Roadmap

Yes, it’s still a bit too early for our monthly roadmap, but it is about time to announce Build 1118, which comes around two and a half months after our previous update. Why did it take so long, you might ask? Because we needed to take some time to complete some bigger tasks, such as overhauling our package management system, deploying the first step of our graphics improvements and integrating our brand new broadcast overlays. All in all, this is a considerable update with a mix of improvements, fixes and new features. On top of that, we are also proud to release a brand new track, the Berlin E-Prix Track, which is on sale in our store right now.

https://store.steampowered.com/itemstore/365960/detail/49/

Things that have not yet made it are the release of Portland International Raceway and an update to the Zandvoort 2020 track, but both will come soon!

In terms of feedback we would like to invite you all to provide feedback on a couple of things. First of all, the graphics updates and how they affect the content you use. Secondly, if you are doing broadcasts, we’d like to know what to bring next to the overlays. Finally, we encourage you to give the new UI another try. It’s not the default yet, but we intend to make that switch soon, initially leaving the old UI as an option in a beta branch but eventually phasing it out altogether. We will also phase out our 32 bits version as hardware surveys tell us it’s not being used anymore as users have all switched to 64 bits operating systems.

Broadcast Overlays

Broadcast overlays are now integrated into the simulation as part of this update. That means you can use them directly in-game or with a broadcasting tool like OBS or XSplit. The overlays come with a separate control panel that can be used to control cameras as well as enable specific broadcast elements. It is available as a web page, which means you can remotely control the connected client from another computer or tablet. The overlay itself is also available as a transparent web page for integration into broadcast tools as well as directly in-game when you watch in full-screen.

There is also a system to customize overlays for your own league, tweaking colors, adding your own logos and customizing the style through CSS (cascading style sheets). This customization also includes support for setting safe regions when broadcasting to linear TV and a way for a single control panel to control multiple clients, in case you need to stream the same cameras to different output formats in the highest quality, completely removing the need for expensive frame interpolation hardware.

Our future roadmap here includes a guide on how to customize overlays as well as to add support for distributing them via the workshop.

Graphics Development

This release sees numerous updates to the graphics engine of rFactor2. These updates will allow us to build higher quality content going forward, and shortly they will let you do the same with mods. As an overview we have addressed some teething issues we were having with our PBR implementation and equalized the lighting equations between PBR and non-PBR. We have also corrected a range of balance issues with the lighting, postfx and atmospherics setup. This will allow us to release content of a much higher quality going forward; however, it will mean that some mods will require some fixes to look their best. In testing we have found that some old content is not configured correctly, and the old lighting setup masked these issues.

Now let’s take a closer look at what we have done and the implications of those changes. After an in-depth look into verifying the results of our PBR lighting pipeline against ray tracing solutions, we found that we had to make some adjustments to correct various issues with diffuse and specular output. This will make it much easier for artists to author content as things start to just behave naturally. Previously, in order for our new content to fit with the old content, we had to run a very constrained version of the shaders. This was one of the reasons we did not support modding with them yet. These changes will allow us to run at the full output now. The first track to be fully developed with this in mind is the just released Berlin Formula E track. However as a result of these changes you may find the lighting balance not quite right at Le Mans or other tracks recently updated to PBR. We will update these shortly.

We have also ported those lighting calculations over to the old shaders. However, the pre-PBR shaders required much darker albedo maps than is normal. As a result we have had to apply an automated correction to these textures. The intention is that these corrections will, on the shader side, push the albedo maps into the correct ball park for real-life albedo values, which the PBR shaders take as a rough input guideline. This change may take a bit of iteration, so please be patient and give us feedback if required. The main change resulting from all this is that the ambient lighting will be brighter on content using non-PBR shaders. It is important that ambient probes are set correctly. In our tests we found that mod tracks with poorly setup ambient probes resulted in bad lighting. Examples of this include them being in areas of strong colour cast (such as over a lot of very green grass), or underneath the terrain (resulting in the bottom of the ambient probe being brighter than the sky), or really high up in the sky (so the ambient probe receives much more sky contribution than you would expect, making it very blue in general). On content that had good ambient probes, we found that there was minimal difference, other than a slightly blue shift, due to the increased ambient lighting.

Some custom Showrooms may require updating, depending on how they have been authored. If they are suddenly very dark then this is why, as we could not apply this auto correction to the built in ones, and we need to review the way old content is being rendered in them.

We also took an in-depth look into our PostFX setup, and have iterated our configuration there further. The first area of interest was reviewing the exposure and the tone mapping. With the changes made to the output of the shader lighting equations, this was vital to ensure a naturally balanced scene. We have enabled auto exposure in limited situations for now, such as external cameras, and attached cameras not in the cockpit. This will allow us to test these changes further before enabling in the cockpit. We have spent a lot of time taming the glare settings so that we can use the full range of specular during the daytime, although trackside nightlights are still partial to glare quite a bit – we do intend to address this though. We also experimented with some more advanced effects that we may introduce at a later date. We will most likely tone this down in the content. In the future, we look forward to key framing different conditions in order to bring this to life even further.

The atmospherics and sky has had a pass to try to link everything together better. We have reviewed the sky configuration to improve its balance in general. We paid quite a bit of attention to the visuals as the sun starts to go down and to make sure that we are keeping appropriate amounts of light in the sky as it progresses into night. There are clear gains there but there’s still more work to be done. We have done some basic adjustments to the cloud rendering to ensure they are rendered with more natural colours and linked them up to the horizon haze to try and ensure a more natural horizon under various conditions. Finally, we have also changed how fog is applied on the entire scene. There is a lot of content in rFactor2 that suffers from a significant issue concerning the amount of fog applied and the overly blue colour it presents in many conditions. We have therefore decided to apply fog to the scene from an authoring perspective in a different way. We will expose variables to configure this shortly. We now have a base level of fog which is applied over the scene on a clear day. The default value is set to a realistic value for a scene with an accurately modelled vista, such as Le Mans or Nordschliefe, where you can see far into the distance. We then have extra fog or atmospherics that are applied as the conditions change, such as the sun going down, or as it becomes more cloudy or starts raining. This may present some issues at tracks where a static horizon has been placed unrealistically close to the foreground though, and it would be better to change this mesh so it is at a more realistic distance. These settings now also apply to the sky, so we no longer have really bright blue sky on the horizon on a completely cloudy day.

We have also iterated our shaders further. There are various fixes and improvements to allow us to make improvements in various places on the new IBL shaders. We added a new Car Tyre shader, which will be used in the near future, as well as an IBL Terrain Legacy shader to allow for easier porting of old content to the new setup. The one major thing missing from this release that we have spoken about before is the Screen Space Reflections development. This is well advanced, yet needs further performance testing before it is released. We have, however, ported over some of the basic developments from this to the new release which make wet weather conditions look even better on PBR tracks.

With regards to full modding support, this is something we envisage that we can start offering after we have completed the Le Mans race next month. Our team has a huge amount of documents ready to port over for modder support once things become a little less busy!

