rFactor 2 - Beta Released

ISI's new sim rFactor
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Re: rFactor 2 - Beta Released

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STUDIO 397 released the second update for their popular GT3 Power Pack DLC for rFactor 2.
Besides some minor bug fixes, the new update for the GT3 add-on results in a better performance when higher shadow settings are selected. The performance is also increased by adding further level of detail (LOD) improvements to the opponent cars. Furthermore, the update adds an Endurance light option to the McLaren, Bentley, Callaway, and Radical.

Changelog GT3 Pack Update 2 ( 01/11/2017):
McLaren 650S GT3 2017 v1.85

Improved performance when running higher shadow settings.
Improved performance through further LOD improvements to opponent cars.
Added endurance lights.

Bentley Continental GT3 2017 v1.23
Improved performance when running higher shadow settings.
Improved performance through further LOD improvements to opponent cars.
Added endurance lights.

Callaway C7 GT3 2017 v1.23
Improved performance when running higher shadow settings.
Improved performance through further LOD improvements to opponent cars.
Fix for team creation not working.
Added endurance lights.

Mercedes AMG GT3 2017 v1.11
Improved performance when running higher shadow settings.
Improved performance through further LOD improvements to opponent cars.

Radical RRXC GT3 v1.17
Improved performance when running higher shadow settings.
Improved performance through further LOD improvements to opponent cars.
Added endurance lights.
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Re: rFactor 2 - Beta Released

Post by Duke »

This guy is doing a talk & drive of each car in the GT3 Power Pack DLC. He has done 2 so far & apart from being dry they are worth a look if you're thinking of purchasing.





3rd vid is up



4th vid



Lucky last

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Re: rFactor 2 - Beta Released

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Next DLC for rF2 announced, no surprise really...

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Re: rFactor 2 - Beta Released

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STUDIO 397 released a new update (Build 1109) for both the DX11 and DX9 version of their rFactor 2 racing simulator.
The relative small update mainly contains some graphical and physics fixes and improvements.

Changelog (26/11/2017):
Open Beta DX11 Steam Build ID – 2317129 (rFactor 2 Build 1109)
Default DX9 Steam Build ID – 2313980 (rFactor 2 Build 1109)

- (DX11) fixed the undercar shadow becoming hard to see at certain low sun angles and reflective road surfaces.
- Removed an error message in the Launcher when a component already was installed because that’s not an error.
- Onboard controls for changing the engine brake mapping.
- Physics enhancement to allow building engines that won’t stall because they are electric.
- Added proper playback of transmission sounds on AI/network cars.
- Physics enhancement to properly generate heat when regenerating energy.
- Added extra values to display in cockpits and on steering wheels for tyre pressures, temperature, and mixture, boost and brake mapping and brake bias settings.
- (DX11) ambient undercar shadow fixes so they won’t show up on parts of the car, just the ground underneath it.
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Re: rFactor 2 - Beta Released

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STUDIO 397 has released it’s eagerly anticipated Formula E Energize Pack for rFactor 2. The pack contains the 2018 Formula E car, all the teams, and a stunning version of the 2018 season-opening 1.8 km Hong Kong Central Harbourfront E-Prix track.

The Studio 397 team developed the virtual electric racer in close partnership with Formula E itself. This resulted in a car model featuring immersive physics and graphics. Besides the amazing looking model the rFactor Formula E simulation also features REGEN and power modes, as well as a new cockpit and HUD elements mimicking the functionality of the real world car.

You can purchase the Formula E Energize Pack at the dedicated Steam Store Page for a modest €9.74. (619.2Mb Download) The Formula E car is also available as a stand-alone download for €4.99, while you can pick up the Hong Kong E-Prix track for €7.99.

Because Formula E is very different kind of motorsport in which you have to focus on strategy and optimising your power and battery life, the Studio 397 team published a handy rFactor 2 Formula E Guide to help us climatize to the new technology and the driving style that goes with it. Alongside the written guide, you can also have a look at the accompanying video posted below.

Known issues:
Track accuracy may be different due to late changes in layouts
AI currently does not adhere to the 1 pit stop rule and does not try to save fuel by lifting and coasting
Regen mode is based off braking and is automatic on braking
Fuel indicator currently does not show granular detail on battery life, therefore we suggest using 3rd party plugins in the meantime
Cars have one set of physics based on homologated data
Liveries and helmets will be updated when embargoes are lifted
AI will sporadically slow just after Start/Finish under full course yellow – this should not affect the race restarts.

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Re: rFactor 2 - Beta Released

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November Roadmap Update
Last month we reflected on 2017 and hinted at new content. Earlier this week we announced the Formula E Energize Pack, bringing electric racing to rFactor 2. This weekend you can all watch the season-opening doubleheader race in Hong Kong. We announced a hot-lap competition, which gives you a chance to win some exclusive Formula E goodies, or show your friends how much better you are than them!

Some of you might have watched the talk and drive that Marcel did on RaceDepartment. For those of you that didn’t, you missed out on some free copies of the Formula E pack. We’ll summarize some of the new things that were discussed there.

Obviously a lot of questions centered around the Formula E content. We’ll release an update of that in a week or two that will include the new team liveries that we were not able to show you ahead of the opening race, and we’ll also provide a code update that will give you a better insight into the amount of battery you have left, and are using per lap. Since this part of the strategy is such an integral part of racing these cars, we feel an improvement is in order so you don’t have to rely on third-party plugins. Incidentally, talking about third-party plugins, Crew Chief already released a code update that supports Formula E. If you have not checked it out yet, we can definitely recommend you do so!

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We’re also ready to announce that we will be making DX11 the default before Christmas. As an intermediate step before we come with a new HUD system for plugins, we’ll focus on providing a default HUD that includes a lot of the features you have been enjoying in third party plugins. One of these is a new dial that show you the time delta compared to your best lap, but we have a few other new things and enhancements planned. Part of this DX11 update will be the inclusion of the “rain update” that we previewed at SimExpo. We’ve since perfected it. We’ve also improved the ambient lighting, producing subtle differences that give the overall image a slightly more dramatic look. At the moment we are working feverishly to update all our cars and tracks to make maximum use of these new features. We’ll incrementally release those updates, but anticipate to already have a substantial part done before the end of this year. The shots below are still work in progress, but show you what we’ve been doing to make the rain look better on both cars and tracks.

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Another announcement is that we officially support all the new Windows Mixed Reality headsets, check it here. In 2018 we will focus on more DX11 related updates, both in terms of performance and fidelity. As announced, that means we’re deprecating DX9, meaning it will still be available, but it won’t be updated anymore. This gives us more bandwidth to focus on the new engine, which should be a huge benefit for everybody.

