Last week we hinted already at some new developments. Today we’ve deployed a few updates to the code as well as an extra competition. A qualifier for the first BMW M2 round of season 2. In the upcoming days we will be running a daily qualification session next to the other competitions that are still ongoing. We also made sure to update our GT3 series after the BOP that got released last evening.

Next week we will be launching new competitions, and we are still looking at which parts of our upcoming GT challenge series we can now run as part of the regular competitions. We will certainly elaborate a bit more about that in next week’s blog!

We will also be looking at our roadmap in general in the upcoming monthly roadmap, so for the rest of this one, we’ll focus on some of the questions that came in this week. If your question is not yet on the list, don’t worry, we’ve moved a few to future roadmaps.

Q&A

Are there any plans to give out trophies or awards during the competition? I’m thinking of trophies or awards for a pole position, a win, a podium finish, the fastest lap in the race etc. I think that would also excite many newcomers and keep them interested. It could also contribute to the ratings in the ranking system.

wmann

It’s an interesting idea. We did plan to offer extensive statistics, but this might be a nice addition on top of that.

It would also be nice to be able to see the profile of the driver in this context (for example in the ranking list). If this is enriched with laps, completed, races and placings and the like, that would be very nice.

MarcG

That is certainly planned, the profile being the starting point for exploring your (or someone else’s) statistics and achievements.

On a side note, we actually need a punishment system unfortunately, the last few races have been sabotaged each time by a rider (the same on all races) who then waited for others on the track to “take them out”. Unfortunately, it is assumed that there are no such idiots, but this is a misjudgement.

wmann

We do need that. I don’t think we misjudged that, it’s still being developed and tested. Chances are high we’ll come with some experiments in some upcoming competitions.

I feel like in iRacing, after the race you’re able to watch your replay for a lot longer before the session kicks you (does it ever kick you out?). Would it be possible to have something like that in these competition races? A lot of times I like to watch my replay and especially analyse certain parts, but the session ends way too early for that and I have to reload the replay if I want to do that, which I lose the motivation to do because of another load time

Kaashif

At some point after a session we shut down our servers and that is a signal for the client to go back to the main menu. We could consider keeping the client in the (disconnected) session, but if you can’t be bothered to load the replay (again) I doubt you will want to spend much time reviewing it anyway. So honestly I don’t see a huge need for this. Of course, we can agree to disagree on this.

Would it be possible to have not only personal rating (as it is planned) but also team rating. For example there could be both ratings for temporary or permanent teams. For temporary teams it could be the mean value of all participants which would help in registering a team for a special event like 24h of Daytona, Le Mans, Nürburgring etc without having similar problems of iRacing where the highest ranked driver registers a team. As for permanent teams, it would rate a team as a whole in the competition system. I can see a few ways to implement it, but I would like to hear if you have something similar in mind already.

Robert

Our plans are to introduce the concept of a team in the context of individual competitions, where the actual competition will have constraints on what is and is not allowed when a team of drivers signs up with an entry. At that point we could certainly also add a constraint based on some combination of the individual ratings of the drivers in that team. We want to remain as flexible as possible here.

Would something like notification system for your selected “Nemesis” be feasible? What I mean by that is we would have a way to select certain individuals from either our friend’s list on steam or even directly a random person from online rankings in competition system that we would like to be notified of their progress, perhaps fastest lap time set in Hot Lap competition? For example, you are running in an offline session, and you get a pop-up that your “Nemesis Rich Richardson III” has just beat your time in HL standings. It would be a fun and interactive way to motivate you to come back and beat a time set by your friend and have banters about it.

Robert

I think that’s a great idea! We obviously planned to allow you to track your (steam) friends, but this sounds like a fun addition to that.

Would it be reasonable to also have a system that would allow you to download/watch replays from other people in such Hot Lap competitions? Like top 5-10 places automatically upload their laps to the public area where a person could just click from menus and have a quick look how person XYZ deals with his/her attempt to set the best lap time.

Robert

Yes. We keep those around, so we could offer ways to download (parts of) them.

Could we have a support system in place similar to rFactor’s competition that allows quick renting a server with selected content for a certain amount of time to host perhaps a quick event for friends without having to set it on your own machine?

Robert

Further down the line, yes, either as part of the competition system or as a stand-alone system. We are similarly also toying around with some ideas to allow leagues to use this system.

For when the use of skins in the competition system, would attract many more people, teams, photos etc, it is one of the strong points that attracts the community, being able to see their skin or see the skin of some other driver and motivate yourself and know what team it is.

Adrian Blasco

We are still looking into the best way(s) to do this.

I’ve been MIA these last 2 weeks in the Competition system because I have bitten off FSR pre-season and testing to join a VEC team. It made me think that if the CS used a car and track combo that’s the next round of such major leagues that a few people practising might jump in for a jolly. For example Sebring is coming up in VEC so Sebring in the GTEs for example.

davidporeilly

Certainly an interesting idea. Something we would have to discuss with such leagues, also because often they use their own BOP and/or content builds, so we’d have to make sure that those would be aligned too.

Follow up on this, I know there has been talks before about leagues on the comp system. With how stuff is like now, do you see a possibility for leagues like VEC (who use official content only and is run by the amazing Jimmi who is part of S397) or for example FSR, which uses official tracks and an original formula car, to be run inside this same system? Maybe also fun to have Jimmi his stance on this.

Remco Majoor

I will pass this question on to Jimmi as well, maybe he can respond next week. As I mentioned above, we are certainly looking at how to integrate leagues (that stick to “legal” content).

I don’t know if it has been mentioned before, but 5 minutes is a tight window to hit when dealing with ‘issues’. And currently there are always issues. At the moment each new circuit pretty much means writing off the first race or qualifying session that I join and then making meticulous preparation for the next on the basis of what problems I discover in the first.

benborp

Yes. We are considering longer sessions. At the same time, people also want to race, so this is a bit of a trade-off.

Is it possible to have a rookies’ competition online separate to the current one?

cristianuk

How would you define a “rookie” in this context and what would be the purpose of only allowing them and not everybody else. Sure we can have entry criteria for competitions, I’m just not sure what you want to achieve here.

Considering the amount of people that complain and already do not drive a series because they need to own all tracks in that series, why not make a middle ground? Series that are more for pickup racing (the ones that will run every 2 hours in the future for example) have like a new mod every track (all the free tracks in 1 mod), and the series that are more aimed at league style races, like for example the GT3 challenge (where it’s wanted that people drive the full season) everyone needs all the content to sign up. This way you won’t lock out the people that just want to drive one certain combo, but not the entire series, and it keeps peeps who join the more league style races more committed to driving all tracks that season.

Remco Majoor

I think the middle ground we have now is to also have competitions that don’t require paid content. Fragmenting the competition by having people only join part of it, apart from all the extra rfmods it generates, sounds like a bad idea. We want to encourage people to participate from A to Z. We might offer shorter, simpler competitions if that ends up what people want. Or more special, short events. Time will tell.

I would like to see some kind of career progression. Make a skip barber series, top half of the leader board can go for a USF2000 series, and go like that through PM18 until the Indy or something like that with Clio/Megane/GT3 Cup/GT3.

Juninho Tilambucano

That’s planned by having competitions that you can only sign up for if you meet certain criteria. We will obviously have to see how this works out, if enough people would want to go through such “ladders” but I think it would be a cool feature.

Today we are pleased to release a brand-new Balance of Performance (BoP) update for our extensive collection of GT3 specification cars within rFactor 2.

The new update is available now and aims to further close the performance differential between the various cars within the GT3 class in rFactor 2, as well as introducing a new fix developed to improve the behaviour of the cars when following closely in the slipstream – an unexpected behavioural trait that has particularly manifested itself when in proximity of another car through the Eau Rouge / Raidillon complex of corners at Spa-Francorchamps.

rFactor 2 | GT3 Bundle Steam Store: Click Here.

Why have a BOP?

he idea of a Balance of Performance in GT racing is nothing new, the desire to engineer close performance between a number of different brands and engineering principles has been a technique applied by real world motorsport championships for a number of years. Born from a desire to ensure a racing series can enjoy close racing from a rich collection of varied machinery, whilst preventing excessive manufacturer spending in order to gain a performance advantage, the application of Balance of Performance is often a thorny topic of conversation amongst drivers and teams alike. 

