With 2021 closer than we dare believe, a returning favourite is set to take centre stage in the world of competitive rFactor 2 esport competition this January  – announcing Sim Formula Europe 2021 / The InterClassics Virtual Dutch GP!

Moving from an on-site final to a virtual race from home competition for the new year, Sim Formula Europe 2021 is set to be bigger, better and more competitive than ever before – with an incredible prize pool of 10,000 EU cash and some exceptional sim racing hardware on offer to our best placed drivers, the total prize pool for this season is an amazing 13,500 EU! 

Developed to provide compact and intense racing, Sim Formula Europe 2021 and rFactor 2 will partner up once again to bring you this amazing competition, with the Champions Day races taking place in conjunction with InterClassics Maastricht, wrapped up with the theme of Dutch Grand Prix Classics at the sensational Zandvoort Grand Prix Circuit.

Sim Formula Europe | ICYMI – Finals Day 2020: Click HERE.

Before we let you know how to get involved in the competition yourself, we spoke to Sim Formula Europe 2020 winner Risto Kappet about his experiences at the MECC Maastricht Arena last January, and what it means to race in competitions at this level.

HOW TO TAKE PART

Hotlap Qualification and Races

Sim Formula Europe will be running a hotlap competition beginning on 09:00 CET Thursday 3^rd December until 23:59 CET Sunday 13^th December. Drivers will need to set a lap within the top 60 times using the 1993 McLaren MP4/8 at the modern Zandvoort Grand Prix Circuit in order to qualify for the Sim Formula Europe qualification races, with the Quarter-Finals set to be held on Wednesday 16th December, and the qualification finals on December 19th. The qualification races will consist of three standalone 20-minute events in the Tatuus FT-60 at the challenging Virginia International Raceway Circuit, (Reiza Pack DLC) with the top 10 drivers from each split progressing to the series Quarter-Final race, to be held on Saturday 19th December at the Botniaring track.  The top nine race finishes within the quarter-finals race will qualify for promotion to the Finals Day main event on January 17th, alongside reigning Sim Formula Europe champion, Risto Kappet.

Drivers over the age of 18 years old are eligible to participate in the competition, and registered drivers should be willing to broadcast their webcam image during the live event on January 17^th.

Hotlap Qualifications | Registration Open: CLICK HERE

The Finals Day

Nine qualified drivers and reigning champion Risto Kappet will take part in a live broadcasted ‘Finals Day’ event on January 17^th, 2021. The drivers will be pitched against each other across separate races, with points awarded for finishing positions determining the overall series champion. Stay tuned to the Sim Formula Europe and rFactor 2 social channels for exact format details closer to the big event.

The Finals Day event will be broadcast live on the Studio 397 YouTube and social channels, with studio presentation taking place on site at the historic InterClassics Dutch GP setting at MECC Maastricht.

The Prizes

1^st Place | 4,000 EU and SimTag hydraulic 2 pedal system (Racer edition)

2^nd Place | 2,000 EU and Sim-Lab P1-X sim racing cockpit Black and Speed1 Seat

3^rd Place | 1,500 EU and Heusinkveld sim pedals Sprint (3 pedal set)

4^th Place | 750 EU

5^th Place | 500 EU

6^th Place | 250 EU

7^th Place | 250 EU

8^th Place | 250 EU

9^th Place | 250 EU

10^th Place | 250 EU

Total Prize Pool Value | 13,500 EU

As an additional bonus, of those drivers who qualify for the series via our Sim Formula Europe 2021 hotlap competition, one lucky winner will be selected at random on December 19^th to win a Cooler Master package of hardware, including a gaming headset, keyboard, mouse and mousepad.

Things are set to look a little different this year due to the current world health pandemic, however we are delighted to continue our wonderful partnership with the InterClassics event at the MECC Arena in Maastricht, and to grow and expand our series to reward drivers with even bigger prizes, better competition and another chance to be crowned Sim Formula Europe champion!

https://simformula.eu

November has been another busy month here at Studio 397, with plenty of activity taking place back at base as we prepare for the run in to the festive season.

The nature of game development means we are constantly balancing our long and short term goals for rFactor 2, strengthening the core software and bringing new features whilst ensuring our content offer remains interesting and fresh for new and existing players alike.

Recapping quickly on November (can you believe it’s over already!?), we’ve certainly had a very enjoyable month checking out the reactions to our brand-new Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps DLC release – one of the tracks our team has been so keen to bring to rFactor 2 in all of its laserscanned glory, and it’s now finally available in for players to enjoy!

rFactor 2 | Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps Steam Store: Click HERE

To celebrate release of this new circuit, we’ve teamed up with the good people over at WTF1 to launch a very special selection of races on the new track. Headlining the action on December 4^th will be our WTF1 3H Invitational endurance event for invited esports drivers, and a very nice selection of real world racing legends. Not content with keeping the action to the world of endurance racing, we’ve also lined up an exceptional collection of esport drivers from the community, who have taken the opportunity to qualify for not one, but two support races for the main action.  Comprising two short and sharp 25-minute sprints in the Porsche Cup and Tatuus F3, we expect the action to be fast and frantic throughout – with plenty of overtaking and drama sure to unfold. 

We are still firming up the full entry list for this special event, so stay tuned to the rFactor 2 social channels for some special guest announcements in the coming days.

rFactor 2 | WTF1 Spa 3 Hours and Support Races: More Details, Click HERE.

Still on the subject of the month of November, we also released a brand-new build update for rFactor 2. As part of that build release we were pleased to introduce our new VR flat desktop mirror mode for Virtual Reality users, something that has been requested by our community quite a lot recently, and also our latest lighting and graphic improvements have made their way into the simulation ahead of further refinements and upgrades scheduled for the coming weeks and months ahead.

As we are closing in on the festive holidays, for gamers this time of year is a wonderful one to snatch up a bargain or two in the many sales that occur during the Christmas period. If you missed out on some goodies during the Halloween Sale last month then worry not, the Steam Autumn Sale is here, and with it comes great discounts on some awesome rFactor 2 content!

In the Autumn Sale you can enjoy 50% off our Formula E, Endurance, Reiza and KartSim packs, and a 25% reduction in the rFactor 2 Track Expansion Pack – but act fast, the sale ends on December 1^st!

Moving forward to the future, namely the festive month that is December, we continue to work hard behind the scenes to deliver some interesting improvements to the way competitions are handled within rFactor 2 – something we expect will really help players access the types of online racing and competitions we know you are keen to experience, but wrapped up in a much more sensible and user-friendly environment than is currently possible with the way the simulation is presently structured.  

Last month we spoke briefly about our the competition system beta, and our hopes to get a first pass of the new system in the hands of players before the holiday season kicks into full swing, and then to build on this system in 2021. This very much remains our intention as we slide into December, and initial behind closed door testing seem to indicate the system is working much as anticipated. We’ve run a few races now internally with our Studio 397 staff and identified a few issues that have been quickly resolved, so before we put down our tools and exchange coding for mince pies and sherry we should be in a position to let you all finally get your hands on what will very much be a long and rewarding journey of expanding and improving the way players interact with rFactor 2 in an online environment. 

COMPETITION SYSTEM BETA AND 2021 ROADMAP

FIRST BETA

The primary goal for the first beta is to get a system in place that is easy to use and allows everybody to jump into daily races that are part of competitions. We will support a format where each event in a competition has multiple slots, so you can choose the one(s) that suits your schedule. Standings will be based on a local rating system that compares drivers in all those time slots to figure out who was the best overall.

ROADMAP FOR 2021

So what’s in store after the holidays? Let’s start by saying we will probably revise this roadmap as we go, also based on user feedback as we deploy each update.

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.

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 hotlap styles, some completely new formats as well as more “league style” competitions in the system.

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.

These features will take us well into 2021 and we will revise and update them as the year progresses.

As per our November Development Roadmap post, it should be noted that the transition build to our Competition System will also mandate the use of our new UI within rFactor 2. Following the upcoming December update, continued support of the legacy UI within the simulation will come to a close, and any future builds and updates to rFactor 2 will only occur on the new default branch of the sim. We appreciate that for many players this will bring with it a number of changes to how you are used to experiencing rFactor 2, however we remain confident that the latest iterations of the ‘new’ UI will provide players with a much more streamlined and enjoyable experience, with many benefits to using rFactor 2 both now and more importantly in the future as we continue to make strides towards ongoing development of the title. 

Closer to release we will be publishing a much more detailed guide on the benefits (and known issues) with the new UI and Competition System, and we strongly advise players to migrate to the UI sooner rather than later in order to become comfortable with the layout and features presented, and to help us with feedback as we drive towards maximising the potential of the system. 

So, why should you be excited about the new UI, both now and in the future? Apart from the fact the whole UI system is based on technology that allows us to add, change and improve features over time – something that wasn’t possible with the current integration, we’ve also worked hard to ensure that anything you’ve become used to with the current UI has at the very least been transported to the new design, as well as plenty of new features and improvements that will only be expanded upon in the weeks, months and years ahead. 

