rFactor 2 October Roadmap Update is Here

[Paul Jeffrey]

The latest monthly roadmap update on the state of play in rFactor 2 is now live!

It must be difficult to find new things to discuss each month when Studio 397 sit down and plan out the latest roadmap blog posting, and it is testament to the Dutch studio that pretty much consistently since taking over the reigns of development for this outstanding simulation the developers have been able to bring news of progress with the sim, often breaking new ground as they continue to breathe fresh life into the title following acquisition of rF2 from Image Space Incorporated.

For the month of October, S397 have released another new piece of content in the form of the Finnish Botniaring track, plus updated fans on the progress of the mammoth task of bringing a modern laserscanned version of the epic Nürburgring track in Germany - one of the most sought after pieces of sim racing real-estate within our hobby.

So without further ramblings from me, let's see what Studio 397 have to say this month....

The full October 2018 rF2 Roadmap can be read below:

It´s getting colder outside, and most of us probably have either switched to winter tyres already or are planning to right now. Brace yourself, winter is here! But as simracers, we’re lucky, our season never ends, so let´s get into this month’s roadmap. It was once again a busy time for us. Let’s be honest here, that probably never ends either: we are pushing rFactor 2 further every single day, but it’s always great to head out to the community with good news like releases or announcements!

Botniaring
In 1989, the gates in Jurva opened to what now is known as the longest and most versatile racetrack in Finland, the Botniaring. It also features different layouts, thanks to the extension of the track in the past from a length of 2618 meter to 4014 meters, making it the longest racetrack in the country. Its smooth tarmac surface has invited multiple races to the region over the years, turning Botniaring into another Finnish motorsport center.

Mostly used for national championships, the track also became popular among northern European championships. With its 3 different layouts, the Botniaring offers thrilling racing action for all kinds of motorsport classes. It might not have seen a full European GT Championship yet, but you can change that in rFactor 2! Choose from the “Long”, “Long with Chicane”, and “Short” layouts to either be challenged by a high-speed track or to take on a breathtaking chicane that needs all your attention if you want to clock a fast lap time. Ah yes, we nearly forgot, the track is live now and servers are also running already, so what are you waiting for?!
​

Nürburgring
When we announced this track at SimRacing Expo, we already stated this is a monumental task. The 2018 scan data has now been fully processed, and in parallel we have been working on many of the track-side details. We don’t have a lot to show yet, as usually the phases of modeling a track involve a lot of work that is not immediately visible until quite late in the build. We did visit our artists and got some pictures from their workstations while they were working on the track. Planning-wise, we are on schedule, and in a couple of months we hope to be able to show you some in-game shots. Worth mentioning already is that this will be our first full track that is built using our new material system.
​

McLaren Shadow rFactor 2 Qualifier
After introducing three new free cars to the simulation, we headed into the harsh but exciting world of competitive racing, on the hunt for that one driver that would represent the rFactor 2 community in the McLaren Shadow final later on in Woking. But before anyone could claim this spot, three qualifier rounds broke down the list of participants to the last 30 that had a chance at winning this.

Road 1 at Silverstone
Round one saw our racers flying through Hangars straight at the iconic Silverstone Circuit in the McLaren MP4/8. With everyone ready to shine and willing to do everything to put their stamp on the first round of the new competition, our livestream saw plenty of action and great fights with everyone trying to get inside the top 10 to make their way to the Qualifier final. After 30 minutes we had our first podium of the rFactor 2 McLaren Shadow Competition with Jan von der Heyde winning in front of Michelle D Alessandro and Eros Masciulli.
​

Round 2 at Zandvoort
The first 10 had their ticket to the Qualifier final, another 20 tickets were still up for grabs. After everyone parked their McLaren MP4/8 in the garage again we went even further back in time with the McLaren M23, a pure drivers car. No electronics, just a steering wheel and pedals. And with these weapons, our best drivers out of the Hotlap Sessions had to go up against each other on Zandvoort. Long fast corners, a lot of banking, and the endless will to fight made up another great livestream during this competition, eventually seeing Georgo Baldi reaching for the top spot and sending Peyo Peev and Kuba Brzenzinski down to the other spots on the podium.
​