Wrapping up this month’s update, we all wish you a happy holiday season and we’ll be back with one final roadmap update close to the end of the year. Of course we will be back in 2018. Happy simracing!
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Re: rFactor 2 - Beta Released

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STUDIO 397 released a new significant update for their rFactor 2 racing title.
Besides addressing some issues, the latest update brings us an array of Graphics Improvements and a big list of new HUD Options.
Furthermore, STUDIO 397 launched their Steam Winter Sale today letting you purchase rFactor 2 at a 50% price reduction.

Changelog (21/12/2017):
Graphics Improvements:
Improved Lighting

We developed an Image-Based Lighting for Ambient (IBLA) solution that substantially improves lighting in our graphics engine.
IBLA acts on the colors of the scene, taking into account information from the surrounding environment when drawing each object.
The resulting lighting system gives the final image a more realistic look and it improves the perception of depth for the driver.
This new system uses new ambient probes that have been added to most of the tracks. It is recomputed dynamically as weather or time conditions change.
IBLA does not introduce any noticeable performance penalties and its features have been exposed to Mod Dev. Furthermore, tracks that do not have set IBLA yet will automatically have a default set of probes assigned to them.

Rain Effects
Cars

Added dynamic drops on the windshield and the body of the car.
These drops respect gravity, so they will run down the sides, and every single drop will have its own lifespan.
The drops also respect airflow around the car when driving, making them move in appropriate directions.
The effect is not scripted but generated in real time, and it varies depending on factors like the number of raindrops falling from the sky, the speed of the vehicle, or the particles generated from another car in front of you.
Wipers on cars are now functional and will clear the windscreen in two different user configurable speeds.

Tracks
Vastly improved reflections of the surroundings that become visible as the track gets wet.
Added blurred reflections for the “Ultra” Road Reflection setting.
Improved shaders for the real-road surfaces and added new shaders to match closely the properties of elements like curbs in dry/wet conditions.
Added highly detailed puddle maps that allow puddles to form in the appropriate places on tracks.

New HUD Options
Added options to show tire wear and ride height as text parameters.
Added tire wear percentage to the vehicle status MFD.
Increased the accuracy of fuel consumption with an extra digit.
Fixed a bug with TireAverageTemp text parameters, which would not show up in the HUD because of a space in their names.
Added a “delta best” parameter that you can add to a HUD, showing time lost or gained compared to your fastest lap in milliseconds. Works for all cars (not just player). Included optional text coloring of the text output so positive and negative values can result in different colors.
Added a more accurate fuel indication as well as one that shows the fuel you used in your last (full) lap, or zero otherwise.
Added a gauge for showing the “delta best” with a range of -1.0 to +1.0 seconds.
Added predicted a number of laps remaining based on fuel used for the last lap.
Added current rain percentage.
Added minimum and maximum track water depth.
Added an option to disable font scaling for the chat and message box (apart from using comic sans, non-linear font scaling is about the biggest sin a designer can commit).
Added weather info (rain intensity and min/max water depth) into the MFD for HUD and in-car use.
Designed a new default HUD that takes advantage of the new features. (Coming soon)

Other/Fixes etc.
The plugin API will no longer invoke callbacks that provide ScreenInfoV01 data that used to allow plugins to render to the screen. Doing this directly has been deprecated with the release of DX11, and alternatives are to either use information that is available in the updated HUD or wait for a new pluggable HUD system to be released in 2018.
We have removed the “cache” folder from our install, so all content will now be downloaded from the workshop. This means the base install is much smaller. Upon first launch, you will be automatically subscribed to all Studio 397 content and while that is downloading the Launcher will show a progress dialog window with screenshots of all content items it is downloading for you.
Generating MIP Maps from reflections, this gives smoother reflections as a result.
Formula E liveries for TeCheetah, Mahindra and Venturi updated to 2018.
Formula E driver helmets updated.
Formula E driver suits updated.

Known Issues/troubleshooting
Rain effects are visual currently. However, we are working on physics impacts.
Some content is still to be updated to include the rain effects such as cars and tracks.
Performance is constantly being reviewed
Raindrops on external cameras under review
If you are experiencing strange graphical issues, delete the contents of your cbash and shader folders located in \Steam\steamapps\common\rFactor 2\UserData\Log
Important: Make sure to update any SteamCMD servers to get the latest!
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Re: rFactor 2 - Beta Released

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Deployed today to Steam, the new rFactor 2 build looks to be more of an intermediate hotfix update rather than a full scale new build, focussing mainly on addressing some outstanding issues caused by the recent build 1109 December release.

Although with a heavy focus towards rectifying outstanding issues, the new build is notable for the new inclusion of ambient undercar shadows, designed to both offer a visual improvement in various weather conditions as well as providing a more stable solution than that what was employed previously.

rFactor 2 Steam Build ID 2438696
Fixed join lag in multiplayer
Updated language files (to avoid crashing when the LSI screen was active)
Fixed wipers on/off in replay
Fixed rain in cockpit in MP sessions
Fixed V-sync software with 'custom resolution' (Config_DX11.ini)
Fixed TCP Matchmaker error message in the dedicated server UI
Added an all new ambient undercar shadow: more stable, reliable, and clearly visible even at night. The shadows can no longer clip through the ground, nor are they visible on the ground below a bridge when a car drives over that bridge. This new tech requires no intervention from content creators. We automatically remove the current undercar art and replace it with the new system. On subsequent updates, content creators can remove the old artwork.

Important Note: Please make sure and update your SteamCMD Dedicated server by running the command again in terminal.
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Re: rFactor 2 - Beta Released

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During the past few days, STUDIO 397 has released a couple of new update patches for the rFactor 2 racing simulator.

Latest Content Updates:
Dallara – v1.96: Corrected texture mapping issue.
Radical GT3 – v1.995: Corrected slick tires referring to the wrong compound.
Radical SR3-RSX v1.96: Added newest CPM & Corrected lateral CG (center of gravity).
Nissan GTR GT1 – v1.93
Silverstone – v1.84*: Fixed rain not hitting the ground (Main straight to T2).
Portugal – v2.28: Rain updates.

Steam Build ID 2445683 has just been released. It addresses the following issues:
Fixed undercar ambient shadows showing on non-visible cars.
Fixed undercar ambient shadow glitch on some tracks.
Fixed rare case of abnormally low FPS on some third party WIP content.
Removed undercar ambient shadows in rear view mirrors when car is not rendered.

