Roadmap

Hello sim racers,

Surprise! Yes, a little earlier than usual we at Studio 397 are pleased to present to you the very latest rFactor 2 Development Roadmap post for October! 

As we step into the final throws of the month of October, Christmas decorations are already starting to make their way into shops, and the usual seasonal adverts begin to slowly but surely make their presence known on the TV – none of which we at the Studio have had time to fully take in, as we’ve been working flat out on all things rFactor 2 for you to enjoy! OK, that’s an exaggeration, we have actually been out of the office occasionally, and juggling a work / life balance aside, we have managed to pull together quite a few goodies for the run-up to the end of the year – some of which we think will make many within our community very happy indeed… 

While we appreciate the last couple of months have been a little slower in terms of news than has become customary of late, I’m sure you can all appreciate that working on large projects like the current Le Mans Virtual Series alongside our normal development priorities can sometimes mean we need to prioritize our resources, coupled with having quite a few bigger pieces of work with longer lead times (more on those another day), it sometimes means we can’t talk much about what we are currently working on at the studio. While this is a shame, it is very much part of the development cycle of a live product like rFactor 2, and as we pride ourselves on our transparency within our growing community, it has certainly been a little frustrating for us these last couple of months having to keep most of our work under wraps from you all. 

That said, for a lot of the bulk of that work we need to ask you all to remain patient as we close in on those magical announcement dates, however not everything remains under wraps thankfully, which moves us nicely onto some of the topics of our latest development roadmap…  

Driver Labels Return – New and Improved!

At last! Yes, we’ve heard you all loud and clear, and now is the time to finally reveal the much anticipated and often requested return of driver labels is right around the corner! We took the decision to remove this feature from rFactor 2 back when we originally released the current UI for the simulation, and although it has often been a debate around if these should indeed return or not in future, we couldn’t help but notice many of you out in the community have been very vocal about us needing to get these back in the simulation. 

While bringing them back was of course very important, especially to our Stock Car community members, we really didn’t want to simply re-enable the original basic version of driver labels, and so with a bit of time spent looking at how they can be made more aesthetically pleasing, and with new functionality, we are delighted with the current version in testing –  as can be seen on the previews above. 

Immediately you will notice the new version follows much more closely to our visual structure within rFactor 2 – benefitting from a new font and sizing format, plus the addition of fade characteristics and background shading. With this new version, we’ve also taken the opportunity to add driver penalties – should a driver or AI be in receipt of a DT or Stop & Go penalty, this will now be shown with a visual representation on the driver label above the car! 

The newly refreshed driver labels will be made available as part of the upcoming Release Candidate build of rFactor 2 – enjoy!

Steam Halloween Sale – Massive Savings

Sale season begins! Over on Steam, many titles will be enjoying some nice discounts for the discerning gamers, and we at rFactor 2 are no different! Running from today until November 1st, the rFactor 2 base game will be available to purchase with an exceptional discount of 80%, meaning that depending on where you are buying from, you will be able to pick up rFactor 2 for as little as around 6 Euros! A bargain if we do say so ourselves! 

If you are not already part of the rFactor 2 community, head over to rFactor 2 on Steam and secure yourself a bargain! 

New Opt-Out Build and Release Candidate

Earlier today, we deployed a brand-new Release Candidate update of rFactor 2 to the current RC build within Steam. This new update comes ahead of an anticipated deployment of our current Release Candidate to Opt-Out early next week. With RC to Opt-Out set to happen at the very early part of November, that means we are set to put together a brand new Release Candidate build that will of course include the above-mentioned return of Driver Labels, plus a couple of new physics features that we hope should provide some nice additional options for our community to enjoy. With that RC build right around the corner, we aren’t going to get into those details right now, we think we will save that bit of excitement for the release notes of the build when it deploys in the near future.

As for the latest RC update, the release notes of which can be found below.

rFactor 2 Release Candidate Update Notes:

Steam Build IDs:
Client 7618186
Dedicated Server 7618200

Controller Profile Updates (General)

• Set Exaggerate Yaw to 0
• Fixed various missing ‘Clutch-In’ entries that had been deleted by accident

Fanatec Podium Wheelbase DD1/2

• Default “Steering resistance type”:0,
• Added pedal inputs

Thrustmaster T300RS Racing wheel

• Fixed mappings

Looking Back on October

The month of October has been an incredibly busy one for us at the studio, even if we’ve not been able to say or release much into the public domain during these last few weeks. As mentioned at the start of this roadmap post, the first fruits of those labours are starting to trickle out now with our new RC and driver labels, and we’ve got a few more things coming down the line that should make for a very exciting few weeks ahead. Ahead of all that happening, as is tradition, let’s take a few moments out to reflect on the work we have achieved during October, with a select few highlights mentioned below: 

Recruitment – The Search Continues 

Many of you will, we are sure, be aware that the rFactor 2 team have been looking to expand our workforce in recent weeks. With positions across the team open for the right candidates, we at Studio 397 are incredibly excited about this opportunity to bring new talents into the family, and help us continue pushing forward with development of our great simulation. 

Our recruitment campaign is still very much ongoing, and we would love to hear from people who feel they have the required skills and experiences to help us expand the team. If you’ve not yet seen our various social media messages, or if you’ve missed the new ‘Careers’ tab on the Studio 397 website, check out THIS LINK to see what opportunities we currently have available, and we look forward to hopefully hearing from some of you in the near future!

New rFactor 2 Blog

October would see a hugely popular change to our regular bi-week Competition System blog posting from the Studio. Originally developed to help clear up any topics our community wished to raise on the new Competition System within rFactor 2, we felt the blog had run its course and very much served its initial purpose. We didn’t want to lose this valuable communication tool with our community, as we very much like to share as much as possible about the development state of the software, so we took the decision to try a different format for the blog going forward – changing to a more generic ‘The rFactor 2 Blog’ and featuring different topics each fortnight. 

Our first topic, Tracks, proved to be very popular indeed (link below), and although initially planned for this week (Wednesday 27th October), topic #2 (Cars) has proven to be even more popular still, with well over 150 questions already submitted! Thanks to the number of submissions, and annual leave arrangements, we have decided to delay release for another week – so stay tuned on Wednesday 3rd November for a bumper edition of the blog! 

The rFactor 2 Blog | Tracks | CLICK HERE

Tatuus Updates

Tatuus | Steam Workshop: CLICK HERE

So far we have no less than seven Tatuus models within rFactor 2, all of which are free to players via the rFactor 2 Steam Workshop, and October would see some nice improvements brought to some of these cars in order to maintain the most up-to-date experience with these outstanding little beasts within the simulation. Key changes for the new Tatuus update would be the introduction of an oval configuration for the USF 17 and PM 18 cars, plus a range of visual and audio tweaks to really help players immerse themselves in the world of one of national motorsports most impressive and prolific open wheel car manufacturers.

We love these little Tatuus models in rFactor 2, and we very much hope our community enjoy driving them just as much as we do ourselves. Models representing series such as British Formula Three, W Series, Asian Formula Three, the Road to Indy and much more – these are great cars to acquaint yourselves with the nuances of racing formula style machinery, as well as providing some incredible racing action!

Release Candidate Updates

At the very start of October, we deployed a brand-new Release Candidate to rFactor 2, introducing a number of new things we firmly believe helps in our mission to continue improving and progressing the way rFactor 2 behaves in the hands of our fantastic players.

Without doubt, the most significant improvement of the current Release Candidate has to be the introduction of improved loading times within the software, both at UI level and when loading into a track session. These changes have already been reported by the community to deliver strong real-world time savings when performing loading instances within the title. 

We are excited to see how well these improvements have been received by our players, and we cannot wait to gather your reactions from the upcoming RC, which should be deployed in the very, very near future!  

In preparation for moving the current RC to our main Opt-Out branch of rFactor 2, October would also see the introduction of a minor hotfix release on October 23rd, as well as the above-mentioned update, addressing a variety of aspects within the current RC build. 

You can check out the contents of the current Release Candidate build in our September Development Roadmap post, found above and HERE. 

Competition System

By popular demand, the rFactor 2 Competition System now features a much more regular schedule of racers for our drivers to enjoy. Starting out with races held every 30 minutes in both the Tatuus MSV F3-020 and the Radical SR3 XX, plus regularly scheduled events in the Ferrari 488 GTE and a Competition System debut for the Gen 2 Formula E series, we believe our collection of races offers a great mix of free and paid content, held at regular and convenient times, that should give plenty of opportunities for our players to race within the simulation.

Moving in to week 43-44, the Competition System would see the addition of the Dallara DW12 IndyCar in place of Formula E on the regularly scheduled events list, and the removal of the Tatuus MSV F3 from rotation. To keep abreast of the latest Competition System schedules, make sure to stay tuned to the rFactor 2 Twitter feed for all the latest news (rFactor 2 Twitter – click HERE).

If you haven’t yet tried our Competition System in rFactor 2, you will find it under ‘Competition’ in the main rFactor 2 UI. Simply navigate to the series in which you want to race, sign up, register for your desired session and come join in the action!

Recommended Viewing – rFactor 2 Esports Competitions

2021 has witnessed the hugely successful continuation of our GT Pro and GT Challenge series in rFactor 2, as well as a debut to the open wheel equivalent in Formula Pro and Challenge, four categories of racing that have firmly established themselves as the de facto premium places to race competitively in rFactor 2. All good things come to an end as they say, as both GT and Formula series have now run to their conclusion for the season – but that most certainly doesn’t mean the racing action has to end! 

Over the next few weeks rFactor 2 esport fans have plenty to look forward to, as such incredible events such as the ongoing Le Mans Virtual Series and Cup head into the sunset of their respective campaigns, plus of course the thrilling conclusion of the new RCCO eX World Championship is set to be on your television screens this November 25th – so plenty left to look forward to in the next few weeks. 

30th October | TIME | GTR24h 24 Hours Le Mans | GTR24h YouTube

6th November | 13:00 | VEC 8 Hours of Spa | VEC YouTube

12th November | 19:00 | Le Mans Virtual Cup Round 3 | TraxionGG YouTube

13th November | 13:30 | Le Mans Virtual Series Round 3 | TraxionGG YouTube

23rd November | 20:00 | RCCO eX World Championship Round 10 | Motorsport.TV

As always, thank you for taking the time to read our new Development Roadmap post, and we wish you all a happy, safe and fast November! 

Roadmap day!

Hello everyone out in rFactor 2 land, and welcome to the end of yet another month of 2021. As is tradition, today is our latest monthly roadmap update, where we share with you all a little about where we’ve been, and where we are going with development and all things rFactor 2.

As always seems to be the case nowadays, September has shot by in an absolute flash. Out in the real world, much of Europe has enjoyed a mild resurgence in summer weather, which I’m sure we can agree is very much welcomed, and back at base here at Studio 397 we’ve continued working exceptionally hard behind the scenes to put together a lot of new and exciting things for our community to experience. Much of what we are working on at present is rather sadly not at a point where we can speak about things in any great detail, and trust me – that is as frustrating for us as we are sure it will be for all of you. That said, we ask for a little more patience as we edge closer to being able to tell you more about some of the various things we have underway, and I’m sure at the end of it all we will see general agreement that it has been worth the wait…! 

So, enough of telling you about not being able to tell you about stuff, and let us move on to some things in the pipeline to get excited for in the not so distant future. 

We are hiring

Studio 397 Careers | More Details | CLICK HERE

No doubt, those of you who follow the rFactor 2 social channels have spotted this one already – Studio 397 are looking to expand our team! That’s right, with plenty of exciting developments in the works, and with the power of our new owner Motorsport Games behind us, now is the perfect time to go out to market and recruit new talent to join our existing team here at the Studio. 

We are incredibly excited to finally be in a position to push forward with this recruitment process, one that we trust will help us strengthen our established team to support us to push forward in our efforts to accelerate development of rFactor 2. 

In order to ensure we offer the simplest means possible of sharing with the community our available vacancies, we recently launched a new careers page on the Studio 397 website, accessible via the careers tab at the very top of the homepage. Here, we have posted details of the current available opportunities, we details for each role of the kind of skills and experience we are looking for from perspective employees. 

This page will be maintained and updated as we progress through this process, and we invite you all to take a look and see if you are ready to take the next step in your own career, and become part of the team!

New rFactor 2 Release Candidate

Following our last RC deployment to the public branch of the sim, very shortly we will take the opportunity to deploy a new ‘Release Candidate’ build of rFactor 2. Available via the ‘beta’ tab of rFactor 2 on Steam, the new RC will be made available for anyone who wishes to opt in early to review the latest round of fixes, tweaks and improvements that we are bringing to the simulation, ahead of deployment to the main public branch of the software.

In this new build update, we have taken the opportunity to address the recent sound and ‘exaggerate yaw’ bugs that have been reported by the community. Although workarounds exist for both of these situations, and they seemingly don’t impact all users, this new build should squash those particular issues once and for all. 

One of the key changes for this new build is work we have undertaken to facilitate faster loading times within the simulation – a topic that we have seen discussed by our community on a number of occasions in the past. Due to the software having to build shaders each time you first load into a new track, often players can find extended loading times that fall outside an acceptable period of time. Of course, these loading times reduce dramatically upon second load of that track, but we still wanted to investigate if any opportunities exist to reduce the initial load period, and improve the user experience of participating in races and sessions within rF2. 

The development team have worked hard to understand where efficiencies can be introduced into this process, and we now believe we have developed a solution that should see players experiencing shorter loading periods with both the game itself, loading into tracks, and also when switching between series.

The new Release Candidate build is set to be deployed in the very near future, and subject to avoiding unexpected issues, should be moved into the main public branch of rFactor 2 within the next few weeks. 

Release Candidate Update Notes:

Game Loading

• Optimizations to Game Loading and Series switching.
• Optimizations to Texture Loading.
• Added the ability to load cached track files from the component to improve loading times.
• Improved shader loading and added pre-built shader cache to improve loading times.

UI

• Fixed an issue where Exaggerate Yaw would default to -80%

GFX

• Minor pass on cloud texture balancing.
• Adjusted PFX settings to allow for more exposure in low light conditions.

Audio

• Updated minimum number of audio effects to 32.

Modding

• Updated ModDev to save and load CBASH and RRSHD files into track folders so that they can be packaged with content.
• Detect if VisGroups affect collision and log this occurrence and in ModDev only show a pop up.

Windscreen rain effects

An aspect of the rain implementation in rFactor 2 that we have always considered ripe for improvement is the way rain drops are represented on the windscreen of our cars. Although this was improved massively over the very early implementation of this visual back in the days of initial development, we firmly believed the simulation would greatly benefit from improvements into this highly immersive aspect of wet weather driving. 

Having spent time recently to upgrade how rain driving looks in rFactor 2, from the introduction of SSR to the various tweaks and iterations of our wet weather visuals, now feels like very much the right time to dedicate some attention to this aspect of the experience – after all, the way rain rests and move on the windscreen is one of the most visually prominent areas of the wet weather driving experience. 

In order to improve this effect, we have spent time looking at how the rain shaders interact with the windshield, and if these might cause any performance impact. After quite a bit of back and forth with different iterations, we now feel like we are pretty close to the finish line with developing this improvement and bringing out in the public build of rFactor 2. We still have a little work to do in order to ensure this works effectively on the many windshield types present within the sim, but we can safely say the current upgrade certainly looks massively improved over the current solution.

Tatuus Updates

Tatuus in rFactor 2 | Steam Workshop: CLICK HERE

Further to our recent release of the free Tatuus MSV F3-020 back in July, we are currently taking the opportunity to revisit our wide selection of Tatuus models within the simulation as we look to apply a few further fixes and improvements across the full spectrum of cars. Aimed at ensuring each model remains full up-to-date and accurate in comparison to their real life counterpart, the new developments will bring various visual improvements, as well as tweaks to how the cars behave on track… and oval configurations! 

At present, we are finalising testing with these new changes, and anticipate a public release should possible in the very near future. Although this is an important update, we most certainly haven’t done with our relationship with Tatuus just yet… stay tuned for more on that one in the months ahead! 

Looking back on September

As always, the month just passed has been a busy one for us here at the Studio. As well as working on the continual development of rFactor 2, bringing new features to our Competition System and developing the next wave of new and updated content for the title, we’ve also been hard at work ensuring the start of the new Le Mans Virtual Series and Le Mans Virtual Cup held within rFactor 2 goes off without a hitch. This is by far the biggest esport series of the year for rFactor 2, and building on the incredible success of last season, forms an important aspect of our daily business. 

