rFactor 2 - Beta Released

[norbs]

Yep. the last hour of my Sebring 6 hour will have to wait. And I just took the lead in the GTE class, but need another pitstop at least.

[norbs]

I think Duke will back me up, these Taatus cars are great fun!

[Duke]

Agree they are most excellent & each have their own unique character.
Had a ball running with norbs & some random AI while hosting a server.
Would make for a great FNF event as they should provide tight close racing.

[norbs]

Let me just add, pissing rain at Brazil was less fun.

[Duke]

Let me just add, pissing rain at Brazil was less fun.

hahaha, true but that's easily fixed by unticking one check-box in the dediserver UI.

[norbs]

https://www.racedepartment.com/threads/ ... -4.170419/

That is a really good read. The first 3 parts were good too.

[norbs]

Mclaren Senna coming https://www.racedepartment.com/threads/ ... ap.171640/

[Duke]

Roadmap Update July 2019

Roadmap-time is one of the best times of the month, even for us! You wonder why?
It gives us the chance to bring together what we worked on, admire screenshots, or just be happy about what we achieved as a team in terms of improvements, new features or content. As we´re developing and working on rFactor 2 basically 24/7, it´s important to also enjoy every little step that we did to make this simulation better. Because in the end, we´re sim racing enthusiasts, just like you!
Alright alright, enough romantic talking about game development, let´s go down to what’s actually happening outside of our continuing work on Nordschleife, UI and the competition system. And yes, it has it all, further improvements, new features and fresh content. 3..2..1.. GO!

A New Future
Ever heard that 3 is the magic number? That´s basically what happened here. Take the knowledge and technology of McLaren (1), mix it with the heritage and meaning of the name Senna (2) and add the GTR (3) badge to deliver a masterpiece. Voilá, introducing the hottest carbon fibre thingy on rubber tyres that mankind has ever tried to tame on track.
Powered by a 4.0 litre twin-turbo V8, this almost demonic piece of joy can skyrocket you onto the first place of nearly any grid around the world. But the McLaren Senna GTR is not just the track-day car that would be outside most people’s budgets, it’s more than that. It’s our chance as a simulation studio to actually try to have a look into the not-so-distant future and create something that could be the pinnacle of the next-gen sports car racing world.
So be aware, if you unleash this beast, you might time travel!




Talking about time travel, the McLaren Senna GTR will be released within the next few weeks.
One could think that with this announcement, we burned up everything we have, especially since 2019 is already half-way through.
But we can assure you, that’s absolutely not the case! There is so much more still to come this year!
And yes, this means that we will also add more rubber tyre thingys that go fast!

Worlds Fastest Gamer 2



We’re super stoked to be supporting Worlds Fastest Gamer again with an incredible prize!
Next week, rFactor 2 drivers will have the chance to qualify for the World’s Fastest Gamer Grand Final via an online time trial run on the Sebring International Raceway course with the Aston Martin GT3, running from August 5 to 18.
The top 20 racers will then do battle in a live-streamed, 40-minute race on August 24th. In addition to earning the chance to chase the full-time real-world racing stint worth more than US$1 million, a US$10,000 prize pool will be up for grabs in the final race. Incredible stuff!!
The winning rFactor 2 driver will join eight racers hand-picked by the World’s Fastest Gamer judging panel plus the winner of the Gear.Club mobile game time trial.
Look out for more details soon. In the meantime, check out the WFG website http://wfgamer.com/

Competition heats up!
While we’re at it, let´s also announce an esports live event with Porsche! Yes, the company that makes all the great race cars we admire. We can´t say more yet, but don´t worry. As soon as the lollipop man lifts, we’re ready to launch more info onto the pitlane. That’s not all, McLaren Shadow kicks off again soon. We will bring you more news on that shortly!