The same can be applied to the world of virtual racing, where parameters such as weight, power and fuel are just some tools used to ensure each car of a given category has comparable performance over a single lap or longer stint. This doesn’t mean the cars will produce identical performance characteristics, far from it in fact, as inherently some designs will carry their own unique advantages and disadvantages – not to mention the driving characteristics of that particular machine, and how that plays into the strengths and preferences of an individual driver.

rFactor 2 | Ferrari 488 GT3 EVO Steam Store: Click Here.

Here at Studio 397 we go to great lengths to ensure our respective BOP adjustments offer a fair, rewarding and even playing field across the many cars currently available in the GT3 category of the simulation. Using a mix of physics data, performance telemetry and of course countless laps on the track by a number of drivers of different skill levels, we aim to apply performance BoP to each of the 13 GT3 cars that allows the player to have a fair and reasonable chance to mix it at the front of the field in any given car – just like in real life!

What changed in the new BOP?

Of course, from a performance point of view the new update aims to further refine the outright speed differential between our GT3 class of cars, adding or reducing performance across the 13 different models to ensure a level of parity can be achieved in regard to overall lap time and longer stint behaviour. Does this mean we are less likely to see the Calloway C7 GT3-R run away with things at the front of the field in GT Pro? Yes, I think it would be fair to say the days of OP behaviour for the big American muscle car have been concluded with this new update!

All this aside, we’ve also taken the opportunity to have a look at the behaviour of the cars themselves with this new build, and have used this new update to address both the aerodynamic loss behaviour behind another car, and also the potentially excessive ability to rotate the car by sliding all four tyres through a corner in an exaggerated fashion. We’ve paid attention to the way yaw aero interacts with the car physics for this new build, adjusting some parameters and characteristics on each of the cars that we believe should make for a more stable, and ultimately smoother driving experience behind the wheel. 

We have also used this update as an opportunity to look at how the rear diffuser responds to ride height and circuit proximity when on track, which should result in reducing the sometimes excessive snap oversteer encountered when players ‘bottom out’ (hit the floor of the car on the track surface) – hopefully leading to a more consistent and manageable driving experience in a wider range of specific conditions.  

GT3 February BOP Update Notes

Aston Martin Vantage GT3 v1.87

• BoP adjustments: +5kg weight penalty, -1% engine power.
• New values for draft lifts (FW, RW and diffuser).
• Modifications to yaw aero response (affects sliding sideways).
• Tweaks to diffuser stalling parameters (the car is less snappy now, when bottoming out).
• Reduced slipstreaming effects on drag (lower speed gain when drafting).
• Default setup: -1 to rear wing.
• Recalculated fuel consumption.

Audi R8 GT3 2018 v1.89

• BoP adjustments: -20kg weight penalty.
• New values for draft lifts (FW, RW and diffuser).
• Modifications to yaw aero response (affects sliding sideways).
• Tweaks to diffuser stalling parameters (the car is less snappy now, when bottoming out).
• Reduced slipstreaming effects on drag (lower speed gain when drafting).
• P4 is new default the rear wing,
• Adjusted drivetrain losses (resulting in slightly more engine power on the wheels).
• Adjusted aero drag.
• Default setup: P4 rear wing, +1 to front and rear ARB, +0.352deg to rear toe in, +2 to TC, +14 to differential preload, -0.5deg to rear camber, +1 rear springs.
• Recalculated fuel consumption.
  

Audi R8 GT3 2019 v1.61

• BoP adjustments: -20kg weight penalty.
• Adjusted total inertia, tweaks to default setup to make the car more stable.
  New values for draft lifts (FW, RW and diffuser).
• Modifications to yaw aero response (affects sliding sideways).
• Tweaks to diffuser stalling parameters (the car is less snappy now, when bottoming out).
• Reduced slipstreaming effects on drag (lower speed gain when drafting).
• P4 is new default the rear wing.
• Adjusted drivetrain losses (resulting in slightly more engine power on the wheels).
• Adjusted aero drag.
• Default setup: P4 rear wing, +1 to front and rear ARB, +0.352deg to rear toe in, +2 to TC, +14 to differential preload, -0.5deg to rear camber, +1 to rear springs.
• Recalculated fuel consumption.

Bentley Continental GT3 2020 v1.23

• BoP adjustments: -20kg weight penalty.
• New values for draft lifts (FW, RW and diffuser).
• Modifications to yaw aero response (affects sliding sideways).
• Tweaks to diffuser stalling parameters (the car is less snappy now, when bottoming out).
• Reduced slipstreaming effects on drag (lower speed gain when drafting).
• Adjusted drivetrain losses (resulting in more engine power on the wheels).
• Adjusted aero drag, about 0.5% forward aero balance shift.
• Default setup: +1 to TC.
• Recalculated fuel consumption.
  

Bentley Continental GT3 2017 v2.89

• BoP adjustments: +2% engine power.
• New values for draft lifts (FW, RW and diffuser).
• Modifications to yaw aero response (affects sliding sideways).
• Tweaks to diffuser stalling parameters (the car is less snappy now, when bottoming out).
• Reduced slipstreaming effects on drag (lower speed gain when drafting).
• Fixed damper travel to bump stops (15mm more on front and 11mm on rear).
• Increased maximum packer stack to 40mm.
• Tweaks to inertia and center of gravity.
• Readjusted aero balance and drag.
• Lower (slower) steering rack ratio.
• Adjusted differential locking rates.
• Default setup: brake bias F54.2%, differential preload 120Nm.
• Recalculated fuel consumption.

BMW M6 GT3 v1.79

• BoP adjustments: +10kg weight penalty.
• New values for draft lifts (FW, RW and diffuser).
• Modifications to yaw aero response (affects sliding sideways).
• Tweaks to diffuser stalling parameters (the car is less snappy now, when bottoming out).
• Reduced slipstreaming effects on drag (lower speed gain when drafting).
• Adjusted drivetrain inertia (resulting in slightly less engine power on the wheels).
• Adjusted aero drag.
• Recalculated fuel consumption.

Callaway C7 GT3-R v3.01

• BoP adjustments: +10kg weight penalty, -1% engine power.
• New values for draft lifts (FW, RW and diffuser).
• Modifications to yaw aero response (affects sliding sideways).
• Tweaks to diffuser stalling parameters (the car is less snappy now, when bottoming out).
• Reduced slipstreaming effects on drag (lower speed gain when drafting).
• Default setup: +1 to default rear wing.
• Recalculated fuel consumption.

Ferrari 488 GT3 v1.45

•  new values for draft lifts (FW, RW and diffuser).
•  modifications to yaw aero response (affects sliding sideways).
• Tweaks to diffuser stalling parameters (the car is less snappy now, when bottoming out).
• Reduced slipstreaming effects on drag (means, less speed gain when drafting).
• Adjusted aero drag.
• Recalculated fuel consumption.

McLaren 650S GT3 v2.85

• New values for draft lifts (FW, RW and diffuser).
• Modifications to yaw aero response (affects sliding sideways).
• Tweaks to diffuser stalling parameters (the car is less snappy now, when bottoming out).
• Reduced slipstreaming effects on drag (lower speed gain when drafting).
• Adjusted drivetrain losses (resulting in more engine power on the wheels).
• Rebalanced aero balance and drag.
• Fixed incorrect damper travel to bump stops.
• Default setup: P4 rear wing.
• Recalculated fuel consumption.

McLaren 720S GT3 v1.75

• New values for draft lifts (FW, RW and diffuser).
• Modifications to yaw aero response (affects sliding sideways).
• Tweaks to diffuser stalling parameters (the car is less snappy now, when bottoming out).
• Reduced slipstreaming effects on drag (lower speed gain when drafting).
• Adjusted drivetrain losses (resulting in more engine power on the wheels).
• Adjusted aero drag.
• Fixed incorrect damper travel to bump stops.
• Recalculated fuel consumption.

