rFactor 2 | RCCO eX Zero 2021 DLC Released

[Paul Jeffrey]

Studio 397 have today released the imaginative RCCO eX Zero 2021 electric car DLC for rFactor 2 - an rFactor 2 exclusive machine developed in conjunction with DTM Champion Mike Rockenfeller.

• New DLC available now for £4.55.
• Developed alongside 2013 DTM Champion Mike Rockenfeller.
• Created entirely within rFactor 2.

A DLC with a difference - rFactor 2 have today released a new car to the simulation that doesn't actually exist in real life... the RCCO eX ZERO 2021 has been released and it has been designed by the Studio 397 development team to a specification presented by former DTM Champion Mike Rockenfeller - bringing a brand new and exceptionally powerful electric racing car that should provide incredibly interesting driving coupled with ultra modern battery technology.

From the release notes:

As we draw ever closer to the end of 2020, the world around us is changing in ways we would never have imagined just 10 years ago. Humanity is becoming increasingly aware of the need to preserve our planet for future generations, sustainable options for ways of living are being brought into the conscious minds of consumers at a rate never before seen, and road car manufacturers are increasingly looking to alternative propulsion methods as the future of travel moves yet further away from the traditional ICE power units of today.

With Formula E and the new Extreme E concepts having already proven to be successful showcases for electric racing within the confines of current technology, we’ve been working with a partner to bring a rather different type of car to life within rFactor 2… As our readers well know, we at Studio 397 place an incredibly high value on the accuracy of our simulation, and our ability to recreate any number of different vehicle types within the title. This has led us to build a variety of different cars for the sim over the years, from formula to tin tops, powered by traditional internal combustion engines and modern battery power.

Ever keen to understand the intricacies of many varied types of racing machine, we took on a very different type of project recently; creating a car that confines to all the real world parameters in terms of physics and performance, but starting from a clean sheet of paper with a specification presented to us by 2013 DTM Champion Mike Rockenfeller. Welcome to the world the spectacular RCCO eX ZERO 2021.

Powered by a 100kWH battery and kicking out no-less than 1000hp, the eX ZERO 2021 is a custom-built car – existing only within rFactor 2 – that completely aligns with real world physics and behaviours that would exist should the vehicle find itself out on the real circuits. Enjoying the benefit of 4WD with a 73% rear torque split, the car is capable of 20 minutes of hard racing on a full charge. Lightweight at only 1000 kg without the driver, this car certainly offers exceptional performance and a very lively driving experience!

The eX ZERO 2021 has similar downforce levels to that of a modern LMP3 car, but considerably more torque through the slick tyres, meaning extraordinarily rapid acceleration that will leave the driver plenty of scope to modulate the throttle on corner exit – a critical skill in order to achieve good lap times.

To give you a taste of the kind of performance you can expect from new addition to the rFactor 2 vehicle roster, we enlisted the help of Porsche Carrera Cup Germany driver and rFactor 2 ambassador Rudy van Buren to put the new machine through its paces at the Belgian Spa-Francorchamps Circuit, a track well known to many sim racers, and a perfect venue for comparing the performance of this car to more traditional track based vehicles.


We’ve found the process of developing this car greatly intriguing, to have the scope to realize a vision such as this within rFactor 2 has been a refreshing journey for our development team – and the result is a car that will keep drivers on their tiptoes at every single part of a lap – it’s a wild ride!

We are very proud of the end result with the RCCO eX ZERO 2021 as it really offers something rather unique within the simulation – hopefully you enjoy getting out on the circuit with it too.

RCCO eX ZERO 2021 | Available now in rFactor 2: HERE

Original Source: Studio 397

rFactor 2 is available now exclusively on PC.

Got questions? Our community have answers! Check out the rFactor 2 sub forum here at RaceDepartment for a great way to engage with your fellow fans of the simulation.

 

[TheRealCeeBee]

or

 

[prceurope]

I may be in the minority here (and I drive 30 year old car on a daily basis, and absolutely love every noise and vibration of it). but to me motor is motor, and worst engine sound is fake engine sound. Engine should sound just the way it naturally sounds to perform it's function. I race electric karts and love them for what they are, and I race normal karts as well, and of course i miss the off-throttle BANG behind your back, the smells. the vibrations, but first thing i turn off in the electric kart is fake engine sound. You can monitor the health of your batteries listening to the engine as well. The fake, synthesized engine noise from crappy speakers is last thing i want to hear, it's turning it into toy right away for me.

Similar for gearbox whine... you may hate electric cars for global/political reasons and for these reasons I do too, but dailying a car without gearbox lowers the amount of elements that can be broken > lowers the maintenance cost.