New UI

Improvements to our new UI are ongoing, and we have already tackled the following things:

• We’ve now included options to select a custom showroom and HUD.
• Tuning info for the selected car is now correctly displayed.
• Setups now allow you to view and edit notes again.
• Enabled resume from replay.
• Added options to create custom skins and teams in the showroom.
• Properly detect if we’re offline and adapt the UI to that situation.
• Disabled options in the setup screen are now more clearly marked as such.
• Notification icon changes when there are new, unread messages.
• Ensured that parc ferme settings are always respected by the UI.

Improvements and Fixes

Apart from the bigger features above, we have done quite a few “smaller” improvements and fixes that should improve the overall experience:

• Fixed a graphics freeze that could occur on some systems after driving for roughly half an hour, at which point it could freeze for over a second, which was sometimes causing mild framerate stutters at other times.
• Improved the speed of real-road synchronization when a client logs into a server. As we developed more laser scanned tracks with significantly higher polygon counts for the road surfaces, this synchronization was taking more time. This has now been addressed, and you get a message when joining to indicate this process is ongoing. In general, you will want to wait for it, but you don’t have to. During the process, your frame rate might be slightly lower.
• We’ve reviewed the package management system and fixed several bugs related to packages and their dependencies that could cause scenarios where content would not correctly install and, worse, allowed you to join a server without having all content installed. The whole system is now made much more robust, and we also managed to speed it up.
• Our real-time logging has also been improved as we keep trying to track down further issues.
• Fixed the wrong track loading sometimes when loading a saved replay.
• Fixed newly saved replays not immediately showing up.
• Made a few small improvements to controller rearrangements, making sure we detect a controller regardless of what USB port it plugs into.
• Especially for long races, we have now implemented a way to resume a race on the same or a different server in case of networking problems. At the end of every lap, the current standings and order are backed up and these script files can be run on a new server to resume the race after all drivers have rejoined. We’ll explain this system in more detail in the upcoming weeks.

Formula E Berlin E-Prix 2020 Released

The Big City life – Berlin is not just the capital city of Germany, but it’s also one of the few places that has been visited by the Formula E circuit each year since 2015. The former airport Tempelhof makes for a great event venue for this “electric spectacle” and has become one of the most anticipated races for many Formula E drivers, not just German drivers.

The Berlin ePrix features vast concrete planes rather than smooth city street asphalt, turning it into a unique challenge for everyone who wants to be on the top spot of the podium. The layout itself mixes high-speed straights with very technical sectors, forcing teams to setup a car that can shine on both. With 2.3 kilometers of track, Berlin offers plenty of chances to make a move and climb up the ranking. The very long turn 1, which leads into a chicane-like sector, is a real highlight not just for the drivers, but also for the crowd, as the grandstands create arguably some of the best views you can have when visiting an ePrix.

The long straights open up to create a real fight for slipstream, giving an advantage to drivers who can use the full capabilities of their brakes. This leads into the long turns that also allow for alternative entry and exit lines, giving defenders many possibilities to cut back in front or strike back on the exit. Rhythm is absolutely everything on this track that feels, because these are no roads, like an airfield. More like a classic circuit track rather than a typical Formula E street race, 10 corners have to be tackled before a lap time can be posted on the board. This track demands a smooth driver for consistently quick lap times. 

It’s your time now to prove that you are this complete driver, smooth but aggressive enough to go deep under braking, and precise on every single exit to maximize speed on the straights!

This evening, after another extremely busy and exciting day at the virtual office, I had dinner, walked my dog, and finally sat down behind my desk. I put on some music to start writing the roadmap update for this month.

My mind started to wander. Four years ago this month I was in the middle of writing some code to extend the Steam integration of rFactor 2 when all of a sudden Gjon popped up on Skype to start a discussion that quickly transformed into an opportunity I simply had to take. Many interesting discussions followed as we worked towards founding a new company to continue the development of a racing simulation that I spent many hours driving, racing strangers that became close friends. One of the probably less important tasks on my checklist back then was to come up with a name for this new company. If you’ve ever gone through such a process, you probably know it’s not easy to find a name that is still available as a domain. We finally settled on the somewhat cryptic Studio 397, a hint at our desire to one day bring the iconic track of Le Mans to the simulation. For those of you not aware of the meaning of the number, it is the record number of laps driven during the 24 hour race.

Speeding along the virtual Mulsanne Straight, my mind wanders again as I think about the many stories that are attached to each of the tracks we’ve built over the years. Sunset bend, where we fielded a sister car with Robin Frijns and Dries van den Elzen, who wanted to experience first hand what it would be like to drive a 12 hour endurance race in a professional simulator. An old tool called Ring trainer for Grand Prix Legends introduced me to many unique spots of which Karussel is probably one of the best known. One weekend we drove a 24 hour race there only to learn at the finish that due to some technical issue we had to drive the whole race again the next weekend. Tarzan corner and its dunes where the place where I first met two people whom I now have the pleasure to work with. At the time they were both working on other projects, but our common love for simracing brought us together there. Over sixteen years ago, with some friends we founded Simracing for Holland, taking the iconic livery from Jan Lammers’ Racing for Holland. We are still racing today and the many people that raced with us over the years are on our blocked livery as a tribute.

As you’ve by now no doubt figured out, this roadmap is a bit different from the ones we regularly bring you at the end of the month. So are the current times obviously, where we should all stay in touch with our friends and loved ones, and support them wherever that is needed. With the whole motorsport world sitting at home, it is great to see all this attention on simracing. It pleasantly messes with our plans, and we are all grateful about that. You’ve seen us in the All-Star battles, where many current drivers and legends from the past enjoy themselves racing each other on equal terms. I personally thoroughly enjoyed watching for example Jan Magnussen and Jenson Button racing each other hard and fairly. I was also impressed by the Formula E drivers getting together and showing their skills on the narrow streets of Hong Kong. But apart from these global events, we also did a race on a regional dutch channel, racing a fictional track through the streets of Maastricht, broadcast by a local TV station that did an awesome job to draw in a large and diverse audience on TV and internet. And judging from the talks we are having now, we will create many more great stories in the weeks to come.

Earlier this month, the news that Stefano Casillo left Kunos to start a new adventure surprised a lot of people. It’s a bold move, but I believe he is following his passion and developing new software that soon might surprise a brand new audience. Or maybe we will all see him rock at Pinkpop next year?

So what’s cooking at our Studio? As I mentioned, a lot of our plans have been shuffled and re-arranged. Our track team finished Portland, but it won’t be released until we’ve finished our extensive lighting pass and released a new build. In the mean time they are working on two brand new tracks, as well as a few updates to our existing ones. Our car team completed a brand new car that we currently can’t release as its release was planned to coincide with the real car, and that has been delayed. Here too we moved on to the next car, which unfortunately we can’t announce just yet, but it’s a unique opportunity for our Studio. Our developers have been testing our new overlay system, making tweaks to ensure it can be properly customized. We also fixed a few long standing issues with our package management system, which delayed the pending update of the new UI. Development on the lighting system is now in a phase where artists and developers are iterating over many of the improvements to create the proper balance for each. We are also fixing some smaller bugs and discussing physics improvements. Our esports team is already looking ahead at future seasons for our GT series, planning the next race for BMW as well as streamlining our broadcast setups.