Round 3 at Indianapolis
The championship car of Mika Häkkinen, the McLaren MP4/13, was the car of choice for the last qualifier round, leading our drivers to Indianapolis for a last chance to earn their spot in the Qualifier final. With an aggressive rear end, this car meant serious business for our participants and Indianapolis GP wasn´t willing to make it any easier for them. As this was the last qualifier round, everything heated up quite quickly, with several fighting groups that had to be covered by our live broadcast. In the end it was too much pressure for some drivers which totally threw around the top 10 in the last laps of the qualifier. Managing to keep his MP4/13 under control, it was Mark Berends securing the first place with Kevin Ryan and Antonio Kolarec following closely.
​

Finals at Longford, NOLA and Sebring
All qualifier rounds had been done and it was time for the Top 30 drivers from around the world to face off in the Qualifier final. Due to it being the big finale with just one spot leading to the McLaren Shadow Event in Woking, we decided to send out drivers to 3 different tracks, using all the new McLaren cars to find out who will represent our beloved Sim.

Normally you would expect a write up about what happened, right? Yeah, me too… not gonna happen XD! There was just too much action everywhere and the battles really showed that everyone was willing to give his best to get the Ticket to the UK. So better watch it yourself! (You fancy a link? It’s down there!). To cut a long story short, after 3 intense races it was Nuno Pinto who leading the standings and lifting himself up to the next level of the competition, the on-site final. Nuno Pinto:

It was really good, I wasn’t really expecting to win the competition. The first race was almost perfect, pole position and win. The second race started really bad with the crash on turn 1, recovered from P20 to P9 and got some good points. The last race was so good, started from pole, but when I switched to 2nd gear the rear end stepped out and to avoid hitting the wall I had to lift the throttle and lost 5 spots, recovered to P3 and that gave me overall win. Really happy and I am already working to be in the best shape possible for the final in January, I don’t really know what to expect but I will try and do my best and make all rFactor 2 players as proud as possible!
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rFactor 2 is available exclusively for PC from Steam now.

Check out the rFactor 2 sub forum here at RaceDepartment for all the latest news and discussion with regards to the simulation. You can take part in lively debates with fellow rFactor 2 fans and take part in some great Club and League racing events..! Head over to the forum now!


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Happy with the contents of the latest roadmap release? Looking forward to the future of rF2? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below!​

 

[Alistair McKinley]

I wonder what happened to the AMS dlc. Does Reiza still exist?

Yes, they do. ;-)
Further information is going to be given during the next three weeks (at their forum).

 

[Brent Mills]

For the most part I can live with the graphics because of how great it feels. My problems with RF2 are:

• the AI train. Real life races don't have the whole field nose to tail for 20 minutes. No easy way to vary their pace and make it look more realistic. ACC have done this very well!
• Wildly varying AI pace across different tracks. Requires testing and spreadsheets to figure out the right AI skill %. It's a faff. Many mod tracks have terrible AI. (Obviously nothing s397 can do about this)
• No easy way to keep AI drivers constant across races if you're doing an AI championship. Again have to faff with mas files.
• When you have a lot of mods, selecting a bunch of cars for a class race becomes close to impossible if you don't know the right 'codes'. (Hopefully new ui fixes this)

 

[Dragon60]

I just bouhgt rF2 on Steam Sale with some dlc´s and i´m pretty impressed. Physics and FFB is top notch, no complains about the graphics here . It runs smoothly on my GTX1060 and i´m looking forward for new content to come, specially my former hometrack Nürburgring. rF2, RaceRoom and
Automobilista are my Sim´s to go.

 

[Slowdive]

I shudder to think what they're going to charge for Nord. I like RF2, but it'd be nice if they fixed the game stoppers before doing more development work. Multi-class against the AI is broken. So you can throw all the obscure Finnish tracks at me that you want, but come on, please fix the game.