Mercedes AMG GT3 v2.95

• BoP adjustments: -10kg weight penalty,
• New values for draft lifts (FW, RW and diffuser).
• Modifications to yaw aero response (affects sliding sideways).
• Tweaks to diffuser stalling parameters (the car is less snappy now, when bottoming out).
  Reduced slipstreaming effects on drag (lower speed gain when drafting).
• adjusted drivetrain losses (resulting in more engine power on the wheels).
• Rebalanced aero balance and drag.
• Default setup: +1 to TC, P10 rear wing.
• Recalculated fuel consumption.

Porsche 991 GT3 v1.75

• New values for draft lifts (FW, RW and diffuser).
• Modifications to yaw aero response (affects sliding sideways).
• Tweaks to diffuser stalling parameters (the car is less snappy now, when bottoming out).
• Reduced slipstreaming effects on drag (lower speed gain when drafting).
• Adjusted drivetrain losses (resulting in less engine power on the wheels).
• Rebalanced aero balance, drag and rear downforce between rear wing and diffuser.
• Adjusted center of gravity height and chassis inertia.
• Fixed issue with damper travel to bump stops.
• Default setup:  P11 rear wing, +1 to TC, +2 to front and rear ARB, –0.117deg to front toein, +0.352deg to rear toe-in.
• Recalculated fuel consumption.

Radical RXC GT3 2017 v2.85

• New values for draft lifts (FW, RW and diffuser).
• Modifications to yaw aero response (affects sliding sideways).
• Tweaks to diffuser stalling parameters (the car is less snappy now, when bottoming out).
• Reduced slipstreaming effects on drag (lower speed gain when drafting).
• Rebalanced aero balance and drag.
• Recalculated fuel consumption.

The new Balance of Performance update for our GT3 cars is available to download now.

Happy racing!

Electric racing is a hot topic conversation in motorsports of late, and as the technology continues to develop and electrification becomes seemingly ever more advanced, the RCCO eX ZERO 2021 provides a benchmark of what is currently possible within the framework of motor racing – with unrivalled performance, acceleration and corning agility – in short, the car is a blast to drive!

RCCO eX ZERO 2021 | Launch Article: Click Here.

Back in late 2020 we released the exciting eX ZERO 2021 to rFactor 2. Having undergone extensive development following our initial conversations with former DTM champion Mike Rockenfeller, we thoroughly enjoyed the experience of working to the requested specification as we brought the car to life within our simulation, realizing a dream of Mike and his team to showcase to the world exactly what is possible with electric racing, and giving our players a glimpse at what the potential future of motorsport as we know it could look like in the years to come. Since release, it has been of great interest to the studio to observe how the new car has been adopted by the community, including some fantastic esport activations that we’ve seen popping up throughout the world.

RCCO eX ZERO 2021 | rFactor 2 Steam Store: Click Here.

Recently our development team have taken the opportunity to revisit the eX 2021 to add some further fine-tuning and enhancements to the car – adding a number of improved features and visual updates to really help elevate this unique vehicle in the experience it delivers to our players. Amongst other things, as part of this 1.33 update release the RCCO eX ZERO 2021 has received energy regeneration capabilities – a new feature which gives players the opportunity to regenerate energy when braking – represented by the energy/fuel indicating turning blue under brake load. Additionally, the 1.33 update also adds brand-new wiper animations, several visual tweaks and regen audio enhancements amongst other minor changes and improvements. 

For those players who already own the RCCO eX ZERO 2021, the update should download automatically the next time you restart your Steam client. For new purchases, the latest 1.33 changes will be included within your initial download. 

RCCO eX ZERO 2021 v1.33 Update Notes:

• Added regen on braking
• All new wiper and animation
• eX Logo now lit / front and rear
• Front LED lights colour configurable in the vehicle file
• Default skins now have LED colours to match livery
• Added regen sound interior and exterior
• Added more slipstream
• Even less dirty air
• Tire change 6 secs (should now be fixed)
• Attempted fix for less vibration in the steering
• Dash rev lights and graph now match 15,000 RPM
• Added new default setup based on test session
• Fix to reduce high revving in neutral and then shifting into 1st gear

If you are interested to see how this car stacks up in the spirit of competition, check out the RCCO World eX Championship that will exclusively use the new car in esport competition.

RCCO eX World Championship | More Details: Click Here.

RCCO eX ZERO 2021 | Available Now in rFactor 2

Time flies! Lunar Sale passed quickly, and internally we have been mostly discussing how to integrate some of our hotlap competitions and the upcoming GT Challenge into the competition system. By now we’ve pretty much mapped out how that should work and in the upcoming blogs I’m sure we will get into a bit more detail about this, but we are slowly starting to migrate more of our activities.

At the same time we are balancing what our development team is working on, as we also still very much want to bring a few more improvements to the UI in general as well as graphics updates.

Two features in particular that we are looking at are running sessions where we have a qualification and a race all in the same split as well as qualifications with two races, so we can do sprint and feature races, including reversed grids.

There are a few more, smaller, layout updates coming, probably next Wednesday. That’s all for this week, except that our virtual mailbox was filled with some very good questions again this week. And did I thank my colleague Paul for collating them all? Great job man!

Q&A

Can we expect a tow system when pressing the Esc button instead of just quitting the race?

The Walker

Not related to the competition system per se, but we are considering a few features in this area. When you press ESC you either are done for the session, or there is some timer simulating you getting a tow back to the pits.

You say you wish to add weather in future competitions, this is great but also not without its current set of issues, how do you propose to work around the following:

– Will the comp server be set to “Force Weather On” for graphical settings? This is because it’s all too easy to “turn the weather off” in the graphics settings and have a clear view of the road without spray (for example), thus giving a massive advantage to some drivers over others

– Graphically wet weather racing is a performance hog and that’s partly to be expected, but what measures will you put in place on the comp system to warn players that the comp they’re entering may or may not have wet weather? As there are no graphical presets in place within the sim for a “Quick Change” I can foresee people turning up to race with “dry graphics settings” only to see it raining without prior notice and be at an immediate disadvantage as they battle much lower FPS.

MarcG

Starting with the last question, no, we don’t intend to warn people about that. Instead, I would argue that you need to configure your graphics settings such that you can race regardless of the conditions (weather, tracks, number of cars). The suggestion to fix certain graphics settings is an interesting one. I agree that you can currently gain an advantage by turning off certain graphics. This is in fact a thing that happens in quite a lot of competitive games (Counterstrike, etc.). It will be quite a challenge to have the flexibility to allow everybody to configure the system such that it runs well for them, and at the same time forcing some kind of even playing field. I’m open to suggestions here, but this might end up being quite a significant body of work to be honest.

RaceRoom penalises players for “Quitting” mid race by lowering their Reputation and/or Rating (I forget which), this helps prevent mass disconnects early on and only a few drivers actually making it to the end of a race. What, if any, measures/rating penalties are you putting in place to help prevent “Rage Quitters”?

We basically have this already. If you don’t finish the race, you end up at the bottom in the standings. That negatively impacts your rating, and we give you points based on that. Do you think we should penalize people even more?

Hi, I’ve just made my first race on your comp system (Classics on Longford) and we encountered several heavy rain during the race. At one point, it was 100% rainy with 97% track wet. My question, is it scripted ? Is it random weather? or is it realtime weather?

[ODS]Arnaud

We currently have tracks set to use “default” weather. This is weather that is setup by the creator of the track. Some tracks will be scripted to be always dry, others have some chance of rain at various points during the session. So apparently Longford will sometimes be very wet.

Will you ever take a pass at simplifying the driver swap process? As it currently sits I feel that the amount of clicks that each person has to do is immensely complicated compared to your competition enabling a driver to simply leave the car, and the driver on deck simply gets in.

FreakVelocity

We already made it a bit easier in the new UI. I don’t know if you noticed, but if you join a server as a spectator, and you hit “drive” you will be prompted what car you want to become a passenger in. We plan to further simplify the procedure in the competition system, because there we will know which drivers are driving an entry together, so there will not be a need any more to even select a car. The actual process of doing the swap we will probably keep, giving the current driver the freedom to select the passenger at the pitstop, or not.