That said, while we are all working exceptionally hard to make sure everything is firmly in place for these two exciting new series, we are also highly motivated to ensure we don’t take our foot off the gas with rFactor 2 itself. As mentioned elsewhere within this roadmap post, a lot of the work that has been going on at the studio in recent months remains under wraps until a later date, but that hasn’t stopped us from still finding time to bring about a few interesting new developments over the course of the last four weeks… 

Zandvoort V2.58 Update

Zandvoort 2021 | Steam Workshop: CLICK HERE

Right at the very start of the month we released a substantial free upgrade to our existing Zandvoort Grand Prix Circuit, bringing the track up to 2021 specification and taking the opportunity to basically rework the whole project from the top to bottom. Essentially this meant that what started out life as a PBR shader update, ended up with our track team touching up almost every aspect of the track – from trackside furniture to the circuit layout and roadmesh itself – the 2021 Zandvoort update represented what is basically a brand-new release of the Dutch venue. 

With a track that was now fully accurate in terms of layout and dimensions, we were keen to ensure we could time release to tap into the hype of the return of the Dutch Grand Prix to the Formula One schedule. This would mean that many of our artistic decisions had to be based on how the track was represented at a certain period of time, before the arrival of the Formula One teams for the big race itself. 

As ever with these things, almost as soon as we passed that deadline, Zandvoort then went out and made significant visual changes to the way the track was presented! Frustrating as that was, we resolved to revisit the track in rFactor 2 again after the Grand Prix, and update everything to bring the current visuals as shown during the F1 race – and frankly, we think the track looks simply fantastic now with this fresh lick of paint. 

Additionally, we also spent time addressing a few issues that came to light since we released the track, as well as giving the AI another once over and applying the “Alonso line” into turn 3. 

Tiillotson T4 Series Released

Tillotson T4 Series | Steam Store: CLICK HERE

Thanks to our friends at KartSim, September would see the release of the brand-new Tillotson T4 Series to rFactor 2, alongside an exciting short esport series where the winner would win a drive in the real world Tillotson T4 Series World Cup! 

The kart was developed in conjunction with Tillotson to produce the most realistic representation of this vehicle anywhere in sim racing, and we are sure you would agree that anyone who has taken this out on track will be surprised just how nimble and raceable the T4 Series is. 

Adding this new kart into the simulation is the latest effort to increase the content offering within KartSim in rFactor 2, and brings the total number of KartSim vehicles to 5, with a further 10 tracks available in the consumer version of the software. 

Competition System 

Indianapolis & Silverstone | Steam Workshop: CLICK HERE

The rFactor 2 Competition System continues to provide regular and exciting online racing for our community, as well as supporting some of our big high profile esport activations such as our premium Formula and GT Series. Having been born of the desire to bring together our community in one single and easy to use platform, we are pleased with how initial development has been receieved – however, changing priorities within the studio means that developments within the Competition System will have to slow over the next couple of months, as we spend our resources on other aspects of the simulation. 

That said, we most certainly haven’t lost sight of our desire to make the Competition System as good as it can be, and we still have a very healthy roadmap of developments to look forward to in the year ahead. To give you some insight into our future plans, you can find an extract from the most recent Competition System blog post by Marcel below: 

We are pretty happy with where we are with the competition formats right now. We’ll always keep adding new formats as we go forward, but we feel we can currently cover most competition formats that we want, so it’s time to put a big green checkmark next to it! Recent blogs already indicated that we were prioritizing the implementation of ratings based on user feedback. The algorithms are in place, we’ve worked on code that includes all past competitions into the system, and we started on the UI to show all of this information. I don’t expect this feature to be released until early next year though, as other things outside the competition system are currently being prioritized. Protests and decisions as well as the first iteration of stewarding support are likely to follow after that. We might then prioritize roles and team based driving before we continue our broadcast integration and support for offline championships.

Competition System Blog – Now featuring themed development topics

Our bi-weekly Competition System blog has been a great success, and we have thoroughly enjoyed reading the different types of questions and suggestions our community have raised over the past few months. We hope that by opening up the opportunity for our community to directly ask questions about the CS, we have provided some useful insight over this period, and have helped our players to understand what and where our Competition System development focus has been placed. 

That said, all good things must come to an end, and we feel that now is the right time to reassess the purpose of the Competition System blog going forward, and see if we can find ways to make this a more useful resource for our community. 

We really like the opportunity to engage regularly with our users on topics they wish to know about, and for that reason, we’ve elected to redefine the Competition System blog into a series of themed topics, where we define what the subject matter will be about, and then invite our community to submit questions based on that topic. For the next two weeks, and the first blog in this new series, the subject will be ‘Tracks’ – and already we’ve had quite an influx of questions – keep them coming! 

For those of you who missed our bi-weekly Competition System Blog posts during September, fear not, you can catch up on all the latest questions and answers on the handy links below: 

Competition System Blog | Week 20 | CLICK HERE

Competition System Blog | Week 21 | CLICK HERE

Competition System Blog | Week 22 | CLICK HERE

Recommended Viewing – rFactor 2 Esports Competitions

Tin top saloons…. GTE sports cars…. GT3 closed tops…. long distance endurance racing…. electric world championship racing… top level open wheel formula cars and… the Le Mans Virtual Series… yup, you guessed it – October is packed to the rafters full of incredible and exciting esports racing events for your viewing pleasure! No matter what your preference, it’s more than likely the month ahead will have something for you to enjoy watching as the collection of rFactor 2 esports series continues to go from strength to strength. 

To help you in the quest of navigating through the vast array of different broadcasts on offer, check out our handy collection of some key highlights heading into October. Set a date in the diary, lock the doors and pull up a comfy seat for the night – any one of these races are sure to produce an outstanding and entertaining viewing experience for you to enjoy! 

1st October | 20:00 | Formula Challenge Round 5 – Monza | rFactorLive Twitch / TraxionGG YouTube 

4th October | 19:00 | BMW SIM M2 Round 5 – Spa | rFactorLive Twitch / TraxionGG YouTube 

4th October | 20:00 | GT Pro Round 5 – Spa | rFactorLive Twitch / TraxionGG YouTube 

8th October | 20:00 | GT Challenge Round 5 – Spa | rFactorLive Twitch / TraxionGG YouTube 

9th October | 20:00 | RCCO eX World Championship Round 9 | Motorsport.TV

9th October | TIME | VEC 6h of Monza Round 1 | VEC YouTube

15th October | 20:00 | Le Mans Virtual Cup Round 2 – Spa | TraxionGG YouTube

16th October | TIME | Le Mans Virtual Series Round 2 – Spa 6 Hours | TraxionGG YouTube

18th October | 19:00 | BMW SIM M2 Round 6 – Indianapolis | rFactorLive Twitch / TraxionGG YouTube 

18th October | 20:00 | GT Pro Round 6 – Indianapolis | rFactorLive Twitch / TraxionGG YouTube 

22nd October | 20:00 | GT Challenge Round 6 – Indianapolis | rFactorLive Twitch / TraxionGG YouTube 

30th October | 15:00 | GTR24h Le Mans 24 Hours | GTR24h YouTube

So there we go folks, another month is in the books, and we continue looking forward to the final portion of 2021 – another strange year, but one that continues to yield exciting developments and improvements in the world of rFactor 2. Wherever you, and whatever you are doing, have a great October, and we look forward to catching up with you once again in our next Development Roadmap post. Happy racing! 

Roadmap day!

Good evening everyone out in the big wide world of the Internet – your monthly fix of news and excitement from the development lands of rFactor 2 has arrived – and with an August theme. Yes, believe it or not another four weeks of action have whipped by, leaving us once again with our latest development roadmap posting.

Summer holiday season is here for us all, which undoubtedly has an impact on many businesses around the world as staff look to grab a quick opportunity to rest and refresh in various holiday destinations, or just take a little time back for yourself and crack on with the many things at home you’ve been leaving for the last few months. Here at Studio 397 the team have also enjoyed various bits of holiday time, meaning that this month, while still action packed, is perhaps a little lighter in news that would normally be the case – although we never rest for long, so we’ve still got plenty of points of interest to look forward to in the near future.

Zandvoort 2021 Update

Zandvoort | Steam Workshop: CLICK HERE

Earlier this month we announced that the next track to receive the full PBR update treatment in rFactor 2 will be Zandvoort, and as we race ever closer to the return of the Formula One Dutch Grand Prix this coming weekend, we are delighted to use this roadmap post as the first opportunity to see the new changes in action – ahead of deployment to the public build of the simulation later this week. 

As we mentioned in our announcement post, considerable work has gone into this new build, over and above the visual uplift that has been introduced as part of our shaders package upgrade. We have retraced our steps around the entire Grand Prix and National Circuit configurations, making some pretty noticeable revisions to the circuit layout and surface as we look to ensure our version of Zandvoort is fully accurate to the real life venue. 

These developments are just undergoing final testing and tweaking behind the scenes, and should be released to the public as a free upgrade hopefully later this week! 

Tatuus Updates 

Tatuus | rFactor 2 Steam Workshop | CLICK HERE

Last month we promised some new updates to the various Tatuus cars available within rFactor 2, and at the time we firmly anticipated these would be released within August. As is almost always the case when publically commiting to a date, things happen, changes are required, priorities shift and that date is inevitably missed. Sadly, this has been the case with the various and sizeable updates to the Tatuus models in sim, and now as we hit the final day of August we are still very much in the testing and tweaking phase – meaning we are going to have to move release out to September, although we most certainly aren’t going to commit to an exact release date at this stage!

We certainly believe it’s possible to get these out sooner rather than later, so expect to see some movement with this update early in the coming month. 

New Release Candidate

Following our big build update of July, we have spent the last month or so without an option to opt into the latest ‘Release Candidate’ build of rFactor 2. As we explained at the time of the update, this was a deliberate decision taken by our production colleagues, to allow us to understand and develop some deeper changes to the software before putting everything together into a build we feel confident enough to release into the public domain. At present, we have recently deployed a new internal build of rFactor 2 to our test team, with a rigorous testing process in place to check the first pass of changes have been applied and behave correctly. These changes have only recently been shipped to the private beta build, however work does continue to expand and improve upon this initial base as we gear up towards preparing for pushing out the build into the public Release Candidate. 

The next scheduled Release Candidate will contain a collection of minor tweaks and improvements over the current public build of rFactor 2, with other enhancements set to be introduced over the next few build cycles. Although we are probably still a few weeks away from getting these changes into RC, below you can find a few highlights of what to expect to ship in the upcoming RC.

Faster Loading Times

The new build includes some code reworking to help with optimizing game loading and series switching times, which should present players with improved performance across the UI and when loading into rFactor 2. These changes have been developed as an initial pass at improving the responsiveness and speed of the software across the board, and already we have seen reports that suggest our initial changes are offering a real world improvement to the rFactor 2 experience.

Increased Exposure Settings

The new beta build has also shipped with some graphics improvements that have been made around low light exposure, especially within the cockpit of the cars. We have identified areas where we have made some minor adjustments to low light graphics settings, including a pass on cloud textures rebalancing and increasing the brightness of heavier clouds. These changes, in conjunction with some minor adjustments to cockpit camera PFX settings to allow for more exposure adjustment to produce slightly higher maximum exposure when running in nighttime conditions, which should improve the natural feeling of cockpit camera exposure behaviour out on the track. 

Looking back on August

Despite the disruption that August and staff holidays traditionally bring, we still managed to put together a nice collection of improvements to various aspects of rFactor 2 during the last month. Continuing to work hard on revisiting and improving older content within the title, we are delighted to have finally had the opportunity to bring about some impressive, and free, improvements to various bits of content within the sim over the past four weeks – with more again planned for September and beyond. 

Although certainly not as big of a list as in previous months, August was still another very good time to be a part of the rFactor 2 development process. With that in mind, let’s have a look at some of the highlights from the most just gone.

USF2000 PBR Update Released

USF2000 | Steam Workshop: CLICK HERE

This is one we are absolutely delighted to finally be able to release to the public at long last. The USF2000 is one of our favourite open wheel cars here at Studio 397, and despite the content representing one of our earlier releases, our art team have worked wonders with this latest PBR update – really lifting the visual aspect of the cars onto another level altogether, and instantly transporting this content into the realms of some of the best looking vehicles within the simulation. Having fully refreshed the 3D model in pretty much every aspect that can be seen by the players, plus the addition of PBR paint schemes and a brand-new driver animation – one that we feel offers a significant improvement over the original – this is a car set that now very much looks as good as it drives, and one that we really hope brings our community a great deal of racing pleasure over the months and years ahead. 

USF2000 Release Article | More Details | CLICK HERE

Formula Pro V0.99 Update

Formula Pro | Steam Store: CLICK HERE

We originally released our new Formula Pro car back on July 1st, with a promise that further developments would be forthcoming to the car as the months progress. As we have alluded to in recent weeks, we have some very big plans for this machine in the future, but while we await those coming on stream, we also intend to continue reviewing and updating the car based on our own findings and those of our sim racing community. Intiially releasing under the ‘Shakdown’ version tag, this month we deployed our first update to the car back on August 9th, adding a few additional tweaks to the tyre life behaviour and rectifying a FFB vibration issue that some members of the community have been reporting since intiial release. 

Formula Pro Update | V0.99 Released | CLICK HERE

This new build is very much a quality of life improvement, however we still have quite a bit of sim racing goodness to bring to these cars over the course of the next few months, alongside further fundamental core changes and tweaks. We have been delighted to see and hear the overall positive reaction from our community since we released the Formula Pro, and we cannot wait to let loose some of the ideas we have in our plans for this machine.

DRS Updates – Indianapolis and Silverstone

Indianapolis & Silverstone | Steam Workshop: CLICK HERE

Two of our more recent cars released to the simulation feature the DRS Drag Reduction System, and as such this prompted us to consider updating some of our existing tracks with specific DRS zones. We appreciate that with the introdcution of our new Formula Pro open wheel car, players will undoubtedly be keen to sample the machine on as many of the FIA Grade 1 listed circuits within the simulation as possible, and seeing as some of them either need DRS adding for the first time, or changes to locations of the activation and deployment zones, we took the opportunity to refresh both the Indianapolis Road Course and Silverstone Grand Prix Circuit with these changes. 

As both tracks are free additions to rFactor 2 and available on the Studio 397 Steam Workshop profile, the updates have been deployed directly to the workshop for no additional cost. 

Competition System

Following a short hiatus, August would see the much anticipated return of the rFactor 2 Competition System Blog post – where Marcel answers a bunch of community generated questions and give a little more insight into the ongoing development of our rFactor 2 Competition System. 

With the holiday season in full swing, and having quite a significant amount of work to undertake behind the scenes, the CS blog post releases have become a bit sporadic in recent weeks, however, I’m sure you will agree that the bumper nature of the last post should more than make up for the wait! 

This month, Marcel fielded an incredible amount of questions from our community – we are exceptionally grateful to see the continued interest in our developing system – and hopefully the post produced some interesting insights into our development plans. If you missed it at the time, or want to quickly review what was said again, check out the link below. 

Competition System Blog | Week 19: CLICK HERE

Don’t forget, our next Competition System Blog will be released on Wednesday 1st September – if you still have a question you want to be considered, head over to the Studio 397 forum and get posting!

Recommended Viewing – rFactor 2 Esports Competitions

We have an incredible, action packed month of top level esport competitions happening in rFactor 2 during September. From premium series featuring our new open wheel monster, to the continuation of long-standing tin top GT action in GT Pro and GT Challenge, plus of course a look into the future with the RCCO World eX Championship – if you like things with wheels racing against each other, you really don’t have to look much further than on the links below;

3rd September | 20:00 | Formula Challenge Round 4 – Indianapolis RC | rFactorLive Twitch / TraxionGG YouTube 

6th September | 19:00 | BMW SIM M2 Round 3 – Lime Rock Park | rFactorLive Twitch / TraxionGG YouTube 

6th September | 20:00 | GT Pro Round 3 – Lime Rock Park | rFactorLive Twitch / TraxionGG YouTube 

8th September | 20:00 | RCCO World eX Championship Round 8 | Motorsport.TV

10th September | 20:00 | GT Challenge Round 3 – Lime Rock Park | rFactorLive Twitch / TraxionGG YouTube 

13th September | 19:30 | Formula Pro Round 5 – Zandvoort | rFactorLive Twitch / TraxionGG YouTube 

17th September | 20:00 | Formula Challenge Round 5 – Zandvoort | rFactorLive Twitch / TraxionGG YouTube 

20th September | 19:00 | BMW SIM M2 Round 4 – Loch Drummond | rFactorLive Twitch / TraxionGG YouTube 

20th September | 20:00 | GT Pro Round 4 – Loch Drummond | rFactorLive Twitch / TraxionGG YouTube 

23rd September | 20:00 | GT Challenge Round 4 – Loch Drummond | rFactorLive Twitch / TraxionGG YouTube 

27th September  | 19:30 | Formula Pro Round 6 – Monza | rFactorLive Twitch / TraxionGG YouTube 

That’s all for another month here at Studio 397. Wishing you all a happy, productive and safe September, and catch you all on the Studio 397 website and social media channels for all the latest and greatest news and excitement about rFactor 2! 

