rFactor 2 February Development Roadmap

[Paul Jeffrey]

Studio 397 release latest roadmap update, share images from the DX11 update and progress on VR and NOLA Motorsports Park.

In the second development roadmap update of 2017 from Studio 397 the team behind the continual development of rFactor have outlined their recent work on the sim, as well as confirming both VR and DX11 are still on schedule for a Q1 release.

Although no actual release date for VR and DX11 outside of the loosely mentioned Q1 2017 has been shared by the developers, it has been confirmed the latest track to join rFactor 2, NOLA Motorsports Park, will make it's official debut on February 28th. As usual with stock Studio 397 content, the new track will download automatically when you next fire up the game in Steam.

You can read the full February 2017 Roadmap Update below:


We have a lot of exciting news in this month’s update as we edge closer to our release at the end of Q1. The team is working very hard in all areas and we’re thrilled to share some of the recent developments with you.

VR Update
With DX11 implementation complete, we are now in our first development stage for VR. Our initial focus is the in-car driver experience with both the Oculus Rift and the HTC Vive. The second development stage will delve deeper into the environmental capabilities of the VR experience, which we will share over the next couple of months.

DX11 Content Peek
Last month we shared with you our first comparison shots for DX11. In the last couple of weeks we’ve focused on ensuring compatibility with existing content as well as further improvements to the way we render our HDR output. We’ll let the new screenshots speak for themselves.

Competition Update
Development of the competition infrastructure is going well and is on track to be released this summer. Drivers and teams will be able to record their stats, achievements and results, which then can be accessed through any device and shared with friends. Competitions will feature selected existing content and new content. Details will be announced in the coming months. Our main focus is to create feature rich mechanics that provide a challenge for new drivers and seasoned sim racing veterans alike.

UI Update
We are super excited about our new user interface, which is currently under development. The new UI not only provides a more intuitive and user-friendly experience, it also offers improved flexibility and the ability to add new elements and modules.

NOLA Motorsports Park
Whether you choose to race a kart, open wheeler, or tintop, the large variety of configurations makes NOLA a very versatile and challenging track to master. NOLA Motorsports Park will be released on February 28th!

Radio Communication
Most racing series use radio communication to let drivers talk to their team and pit crew. Some series also have race control broadcasting instructions. For example, oval racing series such as Stock Car typically also have spotters that keep an eye on what’s happening to keep you out of trouble.

We are working on expanding our current system, which is centered on the spotter’s role, into a system that allows different people to talk to you on the radio. In addition, we intend to make the communication more interactive by giving you the ability to ask for information or instructions.

Modding
We’re excited to invite modding teams to join our private forum. We are looking to work with those of you in the modding community to explain the necessary steps that ensure your content continues to work flawlessly with the new DX11 engine. Modders joining our forum will also get access to pre-release builds of the DX11 graphics engine (still in alpha). Our goal is to ensure that your content is ready to go when we do the first public release of the new engine.

If your modding team is interested, please register on our forum and start a conversation with Christopher and Marcel, stating:

1. Your modding team name and all the names and forum names of members that need access.
2. A list of mods you have released for rFactor 2 (either links to the workshop, or some other reference).
3. Any other interesting information about your team such as mods you are still working on.

That wraps up this roadmap update. We are looking forward to the coming month of development so we can continue to share with you our progress on the new innovative elements planned over the next few months!

rFactor 2 is a racing simulation exclusive to Windows PC.

Additional third party content can be downloaded from a variety of sources, one of which is the RaceDepartment rFactor 2 modding archive. Head over and check out the latest releases for the sim, or alternatively join in the discussion and keep up to date with the latest news at our rFactor 2 sub forum right here at RD. If downloading mods or keeping up to date with the latest news items aren't your thing, you can always sign up to one of our epic Club and League events using the software. We hold regular club racing events in our schedule, however the jewel in our crown in no doubt the RaceDepartment Le Mans Series. This is our premium endurance league using rFactor 2. Head over to the RDLMS forum to find out more!

Did you enjoy the latest roadmap post from Studio 397? Looking forward to DX11 and VR? Do you think NOLA will make a good addition to the sim? Let us know in the comments section below!

