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?!
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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!​

 

[motoliser]

I love RF2 as it is right now but I also understand why people demand better graphics in 2018, especially if you look back at 2007 and PS3 demo Gran Turismo HD actual game footage:

 

[dave kirk]

Ah, yes, the good old 90's/2000's/PS2 graphics...

In game racing with my 1080ti on max settings and 4K it doesn't look like that though, i think replay screenshots are irrelevant

 

[Case_]

In game racing with my 1080ti on max settings and 4K it doesn't look like that though, i think replay screenshots are irrelevant

These screenshots are done with my racing settings, they are not tweaked for screenshotting in any way. So it looks *exactly* like that while racing on my end, except for the depth of field. In fact the only reason the middle screenshot exists is because I was practicing for a race and thought "wow, this looks lovely, I should screenshot this".

I really don't know what else to tell you.

I run GTX 970 at 1200p at what I would call medium high settings.

 

[Will Mazeo]

I made this over a year ago and rF2 looks better now than back then .
rF2 looks good even in VR although the car models and driver could do with some love but the visual clarity and overall track details looks great and probably closest to real life of all VR Sims atm imo (just don't look at the driver or his animations , lol)
Performance is pretty much inline with other Sims , I can get a solid 90 fps with better clarity in rF2 than pC2 or AC while running similar SS and AA settings in all .

Unfortunately most tracks do not have this quality, even official stuff

 

[Alex72]

The more I think and play rF2, the more I'm convinced it's just too little too late. I question the fact why they shouldn't just work on rF3 instead.

EDIT: Always lovely to see the disagree group jumping in and proving their strength.

Well, they disagree with you. Opinions are not allowed anymore?

Look, the reason people disagree is because the simulation of rF2 is so damn good. To many who have been simming since the start of simming its the best simulation of racing to date. This is why they disagree with people who keep saying "ditch it. Just get rid of it!". They are doing their best to improve rF2 and its getting better and better with each update, and to those who value the depth of simulation in it its a great feeling that S397 keeps improving and supporting rF2. Including me.

 

[Enoneado]

Ah, yes, the good old 90's/2000's/PS2 graphics...

GT4: year 2004 (PS2) 14 years of difference, no full HD, 2K or 4K, no PC with graphics card of 600 $...

 

[Amanda]

I made this over a year ago

Yeah, with a 1080Ti. And dull road textures, steering wheel textures that look the same way they did in 2006, a sky that is as bland as they come.

My point is not that rFactor 2 can't look somewhat good, but what hardawre you need to achieve this somewhat good state where it looks good (depending on the time of day, of course).

Perhaps the biggest problem is that rFactor 2 is poorly optimized for motherboards that have PCI-E 2.0 instead of 3.0. This is already lame since the most powerful graphics cards are yet to actually need PCI-E 3.0. For games that are known for being well optimized, such as Dirt Rally, it makes no difference - and it shouldn't matter for rFactor 2 as well. But it's not well optimized.

 

[Amanda]

Ah, yes, the good old 90's/2000's/PS2 graphics...

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.

 

[Case_]

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.

Yes, I know how the game looks during races. It doesn't look like a PS2 game, it really doesn't. Anyone who claims it does has never seen a PS2 game. (But those GT4 screenshots certainly look really good for PS2, I'll give them that.)

Most of the complaints about rF2 graphics are really just complaints about tracks/textures looking kinda dated sometimes, but that's an issue of the track, not the game.

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

It looks somewhat better, sometimes - again because their tracks are of a very high quality. It can also look pretty bad at times. And as for "runs better"...well, that also depends. I rarely run into CPU issues in rF2 (although it took a bit of tweaking, yes). With Raceroom, I run into them constantly.

 

[Juwe]

I'm glad Studio 397 guys are so passionate, putting all these efforts for rF2!
But I'm also thinking ...wouldn't this be the right time to move from the old engine to UE4, like Kunos did?

Still no proper triplescreen-support with ue4 engine. Maybe there will never do. And when they manage to get triples running, you probably will get 20fps max with a 1080ti..