To give you a brief idea about some of the advantages of the soon to be default ‘new UI’ (we are really going to have to find a new way of describing it soon…), we’ve put together a brief list of some of the benefits of the new system – however keep in mind we will be updating and improving this over time, so this list is far from final and any community feedback about useability and features are always welcomed…

• Trackmap now included on monitor screen with live position data of drivers.
• Camera control buttons added in replay screen and monitor.
• Added full screen replay ticker on top.
• Driver selection in replay screen and monitor.
• Statistics and best lap times/sectors.
• Track selection trackmap icons drawn from track data (no need to include icons).
• Car selection list fully transparent icons.
• Race Monitor screen.
• Graph showing race progression.
• Trackmap data on monitor page.
• Integrated Competition System.
• Tuning menu that contains material editor.
• Flat VR mirror screen.
• Triple screen widget in the UI.
• Dedicated front page news section and forum feed.
• Integrated matchmaker and favourites shortcut.
• More intuitive summary overview pages in both general settings and setup screen.
• All admin controls now available as UI controls, (avoids having to use command line if you don’t want to).
  

Turning our attention to the world of playable content, we’ve been around quite a while in the sim racing genre now, and in that time we are pleased to have amassed an impressive collection of licenced cars and tracks for rFactor 2 (with plenty more on the way), and as we continue to bring new things to the title, alongside our ongoing development of the graphics engine, it often means we need to revisit our older releases and bring them up to the same standards as our more recently developed cars and tracks.

Of late we’ve given the refresh treatment to both Silverstone and more recently the Nürburgring track and its various configurations, and now we are delighted to confirm the next two venues on the list to be brought in line with the current standards are the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, and Portland International Raceway.

Both of these American circuits are under review at the moment by the track team here at Studio 397, with Indianapolis set to be updated to the latest PBR graphics and materials, whilst Portland is due to be given a patch to fix and tweak some key areas within the circuit – both updates of which we plan to deploy within the month of December as we look to breathe new life into these great circuits within rFactor 2. As well as these improvements, we are also onto the final stages of testing for a further Nurburgring patch, bringing back those missing curbstones and a few other small tweaks and changes that should improve things nicely.

Moving on to cars, last month we showed you some WIP preview shots of the Cadillac DPi-V.R prototype we’ve been working on at the studio. In order to bring the very best possible level of detail and simulation to this potent prototype racer, we have been working very closely with the JDC-Miller MotorSports team over in the United States. Having access and support from one of the top endurance racing outfits in the IMSA WeatherTec Sportscar Championship, a unit that ran a two-car programme in the top American endurance racing series no less, has been an incredibly exciting experience for us at the studio, and no doubt has helped our development team to recreate one of our most detailed and realistic cars yet for rFactor 2. Currently the Cadillac DPi-V.R is undergoing that all important track testing on the virtual tarmac within the simulation, and I’m sure you will agree with us when we say the digital recreation looks just as stunning as the car in real life – we can’t wait to let you get your hands on this one in the not too distant future. 

rFactor 2 | Endurance Bundle DLC Steam Store: Click HERE

Also on the subject of cars, next month will also see a brand-new vehicle and style of racing arrive in rFactor 2. Over the last few months we’ve been working closely with DTM champion Mike Rockenfeller to bring to life in rFactor 2 a unique concept – a high performance, tin top electric racing car that produces incredible amounts of power through its four-wheel-drive system, yet offers up an exciting and often rather spectacular driving experience. The car has been dubbed the RCCO eX_ZERO_2020, and will be released as DLC within rFactor 2 during December. 

What makes this car rather unique is the fact it will only exist within the sim, but despite having no real world counterpart this is by no means a fantasy piece of content. Several months ago we were presented with an initial spec to develop the car, and using real world parameters and physics the RCCO eX_ZERO_2020 was born – with behaviour and characteristics exactly like those that would be displayed should this crazy machine ever make it out into the real world. 

Having been heavily guided in the design and realisation of this project by Mike Rockenfeller and his team, we’ve found the experience of building the RCCO eX_ZERO_2020 exceptionally enjoyable at the studio, and while the car is certainly something rather different that the normal selection of machinery we develop for the simulation, we feel confident that our drivers will very much enjoy trying to tame this 1000hp beast! Intended for use in some interesting upcoming esports competitions by the RCCO team, as well as providing a very different (and dare we say it, brave) experience for our rFactor 2 players, this is certainly a departure from our usual content style here at rFactor 2!

While we are talking about esports competitions, you may have seen a few messages on the rFactor 2 social channels in recent weeks about the upcoming Sim Formula Europe series taking place next January, well, the second running of this annual competition is starting to kick into gear, and aside from the fantastic racing the series is sure to produce, we’ve got quite the selection of sim racing hardware to giveaway to competitors too… 

Returning for the third year in a row, Sim Formula Europe is back once again for players to come together and race for the opportunity to win some incredible prizes. With 60 drivers set to move forward from the hotlap qualifications to semi-final race events, we should see plenty of action out on the circuit as esports stars new and established look to fight for the opportunity to win a percentage of our 10,000 EU prize pool, and some exceptional hardware from SimTag, SimLab, Heusinkveld Engineering and Cooler Master. The hotlap qualifications are set to run from December 3rd – 13th. Stay tuned to the rFactor 2 website and social media channels in the coming days for details on how to get involved yourself and be in with a chance of taking home some fantastic prizes. 

That about covers everything we can talk about for this month, onwards to December and the festive season as living rooms around the world get turned into a sea of festive lights and strange stuffed toys of fat guys in red suits and scarily menacing reindeers in coats and hats – stay safe everyone, and see you all again next month!

Today marks a new build deployment for rFactor 2 in anticipation of our upcoming Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps DLC, scheduled for release this Friday 20th November. This new update contains a number of important changes and marks the cessation of 32-bit support for rFactor 2. All players should ensure they migrate to the 64-bit build of the simulation going forward. Additionally, it is highly recommended players now transition to the ‘New UI’ within rFactor 2, in order to take the most advantage of the various new features and optimizations available within the software. 

Another important new addition to this build is the inclusion of flat desktop mirror within VR mode. Important for players who use Virtual Reality Headsets but wish to navigate the game menus outside their device, the new VR flat desktop mirror mode has often been requested by our community, and should provide some useful functionality benefits for VR players. Please note, this is only available in the new UI on the public_beta branch.

Changelog

• Removed the 32 bits builds, we are now officially 64 bit only. To ease the transition, we have left some 32 bit utilities in their usual locations for this build only. Please migrate and report any issues you might have.
  • Note: there is a known issue that the ModMgr.exe inside Bin64 folder on SteamCMD dedicated server distributions may crash when toggling certain settings. Please use ModMgr.exe inside Bin32 folder for now.
• Changed the way the new UI gets rendered, making it smooth even when the back-end is busy.
• Fixed several memory leaks and a possible crash on changing graphics settings in-game.
• Ensured that when a user is entering text in a text field, keys he/she presses don’t accidentally trigger other controls.
• Fixed the mouse cursor from going missing when pressing ESC in VR after driving the car.
• Fixed an issue where sometimes when restarting or forwarding sessions, the UI would not (re)appear after that transition.
• Fixed several aspect-ratio related rendering issues with the new UI.
• Fixed the new UI being one pixel too wide and too high on triples.
• Added new VR flat desktop mirror. Please note this is only available in the new UI on the public_beta branch.
• Controller profiles
  • Simagic M10 new profile added.
  • VRS Direct Force Pro corrected typo in controller profile.
• Re-enabled & Improved Sun God Rays / Light Flare settings (requires PostFX enabled, mostly only visible when the sun is occluded slightly)
• Tweaks to Air Pollution colour blending and params
• Corrected Moon Brightness
• Reviewed various lighting parameters
• Moved “Atmospherics” section for Track Weather file (.WET) to Track Game Database file (.GDB)
• Added option for static mappers to disable omni lights
• Fixed auto static mapper assignment, so Static01 mapper is auto assigned only. (prevent mappers for specific situations being auto assigned to assets)
• Fixes for issues with No Rain Zones including when falling back to bounding box, and sorting issues with the currently rendered no rain zones.
• Fixed an issue where reflections would stop updating after rejoining track
• Fix for track side cameras not always showing the correct number of objects
• Updated PBR track shaders to make use of new sampler methods to allow for more textures to be used.
• Fixed an issue where DXT1 and DXT5 textures would not sample sRGB when they should when using new sampler method (This was an issue on the Road Shader only previously)
• Fixed a rare issue causing texture animations to stop working
• IBL Road and IBL Curb:
  • Added ability to use a second normal map (overlay on road, switch on curbs)
  • Tweaked Groove Blending logic (This may result in more noticeable dust, you may wish to tone this down in your Road Details Map)
  • Updated default settings for Groove & Dust IBL Standard
  • Fixed some issues with the Detail Map
• IBL Standard & Blend
  • Added option to use detail map as an alpha masked decal IBL Standard Blend
  • Added the option to use a detail map with the same logic as IBL Standard
  • Removed Multiply Square albedo blending mode, since this can be achieved by saving the texture in the correct format.
• IBL Terrain:
  • Added the ability to set per Albedo strengths for Pattern map
  • Added an optional splatter overlay map, which applies alpha to specular mask
  • Added Albedo Tinting to Specular on Terrain Shaders
• IBL Vegetation
  • Added a new Vegetation Specific shader, which contains only appropriate logic from IBL Standard
  • Added Specular Tinting with a static colour in the Vegetation Shader.