The hard thing right now is to predict what will happen next. Extrapolating based on the last weeks we can only say that we probably don’t know. As a good friend said to me, we need to be prepared for pleasant surprises, and on that note I wish everybody a healthy future, stay safe and look out for each other!

Marcel

This is probably one of the tougher roadmap intros to write. On the one hand we would love to go on and on about the growth we are seeing in simracing. How amazing it feels to see simracing on TV and being talked about everywhere. On the other hand we all know where the growth is coming from, the absence of our beloved motorsport, and why this is. So let us start with saying that we hope everyone out there stays safe and healthy. It’s important in these days to keep calm and try everything to help the world to get through this. For us here at Studio 397, the impact on our jobs was probably not as big as it was for others. While we also feel the changes in our everyday life due to lockdowns and the general situation, we are lucky that the home office was always the way to go in our Studio, means we could just carry on like before.

Speaking about carrying on, there was a lot of rFactor 2 to be seen this month, and that won’t change in the upcoming ones. We will continue to be flat out when it comes to events and are more than happy to see that our GT Pro and Challenger Series, besides “The Race’s All-Star Esports Battle” and other projects, are gaining interest and deliver amazing and entertaining racing. Which is also down to our lovely racing community, so thanks for that! There is also news on the development side of rFactor 2, so let’s get into the actual roadmap!

Development Update

Last month we did a series of weekly updates. Those have slowed down a bit as we fixed a lot of the issues that were reported and at the same time spent time to implement a few new features. We are working towards a public release of the new UI. Expect a release candidate towards the end of this month.

In that build we implemented some smaller missing features, fixes, and a significant update to the way we handle controllers in rFactor 2. In short, we have fixed the issue that if you plug controllers into different ports, the input mappings would get lost. We will get into more detail on all of these when that build is released.

Another thing that will be part of the upcoming release candidate are the new overlays. We’re sure you have seen them being used in our current broadcasts, and we are looking forward to everybody starting to use them!

There are multiple fronts of graphics development progressing at present. We have the core lighting review developments we discussed last month which have been continued in March. We are starting to see some solid improvements in the output. In addition we are reviewing the PostFX setup and making sure that everything is correctly configured there. The two of these combined will make a nice step up to our visual output. Some initial previews from those developments can be seen in the Portland images in this article.

Finally we are currently also experimenting with a technology called Screen Space Reflections, evaluating if it helps us to improve the way wet road reflections are rendered. In theory this will allow us to have more objects reflected, and a more visually correct wet experience, overcoming many shortcomings of the previous technology.

Content Update

Our content team has spent a significant amount of time supporting our graphics development but we have been working on a few extra things too. However the big announcement from last time, Portland is now very close to being done, and we will probably release that soon after our new build is public.

Additionally, we will be releasing a new layout of the Nürburgring – even more variety to an already full list of Nords layouts! Called the ’24H Support’ layout, it’s another short version of the GP – essentially it bypasses the Arena section and the final chicane.

Finally work is on going on a renovation at Silverstone! We are working on updating the track both in terms of visuals and overall accuracy, bringing it up to our current standards.

Competition

Even though the new competition system is still being worked on, as we shifted our focus on getting the new UI out first, we’ve started ramping up our competitions. We’ve never had this many competitions running, and we are happy to see you all competing in them. In the BMW M2 2020 online Cup, the All-star Esports Battle and our very own GT Series, we are seeing superb racing being guided by our race control team that ensures penalties get handed out where needed and ongoing Balance Of Performance adjustments are being applied. This should actually benefit everyone, as we intend to bring such updates to the public as well.

In a good mix of both simulation and fast and furious esports battles, we’ve seen real-life legends such as Jan Magnussen, Juan Pablo Montoya, David Brabham and Emerson Fittipaldi race in our sim. This makes us proud. We’re not stopping here, the continuation of our GT series, more All-Star Esports Battles and more racing is coming up!

This year, February gifted us 29 days to work on the roadmap, but look at us, we did it in 28! It was a busy month nonetheless and once again, we are happy to show what’s new in your favourite sim. As you probably all saw already, we released a patch with the new HAM feature for VR but it obviously isn’t the only “newcomer” to rFactor 2. In this months roadmap you will find something from basically every part of the game, overlays for the broadcast of your favourite league, updated textures for our content and also code improvements here and there. All packed for you in little stories to ensure that you can enjoy roadmap day. And don’t forget about our competitions, with the BMW Sim M2 CS Racing Cup 2020 already underway and the GT Series waiting for green light, there is much so look forward to.

Broadcast Overlays

Over the last couple of months we have been building, prototyping and testing various iterations of our broadcast overlays. We’ve involved various leagues in this process, collaborating with them, and now we’re getting to a point where we feel we have a solid base that we can publicly release as part of rFactor 2. There are still a few things to finish and test, so an actual release date will probably be announced next month, but we wanted to show you what we were up to anyway.

There will be a couple of different ways to use these overlays. The most straightforward way is directly in-game, where these overlays are available when you are spectating a race. This makes it easy for anybody to start broadcasting races, with no need for extra software except something to stream to your service of choice. The other way is to use them as a layer in your favorite broadcasting software like OBS or XSplit or any other tool that can integrate HTML based elements. In both cases we also provide a control panel that can be used to blend in and out the various elements of the overlay like the scoring tower or the battle box. This itself is also an HTML page, and you can use it in-game or in an external browser.

We’ve gone through a lot of effort to provide a solution that is easy to customize. Leagues can add their own logo, styling, sponsors and colors, all without having to program, and such customizations are easy to share and install, so everybody should be able to use these new broadcast overlays!

Development Update

Since our previous roadmap, we have done three more releases containing fixes and improvements to the code, as well as existing content. We’ve increased the release frequency because first of all you, the community, asked for more updates and fixes, but also because we want to keep the momentum going on the new user interface, addressing issues and providing you with quick updates so we can move towards our goal of making this new UI the default. We’re not done yet, we’re still working on some fixes for problems that were reported and features that went missing so you can expect us to keep up this pace in the weeks to come.

There are also still quite a few bigger things we are working on in the background. There’s not always much news to report on regarding these, but as a small recap we’ll go over some of them anyway. First of all our graphics team are still doing an extensive review of our rendering pipeline, evaluating the different stages of that pipeline against reference images generated by ray tracing algorithms as well as real photos. Then there are a lot of improvements that are building on that, as well as things that make the lives of content developers easier. A lot of these developments are getting closer to completion. Our core development team is obviously focusing a lot on the new UI at the moment, but as soon as that has reached maturity the focus will go back to finishing the competition system. We’ve used the last couple of months to look at a few long standing feature requests, such as “offline championships” so we are now looking at modelling those into this system as well.

Content

In the content department, this month we have a couple of minor bug fixes to some classic rFactor 2 cars, some fine tuning of Le Mans and even another track to announce! Additionally our partner KartSim has a whole set of updates and some new content ready.

Circuit des 24 Heures du Mans 2018

v2.05

• Adjusted grass saturation.
• Adjusted specular profile on roads to make rubber build up less blue.
• Configured sky haze settings.

Historic Challenge Spark 1968

v2.05

• Fixed LOD in showroom.
• Added new icons for the new UI.

Historic Challenge EVE 1968

v2.04

• Fixed missing cockpit in the F2.
• Added new icons for the new UI.

