Earlier this week we started four new series, including two with the Alpine A110, bringing more diversity and some properly licensed community content to the competition system. We also did a few smaller UI improvements such as a better looking standings table.

That said, the talk of the week has certainly been the build update we released on Monday, with a couple of hotfixes the day after. We did test all of these updates, and they passed, but it quickly became clear that a lot of people were having problems we did not see in testing. Therefore we have decided to roll back to an older build today.

This means some of the newer changes have been reverted for now, and it’s our intention next week to communicate a few more improvements to make sure that first of all this does not happen again and second of all, if it does, there is an easy way for our community to revert to the previous build. We are also considering having a public-beta build with newer stuff for people to try and give feedback on.

By now the competition system has been started up again and sessions will soon start. The rollback does not affect much in terms of the features of the competition system, and we will look at bringing back the few things we added soon.

Stability is still our focus, as well as ironing out some smaller issues with upgrades for cars. This week we also got a significant amount of questions again, so without further delay, let’s jump into those.

Q&A

Q: Is there any penalty for signing up to a series and not driving?

Remco Majoor

No. We intend to give penalties to people who register for a session and then don’t drive, but signing up for a series and not driving is something we have not considered penalizing. It could make some sense though.

Q: What driver aids are allowed on the competition system?

BadWallflower

Right now, only auto clutch. It’s configurable though so for different levels of drivers we can allow different settings. As you know rFactor 2 also has a system of “penalties” so when you enable an aid, we can make you go a bit slower. That way you can learn with aids on and at some point you’ll want to turn them off again to maximize your performance.

Q: Can I view the standings, schedules and such only inside rFactor 2 or is there a website as well so I don’t have to open the simulation?

Max Melamed & Gonçalo Costa

Since these are basically the same question, let me explain a bit what our plans are with this. First, if you look on our discord right now there are a few third party apps that do this, but our plan is basically to make all relevant parts of rFactor 2 available “remotely” meaning you can take your phone, browse to the rFactor 2 website and see a similar view with panels that you would see in game. Obviously not everything you do in game will work on your phone, so no this is not a sneaky announcement of a mobile version of the simulation, but things like browsing results and schedules, signing up for competitions, watching live streams and similar things you can expect to be available.

Q: Would be nice to have at least 1 practice server for each series!

Jtilambucano

Okay, you sneaked in a suggestion. This is planned actually, to add specific practice sessions for the various competitions. That said, because each competition is a separate series in rFactor 2 you can also simply select the series, choose a car and track and do some off-line practice.

Q: Can someone explain to me what the qualifying sessions are for in the competition system? It confuses me, because there are many races and various classifications.

Andres Valles

What the exact role is of a particular session in general depends on how the competition is setup. In the current series of competitions, we group the results of all qualification sessions together per event to make a single ranking out of them. That ranking is then used to determine how splits are done. The fastest entries end up together in a split, followed by the next ones, etc. Everybody without a time ends up somewhere at the end of that list.

Q: Can someone, please, explain the scoring system of the Tatuus winter series to me? Do I gain more points if I race people who are much faster than me?

Neil Tyler & kajoti

All current competitions have a scoring system that works in two steps. The first step is where we aggregate all race results of an event together. We use those to calculate a driver rating based on the performance in all of those sessions. What matters is where you finish, who you beat and who finished in front of you. Those ratings are then sorted into a list. The list is assigned a points table. This is also why, during an event, even if you do not race yourself, your points can change. As soon as all races in an event are over, you can see your final points.

Q: Why did you choose to make a single series (or rfmod) per competition instead of a separate one per event or session? Doing so would allow people to compete who do not own all the tracks, if they are interested in competing in only a few sessions.

lagg

We debated that and decided against it. Series are an important, and underused concept in rFactor 2 and be properly leveraging them we can use them as the basis for not just online competitions, but also single player events and offline championships in the future, and people can easily use them to host servers with the same content. If we ended up having to generate a series per session in the most extreme event, you’d end up with a ton of them on your system and we would have to start making ways to uninstall them again, etc.

Q: Where can I find the screens with extensive statistics (similar to iRacing) where I can browse session results, driver profiles and related reports and “drill down” into this information?

burgesjl

This has not been implemented and deployed yet. We do have statistics, but we did not add the screens yet to show it. So this is simple something we will add later. We figured we’d let people race first and then look at stats later.

Q: The current competition standings are multiple tabs with results, and worse, with mixed info in the grid. The formatting should be improved and you should add pages. Where is the design for this?

burgesjl

No argument about the poor formatting. There is a design for this, and it’s not fully implemented yet. Currently some tables look odd, with words wrapping at awkward places. It gets the job done, but will be improved.

Q: Oval series would be cool in future.

Frederik B.

Most certainly. At the moment we have only a few ovals in our repertoire, but we know our stock cars are quite popular within the community so it’s definitely something we want to do.

Q: Will there be voice chat built into the system for general and teams?

James Foster

I think most people are used to being on TeamSpeak or Discord or a similar voice service already, so it’s unlikely we will add something like that ourselves when there are existing solutions out there. I could see us integrating with one of those services going forward, but that will certainly be longer term.

Q: If the competition system remains free of charge as you guys wrote in the blog post how do you afford all the servers? Hosting at scale is expensive. Isn’t it a losing game?

Frederik B.

We’ve designed the system to be resource efficient, so whilst there is certainly a cost to hosting at scale, we think we can cover that. In the end, we want people to race (online and offline) as much as possible, so facilitating that is important to us.

Q: Why max 20 per splits by the way? Is the dedicated one the same as the one for public servers?

Julien Lemoine

This is something we can configure per session (or competition). The reason for using 20 now is that most if not all tracks we have support at least that many pit boxes. Also a field of 20 fits on most tracks. But we are using the “normal” dedicated servers to host these, so anything you can configure there, we can configure as well.

That’s all for today. Enjoy the racing, be fair and respectful towards each other, and stay safe!

In case you’ve been living under a rock or have decided to forego exposure to the internet and social media over the last few days, you’ve probably noticed a rather special new piece of content has been released for rFactor 2 by the hugely prolific and highly talented EnduRacers Modding Team – here at Studio we’ve certainly been keeping an eye on this one, and I can only speak for myself personally in saying that it has rather monopolized my sim time over the last couple of days….

Not sure what I’m talking about? Well fear not, we’ve got you covered on that score… introducing the EnduRacers Alpine Series mod for rFactor 2 – adding the Cup and GT4 variation of little A110 from the popular French carmaker to rFactor 2 as a free piece of downloadable content. What makes this even more special is the fact that EnduRacers have officially licenced these two new cars with the manufacturer, and have worked exceptionally closely with Signatech Alpine in order to replicate the light and powerful GT racers as closely as possible to their real world counterparts, using real data and with input from the actual drivers of the cars! 

Endurances Alpine Series | Steam Workshop: Click Here.

This release is an incredible achievement from the team at EnduRacers, and testament to the level of dedication, skill and determination of the community in rFactor 2 to achieve the very best level or realism and immersion within our favourite simulation. 

