rFactor 2 | New Build Update Released

[Paul Jeffrey]

Studio 397 have released a new build update for rFactor 2 tonight, adding a number of fixes, tweaks and improvements to the PC exclusive racing simulation.

The new build is available to download the next time a player restarts their Steam client, with some key highlights including improvements to the lighting transitions on dynamic time of day, rendering improvements to the way clouds are presented within the game - improving the look of skies within the game, UI tweaks and various other changes, detailed in the update log below.

Update Notes:

• Added back-end support for detecting the state of the Steam overlay so we can advise people to turn it on when trying to show them a shopping cart.
• Fixed a possible deadlock.
• Changed the lighting at dusk to gradually transition the fog color, preventing a sudden light change.
• Improved the shutdown of a dedi so it no longer exits with a non-zero return code.
• Fixed an issue where if we failed to load a custom skin we would not correctly fall back to the default skin.
• Fixed an issue where blurred reflections did not show up.
• Made the material editor port configurable in the scene viewer and changed it to 5396 by default so it won't conflict with the default port that rFactor 2 uses.
• Allow up to 128 scene paths in the scene viewer.
• Fixed an issue where upgrades did not correctly show in the showroom when selected.
• Enforced loading the correct upgrades before we initialize physics online.
• Added a few missing control options in the menus so they can be assigned again in the UI.
• Significantly improved the way we render our clouds, resulting in much better looking skies.
• Server will now kick a client using a custom team if file transfers are disabled because that client would be kicked when a race starts anyway.
• Various auto exposure tweaks were done, also to the cockpit view.
• Only pause the first session now if the setting is enabled on a dedicated server.
• Fixed UI mouse click control.
• Converted old FSAA values to new MSAA ones.
• Corrected some inconsistencies between the viewer and rFactor 2.
• Fixed some compound rendering issues in the showroom.
• Improved the camera editor in dev mode by fixing some assets for it.

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.

 

[RasmusP]

To a server? How d'you do that?

I have to correct myself!
To be fair I didn't try the new ui yet and the last time I joined a server was for a Nordschleife race last year.. I think in October.
There had been an update so I went the safe route and deleted the shaders.

I think the first loading took about 12 minutes. That was really bad...

But I just recorded my monitor joining the RD server in assetto corsa and then the RD server in rf2.
Damn, I'm impressed by how much the loading times got improved!

Here's the video. I put a timer in there so I could accelerate the replay speed for you.
I also cut out the download of the track in rF2 since that would be very unfair...

Did 2 loads for each sim, AC took exactly the same time though so only put one into the video:
(gonna take some time to be HD..)

 

[Denis Betty]

I have to correct myself!
To be fair I didn't try the new ui yet and the last time I joined a server was for a Nordschleife race last year.. I think in October.
There had been an update so I went the safe route and deleted the shaders.

I think the first loading took about 12 minutes. That was really bad...

But I just recorded my monitor joining the RD server in assetto corsa and then the RD server in rf2.
Damn, I'm impressed by how much the loading times got improved!

Here's the video. I put a timer in there so I could accelerate the replay speed for you.
I also cut out the download of the track in rF2 since that would be very unfair...

Did 2 loads for each sim, AC took exactly the same time though so only put one into the video:
(gonna take some time to be HD..)

I was talking about the load time once you clicked to join a server. Which, if the shaders are loaded and we avoid outliers like Nords in rF2 (which you did) the difference in time is not anything to concern me. Thanks for the clear comparison Rasmus.

 

[bgil66]

Changed the lighting at dusk to gradually transition the fog color, preventing a sudden light change.

Had a quick race at Spa starting at 6am x20 with 'Mostly Cloudy'...had a better transition from dark to light even at x20 on my PC.

View attachment 437696View attachment 437697View attachment 437698View attachment 437699View attachment 437700

Stunning! You dont have to answer but what is your fav sim right now or top three? rF2-AMS2-RaceRoom are close for me

 

[Jan Larsen]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1351506943203020807

And it worked, the loading time getting on the server (where you see the track loading screen) is a lot faster. Very nice! Now you just need to fix all the other long loading times everywhere else
I just booted up AMS2 after a long while, just to compare. Its a total night and day difference, AMS2 being the Ferrari and rf2 the Yugo.