McLaren MP4/8

v1.30

• Flipped wet texture treads so it ‘mirrors’.
• Tyre damage texture fix.

McLaren MP4/13

v1.30

• Tyre smoothing.
• Tyre damage texture fix.

Portland International Raceway

Announced a little while back, and now back by popular demand! We give you our latest development shots of Portland International Raceway. This original collaboration started with community member Alex Coutie’s scratch built track creation. We then built on it, with the intention to use it as a platform to showcase our new materials, and what can be achieved. In the future this track will serve as a basis for modders to learn all about our new materials system for tracks.  We’ll release more details on that after the track becomes available. Portland will be a free track for all owners of rFactor 2 and available in the Studio 397 Steam workshop.

KartSim

By now, KartSim is a well known name in the karting industry, known for high quality professional karts and tracks. They will be releasing a big update to all of their content. For consumers the next release will include updates to most of the existing karts and tracks with improvements to shaders, models, AI and more. Professional customers can look forward to even more updates as well as some brand new tracks like “Le Mans” and a few others. More details will be revealed when this update is released next week.

BMW Sim M2 CS Racing Cup

We all know that cup racing is a rough and exciting form of battling it out on the track. Everyone in the same car and it all comes down to the driver. The first 30 that qualified for round 1 showed that they are tough, and up for this challenge. Lots of overtaking kept Rene, Aidan and Lewis, our commentary team, on their toes during the entire broadcast, with more action on every corner than even 3 pairs of eyes could track. In the end it was Michal Smidl who reigned supreme in this first round and with that, grabbed his ticket to the BMW event later this year. But we all know, moving pictures can show you way more of what happened than any lyrical masterpiece we could come up with in text, so watch this:

Want some more BMW action? Round 2 qualifiers have started at the Nordschleife, join now!

rFactor 2 GT Series

Hundreds of drivers have kicked off the qualification for our inaugural GT Series, leading to one of the tightest competitions we have seen in simracing so far. The first race in this series is imminent now, so make sure you tune in to the first GT Pro Series this Monday evening!

Spotter Guide

Trailer

Formula SimRacing

On the 8th of March, Formula SimRacing is going into its 20th season of open-wheeler competition with races held across ten different official tracks and FSR’s own scratch made formula car. There is a place for drivers with all skill levels in FSR, thanks to the driver licence system. Creating three different divisions with similar skill levels across each. The highest level, the World Championship, features a prize pool of at least €3000! Head on over to the FSR forum to learn more on how to sign-up for the races and follow Formula SimRacing on social media to not miss any of the broadcasts and updates.

That’s all from us in this shortest month of the year. We wish you a great weekend and hope to see you soon somewhere on a virtual track!

Hello everybody, we hope you have all had enough time to read and digest the December roadmap? Here at the studio we have all enjoyed our holidays and are back in full force for the new year. It’s time to put on your racing gloves and fasten your seatbelts to blast through the first roadmap of 2020, all lights are green!

New User Interface

A lot of people have tried out the new user interface and provided feedback. We’ve been collecting this information and are scheduling a new “public beta” update next week.

We changed the way series, track and car selection works in the main menu, returning you right back where you came from instead of always going to the dedicated race menu. Talking about that race menu, nobody liked the way we loaded the favorite servers every time you entered that menu, so that now happens only once (and allows you the option to manually refresh later). Ultimately we will make the whole loading asynchronous, so you never have to wait for it. 

We made the replay slider draggable for replays so you can quickly find that scene you were looking for. A few problems that prevented the client from downloading components from a server that was hosting them were addressed and they are now correctly downloaded and installed again while showing you the progress. Brake wear and tire temperatures in the garage after you’ve been on track with your car are back, which should help you analyze your setup. An issue where you could start driving again in a session after being disqualified was fixed. The intermittent issue where the pace car did not correctly load was also addressed. Tyre flex is now again being applied correctly to the visual model.

Unrelated to the UI, we fixed the join lag which accidentally slipped in after some internal refactorings.

We also have an exciting director mode in the works. Taking our broadcast tools from rFactor 2 and allowing you to stream and control the broadcast overlay easily. That also means we’ll start shipping a configurable, customizable overlay. More news on that in our next roadmap.

Looking back at Sim Formula 2020

Thanks to all of you who visited the event or watched the racing being streamed live. The MECC in Maastricht was the perfect venue and the collaboration with InterClassics meant plenty of eye candy, with the city providing many opportunities for a great night out in between the four days. Overall the event was a big success, with both the esports convention and the student workshop drawing a lot of attention before the big crowds hit Sim Formula and InterClassics on the weekend. The exhibition area where lots of different hardware could be tested saw rigs in constant use and I think many visitors got introduced to the depth and experience of simracing that we have all grown used to. Saturday’s hotlap competition in the main auditorium saw people pushing hard on the virtual circuit of Maastricht. The three races on Sunday crowned Risto Kappet the overall winner, beating the four other finalists for the top spot on the podium.

Photo 2, 3, 4 by Ronnie Zeemering

Assisting aspiring game developers!

As well as continuing to improve upon rFactor 2, making time to support young aspiring game developers is something we value here at Studio 397. Members of our UK based team have been invited to a student event at Warrington & Vale Royal College to provide support and advice to students starting their game developing journey. Before the event, students will be taking part in a week-long game jam to which they must produce and pitch the best game idea to industry clientele. The work produced will be entered into a competition, and judged by industry guests, including one of our very own artists, Joel Pattie.

The event will commence from Monday 3rd February and run through to Friday 7th February. Students will be broken into teams of 4/5 members, and must produce a solid example from their idea generation. Tasks will include the creation of a Game Design Document, Level Planning, and 3D environments representing a level in their game, with each industry guest offering support and assistance to help the learners understand how the industry operates. Studio 397 will be providing 5 copies of rFactor 2 to the team awarded best voted game idea!

GT3 BOP update!

Over the past month we have been working on updating our GT3 cars to level performance as best possible. Our hardcore test drivers have put in a lot of laps to ensure a more equal performance across the board, ranging from qualification pace to performance over a full fuel stint. That has lead to the following adjustments for the cars:

• Radical RXC GT3: -30kg weight penalty
• BMW M6 GT3: -30kg weight penalty
• McLaren 650S GT3: -5kg weight penalty.
• Audi R8 LMS GT3 2018: +5kg weight penalty.
• Porsche 991 GT3-R: -1.5% engine torque/power output.
• Bentley Continental GT3: +10kg weight penalty, -2% engine torque/power output.
• Callaway C7 GT3-R: -2.5% engine torque/power output
• Aston Martin Vantage GT3: +15kg weight penalty

Unchanged are the McLaren 720s GT3, Audi R8 LMS GT3 2019 and Mercedes AMG GT3. Expect these updates to come in later this evening.

Tracks

The environment art team has been recovering from last years work load and setting about improving our core generic assets as well as starting work on some new projects which we’ll be able to share with you in the coming months. That said we do have a few updates to share with you this month. We’ve got a full update to the latest technology for the Monaco Formula E track coming which includes many upgrades over the current release version. Additionally, we’ve made some small tweaks to Le Mans to address a few common complaints.

