday afternoon. I finally got it working with my Razer controller, and then it started going a bit strange.

My controller works perfectly fine in all the other sims I have but now in rFactor2 it glitches like crazy on the steering thumbstick, and also has no FFB/Rumble for XBox type gamepads. I only just noticed it says "partial controller support" on the Steam Store, so I guess that's what it means. Seems to be a lot of controller issues on Steam forums about it too.

Pretty disappointed in it really, given all the high praise it gets.
I had to laugh driving over flat grass, it was like bouncing over a pile of boulders. I don't know how that works as "realistic Physics" but I guess it must be if everyone praises it.

Enjoy the new UI!

Have you ever driven a RL car on "flat grass"?
Try it at 60 kmh and then read your post.

 

[mantasisg]

Some other devs only show up when they want to sell a new car or livery (besides occasional one real improvement every seven years). I impel, exhort, adjure or beseech them to tell the users about their monthly development roadmaps. That is if they are really working on the real physics and infrastructure.

I just learned four new words

I hope they do work on physics as well, as there are various key stuff to wish for improvements that gets mentioned a lot, and some mentioned a bit less. Some people in community are getting slightly frustrated, there are also some who gets frustrated over frustration of others, which is perhaps sometimes justified. But I don't think that there is work on physics, or maybe that there will be anything major - hopefully I am wrong. I would suppose it is all UI and bugs solving that is happening, so the experience is getting increasingly more normal, I suppose it is fair to say that rF2 is getting improved for real, but it just doesn't get upgraded a lot, as simple as that.

There happens some changes to physics that also are up for debate IMO, such as decreased severity of flat spot effect, it used to be very brutal (I think too brutal for home user), you really didn't want to drive fast and a lot with mega flatspot, right now you can have mega flatspot, you'll know it is there, but you will be able to completely ignore it, so it went from too hot, to too cold IMO. So it is a great debate when it is better to go cooler, and when it is better to go hotter with simulation. I would suppose thats a difficult decision to make for a simulation. It has to be as real as possible, and if it is chosen not to be so, then it must have a very good and the right reason. But I hear increasing amount of voices from simracers that realism is not that important to them, basically I think every simracer has a threshold where he doesn't care or even has a clue anymore, so thats where the things settle down these days. Just hopefully the devs themselves has a high threshold and great understanding with intentions to pursue that.

 

[BrianB]

That's a familiar name among the contest winners

 

[sonicviz]

>>Have you ever driven a RL car on "flat grass"?
Try it at 60 kmh and then read your post.

That would be funny, except I wasn't going anywhere near 60Kmh.

>>RF2 has one of the best control with gamepad, direct and precise. The player needs to spend about a minute to configure it properly and that's it (the usual stuff, sensitivity, deadzone, etc.).
There is also a steering angle setting, that allows the player to use an identical steering angle for all the cars (say for example 180*), or to let the system change the steering angle according to the car. Absolutely fantastic.
As for the vibration, the game, just like RF1, GTR1 and 2 doesn't offer rumble support. You need to install a plugin to enable it. After that it has the same kind of vibration offered by NetKar Pro and the first iteration of AC (steering rumble: the best).

I'm sorry, but this is totally wrong. I debug software for a living and I can recognize when something is flaky, especially when the behavior is happening in real time and I can benchmark test the controller immediately in another sim to check if it's the controller or the simulator. The fact they also declare it as "partial controller support" on the Steam store also speaks that they know it's flaky. I'm also not talking at all about the steering parameters, I'm talking about the lower level detection and handling of controller input before you even get to that.

Also, if you're trying to tell me I need to install a Win 7 plugin from 2010 (http://lavendy.net/special/driver/xi/index.html) to get the rumble working (and potentially screwing with my other games on Win 10) then I'm also not buying whatever it is you're selling. That means they haven't even implemented xinput api properly (if at all), and they're probably just as unlikely to implement the new UWP API that supports impulse triggers (like some of the sims I mentioned already do) https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/wi...ation#vibration-and-impulse-triggers-overview

Did I also mention the other 10+ racing sims (not to mention flying/space sims/games) I have don't require me to do that, and my controller works just fine OOTB and is also easily configurable?

But fine, if they don't want to support controllers they should just say so and do away with the "partial controller support" bs and just support wheels.

Look, I get it. You're RF2 fans. Great. I tested it (three hours, ty Steam for the refund over time!) and it's got issues, I refunded and I'll try it again *maybe* in the future.
Is RF2 "the best"? No, there is no one best racing simulator and that's the only definitive answer to that question.

 

[A man with a Harmonica]

Well, that was a terrible purchase. RF2 doesn't recognise my controller, which works fine in every other game, and checking on Steam it seems to be a very common issue recently with loads of threads and no response from the devs.

Color me unimpressed, I was expecting it to work.

Edit: Figured it out, but I guess RF2 takes the prize for least intuitive sim. I hope the new UI has a better first user experience UX.

Forget about dev support, it's a complete joke. You have to sort the issues (there're lots of them) by yourself. Welcome on board.

 

[A man with a Harmonica]

About the "update"... E-"sports" that may interest a small minority who don't have a job and can keep lapping over and over 24/7, formula-e... Ah man... We want to like RF2 but it's getting more and more difficult.

 

[pcraenme]

Forget about dev support, it's a complete joke. You have to sort the issues (there're lots of them) by yourself. Welcome on board.

I think that is applicable to more racing sims on a PC and maybe even also part of the fun? Also, my experience with S397 is totally different. RF2 is the only racing sim, where I had regular responses on issues I reported, even directly from @Marcel Offermans himself.

 

[Jason Mullin]

surprised how many users DO use controllers. Not critical of them, just kinda got used to everyone having some sort of wheel.

People race rF2 on a controller?? I can't even drive grand theft auto on a controller and had to download script hook!

 

[Mantas Jokubauskas]

Okay, what's wrong with driving on a controller? It's nice to drive rF2 with my Xbox One Gamepad when I fixed the vibration and I'm using the Controller preset you can download from here. I only keep ABS Low because I'm not that good with the left trigger

 

[Momperface]

that's a whole lot of words saying nothing interesting

 

[azaralamouri]

mantatisg said:

I just learned four new words

I hope they do work on physics as well, as there are various key stuff to wish for improvements that gets mentioned a lot
[/QUOTE]


Yes I agree. Comparing to other sims they already have good physics. But hearing them from time to time talking about new understanding for slip stream zones, implementing priceless real life data from Tatuus or grip zones on wet dirty rubbery tarmac, listening to those three (as examples) is what make me happy. And then I can tell the others that I am doing real grownups stuff not doing same children gaming.