Full list of updated DX11 "rain effect" content, as at 20.01.2018:
Cars
Bentley GT3 - v1.97
Radical GT3 - v1.997 *
Radical SR3-RSX v1.96 *
Mercedes GT3 - v1.99
McLaren GT3 - v1.993
Callaway GT3 - v1.97
Formula E - v1.993
Dallara - v1.96 *
USF 2000 - v1.94
Camaro GT3 - v1.94
Corvette C6R - v1.93
Nissan 370Z GT4 - v1.93
Brabham BT44B - v1.95 >>>You need to manually subscribe HERE
Brabham BT20 - v1.95
Stock Car - v1.96
EVE -v1.98
Spark - v1.98
Formula Two - v1.95
Honda Civic BTCC - v1.99 (Physics Update: New tires)
Kart Cup - v1.92
Nissan GTR GT1 - v1.93
Howston G4 - v1.96
Howston G6 - v1.96
Megane 2013 - v1.95
Clio 2010 - v1.93
Howston Dissenter - v1.94
Nissan GT500 v1.96
Formula FISI v1.68*
Marussia v1.94

Tracks
LimeRock - 2.02
Mores - v1.82
Nola - v1.30
Indianapolis - v2.04
Silverstone - v1.84 *
Brianza - v2.04
Malaysia - v1.82
Portugal - v2.28
PalmBeach - v2.20
Atlanta Motorsports Park v1.28
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Re: rFactor 2 - Beta Released

Post by Duke »

Welcome to the January 2018 roadmap. We’re really excited about what this year will bring. Our internal roadmap has been setup and it features lots of cool content, updates and technical improvements. So let’s get started!

Performance
We’ve had a lot of feedback from some of our users about the graphics performance of the simulation. Over the last months we have improved the fidelity of the DX11 graphics a lot, but partially due to the fact that we still had to support the DX9 engine for every update, we did not yet take full advantage of some of the things DX11 could do. When investigating some of the reports we got, we decided it was time to start making some fundamental improvements to the engine. We are still working on that, but internal builds are looking promising, so we hope to have more news about that soon.

Content
With the release of our GT3 Power Pack and our Formula E Energize Pack last year we are looking forward to bringing you great car and track content this year. With that we are pleased to announce that we have signed a license with Portland International Raceway which will be released for free later this year and ahead of the labor day race. The track has an incredible history having been developed out of the remnants of the City of Vanport. At 1.97 miles, the track has hosted several senior racing events most notably Champ Car and Indycar with the lap record by the late Justin Wilson of 57.597.
We are also working at completing the promised update to the Zandvoort track, adding the latest resurfacing changes as well as a change to one of the turns that was done before the last DTM race. Our expectation is to have that done somewhere towards the end of the first quarter and we will keep you informed about its progress.

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HUD
Our updated HUD is currently in final testing and will be added in the next code update we are going to release. Last month we already talked a bit about some of the new data we’ve made available, and this is probably a good time to talk a bit about the new HUD design. As we already said it is still based on our existing technology, but we’ve redesigned it from scratch to look more modern. This means we designed it for the screen resolution that is currently used, and updated the font to conform to our new styling. We have tried to go for a HUD that features all the data, but with the least possible duplication. The most important things remain on screen all the time, some lesser needed data is available in the different pages of the multi-function display (MFD). On top of that we have tried to ensure that the data we display is accurate enough for people to use when driving. Some hightlights include the new “deltabest” bar and digital display at the top, as well as the fuel left and fuel used on the last lap indications at the bottom of the screen. The screenshot is still a work in progress, so some details might still change, but this will give you an impression on what we’re testing now.

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KartSim
In a couple of weeks from now, KartSim will release a consumer version of their content on Steam. All of it will run inside rFactor 2 and can be mixed and matched with our other content. The majority of that content will be paid, however they are also looking at doing a free indoor track. KartSim will include the x30 kart models and three laser (Lidar) scanned kart tracks: Paul Fletcher International Circuit, Buckmore Park International Circuit and Glan Y Gors Championship Circuit. This pack will be around 20 euros. There will also be a version geared to the professional karting market (KartSim Pro) which includes more tracks and karts and includes and entry into the British eSports Karting Championship. It will cost 395 UK Pounds plus VAT and will only be available via KartSim.

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Third Party Support
As we have spoken about in the past, we are ready to support third parties that wish to publish items via our store with the official licenses and agreements in place. Please do contact us via Discord or start a conversation with us on the forum for more information.

Laser Scanning
Finally, we are proud to announce that a few days ago we have successfully scanned our first track with professional LIDAR equipment. We’ll keep you guys in suspense a little bit longer about which track this will be, but needless to say we are very excited to work with such data to produce a very accurate rendition of this track.
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Re: rFactor 2 - Beta Released

Post by Duke »

Another month has flown by! The February 2018 roadmap is here! And as usual we haven’t just been twiddling our button boxes, we’ve been furiously making improvements and creating new and exciting content and features, some of which we are happy to share with you now. This short month has been a whirlwind of activity, which included competition infrastructure, getting in some new features for the new UI, testing performance optimizations, and building new content, both track and car.

Performance
We mentioned last month already that performance was being worked on, it’s still one of our main priorities, we’re continuing to chip away at it and have come even further, it should not be long now until we can release these improvements to you. It’s safe to say you’ll will be very surprised at the end results. In our internal testing we’ve seen a substantial performance boost and higher frame-rates across the board. As with anything though we are cautious, it’s in the hands of our internal test team to make sure it’s all working as expected.

Content
The content team has been keeping very busy, as usual, which is not hard as we have a lot of new content in the planning.

Corvette C7.R GTE/GTLM
Recently, on social, we teased this car with a short movie with a roaring V8, and the license for it has been announced over a year ago, but now you can finally see the car during internal testing at Silverstone. Scheduled for a late April release, this car will not come alone and will be part of a new upcoming pack.

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Norma M30 LMP3
We’re super chuffed to see an LMP3 enter the grid! The Norma M30 is a fairly recent car that has already built up an impressive record in the races it has competed in, such as in the ELMS race last year at Spa, where we took this picture of it. We’re sure this new class will become quite popular in rFactor 2!

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Sebring International Raceway
Last but not least, we can now proudly announce that we have licensed America’s oldest road racing track, host to many historic endurance races. Sebring International Raceway is being built based on a laser scan we did last month. This is a first for us and although we have made many tracks based on CAD data and other information that have been quite accurate, this scan will allow us to get every little detail right. It will take us a couple of months to finish this one, but we are working on it feverishly!

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HUD
The official Studio 397 HUD is still being polished and refined, we know you are impatient to get your hands on it, while working on it we’ve come across a few bugs that lay dormant deep in the code that we needed to address, this is a win-win for the HUD in general and we decided it needs attention. It will certainly be part of the next build.

UI
Our UI is making leaps and bounds, we’ve got most of the basic features in and some new slick features. For starters we’ve looked at making triple screen setup much more intuitive, with a full set of controls via the UI settings screen. This will be an additional functionality to go along with the on track pop up widget.

Next we overhauled the live replay screen, controls are now not only selectable via controls as before but also via mouse clicks.

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Also we’ve added in a modern drop down standing ticker, for easy access to driver times from the live replay. This incidentally also shows our capabilities to overlay HTML with live camera feeds, a technique we will leverage in other places such as broadcast overlays.