Competition

We are confident that 2020 will be an exciting year, both for us in the Studio but more importantly for simracers (obviously rFactor 2 drivers will have more fun, and yes you can use that as a bumper sticker). In the December roadmap we revealed a glimpse of the future by announcing 4 major endurance special events, so let’s elaborate a bit more on those now. The first three will be the Sebring 12 hour, the Nordschleife 24 hour and the rF24 Le Mans race. The fourth one will be announced later this year. These races will be partially based on invites and have qualification routes for entry for everyone else.

That’s not all. In roughly a month from now our new rF2 GT Pro Series and rF2 GT Challenge Series will kick off. Our First Pro Series season will last for three months and will be handled by invitation and a hotlap qualifier. After this season we will have people moving up from Challenge Series to compete for the prize money in the 2nd season of GT Pro Series. The Challenge Series will be fluid and can consist of multiple splits, giving everybody a chance to climb through the ranks, so don’t worry if you are not a hotlapper, you will have your chance to prove your racecraft and quickly advance to the top tier!

The GT Pro Series will be broadcast live and the top split in the GT Challenge Series will be broadcast as well. Invites will be sent out in the upcoming week and qualifying will start in two weeks time. Based on the results there, the Pro Series Grid and the Challenge Grids will be determined.  Look out for our announcement and more details shortly!

Before we string up the lights and begin to tell you the Christmas story of our December roadmap, here is the keyhole version for those of you that just can´t wait for Santa: lots of cool stuff you asked for, awesome new series, content surprises #1 to #5, rF2 improvements and the answer to your pressing question “when’s the new UI?” Now that you can see the presents, we promise it’s a lot more exciting when you sit down in your PJ’s and unwrap them one by one. So let’s get busy, shall we (wink)

A quick look out of the window confirms, winter’s here- at least in northern Europe. And that means the soothing sounds of our favorite race car engines have been temporarily drowned out by the incessant “Last Christmas” blaring from seemingly all around. But fear not, we haven’t succumbed to the sugar coating yet and the dev elves have been very busy in the simracing workshop – simracing is not just a season!

2019 – What a year!

Let´s start with a quick roundup of the year. The studio was running on full throttle, and we were super proud to introduce iconic racetracks like Le Mans or Nürburgring to you. Great cars such as new GT3s, Cup cars and a full lineup of new Tatuus Open Wheelers seriously tempted even us to stop working for a moment and just get in there and race all of that awesome content!

While much of the team’s development focused on the UI and the upcoming competition system, 2019 also saw rFactor 2 show off new content at many events and in lots of different competitions, further highlighting our dedication to competitive racing simulation: from our endurance events like Sebring 12h and the rF24h at Le Mans (with a combined prize pool of over 20.000 Euro just in those races), to tournaments and competitions such as World’s Fastest Gamer, A1 e-sports league, ESL Mapfre Racing Series, and McLaren Shadow.

Clearly, investing your training time in rFactor 2 to become one of the fastest drivers in the world really paid off this year, not to mention the several thousand people who watched rFactor 2 esports live! Supporting grassroots and entry level racing (more on that later) will always be a core focus for us, but for 2020 our goal is to increase top-notch rFactor 2 events and tournaments to provide more regular, exciting broadcasts . This year, we celebrate that rFactor 2 was supported in many leagues and events. Next year, we promise to continue our work on creating “more things to race in!”

2020 – A glimpse of the future

There’s no slowing down for the turn of the year (get it???) – 2020 will be full speed ahead. Watch out for traffic signs on the winding road that is the upcoming year: Ratings ahead!, Daily races in 100m!, Slow down, ladder! and much more. You probably guessed it already, we are subtly hinting at the competition system.

But as we move onto the next level of integrating our competition system into the UI, we are equally as proud to announce one of our bigger championships hitting in 2020: the rFactor 2 Major Series, featuring 4 major endurance events throughout the year, bringing you the excitement of multi-class racing in a team environment. Different tracks at each event, adjusted classes and hours of exciting racing action is yours coming up. Specific teams, such as the top teams in class from VEC, will get direct invites prior to those events. Everyone else will be able to qualify per event. While those major series races will be partly “stand-alone,” like this year’s Sebring and Le Mans, there will be overall standings across the entire season, rewarding teams that are constantly bringing home points. Our goal is to ensure every endurance racing lover out there has a chance to get a spot in this exciting event in 2020. More details are under the hood, which we’ll reveal when the time comes.

Winter Sale!

Nothing brings on the Christmas cheer like our winter sale! With rad discounts across much of our content and rFactor 2 at a tinsel-topped 50% off! https://store.steampowered.com/app/365960/rFactor_2/

Let’s take a look at some of the goodies!

GT3 Power pack 50% off

GT3 Challengers pack 50% off

Two Strong pack 30% off

Le Mans 30% off

Sebring 50% off

Endurance Pack 50% off

Reiza Pack 50% off

Kartsim 50% off

Formula E Race Bundle 50% off

Why are you still trying on that ugly sweater?? Go and treat yourself right now!

Audi R8 GT3 2019

We see you peeping through the door! You’ve been good all year (you have, haven’t you?!) and you just can´t wait any more, so here’s your present*!

As successful as the previous model has been in sprint and endurance GT racing, the German premium manufacturer presented the 3rd generation of its GT3-powerhouse at the end of 2018.

Paris played host back then for the first outing of the new Audi R8 GT3 LMS Evo and now you can try to master this rocket in rFactor 2 as the newest addition to our already big GT3 grid.

*The 2019 model is free for every one who already owns the previous Audi R8 GT3- Merry Christmas!

With a revised body, including a new front-end with bigger dive planes, changes to the rear wing size, and profile and other modifications (which resulted in a new rev limit, now at 8600 rpm in 6th gear), this knife is sharpened to the max and ready for another season of racing.

Circuit d´Azur

Between the beautiful sea, regal casinos and the lifestyle of the fast and famous, it´s up to you to carve your name into the tarmac as a winner of this challenging street circuit! We hear it´s pretty cool to win three epic races in a race career, with two of them being in Indianapolis and Le Mans–tracks you can already find in rFactor2–let us introduce you to an amazing looking piece of track along the Cote d´Azur. To make sure you know where to travel for your next holidays, we even named the Circuit accordingly. You’re welcome (wink)

As your engine echoes through the apartment canyons (which probably cost more than an entire GT3 season), you downshift to 2nd gear, your eyes locked onto the tight apex right in front of a stunning harbour scene (eyes on the apex!!), the road twists and turns like a roller coaster. The backdrop of this holiday paradise will keep distracting you as you approach the last hairpin, separating you from reaching the crown. Sounds cool? It is, and it’s your chance to experience right now!

You can grab this fresh circuit in the Steam Item Store or just follow the link here https://store.steampowered.com/itemstore/365960/detail/45/

 

Tatuus TRS FT-60

This Christmas, we will be releasing an update to the awesome Tatuus TRS FT-60. The car is used predominantly in the Toyota Racing Series, which is a proving ground for emerging talent in the open-wheeler season.