Roadmap day!

Happy end of July everyone – we’ve made it through the month, and now it’s that time once again to sit down, take stock and get excited about the future development of rFactor 2! The days have been long, the nights have been short, and we’ve even managed to find time to pull ourselves away from the sim rigs for a little while to do some more development work, as always marrying together our own internal roadmap plans with feedback from our ever loyal and expanding community here in rFactor 2 land.

Development has been very intense behind the scenes of late, and we’ve exhausted a lot of our resources in recent weeks on bringing together the latest big build update for rFactor 2, so much of what we have in the works for the next few weeks is perhaps a little too early in development to start discussing in this Development Roadmap post – however, we really can’t let July pass without giving you some bits to get excited about, so let’s have a look at what the very near future is likely to bring…

Helmet Updates – Coming Soon

The helmet model in rFactor 2 has been in use for… a while now. Let’s be honest about this, it really did need an upgrade in order to add some much-needed visual immersion to the excellent content produced both here at the studio and by our outstanding modding community that continue to work tirelessly to create great content for rFactor 2.  

Whilst we have always harboured ambitions to revisit the helmets in game, allocating the artwork resource required for this task just hasn’t been possible until very recently – and to be quite frank with you, we think the efforts undertaken by our development team to upgrade the rFactor 2 helmet have paid off spectacularly – with a significant improvement having been achieved with this new update. 

On the visuals front, the helmet now benefits from our PBR shader technology, which should really help to merge the visuals into the modern aesthetic of the simulation. We have added details to the normal map, and given the material a better feel. Additionally, we have also built a brand-new easy to use template, with user-friendly modular shapes and colours. This will allow us to quickly export dozens of different designs, with 15 of them already built and ready to use in future series as default skins. This new customizable template should allow creators to easily export skins and design their own styles – hopefully facilitating plenty of creative opportunities for our community! 

New Safety Car!

At last! A new Safety Car is coming to rFactor 2 – we’ve done it, at long last, the previous generation safety car will be no more! With full working lights and PBR shaders, and keeping with the Corvette theme (because we really like Corvette here at Studio 397), the new C6 is here, and is something that we have been exceptionally keen to bring into the simulation for a long time now, but haven’t quite found the time to put the resources towards bringing this into fruition within the simulation. That has changed with this new car, and as soon as we get the base design liveried up and looking all official, we will be adding it into rFactor 2 for everyone to enjoy. Get ready to say your goodbyes to the old car, it’s been a long-standing member of the software for plenty of years now – but change is coming!

USF2000 PBR Update

USF2000 | Steam Workshop: CLICK HERE

Yes… we talked about this update ages ago… and yes, it’s taken far longer than we initially anticipated as other priorities and projects have come to the forefront of our development schedules. Despite those unintended delays, we remain huge fans of this car here at the Studio, and with such an incredible amount of love for the mighty little USF2000 we were never likely to let things slip too far into the future – a future that is now here! We’ve almost finished revisiting the car with some nice tweaks and the full PBR upgrade treatment, so expect this one to go into testing in August with a view to getting it out into the public towards the end of the month – hurray! 

Tatuus Updates 

Tatuus in rFactor 2 | Steam Workshop: CLICK HERE

During July, we dropped a surprise new Tatuus car to the simulation, and that got us inspired to revisit the existing Tatuus models in rFactor 2 with a view to bringing about some additional tweaks and improvements to the cars, from bug fixing to further refinements that we hope and expect will make these cars even more enjoyable to drive within the sim. 

We have a pretty comprehensive collection of the Tatuus cars already, so this wasn’t exactly a quick thing to revisit them all and add the changes we wanted to make, however with the various Tatuus cars all offering something different and unique to the rFactor 2 experience, we hope you agree with us that the effort was well worth the end result – they now look, sound and drive even better than ever before! 

In terms of the updates, we’ve revised some audio files to better represent the types of engines in play with these models, and we’ve also spent some time looking at the physics and handling to ensure we have as close of a relationship to the behaviour of the real cars as possible. Although many of the changes are relatively minor in isolation, we firmly believe these changes, once deployed in early August, will help our drivers enjoy these great cars even more than ever before. Watch out for the update to drop early in the new month…. 

New PBR Track Update Coming Soon

August should also see the introduction of the latest track to receive our PBR update treatment. As well as bringing the visual aspect of this circuit right up to current standards, including new assets and full PBR shader updates, we’ve also taken the opportunity to revisit the circuit layout itself – adding a number of tweaks and changes to ensure it best reflects the current version in use today. Uplifting the visuals and circuit layout has been a pretty sizeable undertaking for our track team, and we have been very impressed with how much of an improvement this has made to the overall experience. Although we are pretty close to getting this into our testing process, we don’t quite feel ready to announce which track it is just yet, so we will save that one for a reveal post later this month… 

Shadows Review

We’ve briefly spoken about our desire to review the shadows process within rFactor 2 in previous roadmaps, and while we still have a lot of work in front of us before we can consider these improvements ready to share with the rFactor 2 community, early indications suggest the changes we are looking to make should bring about a nice visual uplift to the simulation. Our development team have spent time in recent weeks trying to understand how and where the main gains can be found with how rFactor 2 processes shadows in different light and environment conditions, and needless to say the development team remain hard at work back at base investigating different potential solutions. Now that we are well into development of our new SSR technology, we expect this to form the largest part of our upcoming development focus.

Competition System Developments 

One of the next key development goals for our Competition System is the introduction of an area of the system that allows drivers the opportunity to view and interrogate data from past sessions and events in which they have taken part in. We want the driver journey within our Competition System to be a long term commitment from racers, where regular and exciting events are available to participate in on a daily basis, but also where players have the opportunity to review their performances and attendance in previous encounters. Of course, reviewing past events and competitions is only a very small portion of the data experience we intend to bring to the Competition System, as of course we’ve also targeted the introduction of driver ratings and other informative and useful statistics and markers – however, this type of process is very much taken in smaller steps, the first of which we hope to introduce over the course of the next four weeks. At present, we are looking at how best to present the information on previous participation, with several potentially strong design directions under consideration. 

We continue to work hard on refining the user experience of our CS going forward, so make sure you get into the system early as we continue to build what we hope becomes the central place to take rFactor 2 online in a competitive environment. 

Sound Issues 

In recent weeks we have acknowledged several reports from our community about a frustrating issue where rFactor 2 occasionally switches the number of sound effects to one – effectively ‘breaking’ the game audio and leaving players with a lot of confusion as to what went wrong, and how to fix it. Although the fix for this is fairly straight forward – set audio effects to 64 in the settings screen – we’ve noted that a follow-on deviation from expected behaviour has manifested itself in that players then have to restart their rFactor 2 install to ensure this setting change takes effect.

While this workaround is perfectly serviceable for the short term, we are of course disappointed to see it happen in the first place, and we are continuing to investigate both the cause of the issue in the first instance, and also how to ensure future setting changes are immediately rendered effective in the UI, without the need to restart the simulation. We have only just started our review of these issues, however early indications suggest we have a handle on what might be causing this, so expect a more permanent fix to be incorporated into the next Release Candidate build going forward.

Overlay Improvements

Having the ability to facilitate professional and impressive race broadcasts is another aspect of the overall rFactor 2 experience that remains important to us. We know that many of our community enjoy live-streaming their racing activities on various platforms and channels, and we strongly believe that no matter how big, or how small your team and events are, you should have the opportunity to produce broadcasts that are both visually appealing, and informative to the viewers watching at home.

Over the last year or two we have worked hard to bring a robust and feature rich suit of broadcast tools to rFactor 2, and as we continue to push forward with our own various esport series, new and interesting opportunities to add further interesting insights into the race events present themselves.

In our next scheduled batch of improvements to the rFactor 2 broadcast overlay system, we have elected to extend the number of available fields to present data on screen, as well as applying several further refinements to both the functionality and robustness of the system. One of these is a new auto cycle feature. This allows you to select all the types of information you want to see in your overlay tower and let the overlay system do the rest. Determine the amount of time you want between each piece of data, and the overlay will automatically cycle between them.

We’re not just working on features. We have also been looking into new data from the backend, such as tyre compounds and DRS. These two made their debut on screen during the Formula Challenge broadcast last Friday. The compounds will be going public soon, while the DRS functionality is already live. By default, a simple text will be shown for DRS. For those who are into a more customized overlay, we have added CSS classes to various elements whenever DRS is active. This way you can add animations or graphics to those who have DRS active, like in our bespoke Formula Challenge version of the overlays:

A New Car Announcement

During August, we anticipate being in a position to reveal the identity of a brand-new car to be introduced to rFactor 2. While no one really wants to read about us teasing an announcement, and frankly we feel the same, such intricacies as licencing deals, release strategies and all the other types of things one has to consider when launching new content all come into play, meaning we aren’t quite in a position yet to tell you what it is and when it will be released – but we still wanted to let you know something is in the works, and should be in your virtual garages sooner rather than later. 

Hopefully we should be able to share with you lots more details and images over the next month, so apologies for being a bit vague – hopefully it will be worth the wait!

Driver Swaps – Developments Ongoing

As a simulation that very much prides itself on our capacity to provide outstanding endurance racing experiences, one of the key aspects of any multiplayer long distance race events is the ability to swap drivers mid-race. Last year we spent considerable time refining and improving the usability and robustness of our driver swap feature within the simulation, and as we head into the middle of summer we are again looking at bringing further developments and fixes to this important aspect of the game. We have noted recent feedback from the community around a few reoccurring issues with drive swap functionality, and we remain committed to investigating and resolving these issues in the very near future. 

Looking back on July

July has been a pretty strong month for the studio in terms of new updates, developments and content releases. Over the course of the last 4 weeks we have managed to deploy a new free car, a free double layout add-on to the paid Monza DLC and the brand new, and super exciting Formula Pro open wheel racer.

While content is of course important to keep the racing experience fresh, we’ve also been exceptionally pleased to finally deploy our sizeable July build update to the main branch of rFactor 2, adding a very satisfying mix of improvements and fixes, as well as our first pass at SSR (Screen Space Reflections), a new graphic feature that we believe truly lifts the overall visual experience of rFactor 2 another level forward – and with plenty more improvements still to come!

July has also been important as we continue to set the tone for the future development of rFactor 2. Here at Studio 397 we remain incredibly committed to bringing yet more features, fixes, improvements and exciting content to the simulation in the weeks, months and years ahead, and some of the things we have in our plans we think our awesome community will really enjoy – but more on those another day.

So, having already looked forward to a few things on the horizon in the very near future, lets take a look at a few of the key highlights from July:

July Major Build Update

rFactor 2 July Update | More Details: CLICK HERE

This was a big one. The development team here at rFactor 2 have worked tirelessly in recent months to continue diligently working on improving and expanding the rFactor 2 codebase to bring online the various fixes, tweaks, updates and new features we want and need for the simulation to continue progressing.

Early in the development cycle of rFactor 2, way back when Studio 397 formed and took over the software from previous custodians ISI, we spent time as a team looking at the various strengths and weaknesses of the simulation as we planned how we can best deploy our limited resources in taking rFactor 2 forward in the long term.

As part of those initial discussions, we identified that arguably the weakest area of the software was the graphics engine, with the visual aspect of rFactor 2 falling significantly behind that of its main rivals, and certainly not being as far advanced as other aspects of the software such as the physics and force feedback.

With that in mind, we elected to embark upon a journey to aggressively develop the graphical aspect of the simulation to bring it back into the ballpark of where a modern racing simulation should be, throwing new developments like VR and DX11 into the mix, as well as upgrading older and new content with the latest PBR shader technology employed in all our latest content.

The next step of this journey we realized in July with the release of our first SSR (Screen Space Reflections) build into the public release of the software. Adding SSR has opened the door for us to significantly improve how reflections are generated within the simulation, dramatically improving rain and wet surface visuals, as well as allowing more detailed and dynamic reflection behaviour.

The July build update was a first pass at this new feature, and already we are very pleased with the outcome even at this early stage, and we look forward to seeing further improvements in this area of the graphics engine in the weeks and months ahead.

The July build wasn’t only all about SSR, we also took the opportunity to develop further fixes and improvements across the board to the software, from more UI improvements to linked sessions in the Competition System – the build was huge, and we are now hard at work trying to top that in the next one!

Formula Pro Released 

Formula Pro | Steam Store: CLICK HERE

The fastest car in rFactor 2 (for now). The Formula Pro open wheel racer joined our ever expanding collection of official Studio 397 content right at the very start of July, and we have been absolutely delighted with how well this new vehicle has been received by the community so far.

Developed in collaboration with tyre supplier Goodyear, the Formula Pro marks the first occasion we have put the new tyre data and learnings to use within the sim, producing what we believe to be a much more satisfactory behaviour with the tyres, as well as delivering what is an overall excellent driving experience with a car that we have put a lot of work into making as detailed as possible, despite the ‘fantasy’ nature of the machine.

As well as the car itself, complete with 26 team liveries, we also launched our new Formula Pro and Formula Challenge esports series with the new machine, and already the racing has proven it be exceptionally entertaining in both categories during the opening round – something we are delighted to see being enjoyed by the community so much even at this early stage. We’ve got big plans for this car in the immediate future, and we can’t wait to tell you more about them as the year progresses. 

Monza New Layouts Released

Autodromo Nazionale Monza | Steam Store: CLICK HERE

I’m sure it is pretty clear to everyone that we have been on a mission here at Studio 397 to recreate the very biggest and best racetracks from around the world, and they don’t get much bigger or better than the hallowed tarmac of Monza.

Initially releasing back in late June, we wanted to revisit the track again after the initial hype died down to see if we could squeeze in another couple of interesting layouts, ones that would appeal to different types of cars aside from the usual high-powered machinery associated with the Italian temple of speed.

Having been on site scanning the track and taking reference images ourselves, we couldn’t resist putting together another couple of layout versions to the track, and with the Junior configuration in particular, we think these updates have really opened up the possibilities for many types of car to be tested to their limits.

Sadly both licence agreements and physical access to the tarmac have prevented us from being able to recreate the original banked configuration of the circuit, for now at least, but with these three configurations we’ve certainly got plenty of racing to get on with in the months ahead.

New Tatuus MSV F3-020 

Tatuus MSV F3-020 | Steam Workshop: CLICK HERE

Free is great. Open wheel racers are great. Low powered cars are great. The Tatuus MSV F3-020 is great! Yes, a new car is always a welcome addition to rFactor 2, and one that has been built to as closely resemble the real world equivalent as the Tatuus MSV F3-020 is even better again, so we couldn’t have been more happy to introduce this new and free piece of content to the simulation earlier this week. Already we’ve heard voices from the our Discord users wanting to see this new car introduced into the next season of Competition System events – so stay tuned to see what happens with that next week! 

KartSim Major Build Update

KartSim | Steam Store: CLICK HERE

PBR refresh updates are the exclusive domain of just our tracks in rFactor 2, far from it. Last month we had the opportunity to release a significant update to the vast KartSim content collection within the software, bringing full PBR shader updates to all the tracks and karts within the various KartSim packages – as well as adding plenty of new and exciting content to try out. Two new karts, including the first shifter model of the pack, and four new tracks headlined the recent update, and to help our players ensure they have the most economically beneficial options for purchasing all the content, we’ve also revised the various packs for this content within the Steam Store – make sure to check them out and see if you can pick up any bits that you need to complete your collection.

Competition System

Our Competition System continues to be developed and expanded as we review how users are engaging with the system, and the latest changes to be deployed to the system came earlier this month in the form of linked sessions – a feature that many of you have been asking for in recent weeks, and one that we are exceptionally pleased to finally be able to roll out into the public build of the CS. 

Competition System | Linked Sessions Details: CLICK HERE

We are pleased to see this introduction, and further integration of our major esports series like the BMW SIM M2 CS Racing Cup, Formula Challenge and GT Challenge are all working well within the Competition System at present, and we are very much looking forward to getting into the next stage of development for this feature. That said, we are planning to take the next few weeks to monitor how things progress within the Competition System, as ensuring a reliable and robust platform has to remain our main priority no matter what new updates are brought forward, so it will be a little while longer until you see the next batch of major changes brought forward into the public domain. 