 

[Ghoults]

So, what's the point in calling them "games" in the first place with that condescending connotation?

Rf2 is a video game, ac is video game, iracing is video game, gran turismo is video game, super mario kart is video game. There is nothing condescending about it. Sims are one type of game. Not some separate thing. Just like soccer is sport, ice hockey is sport or bowling is sport. All of them are one type of sports but in the end they are all sports.

I find it incredibly funny for someone to bash ac for it being fiddly if he personally plays rf2. Oh people these days...

 

[TzZyO]

Rf2 is a video game, ac is video game, iracing is video game, gran turismo is video game, super mario kart is video game. There is nothing condescending about it. Sims are one type of game. Not some separate thing. Just like soccer is sport, ice hockey is sport or bowling is sport. All of them are one type of sports but in the end they are all sports.

Just like documentaries and comedies alike all are supposed to be "movies"

 

[John-Eric Saxén]

I find it incredibly funny for someone to bash ac for it being fiddly if he personally plays rf2. Oh people these days...

Why is it funny? Remember that rF2 shares a lot of code with rF Pro, which is the simulator that more or less all F1 teams use today. I'm sure the F1 teams don't refer to it as a "game", it's not something they use as entertainment.

 

[hitm4k3r]

Just skimming through the pages of crapload posted here by some users ... Are we discussing sim racing or are we discussing nice looking screenshots? Is this some kind of art blog? A screenshot is such a small fragment of what sim racing is about and people discuss it as if it was the holy grail that makes or breakes a game. The obsession with graphics is becomming so stupid nowadays that I ask myself if people care about anything else these days, no matter how sh*t the rest of a game is or how much time they are actually spending in a game. I don't care for how pCars 2 nor how GTR3 looks. They don't exist and it doesn't interest me one bit until I try them. The last games by Simbin, SMS and Sector 3 were great dissapointments for me personaly, so I rather spend my time in a well functioning sim produced by racing enthusiats, with a deep experience that looks a bit less good, but that doesn't fall apart after 2 hours of playing. The best part about pCars is it's intro ... nuff said.

If it is too ugly for you, do me a favor and uninstall rF2 and play the games that you like visually, but please don't cry when this or that is missing and let the people who are fine with something enjoy their sim of choice. Ofcourse I wish studio 397 some commercial success so that they can pay their bills and maybe improve on certain aspects and implement new features . But some comments here make me really question if people shouldn't take a break and stop spamming their capitalistic nonesense of - physics don't sell games, graphics sell - as being the end of it all and repeating it over and over again ... like a parrot. People enjoy niche products every day, and that for good reason. If every musician would follow that nonesense, we would all have to listen to Justin Bieber.

Still don't know why Melanie is allowed to post tbh: "Roll on the end of the first quarter, so that I can really rip into this so called new dx11 graphics engine, because it doesn't look any better than the current race room visuals." I mean, how sad can someones life be and if this is the atmosphere that moderators see fitting for this Website, I will just call it a day I guess.

 

[hitm4k3r]

I'm an rF2 user for a long enough time to know that. The problem is, after the recent updates my experience has become much worse. I have to wait forever for tracks to load every single time, and I mostly use the same ones anyway. And I think I saw some other people complaining about this issue too.
I do have a lot of everything installed for rF2, but I didn't have a problem before the thing had the logo changed.

That's a bit wierd and propably hardware or software related then. Maybe you should check for hardware errors or make a maleware scan. I don't even have a SSD and it loads just fine. Have you tried deleting the cache and the player ini to let them build from scratch? It's certainly not the norm with rF2 to wait forever

 

[BazzaLB]

Please don't break 3DVision support

 

[Bwana]

Just skimming through the pages of crapload posted here by some users ... Are we discussing sim racing or are we discussing nice looking screenshots? Is this some kind of art blog? A screenshot is such a small fragment of what sim racing is about and people discuss it as if it was the holy grail that makes or breakes a game. The obsession with graphics is becomming so stupid nowadays that I ask myself if people care about anything else these days, no matter how sh*t the rest of a game is or how much time they are actually spending in a game. I don't care for how pCars 2 nor how GTR3 looks. They don't exist and it doesn't interest me one bit until I try them. The last games by Simbin, SMS and Sector 3 were great dissapointments for me personaly, so I rather spend my time in a well functioning sim produced by racing enthusiats, with a deep experience that looks a bit less good, but that doesn't fall apart after 2 hours of playing. The best part about pCars is it's intro ... nuff said.