How are season points regulated ? Is only one result counted, or the average of all, or a hybrid (like in iRacing for example)

Teiwaz

So far we have used a system where we aggregate all results of all races and their splits within the same event, and we apply our rating algorithm to rank all the drivers based on their performance. That gives us a rating and a certainty of that rating, and we combine those numbers to rank people. Then we apply points table to that ranking. In short, we try to figure out how good you were in all the races you participated in versus everybody else.

Is the weather fixed for all races to be the same or is there variability or is it even random or linked to outside factors (like plugins that feed the actual real world weather)

Teiwaz

As explained in one of the questions above, we use the track “default” weather right now. We intend to add real world weather later, similar to how some plugins now work.

I remember the S397 announced a few years ago that Motec would be available. Will it be available in CS in the near future?

yashiman

That’s an excellent question. Being totally honest, we got about halfway with that project so far, and it’s currently awaiting further work because there are a few other projects we wanted to prioritize. Our end goal is to have telemetry in Motec and possibly a few other formats available from the CS.

I think there are many unique races, cars and circuits in East Asia and Oceania right now. (SUPERCARS, Super GT, etc….) Do you plan to produce these models near the future?

yashiman

We’ve done a few and I think there are a few more on our wishlist. We’re not ready to communicate exactly which ones, but by no means do we intend to just focus on one region of the world. We aim to create a global offering. That said, the current pandemic is making it more difficult for all of us to travel, scan and survey tracks, etc, so sometimes we currently have to make choices to postpone such activities or seek tracks we can access. In terms of cars, and series, the world is changing a lot as well. Existing series are transforming, new ones forming. If you ask me personally, I’d love to do the Supercars at some point. 🙂

Is there any possibility to see cars like the FR 3.5 or the Megane Trophy join the system as new competitions soon?

L0P3X

We have considered reworking the FR3.5 along the lines of what we did for the races we hosted with The Race. That might still happen. We certainly would like to add a few really fast open wheeler classes above our current offering.

Are we going to see races with race-length based in laps instead of time in the future?

L0P3X

It’s already a feature. Why have we not done it (yet) in the competitions we deployed? I guess we were a bit lazy and the timing of sessions is easier if you just specify a time, so we don’t have to drive all tracks with the chosen cars to get an average lap time.

As we currently have the 70s F1 in the System, any possibility to see “new” classic layouts for already existing tracks in the future? (For example, Silverstone or Nordschleife)

L0P3X

When we updated Silverstone we did add a “semi-classic” layout. Adding an old layout to Nordschleife is more involved, honestly we have not planned that at the moment. We are aware that some tracks in the Reiza pack have some nice classic layouts, but for the current competition we wanted to stick with free content. If there’s enough interest we will definitely visit those tracks as well.

In my humble opinion, more races are missing. The idea of a “season” is very good, but there are people who just want to enter, qualify and run, as simple as that. I’ll give RaceRoom as an example. There are races every 30 minutes and almost every race has more than 15 – 20 cars. There is a very large number of people who want to run, have fun, run one more, one more, without worrying about a “season”. For those who want to race the GT3 Season in Brazil, we have races at 6:00, 12:00, 18:00 and 00:00. Now imagine if I could run every half hour in GT3, it would be MUCH better.

Carlos Eduardo de Araujo

Noted, and you are not the only one giving us this feedback so this is something that is rapidly going up in our priority list.

Looking around me, the outside world is covered in snow. A clear sign we’re still in the middle of winter in the Northern Hemisphere. Today we also started a new series of competitions, leveraging the just released update of Indianapolis as well as the build update that we’ve just shared publicly as a release candidate. A lot of effort from our complete development team has gone into that, so we hope you will all take it for a thorough spin to ensure it works well before we declare it stable in a week or two.

One of the scheduled competitions actually did not start yet. I guess this is one of the things that can happen in beta. One of our tools we use for generating such series showed a very specific issue, which we have pinpointed and solved today, so we expect that one to be up tomorrow too.

Behind the scenes we are currently working at a plan to bring some parts of our upcoming GT Challenge and hotlap competitions into the new system. I anticipate that in a week or two we will be able to announce a lot more details about that. But for today, that’s it, so let’s move on to answering some of your questions again!

Q&A

To which pace the system is going to evolve? Is it going to be “steps by steps”, or will we see a big update every 3 – 4 months for example?

Spyro

Honestly, it will be a bit of both. We are currently in a phase where we are fine-tuning some of the basic systems to ensure that everybody can race smoothly, and I feel we’re getting to the point where those mechanics are now in place. That means that we can shift our attention to the introduction of a few next big features. On the one hand we will focus on a good way to run more races (as that seems to be a returning question) and on the other hand we need to make sure there is some kind of marshalling system in place to ensure everybody behaves. On that last point, as a side note, we have been pleasantly surprised that most drivers are indeed being very fair and sporting. Still, for the few that are not, we need to make sure they can’t ruin the race of others.

Do you have an idea how long the beta phase will be? Are we talking something like 6 months or 1 year (maybe more?)

Spyro

The roadmap we outlined before is quite extensive, I would definitely say that 6 months is the minimum, and if you look at features like offline racing, that will probably take us into 2022. That’s my current take on it. As we proceed and get more feedback from the community, we might adjust our plans.

Can we expect different racing conditions in the future (night, scripted weather or even real time weather)? Preferred cars / tracks they would like to see within the system in future too?

Spyro

Yes. I would love to add weather conditions, including real time weather. It would be awesome if we could ensure that this means that 5 splits running at the same time all end up with those conditions too.

Is it planned for longer races (>30 mins?) to add the safety car either for road (where it seems to work decently) and oval racing?

Spyro

Certainly that will be an option going forward.

Will the friend system you talk about in this entry allow you to play with some friends who have a similar rating?

Guillem Rego

One thing we’ve been discussing internally is different ways to do matchmaking. Traditionally that is done on ranking only, but that poses one big problem. If you and your friends want to do a race together at a specific time, you have to be really lucky to end up in the same split. It would be a great feature to add a social aspect to matchmaking, so you can indeed race with your friends in the same split. Technically we can make that happen, so unless we get pushback from the community about this it’s likely this will happen.

When are we going to get more frequent events? I’d love to use the system but there so far apart it’s impossible?

Callum Hambley

You mean you just want to do a lot of races in short succession and not have to wait for a few hours until the same competition is scheduled again? We have a few minor issues we would like to resolve before we ramp up the frequency, but we definitely plan to. I don’t have an exact timeline for that yet.

Can fantasy tracks feature in CS, like Nsuka or Maastricht?

jtilambucano

Any track with no IP or copyright issues is usable. We adopted the Alpine. We could similarly adopt Maastricht or other fantasy tracks or cars. We already have featured some of our own fantasy tracks, Mills and Toban, and we have been getting very positive feedback about them.

Will we be able to join the races in a series with the tracks we do own and skip the races with tracks we don’t own yet? Would be reasonable because we already need to own all the cars in a series.

EricW

Technically, you are right, we could generate a separate series (rfmod) for each individual event. We decided against that though as you end up with a lot of different installed series instead of the much nicer model we have now, where if you have one series installed, you can be sure you have everything you need to participate in any event. This also gives us a good basis for using series elsewhere in rFactor 2, such as an offline championship.

You mention support for rolling starts for some competitions in the future. How about fast rolling starts, which I know the game supports offline, but I’m not sure about online. I don’t think anyone is going to want to do a full formation lap at the Nordschleife!

Bill Worrel

Nordschleife has its own set of specific challenges, outlaps being one of the bigger ones. We are aware that we will probably need to build some specific code for that track in the future.

There have been many questions about marshalling and unsportsmanlike behaviour. You say you’re looking at things about how to best manage this. I want to point out something you can explore: How about assigning reputation? You gain some amount of rep by completing races (value depends on time/laps), you lose it by causing collisions (different amounts for different seriousness). Then you can restrict entries for competitions above a specific reputation, or do the splits with players of similar reputation (or combining it somehow with the ladder if there are few entries).