 

[Deleted member 217114]

I don't get it. For years the development is slow, and when they feel the breath of Reiza they suddenly doing stuff. Well, guess competition is good. Curious where rFactor 2 will be in 2 years. AMS 2 is now the champion.

 

[Ole Marius Myrvold]

Not really. In my server we only used official content with no custom skins, and LEGO still appeared when we started to join practice session one by one. It goes to normal when race starts or we go to pits.

Exactly how it's supposed to be. The yellow brick is to avoid join-lag when loading in the actual car. So it loads in a yellow brick, and you get the car when you go back to the menu. It's been done like this since rF1 in 2005.

 

[Jan Larsen]

Yep, 16 years I've seen various colored bricks

 

[stenovitz]

Surely a bug in the hotfix, but dunno if it's related to autoexposure.

Just drove 60 min timescaled x 24 race at 2020 Le Mans at scripted weather from thunderstorms at night right into dry sunset.

Having a pack bunch behind me almost bumping me. Consequently blinding my mirrors and cockpit lightet up almost white.

Then at Porsche curves AI havoc behind me. But left alone on track driving to sunligt my cockpit was still full white lights just as a car behind trying to bump me. But I was alone.

Seconds later all turnet to extreme white screen so slope of track entering Ford curves was impossible to see any of.

Was a moment worrying about my graphics card, but core+vram temps and desktop programs were ok.

Haven't experienced this phenomenae before under similar conditions.

Moreover the GT3 AI seems too easy. Had expected some harder competition at 110% AI strength. But surely they are live at standard aggression, driving each other off at Tertre Rouge and no hesitation in surpassing it seems. Brings some spice to the offline simmer and thst's good.

And yes, still waiting for offline championships, set up easily just as in AC.

 

[bgil66]

And it worked, the loading time getting on the server (where you see the track loading screen) is a lot faster. Very nice! Now you just need to fix all the other long loading times everywhere else
I just booted up AMS2 after a long while, just to compare. Its a total night and day difference, AMS2 being the Ferrari and rf2 the Yugo.

oh man I remember test driving a Yugo way way back and within 30 seconds I wanted out! The F430 on the other hand oh baby however he didn't let me shift to third as it was one of those 'pay to drive' and coned off in a parking lot lol

 

[Cote Dazur]

So, to be clear.. everyone's favorite sim is the best?

Yes, that is it, but that would not be so bad, as in reality it is more like:
My favorite SIM is the best and the others are not even worth playing and my favorite cannot do anything wrong, if it does something wrong, it is a feature.

Also you can only play your favorite, as if one was to play more than one of his SIM it would be some type of a crime.
Better laugh about it, the alternative is too depressing.

 

[Shovas]

I don't get it. For years the development is slow, and when they feel the breath of Reiza they suddenly doing stuff. Well, guess competition is good. Curious where rFactor 2 will be in 2 years. AMS 2 is now the champion.

As a software developer getting into project management / product ownership, I can assure you the change from traditional, slow only-release-when-finished approach to the modern, agile, release-early-release-often is a big undertaking for a team of any but the smallest teams and I am so proud and optimistic for S397 now that they seem to have adopted the same methodology as Reiza.

The new agile way of doing things isn't perfect and has downsides, like more frequent (but hopefully smaller) bugs in releases, but they'll also get fixed quicker because of the delivery methodology. Contrast with older methods and your bug fixes would take even longer.

Combine switching delivery methods with learning a large codebase like rF2 with hiring the right people with managing remote employees with managing revenues from dlcs to keep things afloat with etc with etc and you can begin to see why it's taken this long to get to this point.

All in all, though, this is why I keep saying S397 is just hitting their stride now and I'm so happy for them and so looking forward to a future for rF2 that is brighter now than it's ever been.

PS. Also the obligatory last standing open moddable current gen simulator plug!

 

[John-Eric Saxén]

The new agile way of doing things isn't perfect and has downsides, like more frequent (but hopefully smaller) bugs in releases, but they'll also get fixed quicker because of the delivery methodology. Contrast with older methods and your bug fixes would take even longer.

The downside is that it also means server admins have to do another cycle of updating and potentially league races get cancelled due to issues. We already had two hotfixes today, one for join issues and another one just released for graphical glitches. It seems to be the rule rather than the exception now.