While you wait for the next build update, we continue to release our regular Competition System Blog postings on the Studio 397 website, although we’ve missed a week this month due to annual leave arrangements – be sure to catch up on all the latest answers, and of course feel free to submit questions of your own for the next blog in August!

Competition System Blog | Week 18:  CLICK HERE

Recommended Viewing – rFactor 2 Esports Competitions

August is going to be a massive month for esport racing in rFactor 2. We’ve got a collection of outstanding home developed series for you to enjoy, from high-powered open wheel formula cars to tin top GTE’s, plus of course our incredible community continue to produce some exceptional racing series of their own – ensuring you’ve always got something to watch when not out on the racetrack for yourself! 

As usual in these roadmap posts, please find below a brief list of some highlight events for the month ahead: 

2nd August  | 20:00 CEST | Formula Pro Round 2 – Silverstone | rFactorLive Twitch / TraxionGG YouTube 

6th August  | 20:00 CEST | Formula Challenge Round 2 – Silverstone | rFactorLive Twitch / TraxionGG YouTube 

8th August | 20:45 CEST | Formula SimRacing Round 11 – Malaysia | FSR YouTube

9th August | 20:00 CEST | BMW M2 SIM Round 1 – Monza | rFactorLive Twitch / TraxionGG YouTube 

9th August | 20:00 CEST | GT Pro Round 1 – Monza | rFactorLive Twitch / TraxionGG YouTube 

13th August | 20:00 CEST | GT Challenge Round 1 – Monza | rFactorLive Twitch / TraxionGG YouTube 

16th August | 20:00 CEST | Formula Pro Round 3 – Nürburgring | rFactorLive Twitch / TraxionGG YouTube 

20th August | 20:00 CEST | Formula Challenge Round 3 – Nürburgring | rFactorLive Twitch / TraxionGG YouTube 

22nd August | 20:45 CEST | Formula SimRacing Round 12 – Brazil | FSR YouTube

23rd August | 20:00 CEST | BMW M2 SIM Round 2 – Sebring | rFactorLive Twitch / TraxionGG YouTube  

23rd August | 20:00 CEST | GT Pro Round 2 – Sebring | rFactorLive Twitch / TraxionGG YouTube 

26th August | 20:00 CEST | RCCO World eX Championship Round 7 – Spa | Motorsport.TV

27th August | 20:00 CEST | GT Challenge Round 2 – Sebring | rFactorLive Twitch / TraxionGG YouTube 

28th August | 15:00 CEST | GTR24H of Spa-Francorchamps | GTR24h YouTube

30th August | 20:00 CEST | Formula Pro Round 4 – Indianapolis RC | rFactorLive Twitch / TraxionGG YouTube 

That’s it for another month – summer keeps on getting cooler, work keeps on getting more intense, and the excuses I use for why I’m not faster than other drivers continue to run out at an alarming rate. While I dig deep to find a great reason for my lack of pace during August, we hope you all have a safe, enjoyable and exciting month ahead – until next time – see you on track! 

Roadmap day!

Believe it or not, the end of June is here and much of the world should be, in theory at least, basking in glorious sunshine as we approach the height of summer across much of Europe. While the warmer days and shorter nights are a pleasant distraction for sure, it most certainly doesn’t mean things have slowed down any here at Studio 397, with our dedicated team of developers and artists continuing to work long into the nights to bring all the latest goodies and improvements to rFactor 2.

We’ve certainly had another busy month here at the Studio, with plenty of new content being released, a big ‘Release Candidate’ build deployment and lots of work behind the scenes to make sure all the building blocks are lined up for successful future development, so let’s take a quick look at some of the things we’ve got to look forward to in the weeks ahead, and catch up on a few of our key achievements from the month gone by…

Announcing The New Formula Pro Car

A new car is about to be released for rFactor 2, in the form of the mighty Formula Pro – a realization of how top tier open wheel formula racing will be represented in the years ahead. The introduction of the Formula Pro in rFactor 2 will mark the fastest and most modern open wheel machine within our collection of vehicles, featuring no-less than an eye watering 800 HP delivered to the real wheels of a car that weighs just 680 KG. Complete with modern safety devices like Halo head protection system, this new car takes a lot of skill and effort to race, and gives us all a small insight into how open wheel racing is set to develop in the very near future

In order to bring the car to players early enough to allow drivers to become acquainted with the nuances of such a demanding machine in race conditions, we have decided to release the new Formula Pro in a two phased approach, with an early ‘Shakedown’ build set to be released this July 1st, ahead of the qualifying rounds of the upcoming new Formula Challenge S1 Championship, and then a further development update set to drop ahead of the full ‘Version 1’ release scheduled for a little later in July. This means that the initial build of the car scheduled for tomorrow afternoon will receive more development work and improvements in the very near future, so get practising and enjoying the incredible performance this car offers ahead of more goodies and tweaks coming to the machine over the course of the next few days.

Keen to try this new beast out in the spirit of competition? The brand-new Formula Challenge Series qualification begins on on July 2nd and runs until July 12th, all within the rFactor 2 Competiton System. Find out more about how to take part in this new series by clicking on the following link: HERE.

Release Candidate and Beta Progress

June Release Candidate Update | More Information: CLICK HERE

Earlier this month, we deployed a substantial new ‘Release Candidate’ build update for the simulation, bumping the version number for this latest RC build and adding the new and (we believe) dramatically good-looking first pass at Screen Space Reflections (SSR) – vastly improving the way rFactor 2 represents reflections in wet road conditions, adding a much appreciated level of graphical depth and quality to the simulation when racing in the rain on any given track within the title. Of course, with such a considerable improvement to the graphics of the software, we anticipate small fixes and updates will be required over the comings weeks to ensure everything is performing exactly as expected, something that we are monitoring and working on at a near daily basis back at HQ. 

What this does mean, following a release of this size, is that much of our attention is currently focussed on supporting the quality of life and development of the latest Release Candidate update – addressing any issues that have been presented by the community and generally making sure that everything is performing correctly, and addressing any bugs and problems that crop up between now and when we turn this latest Release Candidate build into the main rFactor 2 branch on Steam. 

Already we have received a few reports of various items of interest from the community, which we are in the process of reviewing and tweaking for the next hotfix update currently in development. 

Although a lot of our resource capacity is quite rightly focussed on the continued improvements to our current RC build, we are also turning our attention to the next batch of updates that are underway behind closed doors (the workflow never stops!) – although these changes are still at an early stage as we focus mostly on supporting the current RC, we have plenty of interesting fixes and improvements planned for our next update. 

Tyre Compounds In Overlay

One of the key areas we are looking at expanding in the near future is the amount of information shared to the game overlay, something that should help enrich the various rFactor 2 broadcasts that are regularly run both centrally here at Studio 397, and out within the wider rFactor 2 community. With the introduction of the upcoming Formula Pro open wheel car, and the inevitable selection of tyre compounds that machine comes with, we have resolved to upgrade our overlay system to show the viewers at home which compounds are in play for each driver at any given time – something that we feel will bring a positive improvement to the broadcast experience within the simulation. 

As many of you will likely have noticed from the last Release Candidate update, we have already added a few new features to the in-built overlay that have proven to be popular amongst our active racing community, namely the introduction of a brand-new DRS display, as well as the welcome addition / return of RMP, speed, gear and pedal inputs. Needless to say we will continue to look at refining and expanding this powerful tool within the simulation, as well as continuing to enjoy the many varied event broadcasts our outstanding community so impressively produce.

Competition System Linked Sessions

We are delighted to see our Competition System continues to produce some excellent regular online racing action within the rFactor 2 community, and while progress from the outside may seem to have slowed down a little in recent months, we can assure you that we continue to look at ways we can improve and add value to this aspect of rFactor 2 going forward. Right from the very early days following the introduction of the CS back in late 2020, our community have requested the ability to join different races directly after the previous event has finished, without the need to back out of the Competition System itself and register for the next event. 

Although we have long agreed with this desire, we have had to temper expectation a little as we work behind the scenes to test out various different scenarios and ensure what we have already is robust enough to act as a base for further developments and expansion. Although we feel testing and tweaking with this sort of thing could very easily go on for the foreseeable future, we do feel that we now have a good gap in our development schedule to look at how we can best included ‘linked’ sessions within the Competition System – which will basically mean that a driver can join an event and race, and stay within the system and progress straight into the next track session – something we are very excited to finally be able to work on and hopefully bring to the community in the very near future. 

2022 BMW M4 GT3 Announced

BMW M4 Class 1 2021 | Reveal Event: CLICK HERE

If you tuned in to the recent BMW Reveal Event ahead of our new BMW M4 Class 1 2021 announcement, you may have noticed a cheeky little reference to another new car towards the end of the show – that’s right, we have signed a licence agreement with BMW to bring the new for next season 2022 BMW M4 GT3 to rFactor 2 – a car that will represent the 14th GT3 model in the simulation, and should prove to be a very exciting and dramatic modern upgrade for the rapidly expanding field of GT3 cars already on offer in rFactor 2. 

Developed as the successor to the M6 GT3, the new machine represents what BMW hope will become the new standard in GT3 performance. Based on the latest generation BMW M4, the new car not only looks dramatically different to its predecessor, but should pack a greater punch out on the circuit with improved consistency and tyre life one of the key cornerstones of this latest design. Of course, it is still very early days for the sim version of this car, as the real world M4 GT3 is still very much undergoing intensive testing and select race outings ahead of its 2022 competition debut, so stay tuned on the Studio 397 website and rFactor 2 social channels for further updates and news about this exciting new addition to rFactor 2 in the weeks and months ahead. 

That’s about it for the things we can talk about going forward, rest assured these are just the very tip of the iceberg here in rFactor 2 land – we’ve got PBR updates, new licences, new cars, feature improvements, bug fixes and many other things besides all cooking away in the background – but more on some of those topics another day. 

As is tradition in these roadmap posts, we will now turn our attention to some of the key highlights that occurred during the month about to pass, with a quick look back on some of the things we have achieved in June….

Looking Back On June

A month is a short time in the grand scale of things. 4 weeks out of a total 52 in a calendar year, 30 days, 720 hours, 43,200 minutes or 2,592,000 seconds. Numbers, a curious way to represent how one spends one’s time at any given period, and a record that does not do justice to the amount of collective time and effort that has been lavished upon rFactor 2 during these past 4 weeks – plenty of drama, plenty of content, lots and lots of fixes and improvements and a pretty tasty collection of content with serious reductions for those looking to spend some money over the summer holidays… 

Steam Summer Sale

rFactor 2 Summer Sale | Steam Store: CLICK HERE

The summer is here, and that means its time for the annual Steam Summer Sale – a fantastic opportunity to pick up some tremendous savings on top quality rFactor 2 content. From a generous 60% off the base rFactor 2 software, to crazy 70% reductions on content like our premium GT3 Pack (now including Ferrari!!) and the epic Formula E Pack, the Steam Summer Sale has a little bit of something for everyone, and offers a great chance to pick up on those last bits of virtual racing content that you’ve been holding out on buying during the long, dark winter months. 

So, what kind of deals can you pick up in the Steam Summer Sale I hear you ask, check out some of these highlights below:

The GT3 Pack – 70% Off – Steam Store: Click HERE.
Contains the full collection of 13 GT3 specification cars, now including the majestic Ferrari 488 GT3 EVO for the very first time.

The Formula E Pack – 70% Off – Steam Store: Click HERE
Two models, three seasons and 6 highly detailed official circuits make up the Formula E Pack – bringing the very best in electric open wheel racing to rF2. 

The Endurance Pack – 60% Off – Steam Store: Click HERE.
10 select cars from the world of endurance racing, at 60% off the Endurance Pack contains no less than 6 GTE cars, 1 DPi, 2 LMP 2 and 1 LMP 3 machine to open your eyes to the wonders of multi-class endurance action. 

The Reiza Pack – 50% off – Steam Store: Click HERE.
Variety at its virtual finest, the Reiza Pack consists of some of the best and most interesting content from Brazilian and international motorsport. 6 vehicles and 4 unique venues in 10 different layouts make up this excellent collection of interesting and exciting racing content.

The above are just some of the great deals available in the rFactor 2 Steam Summer Sale – make sure to check out the rFactor 2 Steam Store page to see if any of our great bargains catch your eye this summer…

Autodromo Nazionale di Monza Released

Autodromo Nazionale di Monza | Steam Store: CLICK HERE

Headlining our new content releases this month has to be the addition of the iconic and high speed Autodromo Nazionale di Monza Circuit, a faithfully recreated laserscanned version of the historic Italian venue that is sure to provide some incredibly close and intense racing action for the years ahead. 

Deployed to the Steam Store on the same day as the free BMW M4 Class 1 discussed below, the Monza circuit represents another step forward in our goal to feature many of the biggest and best racing content in rFactor 2, and we certainly haven’t done yet! We are already working hard on bringing some further tweaks and improvements to our Monza release, these should be deployed to the track in the very near future, and stay tuned for information about new track configurations that we are set to announce in the coming days as well… Monza, the gift that keeps on giving!

BMW M4 Class 1 2021

BMW M4 Class 1 2021 | Steam Workshop: CLICK HERE

June marked the introduction of a new and pretty darn spectacular free car for rFactor 2, in the form of the 2021 specification BMW M4 Class 1. Designed by BMW, developed by BMW and built by Studio 397, the M4 Class 1 2021 is a car that never made it on to the real racing circuits, and would insted have to live on through the world of virtual motorsport – opening up the opportunity for our development team here at Studio 397 to access incredible riches of data from BMW in order to create this wonderful new car for rFactor 2. 

Built using quite literally the entrity of the research and development created by BMW, the end result is something that we feel brings the very best experience of this car out into the simulation, offering a vehicle that is both agressive and exciting to drive, yet something that should produce a solid base from which to push forward and create some great racing moments – and its free for good measure! 

The car has already been introduced into our rFactor 2 Competiton System, alongside Monza, and will no doubt prove to be a popular piece of racing content in the months ahead. 

Sebring PBR Update

Sebring International Raceway | Steam Store: CLICK HERE

While it is of course important to us to bring the latest new track and car content to the simulation on a reasonably regular basis, we are also very much in the middle of a program of work to update many of our existing releases to the very latest standards expected from new rFactor 2 content. Despite already representing one of the leading tracks in terms of quality within rFactor 2, our track team have worked wonders this month to add a fresh lick of PBR flavoured paint to the Sebring International Raceway track within the sim – bringing all the latest graphical goodies to this iconic and challenging Amercian venue, and all for free to players who own this DLC circuit addon from the Steam Store.

We are really happy with the way this PBR update has turned out at Sebring, and we firmly believe the changes made had added a great deal of visual value to one of the most enjoyable tracks on which to race in rFactor 2. 

Not sure of how the changes look in reality? Well, check out this handy side-by-side comparison video to get a great idea of how things improved as part of the latest update release:

Formula Series Announced

Formula Series | More Details: CLICK HERE

A brand-new and exciting series is about to start – one that features the fastest, most modern, most challenging and arguably most exciting car in rFactor 2 – The Formula Series is here!

Developed along the very same lines as our current GT Series, the new Formula Series will be a recurring top level open wheel championship within rFactor 2, that aims to challenge teams and drivers to overcome both the car and their rivals to be crowned the ultimate formula driver within rFactor 2. With over $25,000 in prize money in the Pro Series, and multiple splits in Challenge – just like in our GT Series, this is serious rFactor 2 Esport competition at its very finest.

Formula Pro – Team Based, over $25,000 in prize money
The Formula Pro Series will be held on every other Monday evening. Formula Pro features the best teams in sim racing, where each team fields 2 drivers to fight together for the Formula Pro title! We have invited a few teams already, but there are spots open on the list! Does your team have what it takes to compete in Formula Pro? Applications are open now until June 30! The form to apply can be found on the dedicated Formula Series page: HERE.

Calendar:

• 19 July: Spa-Francorchamps
• 2 August: Silverstone
• 16 August: Nürburgring
• 30 August: Indianapolis RC
• 13 September: Zandvoort
• 27 September: Monza

Formula Challenge qualification will run from July 2nd to July 12th 2021, via the in-game rFactor 2 Competition System. Details on how to take part and what to expect from this exciting new series can be found on the Studio 397 forum, HERE.

Formula Challenge – Driver based, multiple splits
The Formula Challenge Series will be held on the Fridays in the same week of Formula Pro. Formula Challenge is the feeder series into Formula Pro, where drivers fight for a team spot in Formula Pro season 2. Drivers will qualify through the Competition System and will be sorted in splits for the season opener. Throughout the season, drivers will be able to move up and down between the splits.