Steam Build IDs

Old UI (opt-out)

• Client build ID: 5842885
• Dedicated server build ID: 5842895

New UI (public-beta)

• Client build ID: 5842938

The new build is available now, and should download automatically the next time you restart your Steam client. 

Roadmap day!

Hello everyone and welcome to the rFactor 2 October Development Roadmap – can you believe it’s been a month already since we last wrote about the happenings back at Studio 397 HQ? It’s certainly been another busy one for us here in the team, as we continue to push hard to make rFactor 2 the simulation we all know it can become. Although the festive holidays are getting ever closer, that certainly doesn’t mean we are taking our foot off the gas behind the scenes, far from it in fact.

So, what’s been cooking back at base, and what do we have to look forward to in the very near future?

First, let’s have a quick look at some of the highlights from the last month before we dig a little deeper into what’s coming up.

We’ve been busy recently adding some quality of life improvements to existing content within the simulation, and I think it fair to say that the changes we’ve brought to the Nürburgring Nordschleife in particular have elevated the circuit right into the top echelons of track content within rFactor 2.

Nürburgring Nordschleife DLC | Purchase HERE.

We’ve been delighted with the visual uplift our latest PBR update has brought to the venue, and we are gratified to see the community appears to agree!

Ermin Hamidovic

Since the update deployed for the Nürburgring Nordschleife, we’ve realised a few little details have been overlooked during the PBR facelift, details like curb visuals at key points of the circuit for example, so we’ve got our track team back on the case and should be in a position to push out a new update for this immense circuit in the not too distant future.

In terms of cars, we also deployed a new GT3 AI BOP that added significant improvements to the way the AI drivers behave and their balance of performances against each vs and the player, which came directly off the back of our new Bentley and Ferrari DLC releases; really helping to flesh out the GT3 category of cars within rFactor 2 as the class continues to prove itself as an exceptionally popular choice within the sim racing community.

Ferrari 488 GT3 EVO 2020 | Purchase HERE.

Bentley Continental GT3 2020 | Purchase HERE.

Also on the topic of cars, October would see us release a new build for the often overlooked Stock Car 2018 content. We are delighted to see that the new update seems to have done a great job of bringing these powerful and entertaining cars back into the consciousness of the sim racing community – and hopefully exposing some players to a new and enjoyable driving experience that they perhaps overlooked earlier in their rFactor 2 adventures.

Stock Car 2018 | Download HERE.

In terms of competitions, this month marked the start of our two premium Esport racing series – as the very best of the rFactor 2 racing community took to the circuit for the opening rounds of our returning GT Pro and GT Challenge Powered by VCO championships – taking in the bumps and twists of Sebring and Portland in two incredibly entertaining encounters out on the virtual track.

GT Pro and Challenge Series | Catch all the action again HERE.

While those championships kicked off in fine style, another popular series would come to its dramatic conclusion this month too – with the BMW M2 CS Racing Cup hosting its final round at the daunting Nordschleife – another fantastic series that really showcased some virtual driving heroics amongst our Esport drivers. We thoroughly enjoyed seeing how the drivers adapted to the BMW M2 CS Racing machine, and look forward to hosting more action with this car in the future.

Now, before we get onto the subject of future goodies within the world of rFactor 2, we wanted to take this opportunity to highlight a very insightful interview our Managing Director Marcel Offermans recently undertook with sim racing YouTuber Ermin Hamidovic… be warned, it’s a long watch but well worth an hour of your time…

So, let’s talk about the future. We are continuously working hard behind the scenes to bring as much development and improvement to rFactor 2 as we possibly can, whilst juggling that difficult tightrope of ensuring the base software remains stable, and any unexpected issues are identified and resolved as quickly as possible.

Often we hear the community asking for certain improvements within the simulation, and of course we see and hear as many of these comments as we possibly can. Rest assured, we as just as keen as the community to bring all of these suggestions and more into the title in the future.

One such item is our Competition System – something we believe will add considerable enrichment to the online multiplayer experience of our players. Before we talk about that though, let’s examine the state of the new UI.

As we explained in some earlier roadmaps, the new UI should be seen as a new beginning, its initial version offering most if not all of the features that were in the old UI, and quite a few tweaks and improvements. It integrates the old launcher with its multiplayer and package management features as well as the workshop and store interfaces. For quite a while we have developed both versions side by side, which allowed us to get a lot of feedback from the community. Ultimately though, maintaining both versions is slowing us down… so before the end of the year we are switching!

We are also taking that opportunity to cease updates to the 32 bits version of rFactor 2. Steam hardware surveys for our simulation have shown us that everybody is on 64 bits operating systems right now, so this move should be completely transparent.

While we are on the subject of compatibility, for a while now we have been shipping updated versions of our 3D Studio Max plugins, originally for 2021, and more recently both for 2017 and 2021 versions of their software. Our new policy when it comes to these tools is that we will support the latest version of 3D Studio Max as neither 2012 nor 2017 can be bought anymore.

So with the new UI in place, we have a solid basis for the competition system. Our primary goal is to ensure that the system provides everybody with something to race, every day and at every level. That requires an integration that makes participating in competitions as painless as possible.

We do that by making sure that once you’ve decided on the competition you want to join, we automatically subscribe you to any content you might need. If the competition uses content you need to buy, we will list that too and figure out the best deal for you to get the missing content. With the content in place, joining a session becomes painless. You just show up and register and as soon as it starts we automatically connect you to the server for your split. When you are done, the standings so far can be reviewed in the competition overview.

The first public beta should be released in time for the holiday season. The focus is on running a variety of competitions, trying out different formats and gathering feedback from the community about the direction they would like this to go in. Some parts of the system will not be immediately available, such as the rating system, a way to submit protests and endurance racing. Those are planned in the first half of 2021.

In other developments, we’ve also been working hard prototyping a new way of rendering the UI – these are very much still in development but results have been very encouraging behind the scenes and we can’t wait to share our hard work with you as part of the next update. The old UI, and until now the new UI, used the graphics thread to render as well as do everything else that a user could command. This included loading new cars, tracks and series, responding to questions from the operating system, and just about anything else you can think of. Needless to say some of these things take time, and during that time the UI basically was “frozen”. That was easily visible in some of the UI transitions we have in the new UI, that would sometimes animate inconsistently or even freeze up completely, and if you looked for it, you could see similar things in the old UI. What we have now done is leverage the fact that modern CPUs have four or more cores and put the rendering of the UI on a separate thread. This means that no matter what the code is doing in the background, the UI will remain responsive, and going forward we will leverage and extend this design to make as many things that take time load incrementally.

To take us back to the topic of content, as we released a nice update for the Stock Car 2018 cars this month, we’ve also resolved to bring a new Stock Car Rules Plugin and some userguide instructions to support better use of these powerful cars. We didn’t want to hold back the car update while we finish off developing these tools however, but we still have a little way to go in order to get these finalised and pushed out to the wider community. Fear not, we are close to the finish line getting the userguide and plugin ready to go, and we will of course keep you updated as to when these can be expected to release for the simulation.

Still on the subject of content, we did speak about some new licence agreements secured by our licencing team recently, and of these new cars we just couldn’t resist sharing some very early development screenshots…

Can you tell what it is? Yes, those of you with a good knowledge of Prototype cars will have spotted this is the exceptional Cadillac DPi-V.R that has competed in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship in North America since 2017.

We’ve been working exceptionally closely with JDC-Miller MotorSports on this new car, and the relationship with the team has proven to be an outstanding collaboration that is really helping us to go that extra step in terms of access and data, resulting it what is turning out to be a very detailed and realistic new addition to the car content portfolio within rFactor 2. As you may know, JDC-Miller Motorsports are a long established racing team that have taken part in numerious series across the world, from F2000 and Star Mazda to top tier international prototype racing. The team are responsible for running a two-car Cadillac Prototype DPi program in the US IMSA WeatherTech Sportscar Championship, allowing Studio 397 some incredible access to the inner workings of how these amazing machines are put together, and run out on the race track.

The Cadillac DPi-V.R prototype is a potent race car, a high speed and high downforce pure racer that represents the first official Cadillac involvement in top level motorsport since the Northstar LMP of 2002. We are absolutely delighted to be bringing this outstanding machine to rFactor 2, and what’s more it will form part of a wider car pack that we plan to release close to the holiday season… but more on that next month…

Regarding tracks, although not Nürburgring specific, we couldn’t resist popping in another image from the German venue to illustrate our next point… in recent weeks we’ve been working hard developing a feature that dropped out of rFactor 2 over the passage of time, but is set to come back strongly in the near future… god rays!

