ICYMI: Laserscanned Nordschleife Coming to rF2...

Paul Jeffrey · Sep 22, 2018

At the 2018 Sim Racing Expo Studio 397 had plenty of big news to share, not least of which was the announcement of a laserscanned Nordschleife coming to rFactor 2...

Now I know this is pretty late in being written up, I blame too much beer and too good company for that, but I think it is probably big enough and exciting enough to deserve an article all of its own - even if it is several days after the actual event.

Clearly very pleased with their latest licence agreement, Marcel Offermans and Christopher Elliot of Studio 397 used the recent Sim Racing Expo in Germany as an opportunity to announce to the world the recent acquisition of a licence to recreate the spectacular Nordschleife in rFactor 2.

Nordschleife is often one of the most favoured and requested race tracks in sim racing circles, with many of the current breed of sim games already featuring the epic circuit, however what makes the move to bring the circuit to rF2 a little bit more special is that Offermans and co have secured brand new laser scanned data, giving the studio the opportunity to recreate the circuit as it is in 2018, including several updates to the track that are not present in other recreations of the venue elsewhere in sim racing.

This is good, and marks a significant step for Studio 397 as they continue to look to bring yet more interesting official content to the simulation.

As well as the big hitting news of Nordschleife coming to rF2, the Dutch developers have also announced and subsequently released three new historic McLaren Formula One cars, of which you can read about HERE, plus they have previewed some rather impressive shader improvements that are coming to the title very soon - Studio 397 making yet more progress with an increasingly improving graphical power of the simulation.

You can check out some of the shader preview images below:

Sim Racing Expo 2018 was a big weekend for Studio 397, and it looks like things can only keep on improving from here...

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 rF2 announcements last weekend? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below!

Case_ · Oct 20, 2018

So I guess iRacing is the only "serious sim" on the market.

Ace King · Oct 20, 2018

Perhaps i didn't choose the best wording i could have. lol My track suggestions in my opinion would be great choices to have in any sim. After all i purchased ACC and it will only contain 10 tracks and it will definitly be a serious sim!

BP · Oct 24, 2018

Really glad to hear this! It's interesting to race on, but actually I really like the Nords mostly as a test track for a new car since there's nearly every type of corner you can think of there and some of the longest straights ever. Just taking a random car out there for a few laps on its default setup gives a good feel for its capabilities. Also good for shaking off the cobwebs if I've been away from the rig for awhile.

I've had rF2 for about 2 years but never could get good framerates out of it in triples without killing all eye candy (this was before and after the DX11 beta), so I put it down...but as I've learned more about getting the most performance out of games on slower CPU bound systems (Thanks ACC!

) I tried again this weekend and finally found the magic settings...purchased the Endurance pack + Sebring and downloaded a few other free tracks on the workshop and now I can't put it down! Maybe the cars I tried in the past didn't have as well-tuned FFB as these cars, or the poor FPS was affecting my judgement of the FFB (or both), but it feels so much better now...there's an intuitiveness to the feel that reminds me of AMS (not surprising) but even better in some ways.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm gonna take the MP4/8 out for a spin...Keep up the good work!