Calendar:

• 23 July: Spa-Francorchamps
• 6 August: Silverstone
• 20 August: Nürburgring
• 3 September: Indianapolis RC
• 17 September: Zandvoort
• 1 October: Monza

Formula Series | Studio 397 Forum: CLICK HERE

Competition System 

The rFactor 2 Competition System blog has taken a little bit of a back seat this month, mostly down to having not had the opportunity to gather together questions for Marcel to answer due to time away from the office, however we did get the opportunity to put one such blog update post out into the public domain, and all it means is our next one should be a bumper collection of questions, answers and insights when it releases next week! 

For the Competition System itself, we’ve seen a nice selection of drivers taking time at the top of the field and racing for those top positions – and with the recent introduction of both Monza and the new BMW M4 Class 1 2021, we’ve certainly put together some nice opportunities to sample different content in a competitive environment within rFactor 2. As we mentioned during the recent June Release Candidate release post (link HERE), it should be noted that drivers on the RC branch of the simulation will not be able to access the standard Competiton System – however we have put together some test competitions that are up and running for you to try out on the new RC. These test competitions will show up in the same place, you just need to join normally, no special steps needed. There will be two competitions running parallel: one with the Ferrari 488 GTE, the other with McLaren MP4-8. The McLaren MP4-8 can be downloaded for free by subscribing in the Studio 397 workshop, and the Ferrari 488 GTE can be purchased in our item store.  On a side note, both competitions will be running the first ever ‘fixed setup’ races. This should even out the casual racing field a bit – less time fiddling setup parameters, more time racing!

In case you missed it, you can check out the sole rFactor 2 Competiton System Blog from back on June 9th below:

• Week 17 | CLICK HERE

Don’t forget, you can still submit questions for the next CS Blog post, just pop in your question to the comments section of the Week 17 blog on the Studio 397 forum!

Recommended Viewing – rFactor 2 Esports Competitions

With summer now in full swing, July traditionally marks something of a temporary slowing of live esport racing events, as the hight of the summer months result in more time spent outdoors, and less hot and sweaty driving behind the virtual steering wheel. Despite the short break of sorts for the month ahead, keen rFactor 2 esport viewers still have plenty to look forward to – with some exciting broadcasts on the horizon, and the debut of the new Formula Challenge Series kicking off on Friday July 25th! 

Check out a few of the key highlights from the month ahead below:

Sunday 11th July | 20:45 CEST | Formula Sim Racing Round 9 | FSR YouTube

Friday 23rd July | 20:00 CEST | Formula Challenge Round 1 | rFactor 2 Twitch / TraxionGG YouTube

Sunday 25th July | 20:45 CEST | Formula Sim Racing Round 10 | FSR YouTube

Monday 26th July | 20:00 CEST | GT Pro Draft | rFactor 2 Twitch / TraxionGG YouTube

Thursday 29th July | 20:00 CEST CEST | RCCO World eX Championship Round 6 | Motorsport.TV

So, that’s it for another month here at Studio 397. June has certainly been an intense period of development and content production, and July looks set to be even bigger still! We love what we do here at the Studio, and we can only hope that our love, passion and enthusiam continues to show in the work we produce for the software, and that you contine to enjoy being a part of this amazing journey that we are all on together. 

Until next time, have a great July and see you all out on the track! 

Roadmap Day!

Welcome to the Monthly Development Roadmap post for May – the latest look behind the curtain of Studio 397 as we continue on our exciting rFactor 2 journey. 

Thankfully and somewhat later than hoped for, the warm weather is starting to take hold around Europe (allegedly), and even with the significant temptation to venture out into the great outdoors, our team here at Studio 397 have remained hunkered down in our home offices working hard to keep up the flow of updates, tweaks, improvements and fixes to the title coming together at a pace – with plenty having gone on behind the scenes in what has been a satisfyingly successful and busy few weeks of development. 

As is always the case with these development roadmap posts, the intention today is to give you a brief insight into what we are working on within the simulation going forward, and to wrap up our most recent achievements for those within the community who perhaps don’t follow our progress on a day-to-day basis. 

Studio 397 Now Officially Part Of Motorsport Games Family 

Now with that introduction out of the way, and before we dig deeper into upcoming developments, we must start off with some rather big and satisfying news for everyone here at the Studio. Following up on the announcement about our impending purchase by Motorsport Games, we finally managed to see that deal over the line earlier this month, and from here on in are now a part of the ever expanding Motorsport Games network – a move that we believe will significantly help us strengthen our core skills and resources as we continue to push forward and develop rFactor 2 in the weeks, months and years ahead. 

Motorsport Games Complete Purchase of S397 | More Details: CLICK HERE

The new relationship is still very much in its infancy at the moment, with much of the current activity focusing on Motorsport Games and Studio 397 colleagues getting to know each other, understanding where our respective skills, strengths and weaknesses all lye and slowly starting to get a feel for how we can collectively work together to drive our various roles and responsibilities forward in the years ahead. Although these kinds of major ownership changes take time to bed in and settle down before any real insight into what benefits each party can and will bring to the table, we are just as keen as the community is to know how this new arrangement will impact the development future of rFactor 2. As such, in a bid to help clear up some facts and share insights with the community here in rFactor 2, we have planned a long and detailed video interview with Motorsport Games President Stephen Hood, where we plan to sit down at the Motorsport Games HQ in Silverstone and really get into the details about how this new arrangement is expected to work going forward. Furthermore, once that interview has been released, and the subsequent questions that will no doubt produce, we will produce a follow-on session with Marcel Offermans from Studio 397, where we plan to mop up any following questions from the community, and likely throw a few curveballs at Marcel from our side as well! 

Unfortunately, the initial plan was to head down to Silverstone week ending 28th May, however quite frankly I had a delayed Covid-19 vaccination jab the day before departing, and suddenly the task of a 240-mile round trip felt significantly less desirable than when the meeting was initially arranged. As such, the original plan has been delayed slightly, with a new date for the interview set to be arranged for the first week or two of June.

Development Focus For June

Each month in these development roadmap posts we attempt to share a little insight into some activities and developments we are working on behind the scenes with rFactor 2. Due to the level of complexity of game development, and the many varied states of either bug fixing or feature improvements we are working on at any given time, with the software, sometimes the amount of information we feel able to share with the wider public can vary in its detail. This can be for a number of reasons, some related to our confidence on getting round to starting / finishing any given piece of project work, through to certain aspects of development having a longer lead time than others, often meaning that key areas of improvement can roll over into consecutive months, especially if some of the necessary background work that needs to be undertaken is often behind the scenes, and doesn’t produce something that will affect the game play experience of the public in general. 

With that said, much of what the team are focusing on for this coming month will centre around some key areas of the software – from background tooling, maintenance and code revisions that will support future development objectives, to other major changes the likes of our new SSR implementation, that although set to bring a significant visual improvement to the title, are major pieces of work in their own right. 

Following up from what we discussed in the April Development Roadmap, this month much of our work continues to look at ways we can develop and improve the user experience within the simulation, as the team look at the smaller and more fine detail aspects of the UI in a bid to streamline and smoothen out both the experience and the flow of using the front end aspects of rFactor 2. Much of the ground work for these changes has already been discussed in our previous roadmap post, however for the month ahead we hope to bring many of these small but important updates forward within the next upcoming Release Candidate build of the simulation – with much work still being undertaken by the development team to further polish and improve the experience and performance within the UI.

Shadow Cascading Improvements

A long time issue of the graphics engine in rFactor 2, I’m sure many of you will have noticed the shadow cascading (or so called running shadow) effect in rFactor 2 over the years. As we continue in our push to improve the overall visual experience for rFactor 2 players, this is one of the aspects of the simulation that has long been on our laundry list of items that we would like to review and improve over time. Back at the very start of the rFactor 2 journey we considered this to be one of those aspects of the graphics engine that would unfortunately prove to require too significant of a development to effectively review and improve in the immediate future, however as the graphical prowess of rFactor 2 has moved on significantly in recent years, it has become more and more apparent that this aspect of the way shadows are produced in the software needs to be improved, and upon closer inspected we are delighted to report that early trials and investigations have brought back some very encouraging results so far. 

Although it would be fair to say we are still some way off from creating a solution that is robust enough to move into any public facing build versions of the simulation, we still feel it is a point worth raising with the community that this side of the graphic engine is being looked into, and that we are optimistic that the work being undertaken at present will have real value to the ongoing visual improvements in the software in the near future. 

To give you a little bit of insight into the current state of these tests (very early and without any AA applied), check out the comparison gifs from before and after the changes below:

Before

After

Additional Hardware Support

Another aspect of the continued strive to make our UI experience easier and more customisable for the end user has led us to look at the introduction of further visual references for the calibration of hardware within the simulation. As many of you will know, rFactor 2 works with an incredibly wide range of sim racing hardware, from all different kinds of popular (and not so popular) wheel and pedal sets, to handbrakes, motion systems and pretty much any other type of hardware device one can imagine. Of course, with such a varied amount of hardware now available within the sim racing marketplace, we recognise the fact it is important to our users to have the power to adjust and tweak their equipment to provide an realistic and enjoyable experience. That said, we also recognise that further fine tuning and adjustments are valuable to our players in order to perform those final tweaks to dial in their hardware, as such, we have resolved to bring further pedal calibration options into the UI, that will allow players to access a simple and visual tool within the software that will enable maximum and minimum inputs to be set across the whole raw range of pedal travel – similar in functionality to what was available in the former UI configuration pages. 

Furthermore, we also intend to look at offering a reverse FFB forces option natively within the UI, which will be helpful for correcting forces on some wheels that are inverted on calibration. These changes, along with the previously mentioned sever password save option, asynchronously server loading, new sorting options, removed waiting time for ‘favourite servers’ and other quality of life improvements are all at lesser or greater stages of development, and should be making an appearance within upcoming builds of the title in the very near future.

New Overlay Features

With the next Release Candidate build we intend to ship a new overlay feature for DRS (Drag Reduction System) within the core offering of rFactor 2. Many cars in the title, both first and third party, feature some kind of DRS functionality, and while we already support this natively on certain tracks with DRS zones, as well as on all tracks as unregulated activations, the next build of rFactor 2 should bring with it the ability to visually represent how DRS is being deployed on the broadcast overlay functionality within the sim. Telling a story to the viewers on a broadcast, either from the commentary team or on screen by way of broadcast graphics is an important aspect of producing compelling racing coverage, and we are excited to introduce some very interesting DRS related features within the next build. Chief amongst these updates will be the introduction of a ‘1v1 battle box’ that will display in scenarios when a chasing driver has enabled DRS, plus the ability to display each row of drivers with active DRS in the timing tower and the extended battle box, as well as a “DRS ACTIVE” text in the 1v1 battle box if the chasing driver has DRS active – all part of the ongoing improvements and additions to our broadcast overlay system within rFactor 2. 

Competition System – New Features

The main noticeable change to the Competition System this month will undoubtedly be the introduction of our new three-race ‘Summer Showdown’ series of events, where we have compiled three very different types of racing action in our StockCar, IndyCar and GT3 car sets across three very different circuits, with the top split qualified drivers featuring in their own live streamed race on the rFactorLive Twitch channel on Saturday evenings. We are quite frankly delighted with the level of interest and engagement these races have generated within the community, and it has been a great pleasure for us to see the enjoyment (and excellent racing) that these events are producing so far as we head into the final ’60 Minutes of the Ring’ later in June. With such a great uptake on this new format of special edition races, we very much plan to continue this trend going forward for a little while longer – so expect more special edition broadcasted events in the weeks and months ahead! 

Still keeping to the topic of the Competition System, one other new feature that is likely to be introduced into the main system in the very near future is the ability to host fixed setup race events, something that we have heard many requests about from the community and are happy to finally be able to introduce into the system for future events. Of course we recognise that some players enjoy the aspect of building and racing a custom setup, so don’t expect all events to feature this new option – we will work hard to ensure our planning of future races offers up a nice mix of both fixes and custom setup racing, much like we do with our mix of paid and free content within the Competition System – as we try and offer a mix of something for all different types of rFactor 2 users. Earlier this month we also provided an update to our roadmap, making some changes and elaborating on a few others.

Monza! New Track Announcement

Finally we have been able to confirm the latest new circuit to be added to rFactor 2, with the announcement of the much anticipate addition of the Autodromo Nazionale di Monza – fully laser scanned and up-to-date with the current racing season. We headed out to the beautiful Monza park back at the end of March, and since then the track team here at Studio 397 have been working at an incredible rate to bring together the many hundreds of GB of data into a working circuit model within the simulation. Now of course I’m not going to fall into the trap of predicting a release date for this new circuit, however I think (ha, ha) I’m probably on safe ground to say we should be looking to get this out to the public within the next two or three months. 

Monza Announced | More Details: Click HERE

As work continues at a pace back in the studio on this track, we will continue to keep you all updated with regular progress reports on the various Studio 397 social media channels, from video previous, shots of the work-in-progress development and side-by-side comparisons to the real circuit, so if you aren’t already following us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, make sure to give us a like and not miss out on any of the awesome progress that is happening with this great new track.

Major Sebring PBR Update Incoming

Sebring International Raceway | Steam Store: CLICK HERE

Keeping very firmly on the subject of tracks, despite the announcement of a brand-new venue in the form of Monza, and with a couple more we are about to secure licences for in the next few weeks, we are still very much focussed on updating and refreshing the current roster of content within rFactor 2 to ensure all our content offerings to the community reach a certain level of quality expected by our community. Recently we introduced a pretty substantial PBR update to the free Lime Rock Park track within the sim (more on that below), and the next venue in our list to get the PBR update treatment is one of our absolute favourite tracks in rFactor 2 – the Sebring International Raceway! 

We’ve had a version of the newly updated track in our internal testing team for a little while now as we look to ensure everything is behaving as expected from the new update, and so far things are looking very good indeed for a release within the month of June. As one can expect from a full PBR refresh, we think Sebring looks absolutely spectacular in this new build, and we cannot wait to get this big update out into the general public for you all to enjoy the fruits of our track teams labour. Already the track looks fantastic in the different time of day and weather conditions in rFactor 2, and coupled together with the upcoming SSR update, we thing our players will notice a considerably improved visual experience in this top draw American race circuit. 

More PBR Track Updates and Remodelling In The Works

With a PBR update release of Sebring quite close to being deployed to the public, we have already started work on an even bigger PBR update and remodelling task for another of our existing tracks within the simulation, however we will keep the details of that to ourselves for now, and likely tell you more about what is next on the list in the June Development Roadmap – needless to say, our track team are very busy with new and existing content !

Looking Back On May

May was a very busy month for the team here at Studio 397, and we have been delighted to get plenty of goodies out into the public domain for our wonderful community to enjoy. From new content updates in the form of our massive Lime Rock Park PBR refresh, to a pretty significant development by the KartSim team, plus a number of fixes and tweaks to the core simulation itself –  May was a good one indeed!

Lime Rock Park PBR Refresh

Lime Rock Park | Steam Workshop: Click Here.

A popular track made even more attractive thanks to the great work of the rFactor 2 track team, we were absolutely delighted to release the free PBR update refresh for this mighty little American venue last month, and the reaction from our community has been incredibly heart-warming to see how much fresh love and affection this little and often overlooked venue has received since the new update was deployed back on the 5th May. We’ve always been fans of the lesser known venues here at Studio 397, despite acknowledging that many players very much appreciate the more well-known tracks we have to offer, we are sure many of you like ourselves enjoy the odd guilty pleasure of tearing up the tarmac on lesser known little gems like this one. 

Lime Rock Park has been a staple venue of rFactor 2 for many a year, having originally released for the simulation all the way back in the 2013, and thanks to its grand old age it would be fair to say that the little 2.462km track needed this new refresh in order to bring it back into line with the quality standards you’ve all now become accustomed to with our more recent content offerings. 

For us at the studio it was an really rewarding experience bringing this track back into the spotlight, and so far it very much looks like all of our hard work is paying off, as the track has been very warmly received by the community, and already has been the scene of some epic racing adventures in our Competition System. Lime Rock Park is back, and more beautiful that ever!