Previously this feature just didn’t quite work how we would have liked in rFactor 2, so we turned the functionality off a little while ago while our code and art team went to work understanding how we can make it better within the title, while not inducing a considerable impact on how the simulation performs. We feel like the time is right to start sharing some of the fruits of our labours with you all, and as you can see from the screenshot in this post, visually we feel the new god rays within rFactor 2 really bring another important layer of immersion to the playing experience – which is always the aim of the game within our current graphics engine updates. We remain hard at work testing and fine tuning these graphical improvements within the simulation, hopefully with a view to getting them back out into the title in the near future.

That pretty much wraps up most of what we can speak about for this month, rest assured we continue to put in the hours and hard work behind the scenes to continue developing, expanding, enhancing and improving rFactor 2 in the weeks, months and years ahead.

If you haven’t joined in the rFactor 2 adventure yet, now might be a good time to dip into our rich pool of content with the current Steam Halloween Sale, running from October 29^th to November 2^nd.  You can check out the rFactor 2 Steam Halloween Sale items HERE and grab yourself a bargain!

Oh, one last thing before we sign out for this month.. we’ve actually got a new and currently unannounced track that will be releasing in November. We’ve hinted about the track a little already, so stay tuned to our rFactor 2 Social Media accounts in the next couple of weeks for the big reveal… we think you’ll be happy…

Stay safe, drive fast (on the virtual tracks) and see you all again next month.

Roadmap day!

Hello our friends within the sim racing community – welcome to the Studio 397 rFactor 2 Development Roadmap for September, brought to you slightly earlier than usual this month thanks to a pretty exciting new car release we have coming tomorrow… but more on that a little later.

So, what’s been happening behind the curtain of rFactor 2 that we can share with you all this month? As usual, things here at Studio 397 HQ have remained rather fraught these past four weeks as we continue working hard to make rFactor 2 everything we believe it can be, both now and in the future.

We’ve already alluded to a pretty exciting new release tomorrow, and of course that can only be the stunning Ferrari 488 GT3 EVO 2020 – the second car from Maranello to arrive as official content following the popular 488 GTE we brought to the title back in May.

The new for 2020 488 GT3 EVO is a slightly larger, more aerodynamically efficient and all round more aggressive car than its predecessor, having undergone much in the way of development since first releasing to customer teams all the way back in 2016.

We firmly believe GT3 racing offers an incredible experience for sim racing fans in rFactor 2, and as such adding this 13^th car to our ever growing collection of GT3 vehicles is something that makes us very proud indeed – especially as we think it would be fair to say this new Ferrari is arguably the most visually impressive car we’ve produced, and the driving experience is simply sublime!

Interested to see the car in action ahead of release day tomorrow? Check out these awesome videos created by our sim racing community:

Ermin Hamidovic (English)

RaceDepartment (English)

Franconen (French) 

Pablo López (Spanish)

While we are on the topic of new GT3 cars, we also took the opportunity to release the stunning 2020 version of the Bentley Continental GT3 as a free piece of content last week – keeping rFactor 2 bang up to date with the seemingly never ending update cycle of modern GT3 manufacturers!

The Bentley retains much of the character of it’s older brother, but like all motorsport technology, the push for improvements and progression is near endless, leading to the British marque again substantially revising the new car in a bid to stay ahead of the competition. We felt it would be a great opportunity to bring this car to rFactor 2, and as a reward for our players who already have the original 2017 machine, the new car has been added to the same Steam Store item and will automatically download for free whenever you restart your rFactor 2 simulation!

Bentley Continental GT3 2020 | Steam Store: Click HERE.

GT Series Season 2

GT Pro and GT Challenge are back! A brand new season in GT Pro will see the the best from last season and those who managed to promote into GT Pro Season 2 fight it out. In the meantime the GT Challenge Season 2 qualifier is running strong, with over 200 entrants and room for plenty of drivers across multiple splits to fight for a chance to grow and promote trough the splits and on to the top! To read more about GT Series Season 2 and how to enter the Challenge qualifier go here: https://www.studio-397.com/rfactor2-gt-series-2020/

GT Pro Series schedule

12 October: Sebring
26 October: Portland
9 November: VIR
23 November: Nurburgring
7 December: Indianapolis
21 December: TBA

GT Challenge Series schedule

19 October: Sebring
2 November: Portland
16 November: VIR
30 November: Nurburgring
14 December: Indianapolis
28 December: TBA

Well that’s the stuff we’ve already done covered, now it’s time to move on to some goodies that are still getting cooked up with by talented development team behind the scenes.

Last weekend was the Total 24 Hours of Nürburgring in Germany, one of the toughest endurance GT racers anywhere in the world. Back in September 2019 we released that incredible circuit for rFactor 2, and as we’ve just hit the one-year anniversary we’ve decided to revisit our laserscanned Nürburgring Nordschleife to give it a rather significant overhaul. Thanks to the progress we’ve made in recent months with visual improvements to the simulation, our track team decided to employ these new techniques and technologies on the largest and probably most famous track in rFactor 2, and already the improvement from the current public build of the circuit have proven to be staggering.

Nürburgring Nordschleife | Steam Store: Click HERE.

Adding PBR shaders has in our humble opinion transformed the circuit, bringing a new level of depth and life to the visuals that really allows this one to stand up and be counted against any of the other venues within the title. We’ve worked hard on the road surface itself, but attention has also been applied to the way the light and shadows interact with the player and track, really helping immerse you in the whole Nordschleife experience as you power round this incredible racing venue.

Most of the work has already been completed on Nürburgring now, we are just applying a final coat of graffiti on the racing surface (with 170 corners that’s actually a pretty lengthy process!) and putting the track into final testing, so stay tuned to the rFactor 2 social media channels in the days and weeks ahead for some nice previews of the “new” track ahead of release day.

In our August Development Roadmap post we spoke about the continual improvements and additions we are looking to make to our ever expanding Formula E experience within rFactor 2– and that very much remains a key area of development for us here at Studio 397.

Last month we briefly mentioned our desire to bring the unique ‘Attack Mode’ feature to the sim – making us the first title to introduce this interesting tactical element to a racing simulation. While we are still some way off from having this as a playable feature within the public build of rFactor 2, we remain hard at work understanding how to best implement it into our existing, and future Formula E circuits… (more on future tracks next month….).

Elsewhere in the Studio 397 offices our CDO, Dom Duhan has been dipping his fishing rod into the big pool of brand licencing of late too, and we must say he’s had a marvellous day at the lakes, catching plenty of very interesting licences that we can’t wait to share with you in the months ahead.

Finally, we will wrap up the Roadmap for this month with a couple of quick honourable mentions for the recent new GT3 Balance of Performance release we deployed to rFactor 2 last week. Bringing this many cars to a level where they can complete evenly together has been a substantial piece of work by the team, and we are pleased with how this has come together for the BOP release, including the addition of both the new Bentley and Ferrari cars. That said, you can always find room for improvement, and as such we’ve got a small update across all cars scheduled for release this Wednesday (30.09), including a bug fix to rectify an issue with a couple of the cars. Another shout out has to go to the incredible performance Rudy van Buren pulled off at Le Mans – our rFactor 2 ambassador produced an outstanding display of driving talent in incredibly challenging conditions at the Circuit de la Sarthe during his Porsche Carrera Cup debut weekend – sadly Rudy would come away without the result he deserved courtesy of being knocked off the track right at the end of the race, but our Dutch superstar certainly showed the world that sim racers have absolutely all the tools needed to run right at the front in professional motorsport – well done Rudy!

Rudy van Buren | Le Mans Weekend: Click HERE.

Last but not least, we would love to invite you to our Discord community if you haven’t already joined. Be the first in line for news and discussions about everything we are cooking up here at Studio 397.

rFactor 2 | Discord Community: Click HERE.

Oh, before we go one final thing… you might remember we spoke a little while ago about an ‘iconic European track’ coming to rFactor 2? Well, development of said track is going very well indeed – so stay tuned to rFactor 2 on Social Media for the big reveal very soon 

That pretty much wraps things up for another month. Have a great October wherever you are, stay safe and see you out on the track!

It’s been a while since we last updated our build and in the mean time we’ve been working on quite a few bugs and improvements to the code base, so we felt it was time to share these in a fresh update. A full overview of all changes can be found below.

