rFactor 2 | Competition System Released In New Build Update

Paul Jeffrey

Premium
Studio 397 have released a new build update for rFactor 2, adding the much anticipated first pass of the new competition system to the title.
  • New build includes minor fixes and new competition system.
  • Races due to start on Thursday within the system.
  • Further development will be ongoing throughout the coming months.

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From the release notes:

Today is a good day. Today is a new build day. You may have heard on the sim racing grapevine something about a new competition system within rFactor 2 that is under development..? Yes, that’s right, our December build update is here and a very first pass at organizing rFactor 2 multiplayer action has come with it, marking a very important line in the sand for us here at Studio 397 as we continue working incredibly hard to ensure the simulation delivers an experience our users demand.

The Competition System is now live as part of this build update, with the first racing events due to be uploaded and set to begin on Thursday December 24th.

November Roadmap | More Details On Competition Roadmap: Click Here.

Before we talk about the changes that have come as part of this new build release, let us remind you a little about why we want to include a competition system within the software in the first place.

Online racing, from a local level all the way up to organized and professional esport activities are an important aspect of the rFactor 2 journey, and have for a long time been very well represented by the many numerous community created sim racing leagues throughout the world.

Whilst these leagues are doing an incredible job of offering sim racers outstanding opportunities to race their favourite cars within the simulation, we realize that for the largest part of our user base racing in scheduled league events isn’t always the most convenient or accessible way for them to get involved in online multiplayer action, and finding servers that host content they want to race, at a time in which they would like to race it, has proven to be more difficult than it ideally needs to be.

Driven by a desire to offer quality racing for everyone, in a structured and organized way that increases the opportunities for our fantastic community to get involved, we have devised a new competition system within the software, one that offers up regularly scheduled racing in a variety of different car and track combinations within the sim and brings with it an element of matching together drivers of similar skill and ratings, to help streamline and improve the racing experience for our users, and put the emphasis back on what is important – getting on track and having fun.

Of course, this new system has been developed with expansion in mind, so what you will see as part of the new build today is certainly going to grow and expand over time – with so much obvious potential to enhance our multiplayer experience, we have taken the decision to adopt a cautious and regimented approach to deployment. What this means in reality is that we intend to spend time at each phase of development taking onboard community feedback in regard to how the system is working, and what features and behaviours the community would like to see brought to the system in future builds. By adopting this approach, we aim to maximize the potential of the system based on how it is used, and how the vast majority of people would like to use it going forward, to collectively develop something that adds genuine value to your sim racing experience within rFactor 2.

Before we take a look at the system in its current initial release status, it may be useful for those of you who missed it within the November Development Roadmap to have another look at our planned ‘mini’ roadmap of development over the coming months:

Ratings — are probably one of the most anticipated features, and one of the reasons for not having them active right from the start is that we want to test our algorithms on real-world data before publishing anything. Our current philosophy is to have a single rating system that encapsulates both your skill and safety record.

Protests and decisions — are also high on our roadmap list as we will no doubt have situations where an incident will need to be reported and evaluated by our stewards. Our goal here is definitely to let the in-game systems do a lot of the (easy) work here, monitoring when you cut the track or commit other offences and directly handing out penalties. At the same time we are aware that not everything can be decided by robots.

More competition formats — are things we will probably gradually introduce but as a feature they certainly need to be mentioned on any roadmap. We intend to run our GT championship, various hotlap styles, some completely new formats as well as more “league style” competitions in the system.

Roles and team based driving — will be added to allow multiple drivers to share an “entry”, or car, in a competition. Roles can be defined so teams can also have a manager or race engineer. Other roles are stewards, race control, and cameramen to facilitate broadcasts.

Broadcast integration — is probably another feature that will be gradually introduced, but obviously when broadcasting sessions that belong to a competition, we want to make sure that overlays showing standings, points, participants and calendars accurately reflect the competition they’re a part of.

Offline Championships — will be added once the online part is running smoothly. We will leverage the features we use online to also facilitate offline championships, where you can race against our AI.

These features will take us well into 2021, and we will revise and update them as the year progresses.

These features and developments will largely be driven by how the system is adopted by the current and future rFactor 2 racing community of course, and should be taken as a broad guideline as to our development intentions rather than a set of absolutes. We are exceptionally keen to ensure this development phase is driven by the wants and desires of our community racers, as we look to build something together than improves and enhances the overall experience of racing within rFactor 2.

With that all said, let us take a look at what has changed as part of the new build today.

  • Fixed v-sync not working
  • Fixed an issue where certain car classes would not show in a session
  • Various minor graphical bug fixes
  • Fixed issues with aspect ratio
  • Added competition system
So that’s it for the new build update, but it certainly isn’t the end of the rFactor 2 story this month. Tomorrow afternoon we plan to release our new Endurance Pack 2 DLC, adding three pretty fantastic new cars in the form of the Cadillac DPi-V.R, the LMP2 specification Ligier JS P217 and the brand new GTE Chevrolet Corvette C8.R… three cars we are sure you will enjoy racing just as much as we have enjoyed developing over the last few months.

