rFactor 2 | February Development Roadmap

Paul Jeffrey

Premium
Studio 397 have released their Development Roadmap for February, looking closer at the latest tweaks and improvements that have are being carried out by the studio in recent days.

Keeping up the tradition of monthly community updates about the latest developments in the world of rFactor 2, Studio 397 recently published their latest roadmap posting and gave some interesting insights into the future development direction of the simulation - as well as confirmation that the Diriyah E-Prix circuit will be added to the software as paid DLC later this week.

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In the roadmap post, the Studio shared with the community the latest development bugs they have been reviewed back at base, with some nice insights into the next round of updates that will be deployed to the simulation in the near furure:

"As we detailed in the last Development Roadmap back at the end of January, a lot of the attention from our development team continues to be focused on addressing a number of the identified and existing bugs within the simulation, with extra attention having been spent in recent weeks verifying and analysing a wide variety of different aspects of the software that can be fixed in the short, medium and long term development of rFactor 2. In an effort to ensure we deploy our resources in a sensible and structured way, we have gone to great lengths to understand where we can make the most impact on the highest number of important fixes within the sim, whilst keeping a close eye on the potential effects this might bring into the codebase within the software. When working on a piece of software as complex as rFactor 2, it is often the case that one change within the development code has unintended consequences elsewhere, and what initially felt like it would be a relatively straight forward change ends up eating into considerable amounts of time that we have budgeted for the fixes, which in turn can have an impact on how many issues we can address in a given timeframe.

In order to facilitate our ongoing development process, we have taken the decision to have a closer look at the underlying code within rFactor 2, and how various pieces of the software depend on other aspects of the code, and what these functions aim to achieve in how rFactor 2 operates behind the scenes. This is proving to be a fruitful exercise, and many fixes and improvements have already been identified and resolved by the development team – which helps put us in a stronger position moving forward. The downside to this is a lot of our resource has been applied to fixing areas of the software that will perhaps not manifest themselves as noticeable changes to the public, but they have certainly been required in order to give us the stable base on which we need to keep pushing forward, and start bringing together those big ticket changes that really uplift the user experience for our players.

Earlier this month we deployed a new build update to the ‘Release Candidate’ branch of Steam (more on RC builds below) that contained the first round of tweaks and improvements we have been working on. So far, we have received a positive reaction to this build, and community feedback suggests we are very close to putting these fixes into the main public branch of the software. The benefit we’ve found in having a release candidate branch has been significant, as it allows us to gauge the reaction of our community and identify if any issues become apparent that did not show themselves during our internal testing, whilst still offering players the opportunity to stick with the main stable branch of the software if they so choose. We are pleased with how this is working initially, and will continue to adopt this development strategy for the foreseeable future"

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Another positive benefit of having a Release Candidate branch for our new update is it allows us to split development focus between closing up any outstanding issues on the RC build that may appear, whilst simultaneously continuing to advance the process of creating our next build – something that is well underway at the Studio and should be very, very close to being deployed to the RC branch once we’ve moved the current changes into the public version of the software. Oh and yes, wheel and pedal inputs will return for the next update…!".

In other good news for fans of the title that have been keen to see the studio address some of the long standing issues with the simulation, studio 397 have also confirmed they have addressed several areas of user interest for an upcoming build release, that should be deployed as 'release candidate' in the near future.

Of that new build, the studio had the following to say about the upcoming new build:

"Related to content, we fixed a CTD when you tried to launch with a series selected that was uninstalled, we made sure there are no ways anymore to select upgrades that were different from the ones the server forced, and we addressed an issue where sometimes when you tried joining a server you would end up selecting cars from the wrong list. Finally, we have extended the logging to include more details about the content that’s being loaded.

Fixed issues with the UI sometimes running at an insane framerate. In the options screen, if you would change FFB settings, they would not register until you go on the track for the second time. The session settings screen saw a bunch of fixes, most of them related to making sure settings get reset at the proper time, such as when changing tracks or series. In the package management screen, we fixed a sometimes not working refresh button. Favorites are also refreshed if you add new ones from the full server list and finally the garage screen now also shows wheel loads.

In the graphics department, after discovering, in testing, some graphical glitches in the skies, included those in the permanent fixes we did that would also sometimes cause the car bodies to glitch and “blow up”. We removed the faint boundaries you would see in VR when looking at the edges of the UI. Last but not least we fixed an issue where secondary wet weather reflections would not show up on damp road surfaces.

Added driver and car info displays to the full screen replay. This includes inputs like steering, brake, clutch and throttle and a g-force circle graph. On top of that we also now always display the correct driver before and after driver swaps. In a race session we now show the time remaining in a session. The message centre now consistently shows the same naming and numbering for values as the garage when changing settings such as ABS and TC while driving."

Other notable mentions in the roadmap is confirmation that the Diriyah E-Prix will be arriving this week, plus another circuit that later this month that has yet to be revealed.


Original Source: Studio 397


rFactor 2 is available now, exclusively on PC.

Check out the rFactor 2 sub forum here at RaceDepartment for the latest and greatest news, chat and speculation about the rFactor 2 racing simulation.