Thanks for the thoughtful reply. Unfortunately you seem to be speaking past me. Bad sound effects - of any kind - are undesirable. If the Star Wars Tie Fighter had a pathetic little squeaky sputter for a sound, viewers would have hated it (and then complained that you cannot hear the sound in space anyway). The sound of that fighter is equally as important as the sound of James Earl Jones' effects-enhanced voice as Vader, in engendering fear of The Empire. If they could have also shot their weapons accurately, that would have been better.

Every internal combustion engine's sound is heavily influenced by exhaust and muffling devices, and the people who design these systems are paid a fortune to produce "signature exhaust notes." So, modifying an electric motor whine with an analog-to-digital signal processor, and then modulating and amplifying it through a proper audio system, is not that much different. There is beauty in the electronic, software and hardware engineering. It just needs to be done well.

Most daily cars do not have a square-cut gearbox. You wouldn't be very popular around town if you had one. What I wrote was that the appreciation for racing car gear whine can be replaced with electric motor whine, in the context of auditory experience in EV racing. No argument that eliminating moving parts in a car reduces complexity, risk and maintenance cost.

I also wrote about mechanical noise generation from the wind being channeled through a noise generating device. Think, Ju-87 Stuka dive bombers from WW2 - and @gianlucaP 's cardboard BMX motor. Those sirens produced drag, however, so you would need smart F Duct cookies doing something to make some wind noise part of the auditory experience without slowing the car down unnecessarily.

In a modern convertible, the sound of the wind from the driver and passenger seats is also carefully engineered. You want just enough air flow and whoosh sound to feel exciting, but not so much as to mess up the coiffage.

I wonder, when the combustion engine cars were just getting produced, everyone also wanted to put horse sounds to them?

Oh dear. You may wish to consider that combustion engines - such as the steam engine - had been around for a long time prior to the internal combustion engine being introduced into cars. Steam tractors had long since replaced horses in many agricultural and industrial applications. But, I do not wish to spoil your joke.

 

[RichardHessels]

Thanks for the thoughtful reply. Unfortunately you seem to be speaking past me. Bad sound effects - of any kind - are undesirable. If the Star Wars Tie Fighter had a pathetic little squeaky sputter for a sound, viewers would have hated it (and then complained that you cannot hear the sound in space anyway). The sound of that fighter is equally as important as the sound of James Earl Jones' effects-enhanced voice as Vader, in engendering fear of The Empire. If they could have also shot their weapons accurately, that would have been better.

Every internal combustion engine's sound is heavily influenced by exhaust and muffling devices, and the people who design these systems are paid a fortune to produce "signature exhaust notes." So, modifying an electric motor whine with an analog-to-digital signal processor, and then modulating and amplifying it through a proper audio system, is not that much different. There is beauty in the electronic, software and hardware engineering. It just needs to be done well.

Most daily cars do not have a square-cut gearbox. You wouldn't be very popular around town if you had one. What I wrote was that the appreciation for racing car gear whine can be replaced with electric motor whine, in the context of auditory experience in EV racing. No argument that eliminating moving parts in a car reduces complexity, risk and maintenance cost.

I also wrote about mechanical noise generation from the wind being channeled through a noise generating device. Think, Ju-87 Stuka dive bombers from WW2 - and @gianlucaP 's cardboard BMX motor. Those sirens produced drag, however, so you would need smart F Duct cookies doing something to make some wind noise part of the auditory experience without slowing the car down unnecessarily.

In a modern convertible, the sound of the wind from the driver and passenger seats is also carefully engineered. You want just enough air flow and whoosh sound to feel exciting, but not so much as to mess up the coiffage.



Oh dear. You may wish to consider that combustion engines - such as the steam engine - had been around for a long time prior to the internal combustion engine being introduced into cars. Steam tractors had long since replaced horses in many agricultural and industrial applications. But, I do not wish to spoil your joke.

Hmmm.. A steam turbine engine powered with a small cold fusion reactor.

 

[Diogenes3.14]

No interest in this car whatsoever and agree with the many others here who have become disillusioned with rF2.
I usually buy all the content at launch but no more after Spa.

I understand the studio must make money and new content must be released to maintain revenue streams but the approach is just all wrong imo.

Had S397 released an updated build which fixed even a few bugs prior to announcing the fantasy car, I might be more willing to support this DLC... but at this stage I feel the UK are more likely to rejoin the EU before we get some of the bigger bugs in rF2 addressed, or proper implementation of a manual transmission.

 

[KittX]

Thanks for the thoughtful reply. Unfortunately you seem to be speaking past me. Bad sound effects - of any kind - are undesirable. If the Star Wars Tie Fighter had a pathetic little squeaky sputter for a sound, viewers would have hated it (and then complained that you cannot hear the sound in space anyway). The sound of that fighter is equally as important as the sound of James Earl Jones' effects-enhanced voice as Vader, in engendering fear of The Empire. If they could have also shot their weapons accurately, that would have been better.