Old UI (opt-out)

• Client build ID: 5504070
• Dedicated server build ID: 5504080

New UI (public_beta)

• Client build ID: 5503999

User Interface

• Added key binding for hide cursor. This is useful when running the in-game overlays and doing a broadcast to a capture card that insists on showing your cursor otherwise.
• All replay controls can now be custom assigned in the controller tab. By default all replay controls are mapped to the same defaults unless re-assigned.
• Added first time start up wizard. For now only has name and nickname fields. This will be extended.
• Added player area in the main UI. For now only has name and nickname fields.
• In showroom we now check for upgrades on page load and do not show info if there aren’t any.
• Disabled select button in list layout for category items. When switching from grid or thumbnail layout to the list layout, and having a “category” item selected, the select button would be available and would glitch things when clicked.
• Clear car configuration info when viewing a “category” item.
• Updated the pop-up layout and styling.
• Renamed event screen “Drive” button to “Passenger” when in multiplayer spectator mode.
• Made transitioning to packages area page smoother:
  • Get packages after the page has loaded to avoid blocking.
  • Show a pop-up message while getting packages.
  • Use a dark grey background during switching to the page.
• Enabled a chat message for single player admin commands.
• Fixed a game crash when switching sessions.
• Fix accessing garage data properties if data is not available.
• All controller profiles are updated. This fixes various issues when using ‘Detect’ on first time hardware setup.
• We have new controller profiles for:
  • Simucube 2 Sport;
  • Simucube 2 Pro;
  • Simucube 2 Ultimate;
  • Logitech G923 PlayStation 4 and PC;
  • Logitech G923 XBox One and PC;
  • VRS OSW;
  • XBOX One Controller For Windows.
• Added “PlayerFileOverrides” to various profiles to ensure proper driver aids are enabled/disabled on first time wheel detect.
• Added use thread “true” for all profiles.
• Ensured that the “920 workaround” is set to “false” on all non-Logitech profiles.
• Fixed profile naming and removed redundant profiles.
• Fixed stuck ‘look left’ on TS-XW profile.
• Thrustmaster F1 wheel Integral profiles: Fixed all mapping conflicts: T-GT, TS-PC, T500 RS, TS-XW.
• Thrustmaster Racing wheel profiles: Fixed all mapping conflicts: T-GT, TS-PC, T500 RS.
• Thrustmaster F1 wheel Integral profiles: Fixed all mapping conflicts: T-GT, TS-PC, T500 RS, TS-XW.
• Thrustmaster Racing wheel profiles: Fixed all mapping conflicts: T-GT, TS-PC, T500 RS.
• Added correct max torque to Fanatec CSW v1, v2, V2.5 and Direct Drive profiles.

Modding Support

• Published a ton of new information about modding for rFactor 2 on the documentation website.
• Large update to modding documentation, will full documentation on PBR material system, dedicated Development Tools section and more.
• First official release of 3ds Max 2021 Plugins.
• First official release of Material Editor.
• First official release of Maps Converter Tool.
• Added Loch Drummond (PBR Track) to ModDev.
• Added ability to disable auto albedo correction on pre PBR shaders.
• Added ability to choose cube Fresnel default settings on pre PBR car body shader.
• Corrected Deformable Tire shader naming in Max Plugins.
• Exposed Atmospherics section in Wet file to configure Haze and other settings..
• Updated ModDev to use main game HUD.
• Added ability to save preset positions in the Scene Viewer.

Graphics

• Added new pit exit marshal textures, thanks to Alessandro Micali!
• Small refactor of glare settings in PostFX
• Many other minor tweaks to various shaders and settings.

Multiplayer

• Significantly improved logging for multiplayer sessions.
• Fixed race conditions in our low level socket node list.
• Increased the size of an internal array to accommodate all possible cars in a session.
• Fixed an issue where not just the server would send out node reordering messages.
• Changed some very “spammy” log messages.
• Fixed several crashes where some code would reference invalid data.
• Added descriptive names to all threads.
• Improved the handling of an application crash to ensure logs get flushed.

Broadcast Overlays

• Made qualifying box sector colors correspond to best lap sectors instead of absolute best sectors.
• Added fallback for drivers with no last name set.
• Added drop-down in control panel to select overlay configuration.
• Made replay transition follow the configured series color.
• Added an option to show more data in tower field 4 (gap to next, number of pit stops).
• Added an option to automatically enable race update box when timing box is enabled.
• Fixed pit timer getting stuck after leaving pit lane.
• Fixed displaying of gaps to leader/fastest lap time in tower and banner.
• Extended field 2 data with manufacturer and team logo.
• Added turning lap time green or purple in the qualifying box after the lap.
• Added option to minimize boxes in the control panel.
• Fixed starting order not working with multiple events.
• Fixed replay jumping to wrong time.
• Cleaned up the CSS to make it easier to make changes in the custom.css.
• Added a replay marker button to mark replay events.
• Updated team name and car number to use the entries from the .VEH file.
• Added mixed/overall standings option.
• Added an option to toggle between driver name, team name and description.
• Made b-roll a standalone element.
• Added option to condense tower by hiding field 2 or 3.
• Fixed schedule slide date comparing.
• Added an option to start the overlay in multi-class or single-class mode.
• Updated banner behavior based on the selected car class (or mixed/multi-class mode).
• Rearranged control panel.
• Known issue: tower animation flickers when swapping pages.

Waiting for the monthly roadmap has become a bit of a tradition on the last day of the month. Whilst some just keep an eye on our Discord server, others are known to keep hitting F5 in their browser to catch the first glimpse of the much anticipated news. And that’s great, because coming back to the roadmap each month gives us the opportunity to reflect on what we worked on, get an overview about what happened and enjoy what we accomplished, as well as look ahead at what’s to come. So let’s get started!

Development

On the development front we have just completed a whole series of automated and real-life tests to ensure the fixes we have been making for endurance events are indeed working. All of them have been positive, so we are now at a point where we are looking at making these part of our upcoming release.

Our UI is nearing the point where we switch to it by default. We’re currently making sure that we can properly translate all aspects into multiple languages, including a mechanism to do that for content so we can translate things like track and car descriptions. We have also integrated the material editor for custom liveries, making it easier to tweak those materials to perfection.

Last month we released our new stock cars, and in our upcoming release we will release an important update to the plugins that go with this series. We will also include more documentation on how to properly setup races with these cars as we are aware that some of you have struggled a bit with this.

Also in our new update will be many tweaks to support the new modding documentation and PBR shaders. That documentation has been proof-read internally for the last couple of weeks now and we are curious to see what our community can achieve with it! As an example of how to use all of these new goodies, we will include a “dev mode” version of Loch Drummond for everybody to examine and toy around with.

Finally, you might wonder when this next release will be out. Definitely this month an sooner rather than later.

Content

We’re getting super close to releasing both the Bentley Continental GT3 and Ferrari 488 GT3 Evo – which will make a total of 13 official GT3 cars in rFactor 2 – each with their own unique strengths and weaknesses. In view of that, we are also updating the BOP for each of the cars, some of which have had some significant makeovers. We look forward to sharing more details over the next few weeks.

Also on the horizon is the release of a free update to the Nürburgring Nordschleife as we have migrated the track to PBR. The PBR update provides a much more natural look for this outstanding track, our team of Banksy wannabees are furiously re-adding he graffiti as we speak – we’re really looking forward to showing off more screens and releasing the update soon.

We’re also excited to bring more updates for our Formula E content, after the successful ‘Race At Home’ series by Formula E, we are working on a number of improvements to make the racing more realistic, including physics updates, and for online activity the “attack mode”. Although “attack mode” is quite specific for Formula E, in theory you could use the same feature for other cars as well. Triggered by you driving over a certain section of the track, attack mode gives you slightly more power for a limited amount of time. This promotes more exciting races as well as an extra tactical element and we applaud Formula E for pioneering such features in their series! Not just that, look out for another stunning Formula E laser scanned circuit soon.

Competition

As announced on last month’s roadmap, we’re preparing the launch of Season 2 of our GT Series in both Pro and Challenge. But there was one last crucial event before we all can concentrate on Season 2, and that was the Relegation. A one-day event with everything on the line. Positions 6-10 from GT Challenge went head to head with positions 25-20 from GT Pro, fighting for the last 5 tickets to the pinnacle of GT racing in rFactor 2, the Pro Series. Same evening as roadmap, it turned our monday into an action packed series of working hours. We had chosen shorter layouts to make sure our 10 contenders really fight every second, so we visited Silverstone International, Sebring School and the Nürburgring Sprint layout.

Drivers in the Relegation event:

• Dennis Lind (who unfortunately wasn’t able to compete)
• Jan von der Heyde
• Ferris Stanley
• Peyo Peev
• Zbigniew Siara
• Vojta Polesny
• Alex Siebel
• Sido Weijer
• Matthew Beaving
• Alejandro López

Race 1 showed us already what we had been in for in this event. After a great start for Buttler-Pal Motorsport driver Peyo Peev in his Porsche GT3 it was Alex Siebel with the BMW M6 GT3 who challenged him for the win every single lap. Alejando Lopez unfortunately connected with Jan von der Heyde and Zbigniew Siara in turn 1 and found himself at the last position where he stayed for the reminder of the race. With a few skirmished everywhere on the grid the 20 minutes flew by pretty quickly but it was Peyo Peev at the end who managed to fight of Alex Siebel and bringing home his first 35 points at the UK stop.

Over in the US it was a completely different picture compared to Silverstone, basically mixing the entire result. After a super fast qualification viewers saw Alejandro López defending his position like an angry mother-dinosaurs right from the famous movies, bring home a start-finish win with Peyo Peev spinning his Porsche and ending up on the opposite site of the leaderboard. Zanshos quick driver Jan von der Heyde was once again right within reach of the win but couldn´t find a way around López McLaren and had to settle for 2nd position. With the results opening up the competition for the top 5 spots again, it was all about the 3rd and last race – the decider.

