rF2: The Big Interview - Submit Your Questions Here

[Paul Jeffrey]

We are soon going to interview Marcel Offermans, the head of Studio 397 and the rFactor 2 racing simulation, and we want your questions!

The last few months have seen a whirlwind of development and improvements for rFactor 2, with some significant changes to the simulation taking place as well as a number of high profile car and track licence announcements - not least of which is the legendary combination of the Nordschleife and Le Mans 24 Hour circuits coming to the title.

Following on from the successful Automobilista 2 interview, I'm looking to tour round all the major developers and have a word about how things are going in their respective simulations - starting with a discussion with Studio 397 and their rFactor 2 racing title.

In order to ensure we get to the bottom of the questions our community want to know, I'm asking you to submit your questions for Marcel in the comments section below, and I'll do my best to ask as many of them as possible when we have a discussion next week.

Feel free to submit a question about anything and everything you always wanted to know about rFactor 2 in the comments section below!

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[leclettico]

• There's a plan to manage a custom championship with the IA (so, with the same IA drivers) without having to create copy of liveries and drivers and using LogAnalyzer to looking into results and standings?
• Rain and IA. There will be improvements in the managing of pit in case of rain?

 

[Jonny Austin]

Many sim racers praise the handling in RF2.What are the other unique features that should make me buy RF2?To me there is to much content that I can find elsewhere.
I have held off buying so far until the UI was sorted,It has taken so long that the game is quite expensive with all the new content.Is there plans for a packaged price with all new content?e.g.RF2019 package.

 

[Alex Townsend]

All I need is 3D grass. Will all new and old tracks (Zandvoort already has it) be equipped with it?

I'm genuinely unsure if you're joking or not...
Is this really a thing? And if it is why does 3d grass matter to the driving experience?
Not mocking, just interested in another sim racers requirements.

 

[BrainsBush]

Marcel: While not driving --> Bavaria or Heineken?

grtz, Brian

 

[Anomalistics]

A signficant portion of your playerbase are based entierly offline. Given that iRacing are now developing AI (and understand the importance of it) are you going to make any effort at all in addressing the key issues the community have raised over the years? I have one thing to stay. Cars getting stuck slip streaming.

You know what to do....

 

[Jenda2cz]

- Have you mentioned several times that new features are being added to extend the Sim, which will be easier?
- How do you go with the planes for the future, will you focus on a particular series (GT, formula), or will the content be multi, for a wider range of customers?

Thanks, good luck for whole team.

 

[Alexandr Meshkov]

Couple questions

Is there Portland International Raceway still in development? No news for 1.5 years about it in Roadmaps.

What is the Dritmaps and how it works? I remember that was a word about that feature when Sebring releases but no explanation since that.

Also is there some chance to see more car/track examples for DevMode since all official cars are encrypted?

 

[The Walker]

Where is the Taatus Pack? Announced almost 7 months ago, close to the release and we didn't hear a word about that in the last 3 roadmaps.

Also, but this is just curiosity, I read somewhere like in 2017 that rF2 had the license for the Reynard 95i car and the license for Portland. They never got released, right?

Keep up the good work

 

[SimJim70]

As someone who works constantly changing shift patterns, do they ever plan to incorporate 'drop-in/drop-out' online racing? Unless I change jobs I'll never be a regular in a league or even weekly events that occur. Hence my question.

 

[Steve Worrell]

I love rf2, it's my favourite SIM it's just a lambo and Ferrari short of perfection in my book. A couple of questions from me.

It has the best AI in the industry but are there any plans to improve it even further?

Are there any plans to do a thing with the damage model in the sim. Loving what iracing have planned, I would love to see something similar in rf2.

 

[Cristian Luis]

Hi Mr. Marcel. My two questions are about adding game options. Will have the new UI championship mode and the possibility to listen to music while in the main menu? (Just like in rFactor1).

 

[tswest]

View attachment 309405
We are soon going to interview Marcel Offermans, the head of Studio 397 and the rFactor 2 racing simulation, and we want your questions!

The last few months have seen a whirlwind of development and improvements for rFactor 2, with some significant changes to the simulation taking place as well as a number of high profile car and track licence announcements - not least of which is the legendary combination of the Nordschleife and Le Mans 24 Hour circuits coming to the title.