Technical Update
A little under four weeks ago, we hosted the rF24, an endurance race with many high-profile teams and drivers participating at Le Mans. Roughly half-way through we had to red flag the event because of technical issues. Immediately after the event, we released an official statement and started gathering information from all the participants and set out to try and fix these issues with a special task force. It’s time for an update now.
In the months leading up to the event, we were already investigating and improving issues some people were having with the physics calculations “freezing”. In investigating that issue, we built a very detailed “stopwatch” system that we could use internally to exactly pinpoint where these delays occurred. We learned a lot from the “logs” that our community submitted and found multiple issues. For one, our timing, code that had been part of rFactor 2 and many ISI-based sims before, turned out not to be the most efficient and reliable way to run something at 400 Hz (and 2400 Hz for the tyres). We rewrote that code, and after several stages of testing these revisions made it into the release. A second issue we discovered had to do with plugins that were taking too much time. We give plugin authors a lot of power, running plugins directly as part of the physics thread, but as you know, with great power comes great responsibility, and unfortunately in some cases, plugins don’t behave nicely. We’ve blacklisted a few plugins and are talking to authors to help them improve. A third issue was in how we sometimes talked to Steam, which has led us to rewrite that code and convert it from a plugin to internal code. We are still diagnosing more rare issues, and there is a forum thread that explains how you can submit your logs for review.
Now during the event, we ran into issues that have plagued us before, but never this severely and never in a way that we could reproduce. However, we now had so many people reporting issues that we started to see some patterns, so the first step we took was to analyze exactly what had happened. We took our time, collected a lot of data from participants, for which we are very grateful, and then started to try to reproduce specific problems.
The first issue we could reproduce were join lags. Someone would (re)join the server, and this issue then propagated to all other clients. We discovered that this would happen whenever someone rejoined the server using a car with different upgrades from the ones he used before (such as forgetting to select the low downforce upgrade). Our first fix was to add code that would not propagate such (wrong) upgrades to other clients. We then quickly confirmed that these join lags were indeed gone, which was a big improvement since these were causing all kinds of other issues as well.
When exploring this first issue, we discovered that it was currently possible to rejoin not just with the wrong upgrades, but even with the wrong livery or even the wrong car, and this was not handled correctly in the code. We saw this cause issues where you ended up with the wrong set of physics because of the upgrades and the server re-applying the same setup you had before, but to a different car. We also saw issues where a car would appear in the garage for some, but on the road for others, and a few other variations that were all caused by the same problem. We decided to solve this in two places. First of all, we now double check when you rejoin that you indeed have exactly the same car, livery and upgrades again. If you don’t, rather than letting it cause problems, the server will boot you and tell you why it did so. Secondly, we added code to the client that, when you connect to a server, will check if your intention is to rejoin. If it is, the server will now tell you directly which car, livery and upgrades to use, and we will simply show you that car in the UI instead of letting you choose anything. We also decided to make the rejoin check a bit more lenient in that you still need to rejoin with the same driver, but this driver is now identified via his Steam ID, meaning that in the case of a hardware failure, if you have multiple installs of rFactor 2, you can even take over on a different client and resume the race.
Another, slightly unrelated, issue we looked into was loading times. The good news here is we’ve found some improvements and our upcoming release will roughly halve those loading times. We’ve seen numbers being reported by testers indicating a 40-50% improvement.
Other issues still on our “fix list” are a somewhat smaller lag some people are getting when someone leaves the server as well as a few usability issues, such as the fact that if you got a disconnect right before you made a pitstop, you basically get a car with no fuel when you rejoin, and you have to try and drive a lap first (which will likely fail).
Right now our intention is to release the first of a series of updates as soon as this rejoin process is “bullet proof”. We are going through a series of tests, each with a bigger set of users, until finally we are confident that we squashed this. Our current estimate is that this first update will go live sometime next week. We won’t stop there, and remain committed to making sure everybody has a good experience racing rFactor 2. Of course, we will also do a re-run of the rF24 when we feel these issues have all been resolved and tested.

Simexpo
We’re looking forward to once again attending Sim Expo this year at the Nürburgring, as usual with a few surprises up our sleeves! Make sure you come and visit us and say hi!

[Duke]

Ah what... Coming to a console near you???

[Duke]

And the answer to the above is....

Studio 397 have confirmed the awesome Aston Martin Vantage GTE will be arriving for rFactor 2 soon!
Revealing the meaning behind the cryptic 'a fourth player has joined the race' teaser recently released by the Dutch studio, today Studio 397 have confirmed the upcoming arrival of the epic Aston Martin for the GTE category of the simulation - joining the already released BMW M8, Porsche 991 RSR and Corvette C7R.

[Cutter]

Finally got it working.
Hmmm lots to sort out, but a step forward.

[Duke]

Having recently revealed the Aston Martin Vantage GTE will be arriving for rFactor 2 in the very near future, Studio 397 have dropped a new Balance of Performance (BoP) update for the impressive four car DLC.
Although much of the new update is focussed on BoP changes for the three GTE cars, the LMP2 specification Oreca also receives a little love, with quite a few changes brought to the premier prototype car within the simulation.