Coming to Nürburgring we had 3 drivers sitting on top of the scoreboard, Lopez, von der Heyde and Peev, and another 4 drivers that could close out the top 5 and go Pro (Siara, Stanley, Polesny and Weijer) with Alex Siebel being right between these 2 fighting groups, just having to get a decent finis hto make it into Season 2 of the Pro Series. Pole Position once again went to Peyo Peev who was on fire on this monday night. RIght from the start tho it was López again who went for the highlight moves, squeezing through 2 cars right in the middle into turn 1 and getting into third, which left Peev and Siebel uncontested for the first laps and giving them time to spread their lead. It all seemed settled as we approached the half way point when things got out of hands fairly quickly. López was fighting with von der Heyde again, basically a replay from sebring, with the Zansho driver lusting for revenge, when it was Siara from Buttler-Pal Motorsport who saw his chance in passing both but instead tapped the rear of von der Heydes McLaren, unsettling his car and costing him a lot of time. Siara then decided to give back the position to the Zansho Ace but lost so much momentum on the straight that also Polesny and Stanley went by. With this change in the leaderboard, it was all of the sudden Siara who wouldn’t make it to stay in the Pro Series. Nail-biting minutes followed for Polesny and Siara, with both fighting for points. While Ferris Stanley in his Mercedes AMG GT3 had to let Siara by at one point, it was Polesny from Deuce Motorsport who claimed the last spot for Pro Series in the end, with Peyo Peev winning his second race of the night.

With the 3 races done and dusted we say welcome (back) to the Pro Series to following drivers:

• Peyo Peev
• Jan von der Heyde
• Vojta Polesny
• Alejandro López
• Alex Siebel

Now all the teams and drivers have to get prepared for the new challenge that is arising with season 2 and we wish them all the best for preparation phase.

If you missed the exciting livestream of the relegation you can obviously re-watch it on our twitch channel: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/727240439

In other news, we want to congratulate our very own René Buttler and his team for finishing their first NLS race, surviving the 6 hours while also claiming their first pole position! We will start following them, and a lot of other “simracers who turned real racers”, in a new series starting soon!

Welcome

Last but not least, tomorrow we formally welcome our newest member of Studio 397, Paul Jeffrey. Most of you will know Paul from his many great contributions to RaceDepartment, and he will keep doing those of course. We are very excited to have him on board and we are confident that you will be hearing a lot more from him soon! Have a great month, enjoy your sim racing and on behalf of all of us, stay safe!

Sometimes our roadmap is focused on a specific topic; sometimes it’s a huge box of surprises. Today’s roadmap feels like the latter. Actually, the beauty of rFactor 2, and probably one of the reasons why you love it, is that there’s not just one type of racing or motorsport — it can be whatever you feel like today. So let’s try to bring this vibe of spontaneity and surprise to the July roadmap, which features many different aspects of what we are currently working on behind the scenes.

The first topic we want to talk about is connected to our last summer sale. We hope you were able to grab that piece of content you really wanted to add to your collection and are already enjoying it to the fullest. But we also listened to those of you who voiced disappointment about us restructuring DLC packs, especially since specific smaller packs were missing from the offer, packs that would “complete” your inventory. We value community feedback a lot, so we went back to our library, put on our spectacles, and dug out some of the “old” packs.

The great news is that some of those packs will now be discounted. Like waiting for the after party, the after sale is even better, so everyone who missed the packs can grab them now. Please keep in mind that nothing lasts forever: this  discount offer and the packs themselves will go away after roughly 2 weeks, so grab them while you can

The following packs will be brought back for the “After-Sale”:

• Two Strong Pack – featuring the tech-packed McLaren Senna GTR and the mighty Aston Martin Vantage GTE → Get it HERE
• GT3 Pack – our first and basically original pack with the beloved GT3s, featuring cars like the McLaren 650S GT3, Radical GT3, Callaway Corvette GT3 and more (5 GT3 in total) → Get it HERE
• GT3 Challenger Pack – our second GT3 pack featuring another 5 GT3 class contenders such as the Audi R8 GT3 (normal and evo), BMW M6 GT3, Aston Martin Vantage GT3 etc. → Get it HERE

Cars

Part one is done, now let’s head over to the section showcasing the main actors in simracing: the cars.

As previously mentioned, this roadmap aims at diversity and with it we bring back a section we haven’t talked about for ages —  oval racing, or more precisely, the rFactor 2 Stock Car Mod.

We are proud to announce a major update to the Stock Car mod. We’ve been hard at work for nearly 16 months redesigning almost every aspect of these cars. The main component of this update is the tire model.  A lot of development was spent making sure they reacted correctly, giving the car a much improved feel and a better sense of realism. This update consists of brand new tire compounds for every track the Gen 6 CUP cars run on that are available in rFactor 2. The update uses the 2018 rules package with reworked aerodynamics, proper center of gravity, shocks, default setups, engines from dyno data (750+ horsepower), and, most importantly, rebuilt tires (24 different compounds/sets).  The decision to stay with the 2018 rules was due to horsepower.  In 2018, Stock Cars had 750 horsepower.  In 2020 they have 550 horsepower.  We felt the higher horsepower would provide a better experience of how a real stock car drives and feels. A lot of testing went into this to make sure the cars reacted correctly, and the default setups make it fun to drive right out of the box. Just like in real life, when behind a pack of cars you get slightly aero tight, but up front in clean air the car turns into the corners a little better.  The new tire model gives it the feel you need to tell when it’s at the limit.  However, when you go over the limit, be ready to catch it.  You can’t just stomp the gas pedal, you gotta drive it up out of the corner while trying to keep its 750hp engine under control.  As the tracks rubber up, you have to search for grip in different grooves.  But with an in-car adjustable track bar, you can adjust the handling while you drive. We have also updated the car shaders to the new PBR shader and updated the templates as well with region maps. The Stock Car Team would like community feedback on the new cars and will have more exciting updates in the near future for them as well. Their main goal was to get the Stock Cars driving as close to a real car as possible by collaborating with real stock car drivers. Feel free to give feedback to the stock car team on Discord in the oval section. As a way of saying thanks, we added new default Stock Car paint jobs to reflect drivers that helped test and give feedback while developing this new beast!

Stockcar 2018

Changelog

v2.10

• Developed New Tire compounds for 24 tracks.
• Default setups for each track tweaked
• BOP tweaked per track
• Engine torque/HP tweaked per Dyno sheet information on a Stock Car Engine
• 3D bodies exported with new PBR shaders.
• Templates updated with Regions and contingencies layer
• Adjusted Aero Package to represent 2018 package

We hope you’re not going crazy in circles already because there is more to come in this section. In other news: Do you remember us saying that there are two new GT3s coming? With one being the obvious elephant in the room, it’s time to introduce the other fresh contender to this popular motorsport category.

Subscribe to the Stockcar 2018 Steam Workshop item → HERE

Bentley Continental GT3 2020

Rolling out of the factory with its fiercely striking design, this British masterpiece of the renowned luxurious car brand is going for the big wins again. We are very pleased to welcome the 2020 Bentley Continental GT3 to the lineup of cars available in rFactor 2. It is powered by a 4-litre-twin-turbo V8, 4.8 meters long and hungry to be at the front row of whichever track you choose to enjoy the roaring sound of your new race car. If you’re already on your way out of this roadmap and into the steam shop – stop! While we want to get the new Bentley into your hands as early as possible, it’s not ready to be launched off the grid just yet. Give our mechanics a bit more time to put on the slicks and do the last radio checks, then we’re ready to rock.

Tracks

After all this car-talk, let’s change focus to the locations we want to race at. While there won’t be a new track announcement just yet, we think we have some news to share in this category that people will like. Starting off with Loch Drummond you might be like Loch what?!” but hear us out. Loch Drummond is an amazing track that poses a real challenge to every serious simracer out there. And to make sure that you enjoy seeing your expensive toys on four wheels on this track, we gave it a complete overhaul, bringing it up to the latest tech. If there is still a question mark above your head as to why we would do this – we have good reasons: There will also be an upcoming Dev Mode release of this track, giving you guys a better look at our electronic flags and other cool assets for track building.

Loch Drummond

Located just outside Stirling in the small vilage of Drummond, Scotland, is perhaps the home of the earliest known location of racing. Whether you consider it to be simple folklore, or to have some basis in reality, the valley has certainly held racing events since the 1950′s, but possibly for thousands of years. Based around what is assumed to be a disused and abandoned military installation, and surrounded by the walls of the valley, Loch Drummond is a relatively slow speed and highly technical track of two layouts (1.2 and 1.97 miles), that can really punish with lost time over a whole lap, for a mistake in a single corner. The area was once thought to be a place of ancient religious ceremonies, centered around a small henge of rounded stones located at the foot of the valley. Many people considered the area to be haunted, and there are many stories of disappearances and sightings of unusual things going back thousands of years. By 1946 however, the area was largely deserted, with only a handful of local farmers working in the valley. June 1947 saw a flurry of activity, when the British military constructed a base to handle radio traffic for the region. Of course, due to the location, there was some controversy, especially as the area saw little need for such an installation. Less than two months later, after a period of strange activity, the installation was abandoned, and it was found that the stone circle had been used as the foundations for a brick tower within the base. As time went by, ‘Glen Station’ and many of the valley stories were forgotten by all but a few. It wasn’t until the mid-1950′s, when a young farmer’s son began to travel from Duns, Berwickshire, to race at both Loch Drummond and nearby Crimond, that the area saw life once more. Soon, a young gentleman’s racing club was formed and saw great success for the next decade, using a simple set of racing rules: “no contact, and show respect to your fellow competitors.” Fully resurfaced in 1972, 1993 and 2008, the track also saw the addition of a new section in 2009, but could not attract high profile racing categories until safety improvements were made, and the dangerous runoff areas were widened. Sadly, the recent financial crisis of 2012 proved to be a tough challenge to overcome in terms of organizing the races, and covering the costs of recent improvements to the track. This saw the gentleman’s racing club (then known as GRC) sell the track to local racing enthusiast, John Livet, who has promised to make sure the legacy of the Gentleman’s Club carries on.