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Competition
In the realm of competition we have our full time team actively hacking away at a very inclusive and encompassing competition structure, which is a big task not done overnight! We have big plans and that’s why we want to do this from the ground up the right way. Our next big task has been the implementation of full race series, including sign ups, practice, qualification and multiple race heats over a set period of time. These new features are ongoing and need a lot of testing so we are looking at a little while more to get this up and running, but it’s not that far off, we can see the horizon!

KartSim
We already announced that a consumer release of KartSim is coming soon. Currently this version is undergoing final testing and polishing to include our visual damage model and the latest rain effects. Just to show you how good it looks, a few more shots to keep you entertained until its release.

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Community
In our ongoing effort to encourage more of that community vibe, we will be adding a new forum area to showcase your original paint artwork, screenshots, and videos. Additionally, we will also be adding all templates for existing cars to the base install, that way everyone has access to the latest updated templates. Our plan is to streamline the templates and their extra parts so there’s less guesswork and more creative time!

That’s all for the shortest month of the year! See you on track!
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Re: rFactor 2 - Beta Released

Post by Duke »

STUDIO 397 and third-party partner Tony Irfan are proud to announce that the KartSim DLC is now available for rFactor 2.

The first in a series of Kart packs features three tracks and two different types of karts. You can race the X30 UK Senior Kart and Rental Kart on the laser-scanned Paul Fletcher International, Buckmore Park, and Glan Y Gors karting circuits. In the near future, the KartSim team also plans to expand the portfolio of tracks and karts for KartSim with new and exciting content.

The first KartSim pack for rFactor 2 is now available via Steam for USD$25.00.

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Included Tracks
Buckmore Park International Circuit

Buckmore Park Kart Circuit is an MSA approved outdoor kart racing circuit located just off the M2 in Chatham, Kent, England.
Originally owned by John Surtees, who notably won world Grand Prix championships in both Formula One car racing and Grand Prix motorcycle racing. Situated in a woodland between the two motorways, its proximity to London makes it Britain’s busiest circuit.
Buckmore Park is a circuit where many current and past Formula One drivers learned their trade, including Johnny Herbert and F1 champions Jenson Button and Lewis Hamilton, who was originally discovered by Ron Dennis in the 1996 Champions of the Future event held at Buckmore Park.

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Glan Y Gors
With a length of 1.6 km, this karting circuit is one of the largest in the UK. Situated on the A5 between Corwen and Betws-Y-Coed, is one of the UK premier karting venues that started life comparatively late to other S1 race venues. With fast, sweeping uphill and downhill sections combine to make this an extremely fun yet technical challenge. It is no wonder all the young Racing Professionals start their career at GYG Karting.
A lap around the track takes you through corners as a carousel, compression corner, the druid’s complex and the devil’s elbow and contains a straight named after the Snowdon Mountain. The track has various good overtaking opportunities, guaranteeing exciting races!

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Paul Fletcher International
PFI is the UK’s largest outdoor karting circuit based in Grantham, Lincolnshire and caters for various corporate events and race meetings throughout Lincolnshire, Newark, Nottingham and the UK. British, European and World Championships are held at PFI, as well as a club race held once a month by Trent Valley Kart Club who are based at the track. The circuit was built by Paul Fletcher, who still owns it today. Recently in 2011, an extension was added on to the track including a bridge, making it one of a kind.

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Included Karts
There are two karts within the KartSim package, the Iame Senior X30 UK, and a Rental Kart, the karts have been meticulously designed working with partners on physics and drivers for performance and accuracy. These karts are fixed setup, which means they will be great to race online.

Iame Senior X30 UK
The “X30 World” concept is based on the engine X30 125cc and it can be summarized in few words as “real Karting at hand”. Thanks to the characteristics of the engine of simplicity, immediate feeling, reliability, performance and ease of use, with the concept of X30 World, IAME offers a full program for Karting drivers from the year of their 13th birthday (with the correct MSA licence) with an engine that can virtually accompany them along the whole career.
Since the very first introduction on the markets, the X30 has quickly and constantly grown, in the beginning as an engine dedicated to regional series, up to commercial classes promoted under the name of “X30 Challenge”, then introduced as Federative class by federations willing to replace the unsuccessful international classes and recently landed at international level with a European Challenge and an International Final usually held in central Europe.
The success of the X30 categories, basically distinguished in X30 Junior, X30 Senior, and X30 Master, comes from the stability and solidity of the engine and from IAME’s constant aim to provide detailed regulations and low management costs of both the vehicle and the race meetings. In 2013 the X30 is present in more than 15 countries and besides the commercial classes.

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Rental Kart
The Rental Kart is a fixed gearing corporate kart using a 4 stroke engine for karters who enjoy karting as a hobby. They’re equipped with night lights too so you can keep racing them 24/7!

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Re: rFactor 2 - Beta Released

Post by Duke »

Roadmap Update March 2018

And work goes on!… We continue to relentlessly hammer away at the new features and content mentioned in the previous roadmaps. And yes, you’ll be happy to know that this month is no exception: we will still manage to bring you some ‘new’ things to look forward to.

We know how much you all enjoy these road maps, with anticipation of the things to come, and we are just as anxious to share them with you. Keeping you informed of our broad development goals is part of our whole outlook. For us communication is key to making sure we stay on the mark and never get out ahead of our userbase. So as things begin to take shape and features mature, we do our best to show you the progression and previews as soon as we possibly can. Although these are not ‘deadlines’, they should give a you good idea of the things you need to get excited about.

Performance
The graphics optimizations we mentioned in previous roadmaps are still very much ongoing and current. We are investing a considerable amount of resources to get this done. Graphical improvements and optimizations are key to future proofing the rFactor 2 graphics engine. With that in mind, we are taking our time to methodically test each optimization pass to make sure everything stays put and is in working order, and that is why it’s taking a little longer than originally planned. Thanks to our very focused group of dedicated testers who are looking at each area, we are moving forward at a steady pace. We hope to get it out to you ASAP!

VR
And speaking of specifics, VR is one area where we know we need to improve performance, and these optimizations are showing very promising increases in stability and overall framerate.

Triple Screen – Multiview
“Multiview” has to render three separate viewpoints and because of this, it’s inherently more taxing on any system. You’ll be happy to know we have worked on some very specific optimizations that will positively affect multiview performance

Content
After releasing the KartSim pack earlier this week, we wanted to reassure you that we also have new free content coming up:

March 761
We have a solid commitment to historic racing and we hope you find rFactor 2 a good place to experience some of the great cars of the past. With that we are pleased to announce that we will be releasing the March 761 soon for free. Not just that, we have also updated the Brabham BT44 for some excellent head-to-head racing.

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Botniaring
Finnish fans! We have a new track on the horizon. Introducing the Botniaring, located in Southern Ostrobothnia, Jurva, Finland aka Perkeleville (big grin) The track is perfect for our upcoming Tatuus cars as well as many others.