Check out the changes below:
Porsche 991 RSR GTE v1.93
BoP (Balance of Performance)
Fixed headlight glass reflections

Chevrolet Corvette C7.R GTE v2.01
BoP (Balance of Performance)

BMW M8 GTE v1.73
BoP (Balance of Performance)

Oreca 07 LMP2 v1.69
Made the car a bit heavier to better correspond with real data.
Further adjustments to correct engine power/torque output
Adjusted downforce overall
Further improvements and adjustments to Le Mans aero package
Corrected engine inertia
Corrected gear changes that were slightly too short (gear shifts)

[Duke]

Both in the same pack, instabuy by me!!!

The “Two Strong” pack brings us the Aston Martin Vantage GTE and the McLaren Senna GTR for AUD $11.44.

[w00dsy]

Jimmer done a video on the Senna

[Duke]

And it is friggin insane & crazy!!!

[Duke]

Release of Build 1114

[Duke]

[Duke]

Roadmap Update August 2019

Roughly a week later than normal, we bring you the monthly roadmap for August. Obviously we were at the SimRacing Expo last weekend, where we met a lot of you and showed off a pre-release version of the Porsche GT3 Cup car and the Nürburgring. Both are scheduled for a release in roughly two weeks from now, pending final approvals. But we have a lot of other news to share with you too, so let’s get started!



Code Updates
After the first technical update last month, we have now released another one that addresses the “leave lags” that people were experiencing in some circumstances. Specifically when someone with a car with non-standard upgrades left the server, this would cause a lag that propagated to all other clients. Our latest update fixes that. Next on our list are some smaller usability issues. We are also still analyzing any freezes that specific clients are having.

The rest of our development team is working hard on finishing the UI we previewed at the SimRacing Expo. If you missed our live broadcast on Twitch on Sunday, check it out below.



We want to thank everybody for providing a lot of comments on this new UI. Just to clarify where we are with this. Our first release is a starting point for many more tweaks and improvements, so if you don’t see your favorite improvement yet, don’t worry, things will evolve!

With the new UI, we are also going to release the first version of our competition system, and although we did not demo any of that in the video we did at the SimRacing Expo, we will start showing it in the weeks to come.

Our graphics developers in the meantime are working on some more fundamental changes to the lighting and the way our shaders work. The move to PBR triggered a few other issues that we are fixing right now and at the same time we are improving how our shaders work, by streamlining the number of different shaders we have and making new ones that can be customized a lot more by artists. Once these things are done, we are continuing our work on cockpit shaders. Prototypes for that were very encouraging.

Content
For those of you who could not attend the SimRacing Expo we have some more shots of the Porsche GT3 Cup car. The car is officially still a “Work In Progress” but as you can see, it’s coming along nicely. Obviously we are already planning new content beyond the things that will be in your hands in a few more weeks, but we’ll save that for another roadmap.







That’s all for this month. We’ll be back in roughly three weeks with next month’s roadmap which will be back on schedule. In the meantime we would like to wish everybody a lot of fun simracing, and stay safe!

[Duke]

Studio 397 have released a couple of minor updates to rFactor and their 2019/20 'Gen2' Formula E content recently.
Nothing major or groundbreaking & although small in size, the good news is the latest build appears to have addressed one of the more difficult to pin down freezing issues experienced by some players, a problem that apparently only occurs intermittently for certain build installs.
Studio 397 have also updated their 2019 'Gen2' FIA Formula E content - adding liveries for the new for next season works Porsche team, as well as making minor improvements to the cooling of the cars.
rFactor 2 V1.1115 Notes:
Improvements and bug fixing for the newly integrated Steam plugin. This includes a fix for a freeze that would occur at 33 minutes into a session, for some users.
Fixed player count in the matchmaker.
It is worth noting that server admins must update all dedicated servers.

Gen2 Formula E v1.17 Notes:
Added Porsche 2020 liveries
Adjustment for slightly more cooling

[Duke]

It out finally!!!

The new Nürburgring Nordschleife track for the rFactor 2 is available via the dedicated Steam page for $19.40AUD.
Also make sure to check out the awesome writeupabout the various Sections of the Nordschleife in which Studio 397 summarizes a lap around the Nordschleife on a section by section basis, giving you a little history and advice on each.