We’re releasing an update to the Tatuus pack! After further evaluating the real car performance, we have updated small things on the F4 and F3 cars. On top of that, we have even added something new! The FT50 was already part of this pack, but now we also have the FT60. This F3 is putting down 290 bhp exclusively on the real roads of New Zealand in January and February of 2020. We again worked closely with Engineering Consult and Toyota Gazoo New Zealand on the car, but this time we also created five amazing tracks, all of which will be released completely for free in the workshop: Highlands, Teretonga, Pukekohe, Manfeild and Hampton Downs. We will open a server for any competitor in the real series to set a benchmark time and let our online racers have a go at beating them.

FT-60 at Adria

Teretonga

Manfeild

BMW M2 Clubsport

You probably wonder, “is this last months roadmap?”, because it isn’t that long ago that we told you about the amazing partnership with BMW Motorsport and how we build the BMW M2 CS Cup car together with them but we still got some additional news for you on this car.

Just in case the sliding rear wasn’t enough for you yet and you feel like you need some more POWAAA for more angle, we just got the right update for you. From now on, you can not only dive into your future race career with the BMW M2 CS Cup, you can also enjoy the BMW M2 Clubsport, the 450 HP street monster. Live your “Touristenfahrten” dreams with this Bavarian masterpiece and tear up the tarmac whilst you look cool in every corner!

Le Mans Update

Le Mans has been updated to make use of all of the latest graphical developments. This includes upgrading all PBR materials, as well as a complete foliage material update and more. All of this has it looking better than ever before.

KartSim Track Pack 

After releasing the brand new track and our updates for Le Mans, we’re still not done releasing tracks. That’s right! It might have gone silent around KartSim for a while, but that doesn’t mean that nothing’s happening behind the scenes. For PFI we have updated the curbs and the track colour scheme, graphics and shaders, as well as roadside advertising. We also updated the AI and advertising for Buckmore and Glan Y Gors.

On top of that, we have three brand new tracks from the European karting scene!

Adria

Alongside the Adria International Raceway lies the Adria Karting Raceway, situated in beautiful Italy, just an hour south of Venice. Built in 2014, it is one of the most modern kart tracks, and hosts many international karting events. The track itself sports a nice looking combination of concrete and colored run-off areas and is just over 1.3 kilometers long.

Kristianstad

Located in the south of Sweden is the Kristianstad karting circuit, a 1.2 kilometer long track that was repaved and upgraded to meet the demands of a CIK grade-A circuit in 2012. The track has 16 corners, two chicanes, and a level difference of 6 meters vertically.

Alahärmä

The Alaharma circuit, sometimes also called the Mika Salo Circuit as it was designed by the former racing driver of the same name, is one of the most beautiful outdoor karting tracks. Located in Finland in the beautiful town of Alahärmä on the banks of the river Lapuanjoki, the 1 kilometer long course winds down the river and has several corners that challenge even the most experienced drivers.

Zandvoort Update

Circuit Zandvoort got a small update, with some fixes and the inclusion of the 2020 GP banner near the end of the main straight. We wanted to make sure the final version of this layout was current. As you are probably aware, the track is currently undergoing changes. Expect more news about those early next year!

Graphic Improvements

This release marks the 3rd major instalment of our PBR revamp of the graphics engine. Last winter, we introduced PBR to vehicles via a new car paint material system, and in the summer we released Le Mans, our first track to make use of the technology. This winter, we bring the next step in the evolution of the environment shaders.

The major feature of this release is the introduction of pre-processor defines for shaders. This means we now can have a handful of shaders with many configurable options. We can enable and disable maps, configure which UV each map uses and change large parts of the logic carried out by the shader on a per material basis. This allows artists much greater freedom to achieve the results they are looking for.

As a result, we’ve added various tweaks and improvements to the full suite of PBR shaders, improving our solutions for Terrain, Road, Foliage and more.

On Roads and Curbs it is possible to fully configure the strength and full PBR profile of Dust, Marble and Groove effects as well as controlling the impact of detail maps across the road. It is possible to pre-bake wear into the road, allowing for a more natural feeling “green” road with subtle variations. It’s all real road compatible too, dusty parts of the road will clear off as vehicles drive over it!

The terrain shader is now more powerful, allowing more maps to be blended and the option to use a “splatter” map input in addition to vertex colour, as was used in the past to control the blending. Distant shadows can be pre-baked, and we have added translucency options to give an improved low light look. This all allows for more natural blending patterns and adds more depth to the scene.

We’ve taken the time to improve billboard lighting on foliage, adding more depth to trees, as well as giving a silhouette glow to them as the sun goes down.

Finally, a complex blend shader gives us the ability to blend different materials together. This is put to use across the scene Gravel Traps to Advertisement hoardings. For example on Gravel Traps we can input two sets of maps, one for the fine pebble details, and a second to achieve the raked pattern. These blend together to add more depth and allow the lighting to be more accurate. Advertisements can be setup with profiles, so a single albedo map with the sponsor logos can be used across all kinds of different surfaces whilst being able to configure a unique profile for each surface.

In terms of lighting, we have taken some small steps here after the preliminary results of the lighting review. The whole pipeline has been adjusted to work with real life albedo values, which meant existing content had to be completely reworked from the assets side. We have also addressed some issues with the direct light and ambient light balance.

All that said, there’s still much work to do. We intend to complete our lighting review in the new year, and also look at improving the PostFX.

Finally, a common question we receive is when will we offer modder support. This is a very important subject, and we want to offer that support as soon as we can. When we roll out modder support, we wish to have proper documentation and be sure that we are not going to make wholesale changes to the way things are setup shortly afterwards. As such, we expect that modder support will not come before the next stage of the graphics pipeline development is complete. As there is still a large chance that things maybe significantly re-balanced and cause major work to content already making use of these developments.

Public Beta of the new UI

Rfactor 2 has always deserved a real ecosystem to showcase its core attributes. A place that is minimal without being sparse, and useful and intuitive without being cluttered. It might sound somewhat abstract, but our vision of a ‘UI’ has always been the visual representation and feel of ‘simulation’. Essentially, we’ve created a building block that has the flexibility to accommodate any new features that will come. Since taking over the development from ISI back in 2016, we immediately redefined our graphical identity. From that point on we continued to further redefine rFactor 2 in many other ways, bringing in great “triple-A” cars and tracks, overhauling the graphic engine, and improving on and adding new features all along the way…

But our starting point was always ‘the new UI.’ It served as a basis for the overall design charter – we knew right away that how rFactor 2 is perceived depends heavily on how well it visually brings across its true potential and the possibilities it contains. We put great care and effort into making sure ‘your sim’ shows in the best light.

So a public beta is not the first step, we are well on our way already, but it’s the first time it sees start lights and, more importantly, it’s a preview of more exciting things to come!

In this first beta phase, we’ll be looking at getting your feedback and ideas, so please do post in our forum thread here

To access the new UI you will need to subscribe to a special branch on Steam – here’s how to do that;

Step one

Right click on rFactor 2 in your Steam Library and go to Properties

Step two

Click on the tab at the top of the window ‘Betas‘ and from the drop down select ‘Public-Beta‘

Now in the background rFactor 2 will now load the Public Beta branch, it make take a little while first time!

Sim Formula 2020

After no fewer than ten 15 min races, thrilling starts, a pile up in T1 and a change of format we have five winners already invited to the InterClassics event in mid-January!