Zandvoort
We have a number of updates to the Zandvoort track that is currently in beta. While we were building the track, it was being repaved and our 0.20 version showed a version of the track as it was then: about three quarters done, with some old asphalt in the final sector. Since then, repaving has been finished and the Audi S curve was remodeled for the DTM races. On top of that we added a lot of detail, for example in the pit area, and at the same time optimized the track. We’re almost ready to put the track through final testing, so we hope to bring you this new version soon!

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Oreca 07 LMP2
After all these free updates above, we are also proud to announce another car that will be part of a new upcoming pack – say hi to the super successful Oreca 07 LMP2! Used across all major endurance series the Oreca LMP2 almost won outright at Le Mans last year with Jackie Chan Racing DC.

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UI
Most of our focus on the UI in the last months has been to include all of the current base features and test them to make sure they function properly. On the surface this might seem like an easy task, but it involves a lot of repeated clicking and trying: the UI is a complex matrix of interdependences that we need to carefully unravel to better understand and improve. So before really jumping in to conquer the new features, we needed a solid base.

As this first phase begins to wrap up and we have a stable functioning UI, our focus is shifting to those specific things that really need to be more user friendly, existing features that were either hidden or not readily visible enough to find and use. Two current examples of this are custom teams/skins and driver swaps.

Using custom skins in the current UI, although functional, has always been a bit obtuse and not straight forward for the average user. We saw a couple of ways to improve this going forward. One is to offer a simpler way to get your skin in game, and avoid the need to alt-tab or even exit rFactor 2, just to see your skin on the car. We’re still playing with a few ways to make this less fiddly. Next, custom ‘team’ creation needs to be more direct and easier to achieve. This involves thinking like a new user and making smart dialogs and using correct terminology, that way there’s no doubts about how naming or hierarchy.

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Driver swaps are another area that works in the current UI, but is complicated to use in practice: having to close rF2 and navigate through somewhat hidden menus is not ideal and prone to user error, and having to assign keys to perform simple actions is a bit overkill. So the new way to do a driver swap is simple. When you join a server, we will ask you if you want to drive a car or join as as a spectator. When you choose the latter and click drive, you’ll get a pop up list of names to choose from, click select and you’re ready to drive once your team mate pits – simple as that!

Competition
The competition structure continues to take shape, and just like the UI we are focusing on the ground work. This means dealing with and squishing any bugs related to the day to day functioning of the competition structure itself. Competitions, as you may know, can span many weeks with multiple events and sessions. It’s therefore important that each code change is throughly tested for reliability and stability. By basing this on the cloud technology of our parent company Luminis we ensure the system will be very scalable, and it is certainly our intention to end up with an open system that can also be used by the many existing leagues out there.

We hope to show you more real soon!

Community
When we did the paint competition a few months ago, we were overwhelmed by the large amount of high quality entries. Encouraged by this, we concluded we wanted to do more of these competitions to showcase the many talented painters in our community. That said, assembling all these skins into packs proved to be a lot of work, so after discussing various options we decided to build some automation to more easily generate new cars, their skins, and all data and preview images associated with them. That is the reason the GT3 skins took us longer, but we’re confident we can release them next week. To give you a preview of all the nice skins you will see, we included a “spotter guide” like overview for you to enjoy!

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Re: rFactor 2 - Beta Released

Post by Duke »

Studio 397 have released not one but two updates to rF2 content today, adding some quick fixes to the new KartSim content and a new set of community liveries to the popular GT3 Power Pack DLC from back in November 2017.

KartSim Update Notes:
KS_X30 v1.13
Rental v1.13

Changelog
Changes to naming parameters
More adjustmentment on seating
Updated Skins
Tyre telemetry switched on as per request from forum
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Re: rFactor 2 - Beta Released

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Re: rFactor 2 - Beta Released

Post by Duke »

STUDIO 397 released a new update build for their rFactor 2 racing title. Besides addressing some issues and enhancements, this new update mainly focuses on performance bringing us some efficiency improvements from a CPU and GPU point of view, resulting in a better overall driving experience.

In the near future, the rF2 development team will continue improving the graphics. Currently, the team is looking at some improvements on how our rain effects look on external cameras, as well as fixing an issue that specifically affects VR in rainy conditions.

To update your install to this latest version you only need to make sure that you’re opted-out of any beta versions you might have been using before. This build also has a new multiplayer version (1.1110) which means we updated the dedicated server. Depending on how you installed that one, you might have to explicitly update it.

ChangeLog
New HUD

Released the newly designed HUD, optimized for Full HD screens and anything else with that aspect ratio, and made it the default. We have removed our old HUD designs from the install.
The “deltabest” indication gets reset at the start of a session only, instead of every time you get in the car. We also make sure to only show it when you’re on a valid lap.
Ensured that the Low-Speed Indicator (LSI) is still transparent.

AI
Fixed an issue with the AI throttle and brake application, which would cause poor acceleration at very low AI strengths.

Sound
Changed the way opponent volume works. If you set them to 100% in the past, they were way too loud. If you turned them down, they would not be as loud as the player car in external cameras. We introduced a damping factor now for the cockpit that can be configured per car and defaults to 0.3 that solves this issue.
The number of engine samples was increased to 12 and the number of transmission samples to 6 to allow much richer sounds for both.

Inputs
Changed the way in which we combine primary and alternate inputs for the throttle, brake, and steering to end up with more consistent behavior for both.
When using keyboard rates for analog, typically used with game controllers, we apply a lot of smoothing which initially results in a fast response, but eventually responds very slowly, making a car hard to control. We’ve designed a new algorithm that works a lot better and is more linear.

Development Corner
We have added some new 64 bit compatible 3D Studio Max 2012 plugins. They are still in “beta” but have been used at Studio 397 for some time now. These should help anyone working on larger scenes. Please note that, in order to improve stability, we strongly recommend updating Max to Service Pack 2.
As we no longer support Max 2010 and 2011, those plugins have now been removed.
We have removed gJED, as we feel the tool in its current state did not meet our quality standards.
The plugin API has been enhanced and bumped to version 8, with improved application lifecycle support. This brings back some of the data we had to remove because it was mixed with DirectX 9 information that we could no longer support. We also added the deltabest time for all cars. The new package and documentation for it will be released on our site soon after this release.