Changelog:

v1.23

• Full PBR update
• Added score tower
• Added Big TV screen objects
• Fixed smoothing on pit trucks
• Small tweaks to terrain materials
• Small adjustment to AI at uphill chicane
• Fixed collision gaps
• Improved smoothing on outer terrain
• Fixed issues with shadow casting on tunnel

Subscribe to the Loch Drummond Steam Workshop item → HERE

Nürburgring PBR Update

As we were already in the flow of updating tracks, we also revisited the famous Nürburgring. While you wait for the release of this new PBR version, enjoy some of the shots taken by our track team that is currently updating every single square meter of not just the Nürburgring GP but also the Green Hell. In addition to PBR, we continue to add more optimizations and other performance tweaks. More to come!

Code

No, we didn’t forget about our promise to give you an update after last month’s roadmap, in which we talked extensively about our search to find and fix some long standing issues that tend to pop up in some of our endurance events. This work has continued, and we are now at a point where we have a few scenarios that we can consistently reproduce. Based on these, we are now also investigating a few other areas of the code to ensure we leave no bug behind, using a mix of code reviews and static code analysis tools. Part of this process is also creating some new test tooling to automatically run a lot of complicated and long scenarios. So far this has resulted in quite a few improvements to the codebase already, and even though we are not completely there yet, we are very positive about where we are right now. It’s hard to predict exactly when this process will be done, but we are committed to making sure we completely fix the issues, and it’s likely the next build will already have some improvements.

It’s been a while since we’ve given you an update on our UI. Earlier this year we started doing regular development updates on it. Those have slowed down a bit as we were addressing some bigger modules of the code, but we are now getting to a point where we are ready to switch on the new UI by default. That does not mean the old one instantly disappears. We will keep it around as a “beta” on Steam. Another change we are looking to make is to go 64-bit only. We already announced that intention a while ago, and we can see from hardware surveys that our community has moved to this platform already.

We spent the last couple of weeks doing smaller tweaks and bugfixes, and as explained before, switching to this new UI should be seen as a new beginning that adds a lot more features and improvements.

One of those new features is our competition system. The current system, on which we have been running a lot of hotlap competitions, was just the first step, and our current intention is to come out with the next update in December. As development continues in the upcoming months, we’ll explain in more detail the features we are targeting for this release, but our end goal is definitely to have a tightly integrated system that you can use to easily find races and compete against people with similar skills. This will eventually also include features to do off-line races, as we know many of you enjoy competing against our AI as well.

Competition

Exciting racing action in every single round of the championship – that probably describes our GT Pro Series and Challenge Series in the most accurate way. As promised back then, this championship came here to stay, and so it does!
While we can´t give you a fully detailed schedule yet, we are happy to inform you that the Series will be back soon! We are planning to have the Relegation Race Day in August to finalize the GT Pro Series Season 2 Grid. You´re not familiar with what´s happening there? Let me give you a quick overview: it’s a 1-day event featuring three races where positions 25 – 21 of the GT Pro Season 1 and position 6 – 10 of the GT Challenge fight for the last five remaining Pro Series Spots for Season 2. This will be good, promise!
Right after Relegation, we will get going with the hotlap qualifier for GT Challenge Season 2, everyone’s chance to be on the grid of this major rFactor 2 GT series, competing for a spot in the Season 3 Pro Series. Some info on this already: The Hotlap Qualifier will feature the same car/setup for everyone, and drivers will be able to choose the GT3 car they want to compete with after they earned their spot in this championship. Sharpen your skill and racecraft until then, and we will see you on the broadcast!

But if GT-racing isn’t really where you see yourself on the top, then don´t worry. We are hard at work on another series with a similar format (Pro and Challenge) featuring a team championship and a different style of racing. More on this soon 

Road to NBR24h

X-factor, a word we throw around a lot, but what do we actually mean? We mostly deal in R-factor. So maybe we should say someone has that ‘R-factor’ when it comes to being a racing talent!

We are happy to see one of our own is tapping into real world motorsport. Rene Buttler, our Business manager, decided to bring together simracers for a real racing team. On this real-life team made up of virtual racers even the mechanics are sim guys. Together with his team, the support of the studio, and drivers like Dave Gaming or Jimmy Broadbent, Rene wants to achieve participating in the Nurburgring 24 hours race in 2021. Rene went all out: he bought a race-ready Astra Cup car, got his racing license, and — most importantly —  decked it out with rF2 logos. For him, it’s about the journey of combining simracing and real racing. His first NLS (formerly known as VLN) race is planned for August 29th, a 6-hour endurance race, broadcast live from the race. Rene is currently preparing the nuts and bolts of the project, and we celebrate this first big step towards the 24h race with the release of the Nürburgring Endurance Bundle.

This all new bundle will includes: Nürburgring, Porsche 911 GT3 Cup, BMW M2 CS Racing and Radical SR3-XX. With this new pack we give you a sampler of options to get to know Endurance racing at the Ring! From the more approachable to the more advanced in terms of handling, work your way up and conquer the Green Hell.

Get the Nürburgring Endurance Bundle → HERE

We will also have open hotlap servers for each of the cars – allowing you to challenge the top times in the world!

Summary

That’s all for this month! Stay safe, keep cool, and have a great summer everyone! 🙂

Looking back at the month of June, you’re probably asking yourself, what could the crew at Studio 397 announce after a month with so many highlights? It’s exactly what we asked ourselves as well. We started the month building up towards what would become the biggest sim racing esports event ever, with millions of people watching the 24 hours of Le Mans Virtual on televisions and streams worldwide. You’ve likely also already heard about Portland, the new and free track for rFactor 2. You may have noticed, if you own our Endurance pack, the new shiny liveries from the 24 Hours of Le Mans Virtual event that are now integrated. And that wasn’t even all in the last update. We gave Silverstone a fresh new look and released the first step of the new GTE BoP, based on improved physics for all of those cars.

So what’s next? Even after last month’s events, there is so much happening at the Studio we want to tell you about. We may have downshifted a gear to make the next corner, but on the apex we are already full throttle again to bring you lots of new updates. The first will be another small BoP tweak to the GTE cars as well as a brand new set of default setups that are a better starting point for you to customize. Once that is done, the knowledge we gained from upgrading the GTE cars will be applied to our extensive set of GT3 cars, giving them a much needed update while we add two brand new ones. One we already announced, the Ferrari 488 GT3 in the latest 2020 evolution. The other we have not announced yet, but it’s already in beta so like the Ferrari it won’t be too long!

Three Seasons of The Race All-Star Series

Ironically, unlike most of real-world motorsports, we in the simracing world – and especially developers – have been on hyper drive since the start of the pandemic and for most of the confinement period – even thereafter. In a time when everything we know and love in motorsport was being canceled, simracing suddenly had a job to do – we saw our rF2 shaped bat-signal in the sky 😉 and our mission quickly became “make things happen” so that motorsports will have a place to go.

The first big opportunity came knocking when the Australian Grand Prix was suddenly canceled, leaving fans all over the world without the beloved F1 inaugural race in Melbourne. That very week, Ideas+Cars, led by Darren Cox, founder of GT Academy, contacted us with the wild idea to collaborate and essentially become the stand-in event for that inaugural weekend. Ideas+Cars would be inviting a colorful cast of real drivers, past and present, from all over the world, many former world champions, to mix it up with professional and aspiring simracers. A pop-up race series of sorts. Creating a new format that worked for everyone was not easy, and we dug deep to make sure our new overlay and our broadcasting capabilities were up to snuff to showcase these events as they should be.

To everyone’s surprise the first event was a run-away success. It went above and beyond what we thought it might achieve. Thousands upon thousands watched that weekend, as many big names tore it up on Nurburgring GP, fighting it out while being broadcast in their rigs on Zoom… surreal and somehow so real. And the result: the viewers wanted more! So for the next 15 weeks we put on a show every single Saturday evening, with a hotlap competition during the week to find the best and fastest aspiring simracers to take part and get their chance to be on the podium. There was a long list of drivers, some with almost mythical status, competing in the Legends part of the show. Together they battled it out on the virtual track, some of them for the very first time in a sim rig. The Legends spanned multiple generations of champions across many different series and disciplines, Rally, F1, BTCC, Le Mans, Indycar – Jenson Button, Juan Pablo Montoya, Fernando Alonso, David Brabham, Petter Solberg, Jason Plato, Dario Franchitti, Helio Castroneves, Rubens Barrichello, Emanuele Pirro, Max Papis, Emerson Fittipaldi, the list goes on and on! Even Mario Andretti himself took part in the event at Indianapolis, putting on a massive show for the whole world. Not to forget Sebastian Vettel showed up for a race!