Here at Studio 397 we’ve been so excited to see the realization of this project, and so impressed with the final outcome, we couldn’t let the opportunity pass to not give these beautifully crafted new cars a platform on which the wider community can race them – as such, we are absolutely delighted to announce both the Alpine A110 Cup and Alpine A110 GT4 we be coming to the rFactor 2 Competition System – starting now! 

With the first events already in action for the Cup car, and with the GT4 to follow tonight, we will be hosting a series of regular races across multiple circuits using both the Cup and GT4 variants of the car, each with their own standalone series to allow drivers the maximum opportunities to sample these fantastic creations in anger out on the circuit. 

The races will be run in our new Competition System found within rFactor 2, and should last in the region of 20 – 30 minutes per race event. 

What are you waiting for? Get the cars downloaded, start practising, and we will see you out on the virtual racetracks of rFactor 2 very soon indeed!

This weekend, the first two series will end, and whilst we are already preparing for a new and fresh set of competitions (possibly with a surprise we don’t want to spoil just yet), in terms of development we have been chasing two bugs:

• The first one is a problem where, seemingly randomly, significant groups of people disconnect from the server after a couple of minutes. So far we’re mainly seeing this in our GTE series and it seems to have gotten worse after we introduced some changes last week. Our efforts are very much focused on reproducing this and fixing it and we expect this to continue into next week.
• The second one is a graphics glitch, where the bodywork of a car starts deforming into a bunch of huge polygons that reach into the sky. This one too is still under investigation, and I hope to have a better update on this next week.

Feature wise we’ve deployed a few updates to the rendering in the UI, and a few more are expected to be deployed right after the publication of this blog, or possibly tomorrow. Updates include a richer briefing, better layout for the standings (with jumping to “your” position still to come) and some networking improvements that make the UI more robust.

In general we would like to thank our community for their active involvement in reporting issues during this beta phase. As promised last week, we wanted to answer some frequently asked questions. If we’ve missed yours, don’t hesitate to get in touch and we’ll answer a few more next week.

Q&A

Q: What will be the major feature of the system which will make people say “hey let’s play (or switch) to rFactor 2”?

Stevy

I’m not sure if we can name a single major feature, but a significant part of the community has been telling us “if only you had an organized online system like one of your major competitors”. So that was a major reason to build this system. Picking one feature that might make it unique, but will still be some time away, the system is quite flexible in how you can setup different competitions, so we can keep innovating and organizing new formats. One feature that, as far as I know, will be unique, is that we can include multiple different simulations into the system and even run competitions where different events run in different sims.

Q: What will make it special compared to all the other systems?

Stevy

Our main goal is to have an experience that keeps people trying new things, so in the next couple of years you will see league style races, knockout tournaments, short sprint races, endurance races, and lots of other types of challenges we probably did not even think of right now.

Q: Will it even have something like this or will it be “just” a comp system like all the others?

Stevy

In the end there are only so many ways you can do a competition system, but I think the rFactor 2 simulation itself lays the groundwork for some unique things. One aspect we already mentioned before is that we expect to also include “offline” racing against the AI, so maybe next year the Tatuus Winter Series is something you can also run against AI, or maybe even allowing a mix of AI and humans.

Q: Will there be an iRacing like results screen where you can see the ratings from all the drivers at the end, and will they be saved to look back at it yourself?

Unknown

The whole “result viewing” part has not been deployed yet, but for sure we will add extensive statistics about all the sessions and splits in each competition, as well as driver, team and friend statistics. And that will certainly include some form of rating, driver reputation and possibly others.

Q: My question about that would be how you can maybe change your car? Even if all points are gone.

Vanisch

Yes, we will most likely have a feature to leave a competition and then (if that is still allowed for that competition) join it with a new entry, which will also allow you a new choice of car.

Q: Please add more Q session for GTE during the day, in American continent there’s one at 3am and 4.45am so the next 4 races of the day.

Nico Barclay

Right now we settled on a schedule where there is a race every 5 hours in both competitions and we had to shuffle the qualifications around a bit to accomodate for the big demand we saw. We are aware that that still might not be enough for all timezones to find a nice slot to race in the 3 days each event lasts. In this beta we will probably not “scale up” yet, but in the future our goal is to host as many races as there is demand for.

Q: Please add a “practice” button from the competition page so we can either join an open practice session or a single player race. I was trying to practice the loch last night, but I couldn’t find any details on which track config it was supposed to be. So a practice button that takes us right there would be great.

MarcG

For now, your best bet is to go into single player, and then go to the series selection and look for the GTE or Tatuus Winter Series and select that. This way when you go into car or track selection, you will just see the content that is used in the competition. For now all tracks are run using “default” weather. Going forward we will introduce practice sessions for people to get together and train online.

Q: Will we have to keep buying cars we’re not interested in driving or will this change in the future? A while back I took a break from rFactor 2 so there are some cars I don’t have and I can’t join the GTE series even if I already have the car I want to drive. A couple of cars is already enough to stop me from returning to rFactor 2. I can’t imagine how many new players this will stop from getting into the game.

Martin Vindis

So this would require a huge technical change, basically a rewrite of how the package system works. We decided against that and instead offer much better pricing on car packs compared to some of our competitors. We will always keep running competitions with free content, and will even consider properly built and licensed community created content. You can also expect future bundles that are tailored to our competitions and can be bought at a discount.

Q: Will the competition system become subscription-based when it hits proper RC-state?

Flaux

No. The competition system will be free to enter and as long as you behave well in the sessions, you can access it. There might be some competitions in the future that require an entry fee, and we might work with specific partners to build special events that have other requirements, but fundamentally we want everybody to participate.

Q: Hello good morning, when are you going to put the game in Spanish? since in the community there are many Spanish speakers, more than you think to put us aside. It would be more correct to also translate into Spanish from Spain. Translated with google translator.

Tetemr

Somos conscientes de que hay una gran comunidad de habla hispana y en nuestra pantalla de perfil puede ver que tenemos la intención de proporcionar traducciones completas a muchos idiomas. No estamos listos para comenzar ese proceso, pero está planeado y ciertamente aceptaremos la ayuda de la comunidad para lograrlo. Traducido con Google Translator.

We wish you all a good week, and stay safe!

Hello and welcome to a new series of blog entries. These are not intended to replace the monthly roadmap, but give more in depth updates specifically on the competition system.

Two weeks ago we launched the first competition, using the Tatuus FT-60 car at a selection of free tracks. A week later we added our paid GTE cars running on a combination of free and paid tracks. This allowed us to both test the subscription to free content as well as the process we added to calculate the cheapest combination of bundles to get you the paid content needed to compete.

The response so far has been really good. Thousands have signed up and raced in over 500 splits, and although not all elements of the system have been deployed yet, we’ve seen some good racing and had a lot of valuable feedback from the community.

In the first two weeks we mainly focused on making sure the system runs smoothly and the user experience is good. Initially we encountered and fixed some scalability issues. We also discovered that there are some issues with people having installed upgrades to our content that interfere with our series definitions. We are looking into adding code that will try to analyze the components and their upgrades you have installed and and report back on the root causes of why certain content won’t work. Overall, we’ve made an effort on both Discord and our forum to support users that ran into issues, and we’ve seen others in the community helping each other out.
By now people should be able to get into sessions without problem and we added extra servers as well as adjusted the session timings to ensure we could meet with the demand. To give you some insights, we were running 20 servers and in some cases the sessions were too close together, so servers did not have enough time to reconfigure and be ready. We’ve learned a lot on how to better tune the system as a whole.