Bugfixes
Fixed the join/leave/join messages and unnecessary reloading of a car when you joined a server with car upgrades selected.
Fixed a bug in our SteamPlugin which accidentally returned the wrong API version, causing the game to try to invoke it wrongly and crash.
Fixed viewer crash on startup.
Fixed the very dark areas on the car in the showroom, which was caused by us not correctly setting up ambient light.
Fixed black screen that some people got when starting the physics (ptool) and tyre (ttool) tools.
Removed a redundant log file from the Steam distribution as it would cause a verify ever on every check.
Fixed two issues with the 32 bits version that crashed in specific circumstances.
Displaying the performance info now works on VR as well.
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Re: rFactor 2 - Beta Released

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Roadmap Update April 2018
This month we released the much anticipated performance upgrades. Judging from the feedback we got, build 1110 has provided most, if not all people a significant improvement. On top of those improvements, we also added several new features, one of which was a refinement of our tyre model, which Michael explained extensively in his blog. In the last couple of weeks we’ve been monitoring our forums and other channels to resolve any remaining issues. As promised, we also intend to address some remaining issues with our rainy conditions. In VR the performance is still relatively low, and viewed from external TV cameras the raindrops, when zoomed in, look too big. Both issues are still on our list for a future update.

We also took part in the Luminis DevCon, a yearly conference that we organize in a big movie theater by developers for developers. Studio 397 was there, and we brought two rigs for people to try rFactor 2. One of them was a prototype of a new monocoque by Bernax that was setup to use VR, the other our office rig with triple screens. As a special guest we had Rudy van Buren, McLaren’s World’s Fastest Gamer, join us for the keynote and answering questions and giving advice all day, and Marcel gave a talk about the future of simracing.

Norma M30 LMP3
Two months ago we announced we had licensed the Norma M30 LMP3 car. Working closely with both Norma and one of the first team to race this car, Duqueine Engineering, we are now in the final stage of production for this car, testing the car on different virtual tracks and comparing its performance with the telemetry and other data we gathered. This car will be one of five in our next car pack, joining the Corvette C7.R and the Oreca 07 LMP2, with two more, yet unannounced GTE cars to come. In fact all five cars are actually in the final stage so pending final approval from the different manufacturers we are getting close to a release.

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Actually, the whole LMP3 class is fairly new, being launched by ACO in 2015, when five constructors were selected to build the chassis with Nissan providing a 420hp engine to power all of them. Norma introduced their car, the M30, in February of 2017, and since the car has been used by a growing number of teams and winning quite a few races they entered in. At Studio 397 we met the guys from Duqueine Engineering in one of their first races with the car at Spa during the ELMS race, and this is where we started to examine the possibility of bringing this car to rFactor 2.

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UI and Competition
On the topic of UI and Competition we are still working hard to finish both, and at this point we really don’t have much more to say other than that both are being tested internally. Some of the things that are currently being tested are the localisation of the interface, which we are basing on open standards to ensure that it will be easy for translators to provide a new version in their own language by leveraging existing tools. On the competition side we are now testing sequences of different types of sessions, ensuring our servers can transition from one to the other and have the results of one session (such as a qualification result) influence the next session (the grid for the start of a race).

Historics
Last week we already showed you the latest screenshots for the March 761, the first car to accompany the Brabham BT44B which has been in development for quite some time and also served as the main character in a whole series of blogs that explain all intricate details of the rFactor 2 physics engine. What we did not say is that we are not stopping there. After these two cars are released, we are going to add another, and we are very proud to announce that this will be the McLaren M23. This car is the one James Hunt drove in and won the championship with in 1976, beating Niki Lauda by just one point! We certainly hope that these cars will please the many fans of historic racing we have!

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That concludes this month, and its roadmap. We have a lot of things in motion at the moment and we’re pushing hard to finish those things so we can share them with you as, believe it or not, we are as impatient as you to start driving! Have a great month!
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Re: rFactor 2 - Beta Released

Post by Duke »

A small but important hotfix has been released for rFactor 2 today...

Addressing several issues with the latest build of rFactor 2, the new update released earlier today is a very welcome surprise to players of this outstanding simulation, clearing up some important bugs that have nagged at the playing experience recently, as well as seemingly adding some nice performance improvements for some who've been suffering with stutter since the last update.

Key highlights of the new build update include a fix for Real Road issues on some stock track content and a crash issue that causes problems when trying to use various content combinations. The new build should download automatically the next time players open their Steam client.

11/05/2018 rFactor 2 Update Notes (Steam Build ID 2759516):
Fixed issues with shadow and texture filtering introduced with performance update.
Fixed Launcher sporadically hanging on verify with certain content.
Fixed live replays not working when 'Record Replay' was set to OFF.
Fixed an issue that caused missing segments of real road on certain tracks.
Fixed missing brake disc glow.
New: Corner and safety workers can now be two separate objects and
animations instead of being one object with two people. Naming conventions for modders.
The new safety workers are called SafetyWorker_001, _002, ... and the animations SB_FLAGDOWN, SB_FLAGHELD, ... similar to the corner worker
New: Puppet mode was added to dev mode for modders. It shows up in the menus and allows you to remotely control certain aspects of a race. You can also drag select cars in the camera view and control them."

Note: For this latest update, if you are already on rFactor 2 Build 1110, server Admins will NOT need to update dedicated servers.
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Re: rFactor 2 - Beta Released

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Roadmap Update May 2018
Over the course of this month we have released a few hotfixes for our fresh 1110 build whilst our team has been working on many of the features we’ve been talking about in the last few roadmaps. We also went to Zandvoort during the Jumbo Racing Days to showcase some of our content to the huge crowds that came to see several racing series and of course appearances from Max Verstappen, Daniel Ricciardo and David Coulthard.
Needless to say, we have plenty to talk about this month, and the first announcement we have is a new hire that starts tomorrow. Now we don’t always announce people that we add to the team and, as a reference, our total team in Studio 397 is about 30 people, currently. With our focus on building the competition infrastructure and releasing that later this year, we welcome René Buttler to the team. He has been working at ESL on projects and esports tournaments with a strong focus on racing simulations, and we are very happy to have him at Studio 397!

Content
Last month we already announced that our next pack would consist of 5 cars. This will be our “Endurance Pack,” and we are ready to announce one of the two previously unannounced GTE cars that will be part of it. All cars are in the final stages of approval by the manufacturers, which is a process we don’t have full control over, but it does indicate we’re getting close to a release now. That said, it is time to announce the Porsche 911 RSR GTE! Ever since the start of Studio 397 we have had a great relationship with Porsche, so we’re very happy to finally be able to share the news. We’ve licensed the very latest spec of this car to race alongside the other GTE’s, and we are confident this car will be a joy to drive. And it certainly looks great!

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Earlier this week, we also visited the offices and test track of Duqueine Engineering again and validated both the Oreca 07 and Norma M30 models in their simulator with their drivers and engineers. We are also including liveries of various teams racing these cars to ensure we end up with a great looking field of cars, as you can see from the shots below.