 

[pitkin]

For the most part I can live with the graphics because of how great it feels. My problems with RF2 are:

• the AI train. Real life races don't have the whole field nose to tail for 20 minutes. No easy way to vary their pace and make it look more realistic. ACC have done this very well!
• Wildly varying AI pace across different tracks. Requires testing and spreadsheets to figure out the right AI skill %. It's a faff. Many mod tracks have terrible AI. (Obviously nothing s397 can do about this)
• No easy way to keep AI drivers constant across races if you're doing an AI championship. Again have to faff with mas files.
• When you have a lot of mods, selecting a bunch of cars for a class race becomes close to impossible if you don't know the right 'codes'. (Hopefully new ui fixes this)

People always rave about the AI in RF2, I don't know why. I agree with all the above, plus there's a few other thing that frustrate.
They make no tyre choices
They're predictable. The block path is all well and good, but it's quite easy to learn where they will or won't block and you can use that knowledge to predict where they will be at a given corner and make an easy pass.
Changeable weather with AI - Don't even bother.

Although this one is user error and the new UI will hopefully make this better, I seem to set up a race, wait 5 minutes for the track and cars to load, then realise there's a car in my race that shouldn't be there. Exit race, go to car select and realise there's a tick where there shouldn't be further down the list. Am I the only twit this happens to?

As an offline racer, if it was easier to create a field of cars that would be consistant across a set of races, I think I would play RF2 more. Hopefully the new UI will make it easier.

 

[mantasisg]

rF2 might not look best in stills, but in my mind it is very good looking in real time. It depends on content a lot, some gives better impressions. To me It is absolutely great how lighting works and how it affects shading. The way how sun position and clouds works all together to illuminate the world and how camera position matter which way it is facing regarding the sun and clouds, and shading reacts to that. To me it is very important. Then clarity ! And colors are so right, but it also depends a lot if content is modeled well, if textures and shaders/materials adjusted well.

Also really love how night looks. Absolutely love it.

Rain is also great, again depends on content. Some tracks looks better, some cars doesn't have rain particles on windshield which are absolutely epic.

I would also wish improvements here and there, but it is not so critical to me, perhaps my biggest wish would be that more content would be dragged up to the potential of engine.

I also have to say that I don't understand the pickyness and bias towards graphics in simracing community. To me physical simulation is above visual simulation, and some simulators which looks better doesn't really simulate visuals properly, nor physics too.

 

[catacroken]

As an offline racer, if it was easier to create a field of cars that would be consistant across a set of races, I think I would play RF2 more. Hopefully the new UI will make it easier.

totally agree

 

[thepharcyde]

I shudder to think what they're going to charge for Nord. I like RF2, but it'd be nice if they fixed the game stoppers before doing more development work. Multi-class against the AI is broken. So you can throw all the obscure Finnish tracks at me that you want, but come on, please fix the game.

No, it's just you must skip to race without any quali hence 1st lap mess

 

[Enagee]

Sorry for the off topic..Haven't been up to date and My Rf2 has been gathering virtual dust. Is there a road map for the UI

 

[Peter Koslowski]

This sim is awesome! The new track is a well done gift from the developers. If you want better graphics you have to use reshade. All the mod stuff makes it complete in comparison to the other sims. I hope they will never stop the development of this good piece of Software! But a new UI would bei fine!

 

[JonnyCombat]

I must admit I've found it hard to get into RF2.

I only started Sim racing about a year ago (offline until I get better at it) and I find the whole sim to be quite fiddly to set up properly both with my wheel, and setting up AI.

As the cars and racing go, when you get it right it feels great, but it's just so inconsistent across different cars and tracks.

I'm sure if you're a lot more experienced with sim racing it must be fantastic, but to a newbie like me it's a hell of a slog and it just puts me off.

 

[Gasper Zupan]

@JonnyCombat
If you want to progress, don't play offline. Go online, join club races or rookie league. You'll be on that train in a race or two and you will never want to go back to offline racing. People in rF2 community are extremely nice and helpful, they (we ) will provide you with all kinds of advices.
Believe me, I've raced offline way too long. With little or no progress. Things changed drastically when I switched to online racing.
I don't think a perfect AI will ever be created anyway. It's just too complex and subjective. Different types of racing cars sometimes require totally different driver/car behavior, racing lines, rules etc. It's not so easy I guess. From my personal perspective, I think devs are loosing time with AI development

 

[JonnyCombat]

Okay Gasper, good advice. I'll try and have a dabble at the weekend.