In the update we have deployed today we have fixed a lot of minor issues we encountered in the backend. We also fixed some duplicate entries that entered the system, so this might affect some of the existing standings. Messages we present to you if something does still go wrong should now offer better advice on what to do going forward.

The GTE series now runs with fixed upgrades as defined in those cars. We have deployed an update to all GTE cars, with other cars to follow, that allows us to make sure people only run with the “Le Mans” aero package on that track and nowhere else and our competition servers have been upgraded to enforce that.

We have also released an rFactor 2 build update, fixing some of the reported issues with the new UI and VR, as well as some tweaks that will improve the competition system experience. In general we are focusing on making sure everybody can smoothly run these new builds.

In the upcoming week we will focus more on bringing you quality of life improvements to the front-end based on your feedback. There are a lot of screens where we can add little details to give you a better insight. Our goal is basically to make sure the system is rock solid before we take the next steps.

So what are some of these next steps? Obviously, when these two competitions end, we want to present new ones. In those we will be again experimenting with some new formats as we test some of the flexibility of the system. To elaborate a bit on that, we can define per competition what kind of sessions we want to run in events, how long events last, how we decide splits and grids and how points are handed out. We will also add some variation in the session formats, such as private qualification sessions with fixed conditions to create a more equal playing field. We’ve also had a few questions on if we could also run sessions where a race is directly preceded by a qualification session. Yes we can. And it’s something we will definitely try out going forward.

Obviously our next big step is the introduction of a stewarding system that will encourage safe driving. During the development phase we’ve developed quite a few ideas in this area, as well as studied what other similar simulations are doing. We expect to try out some different systems in the upcoming months and are looking forward to your feedback.

Also, to make this blog more interactive, we encourage you to send us any questions you want to see answered and we will pick and answer the most frequently asked ones. Enjoy the races and stay safe!

The final rFactor 2 Development Roadmap of 2020 is here! With the festive season in full swing amidst the yearly tradition of afternoon drinking, over eating and slouching around the sales in search of items at prices we can’t resist, it feels like a fine of a time as any to tell you all about the rFactor 2 goodies during this holiday season, before we lay virtual pen and paper to rest for a much-needed break.

Of course this month is a little more dramatic than usual, punctuated with a visit from a fat man in a red suit clambering down the chimney at the dead of night to deliver those socks you always wanted, but that doesn’t mean we’ve taken our foot off the gas here at Studio 397, far from it in fact, as we’ve once again had a bumper month of new stuff for rFactor 2, with plenty more cooking away nicely in the background ready to kick into gear for 2021. 

Winter Sale

rFactor 2 | Winter Sale: Click Here.

Sale time! Yes, a sale is as synonymous with Christmas as cheap socks and cheaper wine, and not wanting to break from the tradition of low prices on awesome content, the rFactor 2 Steam Winter Sale is in full swing – with massive discounts across loads of items within the simulation. If you’ve been holding off on that bit of something you fancy but haven’t gotten around to purchasing just yet, then fear not, now is very much the time to treat yourself to a gift or two during the holiday season.

Our biggest sale of the year, we have fantastic discounts on plenty of great content within rFactor 2. From a 60% reduction of the Formula E Bundle, to half price happiness with our GT3 Pack, even KartSim and the Reiza DLC packages get in on the action too – so head over to the rFactor 2 Steam Store page and pick up a bargain for yourself!

Endurance Bundle 2 DLC Release

Endurance Bundle 2 | Steam Store: Click Here.

With endurance racing very much one of our key pillars here at Studio 397, we are delighted that just ahead of Christmas we were able to release our Endurance Bundle 2 DLC, adding three very special endurance racing machines to the sim. The Endurance Bundle 2 DLC has been a labour of love for a number of months here at rFactor 2 HQ, and we’ve been absolutely delighted to see the positive initial reaction from the community towards these three new cars. With so many exceptional racing series and categories that exist in the world today, it is always a really difficult decision to look through everything and decide what type of car we want to bring to life within rFactor 2, adding variety to the simulation but at the same time also keeping a keen eye on fleshing out some of the categories that are already held dear to the heart of our sim racing community.

With the Endurance Bundle 2 DLC, we’ve looked to further strengthen both the LMP2 and GTE classes within the sim, whilst also bringing a top level IMSA specification DPi racer to the rF2 for the first time. In regard to this new prototype, the Cadillac DPi-V.R, we have enjoyed an unprecedented level of support and access from JDC-Miller MotorSport during the development phase of the car, and as such we are pretty confident this is one of the most realistic releases we’ve managed to put together during the whole lifespan of rFactor 2… needless to say, we really like driving this beast out on the virtual circuits.

It is also with significant pleasure that another firm favourite brand of the studio is represented now in rFactor 2 with their latest challenger, as the eighth generation Chevrolet Corvette C8.R GTE makes its debut in the simulation, further expanding our already impressive collection of GTE cars within the title, and bringing the latest and greatest in terms of engineering technology from the famous American manufacturer. Significantly different to its ultra-successful predecessors, the C8.R is notable not only for its mid-engine concept, but also for the quite dramatic styling changes over the beloved lines of the original Corvette. Initial scepticism from fans of the brand about this dramatic change in direction were quickly overcome however, as the new car has proven itself to be a mighty impressive piece of hardware this season in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship – wrapping up driver and team titles in its first year of competitive action.

RCCO eX ZERO 2021 Release

RCCO eX ZERO 2021 | Steam Store: Click Here.

Endurance Bundle 2 aside, this month the content development team have also been hard at work putting together quite a few new toys to enjoy within rFactor 2. At the beginning of December we kicked things off with a release of the very interesting new RCCO eX ZERO 2021 electric car – a first for rFactor 2 in that it was designed by former DTM champion Mike Rockenfeller and his team, exclusively to be brought to life within our simulator. Loads of power and massive grunt courtesy of the 1000 hp electric power unit, the car will primarily be used for future esports competitions, and could well prove to be an early look at the not too distant future of real world motorsport in the years ahead. 

Content Updates… lots of updates.

rFactor 2 Track Updates | More Details: Click Here.

The development team here at Studio 397 have also taken the opportunity this month to push live a number of developments to some of our existing content within rFactor 2. As is always the case with a continually evolving piece of software, as we move the base rFactor 2 platform forward on a number of levels we have to find a balance between current and future releases, and ensuring our older content meets the standards enjoyed by newer items. As such, December has seen a number of tweaks and improvements to several of our existing tracks within the simulation, with special attention paid to the Nurburgring Nordschleife and its missing curbs, and a few improvements to the Portland International Raceway, Spa-Francorchamps, Hong Kong E-Prix and the Botniaring Circuit. Fear not dear sim racers, further track and vehicle updates will be coming on a reasonably regular basis next year, as we continue to work hard to bring all the content within rFactor 2 up to the quality levels deserving of this racing simulation.

