rF2 Interview, Roadmap and Raindrops

[Paul Jeffrey]

Following an interesting first reveal at the Sim Racing Expo, check out the new rFactor 2 roadmap including our interview with Marcel Offermans and first footage of the new rain effects...

Now confirming the beautiful 2017 Bentley Continental GT3 will join the recently released McLaren 650s in the new officially licenced paid GT3 DLC pack, Studio 397 have been hard at work these last few months bringing together a wealth of updates and improvements for their premium racing simulation.

Whilst of course the new Bentley will be a fairly major talking point for fans of rFactor 2, one of the most impressive improvements featured over at the Expo would undoubtedly be the impressive looking new rain effects coming in a future build, finally adding a much improved visual representation of the wet stuff in rFactor 2.. including windscreen wipers!!

Now able to match visually what is an impressive physical representation of rain in rF2, fans will no doubt be very keen to try out these new visuals and features (including dynamic puddles, dynamic raindrops etc), and accompanying shader improvements to the main game, once the proposed new build update is released in the coming days.

Of course with RaceDepartment on hand at the Expo we just had to have a quick chat with the ever jovial Marcel Offermans, spending a bit of time with the S397 CEO to talk rain, Bentley, DLC, updates, the future and plenty more in between. You can check the interview out below:

With plenty of food for thought coming from the Expo show and tell by Studio 397, the developers have now released the next scheduled monthly roadmap update, detailing what is happening behind the scenes, and shedding some more light (or not) on the next big GT3 DLC car coming in the near future and plenty more in-between...

Check out the full roadmap posting below:

We’re back! After a busy weekend at SimracingExpo held at the famed Nurburgring, most of us have both finished vacations and returned to the office, ready to make progress on our next update.

The Expo was a lot of fun, and we got to meet and greet plenty of hardware manufacturers, software studios, and of course a lot of simracers. Thank you to everyone who came to see us. Studio 397 attended with two cockpits: one triple screen and one virtual reality. Both were running an internal build with the newly announced Bentley Continental GT3 2017 racing in the rain at NOLA Motorsports Park.

McLaren's World's Fastest Gamer
Thank you to everyone who participated in the WFG using rFactor 2! It was a stunning success and something we’re really proud of. Not only did we take on a fairly short-notice build of the McLaren 650s GT3 for use in the competition, but we built, tested, and implemented a whole user registration and online session monitoring system that performed wonderfully. This makes us really excited about the future and how a working online competition structure such as that will really get people racing online in rFactor 2.

Bentley Continental GT3 2017
We are very excited to announce the Bentley Continental GT3 2017 as the second car in our upcoming GT3 pack. Used in many of the premier GT3 categories around the world, the car has a 4.0-litre twin-turbo V8 and up to unrestricted 600hp. The GT3 pack is due for release in October.

Also mentioned in the FaceBook livestream was updated damage and a licensing agreement with Tatuus Racing s.r.l. for a number of open-wheel Formula cars. This allows us to fill out the ladder of progression from Karts to Grand Prix racing and will work well within our competition structure due out next year.

And to whet your appetite, here’s a sneak peek of the next car in our upcoming pack!

Very exciting times for rFactor 2 fans, with plenty of development and new content in the pipeline, one year on from the announcement of Studio 397 taking over the licence to develop rFactor 2 and the future has never been brighter for this outstanding simulation.

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 and share the love this simulation so very much deserves...

Excited to see Bentley coming to rF2? Looking forward to the GT3 car pack? What do you think of the rain features? Let us know in the comments section below!

 

[Dirk Steffen]

Please, pretty please make one of the remaining cars a Porsche 911 GT3 R and another a BMW M6 GT3, please!

 

[M D Gourley]

Excited to see Bentley coming to rF2? Looking forward to the GT3 car pack? What do you think of the rain features?

Very excited to see continuing development on rF2 with the GT3 Bentley and friends showing up at some stage and with the added rain features it looks to me like a very promising future for rF2...I have complete faith that Marcel and his Studio 397 Team will score a home run with rF2...it's just going to take some time...I can wait

 

[St3fan]

I feel it strange that after taken over by Studio397 RF2 always looks much much better with very little lighting than in bright daylight

Those wet road textures look great. Look forward to the updates.

 

[Alex Townsend]

They don't even mention the new UI anymore, I wonder what takes them so long.
Rain and cars are nice though.
I think it was a good move to bring modern GT3 cars to RF2 via DLC since they are super popular.
But I do hope they haven't forgotten some of the other stuff like proper gearbox behavior for manual cars...
Once this gets implemented this will be my favorite sim.