Alexfighter

The system you propose is reasonably close to the “safety rating” used in iRacing, except that you call it “reputation”. There you end up building a statistic called “corners per incident” which is a way to keep track of how often someone is involved in an incident, without actually attempting to assign blame. You do seem to want to try to assign blame in your proposal, which I think is a good idea but also a challenging one. Not many simulations out there have a really good “automatic marshalling” system right now that can always correctly “assign blame”. That said, we are looking at doing some experiments with a few possible systems.

20 minutes seems to be the most common race length so far – do you anticipate longer events in future?

juninho tilambucano

Certainly. Endurance races are an important part of rFactor 2, and we are planning to add both longer “single driver” races and ones where and entry is driven by a “team of drivers”.

Are we likely to see other Tatuus models used within the system, as opposed to the current FT-60?

 juninho tilambucano

Yes. This current season we ended up not picking any of the Tatuus cars, but we definitely also want to include the others.

Do you foresee the possibility of bringing in the original ISI tracks into the Competition System schedule – in particular ovals?

juninho tilambucano

Most of those are unfortunately unlicensed replicas of real tracks and quite dated by now in terms of quality. Quite a few were also done by community members and quite frankly we don’t have sources for all of those. So I would not expect us to bring most of those into the schedule. So we would have to go and license a few more ovals, or really build a few new fantasy ones.

Maybe there will become a certain night, eg. Wednesday night Skip Barber where a vote could be held, which car for Wednesday, which car for Thursday, etc. With the same crew that will arrive and race, and then run for 4 weeks or so.

davidporeilly

What you are describing sounds a lot like more league-style racing where a fixed group of people race a series on fixed times. We will definitely be able to model that. The process of “self organizing” such a competition is definitely interesting. If we can build a matchmaking mechanism where a group of people can get together and do this, that would be nice (assuming they then show up for those races).

Not sure if it’s been asked but a “finding your own name button” in the leaderboards would be nice.

daguru

That has been asked before and we are currently working on adding that.

Can we have a “De-register” button in CS? I registered for LMP3 and found I was unable to attend races due to timings and life not matching up, but I can’t leave the championship. It now clutters up the “My sessions” page.

Neil Tyler

We decided against adding something like this, because we want people to commit to something and then follow through. I understand there are always situations where that does not happen. In those cases you will just have to ignore the fact that such a series is in your “my sessions” page. It should not matter too much since apparently you don’t have time to race anyway.

Would be nice to be able to exit the game via keyboard i.e. esc then enter.

smithaz

Noted, thanks.

Will I be able to race in the CS in VR and not have to see the thin black border around the screen? Will it be soon?

jamesleegte

Nice question to sneak in, but not really related to the CS. We are fixing this at the moment though. I anticipate that to be in the next “release candidate” but even if not, it will be out soon.

We know the plans they have for the gameplay of the competition system but. What plans do you have to continue improving the graphics of the game, taking into account that the other simulators continue to advance at a great pace?

dazzer

Short answer, yes. We have a few new longer term developments in terms of graphics as well as some shorter term balancing tasks. So you will see various updates of that this year as well.

For the offline championships, do you plan to leave a system similar to that of rFactor 1, in which we could play the practices and classifications on day X and then do the race another day?

dazzer

Yes, effectively an offline championship is basically the same as a competition except for a few things. First it runs on your local machine, second you run against AI and third you get to run races when you want instead of at a scheduled time.

Physically, are there any areas that you would like to upgrade to newer technologies such as the gear box system?

dazzer

That’s really too much of an open-ended question to answer in great detail, but taking the gearbox system as an example, yes we would like to improve on that. I would also like to see some hardware innovations when it comes to gearboxes and shifters really!

Finally, I don’t know if they know about this, but in the new interface we have the possibility of doing 2 races in a row or more, the problem is that we cannot define different schedules or weather, basically when we configure 2 races, both are a copy of the other, and it is impossible to configure them differently.

dazzer

We are aware of this. It’s a current limitation of the underlying system. We have not decided on the best way to change that.

 Does the system reward those who compete most?

EmanueleMarra15

Not right now. The current competitions score you based on a calculated ranking. There is a positive effect when you race more often, the system can be more sure of your ranking. Currently, if we are unsure, we err on the safe side, so you might actually be better than we think!

Is it in your plans to add mechanics in motion at the pit stops for changing tires or refuelling? Giving life to one of the key moments that are the stops in a race would be wonderful for the show.

Adrian Blasco

Whilst I agree it is also hard to add a generic system of pit crews running around cars. We support so many types of cars and series each with their own specific rules on pit crew sizes, what can happen concurrently, how well they are trained, etc. Motion capturing all the possible combinations would take a very long time, and building a much smarter system is also a huge job. At the moment we feel we can spend that development time more useful elsewhere.

In the future, will it be possible to have, with a reputation quotient, races with drivers of my level more or less equal?

mixer61

We are looking at such systems, yes, and different algorithms to calculate how to do splits.

Stock car 2018 comp when?

Remco Majoor

Car? Check! Tracks? Lacking ovals.

In case you have manual/H pattern cars in future competition races, how are you going to deal with that? Since there is still no realistic clutch/gearshift system in place and users can operate any car with paddle shifters.

vmgn021

I’ll give you an honest and probably slightly unsatisfying answer. There are not good systems in racing simulations right now and part of that is because there is no good hardware to simulate this in a way that can’t easily be exploited. As you know, most simulations out there allow you to use an H pattern shifter and each gear ends up being a button. The obvious exploit here is to just have 6 buttons on your wheel for all of those gears and quickly press them when you want to change. That takes away all the mechanical delay that the fancy shifter hardware introduces, so it would always be slower to use the correct hardware. I have not seen a good solution to this problem yet. Have you?

How system manages splits? Is there plan to get rid of situations where split one have 20 drivers and 21st driver goes into split two all alone?

Alexandr Meshkov

Yes, that is a bit annoying of the current (too simple) split algorithm. If we end up with 21 drivers and 20 is the maximum, we should try to split them as 11+10 or something similar instead. I hope we can get that improvement in relatively soon.

For upcoming seasons, will there be schedules announced beforehand in the future? Right now I haven’t got a clue what is coming in 2 days time when the new season starts.

Remco Majoor

While we’re testing we want to be able to make these decisions at the last minute, but as we transition out of beta that will change. Until then all I can say we will try, if we can.

Will there be a series from the Reiza car pack in the future?

Raam Adithyan

Yes. We already featured some of their tracks, and we definitely also want to feature some of their cars (on their or other tracks).

Personally I would like to see more races during late evening CET. Like between 8pm and 2am. That’s when I and I guess many other working people can race. It’s frustrating also the qualification system. Not so much that there are qualifying sessions, more that there are no races immediately afterwards. Putting eg a 20 min quali session then scheduling a race right afterwards makes more sense to me. Those that enter qualifying could automatically be moved to the race. Those that don’t want to qualify could just register for the race. Make it easier for people to get their fix.

Mauberley

Points noted, and I think I gave some answers to similar questions already above.

Update time! 

Hello sim racing friends, today we at Studio 397 present you with not only a new build of rFactor 2 for your sim racing pleasure, but also the long awaited PBR update to our Indianapolis Motor Speedway circuit! Happy days of racing await you all…

Build Update

For this latest build release, we have focused particular attention on identifying, replicating and resolving a number of prominent issues and bugs that have been reported by the community through our various communication channels. For the most part, this update contains the first round of fixes that have been achieved as part of that process – although we certainly have more issues to look at for future builds. This is new build can be considered an initial pass at addressing some of these outstanding issues, and further development work is already well underway on our next release – so expect further updates in the coming weeks as we continue to develop rFactor 2 and bring it more into line with our own and the communities expectations. 

As we discussed in the January Development Roadmap post at the end of last month, this release will be deployed to players in a slightly different way than you have become accustomed to in recent years. Although the new build has been thoroughly tested by our beta testing team and the developers, in order to mitigate any potential risks to the stability of the public version of the simulation we have elected to move future build updates to a temporary “release-candidate” branch of rFactor 2 – accessible by right-clicking rFactor 2 in your Steam library, and selecting ‘Properties – betas – release-candidate’.