The New Competition System

Back in the November Development Roadmap posting (here), we spoke about our desire to use the December update as a first pass of our new Competition System within rFactor 2. Now while this first release by no means represents the finished article in terms of how the competition system will look going forward, it does present us with an initial starting point to base development and expansion of the features and functionality based on what the end user would like to see and experience within the system. This first release should offer players the opportunity to engage in regular and scheduled online racing events in rFactor 2, which will be expanded with further offerings and more feature rich functionality in the coming months. For the initial launch phase of the system we have put on a selection of popular car and track combinations for players to enjoy, however expect to see this change up on a regular basis with more frequent events added as the system begins to populate with regular users.

To get you started, we’ve embedded a little guide which will be expanded upon in 2021.

Getting Started

The competition system is integrated into the brand-new UI. Whilst we won’t attempt to explain everything regarding the new interface, we do want to start here by pointing out where to find the new system. From the main menu, right at the top of the screen, click the “Race” option to go to the race screen. Here you will see different panels for accessing single player, multiplayer and competition shortcuts, as well as buttons to further configure each. Click “sign up” on the competition panel to get started.

Signing Up for the System

The first time, you need to sign up for the competition system. This involves accepting the terms and conditions, as well as creating an account using your real name and e-mail address. Once that is done, you are ready to start looking for competitions that spark your interest. Note that, as the system suggests, it is important to sign up with the identical name you are using in rFactor 2 (by default it will already fill that in for you).

Browsing

The “Competitions” screen uses the familiar interface with tabs at the bottom that allow you to browse all the competitions that are currently active in the system. Click on each one for an overview, and if you want to learn more about them, click the “more” button to “drill down”. The “back” button or the path menu at the top allow you to quickly go up that same hierarchy again.

Trying the Series

At this point you might see a competition that you are interested in. In some cases, you might want to first try out the content that is associated with the competition, so at this point we allow you to do just that: subscribe to the content and try it out in single player mode. You can hit the subscribe button at which point you will automatically be subscribed to all the content you need. But what if that includes paid content? We will check if you already own it, and if not, we go and look for the best possible deal for you in our store. We will put all those items in your basket for you to checkout, if you so choose. The end result after downloading and installing all content will be that you get a new “series” that you can use in single player as well that features all the cars and tracks used in that competition. Find the car you like best, practice the tracks you need to drive, tweak setups and in general make sure you come prepared.

Signing Up for a Competition

You’ve now come to a point where you decide to sign up for the competition. The sign-up process for a competition involves the creation of your “entry”. Right now we only support entries with a single driver, but future versions will include endurance races with driver swaps, race engineers, and various other roles. What you do need to do now is pick the actual car you want to race with, as well as any upgrades for it. Once that is done, you are ready to register for your first session!

Registering for a Session

Registering for a session is something you can currently do at the latest 15 minutes ahead of the actual start of the session. By registering, you are telling the system you will be in that session, and pressing the button will redirect you to a briefing screen. You will see some information about the session, as well as a countdown that will automatically join the server that got prepared for you.

As the briefing will have told you, when you enter the server, you will be in a 5-minute session ahead of the “real” session. For example if you joined a race, there will be a 5-minute warmup. This is to allow everybody to join the server ahead of time. You can use this session to drive. As always, be mindful of other drivers that are joining as well. At some point the session will then start, and you can drive. Good luck! When the session ends, you can either leave the server yourself, or wait until it shuts down. If you leave before it ended, you will see a screen that indicates that the session is still in progress, and you can even try rejoining. If the session has ended, you will end up in a post session report screen, and from there you can navigate back to the competition screen and look at the standings or register for the next session.

Looking at the Standings

If you go to the screen for the competition you were just in, the standings tab at the bottom allows you to view the current standings. Each competition can have one or more of them, depending on how it is set up, but typically you will find at least some points based standing and something that will tell you your position in qualification, which determines your grid position relative to others.

Wrapping it up

So that wraps up our short introduction. There is a lively community on our Discord server that can definitely help you if you’re stuck or simply have questions about the system. And with that out of the way, it’s time to remind you about what’s coming. We posted a mini development roadmap for the competition system last month. Below is a brief outline of some key areas of focus around the competition system in the immediate future. Note that this is our current order of priority, but as we move forward and get more feedback from our community, priorities might shift and new ideas added. We will definitely report on such changes going forward.

Ratings — are probably one of the most anticipated features, and one of the reasons for not having them active right from the start is that we want to test our algorithms on real-world data before publishing anything. Our current philosophy is to have a single rating system that encapsulates both your skill and safety record. Internally we already use ratings to evaluate the results if various races in an event, and to give you points based on how well you did in that event.

Protests and decisions — are also high on our roadmap list as we will no doubt have situations where an incident will need to be reported and evaluated by our stewards. Our goal here is definitely to let the in-game systems do a lot of the (easy) work here, monitoring when you cut the track or commit other offenses and directly handing out penalties. At the same time we are aware that not everything can be decided by robots.

More competition formats — are things we will probably gradually introduce but as a feature they certainly need to be mentioned on any roadmap. We intend to run our GT championship, various hot lap styles, some completely new formats as well as more “league style” competitions in the system. The intention here is to keep things fresh, so expect us to introduce several new ideas over the course of next year.

Roles and team based driving — will be added to allow multiple drivers to share an “entry”, or car, in a competition. Roles can be defined so teams can also have a manager or race engineer. Other roles are stewards, race control, and cameramen to facilitate broadcasts.

Broadcast integration — is probably another feature that will be gradually introduced, but obviously when broadcasting sessions that belong to a competition, we want to make sure that overlays showing standings, points, participants and calendars accurately reflect the competition they’re a part of.

Offline Championships — will be added once the online part is running smoothly. We will leverage the features we use online to also facilitate offline championships, where you can race against our AI.

December Build Update

In order to be ready for the competition system launch, we deployed a new build update for rFactor 2 on Tuesday 22nd December. The new build, as detailed in previous roadmap postings, now ensures our latest generation UI is the default way rFactor 2 launches for all users. The current UI technology is essential for the continued progression of the simulation and the integration of the competition system, and continuing to focus development attention on two separate branches of the simulation (old and new UI) isn’t practical for the studio moving forward. 

That said, we acknowledge that some users may find initial technical limitation issues with the new UI, and some Simulation Centres also require access to the original UI in order to run their businesses, as such, we have retained a depreciated version of the simulation running on the original UI. This version can be accessed via the Beta tab on the Steam interface.

It is worth noting however, use of the previous UI version will not be compatible with the new competition system, nor will it be in receipt of future updates.

A Look Back At 2020

We are of course incredibly excited about the new competition system and the continual development and improvements that are being brought to the new UI in rFactor 2, but it is important to remember some of the other achievements we have made during the course of what has been a pretty crazy year for everyone in 2020. With the world of motorsport closed down without much warning thanks to the Covid-19 pandemic at the beginning of the year, the opportunity for bigger and more ambitious than ever esport events has opened up the opportunity for us to put on some incredible displays of esport racing activities this last 12 months. From holding the official Le Mans 24 Hours Virtual action in rFactor 2 to seeing all the real world Formula E drivers taking to the simulation in the Formula E Race at Home Challenge, with plenty of quality racing in events like our GT Pro and GT Challenge seasons, the BMW M2 CS Racing Cup, Sim Formula Europe 2021. An incredible journey so far, and we are still at the very beginning with plenty more to come!