[Duke]

[Duke]

Studio 397 have now released the Porsche 911 GT3 Cup car which is the perfect weapon to attack the Green Hell released yesterday.
The new Porsche 911 GT3 Cup car for rFactor 2 is available via the dedicated Steam page for a very modest $8.08AUD

[Duke]

Roadmap Update September 2019

Traditionally, September has been a busy month for us again. Since our last update, a little of three weeks ago, we’ve been at the International Motor Show (IAA) in Frankfurt, where we were at the spectacular Porsche booth and showed off rFactor 2 and the brand new Formula E 2020 car and Porsche livery. No less than six high-end simulators were driven by people of the audience, simracers, influencers and both Porsche factory drivers, Neel Jani and Andre Lotterer. As soon as we were back, we shifted our focus on final preparation of the Nürburgring and Porsche 911 GT3 Cup car. I guess a lot of you are still driving these right now, but let’s take a brief look at what the future will bring!

McLaren Shadow – Season 2
It’s the time of the year again to see who is the fastest rFactor 2 driver to represent us in the finals of the yearly McLaren Shadow competition! As you may remember, two years ago Rudy van Buren won the first McLaren esports event, at the time still called World’s Fastest Gamer. Last year, Nuno Pinto was the runner-up, so we have a good track record!



Qualifiers are open right now, and the top 20 lap times will be entered into the live broadcast race on the 13th October – so set up your McLaren Senna GTR and get practising! The winner of the rFactor 2 round will also win a tour of the McLaren Technology Centre, and an awesome Sunday Grandstand ticket at Silverstone 2020, including flights and accommodation. Do not worry if you aren’t in the top 20 however, by simply doing a lap you will be entered into the draw to win some of the following:

2x Sunday grandstand tickets 2020 season for a race of the participants choice (Not including travel or accommodation);
5x McLaren caps;
5x McLaren T-shirts signed by Lando Norris.
There that sounds great! To enter check our guide here for the McLaren Shadow rFactor 2 qualifiers.

Content
Both the Nürburgring and Porsche 911 GT3 Cup car will see further updates. The track will get a few more layouts to complete all possible combinations and the car will get more liveries as well as a “VLN” upgrade. In the meantime we are obviously already working on new content and licenses, but it’s a bit too early to reveal anything about those, so we’re just going to drop a hint that we’ll do more on different layouts in the future!





Code
In July we gave you a technical update on some of the fixes we are working on to make the multiplayer and endurance racing more bullet proof. By now we have fixed all the issues that we have since discovered and we will continue to investigate any new reports coming in. At the same time, focus is shifting back to completing the new UI and competition system. We are working towards a public beta release, and we’re confident that we can announce a release date for that in next month’s roadmap.

On the graphics side, we’ve just finished an internal rewrite of our shader system. This is mainly of interest to content authors. It makes their lives a lot easier. In short this change is about creating less shaders that can more easily be configured through optional features and texture maps, instead of having a lot of specialized shaders. In the end this gives authors more overview and an easier workflow to make changes and optimize the materials they need.



Our next focus is on some additional improvements to our lighting system. This is a process that starts with a validation and research phase as we want to really review the whole system from the ground up to make sure all calculations are being done correctly and to current standards. At this point we are not sure yet what the outcome of this will be visually, but at the very least we will be sure everything’s mathematically sound, and we expect some (subtle) improvements as the outcome of this process.

That’s it for this month, or rather the last three weeks since the last roadmap. We wish you all a lot of fun racing rFactor 2!

[Duke]

Roadmap Update October 2019

Hot on the tail of the Halloween Sale, we’re here to present you another monthly roadmap. As usual we have a lot going on and some juicy announcements we’re sure you’ll salivate over. Every month, we work in many diverse areas – that’s why the roadmap exists: we sew it all together and deliver it in a neat little package for you to digest. So let’s get started, you know the drill!

rF24h the Rerun – start your engines!


The fight for the endurance crown on the iconic Le Mans Circuit isn’t over for this year, and as promised previously, we are bringing back the rF24h event for the official rerun. France is calling on the 9th of November for the best of the best to once again take on the challenge.
One might say that a rerun isn’t a thrilling thing to announce, but we are sure you’ll get excited about this one. To ensure that the endurance battle will be at the top of its game and to honor the effort and time the top teams from around the globe put into our big events, we decided to come up with a juicy prize pool that should get every single driver to strive for nothing short of victory.
The 2019 rF24h – Le Mans Circuit will offer a total prize pool of €15.000! This is split into our two classes as follows:
LMP 2:
1st place €3.500
2nd place €2.500
3rd Place €1.500
GTE:
1st place €3.500
2nd place €2.500
3rd Place €1.500
That is a big chunk of money right there for the best teams in the simracing world to grab! As this is a rerun, teams from the first iteration of this year who confirmed their attendance are set for this race as well. Remaining spots will be given out with a small qualifier event to make sure we have a full grid that we will all enjoy watching.
Talking about watching, of course we will broadcast our major event as we did for the previous one. So gather your friends, drinks and chips and head on over to http://www.twitch.tv/rfactorlive from the 9th – 10th of November to witness simracing at its best.
Not much more to say other than that we can’t wait to hear the screaming sounds of cars throughout the night as drivers are battling not just their opponents but also themselves as the clock is moving on.