The ‘release-candidate’ branch containing the new fixes will be active between a week to a month or so, and should no significant issues be reported we will import the update to the main public branch of the simulation after this review period has been completed. 

rFactor 2 Build Update Notes

• We’ve removed the Max 2012 plugins as they no longer work, and provided the last working Max 2017 plugins. We have no intention to upgrade them any longer as we can’t get these versions of Max any more to test. Furthermore, we urge the modding community to upgrade to current Max versions.
• Fixed: Reflection mapper in Scene Viewer, so it renders from the same point as the user sees.
• Fixed: Bind a mouse click to any input control.
• Fixed: Issues with showroom performance.
• Fixed: Missing error prompt when textures are missing from content.
• Fixed: Issue with a white screen you get when you try to assign a control.
• Fixed: Visible damage sometimes corrupting car bodies, to properly fix the hotfix that temporarily disabled the visible damage.
• Fixed: Issue where clouds could show similar corruption as car bodies.
• Fixed: Showroom Upgrades not displaying which require MAS Files.
• Fixed: Glitch where “the lights would suddenly go off” when transitioning from light to dark at dusk.
• Fixed: Exploit where you could still set the FE car to use 250kW in the setup in a race when that setting is reserved for “attack mode”.
• Fixed: Overlays would not correctly follow the attack mode countdown timing.
• AIW Editor: Added new line smoothing option, and added soft selection for manual adjustments.
• Added an internal option to the player.json to turn off multi-threading in the UI. Defaults to “on”.
• Added code support so we can detect a disabled Steam overlay, to warn you about why a shopping cart won’t show up.
• Changed how a dedicated server shuts down when asked so it no longer crashes with a non-zero return code.
• Pausing sessions in a dedicated server will now only pause the first one.
• Increased an internal timeout when talking to Steam to give it more time before we give up or retry.
• Scene Viewer Changes: Moved Web UI Port to 5396 by default and added support for up to 128 scenes in configuration file

We hope you enjoy this latest build of rFactor 2 as we continue to review and improve the current state of the simulation, with a view to addressing further outstanding issues and bringing new features and functionality to the title in the weeks, months and years ahead. 

Indianapolis Motor Speedway

The famed Brickyard, home to countless memories of American motorsport triumphs and tragedies throughout the years, and scene of one of the most controversial and frankly downright bizarre Formula One Grand Prix in living memory.

Renowned the world over for the 500-mile IndyCar race on the legendary oval configuration of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, back in 1998 a deal was struck by then circuit Chairman, CEO and President Tony George to bring Formula One Grand Prix racing back to the American venue – prompting the commencement of a major redevelopment program that would include a brand-new infield road course section, one capable of hosting international grade car and bike racing events.

Over a two-year construction phase, the Indianapolis Motor Speedway would be transformed into an international class racing facility capable of hosting top level motorsport events, with the new road course variant utilizing the final banked corner of the daunting oval before passing over the iconic start/finish straight row of the original bricks.

The work would be completed on time by the Speedway, and the year 2000 would mark a pivotal moment in the 111-year history of the circuit – when the FIA Formula One World Championship visited the newly created infield course for the very first time – an event seen by some 200,000 spectators in what would go down in history as one of the largest crowd attendances ever recorded in Grand Prix racing.

Sadly the love affair between Formula One and Indianapolis would be a short-lived experience, with the tyre debacle of 2005 doing much to dampen enthusiasm for the sport in the USA. Despite changes having been put in place to ensure Formula One could safely resume racing at the facility, rapidly dwindling audience attendance would do much to see off the sport from American shores at the end of the 2007 racing season – leaving a USA sized gap in the Formula One calendar that would only be filled some five years later by the brand-new Circuit of the Americas venue in Austin, Texas.

Fortunately, for those who wish to see the famous track in action on a regular basis, we’ve got a particularly nice new update you might enjoy – bringing our Indianapolis Motor Speedway circuit up to the 2020 configuration with build version 1.06 in rFactor 2, and adding all the latest PBR development goodies to this iconic and impressive racing venue.

Indianapolis Motor Speedway 2020 v1.06 Update Notes

• Update of 2013 Release to 2020.
• Replaced 2013 layout with modern equivalent
• Full PBR Conversion of all assets
• Replaced Crowds with new assets
• Replaced Marshals with new assets
• Added Pitlane Props (Pit Stands, Fuelling Rigs, Pit Markers)
• Added accurate background nightlighting
• Added Advertisements
• Added building at Road Course S1
• Improved various assets such as armco barriers
• AI Updates to 2007 GP and Modern GP layouts.
• Various other improvements and tweaks

The new build of the circuit has been under development for quite a while here at rFactor 2 HQ, and should download automatically from the Steam Workshop the next time your restart your rFactor 2 Steam client.

Available as a free piece of content within the official Studio 397 Steam Workshop (click here), the track comes complete in four unique configurations – the original ‘Brickyard’ oval, the modern paved oval, the 2020 Indianapolis Grand Prix configuration and the final 2007 Grand Prix layout.

We are particularly pleased with the changes brought about in this update, both from a visual point of view (check out the night lighting!) and also the work we have undertaken on the track surface itself – giving the venue a little more grip and feel that should transform the driving experience for our players when out on circuit.

We hope you like the new build, and see you out on track!

With the new series past the half-way point, we start looking ahead again! Two weeks after having to roll back the build, we can now say that the hotfix successfully suppressed the issues with the “exploding car bodies”. By now we have also managed to reproduce and (in a test build) fix the cause of it. Interestingly, the bug has been in the codebase for a few years, and although we’ve had one or two reports pre-dating the competition system it shows that sometimes bugs can hide themselves in a codebase for quite some time.

As promised in the last blog, we have outlined some changes to how we deploy new builds publicly in the monthly roadmap. In the meantime we are working hard to bring the next code update, collate community feedback and prioritize it, so expect us to communicate more about this soon.

But for now, let’s move on to our questions, as we’ve had quite a few coming in again.

Q&A

Q: After qualifying, I was 8 out of 8 participants, But only 4 of us were given a place on the results. I am assuming this meant 4 of the fellows left before the session was completed. They still get assigned to faster groups I hope?

davehenrie

Yes, when you set a time on the server, that’s what counts, regardless if you stay until the end or not.

Q: We’ve seen a few changes since launch to the frequency of races and times in which they are held – do you have a particular ‘goal’ as to what you feel the optimum frequency of events will be, and also how many types of series could run at the same time?

Paul Jeffrey

First of all, welcome Paul, nice to see you asking a few questions here as well. I think there are two ways to describe our goal. One way is to approach it from the point of someone firing up rFactor 2 and wanting to do a race. Ideally there is always something to jump into within the next hour or so. The other way is to look at it from a participation point of view and say that we want to increase the frequency of racing whilst ensuring we have at the very least one or two full splits at all times. Obviously it will require constant balancing to get as close to those goals as possible, so we are making sure it’s easy for us to schedule and reschedule competitions.

Q: The combinations that have been seen in the Competition System so far have been really enjoyable, however do you plan to engage the community via a vote or something similar in future, to see what preferred cars / tracks they would like to see within the system in future?

Paul Jeffrey

I like the idea. Maybe have people propose and then vote for a specific series. Could be the “community series”. Obviously we will have to make sure we only use legal and licensed content, but the Alpine has shown that can be done!

Q: Do you have a rough timescale in mind for when you think big competitions the likes of GT Pro and GT Challenge may transfer to the competition system?

Paul Jeffrey

It’s something we’re discussing internally, as you might know, and it’s likely we will start with the different splits in GT challenge. Maybe as soon as the upcoming season. No final decision has been made, but it’s definitely our intention to move such big competitions into the system.

Q: Is it possible, or even desirable to have a time trail / hot lap leaderboard for each of the official tracks within the system – say something like 1 car per track for x number of weeks, then swapping out the car for something different after that time has passed?

Paul Jeffrey

What we can do is set up “competitions” that feature hotlap sessions, and use those to build standings (leaderboards). As with many things, I think our community will ultimately decide what we run. If there’s an interest, we’re on board!

Q:  Is it within the roadmap of development to have the possibility to assign a ‘favourite’ or ‘friends’ marker on certain drivers within the competition system, so we can easily and quickly see how we are matching up against people we are interested in comparing against?