Ferrari

One of the key highlights for us this year just has to be securing a licence to bring the legendary Ferrari brand to rFactor 2 for the very first time. For years, having a licence agreement with the famous Prancing Horse has felt so far out of reach for us, but with quite some determination and a push for bigger and better licenced content within the sim, it was an unbelievable feeling to finally be able to bring the best of Maranello into our vehicle roster here in rFactor 2. Already the fruits of these labours have been seen with the addition of the 488 GT3 EVO and GTE, and expect more to follow in 2021… 

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

rFactor 2 | Ferrari GT3 Steam Store: Click Here.

Spa-Francorchamps

Another key highlight over the last 12 months has to be the addition of probably one of the best race tracks in the whole world (well, in my humble opinion anyway), yes, after many, many, many requests from the sim racing community, earlier this year we were finally able to recreate the legend that is the Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps in all of its laserscanned glory in rFactor 2 – and honestly, we think it is spectacular with the cars within our simulation. It has certainly been a long time coming to rFactor 2, but as we double down on our desire to be the best option for sim racers looking to recreate a number of different endurance style racing events, we just had to have a collection of the finest endurance racing venues in the world, and with Spa now joining Le Mans, Sebring and Silverstone within the sim, we think we are getting very close to achieving that goal… with yet more goodies to follow next year too…

rFactor 2 | Spa-Francorchaps Steam Store: Click Here.

Zandvoort 2020 Edition

Although most certainly not an endurance racing track, and sadly due to the world health situation not even a Formula One track yet, we also very much enjoyed giving our virtual racers the opportunity to sample the newly reprofiled Zandvoort Grand Prix Circuit ahead of the real world drivers trying out the Dutch venue earlier this year. Unfortunately, circumstances would prevent the much anticipated return of the Dutch Grand Prix until 2021 at the earliest, but that hasn’t stopped us bringing the challenging new layout to the simulation for rFactor 2 players to enjoy. From the sweeping banked last corner to many other profile changes aimed to help improve the racing spectacle, here at Studio 397 we are big fans of the new changes, and we can’t wait to see how Formula One get on at the track when the Dutch Grand Prix finally returns after a 36 year wait!

rFactor 2 | Circuit Zandvoort 2020 Steam Workshop: Click Here

The New Bentley

Another new car we found ourselves very excited to release earlier in the year was the 2020 update to the astounding Bentley Continental GT3. Having proven that racing cars don’t particularly need to be small in order to be blisteringly fast on the world circuits, the new update of the powerful British car has proven to be a step up in almost every way from its now aging predecessor, and having the opportunity to bring it into rFactor 2 and help keep our collection of GT3 machines up-to-date with their real world counterparts, was an opportunity we just couldn’t let pass. 

Of course, having already released the earlier specification Bentley as paid DLC, we also took great pleasure from being in a position to add this to the already existing store item, meaning players who own the car already get a new version for free, and anyone looking to pick the car up for the first time gets both the old and new version together, for the same price. 

The 2020 Bentley is very much a different beast that its older sibling, both in terms of style and also the way it behaves on track, as such, both cars very much have something unique to offer the player, and our continued collaboration with the great British brand we feel is again testament to the strides forward we continue to make with rFactor 2 in recent years.

rFactor 2 | Bentley Continental GT3 Steam Store: Click Here

The Return of Radical

Small, lightweight, powerful. Sounds like a combination of factors that would lead to a good time behind the wheel, either in real life or on the virtual tarmac, and in the new Radical SR3 XX that is exactly what drivers get – producing one of the most interesting and engaging driving experiences in any car within rFactor 2 at present. Having worked with Radical for the release of the original SR3-RSX car all the way back in 2017 a return of that collaboration this year was a source of great pleasure and pride for the studio, especially as it led to the release of this incredible new car from the British marque. 

Acting as its own standalone class within rFactor 2, the Radical quickly became prominent within the community for its deceptively challenging driving behaviour, marking it out firmly as a car that is easy to drive, but difficult to tame. We’ve loved bringing this sort of vehicle to rFactor 2 this year, and hopefully you all enjoy driving it too!

rFactor 2 | Radical SR3 XX Steam Store: Click Here.

New Formula E Tracks

From old tracks like Zandvoort getting a modern update to absolutely brand new venues coming to rFactor 2. Formula E remains one of the most modern and advanced forms of motorsport in the world, and we are absolutely delighted to continue strengthening our relationship with this impressive championship series. As Formula E takes on World Championship status in 2021, we continue to work hard with the series organisers to bring new and exciting content and innovations around the category to the simulation, and next year should see at least a couple of new tracks coming to the title, the addition of the innovative ‘attack zone’ mode on our existing tracks and one or two very exciting esport activations within rFactor 2, so stay tuned for more information about the various things we have cooking as the new year kicks into swing over the next few months…

rFactor 2 | Formula E Bundle: Click Here

Racing Legends in rFactor 2

The topic of esport activations moves us quite nicely onto the subject of some pretty high profile activities we have been involved with this year. If you would have asked anyone at Studio 397 at the end of 2019 if they would have seen Mario Andretti, Emmerson Fittipaldi, Fernando Alonso, Jenson Button and Andy Priaulx all racing together in the same event using our software we would have thought you mad… however, with the world health pandemic throwing a bright light on the world of virtual racing – that is exactly what happened, with The Race All Star and Legends events bringing together some of the biggest names in motorsport to race on the rFactor 2 platform – an incredible showcase of our simulation, and the wider sport of sim racing. Hopefully we can get more of this type of action together in 2021, and continue spreading the joy of legendary race drivers taking to the virtual circuits. 

rFactor 2 | The Race All Star Challenge: Watch Again Here

Broadcast Overlays

Considering much attention this year has been on esports racing in general, and rFactor 2 broadcasts in particular, we took the decision early in the year to spend quite a bit of time and resources updating and improving our broadcast overlay system for our users, alongside our recent improvements that have been made with both the new UI and the overall look and feel of the graphics engine within the title. Our broadcast overlay system has been developed to bring a level of professionalism and quality to both custom organized esport events and races and championships run at home by our sim racing community. We understand that communities within the sim racing world are looking to take their own broadcasts to the next level of visual quality, and the reception we have received from many series running our overlay system has been fantastic to see – it really has made broadcasting race events within rFactor 2 so much more professional looking, and added a fantastic array of customisation options for users to explore and enjoy within the title. It is something we are very proud of indeed, and we look forward to further expanding and improving upon this system in the weeks and months ahead. 

rFactor 2 | Broadcast Overlays User Documentation: Click Here.

Modding Resources

Another important aspect of our simulation, and something that appears to be increasingly rare in modern racing sims, is our desire to offer community modding teams a platform in which to show off their fantastic creations. The rFactor franchise has long been regarded as the platform of choice for modern day sim racing modding, and although the art of creating mods has of course become much more complex with the release of rFactor 2, and with it the ever more demanding requirements that modders must achieve in order to realise their creations within the sim, we’ve worked hard this year to help clarify and support these fantastic individuals with more detailed documentation and support materials to help with their projects. Of course, this is something of a moving feast as rFactor 2 continues to develop, and we still very much have a desire to continue supporting the community in this regard – so expect these documents to continue to grow and expand over time… you can never have enough information!

rFactor 2 | Modding Development Tools and Documentation: Click Here.