Opt-Out New Build

rFactor 2 Build 6660506 | More Details: CLICK HERE

May would also see the introduction of a new build of rFactor 2, as we moved over the existing ‘Release Candidate’ version of the software into the main public build of the simulation. The latest new release, deployed to the title on May 19th was the result of several weeks of development focus on address key areas of bug fixing and development that have been identified through both our internal testing processes, and via the valuable feedback reported from our community. Under normal circumstances, the introduction of a new build release would generate a complementary new ‘Release Candidate’ update for players to choose if they wish to opt into that experimental build, however due to the size and complexity of the new for the next RC build SSR implementation, we have taken the decision to delay the launch of our next RC update, until such a time in the very near future that we can be sure the build is stable and suitable for the public to try. 

What this means in reality is the current public ‘Opt-Out’ and ‘Release Candidate’ builds of rFactor 2 are for the moment identical, until such a time as when we elect to deploy the new Release Candidate build to Steam. 

Client 6660506
Dedicated 6660508

General

• Added SteamID of each client to race results logs generated by a Dedicated Server
• Fix issue with Attack Mode overlay information not correctly resetting.
• Stopped AI playing wipers when in Garage
• Added automatic headlight and wiper settings for player.
• These show as an extra step in the key toggles (Headlights: Off / Auto / On) or (Wipers: Off / Auto / Slow / Fast)
• Skip Auto option when the setting is disabled
• Added a message about windscreen wiper state to the message centre. Don’t show a message if the vehicle does not have wipers.
• Auto Headlights and Windscreen Wipers are forced on if no key is assigned”
• Fixed issue where automatic gears would require a false top gear to correctly downshift for some vehicles
• Report steam branch and build number on startup

HUD

• Fixed spacing for weather info in HUD

Graphics

• Renamed Anti-Aliasing options to show the amount of MSAA applied.
• Adjust Sunflare strength so that they work with different field of views
• Added a blend out at screen edge to smooth transition of Sunflare going off screen.
• Fixed an issue where a texture sampler would not set correctly
• Fixed an issue that DigitalFlags would behave as Marshals online
• Reworked Auto Exposure to reduce the calculated exposure “bouncing” around in different conditions
• Enabled Auto Exposure in Cockpit Cameras
• Fixed Water not rendering on TV Screens
• Removed GPU V-Sync option from Graphics Configuration settings
• Updated Environment Reflection Settings
• Low/Medium/High/Ultra settings which increase refresh rate and resolution.
• Ambient light probes now allow for more advanced blending options
• Fixed stuttering on Replay Monitor screen.

UI

• Added sector and lap timing to full screen replay bar.
• Updated the styling and alignment of the full screen replay bar.
• Fixed UI stopping updating when clicking repeatedly on the track map in the event screen.
• Corrected the display of FXAA to On/Off
• Fixed the units to seconds for displaying Transparent Trainer Lead Timer
• Fixed the display units for Low Speed Information to show a percentage
• Fixed race countdown not always showing for a multiplayer race.
• Fixed showing the maximum time for a single player race before the race start.
• Improved formatting of time durations.
• Fixed issue where RealRoad setting was carried over from previous track selection in session setup screen
• Fixed an issue where some tracks would not show in game due to having packed SCN files which were not valid track layouts
• Added Auto Blip, Auto Lift, Hold Brakes, Hold Clutch, Repeat Shifts, Start Engine, Auto Wipers and Auto Headlight settings to difficulty screen

Modding

• Fixed some minor issues with sample ModDev content
• Added pop up (mod dev & scene viewer only) / logging to paths where the RRBIN file fails to load
• Force an update after loading RRBIN in scene viewer or moddev so that it shows correctly straight away.
• Updated default RRBIN filename scene viewer / moddev tweakbar rollout
• Setup a stable and beta version of Max Plugins 2021. Stable is the last fully tested internally. Beta is built to the absolute latest code.

Ligier JS P217 Update 

Ligier JS P217 Released | More Info: Click HERE.

The lovely Ligier was another piece of content that received update treatment during the course of the month about to pass, as we took out the time to check back and review this awesome LMP2 car and address some of the issues that have cropped up since we released the car as part of the Endurance Pack 2 DLC back in December.

More of a quality of life tidy up than a major development overhaul, the new build took the car to version 1.17 and as well as adding a new O-Rouge themed livery, also cleared up some issues around the cockpit graphics – namely tidying up a reflection issue on the steering wheel glass, repaired the underbody shadows of AI cars bug and other minor wiper and IBL shaders on wheel rims issues, as you can check on the update release notes link above.

Competition System 

Well, well, well – plenty has been happening in the world of the rFactor 2 Competition System this month! We’ve had the debut of regular hourly races in the legendary USF2000 open wheeler, the final throws of the GT Challenge series and of course, a brand-new initiative in the form of the very first ‘rFactor 2 Summer Showdown’ series of events – an open invite three race competition where rFactor 2 drivers are invited to register within the competition system and set a time for three high profile and very different types of racing action.

Quite frankly we have been delighted with the uptake from our community with these races so far, and already the first two events (StockCar Challenge at Portland and the rF250 at Indianapolis) have already produced some excellent top split broadcasted racing action. We’ve only got the final 60 Minutes at the Ring event left to run on June 12th, but don’t worry – this type of thing looks like it is something our community enjoy, so expect more of these type of events in the immediate future.

In terms of the Competition System itself, as part of the now bi-weekly CS Blog postings Marcel has issued a new and revised top level development roadmap for the Competition System, details of which you can see just below the catch up links to the latest Q&A sessions below: 

• Week 15 | CLICK HERE
• Week 16 | CLICK HERE 

Latest Competition System Roadmap Update:

More competition formats — we decided to pull some of the different competition formats forward, and we just finished running the first season of GT Challenge in the Competition System. That taught us some valuable things about where we need to add more flexibility to the system, and how we can better accommodate the different styles and formats of racing that we know are so important to our existing and potential new players of rFactor 2. With these findings in our growing databank of knowledge, we’ve elected to spend some more time focussing on this area in the immediate future, however that said, this is probably going to be a continual task, so expect more formats to emerge in the upcoming months.

Protests and decisions — This is a topic that we have decided is best managed by splitting it into two distinct parts. The first part of it, making sure we can handle protests and having race control take decisions, is in place in terms of the basic mechanics, which we will continue to monitor, test and expand upon as the system matures and clear trends and requirements make themselves apparent. We have some firm ideas of what we expect this system to look like and the things we plan to achieve with it, however we are also finding it valuable to absorb the excellent feedback from within the community, feedback which will no doubt have an impact upon the finished product going forward. 

Ratings — based on the data we have gathered, we have completed the internal testing of our algorithms, so our next steps are to look at how to integrate them into the UI and decide what competitions we want to use them for. 

In parallel, we’ve also been looking at some forms of safety ratings, but as I’m sure you can imagine, this is an aspect of the system we want to be fully confident is producing fair and balanced results for all of our users, as such this is very much under evaluation back at the studio as we look to ensure we can offer a robust and well-thought-out solution come public release.

Stewarding — This is another thorny topic of discussion, and arguably one of the most labour-intensive aspects of running racing events on any sim racing platform. When we introduced the idea of the Competition System in rFactor 2, one of the key goals of the platform had to be around how to make life easier for event organizers to put on top quality racing activations, rather than being bogged down with unnecessary levels of administration that doesn’t add to the quality of life experience of our drivers and participants. With this in mind, we have always aspired to offer a significant amount of automation within the system, with aspects such as protests and decisions being one of the key areas we are working to streamline. Of course, this is a rather large area of discussion, and as the system continues to evolve and develop in this regard, we will expand further on this top separately. Our goal 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 offences and directly handing out penalties. At the same time we are aware that not everything can be decided by robots.

Broadcast integration — no big changes here, as we are gradually introducing these features, first internally and then also as part of our overlay package. Some things you will have seen in GT Pro and Challenge over the last couple of months. The goal is still to make sure that overlays showing standings, points, participants and calendars accurately reflect the competition they’re a part of.

Roles and team based driving — This is something that many of you within the community have been requesting from the rFactor 2 Competition System in recent months, and as keen endurance racing fans ourselves, we are certainly incredibly enthusiastic to bring this level of functionality to the system for you to enjoy.  As things stand currently, we are working on adding the ability to allow multiple drivers to share an “entry”, or car, in a competition. Additionally, we plan on allowing roles to be defined within the system, which means that teams can elect to allocate specific roles for a manager or race engineer for example. Other roles are stewards, race control, and cameramen to facilitate broadcasts.

Offline Championships — I’m sure you will appreciate that a lot of our development attention has been focused on improving the online experience of rFactor 2 lately, however with these changes we are also looking at introducing new features to benefit the offline portion of our player base. Already we have identified ways to implement the much request offline championship mode within the core simulation – this will be added once the online part is running smoothly. We will leverage the features introduced as part of the Competition System to allow players to develop their own custom championship tool to race against the AI, something that has been a long time coming to rFactor 2, but hopefully should be worth the wait! 

Integration — This is a topic that is currently under active discussion within Motorsport Games, the new owners of Studio 397 and rFactor 2 With the rFactor 2 engine becoming the base of many new games, the Competition System is being reviewed and considered for those, as well as integration of it in the Traxion.gg website. No decisions have been made here. We’ll update you as time goes on.

Recommended Viewing – rFactor 2 Esports Competitions

Fun as it is to get out onto the virtual tarmac for yourself, it is also somewhat enjoyable to watch the efforts of others in one of the many sim racing esport broadcasts available on the internet during these boom days of virtual motorsports. As a leading simulation platform, rFactor 2 enjoys its fair share of esport racing action, and to keep things nice and easy we’ve once again put together a list of some potential highlights for the month ahead:

Saturday 5th June | 14:30 CEST | VEC 24 Hours of Le Sarthe | VEC YouTube

Monday 7th June | 20:00 CEST | GT Challenge Round 6 |  rFactorLive Twitch/ TraxionGG YouTube

Saturday 12th June | 21:00 CEST | Summer Showdown Race 3 | rFactorLive Twitch 

Sunday 20th June | 20:45 CEST | Formula Sim Racing Round 8 | FSR YouTube

Monday 21st June | 20:00 CEST | GT Pro Relegation Season 4 |  rFactorLive Twitch/ TraxionGG YouTube

Wednesday 23rd June | TBC | Something Special – TBC | rFactorLive Twitch/ TraxionGG YouTube

Thursday 24th June | 20:00 CEST | RCCO World eX  Championship Round 5 | Motorsport.TV

Saturday 26th June | 14:00 CEST | GTR24h Nürburgring 12h |  GTR24h YouTube

As always, thank you for your time in reading our latest update from the world of rFactor 2. Please do continue to stay safe, stay fast and see you out on the (virtual) track!

Roadmap day! 

Happy end of the month to all our community members as today we reach the final day of April, and like we say every month, these last four weeks have flown by in something of a flash – with plenty of rFactor 2 flavoured goodies having been deployed to the simulation, and plenty of very exciting and rewarding things happening in the very near future. 

Aside from the fact that May usually marks the traditional start of the warmer weather season in much of Europe, which always helps lift the mood somewhat, the next few weeks also look like being rather good ones for rFactor 2 players, with plenty happening here at Studio 397 HQ in our ongoing development of the simulation. 

Motorsport Games Acquisition

While we announced the impending purchase of Studio 397 and rFactor 2 by our friends at Motorsport Games back in March, these last few weeks have been a whirlwind of sorting through the legal aspects of the transaction, arranging contracts and generally working through all that a deal of this magnitude entails. We appreciate that many of you will be keen to find out more about what this arrangement will mean for the future of rFactor 2 and the many new projects we will be working on with Motorsport Games going forward, and frankly we can’t wait to start getting into the details ourselves! However, as is always the case with business transactions of this type, paperwork takes time, perhaps even a little longer than we initially anticipated ourselves, however expect more news on the finalization of the purchase in the very near future – then we can start finalizing our strategy and sharing more exciting information with you as the months progress! 

Screen Space Reflections (SSR) In Development

This is something we have been excited to bring into rFactor 2 for quite a while now, and once we have fully integrated this technique into the simulation we expect it should produce a nice visual uplift to how we replicate environment reflections – especially noticeable in wet weather driving conditions.

For those of you who are perhaps less familiar with the term Screen Space Reflections, simply put it enables us to achieve real time reflections on the road surface – essentially reflecting objects based on what can be seen at any given time in situations such as damp or fully wet track surface conditions. Currently the content team have to manually associate objects with a relevant reflective plane, however with the introduction of SSR real time calculations, any given scene will be able to identify where objects should be reflected and produce the desired effect upon the reflecting surface – producing significantly better quality environment reflections and enabling reflections from a much further distance to be generated and displayed within the sim.

Although this will of course show itself most prominently in wet track conditions, the introduction of SSR also allows us the opportunity to produce much improved reflection quality over what is currently possible within the title, and also opens up opportunities for us to produce reflective surfaces on circuits with considerable elevation changes, something that was previously impossible before the introduction of SSR.

While we are certainly excited about this new feature introduction, we are aware that we need this to work across multiple different time of day and weather scenarios within the sim, and without having a significant cost to the frame rate performance of the title on a variety of different hardware configurations. With that in mind, we are planning to run a substantial number of tests and iterations of the technology before we consider it fit for a new Release Candidate build, so don’t expect this to be brought into a public version of rFactor 2 in the immediate few weeks ahead, as we continue to test and refine our implementation within the private beta build of the software behind the scenes. That said, we are keen to get it out sooner rather than later, because it does look very cool indeed!

Development Focus For May

While much work is still ongoing behind the scenes, not least of which is the previous mentioned SSR implementation, we also want to keep a very firm eye on some of the things we can fix and improve in the short term within rFactor 2. Of course, we have many varied paths of development we could take in the next few weeks that have a tangible benefit to the sim, however as is always the case with software development of any kind a good portion of the task is to understand where we should place our development resource to give back the most benefit to both the community itself, and the long term health and progress of the simulation.

Alongside our drive to identify, validate and rectify some of the existing bugs and add new features from the last few builds, we are also very mindful of community feedback telling us that rFactor 2 can be somewhat complex to configure and engage with for new users and existing players. While it is of course a significant undertaking to map out and develop best practice for the entirety of the gameplay experience, we do want to bring some short term solutions to the simulation in order to help our new users setup rFactor 2 and begin their journey with the simulation in the right way.

One of the goals for the coming month has been identified as improving our new user setup experience – getting the player into the simulation, configuring their controls and installing content. With this in mind, we have taken the decision to develop a brand-new ‘First Time Start Up Wizard’ that aims to guide players through the initial configuration phase of the install, and help them choose a curated list of content options to quickly get into the sim – yup you heard that right… gone will be the need to download absolutely every piece of rFactor 2 content on first instal!

Of course, our development of this new setup tool is still very much a work in progress, however in simple terms the idea is to initially guide the player through a setup wizard to calibrate basic hardware such as wheels, pedals and shifters, then present a selection of content instal options to allow the user to select which content they wish to have on first launch. To help guide players through the content choices, we intend to break the content options down into categories that reflect which stage of development these items are at – from ‘recommended’ which represents the latest and greatest rFactor 2 has to offer, to ‘legacy’ items that are perhaps based on older graphical technology. Of course, the player can pick and choose as he or she so wishes, or even elect to download everything and have fun trying them out in the software.

Another aspect of rFactor 2 we wanted to improve upon this month is how the UI handles multiplayer server lists. We’ve heard loud and clear from our community the desire to irradiate UI blocking when waiting for favourite servers to load or even when reviewing the full servers list. At the point of launch for the new UI, this was a feature hard coded into the system, which presented a significant amount of work to remove in such a way as to retain stability in the way servers are displayed. That said, we have begun to invest the time and resource into both removing the requirement to wait for favourite servers to load, whilst also adding the possibility to load server lists (Internet, LAN, Favourites, Friends) asynchronously. What this means in reality is, players no longer have the waiting message load up and block the UI on the Race tab, and should you click on the multiplayer tab the servers list will load servers in such a way that you can see the list populating, and engage with the list even before it has fully loaded – introducing a much reduced wait time when looking to take rFactor 2 online.

Still on the topic of multiplayer servers, we also have the intention of adding some further sorting options to the multiplayer list, adding in the option to sort by version type to help with ease of use for players who run different build versions of rFactor 2. Additional to this, we also plan to add a server password memory function – allowing your install to remember server passwords and removing the need to re-enter login credentials each time you wish to join a server. These changes are being designed with the intention of improving the user experience for our players, and hopefully reducing the amount of time it takes to get in and do what we all come to rFactor 2 to do – go out on track and race!