If it is too ugly for you, do me a favor and uninstall rF2 and play the games that you like visually, but please don't cry when this or that is missing and let the people who are fine with something enjoy their sim of choice. Ofcourse I wish studio 397 some commercial success so that they can pay their bills and maybe improve on certain aspects and implement new features . But some comments here make me really question if people shouldn't take a break and stop spamming their capitalistic nonesense of - physics don't sell games, graphics sell - as being the end of it all and repeating it over and over again ... like a parrot. People enjoy niche products every day, and that for good reason. If every musician would follow that nonesense, we would all have to listen to Justin Bieber.
Still don't know why Melanie is allowed to post tbh: "Roll on the end of the first quarter, so that I can really rip into this so called new dx11 graphics engine, because it doesn't look any better than the current race room visuals." I mean, how sad can someones life be and if this is the atmosphere that moderators see fitting for this Website, I will just call it a day I guess.

Its just how Stephanie/Melanie/Samantha/Frank gets its kicks. Learnt long ago about its preference to sit under a ISI bridge scaring little kids in troll like fashion.

 

[hitm4k3r]

Not seeing this so far.

Wut? This is how the game looks like on my system with some graphics modding:

rF2 will never come close to this and yes, the post processing is a part of that.

I think nobody is arguing that rF2 doesn't look like that. But that's not the point. Even if I could show you equally good looking edited screenshots from rF2 - PP is something that will certainly be possible in rF2 and I wonder why people go so damn nuts about it. It's certainly not a sign of more professional artists in the graphics department, quite contrary actually. In most cases it is used to hide ugly, or flat looking or just less detailed environments. Car models look fantastic in AC though, no question about that.

But should I really start listing you all the things where AC will never come close to rF2?

I hope not, because I just enjoy each sim for what it offers. Nothing more, nothing less.

 

[Ace King]

Is that a fresh installation with very little content added?

I have all of ISI's original content plus a large load of 3rd party content. Still using my original install from 14 months ago!

 

[DaVeX↯]

rF2 doesn't look bad at all in my opinion, we should check AC at the same time of n...ahem no...better not...AC can't...

 

[GTAce]

I think nobody is arguing that rF2 doesn't look like that. But that's not the point. Even if I could show you equally good looking edited screenshots from rF2 - PP is something that will certainly be possible in rF2 and I wonder why people go so damn nuts about it. It's certainly not a sign of more professional artists in the graphics department, quite contrary actually. In most cases it is used to hide ugly, or flat looking or just less detailed environments. Car models look fantastic in AC though, no question about that.

But should I really start listing you all the things where AC will never come close to rF2?

I hope not, because I just enjoy each sim for what it offers. Nothing more, nothing less.

The screenshots are not edited, except for the size and I know rF2 does things better, like AI, night, weather and the flag system etc., but this is not what sells a racing game to a general audience. People look at the screenshots and think "ew" that's enough.

 

[Ace King]

I disagree. I and all my many friends purchased rF2 strictly for it's superior physics, FFB, net code, 24 hour cycle, flag system complimented with a pace car and 2nd to none the very best AI. All these great features i will take any day as my first choice over the graphics glitter!

 

[GTAce]

I disagree. I and all my many friends purchased rF2 strictly for it's superior physics, FFB, net code, 24 hour cycle, flag system complimented with a pace car and 2nd to none the very best AI. All these great features i will take any day as my first choice over the graphics glitter!

This is cool, but look how many thousand and thousand of people didn't.