LEMANS 66 – new partner for the rF24h
The announcement of the return of the rF24h – Le Mans Circuit isn’t the only exciting news we want to share with you in this month’s roadmap. When looking for partners for our events, we want to make sure that they fit right in – no artificial ways of connecting them to what we do and love. With “Le Mans 66 – Gegen jede Chance” (the German language version of the movie ‘Le Mans 66’) we found just the right partner for this major rFactor 2 event. In case you live under a rock or behind the moon on the right side (same for everyone that lives on the left side or down the road), let us quickly inform you what this is all about. As you can probably tell by the title already, the main focus of the new movie by 20th Century Fox is the story around the iconic Le Mans race back in 1966, for which American car designer Carroll Shelby (Matt Damon) and driver Ken Miles (Christian Bale) team up with Ford to battle Ferrari for the top spot at the prestigious endurance event. Based on a true story, this movie highlights the heroes behind this major achievement in motorsport, just like the heroes and their stories in our events.
The movie will be released on the 14th of November in cinemas across Europe, which gives us enough time to celebrate this release in and around rFactor2. “Le Mans 66 – Gegen jede Chance” will not just be our main sponsor for the rF24h – Le Mans Circuit, we will also get some hotlap challenges running (only for Germany) until the release of the movie, where you can win tickets to watch this epic battle unfold on the big screen yourself.
As a result of this partnership, don’t be surprised if your daily launch of rFactor 2 looks slightly different (wink)
We are very proud of the chance to partner up with 20th Century Fox and the “Le Mans 66 – Gegen jede Chance” movie to get people excited about everything around fast cars and thrilling races!



New User Interface
We’ve been teasing the new UI for what seems like ages, and you’ve been waiting patiently on the sidelines for “that day” to come. All along the way, you’ve been part of the development process through sneak previews and updates in our monthly roadmaps. To keep you in the know, we’ve shared our progress in as much detail as possible. The challenges and the overall complexity we faced required a steady and determined approach to get this very essential set of new features firing on all cylinders.
But all things need to eventually see the light of day, so we are now “revving the engine” with intent! We’re proud to be launching the first ‘public beta’ of the UI in mid-December – it’s your chance to finally get your hands on it to test drive!
This first public beta will allow us to gauge two important things. Firstly, how well the system is working for everybody in terms of performance and stability. Secondly, and this is an important step for us, on how you want this system to evolve. By collecting this data based on your participation, we will be able to systematically improve the system in the months to come. Our goal is to make sure the whole system is robust, and then make it the default. When that happens, we will also switch our releases to 64 bit only.

Competition
Expect the first public beta to not yet include the new competition system. We simply did not want to throw too many things at you at once. By December, we will be in a good position to test the comp system, and rest assured that there will be a steady stream of updates from the first public beta onward.
The first steps will include testing both the “mechanics” of the different competition formats, as well as collecting data based on your participation so we will be able to test out our ‘driver rating’ algorithms. Here too, your personal feedback will be a crucial element in deciding how we go forward and which particular improvements we focus on during the next phase of development. To show you an in-development sneak peek of the competition system, here’s a look at the current front-end.





Content
On the content side of things, we are uber busy working on new top secret projects, so we can’t announce anything just yet.
In the meantime, here’s a snap update we’ve done for the Nissan GT500 to bring it in line with the new materials! We can’t wait to see your new skin creations on this enigmatic Japanese beast! Look out for this update to come down in the next few days.






And in other news, the Nürburgring is the track that keeps on giving! There are three new layouts incoming in the next few days: two ‘Sprint’ layouts (with and without chicane), these are shortened versions of the GP layout, and of course the epic full ‘Endurance’ layout that combines most of the GP layout as well as the full Nordschleife.





That’s it for this month! Happy racing and until the next one!

[r8response]

Doesn't matter what settings I change in rF2. I never get it too look that good.