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That didn't take long - 2nd post and somebody can't wait to tell everybody that they don't have rF2 on their HD. What does this have to do with the roadmap?

Sounds like you've been unlucky, in that you weren't able to get rF2 working to your satisfaction. That's a shame, but this is not the place to air you grievance. Please find a relevant thread or start a shiny new one, but please don't post off topic on RD threads. Others will read the title and come to this thread to read about the roadmap. If they wanted to hear about your difficulties (and perhaps even offer to help) they would visit the new thread that you haven't yet started.

I'm gonna stick my neck out and make a prediction. You won't make that thread, because you'd prefer to come here and post off topic in the 2nd post of a front page article. Prove me wrong, please start a thread about the things people would like to see fixed in rF2.

EDIT: :ninja:'d sorry Kenny

Great to hear that S397 are planning to fix lots of bugs. Many people, including myself, have been disappointed at the apparent complete lack of interest in this from them over the years. I think the few bug fixes in recent months are a welcome start. Let's hope they've turned over a new leaf. I haven't tried the Release Candidate, but I look forward to the proposed fixes making it to the main branch. Long may this continue.

Credit where it's due - WD S397. :)
Thanks for the advice officer. now I’m about to report over 65K posts like this in RD. Please take care of them individually.
 
Lovely nice long read that, very good that things are moving swiftly in the "fixer upper" areas, just hope pace picks up for the <cough AI issues </cough> ;). Unsure what the new track might be, hopefully not another well known "it's in every other Sim and iconic" nonsense but a track that is actually lesser known.

I like Roadmaps with more detail, Asobo release Weekly "Blogs" for MSF2020 and they're dreadful...utterly dreadful, so it's refreshing to read much more from Developers that have a clue on what they're actually doing like S397 & Reiza for example.


rf2 is two years away from being two years away.

this is endless circle of

more dlc

still not fixing core game issues


Did you actually bother to read the Article? It's all about fixing core issues of which the public have been crying out for for years and how they're going to go about it, less moaning more reading!
 
I must be clueless. I don't understand when people say, " I deleted it from my HD". Uh............... are people running 40mb hard drives? I have every F1 20xx version, RF2, ACC, AC, PC2 and AMS2 on one drive. I have never deleted anything. I have a 1tb SSD that is for nothing but games. Maybe I have been fortunate enough that I have had to delete stuff to make room on a drive.

Fore sure,not because of insufficient disk space!:D
 
Let actually react to the roadmap (instead of the usual wahwahwah stuff that is very understandable frankly).

"The message centre now consistently shows the same naming and numbering for values as the garage when changing settings such as ABS and TC while driving."

I have never understood TC and ABS in rf2. In the competition servers its important to get that right because they force off the "general TC/ABS" assist so your tires will die if you dont have loadcell brake. And then i noticed that the default TC and ABS for GT3 were set to 10 and 1 or something. There is some button you can map to modify it which is confusingly named. So what do people run for this?
 
With all of these roadmaps a lot of the reaction is going to depend on whether what gets mentioned are the things you were individually interested in. None of the things that particularly bug me about RF2 are directly mentioned in the roadmap but it at least gives me hope that they are continuing to work on it. With anything this complex you may well find that a seemingly unrelated fix has a positive effect on one of the areas that do annoy you. I think when you see something with a lot of potential you easily get hacked off when it takes a long time to realise it.
 
I really appreciate the formula E contend... a proper sim implementation of the series, something that's not present in the F1 series.

More DLC?, keep them coming reasonable priced and I'll keep buying and supporting the sim.

And lastly is nice that S397 have in the outlook fixing the physics of the game; and working from the ground up to address those issues.

Any news regarding oval racing?, I hope S397 revisit this racing format sometime in the near future, drop a few LS tracks and add some additional contend for it, as racing rules... also some dirt driving... and basic rally stage handling... one could only dream :D.
 
So, still no improvement regarding load times on the Roadmap

long load times needn't be an issue if you use the opportunity to take up a sub-hobby. I knocked up a lovely pineapple & ginger pavlova the other day while waiting for Nords to load.

Why not try your hand at raffia basket weaving or fermenting your own post-race celebratory champagne. You'll have time...:whistling:

Great er...roadthingy btw.
 
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Pro Tip: Everybody should be on the Release Candidate channel unless you're worried about multiplayer breakage. Otherwise you'll be waiting weeks for the last actual update.

To me, Release Candidate is actually what a real beta is and you should be updating a quality assurance tests as you run into problems so that increasingly the right problems are caught in development before the actual release.
 
The FE stuff I dont really care about, it gets a lot of attention and recognizion, but its just for a diehard petrolhead like me. I've tried the cars, they drive well, but that electric 'hum' is quite annoying after a short while.
The GT3 bop change, including the tire physic changes, has resulted in some rather interesting twists. The Corvette is still the easiest car to drive, but its not the fastest anymore. All cars are fairly easy to drive now which should make for a more diverse field.
 
Pro Tip: Everybody should be on the Release Candidate channel unless you're worried about multiplayer breakage. Otherwise you'll be waiting weeks for the last actual update.

RD-Racing Tip: RD will not update servers to any other than fully released builds. Thus, using Release Candidate will cause a mismatch on RD servers.
 

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