Endurance Racing Bugs

We’ve also spent a lot of time this year trying to understand and rectify a few of the long standing bugs within the simulation. We are aware that plenty of work still remains in order to eradicate all of the issues that exist within rFactor 2, and of course we very much wish we could wave a magic development wand and make them all go away in a single update, but sadly the reality of the situation when it comes to software development of this nature means that things inevitably take longer than one initially expects, changes don’t always have the desired effect and new additions to the software often bring with them unforeseen outcomes with the many interdependent variables that exist within the code behind the scenes. Sadly, the upshot of this means we will inevitably take longer to work our way through the list of fixes and improvements we have on our radar, but rest assured we are working night and day to address as many areas of the title as we possibly can. 

One of the areas that we have paid particular attention to in recent months has been the endurance racing aspects of rFactor 2. We spoke about the various testing measures we put in place back at the studio to study the cause and effects of these issues back in the June Development Roadmap, and it has been gratifying to see that the fruits of these labours have resulted in plenty of very effective fixes, something that we are keen to continue into other aspects of rFactor 2 in the weeks, months and years ahead. rFactor 2 is so technically complex and wide in scope that these developments will forever remain a work in progress piece of work, and we look forward to rolling out more quality of life improvements into the new year.

Le Mans 24 Hour Virtual

Arguably the biggest thing that happened in the world of rFactor 2 in 2020 would be a world first for sim racing. Due to the global closure of live sporting events following the Covid-19 pandemic, we worked very closely with the ACO, WEC, FIA, Motorsport Games and Alkamel to stage a virtual recreation of the world famous Le Mans 24 Hours, holding the yearly round the clock classic entirely within rFactor 2, rather than on the tarmac of the famous French venue. 

Not only did this prove to be the largest sim racing event in history, as witnessed by an incredible 23.9 million people across 57 different countries throughout the world, but it also allowed us the opportunity to welcome a outstanding collection of real world racing teams and drivers into the rFactor 2 family – providing them with a platform on which to thrill racing fans who would otherwise have been sat in front of the box watching the real event in different, non-pandemic times. 

Frighteningly large in scale, both in terms of the work required to ready ourselves for the event and the broad distribution of the footage, being a part of the Virtual 24 Hours of Le Mans brought to the fore a number of useful learnings for us at the studio, the outcomes of which we continue to work hard to filter into the development of the simulation even to this day. Surely a massive highlight for the team, and a great showcase not only of rFactor 2 as a platform, but also the world of sim racing to both the sport, and the wider racing public.

rFactor 2 | Le Mans 24 Hours Virtual: Event Highlights: Click Here.

Of course the above only lightly touches on the entire body of work that is undertaken here at Studio 397 every day of the week (and weekends too), it would be near impossible to list every single thing the studio have worked on over the last 12 months, some of which are yet to see the light of day, some have changed beyond all recognition since the original concept first formed, some have merged into other aspects of the sim and others are just starting to take their very first tentative steps into the wider team. We will just have to ask you to trust us on this one, each and every member of Studio 397 has a burning passion to ensure the simulation grows and improves as much as possible, as soon as possible, and together we are exceptionally confident that 2021 will be another great year for both sim racing in general, and rFactor 2 in particular. 

Seeing as we are right into the very final throws of this strange and unique year, how about some fun facts and stats about rFactor 2… maybe a few little nuggets here you didn’t already know?

4 – Number of free tracks released in 2020: Zandvoort 2020, Portland, Loch Drummond, Formula E test track

3 – Number of DLC tracks released in 2020: Berlin FE, New York FE, Spa-Francorchamps

1 – Number of free cars released in 2020: Stock Car 2018

6 – Number of updated tracks in 2020: Monaco FE, Le Mans, Silverstone, Nurburgring, Hong Kong, Botniaring

8 – Number of DLC cars released in 2020: Ferrari 488 GTE, Ferrari 488 GT3 EVO 2020, Bentley Continental GT3 2020 (free add-on), Radical SR3 XX, RCCO eX ZERO, Cadillac DPi, Corvette C8.R and Ligier JSP218 LMP2

10 – Number of Formula One World Championships held by drivers who officially raced in rF2 Esport events in 2020: Sebastian Vettel (4) Fernando Alonso (2) Emerson Fittipaldi (2) Mario Andretti (1), Jenson Button (1) 

3 – Total number of new car licences added to rFactor 2: Ferrari, Cadillac, Ligier

6 – Major build updates for rFactor 2: 1117, 1118, 1119, 1120, 1121 and 1122

11 – Number of official rFactor 2 Esport categories held during 2020:  Sim Formula Europe 2020 / Le Mans 24h Virtual / BMW Sim M2 Racing Cup / GT PRO Season 1 / GT Challenge Season 1 / GT PRO Season 2 / GT Challenge Season 2 / Sim Formula Europe 2021 / Formula E Race at Home / The Race Legends Trophy / The Race All Stars Series 

It would be fair to say that 2020 has been a rather exciting / stressful / rewarding / intense / dramatic / satisfying year of development and progress for Studio 397 and rFactor 2. With the difficult world health situation throwing the lives of many people into varying levels of disruption and chaos around the world, it is easy to get too wrapped up in the ups and downs of game development and take your eye off the bigger picture, as such, we wanted to take this opportunity to send our best wishes to everyone in these trying times, to thank you for your continued support and encouragement as we all strive towards our goal of making rFactor 2 the very best it can be. A thank you also to our various staff around the world here at Studio 397, who continue to put in unprecedented hours behind the scenes pulling everything together in our efforts to continually grow the simulation we all love. 

With Christmas already over and the New Year right around the corner, all that is left to say is, from all at Studio 397, wishing you all the very best as we head into (hopefully) better times in 2021. Stay safe, and see you out on the track!

Christmas has come early for sim racing fans today – please give up a very warm rFactor 2 welcome for our latest addition to the family … the Endurance Bundle 2 DLC!

‘Tis the season to be jolly… a time for giving, a time for receiving, festive merriment, a glass of something nice and more mince pies than is either reasonable or healthy. Rather than putting that much-needed pair of new socks or a thickly lined winter jumper under the tree this year, give the gift of endurance racing to your nearest and dearest (or treat yourself!) – why not take out some rather awesome endurance cars for a spin in rFactor 2?

Yes dear sim racers, we’ve gone and put together our latest car pack DLC for the simulation – and I must say we feel pretty pleased with the outcome – three epic endurance machines that include some of the most beautiful, iconic and potent race cars in modern motorsport. 

Endurance Bundle 2 | Steam Store: Click HERE.

It’s hard to argue against the fun of multi-class endurance racing. That feeling of slicing a Prototype through slower traffic in the fight at the head of the field, or powering your GT racer within a crowded pack of cars while keeping half an eye on the mirrors and blue flags ready to let faster cars to pass – it’s something that just cannot be replicated in any other form of motorsport, and with rFactor 2 now containing four of the best endurance tracks in the world (Le Mans, Sebring, Silverstone and Spa), these cars never had a better place to be put through their paces against your rivals.

Endurance Bundle 1 | Steam Store: Click HERE.