It's all fine having an agile approach to software development (which is not a new concept anymore), but some of the bugs in this game have existed for years, so I don't think it would make a big difference to have them delayed a few extra days due to better testing.

You can still have agile development, but from the internal builds you make, only pick specific monthly releases out to the public that have gone through more testing. It does introduce a bit overhead in terms of maintaining older release branches, but as the competition system hopefully gets more popular, it becomes more important to have a stable game at any hour.

 

[Ole Marius Myrvold]

Yep, 16 years I've seen various colored bricks

Same here. Often after I've been to the toilet. Maybe I should consider visiting the vet? ... I mean... Doc.

 

[Case_]

Speaking of the yellow brick cars, it would however be great if they had more visible headlights (do they even have them?). Which I guess also applies to other cars, because plenty of them have barely visible headlights. Doing dusk/night practice on a server with several of those bricks suddenly appearing out of nowhere can be pretty scary/frustrating.

 

[Shovas]

The downside is that it also means server admins have to do another cycle of updating and potentially league races get cancelled due to issues. We already had two hotfixes today, one for join issues and another one just released for graphical glitches. It seems to be the rule rather than the exception now.

It's all fine having an agile approach to software development (which is not a new concept anymore), but some of the bugs in this game have existed for years, so I don't think it would make a big difference to have them delayed a few extra days due to better testing.

You can still have agile development, but from the internal builds you make, only pick specific monthly releases out to the public that have gone through more testing. It does introduce a bit overhead in terms of maintaining older release branches, but as the competition system hopefully gets more popular, it becomes more important to have a stable game at any hour.

The cool thing with agile scrum, which I assume they're using, is that they should be updating what is called the "definition of done" to ensure quality and prevent the things that are causing downtime or interruptions as they run into them.

And, you're right, even in agile scrum the recommended minimum release cycle is 2 weeks (although there's no hard rule). Bug fixes could be released at any time but, as they become aware of excessively high frequency bug fix releases, they should be noting that and updating their release policy to only release the highest priority bug fixes outside of a regular cycle release.

I've noticed every sim already has something like this where they try not to release on Fridays or weekends to ensure that player's have a stable game to play on their off time (and to ensure devs don't have to work on the weekend).

Continuous improvement is the name of the game and if they're doing it well they should be getting better and better at it as time goes on.

 

[2stains]

So, to be clear.. everyone's favorite sim is the best?

And any Sim not their favourite should be removed from society.

 

[togier]

Well in case of my league this "agile" update broke the server and game entirely to the point of postponing the race. Random crashes to desktop and server kicking people without any reason. Eventually, it all crashed and everyone got kicked out of the server.

 

[Havner]

The cool thing with agile scrum, which I assume they're using

Where did you even get that? That they do work by the agile rule book now? Is this your assumption or you have something to back that up? I'm a software developer as well (low level, kernel/platform stuff, 15 years of experience). And from my point of view they are a small company that has problems with even the simplest procedures. They do everything as is and don't test thoroughly anything they release.

Agile, or not agile this looks like the first company I worked in. 5 developers with a project of a size of Adobe Premiere (we made video compositing software back then). It can have the greatest features ever made, but without any form of serious maintenance and testing it's worthless for the end user. And this is how I see S397 right now. They release a patch that they probably finished coding today. Nobody did thorough regression tests, but they released it being happy that they implemented something. But new clouds (which are not even that pretty) are worthless when you can't even drive due to lock ups and crashes.

Agile is not some magical remedy for everything, it's just the way you work with the project and the code. All the other issues are still there.

 

[Pappa_G_27]

Does everyone know you can force the cars to load and get rid of a the yellow bricks without having to return to pits (I only realised this one recently). You can bind a key to it, forget what it is called in the controls menu, but there is a function there to do so.

 

[Shovas]

Where did you even get that?

I'm guessing both Reiza and S397 are at least doing pseudo scrum based on comments over the past year or so and based on their increasing frequency of releases and patching.

It could be they're just doing continuous integration/delivery now so small things can work their way up the pipeline quicker.

At any rate, I *hope* they are instead of the old, slow release cycle that has annoyed and frustrated their customers for years.