Following on from the successful Automobilista 2 interview, I'm looking to tour round all the major developers and have a word about how things are going in their respective simulations - starting with a discussion with Studio 397 and their rFactor 2 racing title.

In order to ensure we get to the bottom of the questions our community want to know, I'm asking you to submit your questions for Marcel in the comments section below, and I'll do my best to ask as many of them as possible when we have a discussion next week.

Feel free to submit a question about anything and everything you always wanted to know about rFactor 2 in the comments section below!

Like what we do at RaceDepartment? Follow us on Social Media!

 

Will there be more tutorials and assistance to allow third party builders to build tracks for rF2 like it has been for rF1. I am a track builder and would like to see more Building tracks in rF2 for DUMMIES tutorials. At the moment there is very little info an I get the impression Studio 397 wants to keep everything for themselves.

 

[Rui Santos]

It would be so nice if you could make the track temperature working as expected and affecting the car behavior as it happens in real life, It's a pity that the BEST SIM regarding tires, FFB and car physics is still suffering the lack os such an important feature. The same goes for tire pressures.

This!

I would like to know if with the release of the new UI the weather feature will be updated. Right now the track temp and ambient temp are allways the same, also i read somewhere that tires work like if it was 26ºC all the time, no matter the temperatures and this is not realistic at all. Also, lowest pressures work better in any car, i would like to be able to adjust this according to the track temperature/condition.

Any plans to update the wet weather physics, racing line, water on track, et�

Thanks for bringing the best sim to life

 

[Peter Koslowski]

I'm genuinely unsure if you're joking or not...
Is this really a thing? And if it is why does 3d grass matter to the driving experience?
Not mocking, just interested in another sim racers requirements.

It just looks better and at least increases my immersion. If you look at Bridgehampton or the Nordschleife (conversion of AC), it really matters. Without 3D grass some tracks look really flat!

 

[John-Eric Saxén]

It just looks better and at least increases my immersion. If you look at Bridgehampton or the Nordschleife (conversion of AC), it really matters. Without 3D grass some tracks look really flat!

The problem with "fake" 3D grass that sims like Assetto Corsa uses (sparse flat 2D grass objects) is that it doesn't look good from close angles and it doesn't look good if the grass is made very short. Generally speaking all race tracks cut their grass before the event, so there isn't much "3D" in real life. I have yet to see 3D grass made in a sim that looks anywhere close to real, but maybe it could work for places like Nordschleife where they don't cut the grass as often.

My question: Across all industries we have recently seen a lot of buzz around AI and machine learning based on big data. However, in racing simulators the development of AI has stagnated at a very basic level. Could we possibly see a form of "neural AI" based on learning in some form in rF2 in the future? This could reduce the time and effort required to tweak the AI to work well with various car classes. The idea is described in this RaceDepartment article.

 

[Patrick van der Meulen]

Any chance of ever getting paged in-car displays for cars like Norma, Oreca, GTE, GT3's? Would add massive amount of immersion with Le Sarthe. Managing from display. It's my only little gripe on RF2.

 

[Travis]

As everyone has asked great questions, will we have a return of the dev blogs? Michael Borda's blog was excellent; are these to be continued at some point?

I would love to read blogs from the track teams etc too.

 

[OZ67]

What is Studio 397's Main goal for rFactor2 and within what time frame do you expect to achieve this goal?

 

[pcraenme]

Where is the Taatus Pack? Announced almost 7 months ago, close to the release and we didn't hear a word about that in the last 3 roadmaps.

Also waiting on that one. However they were mentioned in the April 2019 roadmap ("On the side of cars, now that the Formula E Gen 2 car has been released, we’re shifting our focus again to the Tatuus cars. They’re all drivable, the models and sounds are mostly done and we’re now tweaking and bugfixing them.").In the May 2019 roadmap however, they were not mentioned anymore.

 

[pcraenme]

Are you thinking of introducing something like a season pass/one year membership, so you pay all the upcoming DLC content for a certain period (e.g. a whole year) in advance, but for a cheaper price then having to buy all the individual DLC's when they come out? It has happened a few times now already that new DLC content was offered in a steam sale or additional pack (e.g. what happened with the Monaco Formula E track that was sold in a pack release with the Formula E Gen 2) only shortly after the initial release. So.. waiting on buying new DLC content is 'rewarded' somehow now. As a loyal S397 customer, buying most of your content on day 1 of it release, I feel a bit let down by this.