 

[Ghoults]

AC graphics superiority is not just pointless glitter though. Ac looks better while it runs better. Ac also has things like visual damage to cars and cars getting dirty. In rf2 the only kind of damage is parts dropping off. Vertex damage and visual damage via textures is turned off by isi because apparently it took too much processing power. Or did not work. Rf2 does kinda support cars getting dirty but as far as I know you need a special shader for it which probably means you need to buy 3dsimed to be able to add that shader to a car. I think there are maybe one or two (less than 5 for sure) mods that have that.

Personally for me the biggest issue with rf2 discussions is that people push really hard with the idea that graphics is the only thing that is "little tiny bit behind ac". I think there is a lot more broken with rf2. Poor graphics is the easy excuse why "the masses are not flocking into rf2". But if graphics truly was the only issue I think rf2 should be doing a lot better. Let's not forget it that had 397 not bought rf2 the sim would be dead. Kinda telling tale about how good future the game really had a year ago:
http://www.racedepartment.com/threads/exclusive-isi-studio-397-rfactor-2-interview-part-1.126263/
"ISI was starting to get to the point where rF2 was going to get pushed down and "not rF3" was going to start coming up. ...

From a practical standpoint, the partnership basically allows rf2 to keep going..."

Rf2 had a rough start. Its original content was not very good and the physics were not that good either imho. I don't know whether it was just poor data or alpha stage physics engine but I don't think you will find many who fondly look back at the early versions of the formula 3.5 for example. As a modding platform rf2 had pretty poor start as well. It was hard to commit to the platform when the exact feature set wasn't what the community expected. As such rf2 even had hard time beating rf1. It doesn't help that at the core the game has many features that simply make any kind of modding really difficult and cumbersome. Even compared to other games which are not meant to be moddable. Which is unforgivable considering how important modding was for rf2. The packaging system probably being the biggest mistake in all of sim racing history after the yearly online fee.

The quality of the game was imho pretty average at best when it came out. It had long list of great features and you could call it revolutionary but it was poor package overall. That issues were then magnified when the experienced rf1 modders did not flock to rf2. As such the only hope for rf2 was that new people would come in such as new people came in when rf1 came out. Not all rf1 modders were f1 '02, gtr, scgt or gtl modders. But instead it almost seems rf2 did not want new people. The only focus was really hoping people would just convert stuff from rf1 to rf2. At least that is the impression I get from the couple minimalistic pdf files that were supposed to be some kind of guide. Clearly that was not a succesful route. But regardless the tools and documentation for modding content was extremely poor. Even if you wanted to make something it was almost impossible. Unless you were part of that small rf1 modder elite who did not need documentation. But the problem is you can not make a succesful racing game by focusing only on elite rf1 modders.

When the competition has video tutorials, actual in-depth documentation, example cars and 3d models and almost fully explained (most of the time easy to understand) physics files and much more simpler and functional base for modding along with actual tools that are not tied to outdated version of 3dsmax ... rf2 did not have much chance even as a raw modding platform. Even with its massive backlog of rf1 modded content ready for quick conversions the competitor outperformed rf2 almost 100 to 1 on almost every single metric. But then you add stuff like laser scanned tracks, tons of real interesting cars it was game over. The competitor had stuff like ferrari f40, gt3 cars and all kinds of exotics. Laser scanned nordschleife. Was it really really really "just graphics"? No, it clearly was not.

I'm pretty the initial sales of rf2 were actually better than ac's. I mean surely rf2 did outsell a a hotlapping simulator with handful of cars and tracks, with no online component, not very good ffb and not even ai? But while ac kept pushing out interesting stuff rf2 just sort of vaned away. It was like it was survival mode for isi from 1 onwards. There are and were lots of reasons why rf2 did not build any kind of momentum. But overall I think graphics is just one of the smaller reasons.

 

[DaVeX↯]

(crying with his PC in the hands)
...but...there is still hope right???Right???
...rF2 can still survive???

 

[hitm4k3r]

This is cool, but look how many thousand and thousand of people didn't.