Paul Jeffrey

Yes, we are considering two options for this. First we can leverage your Steam friends list. Second is to add another “friends” or “teammates” system inside rFactor 2 specifically for this purpose, or even a way to just “follow” certain people.

Q:We’ve heard about a richer set of statistics coming to the system in future, can you give us an insight into what can of stats will eventually be measured once the system is fully feature rich?

Paul Jeffrey

As a broad indication, expect us to provide statistics similar to tools like “replay analyser” but then with additional data that is about competitions and the overall system.

Q: How do you plan to act and penalize pilots who cause accidents with dirty and unsportsmanlike behaviour?

Esplomer38

Let me start by stating that people who behave in an unsportsmanlike way on or off the track have no place in the competition system. Since the start of the system we have been monitoring races, and we fully intend to act on the data we are collecting. I don’t have an exact timeline yet for when these actions will be taken but the best advice I can give anybody is to remain calm and respectful to others.

Q: If and when a ranking system will be implemented? (Apologies if this info is already available)

M-Bimmer

It’s a valid question. Right now we have a ranking system that we can feed data, for example everything that happened in a single event or competition, and it will calculate the ranking of every driver involved (including an estimate of the accuracy of that ranking). We are using the first rounds of competition to validate the algorithms, and we anticipate to start showing it in some form at various stages during the beta phase. Eventually it is our goal to have a global ranking.

Q: Will there be sessions with back to back qualification and race ?

M-Bimmer

Yes, that will be one of the formats we intend to support, so before a race, within each split there will be a qualification session to determine the grid.

Q: If the first race and qualy start a bit later. Could be wrong, but I think it starts at 18:00 CET so an hour later would be great. Rest of the schedule will need to be adjusted which is a pain I guess?

M-Bimmer

We are aware that with the current amount of races, there will be certain competitions that only have races at inconvenient times. We basically have a race now every 90 minutes. In the beta phase we deliberately limit the amount of races overall, just because we are still testing and don’t want to run too much just yet. After beta, we will run as many sessions as makes sense. Our goal is certainly to make sure that anybody can race at any time.

Q: Any plans for more races per day per region and when?

M-Bimmer.

Certainly, after the beta ends, and yes we are also looking at possible competitions that are bound to regions.

Q: When can we expect big events taking place in the system (Indy 500, if teams aren’t implemented yet 2.4 hours of spa/nords for example)?

Remco Majoor

Team based events will certainly have to wait a bit longer. We are first looking at integrating shorter races, for example our GT challenge series. Internally we are currently discussing the requirements for this, also for things like broadcasts, stewarding, etc.

Can we expect rolling starts for GT cars any time soon, which would also be good for the stock car 2018?

Remco Majoor

Yes. That will be configurable per series so we can pick something that is the same as what they would use in real life too.

How many cars can an event support? For example can a single Nordschleife event have the full 90 car grid?

Remco Majoor

We have a hard limit of 104 cars (and an additional 104 spectators) per server, so 90 would still fit if we can also make sure the pits, grid and other facilities are there. I have not memorized these numbers of the Nordschleife. It might need some tweaks to get to 90, but it’s certainly technically possible.

 I know that the issue is redundant, but for any competition to go forward, bad behaviour on the track must be sanctioned, it is not reasonable to wait with illusion to enter a race at 02:00 AM, sacrificing night rest, and that in the first lap they take you off the track and destroy your car, mistakes we all make, but some are very flagrant and should be corrected with a penalty in the middle of the race. This if you want to have a serious competition, not to become an arcade in which anything goes.

Chug_59

We get quite a few questions about this, and I can only agree. We are still in the first phase of testing, where we wanted to test the basic mechanics of running sessions, signing up, getting the right content, etc. Obviously in the recent weeks we’ve also uncovered some issues in rFactor 2 itself, possibly made more visible because we are now doing so much racing online, so our first priority remains to deliver a stable platform. But making sure everybody “behaves well” is high on our list after that.

Will there be the possibility of rejoining after an event has started?

davehenrie

If you get disconnected from a race, you can already rejoin. Qualifications are currently still closed. We intend to at least have an option to change that.

Would be cool to filter that in the competition system. So I only see competitions that work with my installation, if I want to….

Flaux

That is actually a great idea, to have such a filter. I could imagine us having a few similar ones, including an option to only see competitions that you can join without having to purchase any new content. The tools are in place for doing such things, so we’ll add that to our list. Thanks!

Will we see fixed(setup) series in the future? And if the answer is “yes” then the obvious when?

Stevy

The answer is “yes” and I think we will do that probably after the upcoming round of competitions. To be honest, the biggest obstacle here is to provide a really good setup that everybody enjoys and we have not taken the time yet to do that. We’d certainly appreciate community feedback and input here though.

Any possibility to have “meatball” flags in the future?

L0P3X

This would need to be a feature that goes into rFactor 2 directly. We have no plans for that at the moment, but we will evaluate what people do if they’re heavily damaged and we could certainly take into account that if you are damaged and involved in another accident, the blame shifts to you because you might not have full car control anymore. But you definitely got us thinking about this problem.

Could the briefing screen show which layout of circuit we are using?

Jtilambucano

Yes, that is on our wishlist as well, to not just show your own car but also a graphic of the actual layout.

Damage model adjusted/graded per split so the better drivers in higher splits take more damage vs the new in lowest, who will make mistakes and need help to get to the finish, are encouraged to learn. Probably undoable in rFactor 2, but would work for all when splits are decided by grading. The wreckers… only bans will slow them down.

Boldaussie

It’s technically doable to setup splits differently. We have not considered this idea. I see positives and negatives so for me the jury’s still out on this. I’ll let others in the community chime in on this one!

 I have always been only an offline player, but I am passionate about the Nordschleife variations, in particular the Nurburgring Combined. Maybe the competition system might appeal to me if there were enough and frequent events on this track, in any form. Could we have information on what is planned on this track in the future in the competition system (including number of sessions and frequency)?

pilAUTO

We will organize events for anything that attracts a big enough crowd to be viable. Nordschleife traditionally does, so I expect us to hold events there for sure!

Are there plans to make the offline competitions customizable? Or will those use predetermined rfmods as well, so we’ll need to own all the content for each? 

Mitch9

We will offer both options. First, using series we supply, and may I comment that we will not exclusively create ones based on paid content but also free ones. Alternatively you will be able to create your own ones, based on series you create yourself (or created by other community members). Offline competitions or championships are still some way out though. Our first focus is the online part.

We really need some sort of reminder and/or a way to sign up for the next race while practising. I just spent nearly an hour practicing to be 5 seconds too late to register.

Bruno Gil

That is planned Bruno. The notification sidebar where chat messages show up as well will start giving you reminders if you’re not “in the car” and we will have something show up in the message center directly when you are. It almost happened to me as well once already.

Any plans for historic cars and track combo and oval racing on the competition system? It can be used the F3 historic because it’s rather easier than the F1. And the Tatuus from Indy Lights or even the US2000 for oval. We also have the historical Indy on the base game, so it’s already set!

Kesk

We’ve been considering doing more with our historic content for some time now. It has a hardcore following. It could also use some graphical updates. We might just try some series to see how popular it would be. I agree the F1 car might be a bit too much for some to handle. F3 sounds like a good starting point.

 Please give some feedback on what was causing the graphic bug addressed in the last builds?

Stefan Wirth

So without getting too technical the bug had to do with our deformable meshes and how we apply damage to them, combined with some coding error that caused a timing issue.

Will it be possible to get practice servers that are running all day long all night long simultaneously to the actual race events? I think it is important to have them because so you can learn to behave in traffic, how to overtake, make space for faster cars, how to leave the pitlane and so on and so on. Communication in the community will grow too I think because you can and will meet on track

Hocician

The short answer is, yes, this is planned. Until that time, there seem to be a few people in the community that have started hosting such servers already. For example I have joined one of the servers put up by “MrGit” to do some training there. But I agree it’s valuable enough for Studio 397 to provide them, and we will.

When will skins work online?