I must have been watching a different video on the same page. I'm sure they talked about the new UI and that it was taking longer than they anticipated.
When you see the new GT3 cars and rain development it's kinda easy to see why.
They don't have the capacity nor scale of Turn 10 or Polyphony here and are doing great things with the resources they have.

 

[Tobiman]

How is possible that every other sim has the bentley but AC doesn't? Even raceroom has had it for ages. Can't be cost. Someone isn't tell the truth.

 

[MPortnoy]

How is possible that every other sim has the bentley but AC doesn't? Even raceroom has had it for ages. Can't be cost. Someone isn't tell the truth.

It's in the works

 

[Boby Kim]

I hope the raindrops are in DX11

 

[Gargos]

The grill needs those killer green lights. Otherwise, pretty.

 

[elloLeo Kinnunen]

Did I read in a previous monthly roadmap that dx11 was coming out of beta before the end of September?

 

[CC]

Damn studio 397 are on the ball with this engine , really impressive looking updates coming , RF2 soon on PC will be number 1 in my book!

 

[Karstenve]

Bentley has made me hard.

So that is Mclaren, Bentley and Corvette so far. Only two to go. RUF is always hard to get a contract with, leaves other popular cars such as Ferrari, Mercedes, BMW, Audi and Lambo. Something tells me it wont be Nissan or anything like that. My guess would be Ferrari and Mercedes are the two missing cars. But I would love to see Audi !

But Porsche stopped the contract with EA Sports. After that they got a license with forza and many more games and sims. It should be possible.

 

[Alex Townsend]

Did I read in a previous monthly roadmap that dx11 was coming out of beta before the end of September?

I vaguely remember something about that too. They're pretty much happy with DX11 now so will be pushed out with the next update. They also said that the rain would be in the next update too... I can fricking wait for it.
New UI and new focus on series and competitions. I'm really hoping this becomes the go to sim again for a lot of the sim racing community and we can just jump online and have decent competitive racing online.

 

[MarcG]

Excited to see Bentley coming to rF2? Looking forward to the GT3 car pack? What do you think of the rain features?

Thanks for the interview Paul it was great, Bentley looks fabulous and I can't wait to drive it. The rain effects look great as well but I fear the ever demanding public will rip it to shreds if it's not on par with other Sims or is riddled with bugs, let's hope Studio397 release a decent first build which I'm sure they're planning to do.

 

[Craig Dunkley]

Sounded like a very positive interview, has got me very exited for the future of this sim ..well done Studio397 for driving things forward

 

[Oscar Hardwick]

Last two cars are the AMG GT3 and the Ginetta G55 GT3. Heard via the grapevine and via a rumor of a rumor.

Pretty sure on it though

 

[Joseph Wright]

I hope the rain updates come out before the RDLMS next week, and I hope it rains... well it is Suzuka... @Daiman Patel

 

[Andrew Harper]

Looking really good so far and loving the work that Studio 397 have put into RF2.

They are a small team and what they have achieved is in my view a massive step for the title.

You have to remember how painfully slow development was with the old owners, so in comparison what Studio 397 have achieved is great

I think some development will probably have stalled due to the online championship (the UI for example) but in most cases we are getting these updates for nothing so I won't criticise them too much.

The wet weather video looks really nice and looking forward to the Bentley. I guess it's because it's a night video but I would like to see some more spray from the car. It is a preview/test video though so we'll see.

In one of the blogs it was mentioned that at the end of October/November time they were looking at going completely DX11 and removing the DX9 version of the game. At the moment on high settings I can get 60(ish) FPS at 4k on the DX11 version so I'm happy. No I can't run with the post effects on full (low to medium) but it's good enough for me

 

[Andrew Harper]

I hope the rain updates come out before the RDLMS next week, and I hope it rains... well it is Suzuka... @Daiman Patel

For Suzuka you need a monsoon setting....

 

[Joseph Wright]

I agree with you @Andrew Harper the development has gone extremely quickly compared to the old owners. Myself and @Davy Vandevenne were discussing last night that by next year, this sim will be a completely different game. And as long as the driving remains the same, and as good as it does, then I am all for it. Let's get the graphical plugins to work with DX11 too, and then I can't wait for the UI and the:

competition structure

This sounds like its going to be good for offline racing.

Let's wait and see, but right now I have to say that this sim is ticking all the right boxes.

 

[thepharcyde]

Wow wow wow - slow progression but suspect also have faith in any deployment will be implemented with perfection.

Kinda disappointed that the pack originally slated for Sept has been pushed for October as I've already paid for the Dlc some time back!

I hope the working wipers extends to all existing ISI/S397 content and includes fixing the rain penetrating through the bulk head!