Well known simracers: Risto Kappet, Jeremy Bouteloup, Hany Alsabti, Zbigniew Siara and finally Jarl Teien will be fighting on track for a prize-pool of € 10.000 + everyone is already a winner of Sprint pedals from Heusinkveld. The race will be streamed from location, and Rene Hoogterp will be calling all the action there.

InterClassics will open January 16th at 12:00, where you are able to give it a go – and work to become the fastest on track. Friday you can meet the pros and get some precious tips and tricks. Saturday you set your best lap and then finally Sunday you can see the finalists duke it out from 13:00 CET.

Meet us there!

ALL Cars updated

Our entire updated roster of cars, ensuring full compatibility with the new UI icons display system. Because cars should shine bright and proudly show off their armor in their new home!

We also snuck in some other updates to a few cars, you can read about it in the changelog below. In short, minor updates for GTE’s to improve close racing and other minor fixes.

Changelog Cars

ALL cars have been updated with new icons and logos compatible with the new UI.

Workshop Items

StockCar 2015 – v2.00
Howston G4 1968 – v2.00
Howston G6 1968 – v2.00
Indycar Dallara DW12 2014
Nissan GT500 2013 – v2.03
USF2000 2016 – v2.00
AC Cobra 427SC 1967 v2.01
Chevrolet Camaro GT3 2012 – 2.00
Corvette C6R GT2 2009 – 2.00
Kart Cup – 2.01
Honda Civic BTCC 2013 – v2.00
Formula Renault 3.5 – v2.00
Renault Clio Cup 2010 – v2.00
Brabham BT20 1966 – v2.00
Howston Dissenter 1974 – v2.00
Panoz Roadster 1999 – v2.00
Nissan GTR 2011 – 2.00
Formula 2 2012 – v2.00
Skip Barber – v2.02
– Added rain effects

Tatuus Pack
– ALL Tatuus – Added upgrade.ini into unencrypted .mas for league use
Tatuus F3 T318 2018 – v1.06
– Separated WSK and Asia as opponents
Tatuus USF-17 – v1.07
Tatuus PM-18 – v1.07
Tatuus FT-50 – v1.07
Tatuus MSV_F3-016 – v1.07
Tatuus F4 2018 – v1.07

Steam Store Items

GTE
– ALL: Diffuser adjustment in GTE cars to reduce aero push oversteer of leading car.

Porsche 991 RSR GTE – v1.99
Chevrolet Corvette C7.R GTE – v2.05
BMW M8 GTE – v1.81
Aston Martin Vantage GTE – v1.11

LMP

Oreca 07 LMP2 – v1.69
Norma – v1.76

GT3

Audi R8LMS GT3 2018 – v1.51
– Changed naming to reflect 2018 in the car list
Bentley Continental GT3 – v2.55
Callaway Corvette C7 GT3-R – v2.51
Mercedes AMG GT3 – v2.51
McLaren 650S GT3 – v2.43
Aston Martin Vantage GT3 – v1.47
BMW M6 GT3 -v1.45
McLaren 720s GT3 – v1.43
Porsche 911 GT3R – v1.41
Radical RXC GT3 – v2.55

Other

BMW M2 2020 – v1.31
– Fixed collision box
– Added ‘Clubsport’ upgrade

Formula E 2018 – v2.03
McLaren Senna – v1.07

Final word

Once again, we like to thank you for you continued support.  We are hugely passionate sim racers and look forward to bringing more developments and surprises throughput the year – Happy Holidays!

As the weather gets cold all around Europe and the northern hemisphere, everyone at Studio 397 is currently in motion and working on exciting projects cranking up the heat! It’s already November, but we’re not finished yet bringing you updates and new content for rFactor 2 this year. Next month we’ll look back at the year, but for now we are dedicated to working on the future of simracing and bringing everybody together for exciting and thrilling digital motorsport action. So get off the track, slow down and park your cars in the pits for a while and let’s talk about what awaits you in the rFactor world this coming month. Spoiler alert: before the clock strikes twelve, you will have heard back from us at least three more times! That’s how much we have planned to end the year on a high. And as you will see, we are already announcing a big event in 2020!

Screenshot Contest Winners

Last week we announced a screenshot contest, featuring our Nissan GT500. Thank you everybody for making an effort and submitting screenshots of your own liveries! We could not decide on a winner, so we picked two! And the winners are…..BrianB and ek0z from Discord – Congratulations! We will be in touch next week.

Formula E 2020 Season Release

Just last weekend we saw the ABB FIA Formula E Championship start into its 6th season, with a grid so packed and full of big names that exciting racing was inevitable! Not hyped enough by what happened at the Diriyah ePrix, or missed it? Check out all the action here! Let’s start off with an interesting fact before diving into our actual announcement. Season six of the ABB FIA Formula E Championship is the first ever championship that sees all four German premium automotive brands battle it out on the same tracks, namely Porsche, Audi, Mercedes and BMW. Of course there are even more manufacturers in this season, with Nissan and Jaguar both coming back to strike hard against the German brands.

But enough about the new season. How does that relate to rFactor 2? As you probably guessed by now, we’re proud to continue our relationship with Formula E, and we’re releasing the 2020 season teams and liveries! Intense street racing with quick and agile open wheelers is waiting for you, featuring the new debutantes, Porsche and Mercedes, as a free upgrade to the current Formula E Gen 2 car. Go get it here!

And check it out, we also added the top wing cam!

Sim Formula 2020 at InterClassics in Maastricht

On January 16-19th, 2020, the MECC in Maastricht will host the biggest simracing event in the Benelux. In collaboration with InterClassics, Sim Formula will host a 4 day long event, focused on simracing. The event is freely accessible every day. Known brands in simracing will be showing off their latest developments and products. There is also a simracing arena featuring various activities. For example, on Saturday there will be a hotlap competition on Circuit Maastricht (which is freely available in the rFactor 2 workshop if you want to come prepared). On Sunday afternoon you can witness the finals. René Hoogterp, a professional Dutch commentator, will participate in the live broadcast of this race.

Qualifiers and Prize Pool

December 2019 will feature an online qualifier competition using rFactor 2, consisting of both hotlaps and races. In the first week of December we will open up a hotlap competition where the top 25 (with 5 reserves) will qualify for a series of races in the week of December 10-15th. In each of those races, a qualification session will be followed by two short sprint races, one with a reverse grid, to determine the fastest driver of that day who will then qualify for the final. More information on how to join will be published here on Monday.

The 5 fastest from these qualifiers will be invited to compete against each other on January 19th at the MECC in Maastricht in full-motion simulators provided by Upracer to determine who wins the first edition of Sim Formula. The total prize pool for this event is €10.000. Note that we are not covering travel expenses, so make sure you are able to travel to Maastricht to compete in the final if you join the qualifiers!

Masterclasses and Congress

In collaboration with Adrenaline-Xperience by Atze Kerkhof all visitors of the event will be able to win one of three masterclasses. To participate, you can fill in a card during your visit to the event and drop it in a spot on the podium of the racing arena. The winner of the hotlap competition on Saturday will win the fourth masterclass. On Thursday evening, there will be an esports congress (for which you do need to buy a ticket). If you want to learn more about the world of esports, this is an excellent opportunity to listen to and discuss with an impressive line-up of well known, international speakers. For more information and tickets, visit this page.