Cheers.

 

[Denis Betty]

If you want to progress, don't play offline. Go online, join club races or rookie league. You'll be on that train in a race or two and you will never want to go back to offline racing. People in rF2 community are extremely nice and helpful, they (we ) will provide you with all kinds of advices.
Believe me, I've raced offline way too long. With little or no progress. Things changed drastically when I switched to online racing.

+1 to this.
My advice would be, to at least try it, sooner rather than later. There are pluses and minuses for both single player and multi-player racing. It boils down to personal preference I guess, But if you haven't tried online racing, what have you got to lose? I honestly believe that it'll help you to improve quicker. You may also find some positives to the social aspect. If you still feel it's too soon for you, you can always come back to it later. Worth a try (IMHO).

 

[mantasisg]

Also visiting official forums is often very helpful and really boosts up the learning curve. It is like that even with less complex simulators.

 

[Will Mazeo]

Look at that first image. Take off the dept of field effect and record a race. Then look at the road texture and the grass.

On the second image: some shaders are actually quite nice. Too bad I can't enable body reflections, specially when doing a GT3 race, because there's something in the McLaren that dips performance too hard.
I can enable body reflections on all sims but rFactor 2.

And like I said, it's not that rFactor 2 can't please the eye, it's that in order to make it look good you need extremely expensive hardware, which just shows how badly optimized it is. For some people to have good performance the game needs to look like a mid 2000's game - while games like GTA V, Project Cars 2, Crysis 3, etc, look way better and also perform better.

If you need a 1080 Ti to max out the game while hiding some of it's flaws on depth of field and bloom while the competition does this better, your game definitely needs better optimization.

Even RaceRoom can look good, and that is a DirectX 9 engine. And it runs better.

If you are going to compare performance focus on stuff with dynamic environment please... for a static sim RR should look even better
And comparing with GTA V that did $1b in 4 days of release.... that's just......... I'd be surprised if ISI ever made 20% of that in their lifetime, heck 10% already would make me surprised lol

 

[St3fan]

People who complain about the slow development speed need to understand that people who are praising the game have been living with ISI development speed for quite a few years and have been mostly fine with that and been defending that. You guys are just using different rulers for measurement of user satisfaction

 

[=LM=908GTS]

It's a really good sim but it's absolutly not optimised ! I was wondering they'll work on it since the dx11 version. I run on a 8700k, 64gb ddr4 and 1080ti and the fps are so low on triple screen... I can run AC at a solid 60fps with 30AI without any trouble.

 

[Oldzeb]

once again always the same people who cry over the same thing the graphics rendering(new motor!!new motor!! )... I think S397 understood well and I agree it is not at the top visually. I prefer an engine known and recognized for its physics than a great new engine just for graphic demonstrations and not good for simracing!

on the other hand it has been 8 years ahead of all the other sim with rf2 feature, day/night cycle, dynamic weather, modern and old contenue (only the tracks are not level) physical and ffb far in front of the others, tire model too... short where is your super sim with its super new engine? 8 years later there is nothing new except some effects to dazzle your beautiful eyes... if that is enough for you!

not to mention the many free content that S397 regularly releases!! who else?

 

[Enoneado]

i didn't say that the most important in a game are the graphics, but is like a showcase, if the people want to begin in simracing, rfactor is not attractive if you see the images of the game, project cars 2 or until AC are better, yes, the physics are for me the best of all, but if you want to open your place at the market of the videogames you need first a good graphic to attract new gamers and then, you must polish the playability and physics, this is the reason why PC2, GT sport, Forza have more users than RF2, RF2 is only for people who was playing simracing during years and with experience, but the majority of the people doesn't know about physics, the only thing they see are graphics... and you have to gain a lot of new users to make great the game.