 

[Amanda]

It doesn't look like a PS2 game, it really doesn't. Anyone who claims it does has never seen a PS2 game.

Good, because I never mentioned Play Station.

Most of the complaints about rF2 graphics are really just complaints about tracks/textures looking kinda dated sometimes, but that's an issue of the track, not the game.

I believe most complaints are related to 'looks vs performance' ratio. For how it looks, rFactor 2 should perform way better.

It can also look pretty bad at times

Nothing compared to rFactor 2 on lower graphics settings.

I rarely run into CPU issues in rF2 (although it took a bit of tweaking, yes). With Raceroom, I run into them constantly.

I certainly do expect games using DirectX 9 engines to be more CPU intensive than a game developed and maintained to this day.

 

[Case_]

Well, OK.

 

[John-Eric Saxén]

RF2 is my favorite game in regards to physics but it is just lacking in everywhere else, I really really want to be excited about this game but can't, I would really love if they brought it into a new graphics engine to give it a new lease of life, I can't imagine they are getting that many new buyers so why not just start RF3?

They did bring DX11 with new post effects and AO less than a year ago. And looking at how UE4 handles triple screen and VR support, it doesn't make much sense to move to it really. I'm still non the wiser as to why sim racers have become so graphics obsessed. In other e-sports people are fine playing on CS:GO, Dota 2 or Fortnite. None of those games have ultra hyper graphics. Optimization is important, as it allows more people with poor hardware to get playing. You really need a PCI-E 3.0 chipset to run rF2 properly, which can be an issue for some. But all this graphics focus just means racing sims will start to require massive hardware to run properly.

 

[Shovas]

I'm not a fan of UE4 for sim racing from what I've seen so far. It just doesn't seem to be designed for that genre. iRacing and Project Cars 2 look and feel better than ACC in terms of performance and image quality (as far as their level of graphics goes). And, yes, I know ACC is early access, and I'm fully onboard with that, but it's troubling nonetheless - how much can it be improved? It has to be improved by the vendor not Kunos.

It seems like custom engines are still the way to go for sims.

Will be happy to be proven wrong as ACC progresses, though. It would be nice to have a vendor supplied engine with all the pretty features so it's more likely to be kept up to date.

 

[wajdi]

Yesterday I did a 20 laps race with the SMC Clio mod at Macau circuit in VR and it was one of the best sim experience that I ever had in 16 years of sim racing. Keep it going Studio 397

 

[Boby Kim]

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

 

[2stains]

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

R3E is near impossible to get to run at 90 fps in VR with a 1080Ti/7700k system yet rF2 runs beautifly in VR with high SS and AA and settings at 90 fps !
Unfortunately R3E really struggles one a single core and it shows with a constant ASW at 45 fps when rF2 there is no need for ASW !

 

[Davy Jones]

Or even for Jimmy who wasn't running the game in VR

I get your point but that isn't really a valid example. That version of Le Mans for rF2 used in the VEC is a conversion from something else and modified again by the guys for the VEC and Jimmy may have been recording in a lower resolution to support streaming.

I get all the points in this thread but we must still support S397 for trying, heck rF2 was on sale the other day, of course they need more users but they also need cash to support development. And perhaps moving to new graphics engine or working on a "rF3" would just mean even longer delays in getting content out. I've been sharing this before but the guide I did on rF2 may help some, and yes it's the old UI and I like many are waiting on the updates but we must still try and support them as best we can.

Competion is always good and there's no sim that is perfect. If I start to think about the differences and complexities between rF2, AC, ACC, AMS, R3E, PCars, iRacing etc it's just mind boggling not to mention the complexity of hardware to support it. If Fanatec can get away with DD auctions I think we can cut the guys in S397 some slack for trying to salvage what was already a sunken ship

 

[Travis]

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

Yep. Beta testing continues.

 

[RichardHessels]

150 hours in rFactor 2 now.
How many hours do you all have in?
.

About 1000 hrs