As these changes are designed to improve the user experience for the players, we have also resolved to look at the possibility of adding more functionality for server administrators too. We are acutely aware that many communities chose to use rFactor 2 for their league racing endeavours, and although we still have plenty of features we wish to bring into the software to ease server admins lives going forward, some of the more immediate improvements we hope to put together in the very near future include the ability to add spectators to the player list when in race monitor, with functions brought into the sim to give admins the rights to kick/ban spectators via the same process as kicking/banning an active player. Furthermore, we also intend to introduce the ability to run server admin commands using Steam IDs, which should help ease the current process of hosting online servers.

Another key element of online racing, either in a league or quick race multiplayer environment, is the ability for users to proudly display their own custom or downloaded liveries. Since the introduction of the refreshed UI in rFactor 2 this feature has taken something of a back seat, however we are currently in the process of reinvigorating and refreshing how skin transfers are handled within the UI, with much improved performance and functionality set to be introduced in the near future. We are looking to offer up a much simplified and clearer progress bar and status icons around skin transfers, although this enhancement is still very much in the early stages of development, we expect it should vastly improve how skin transfers are handled within the simulation.

Moving away from online play, we are also looking to bring some very robust improvements for our loyal and talented modding teams out within the community. One such example is set to be the addition of new AI editor methods designed to improve how modders can update and improve Cut Corridors within their track creations. These new changes are set to include Finding, Normalizing, Setting to Corridor values, Setting to Collision Corridor values as well as setting if adjusting Corridors effects Cut Corridors, which we hope should empower the many talented modders out in the community to create even better and more realistic AI behaviour on their track creations.

Speaking of tracks, recently our community have reported a bug with how the software wrongly closes loops on point-to-point tracks such as rally stages and drift roads – this has already been reviewed and fixed and should appear in the next Release Candidate build! Thank you to those who reported this issue, and of course the other issues that are reported by our users – needless to say we see and hear your communications and endeavour to address each and every one of them within the simulation as development progresses.

Another aspect that we think should help improve the playing experience of a selection of our users centres around how light flares are represented on Ultra-Wide and Triple Screen setups. We’ve noted that on these hardware configurations recent updates have produced an unrealistic visual experience when the sun is low in the sky and directly impacting the view of a driver. Although only a subtle visual discrepancy, our development team are working hard back at base to review, update and improve how light flare effects are represented on these type of screen configurations, and early testing suggests the changes under development produce a significant and much more realistic effect, one that we are sure will be well-received by our community in terms of increasing the visual immersion of the gameplay in rFactor 2. 

Of course, the above text is only the tip of the iceberg in terms of things we are currently working on here at the studio – we most certainly have plenty more development goodies up our sleeve either in active development or planned for the near future, however we wanted to take the opportunity within this roadmap to give you a little taste of some of the things that are more towards the forefront of our development plans. It would be fair to say that each and every member of the Studio 397 team are immensely proud of the work we undertake with rFactor 2, and the journey that we are all collectively on – be it at Studio or within the community. Although we all want more things to happen sooner, we are on a strong development trajectory now, and we have plenty of exciting things lined up for the short, medium and long term plans of the simulation.

Looking further at the player experience,we also have intentions to look at various aspects of the overlay within the sim, adding things such as gear data and RPM for the speedometer, driver name options drop down to overlay control panel and updated overlay elements to use it, plus looking into broadcast overlay issues that have been reported recently by the community. This will be an ongoing process as we add more information and features, and fine tune those that already exist, so stay tuned for that as development progresses. 

On a final note before we move on to the next topic in this April Development Roadmap, we have put quite a bit of work in behind the scenes to ensure our peripheral support tools are in place and up to date for some of the most popular sim racing devices. Having undergone substantial review and testing, we expect that the next build of rFactor 2 should contain updated driver support for Fanatec and Thrustmaster hardware – and a whole load of other fixes, changes, additions and improvements!

Release Candidate Deployment Strategy

As you will likely have noticed, it has been a while now since we last deployed a ‘Release Candidate’ build of rFactor 2 into the main public branch of the simulation. In the early days of our new Release Candidate strategy we had plenty of smaller yet still very important fixes and improvements that we could work through relatively quickly – which meant that we found ourselves in a position to quite rapidly develop, test and release new RC builds to Steam and fairly quickly afterwards update those to the main build of rFactor 2, whilst simultaneously deploying a new Release Candidate for users to opt-in and check out while we ensure it is suitable to push to the main stable build of the software. 

Delighted as we are about the speed of which we initially managed to put together new build releases, we’ve now moved to the stage where much more substantial changes are being developed for the latest builds, and as such these have considerably higher levels of complexity and development lead time – which inevitably has to slow down the process while we build upon the initial base changes and get them into a stage where we feel confident to deploy to a new Release Candidate. Despite this slowing down of new build updates, we’ve still made sure that the current RC available to the public receives updates when certain issues are identified, such as the recent replay stutter problems that some have you have reported, Essentially what this means is that the current RC will be yet further refined when it transfers to the main branch, and our new Release Candidate build that is currently in development will feature some pretty sizeable improvements over the current version of rFactor 2…

As has become standard practice in recent months, we currently have four distinct public branches of rFactor 2 for players choose from. These are as follows:

• Opt-Out’ – This is the main public build of rFactor 2, without any beta branches or additional early updates applied. This is the build that will be available as default.
• Release-Candidate – This build will always feature the latest updates and improvements that have been introduced by our development team ahead of main public release. Although these changes will have been reviewed by our test team here at Studio 397 prior to deployment, we will use this build branch to give our users the opportunity to opt into these changes early, and report any unexpected issues that may or may not occur before we launch to the main public ‘opt-out’ branch of the software.
• Previous-Build – Our new ‘previous-build’ branch will contain a copy of the last public ‘opt-out’ version of rFactor 2, prior to updates being deployed, should any communities need to revert to the last known stable branch of the software for any reason.
• Old UI – Depreciated build of rFactor 2 featuring the old UI – this build will no longer be updated.

Our current ‘Release Candidate’ build has been active since first deploying back on March 4th (update notes here). As mentioned previously in this roadmap, the current RC build has taken longer than normal to move towards a main public release as we continue to fine tune some of the aspects of the build, and as we further develop the next Release Candidate update that is currently being worked on behind closed doors. 

Right from the off, the intention of our Release Candidate strategy was to both offer players access to new features and bug fixes earlier, and also stress test the build with a larger collection of our userbase to help identify any areas of improvement or bug fixing that would be required before we can safely move to the main stable branch of the simulation. 

With the current Release Candidate 3 version of rFactor 2, the last few weeks have seen quite a bit of additonal work undertaken by the development team to get to the bottom of some issues with replay stability, namely an unexpected issue that caused minor and major stuttering to take place within both ‘live’ and saved replay action. Following that intiial March build release, we have since released three further complementary hotfix updates to the build in order to rectify both the replay stuttering issue and a fullscreen UI freeze problem, of which the change notes can be found below:

Client 6496645 / Dedicated 6496649

• Fixed replay stuttering with capped frame rate

Client 6532194 / Dedicated 6532199

• Fixed sporadic freeze of the UI in fullscreen mode

Client 6541710 / Dedicated 6541716

• Fixed replay stuttering

We would like to take this opportunity to offer our thanks to those within the community who have elected to opt in to these Release Candidate builds, and to thank you all for the valuable testing and feedback we have received during this process. We cannot stress enough how important it is to the ongoing development of the simulation to receive this level of engagement from our fantastic community- each report and reproduction steps your share with us helps us all to collectively work on identifying and improving the simulation for all of our players, which in the long term will help us reach our goals faster and more efficiently, and deliver to everyone the simulation experience we all know rFactor 2 is capable of producing. Thank you to everyone for your support with this so far, we really do appreciate it. 

Lime Rock Park PBR Update 

Last month we suggested the big Lime Rock Park PBR update should be in a position to release in April…. having learnt the hard way not to make timing predictions in public, we’ve unfortunately not quite managed to squeeze in the new update this month due to various changing priorities and the need to lavish just that bit more love and attention to the track before it is deployed as an update to the free Lime Rock Park circuit on the Steam Workshop. If you are one of the many players keen to sample the updated version of this wonderful little American venue, worry not it is still very much on the radar and hasn’t been forgotten – just a little more patience is needed, and you will soon be ripping up the tarmac on one of the finest road course tracks in the US. Having learnt not to fall into the release date prediction trap I’m not about to do the same again here, however it shouldn’t be too far away now…

New Track Development Update – Reveal Next Month

In the last Development Roadmap posting we teased the fact some of our Track Team colleagues have been out with the laserscanning equipment taking tons of awesome images for our next scratch built track in rFactor 2. At the time we cautioned that the wait to see this new track in action is likely to be a lengthy one, as at the time of writing the team were still very much in the process of sorting the hundreds of GB of data, images and videos into some kind of meaningful order.. Well that bit has been done, and the track artists are already hard at work putting together the first early stages of this new venue into the sim – for me personally its been fascinating to see how much work and attention to detail goes into these things behind the scenes. If the previews and chatter I’ve seen so far is anything to go by, this should be one of the best tracks we’ve produced for the simulation so far! 

With all this said, much as we’ve enjoyed reading the rampant speculation on Discord as to which track it is we’ve been working on, we don’t quite feel ready to reveal the identity of the track to you all just yet – most likely timing for that will be in and around the next Roadmap at the end of May for an identity reveal. However, seeing as much of the world is starting to take tentative steps to opening back up again, and travel is becoming possible for many of us – including limited attendance at motor racing events, one thing we will say is we’ve left a pretty large rF2 sticker at the track (in a semi-hidden location of course) – so if you are planning to visit any racing events in May, have a good dig around the venue and see if you can find the sticker and identify the track – I’ll buy a cookie to the first one to find it and post a photo on our Discord channel!

Looking Back on April 

As usual, the month that is about to pass has been another one of great satisfaction here at Studio 397, with plenty of work behind the scenes having taken place as we continue to push forward and develop our beloved simulation. Unlike in previous months however, much of the progress made has been behind closed doors, the fruits of which we should be able to share in the near future, so on face value we have a little less than usual to look back on this month – something that I’m pretty confident we should be able to make up for as we start to reach the summer months in mainland Europe. 

Without further ado, let’s have a look at the release highlights from the month of April 2021.

Silverstone, Portland and Indianapolis Update

rFactor 2 Additional Content | Steam Workshop: Click HERE

You may have noticed that we’ve recently been pushing to bring a number of updates to our existing content within rFactor 2, from larger full PBR refresh builds to smaller fixes, tweaks and improvements to the newer content without our existing portfolio. As I’m sure you can image, this is a rather time consuming and labour intensive process, however I think you would agree that the reward of bringing our existing content offering up to the standards of recent releases is well worth this additional workload – although as with the case of Lime Rock Park, things don’t always hit the schedule we initially anticipated! 

During April, we have managed to review and update a trio of our popular free circuits in rFactor 2. All three of these tracks already feature PBR technology, either from initial release or updates deployed further down the line, however we still had a few areas upon which we wished to focus some further attention, and the release deployed back on April 1st went some way towards adding that final bit of polish to these very popular racing venues. 

All three tracks can be downloaded at no additional cost on the rFactor 2 Steam Workshop – and feature regularly in the rFactor 2 Competition System within the main simulation UI.

Silverstone Grand Prix V2.12

• Fixed: Starter Worker animation under Safety Car.
• Minor Balance Updates.
• Fixed: an issue where a camera was blocked by a digital flag.
• Fixed: some digital flag uvw issues.
• Fixed: Closed gaps around pit in detection.
• Fixed: Start Flag Marshal animation under safety car.
• Fixed: Pit Official animations.

Portland International Raceway V1.06

• Fixed: Starter Worker Animation under Safety Car.
• Fixed: Issue with default mapper at night on No Chicane Layout.
• Fixed: Pit Official numbering.

Indianapolis Motor Speedway V1.09

• Fixed: Starter Worker animation under Safety Car
• Reduced size of curb GP layout T6
• Fixed: Various Collision Issues
• Reduced noise on road surface
• Regenerated all real road rubber profiles

RCCO eX Zero 2021 Hotfix Update

eX ZERO 2021 | Steam Store: Click HERE

Earlier this month we spent a little time looking into some feedback from our latest electric racer – the potent RCCO eX ZERO 2021. The car first released back in December 2020 as a new paid DLC for rFactor 2, and since that time we have taken the opportunity to revisit this pretty special machine and add a few further features and visual improvements. As many of you will know, the car has been well-received by the sim racing community since launch, and features in a number of high profile esport racing championships, the highest profile of which is of course the official RCCO eX World Championship – a series that features a number of big name real world and esport racing drivers and teams, with a worldwide television broadcast package supporting the series. 

With so many talented drivers and engineers involved in using the car on a regular basis, we have received plenty of valuable feedback in these last few months as to how the eX ZERO 2021 behaves in racing conditions, and how it can be improved yet further to increase the racing spectacle. Churning the numbers back at base against the feedback we received, we recently deployed a new hotfix update that both increases the positive effect of slipstream behaviour when following another car, and also reduces the undesirable effect of ‘dirty air’ that washes off the lead opponent. 

These changes have moved the car to version 1.39 release status, and have been available to owners of the eX ZERO 2021 since release on Wednesday 21st April

RCCO eX Zero 2021 v1.39

• Significant reduction in dirty air
• Stronger slip stream and stronger draft

Diriyah and Rome Formula E Updates

Rome Formula E | Steam Store: Click Here

Diriyah Formula E | Steam Store: Click Here

Our two most recent official Formula E street circuits, the Rome and Diriyah Formula E venues underwent minor hotfix updates during April, with the track team here at Studio 397 spending some further time tweaking and refining these two very challenging, and visually stunning city street tracks.

Although both updates are only quite minor in size, it is nevertheless important to us to continue to monitor and improve our content within rFactor 2 to help ensure the best playing experience for our players, and address issues that have either been reported by the community, or have arisen from our own further testing and driving post release. 

Of course, this update has automatically deployed to all current owners of the tracks, and will be available as the latest version for anyone who purchases either the Rome E-Prix or Diriyah E-Prix circuits from the rFactor 2 Steam Store.  

Diriyah E-Prixv1.03

• Fixed Camera Clipping at Final Turn

Rome E-Prixv1.07

• Fixed flag mapping issues
• Improved Tree Textures
• Improved Real Road materials
• Slight adjustments to some buildings
• Fine-tuned static and ambient mapper placement
• Fixed terrain gaps
• General scene optimization

Competition System

Although still firmly within the beta stages of development, we continue to see many positive trends with player engagement in our Competition System within rFactor 2, especially some of the valuable feedback we continue to receive on the many styles and formats of racing and qualification sessions that we continue to prototype during this beta development phase. As well as the actual system itself, we are delighted to see the ongoing interest from our community around what we have planned in the short, medium and long term future of the Competition System – something that we are sure holds a lot of exciting potential for new and existing players alike. 

In order to try and keep everyone as informed and up-to-date as possible on our development plans, and to gather your fantastic feedback and suggestions to help us turn this Competition System into something that helps everyone get more enjoyment from the simulation, we are pleased to note the continued engagement from many of you with our Competition System blog postings. As we push forward with developing the Competition System we may experience larger gaps between updates, while we fine tune some of the larger areas of the system, as such we’ve taken the decision to move the blog post onto a 2-week release cycle from now on – although we will certainly consider releasing special posts around the time of any new updates that fall outside of this release cycle.

If you missed any of our posts from April, fear not, you can find links to the respective updates below: 

• Week 13 – https://www.studio-397.com/2021/04/competition-system-blog-week-13/
• Week 14 – https://www.studio-397.com/2021/04/competition-system-blog-week-14/

In terms of the Competition System itself, this month would see the addition of some new and pretty well-received series for our drivers to enjoy. We’ve found that GT3 continues to be a strong draw for sim racers in any simulation, and our rFactor 2 community are certainly no exception to this rule, with plenty of close racing having taken place over the last four months. During April, we also introduced the mighty Nissan GT500 and McLaren MP4/13 Grand Prix car into the service, with some epic racing in both very, very different machines having played out over recent weeks – we certainly hope you continue to enjoy these cars and the many other future additions coming to the Competition System this May!