Hocician

We don’t know yet. We are still analyzing how best to implement custom skins in competitions. We would like to allow people to sign up for a competition with their own livery. The trick is striking a good balance between allowing that, and possibly even allowing people to change their livery during a competition, and making sure this does not cause a huge burden on everybody else. If a competition features 5000 entries, you probably do not want to be forced to download all 5000.

 Are there any plans for the near future (if yes, when) to evaluate or judge uns-portsman like behaviour?

Hocician

Internally we are experimenting with a few different ways to come up with some form of safety rating. At the same time we are working on tooling to evaluate races and chat logs. To be clear, such systems will be implemented and people not behaving correctly can expect to be banned temporarily or, in case they keep it up permanently. And as a service to the rest of the community, that might include banning them from all online play. In other words, be warned and behave!

Studio 397 and rFactor 2 are delighted to continue our fantastic collaboration with Formula E today, as we release the brand-new 2021 ABB Formula E FIA World Championship car pack DLC for rFactor 2.

Having firmly established itself as the very pinnacle of open wheel electric racing, Formula E is about to embark on a fresh new era this coming season with the certification of FIA World Championship status for the very first time – officially recognizing the series as a World Championship category within its own right alongside Formula One, the World Endurance Championship, World Rally and World Rallycross.

Although World Championship status is another remarkable milestone for a series that is about to embark on just its seventh season of competition, the real headline of this new pack for our sim racing community here at rFactor 2 has to be the addition of a brand-new feature used exclusively within the realms of Formula E these last two years – Attack Zone!

Formula E 2021 | Steam Store: Click Here – Free content update to the Formula E 2020 DLC.

What is Attack Zone?

An interesting innovation developed to both aid with overtaking and also add an additional level of viewer intrigue and strategical variation to Formula E races, Attack Zone has been used effectively in Formula E since the 2018/19 racing season. Essentially, Attack Zone allows drivers an additional 35kW of power that can be freely deployed in order to aid overtaking a rival. 

In order to qualify for the temporary boost in performance, drivers will have to position their car through a specially marked ‘Activation Zone’ out on the track. Driving through this specific zone will activate the power boost, which will then be available to use for a limited period of time. 

The number of available activations and the duration in which it will be available can vary from circuit to circuit, dependent on the guidelines of the FIA for each individual round – something that real world teams are informed of just one hour before the beginning of that specific race session.

How is Attack Zone represented in rFactor 2?

Just like in the real series, our Formula E tracks (New York, Berlin, Monaco, Hong Kong) will include the new Attack Zone at a strategic location within the circuit layout. These will be immediately noticeable to the driver from the graphical representation on the tarmac, and once the Attack Zone goes live during the race session, a driver will have to arm the Attack Mode (a new mappable button in the assign menu), and within five seconds navigate their car through this specifically marked section in order to activate the additional performance boost of 35kW for a limited period of time. 

As for the cars themselves, it will immediately be visually apparent which driver has Attack Mode enabled via a light system on the Halo head protection unit above the driver cockpit. When the Halo glows blue, this will be the visual notification that the driver has enabled Attack Mode. The new mode will not be available to use during the opening two laps of the race, nor when a full course caution has been deployed on the circuit. 

Does Attack Zone work in single player mode too?

The Attack Zone is a very special and unique experience within rFactor 2, and offers something highly different to what one would consider a “normal” circuit racing feature. At present, this feature set has only been implemented for online multiplayer activity, and is not compatible with our current AI systems. This doesn’t mean you can’t use these circuits against the AI, far from it, but when racing against computer controlled opponents Attack Mode will only be available to the player themselves, as the AI will not make use of the functionality of the system.

Will Attack Zone work with the current Gen1 2018 and Gen 2 2019 and 2020 Formula E cars available for the simulation?

By default, the Attack Zone will be included in the four official Formula E circuits within the simulation (Hong Kong, New York, Berlin and Monaco). Additionally, this feature has been configured to work exclusively with Formula E cars, so taking another type of car onto an Attack Zone enabled circuit will not trigger the functionality. The feature has been designed specifically to work with the 2021 Season 7 Formula E car pack DLC (which will be added to the same item shop as the 2020 Formula E car), as such the Attack Mode feature and corresponding Halo lighting will only work with this car set. That said, the current 2020 Season 6 cars will also use Attack Zone functionality, however Halo lighting will not be implemented on these vehicles. Attack Mode will not work with the original Gen1 set of Formula E vehicles.

Formula E Bundle | Steam Store: Click Here

What else is new?

Of course, Attack Zone has to be the most prominent change for this new content release, however the 2021/22 season also brings with it a number of interesting updates for our players looking to recreate the world of Formula E in virtual form. This season marks the final year of the current ‘Gen2’ specification of car in the championship – this hasn’t stopped us from reviewing and updating the way the car behaves within the simulation, and as such we are delighted to confirm the new 2021 car pack DLC will benefit from a substantial overhaul in the tyres and physics department – meaning our drivers will have to adapt to a different driving experience behind the wheel in order to get the most performances from these very enjoyable machines.

As we are representing the latest season for the ABB Formula E FIA World Championship with this DLC, of course we also feature all the cars, teams and drivers of the new season – and the sport has seen plenty of change since they last ventured out onto the Berlin E-Prix circuit at the end of last year. 

Featuring 24 drivers across 12 teams with such power house brands as Audi, BMW, Jaguar, Mercedes, Nissan and Porsche fighting it out with the likes of electric racing pioneers Mahindra, Dragon / Penske Automotive and of course reigning champions DS Techeetah, both real and virtual seasons are set to be full of close and intense racing – and you can be part of the action right now! With this latest DLC not only do you gain access to the new cars and drivers, the latest new physics and the brand-new and exciting Attack Mode feature, but you can also reasonably expect to see some Formula E specific events added to our rFactor 2 Competition System in the very near future too!

Track Updates

With the new functionality of the Attack Zone comes the need for us to further update our Formula E specific tracks within rFactor 2. Although some of these circuits are quite new into the simulation, we’ve also taken the opportunity to give them the latest graphical update treatment, adding all the latest developments and PBR shader technology we’ve been working on back at the studio, as well as the latest advertising hoardings and the aforementioned Attack Zone feature within the track. 

At the same time as we release our 2021 Formula E car, players can expect new updates to be deployed for the Hong Kong, New York, Berlin and Monaco Formula E tracks, for those of you that already own the content.

Berlin 2020 v1.7

Added Attack Zone

Removed Marshal Collisions

Hong Kong 2018 v1.67

Added Attack Zone

Monaco 2019 v1.61

Added Attack Zone

Fixed Issues with Flag System online

Fixed a pavement collision issue on left hand side approaching hairpin

Fixed collision issue near Swimming Pool barriers

Fixed a material issue with the Yacht Club Windows

New York 2020 v1.11

Added Attack Zone

Updated Advertisements

Removed Marshal Collisions

Added missing Terrain Definitions

Adjustments to Terrain Definitions

Fixed flipped Digital Flags

Formula E Tracks | Steam Store: Click Here

Formula E Accelerate Esport Series

If watching high quality esport racing action is more your sort of thing, we’ve got you covered on that score too! Starting this Thursday 28th January is the new season of the ABB Formula E FIA World Championship Esport series – Formula E Accelerate Esports! Featuring our three sim racing hotlap finalists, Frederik Rasmussen, Erhan Jajovski and Manuel Biancolilla plus a selection of high profile drivers and sim racing influencers, all fighting it out for their share of the €100,000 prize pot and the ultimate all-electric driving experience of taking the Gen2 car for some laps around a Formula E circuit during an E-Prix weekend, Formula E Accelerate Esports should produce some breathtaking racing action, and once again we cannot wait for it to get started and see how our esport stars perform on the circuit. 

Formula E Accelerate Esports | Live and Exclusive: Click Here 

Additional Reading

It would be fair to say we are pretty excited about the new season of Formula E content here at Studio 397, and we hope you will share with us our excitement to see these incredible pieces of engineering make their way into the simulation for this latest chapter in the Formula E story here in rFactor 2. Powerful cars, slippery surfaces and tight street circuits – yes, that’s a sure fire combination for some fun racing action!

The ABB Formula E FIA World Championship DLC is available to purchase now.