With this new Endurance Bundle DLC, we at Studio 397 have tried to keep an eye on our existing content to both bring something new to the simulation, and add further depth to the popular car classes already available within rFactor2.

Endurance Bundle 2 DLC Contents:

• Cadillac DPi-V.R
• Ligier JS P217 LMP2
• Corvette C8.R GTE
  
  

2020 Cadillac DPi-V.R

Built in close collaboration with top North American sportscar team JDC-Miller Motorsports, the Cadillac DPi-V.R represents the very finest in American endurance racing engineering, having taken the IMSA WeatherTech Sportscar Championship by storm since an incredible debut in 2017, winning no less than the first seven events it contested in the category, including the prestigious Rolex Daytona 24 Hours. Wayne Taylor Racing pairing Ricky and Jordan Taylor would dominate the drivers’ standings in the new machine, securing the title convincingly from sister entry Whelen Engineering, themselves taking a victory at the demanding Mobil 1 SportsCar Grand Prix at the Canadian Tire Motorsport circuit in Ontario, Canada.

2018 would be just as successful for the popular return of the Cadillac brand, with a further four wins courtesy of Mustang Sampling Racing (2), Wayne Taylor Racing (1) and Whelen Engineering (1) enough to secure a clean sweep of drivers and teams’ championships for the iconic American manufacturer. 

A further four wins in 2019 would again see the Cadillac DPi-V.R at the sharp end of the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship despite increased competition from the likes of American powerhouse outfit Penske and Mazda, although championship success would elude the manufacturer for the first time, with the Brazilian driving duo of former Formula One driver Filipe Nasr and SportsCar star Pipo Derani narrowly missing out on top spot in what was generally considered to be the most competitive championships in the recent history of the IMSA series. 

Fast-forward to a truncated 2020 season and again Cadillac would prove to be force to be reckoned with, this time with JDC running two cars under the JDC-Miller Motorsports and JDC Mustang Sampling banner alongside entries from Konica Minolta and Whelen Engineering. Despite having to perform in front of mostly closed door audiences and with a hastily amended calendar, the American teams would put up another determined fight against racing royalty in the form of Acura Team Penske, with the manufacturer taking a total of three race wins and runners up position in the championship for the #10 Konica Minolta car of Australian Ryan Briscoe and Dutchman Renger van der Zande.

With JDC in the unique position of being the only team to run two Cadillac DPi-V.R entries this season, we found them to be the perfect partner to team up with as we looked to maximise the available data and resources when creating this new car. Our collaboration with JDC has been nothing short of sensational these past months, and working alongside our colleagues at the team has opened up some exceptional opportunities to really get under the skin of this outstanding car, and most importantly for the players at home, recreate what we consider to be one of our most accurate and detailed vehicles for rFactor 2 so far. 

Key Performance Stats

Engine: 5.5L V8
Power: 580HP
Weight: 930kg
Top speed: 360km/h

2020 Ligier JS P217

As costs continued to spiral during the previous generation of endurance racing regulations, many teams and drivers found themselves migrating to the much more financially friendly and increasingly competitive LMP2 category of racing – high downforce prototype machines that don’t quite reach the ultimate lap pace of the table topping LMP1 / LMdH / LMH group, but offer seasoned professionals and up and coming drivers multiple opportunities to race in championships throughout the world.

With the recent influx of professional teams and drivers to the category, the popularity of LMP2 has exploded over the last few years. Offering arguably the most competitive and sizeable grids week in, week out in endurance prototype racing, LMP2 has become what the original Le Mans Prototype class never quite managed to achieve – the peak competitive proposition for prospective drivers looking to carve out a reputation and career in endurance prototype racing. 

With such popularity and the sheer volume of cars produced, many championships throughout the world have been quick to adopt LMP2 regulations within their own series, either as a standalone category, or as part of a wider multi-class structure, such as can be found in the World Endurance Championship, IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship and European Le Mans Series. 

We already have the Oreca 07 LMP2 car within the simulation, and keen as we are to ensure rFactor 2 has a wide range of vehicles suitable for close and competitive racing as possible, we felt the time was right to introduce another mighty LMP2 car. With the technical knowledge of a former Formula One race winning outfit in the form of Ligier, the French marque partnered up with Onroak Engineering to produce an exceptionally efficient and competitive vehicle, one that competes with some success in national and international endurance racing events.

Debuting in time for the 2017 racing season, the car immediately proved to be competitive in the hands of numerous racing teams, with a debut fourth place finish (and fifth overall) at the 2017 Le Mans 24 Hours in the hands of United Autosports proving without doubt that the new JS P217 is a car to be reckoned with. That form would be carried forward in the European Le Mans Series by the US squad, the team snapping up an impressive three outright race victories for the new car en route to second overall in the teams standings. 

Further Le Mans LMP2 success would come the way of this attractive closed top prototype, despite the numerical dominance of Oreca within the category, with United Autosports once again carrying the flag for Ligier with a exceptional class podium in 2018, following up with a further top four finish within the series the following season. 

Having released in 2017, the JS P217 immediately showed promise on the circuit, and the following years have seen the car wrap up wins in various categories throughout the world. A mainstay in series such as WEC and stateside with the IMSA WeatherTech Sportscar Championship – we are sure you will agree that this is a great car to add to our ever growing collection of official content within rFactor 2.

Key Performance Stats

Engine: 4.2L V8
Power: 600HP
Weight: 930kg
Top speed: 330km/h

2020 Chevrolet Corvette C8.R

Replacing the venerable Corvette C7.R was never going to be an easy task for Chevrolet, however the new Pratt & Miller developed machine has immediately picked up the baton dropped by its predecessor and proceeded to firmly establish itself as a competitive force to be reckoned with in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship. Straight off the bat following its debut at the Rolex 24 Hours of Daytona the two car entry proved to be quick in the hands of the works Corvette Racing Team, going on to secure wins in over half the rounds of the 2020 season, unsurprisingly culminating with titles in both the team and drivers championship at the conclusion of its debut year of competition. 

The eighth-generation Corvette represents something of a departure from expected norms from the American brand. Gone is the traditional front engine concept so revered by the partisan fanbase of the car, and in its place comes a move to the somewhat divisive modern mid-engine design, Still kicking out in excess of 500hp to the rear wheels and a top speed of just under 200 mph from the fire breathing 5.5 litre V8 engine, the car is very much a Chevrolet under the skin, but with significantly different handling characteristics than those that have traditionally been associated with the bright yellow machines of years gone by.

According to Corvette Racing driver and sportscar ace Antonio Garcia, the new C8.R is “very agile” compared to its elderly predecessor, allowing the driver to “fight it harder and push pretty hard”, which should translate into a very popular choice of car for our online players to select in the white hot heat of battle!

The C8.R should stick to the road better than the C7.R as well, with an estimated additional 10% downforce possible from the new model thanks in part to the aggressive styling characteristics and complex aerodynamic details, coupled with a flat floor design as per the IMSA series regulations, These design touches, and plenty of ingenious work creating a much more use friendly and driver focussed interior layout have all contributed to the incredible success of the car on the world stage, right from its very introduction into racing at the beginning of 2020. With fierce competition from the likes of both Porsche and BMW chomping at the bit to recover lost ground to their American rivals, the race for GTE honours looks set to be another glorious one next year, and you can recreate it at home in rFactor 2 from the comfort of your own racing rigs!