From all at the studio, enjoy the new build and have a great Christmas and New Year!



Original Source: Studio 397

rFactor 2 is available now exclusively on PC.

Got questions? Our community have answers! Check out the rFactor 2 sub forum here at RaceDepartment for a great way to engage with your fellow fans of the simulation.

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There are no other versions.
Removed it, unsubscribed and validated the files removed from "installed" GameData, resubsribed and downloaded again - same result.

Exactly the same here. I am sure we are not alone. Would be more surprised if other people's versions are not the same since the track was last updated a few days ago.

@Dynamitry Remove any other versions if you have them and then Verify Files
Have you tried this for yourself since the update?

Mine is exactly the same as those screen shots since the track update for the combined versions of the track. I have never had any other version of this track other than the one from S397 and I never race online. It only effects the combined versions of the track.
 
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My word the new UI is still terrible. If RF2 forces us to use that, it would be a big mistake on their part.

I second that. This new UI is a huge step back. Launched the game this evening for the first time in 2 months and I just became exasperated after a few minutes. Not to mention configuring my steering wheel was hit or miss at best. I've never felt RF2 was a good game anyway, but this is ridiculous.
 
I second that. This new UI is a huge step back. Launched the game this evening for the first time in 2 months and I just became exasperated after a few minutes. Not to mention configuring my steering wheel was hit or miss at best. I've never felt RF2 was a good game anyway, but this is ridiculous.

Give it more than "a few minutes", no one likes change (me included) but this is the now Default UI, it will improve and it is much better overall than the old UI which was fundamentally flawed under the skin.
Like all aspects of Racing Sims this is (another) area that will constantly evolve over time and eventually you might just get used too it, so untwist those knickers, grab a beer (it's Xmas afterall) and just spend a few more minutes getting to know it, who knows, you might actually grow to like it :)
 

Brent Mills

Brent Mills
Exciting, but disappointing they going to combine safety and skill. Yes safety is important, but when I look at my progression, I want to see a raw performance number, not something that has been diminished because someone rammed me.
Perhaps one of the Devs would care to explain their thinking behind this?
 
Slightly off topic but can someone explain how to uninstall mods in new UI?

I'm trying to delete a file that was installed through Packages folder and isn't available on steam workshop. When I find it in game only option avaiable on the sidebar is refresh.
 
Wow, this update is a nice christmas gift!

About UI:
I remember that i had problems with the new UI in VR, (blackscreen iirc) so i was on the old UI until yesterday... :D
Now i don't have serious problems anymore with the new UI beside a few seconds screen flickering in VR when leaving a session back into main menu, but thats ok... besides one thing:

Please 397, give us a darkmode or brightness slider for the menu... specially the grey background(!) in VR is rly bright imho and somewhat exhausting/stressful to me!

About competition system:
Sure, this is just great! Hopefully the playerbase and server list will grow! Rly curious how this system will evolve... :)
 
No it isn't.

Did the Old UI have:
- Competition System built in?
- Track Map with Clickable Cars?
- Ability to easily configure for future advancements?
- Mod Installation integrated?
- Steam Workshop integrated?
- Forum integrated?
- News Items integrated?
- Plus many more features current & to come...

Time to pull your heads out the Sand guys, the now Default UI is here to stay and will be updated so it's upto you if you want to embrace it and you'll need to accept that whether you like it or not :)
 
Honestly, considering that it just came out of Beta, I really like the new UI. Yes sometimes is counterintuitive and there are still things missing, but I find the integrations and the modularity far better than the old one. In terms of speed, it seems to me that the more I use it, the faster are the loadings. And more than anything, I trust the dev team on building something good on top of this base.
 
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I spent some more time poking around the new UI this morning.
There's some serious new functionality under the hood.
I'm old, cranky, and hate change of any kind, but I think I'm gonna end up liking it.
Now that I 've worked out how to get the mouse cursor to work in VR, I've gone back to using the new UI. If they could get rid of the flickering when changing from one sub-menu to another it'd be nice, and maybe a dark mode too so I don't need my Ray Bans in VR :)
 
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The new UI features are worthwhile but the interface itself is a huge step backwards in terms of usability. The new interface design requires a lot more mouse clicking around and shows much less information per screen (e.g. setup info) which makes it much more tedious and time consuming to use. Part of the problem is the layout itself, which they should be able to improve in a future release without too much effort if they are using a modern design pattern such as MVC (Model-View-Controller).

RF2 remains my favorite sim for offline racing by far. I sincerely hope they are able to improve the new UI to at least the usability level of the old one.
 

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