Co-hosted with InterClassics

The Sim Formula 2020 is full of action, but there is a lot more to see at InterClassics, the biggest car show of the Benelux, featuring many classic and fast cars. Just what the doctor ordered!

Finally

In case you’re wondering how the public beta of the new UI is coming along, we are on schedule to release that mid-December. It will be released as an “opt-in” public beta on Steam, so you will need to enable it yourself and you can quickly switch between the two. Both versions will be fully multiplayer compatible.

Enjoy the last month of the year!

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

rF24h the Rerun – start your engines!

The fight for the endurance crown on the iconic Le Mans Circuit isn’t over for this year, and as promised previously, we are bringing back the rF24h event for the official rerun. France is calling on the 9th of November for the best of the best to once again take on the challenge.

One might say that a rerun isn’t a thrilling thing to announce, but we are sure you’ll get excited about this one. To ensure that the endurance battle will be at the top of its game and to honor the effort and time the top teams from around the globe put into our big events, we decided to come up with a juicy prize pool that should get every single driver to strive for nothing short of victory.

The 2019 rF24h – Le Mans Circuit will offer a total prize pool of €15.000!

This is split into our two classes as follows:

LMP 2:

• 1st place €3.500
• 2nd place €2.500
• 3rd Place €1.500

GTE:

• 1st place €3.500
• 2nd place €2.500
• 3rd Place €1.500

That is a big chunk of money right there for the best teams in the simracing world to grab! As this is a rerun, teams from the first iteration of this year who confirmed their attendance are set for this race as well. Remaining spots will be given out with a small qualifier event to make sure we have a full grid that we will all enjoy watching.

Talking about watching, of course we will broadcast our major event as we did for the previous one. So gather your friends, drinks and chips and head on over to http://www.twitch.tv/rfactorlive from the 9th – 10th of November to witness simracing at its best.

Not much more to say other than that we can’t wait to hear the screaming sounds of cars throughout the night as drivers are battling not just their opponents but also themselves as the clock is moving on.

LEMANS 66 – new partner for the rF24h

The announcement of the return of the rF24h – Le Mans Circuit isn’t the only exciting news we want to share with you in this month’s roadmap. When looking for partners for our events, we want to make sure that they fit right in – no artificial ways of connecting them to what we do and love. With “Le Mans 66 – Gegen jede Chance” (the German language version of the movie ‘Le Mans 66’) we found just the right partner for this major rFactor 2 event. In case you live under a rock or behind the moon on the right side (same for everyone that lives on the left side or down the road), let us quickly inform you what this is all about. As you can probably tell by the title already, the main focus of the new movie by 20th Century Fox is the story around the iconic Le Mans race back in 1966, for which American car designer Carroll Shelby (Matt Damon) and driver Ken Miles (Christian Bale) team up with Ford to battle Ferrari for the top spot at the prestigious endurance event. Based on a true story, this movie highlights the heroes behind this major achievement in motorsport, just like the heroes and their stories in our events.

The movie will be released on the 14th of November in cinemas across Europe, which gives us enough time to celebrate this release in and around rFactor2. “Le Mans 66 – Gegen jede Chance” will not just be our main sponsor for the rF24h – Le Mans Circuit, we will also get some hotlap challenges running (only for Germany) until the release of the movie, where you can win tickets to watch this epic battle unfold on the big screen yourself.

As a result of this partnership, don’t be surprised if your daily launch of rFactor 2 looks slightly different (wink)

We are very proud of the chance to partner up with 20th Century Fox and the “Le Mans 66 – Gegen jede Chance” movie to get people excited about everything around fast cars and thrilling races!

New User Interface

We’ve been teasing the new UI for what seems like ages, and you’ve been waiting patiently on the sidelines for “that day” to come. All along the way, you’ve been part of the development process through sneak previews and updates in our monthly roadmaps. To keep you in the know, we’ve shared our progress in as much detail as possible. The challenges and the overall complexity we faced required a steady and determined approach to get this very essential set of new features firing on all cylinders.

But all things need to eventually see the light of day, so we are now “revving the engine” with intent! We’re proud to be launching the first ‘public beta’ of the UI in mid-December – it’s your chance to finally get your hands on it to test drive!

This first public beta will allow us to gauge two important things. Firstly, how well the system is working for everybody in terms of performance and stability. Secondly, and this is an important step for us, on how you want this system to evolve. By collecting this data based on your participation, we will be able to systematically improve the system in the months to come. Our goal is to make sure the whole system is robust, and then make it the default. When that happens, we will also switch our releases to 64 bit only.

Competition

Expect the first public beta to not yet include the new competition system. We simply did not want to throw too many things at you at once. By December, we will be in a good position to test the comp system, and rest assured that there will be a steady stream of updates from the first public beta onward.

The first steps will include testing both the “mechanics” of the different competition formats, as well as collecting data based on your participation so we will be able to test out our ‘driver rating’ algorithms. Here too, your personal feedback will be a crucial element in deciding how we go forward and which particular improvements we focus on during the next phase of development.

To show you an in-development sneak peek of the competition system, here’s a look at the current front-end.

Content

On the content side of things, we are uber busy working on new top secret projects, so we can’t announce anything just yet.

In the meantime, here’s a snap update we’ve done for the Nissan GT500 to bring it in line with the new materials! We can’t wait to see your new skin creations on this enigmatic Japanese beast! Look out for this update to come down in the next few days.

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

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

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

McLaren Shadow – Season 2

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

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

• 2x Sunday grandstand tickets 2020 season for a race of the participants choice (Not including travel or accommodation);
• 5x McLaren caps;
• 5x McLaren T-shirts signed by Lando Norris.

There that sounds great! To enter check our guide here for the McLaren Shadow rFactor 2 qualifiers.

Content

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

Code

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

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

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

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

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

A1 eSport season 2

A1 eSport is back with yet another season, after a great first season. Once again the races will start off with a hotlap session, and then in each weekend following a race. A total of 5 races will be run before heading to the showdown and shootout and finally the finale in late October hosted in Vienna. Just like last season. The big difference here is that now every European can participate, not just German speaking residents. Sign up is open now, first round starts at midnight on the 9th of September. Lets go! If you want to get a glimpse of what you’re getting yourself into, on their website you can see what the last season finale looked like.

Porsche Formula E Competition IAA Frankfurt

In roughly a week from now, the International Motor Show (IAA) in Frankfurt starts again, and on the last day of this huge show we will be collaborating with Porsche to run a full day of Formula E races. The qualifiers for this event have already been decided. Congratulations to the four finalists who will compete against the Porsche Formula E factory drivers on stage! If you are planning in visiting the show and are there on the last Sunday, please drop by and say hi, watch the show and have a go yourself.

World’s Fastest Gamer 2

Qualifiers for rFactor 2 have been run and if you have not seen the final race, check it out below. Erhan Jajovski won the race in great style and we wish him all the best in the finals later this year. Although at this point little is known yet about these finals, we are confident that these will be something very special, so watch this space and the WFG2 site for more information.

Code Updates

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

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

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

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

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

Content

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

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