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That’s of course not all the content we’re working on. There are a several more things under construction.
The March and Brabham cars are close to completion now. We’re adding the final rain and damage effects and doing the driver animations. Physics wise we’re very happy. Each car has it’s own distinctive character, yet they are very competitive. The McLaren is still in the middle of production, so it’s expected to come a bit later.
Those of you who visited us at Zandvoort have seen the progress we made on that track. It’s still not quite finished, but it’s looking better, and we addressed the performance issues that people reported, so we’re in good shape.
For Botniaring, all 3D work is done, and we’re currently working on texturing and optimization. That work and the AI lines will be finished this month. Then we are going to be giving the track its final shakedown before releasing it.
For Sebring we are currently in the middle of adding all the track side objects. As you might know, building a track can be roughly split in two phases. In the first phase we’re building the roads and everything “up to the barriers,” and in the second phase we do everything beyond the barriers and things like AI lines, night lighting and various other details. We’d like to share our current progress with you, bearing in mind that not everything you see here has been properly optimized yet, so “things might change”.

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UI
UI testing and tweaking is still ongoing, and we’re starting to integrate the work on the competition infrastructure into the new UI whilst also making the back-end more robust. Another thing we have started working on is the integration of Motec data logging into the core of the simulation.

Competition
First of all, congratulations to Oli Ellis-Richardson for winning the KartSim hotlap competition! Oli has secured an entry to the SuperOne British eSport Championship and a copy of the KartSim Pro package. In the USF2000 challenge the winner of last years World Fastest Gamer showed that he was still one of the fastest simracers out there: with a 47.443, Rudy van Buren took pole position.

Results:
Rudy van Buren
Joonas Raivio
Jakub Charkot
Robin Pansar
Kevin van Dooren



All of them have won a free pick of any rFactor 2 DLC pack, on top of that Rudy also won €100.
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Re: rFactor 2 - Beta Released

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Studio 397 proudly announced that the 2018 BMW Motorsport BMW M8 GTE will become part of the upcoming rFactor 2 Endurance pack.
To get us all excited, Studio 397 already included some impressive in-game screenshots of the German endurance racer.
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Re: rFactor 2 - Beta Released

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The new five car 'Endurance Pack' DLC will be released tomorrow for rFactor 2, and to celebrate Studio 397 have revealed a new trailer for this exciting pack of cars.

Bringing the BMW M8 GTE to a racing simulation for the first time, the wonderful Porsche 911 RSR GTE, the beastly Chevrolet Corvette C7.R and two Prototypes in the form of the Norma M30 and Oreca 07, the brand new 'Endurance Pack' DLC release for rFactor 2 looks set fair to be one of the most impressive collections of content for the simulation since Studio 397 took control of the game back in 2016.

Making the most of the rapidly improving new DX11 build and graphic output, the new five pack of cars already look the part, and thanks to the advanced physics that the rFactor series has been renowned for in recent years, the odds of these cars living up to their visuals in the handling department remains very high indeed...

The new pack can be purchased from the rFactor 2 Steam Store for £13.15 and will release Friday 15th June.
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Re: rFactor 2 - Beta Released

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Studio 397 has released the new Endurance pack DLC for their rFactor 2 racing simulator.
The car pack contains a nice mix of GTE and LMP endurance cars including the Porsche 911 RSR, BMW M8 GTE, Corvette C7.R, Oreca 07 LMP2 and the Norma M30 LMP3 of which some are wearing real-world liveries. Besides the car models, the car pack also introduces some interesting new features and new physics.
The Endurance pack DLC for Rf2 is available for $17.40USD at the dedicated Steam page. The individual cars from the Endurance pack can also be purchased for $5.80USD each.

Introducing the cars
Our goal with this pack was certainly to offer a wide variety of cars in different classes used in various modern endurance racing series. We ended up picking five widely used cars in three different classes, complementing our earlier GT3 pack. We deliberately did not include an LMP1 car as that class is currently undergoing a transformation, and we feel strongly about providing you with cars that are up to date and future proof. Once the dust settles on the current “super season” we will certainly look at the new cars that emerge! With that said, back to our amazing cars…

Oreca 07 LMP2
The fastest class in this pack is the LMP2 class, and the Oreca 07 is certainly a popular weapon of choice for teams. It combines daring engineering and skillful know-how. The car debuted late 2006 and competed for the first time in the opening round of the 2017 IMSA season. In its first season, it was the winner of the WEC 2017 P2 class and of Le Mans 2017; it is used by several of the leading endurance teams in the world. During various stages we have had feedback from Duqueine Engineering, Dragonspeed and Jacky Chan Racing, and their input was invaluable to making this car.

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Norma M30 LMP3
The Norma M30 LMP3 had a development cycle of 18 months with innovation at its heart. It was homologated to LMP3. The M30 boasts maximum efficiency, optimised performance, which lead it to instantly becoming a strong contender, winning various races in the series it entered in. Cars in this class offer a pure driving experience. Neither anti-lock brakes nor traction control are allowed, and the downforce on these cars combined with the available engine power makes them challenging and rewarding to drive. During the development of this car we collaborated closely with the team at Duqueine Engineering, who raced this car in ELMS and kindly helped us with many aspects of the car’s simulation.

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Porsche 911 RSR
Another iconic car from Porsche, the 911 RSR combines technology and history to create another classic sports car. The car is used in endurance in the GTE class all over the world. Porsche successfully adapted the classic 911 design to make this a mid-engine design, optimizing balance and performance. We are very grateful for the support we got from Porsche in developing this car. It is the very latest spec of this car.

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Corvette C7.R
The Chevrolet Corvette C7.R, built by Pratt & Miller and Chevrolet for competition in endurance racing, has had numerous successes throughout the years, including a famous photo-finish at the 2016 Rolex 24h of Daytona. Corvette won its class at Le Mans eight times and won 107 out of the 202 events they competed in. Our version is the latest spec car, with updated diffuser and rear wing, and it is, of course, the successor to the highly successful C6.R we already have in our simulation.

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BMW M8 GTE
The BMW M8 GTE competes in multiple endurance series, combining cutting-edge technology with sheer beauty to create a car that will set new benchmarks in endurance racing. We are extremely proud to be the first racing simulation to feature this car after seeing the car in action at Spa earlier this year and being able to talk to the team and drivers there.

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New features
In-car traction control

rFactor 2 already featured “driving aids” that provided both traction control and anti-lock brakes, but like all driving aids they are global for all cars in a session. Especially in multi-class racing, and this pack is a good example, it is common to have different classes that might or might not have traction control available. Therefore we decided to add the option for specific cars to feature traction control (and anti-lock brakes) as part of the car, completely separate from any “aids” settings. On top of that, we can configure the exact number of “levels” the real cars have and decide if you can adjust those levels in-car or just in the garage as part of your setup, and even if you can turn it off or not, as some cars have such aids built-in and you can’t even disable them.
For this pack, traction control is available only on the LMP2 and GTE cars, and there are a couple of things you need to know to set it up. First of all, as this is a system that is separate from the driving aids, to make in-car adjustments you need to go to your controller settings and map the following four new keys:

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On top of that, you can also configure these settings in the garage setup:

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As a final note, if you also have driving aids enabled for one of these cars, the effects of both will correctly be combined. For example, if you set traction control to 2 (which is fairly low) in the in-car setting and then turn on the driving aid to “Medium”, the end result will be that you have medium traction control. We expect most servers and people to simply disable those aids for official races though.