Key Performance Stats

Engine: 5.5L V8
Power: 500HP
Weight: 1260kg
Top Speed: 300km/h

Don’t forget, as it is the Holiday season we’ve also got our Steam Winter Sale in full swing, with some exceptional offers on content for rFactor 2. If you’ve been missing a few key items, want to complete that collection or just fancy taking a look at something a bit different, head over to the rFactor 2 Steam Store page now and check out some brilliant new deals – the Steam Winter Sale ends on January 5th, so act fast!

These new cars represent the pinnacle of modern endurance racing as we head into 2021, and coupled with the already rich array of Prototype and sports car machinery within rFactor 2 (with more to come next year), we feel pretty confident that the Endurance Bundle  2 is a great way to say goodbye to what has been a fantastic year for rFactor 2, and set the tone nicely for what should be an even better 2021…

Enjoy the cars, enjoy the festivities and see you out on track soon.

The Peregrine Returns. After the mod competition we now start the hotlap to the finals. The Peregrine Falcon is the fastest animal on Earth. Capable of reaching speeds in excess of 389 km/hour this graceful bird can easily outrun a modern race car. With its incredible manoeuvrability, lightning fast speeds, superior aerodynamics and strategic insight, the Peregrine Falcon is the perfect ambassador for our brand-new esport racing series.

THE HEUSINKVELD PEREGRINE HOTLAP COMPETITION

PRIZE

The winner of the Heusinkveld Peregrine event to be held on 13th January will take home a set of the spectacular Heusinkveld Sim Pedals Sprint pedals, a 3 pedal set of high-end sim racing hardware that introduces the user to the next level of realism and adjustability.

SCHEDULE

21.12.2020

17:00 CET

Hotlap Qualification Begins – Maastricht, 2019 Audi R8 LMS GT3 EVO

03.01.2020

23:59 CET

Hotlap Qualification Ends

13.01.2020

20:00 CET

Heusinkveld Peregrine Finals Race – Audi R8 LMS GT3 EVO 2019 Peregrine Mod, Maastricht, 30 minutes, open setups, rolling start, formation lap, no pitstops.

FORMAT

How does it work?

The event will begin with an initial hotlap competition using the Maastricht Street Circuit mod and the Audi R8 LMS GT3 EVO 2019 car within rFactor 2.

Hotlap Competition | Register HERE

Drivers will have the opportunity to set an unlimited amount of laps on the server, with the fastest 10 drivers at the end of the qualification period then invited to take part on the broadcasted Heuskinveld Peregrine Mod Competition race on Wednesday 13^th January 2020.

Should a driver be unable to attend the race event having qualified for the finals day race, Sim Formula Europe and Studio 397 reserve the right to promote drivers outside the top 10 qualification times, in order of the leaderboard finishing position.

The race will be held on the Maastricht Street Circuit (link here) using a specially created livery mod of the Audi R8 LMS GT3 EVO 2019, containing the 10 winning liveries from the recent Heusinkveld Peregrine Livery Competition. The fastest driver of the hotlap competition will have first choice of livery design for the race, down to the 10^th place hotlap driver. Sim Formula Europe reserve the right to invite additional guest drivers to the race at their discretion. 

Race Details:

Car: Audi R8 LMS GT3 EVO 2019 with Peregrine Livery Mod.

Track: Maastricht Street Circuit

Qualification: 20:00 CET – 20 minutes

Race: 20:20 CET – 30 minutes. Race will be a rolling start from a full formation lap. Setups will be open and can be changed between qualification and the race. Weather will be 3pm in game time, 20 degrees temperature, partially cloudy conditions.

The overall winner of the race will be crowned the Heusinkveld Peregrine 2021 champion, and take home a set of the outstanding Heusinkveld Sim Pedals Sprint.

Please note, the minimum age of participate is 14, worldwide entry.

The 10 finalists of the Sim Formula Europe 2021 series may not enter this competition.

The event will be broadcast live on the various Studio 397 media channels.

PUBLIC VOTE FOR THE BEST MOD DESIGN 2021

10 fastest racers and the 10 nominated mods come together in one final race.

3 days before the Final Race, each of the 10 finalists will have to select one of the nominated liveries which they will use for the race event (fastest driver first choice, second fastest 2nd choice etc)

3 days before the race Sim Formula Europe will post on the SFE Facebook and Instagram page 10 separate posts containing a picture of the livery, the name of the designer and the name of the driver who selected that design. As of that moment people can start voting by liking (one or more) pictures of the 10 mod designs until January 22^nd at 23:59 CET

ONLY the likes on the post on Sim Formula Europe Facebook and Instagram pages will be counted in the vote. The livery with the highest number of likes will be confirmed as the winner

The overall livery design winner will be announced on Saturday, January 23rd 2021 and uploaded officially in rFactor 2.

What do I need to start?

Before you begin, if you haven’t already, you will need to have a copy of rFactor 2 installed and the Audi R8 LMS GT3 EVO 2019 and Maastricht Street Circuit.

If not, there are a few steps required to get going.

If you have all the content and know what to do enter now.

Otherwise read our mini guide below!

Step 1

Firstly create a Steam account, download and install rFactor 2 here

Then you will need to download both the Audi R8 LMS EVO GT3 and Maastricht Street Circuit,

Once installed, we suggest you setup your wheel and options in single player.

See here for a guide on what to do with your install

Step 2

You are ready to go! Click here to enter the Heusinkveld Peregrine Competition.

To get you going checkout the following;

Log into our competition system with your Steam account. Just click on the “Sign In” and follow the steps according to steam.

After that, you can subscribe to the current event.

If you don’t have an account on our competition system yet, you will need to fill in those details and create one.

After you’ve done this, it’s time to sign up for the Sim Formula Europe 2021 Competition.

Make sure you read the terms and conditions and our code of conduct

The next step shows you the current session running, info about the event etc.

On the bottom left you will find the join button to enter the hotlap servers to create your fastest laptime on track.

Before you hit “join session”, make sure you got Steam open, rFactor 2 installed, as well as the needed content for that round.

You will likely see a pop-up looking similar to this, make sure to Open Steam Client Bootstrapper here.

Steam will then notify you about joining the server. This won’t pop up into to foreground so you might need to click on your steam window to see and accept it.

Choose your car livery, click on race and off you go.

During the session you can adjust your car settings to your liking. Good luck!

If you need help you can chat with us directly on Discord – click here https://discord.gg/CruX93K

Or visit the forum here

Rules

Alongside our code of conduct,  just some hotlap/time trial rules, we will be reviewing all laps that qualify in the top-60 and performing spot-checks, those that do not observe correct driving may have their lap removed or will be disqualified (DQ)

• Observe the track limits at all times, if we observe track cutting that is unrealistic with all wheels in an off-track position the lap will be invalidated
• Do not use off-tracks prior to the lap starting to gain speed
• Do not use external software to modify performance
• Respect your competitors

Good Luck!

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

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

RCCO eX ZERO 2021 | Steam Store: Click HERE

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

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

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

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

As usual, Rudy certainly didn’t leave much in terms of laptime on the table, as you can see below:

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

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

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