Everytime I hear that I get a bit confused. Why does it have to interest me, that people who give a f*ck about physics and care more about nice screenshots, didn't buy a racing game that is not of their interest at all? Why should I care about people, who give a f*ck about the outstanding strong points of a simulation and allways call a software dated just because it has a single noticable weakpoint, wich are it's graphics? In that case I wonder, if people are really interested to learn something about the technical aspects of racing or whether they just want to sit at their desk watching a car in the showroom and have fun for a few minutes. That's what I call consume zombies. rF2 is for people who have atleast some interest in racing and it's technical aspects and regulations and not to make people interested in racing. It's a raw racing simulation and not some kind of interactive movie.

For example I like to listen to Death Metal, a genre that I would call pretty niche or unpopular. So please tell me, why on earth should I care for the music of Lady Gaga or Justin Timberlake, musicians who are more popular and have propably sold many more albums than any Death Metal band? Niche products are nothing to worry about and I have a better time enjoying a moshpit with a few buddies than listening to the crying and screaming of a few thousend teenagers in the first row of a Justin Bieber concert. What worries me more is that people, who are watching a niche from the outside allways try to turn a niche product into a mainstream product, wich makes it basicly as crap as everything else for the people who are looking for that niche product.

At the end rF2 has a pretty active userbase, if you check the stats on steamspy. Does it have the most owners and users? Propably not. But the percentage of owners, who actually use rF2 on a regular base (13,646 ± 3,335 last 2 weeks), is higher than with AC or PC everytime I check it. I know, this doesn't fit the economic plans of some companies who aim for infinite growth, but let's face it: sales numbers, evergrowing numbers of customers and bigger market sharings don't make a good product. And there is a reason, why more owners of rF2 actually keep using the product instead of letting it catch dust in their steam libraries, so I guess ISI did something right to fill a niche. Wich was most likely their strategy with high end simualtors. Or do you think that some total dumbasses are able to survive in the fast progressing software market for allmost 3 decades now? Must be some amateurs who are lucky I guess.

Why can't people see the good and apprecaiate that there are improvements made on the weakpoints?

@Ghoults: everytime I hear people mentioning how superior their sim is I seldom see them touching core features. If visiual damage with windscreens of death is more important to you than some simple features like timed races, then you clearly haven't understood rF2 in the slightest sence. Now lets get to the point of physical damage, shouldn't we? Or is that not important enough?

 

[TzZyO]

That's a bit wierd and propably hardware or software related then. Maybe you should check for hardware errors or make a maleware scan. I don't even have a SSD and it loads just fine. Have you tried deleting the cache and the player ini to let them build from scratch? It's certainly not the norm with rF2 to wait forever

That happened exactly after one of the S397's updates, not to mention that the issue is only affecting rF2. However, I think you have a good point about the cache and the ini. I should try deleting those.

 

[TzZyO]

This is cool, but look how many thousand and thousand of people didn't.

I'm happy for those thousands if they can live with the FFB as atrocious as that. I was basically forcing myself to love AC for a long time, but it's just that bad for me and I have finally given up. Also, I like to test different weather conditions on the track.

So, AC may be the perfect choice for thousands of thousands, but if it's hardly at all appealing for me personally, why should I care?

 

[jonelsorel]

Would be easier for them to team up with Simbin or something, I doubt rFactor 2 will gain any users.

What deep well of intelligence did you dig that one up from? You doubt the sim with the best tire engine on the market AND the most used sim in motor racing training will gain any users with the addition of DX11, VR and a new UI? Don't apply for a market prediction job soon.

okay.

you can get offensive if you want, I don't care and quite frankly, it feeds my needs and keeps the admins busy.

Offensive? I was just pointing out that you don't much think before you speak, in a nuthsell. And I base that on arguments. Don't get offended. Think. It's for the better.

PS: oh, and if "offensive" remarks "feed your needs", you fit the definition of a troll.

 

[TzZyO]

One more thing about graphics. As long as graphics cards manufacturers keep clinging to the same polygons + textures formula, it doesn't make much sense talking about good graphics. Basically, there's not a single game out there that I could say has good graphics about. They are all bad. But those that have more functional graphics with less visual clutter allow your mind to do the rest.

Also, there is the phenomenon called "uncanny valley". I suspect it has to do with anything rather than just with human images.