Every internal combustion engine's sound is heavily influenced by exhaust and muffling devices, and the people who design these systems are paid a fortune to produce "signature exhaust notes." So, modifying an electric motor whine with an analog-to-digital signal processor, and then modulating and amplifying it through a proper audio system, is not that much different. There is beauty in the electronic, software and hardware engineering. It just needs to be done well.

When done well but imo not when overdone. For example the 2019 1LE Camaro has all the glorious rumble, pops and bangs from the exhaust, but it's faked. I mean they are real, but they are caused by intentional slight misfire of the engine, and there is even random generator in the ECU that makes those misfires slightly different, so the exhaust bangs will differ slightly every time. To me this is where the nostalgia and the gimmick kind of ruins the function. I mean, you don't get optimum performance from the engine that is misfiring on purpose.
Exhausts... while i enjoy the great exhaust sounds, more and more i tend to go for muffled ones. Few years i've changed exhaust on my car to make some deep and low note (not louder than original tho), but now i'm getting quite annoyed of it, and more and more enjoy those heavy muffled street motorcycle exhausts with almost "liquid" sound of idling. But well, this is more down to preference i guess.

 

[davehenrie]

I think it was BMW that included a speaker over the engine to add some more sound to their engines. Til they got caught...Purchasers were not happy being deceived.

 

[Case_]

(Plenty of current cars include electronic audio enhancements for the engine.)

 

[gianlucaP]

ì

 

[PurgerUK]

The ecological footprint from e-cars is terrible: they require a lot of energy to manufacture, use a lot of materials that're rare and expensive ( and even more energy used to even get all this stuff out of the ground), and up until now, nobody has any recycling concept to dispose or recycle the batteries when they reach end-of-life.
All in all, a giant con job from the politicians under the motto: look, we're doing something for the ecology, please vote us in again. And please think of the children
The IC motor is going to be here for a lot longer than they would have us believe, e-cars are not the long-term solution that they are marketed as.

Yes that black stuff is so clean and doesn’t take any energy to extract or refine into fuel and if you leak a few thousand tons into the ocean who cares. Seems to be a big lobby now pushing how clean IC is plus ignoring the newer cleaner battery tech in development. Batteries are already re-used and recycled plus plenty of manufacturers are using renewables to power the production lines.

 

[Avo77]

(Plenty of current cars include electronic audio enhancements for the engine.)

Yes, and they are terribile. I unplugged it on my Cupra.

 

[cameron_etc]

So, if you went to pick up your car from a service and was told its not ready and wont be ready for another few days, but it is now perfectly clean as they cleaned it already as they have loads of car detailers but only 1 mechanic... you'd be happy right? After all you would not expect the car detailer to actually service your car and you would leave one happy customer. (With a nice photo of your lovely clean car you will get serviced.... eventually)

I literally said that rF2 has a lot of bugs that need fixing, and I don't consider them fixed because they released this content. I just don't think it makes sense for people to complain about S397 devoting time to content production given rF2's bugs, because what else are the content specialists supposed to do?

 

[doddynco]

.

 

[Havner]

I just don't think it makes sense for people to complain about S397 devoting time to content production given rF2's bugs, because what else are the content specialists supposed to do?

Fix bugs in already released content. It’s not only codebase that’s bugged.

 

[zi99y]

S397 have failed. This just shows they haven’t got a clue what the majority of their audience want, and their focus is not on quality.

 

[Eng.]

They are focusing of income and because of that trying to sell new content.

But if they couldn't fix the multiplayer side they couldn't get bigger audience. The buggy engine prevents them from achieving that.

If you can't fix single player problems, how can you fix multi player?

 

[gianlucaP]

ì

 

[GuitarTech]

Just seen this in a post on S397s forum, a reply to a question, from a staff member who shall remain nameless
" Yes as I said we have looked into it, but do not have an update at this time "
That just about says it all: you can apply this answer to everything S397 does..

 

[SuperMonacoGP]

the last iracing build "release note" contains 10x times the bug fixing and update made by S397 since 2013.
one could argue that iracing has more staff than s397, which is fair, let's then consider what kunos with acc and reiza with ams2 are doing those days, monthly, even weekly updates and bug fix, which lead to an always improving product; not only, they are doing this by putting out even less paid dlc than s397, so where's the magic here folks?
as someone already said, s397 have failed their task, since 2013 all they have done is releasing some content and give the graphics some clean and perf boost, nothing less nothing more.
7 years to develop a new UI is not by any mean an acceptable timeline in this day and age. other devs studio are gonna eat you alive in the meantime.

 

[mesfigas]

i think it was late 2015 that S397 took rf2 from ISI ?

 

[GuitarTech]

i think it was late 2015 that S397 took rf2 from ISI ?

I think 2016, it's around four years ago. Long enough to have sorted all the bugs out anyway, and to produce a modern UI. Why didn't they just copy the UI from AMS2 for example? Or make something similar? Four years is a long time.....