Position lights
This pack is not just about content, we also took the opportunity to add some new tech to add to the immersion of multi-class racing. The all new ‘position lights’ on all cars in the this pack will not only show your individual position, they will also show your position in class with color coding. On top of that, the lights turn into a pit stop timer ‘counting up’ when you pit!

The road ahead
New cars and features always trigger the question “what about the existing cars”? Our close collaboration with teams and manufacturers have given us even more detailed insight into the tyres that they are running on these cars. On top of that, our laser-scanned version of Sebring gave us an excellent opportunity to compare data to a 100% accurate track. The data prompted us to make some updates to our model, and since the GT3 cars are using the same tyres, our next step will be to go back to and implement and test the tyres on those cars too, which in general will make them a bit slower.
The same applies to the position lights as well as the in-car traction control and anti-lock brakes, which will be added as features to each individual GT3 car. We don’t have an exact ETA for these changes yet, as we also need to make sure these changes don’t affect the BOP within the class, but we will certainly keep you up to date in our monthly roadmap. We will also add documentation to our website for third parties that wish to implement these new features on their cars, as well as publish example tyres.
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Re: rFactor 2 - Beta Released

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Roadmap Update June 2018
June has been an eventful month. We released the Endurance Pack and we’re still in the middle of the Steam Summer Sale, which discounts the simulation and the different content packs and offers a nice opportunity to complete your collection. Of course we are already looking ahead again and while some of us are taking a well deserved break, others are working on all different areas of the game.

Studio 397 was also invited to the official opening of the virtual Maastricht city racing track. It is not often that one of our community created tracks attracts the local press and the mayor of Maastricht all gathered in a local movie theatre. Even Bono Huis, winner of the Vegas eRace, was there to do a lap. By now the track can be found in our workshop and can freely be downloaded.

Content
We are currently preparing an update to our GT3 pack as we already indicated when releasing the Endurance pack. This update includes the position lights, new in-car traction control and anti-lock brake settings as well as the latest set of tyres. All of those are in, we’re now checking the BOP and doing a few minor fixes.

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For Zandvoort we’ve just finished the night lighting. There are still a few other layouts to complete and obviously we’ve also addressed some of the performance issues that were still present in the latest public release.

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Sebring is in the middle of testing and optimization. As you might have seen from previous screenshots, we are trying to recreate the atmosphere on the track during the yearly 12 hour race. We are also planning a version with more of a “track day” feel in case you want to do some training without everybody watching your every move.

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Rain
When we released our performance update, we already indicated that we were aware that the specific combination of using VR and rain still was causing problems, frame rate wise, and that we would be addressing those in a future update. We are happy to announce that we have found a good solution that gives a significant improvement and we’ll be releasing that next month. This update also includes another visual fix which made the raindrops become too large in external TV cameras. Finally it has a few small fixes that caused the wipers to sometimes skip a frame and not always start in the correct starting position.

UI
We are currently working on a few more important details in the interface. For one we are adding a search function to all places where you select something from a potentially long list of things, such as cars and tracks. We are also improving opponent selection, allowing more fine-grained control over exactly what cars you race. The final bits we are tweaking now are the standings, including the position in class we also use with our position lights.

Community Nights
We all know, racing and especially simracing is not only about competition. It´s also about spending time with friends and teammates and tackle different challenges. We always try to be transparent and close to the community, so we thought it would be great to arrange a date every now and then! The idea for community nights was born. Race among friends and developers, ask some questions or even see a race broadcast and enjoy the thrill of a friendly competition. Who knows, we might also give you a peek at some upcoming content in some of those events. We’ve scheduled our first event on Monday, July 9th at 20:00 CEST. Stay tuned!

Looking Ahead
Earlier this month we visited the Duqueine Engineering headquarters for more simulator testing. Expect a new blog about that in a few weeks time, where we reveal a bit more about how we collaborate. And remember, if you want to have a chat with us, join our Discord server or join one of our servers, running official content.

That’s all for this month. Happy Racing!
Dukester

norbs diplomacy lesson 101: "If I was putting words in your mouth, you'd know."
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Duke
Dukester Maldonado
Dukester Maldonado
Posts: 11436
Joined: Tue Jan 23, 2007 9:33 pm
Location: Melbourne

Re: rFactor 2 - Beta Released

Post by Duke »

rFactor 2 has received a small but important update today, adding much needed performance improvements under wet conditions to the simulation.

Steam Build ID 2919230 - Steam Build ID 2919232 (dedicated server)
Optimized VR performance in rainy conditions.
Fixed windshield wipers showing a slight skip in the animation.
Fixed windshield wipers when OFF showing slightly propped up.
Fixed rain drops appearing too wide on certain resolutions.
Fixed corrupted Flag animations (affecting both official tracks and mods)
Note: Server Admins - you will need to update all dedicated servers by re-running SteamCMD.
Dukester

norbs diplomacy lesson 101: "If I was putting words in your mouth, you'd know."
User avatar
Duke
Dukester Maldonado
Dukester Maldonado
Posts: 11436
Joined: Tue Jan 23, 2007 9:33 pm
Location: Melbourne

Re: rFactor 2 - Beta Released

Post by Duke »

Studio 397 officially released two iconic cars from the golden era of Formula One. The March 761 and the Brabham BT44b bring back Formula racing of the 70’s to classic or even modern racetracks.

March 761
A fragile but rocket-like fast F1 car, designed and manufactured by UK based March Engineering. With a background of designing F2 cars and the experience of many different racing series, March Engineering brought this car into F1 in 1976. An interesting fact is that these cars used a sponsorship that changed from race to race, resulting in many wildly different liveries being used throughout the season.

Subscribe here to get the March 761 on the Steam Workshop

Brabham BT44b
The car used by Brabham in 1975 wasn´t anything extraordinary from just looking at the individual parts. Marrying a Cosworth DFV engine to a Hewland FG gearbox was considered a standard practice that time, so the BT44b didn´t stand out. But the team worked hard not only on improving the reliability of this combination but also on the performance in certain areas, as well as making sure the BT44b features a very low center of gravity. With all these coming together, Brabham managed to have their most successful season since 1969, finishing 2nd in the constructor’s championship.

Subscribe hee to get the Brabham BT44b on the Steam Workshop
March 761
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Brabham BT44b
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Dukester

norbs diplomacy lesson 101: "If I was putting words in your mouth, you'd know."
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