For rFactor 2, it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see these legends experience simracing all at once, and so wholeheartedly. Aside from being streamed on Youtube, these events ended up reaching far and wide, even into people’s living rooms on Dutch Ziggo TV, ESPN and Eurosport. We would like to thank Ideas+Cars and their team for such close teamwork and know-how, and all the drivers, simracers and pros who took part!

Modding Updates

With all the recent updates to the game visuals, we are now preparing to release documentation to help modders take full advantage of these updates. For now this will focus on track content, with car updates coming at a later date. We have been working hard to upgrade our tools and documentation to help make that possible. Tools will be made available including 3ds Max 2021 plugins and an independent Material Editor, and full documentation will be released for the shaders, as well as some guides and tips for getting setup. This will represent a significant step forward in the way content can be created and the options available to modders, with all the latest features, including improving night-time effects, tree shading and road and terrain blending options. To support this, we will release an updated Loch Drummond that will be included in ModDev by default. This track is a small fantasy circuit that has been updated to make full use of the various options from our work on recent tracks.

In recent updates, we made adjustments to old content to help it be compatible with lighting updates. We will add a few options here to help modders, including the ability to disable these changes on a per-material basis if required. Also with this update, we will allow modders to customize the atmospherics in tracks again. This will now be in the form of scalars to adjust the density of haze in different conditions and also to set the amount of air pollution. This should result in an easier to use system and help us keep effects consistent across the game.

This information will all be made available on our Developers Guide: https://docs.studio-397.com/developers-guide/

Tracking Down Endurance Issues

A few weeks ago, after the 24 hour race, we promised to give you regular updates of our efforts to track down and fix the issues that occurred during that race, and a few races before that. In fact, this effort is not something we started two weeks ago, it is an ongoing process. But before we look at the specific issues, let us first explain a bit more about software development and fixing bugs.

For starters, let’s give you a bit of background on how we develop code, the processes we have in place to ensure that our code is correct as well as a brief introduction on what kind of bugs there are in code and how to fix them.

Every change we make to the codebase, either to fix a bug or to implement a new feature, is developed in isolation. As soon as the developer working on it is confident the change is correct, he or she will do two things. The first is to ask at least two colleagues to review the changes. By getting others to look at the code, we typically catch mistakes that the original author would miss. I’m sure you have had cases where you are blind to your own spelling mistakes when writing some text. For code it’s typically no different. The second is to create a build on Steam that can be tested by others. If the change passes both checks, it gets integrated into the next update. That goes to our group of beta testers who again test the change to ensure it works as designed. If that passes, you will find the change in the next public update.

So that’s how we deal with changes. What about the extensive codebase we already have? Here the process starts by identifying a bug and being able to find a series of steps to reproduce it. If we can reproduce it, we typically have no problem fixing the underlying issue.

There are two types of bugs in code. Bugs that come from mistakes in the logic of the code. Once identified they are typically easy to reproduce and fix. The second type is timing and threading related, also known as concurrency bugs, and in recent years these tend to happen more often as processors get more and more cores and a lot of things happen simultaneously. Reproducing this type of bug is usually a lot more tricky as the slightest change in the execution timing might cause it to appear or disappear. Finding them requires a combination of luck, lots of testing and in some cases rigorous code reviews. Given that the rFactor 2 codebase consists of millions of lines of code (to compare, a typical novel will be around 15.000 lines) you can probably figure out that going over it front to back is going to be a very time consuming process. And you might still glance over the actual issue (do you still remember what the name of the street was that the main protagonist was crossing on page 34?).

Now that we’ve explained the process, let’s go back to the 24 hour event. Directly after the race we started analyzing and categorizing all the different reports we got and pretty soon we were convinced that we were looking at one or more concurrency issues. Reproducing these was going to be tricky. We have a framework that we can use to setup fully automated tests, so our first step was to try and reproduce the exact conditions of this 24 hour race. Specifically we started designing test scenarios that resembled the reports. Two weeks later, we are now seeing the first results of those tests, with a reproducible scenario that we are investigating further. I expect us to be able to explain more in the next roadmap, but the good news is that we found something.

As a result of finding something, we also have some preliminary advice for those running endurance races. Contrary to what most series have been doing, making sure that the replacement driver joins shortly before the intended driver swap and then having the original driver disconnect soon after, it for now is probably better for all drivers to join the server before the race starts and stay on the server throughout the whole event. Our code in theory can handle up to 104 drivers and another 104 spectators, so if your races have less than that, try out this advice while we continue to track down these issues.

Wrapping it up

That’s it for another month. There are a few topics we did not discuss this time round. The UI, improvements to our overlays, what’s happening with the competition system and a few other things we will not doubt revisit in the remaining summer months. While real racing slowly returns, sim racing is taking a short summer break, to come back even stronger after. We started democratizing racing, and that’s a path we will certainly continue to follow! Enjoy the rest of the summer sale and stay safe! In closing there is one topic we want to quickly address. In the sale we changed the bundles we have on sale. We thought it was time to do that. In that process we might have taken away the opportunity for some to “complete their collection”. We did listen to your feedback and will come with a one-time solution for that soon.

Last month we published a roadmap with a focus that was slightly different than most ones that came before it. We got some very diverse reactions to it, most of which were positive, and some thought we’d given up. The latter could not be further from the truth, but on a weekly basis our priorities have to be adjusted to adapt to the changing situation. In the weeks that followed, we could finally start announcing some of the things that were hinted at.

The new build, that both fixed some long standing issues as well as added a significant graphics update. The brand new Berlin and New York E-Prix tracks. Zandvoort in 2020 layout, the first simulation on the market to feature it. The announcement of the Radical SR3 XX, a launch that was coordinated with the real car by Radical Sportscars, earlier today. The Ferrari 488 GTE which needs no further introduction. And of course the announcement that we are hosting the 24 hours of Le Mans together with the ACO and Motorsport Games, featuring probably some of the strongest drivers and manufacturers ever to be competing in a single event.

We supported various Formula E races, some not without controversy, and ran weekly All-Stars events featuring many of the fastest simracers, racing drivers and legends, such as Mario Andretti and Fernando Alonso. So, with all of those things happening, you would almost forget that there’s a lot more to come. So let’s take a look at what the month of June will likely bring.

First of all we will be updating our build and providing you with the long awaited customization instructions on our brand new overlays. We’re just wrapping up testing of this build, that will contain a few other fixes as well, so you can certainly expect that to be available in the upcoming week.

On the art side, June will see the release of Portland International Raceway. This has definitely been one of the longer projects within Studio 397, as we’ve halted and continued it a few times. It has done the track a lot of good as it ended up being our showcase for all the new lighting improvements we’ve been working on over the past year or so. This track will be released for free, and we hope you will all enjoy it.

We have a few more things we’re working on though. Those of you watching the All-Stars events will probably have noticed they were driving on a much improved version of Silverstone. In recent weeks we’ve taken this track, updated all the materials and also brought the track and its surroundings up to the 2020 layout. We’ve even added back one of the older layouts for you to enjoy. And finally of course, with the 24 hour race being run in two weeks from now, Le Mans will get some updates as well. Needless to say the track team has been quite busy, and we will be upgrading a few more tracks in the months to come.

Our car team has also been quite busy. The unannounced car we mentioned last month will remain like that for a little while longer. We have also upgraded a couple of older cars to our new materials, such as the Indycar. The current focus of the team is a final BOP for all the GTE cars at Le Mans. Once that is done, work will most likely start on a few more cars we’ve recently licensed, but are not yet ready to announce. Needless to say the Ferrari 488 in GT3 spec will be one of those.

On the development side, apart from the continued focus on both improvements to the graphics engine and its performance and general bug fixes, we are working on the UI and competition subsystems. You will most likely see updates to the broadcast overlays as well as a system to share customizations of these overlays via the workshop. Here too there is a lot of focus on the 24 hour event as our development team is supporting this huge project. We still have a long list of tasks ahead here and not everything we are working on is visible or announced yet so bear with us as we continue these developments.

Last but not least our esports and marketing team has obviously been very busy organizing events and supporting others. With our own GT series coming to a close, they are already looking ahead at the next season later this year.

All in all this has probably been our busiest month in our now almost four year history, and we’re very excited to learn what the next couple of months will bring as in some areas of the world the lock-down is slowly lifting while other areas are still in the middle of their struggle to ensure people are safe. Some of motorsport is restarting too, but many believe the world will never be the same. Given that the only constant is change, that’s probably not even a bad thing. At least we look at the bright side of things and try to seize the new opportunities this brings. Thank you all for making it to the end of this roadmap, and again, stay healthy and stay safe!