Recommended Viewing – rFactor 2 Esports Competitions

Mat is once again set to be a bumper month of virtual racing on the rFactor 2 platform. Open wheelers, endurance racers, tin tops and more are set to hit the virtual tarmac over the next few weeks – and to help you keep track on some of the best esport racing broadcasts in rFactor 2, as ever please find below some select highlights to look forward to over the next month: 

Monday 3rd May | 19:00 CEST | BMW SIM M2 CS Racing Cup Round 5 |  TraxionGG YouTube/ rFactorLive Twitch

Monday 3rd May | 20:00 CEST |  GT PRO Powered by TraxionGG  Round 5 | TraxionGG YouTube/ rFactorLive Twitch

Saturday 8th May | 17:00 CEST | Virtual Endurance Championship 8h of Spa |  VEC YouTube

Monday 10th May | 20:00 CEST | GT Challenge Series Round 5 |  TraxionGG YouTube/ rFactorLive Twitch

Friday 15th May | 14:00 CEST | GTR24H of Nürburgring | GTR24h YouTube

Sunday 16th | 20:45 CEST | Formula SimRacing Round 6 |  FSR YouTube

Monday 17th May | 19:00 CEST | BMW SIM M2 CS Racing Cup |  TraxionGG YouTube/ rFactorLive Twitch

Monday 17th May | 20:00 CEST | GT PRO Powered by TraxionGG Round 6 |  TraxionGG YouTube/ rFactorLive Twitch

Monday 24th May | 20:00 CEST | GT Challenge Series Round 5 |  TraxionGG YouTube/ rFactorLive Twitch

Thursday 27th May | 20:00 CEST | RCCO World eX Championship Round 4 |  Motorsport.TV

Sunday 30th May | 20:45 CEST | Formula SimRacing Round 7 |  FSR YouTube

That’s all for this month, we hope you enjoyed our latest Development Roadmap, and we look forward to seeing you all out on the virtual racetracks of rFactor 2 !

Roadmap day! 

Happy end of the month everyone – another four weeks of intense activity logged and complete here at Studio 397 as we prepare to say goodbye to month three of 2021, and edge ever closer to those long awaited and much anticipated warmer days of summer. 

Already we have enjoyed a very strong opening to the year here at the studio, with plenty of new content, fresh build updates and improvements to existing content releases – but we most certainly don’t intend to let our collective foot off the gas anytime soon – far from it in fact. 

Now I’m pretty sure you will have seen our big announcement at the start of the month relating to the impending purchase of Studio 397 by our colleagues at Motorsport Games. Understandably, this is a major development for the team here at Studio 397 and something we are extremely excited about as we look to ramp up the progress we have made with rFactor 2 in recent years. Not only will the joining together of these two companies help to strengthen our long time future here at the studio, but without doubt the ability to tap into the substantial resources of Motorsport Games will certainly help in our quest to accelerate the future prospects of rFactor 2 and the many other projects we at Studio 397 continue to be involved with on a day-to-day basis. 

rFactor 2 to be Acquired By Motorsport Games | More Details: Click Here.

I’m sure that the community will have plenty of questions about how this acquisition will impact the short, medium and long term of the team and software, and we will of course communicate with the wider public about this new ownership arrangement when it is appropriate, but rest assured that now more than ever work continues apace back in the studio as we continue our mission to deliver the best sim racing experience possible to our awesome community, and with that in mind, let us take a look at what to expect from the immediate future of rFactor 2, and a few select highlights from the month of March.

Bug Fixes, New Builds & The Quest For Improvement

This past four weeks we have continued our recent push to with the development of rFactor 2 and address some important issues within the simulation that need further exploring and rectifying before we can start adding new and improved features to the software. As has been the case in the last couple of months, we have continued with our new policy of hosting four distinct build branches of the simulation on Steam. ‘Opt Out’ remains our current public stable build of rFactor 2 and is the default, ‘Release Candidate’ is a build containing our latest improvements that the community can choose to download and offer feedback, ‘Previous Release’ is a copy of the last stable build of the simulation prior to the most recent changes and ‘Old UI’ is a now depreciated build of rFactor 2 that retains the old UI functionality of the sim, but will not be subject to any future updates. These are our public facing builds, however we also have a selection of private versions of the simulation for our internal testing, one of which, our ‘Beta’ rFactor 2 already contains a healthy number of fixes that we will be looking to move to ‘Release Candidate’ status in the very near future. 

Within this Beta build, several areas of rFactor 2 have been reviewed and worked on by our development team here at Studio 397, with focus being particularly placed on live stream overlay features and functionality and further UI tweaks. What does this mean in terms of new experiences our players can look forward to in the near future? Well, for starters we are working on adding data for RPM, Speed, Gear and pedal inputs to the driver information live stream overlay (in Release Candidate, these functions are already enabled within the in game replay function), plus new overlay elements and other graphical and modding tweaks amongst other changes – of course these are all still very much in development (with more to be added), so we can talk about that again when the latest internal beta build gets closer to Release Candidate status.

‘Release Candidate’ Builds

We are fairly sure that a large proportion of our player base in rFactor 2 elect to stick with the default ‘Opt Out’ version of the simulation when playing the software on a day-to-day basis, however those who do venture into the realms of Release Candidate builds have been presented with a number of fixes, tweaks and improvements to rFactor 2 in recent times – some of the fixes relate to long-standing issues that the community have been keen to see rectified in the sim, and it is greatly pleasing to us here at Studio 397 to be able to finally bring about some of the changes that our community are so eager to see added to the simulation. 

Over the course of March we have deployed a new Release Candidate build of rFactor 2 and a subsequent update expansion that that build, with further refinements and development work being undertaken here at Studio 397 as we get close to pushing this build out to the main latest stable default version of rFactor 2 – the build that the public will have access to as default. 

Latest Release CandidateSteam Build IDs

Client 6133456
Dedicated 6426499 Changelog

• General- Added SteamID of each client to race results logs generated by a Dedicated Server
• Fix issue with Attack Mode overlay information not correctly resetting.
• Stopped AI playing wipers when in Garage
• Added automatic headlight and wiper settings for player.
• These show as an extra step in the key toggles (Headlights: Off / Auto / On) or (Wipers: Off / Auto / Slow / Fast)
• Skip Auto option when the setting is disabled
• Added a message about windscreen wiper state to the message centre. Don’t show a message if the vehicle does not have wipers.
• Auto Headlights and Windscreen Wipers are forced on if no key is assigned”
• Fixed issue where automatic gears would require a false top gear to correctly downshift for some vehicles
• Report steam branch and build number on startupHUD- Fixed spacing for weather info in HUDGraphics- Renamed Anti-Aliasing options to show the amount of MSAA applied.
• Adjust Sunflare strength so that they work with different field of views
• Added a blend out at screen edge to smooth transition of Sunflare going off screen.
• Fixed an issue where a texture sampler would not set correctly
• Fixed an issue that DigitalFlags would behave as Marshals online
• Reworked Auto Exposure to reduce the calculated exposure “bouncing” around in different conditions
• Enabled Auto Exposure in Cockpit Cameras
• Fixed Water not rendering on TV Screens
• Removed GPU V-Sync option from Graphics Configuration settings
• Updated Environment Reflection Settings
• Low/Medium/High/Ultra settings which increase refresh rate and resolution.
• Ambient light probes now allow for more advanced blending options
• Fixed stuttering on Replay Monitor screen.UI- Added sector and lap timing to full screen replay bar.
• Updated the styling and alignment of the full screen replay bar.
• Fixed UI stopping updating when clicking repeatedly on the track map in the event screen.
• Corrected the display of FXAA to On/Off
• Fixed the units to seconds for displaying Transparent Trainer Lead Timer
• Fixed the display units for Low Speed Information to show a percentage
• Fixed race countdown not always showing for a multiplayer race.
• Fixed showing the maximum time for a single player race before the race start.
• Improved formatting of time durations.
• Fixed issue where RealRoad setting was carried over from previous track selection in session setup screen
• Fixed an issue where some tracks would not show in game due to having packed SCN files which were not valid track layouts
• Added Auto Blip, Auto Lift, Hold Brakes, Hold Clutch, Repeat Shifts, Start Engine, Auto Wipers and Auto Headlight settings to difficulty screenModding- Fixed some minor issues with sample ModDev content
• Added pop up (mod dev & scene viewer only) / logging to paths where the RRBIN file fails to load
• Force an update after loading RRBIN in scene viewer or moddev so that it shows correctly straight away.
• Updated default RRBIN filename scene viewer / moddev tweakbar rollout
• Setup a stable and beta version of Max Plugins 2021. Stable is the last fully tested internally. Beta is built to the absolute latest code.

Client 6426498
Dedicated 6426499

General

• Added SteamID of each client to race results logs generated by a Dedicated Server
• Fix issue with Attack Mode overlay information not correctly resetting.
• Stopped AI playing wipers when in Garage
• Added automatic headlight and wiper settings for player.
• These show as an extra step in the key toggles (Headlights: Off / Auto / On) or (Wipers: Off / Auto / Slow / Fast)
• Skip Auto option when the setting is disabled
• Added a message about windscreen wiper state to the message centre. Don’t show a message if the vehicle does not have wipers.
• Auto Headlights and Windscreen Wipers are forced on if no key is assigned”
• Fixed issue where automatic gears would require a false top gear to correctly downshift for some vehicles
• Report steam branch and build number on startup

HUD

• Fixed spacing for weather info in HUD

Graphics

• Renamed Anti-Aliasing options to show the amount of MSAA applied.
• Adjust Sunflare strength so that they work with different field of views
• Added a blend out at screen edge to smooth transition of Sunflare going off screen.
• Fixed an issue where a texture sampler would not set correctly
• Fixed an issue that DigitalFlags would behave as Marshals online
• Reworked Auto Exposure to reduce the calculated exposure “bouncing” around in different conditions
• Enabled Auto Exposure in Cockpit Cameras
• Fixed Water not rendering on TV Screens
• Removed GPU V-Sync option from Graphics Configuration settings
• Updated Environment Reflection Settings
• Low/Medium/High/Ultra settings which increase refresh rate and resolution.
• Ambient light probes now allow for more advanced blending options
• Fixed stuttering on Replay Monitor screen.

UI

• Added sector and lap timing to full screen replay bar.
• Updated the styling and alignment of the full screen replay bar.
• Fixed UI stopping updating when clicking repeatedly on the track map in the event screen.
• Corrected the display of FXAA to On/Off
• Fixed the units to seconds for displaying Transparent Trainer Lead Timer
• Fixed the display units for Low Speed Information to show a percentage
• Fixed race countdown not always showing for a multiplayer race.
• Fixed showing the maximum time for a single player race before the race start.
• Improved formatting of time durations.
• Fixed issue where RealRoad setting was carried over from previous track selection in session setup screen
• Fixed an issue where some tracks would not show in game due to having packed SCN files which were not valid track layouts
• Added Auto Blip, Auto Lift, Hold Brakes, Hold Clutch, Repeat Shifts, Start Engine, Auto Wipers and Auto Headlight settings to difficulty screen

Modding

• Fixed some minor issues with sample ModDev content
• Added pop up (mod dev & scene viewer only) / logging to paths where the RRBIN file fails to load
• Force an update after loading RRBIN in scene viewer or moddev so that it shows correctly straight away.
• Updated default RRBIN filename scene viewer / moddev tweakbar rollout
• Setup a stable and beta version of Max Plugins 2021. Stable is the last fully tested internally. Beta is built to the absolute latest code.

Latest Release Candidate 3 (Hotfix)

Client 6438124
Dedicated 6438127

• Fixed an issue where Steam had to be open to start a Dedicated Server

As soon as this new update is transferred to the ‘Opt Out’ version of rFactor 2, we will of course bring another brand-new Release Candidate build into the Steam page of rFactor 2 – this is the new update we are currently working on behind the scenes. With so many different build status updates currently in play for the simulation, and with such a rich and sizeable collection of content too as both DLC and free additions to the software, we are also working on a new and all-encompassing page on the Studio 397 website, which will quickly and easily list the last build release notes (for both Opt Out and Release Candidate), and will show what content is available for the simulation in a quick and easy to identify format – including which packs they are a part of, and direct links to purchase / download the content. This is something we are working on behind the scenes, with a view to getting this useful new information page out into the public domain over the next couple of months. 

As we continue to push forward with our development of rFactor 2, we again want to thank our loyal community for engaging on our various Discord and forum channels with suggestions and bug reports – rest assured that these reports and posts are noted by us here at Studio 397, and each bug the community tell us about is recorded, tested, verified and presented to the development team for review and repair in a future build. We would obviously love to rectify more bugs and issues at a quicker rate than is possible now, but the reality of the complexity of the software and the resource available to us is that we must prioritize issues with a view to the longer term development goals of rFactor 2. If you have reported something, and it hasn’t yet be resolved fully, worry not, we will get to it in due course as we continue to push onwards with reaching the potential we all know is firmly in the grasp of the simulation. 

Busy Scanning Tarmac

Apologies in advance for this, but we are excited about a new track we are working on, yet don’t quite want to give away what it is yet so this will have to be a teaser of sorts with more news to follow in the future. Over the course of the last week, colleagues from our track team here at Studio 397 have been rather lucky in the fact they had an opportunity to travel to a particularly wonderful racing venue to carry out some important work. Yes, restrictions are still in place, travel is still pretty challenging and swabs still need to be pushed up noses and down throats in order to be deemed safe to move, but that didn’t stop the team enjoying a couple of days in the sunshine with a laserscanning team, several cameras, more batteries than needed to power a real car and a couple of drones for good measure. The footage and data that the team have brought back home with them is impressive indeed, and the rest of our colleagues here at Studio aren’t jealous of their travels at all… honestly!

So, what track is it I hear you all scream… well, like we said we aren’t quite ready to give that information away just yet, however we can categorically confirm it is not Daytona, so please allow that meme on the Discord channel to die off once and for all! What we can say is this is very much an AAA circuit, is located in Europe, always proves popular with fans and racers alike (in both real and virtual worlds) and should be a good match for much of the content available within rFactor 2. Sadly we will end the clues at that, and with a firm reminder that we literally only scanned it last week, so it is going to take a huge amount of work to sift through the data and get everything together before we even think about beginning to start building the track – so don’t expect it out for purchase in the immediate future – this is more one to look forward to towards the middle or end of 2021. 

KartSim – Massive PBR Update Coming Soon

KartSim | rFactor 2 Steam Store: Click Here.

March is set to see a bumper new update for the popular KartSim DLC available within rFactor 2. Featuring a selection of highly realistic racing karts and laserscanned circuits, KartSim offers the purest of racing experiences within the rFactor 2 platform – and March will see a major new overhaul of the content with PBR graphics updates joining fixes and improvements to the content itself. We are really excited to see how the community reacts to these new changes, and can’t wait to get them out to you in the very near future indeed. Stay tuned to the Studio 397 website for more information, and to our social media channels for release date news and previews in the very near future. 

Giving Some Love to Older Content

Recent months have seen one or two track updates to existing circuits within rFactor 2, and that work certainly continues as we look to apply the PBR treatment to our older crop of virtual racing arenas within the simulation. However, whilst tracks are certainly a very important aspect of the overall experience within rFactor 2, we also acknowledge that several really cool cars are sat in our Steam Workshop and could do with a lick of PBR encrusted paint and some Studio 397 love to bring them back up to the standards now expected with more recent content releases. With this in mind, and frankly as firm fans of the car ourselves, we have made it our ambition to revisit the mighty little USF2000 and give it a bit of a refresh. Now some of you will likely remember this American open wheel racer from when we first released it as free content within rFactor 2 back in – believe it or not – 2016. Low powered, minimal downforce, bags of fun to drive and to race, this free addition to rFactor 2 quickly established itself as a favourite amongst our virtual racers within the simulation. 

USF2000 | rFactor 2 Steam Workshop: Click Here.

Although the car certainly doesn’t look out of place in comparison to more recent cars, we acknowledge that work does need to be done to the vehicle in order to step up the overall experience and quality in line with recent content releases – and hopefully if all goes to plan the month of April should see the fruits of those labours, with both a PBR visual refresh and some further refinements to the physics and actual driving experience of these little beauties. Hopefully, a mini USF2000 revival within our player base will quickly follow on the heels of this update!

Track Updates

Warming to the subject of content improvements, although we have many more update projects in the works behind the scenes at various stages of completion, with tomorrow set to see updates deployed to the Silverstone Grand Prix Circuit, Portland International Raceway track and the Indianapolis Motor Speedway configurations within rFactor 2. These updates will not be as sizeable as a full PBR refresh, as all of these tracks are already to the latest graphical standards. Once these updates roll out into the public build of rFactor 2, we are turning our attention to the finalisation and testing of another big PBR update, this time for the beautiful Lime Rock Park circuit in the United States. The new build should be deployed to our testing team in the next week or so, and depending on any significant issues that crop up with the latest refresh and the final few tweaks and amendments all is in order and should be quite close to when we are ready to release. We don’t have an exact timeframe on when this update will be made available to the public, as things can (and often do) spring up the odd surprise, however it should be reasonably safe to assume we can get this out during the month ahead. 

Looking Back On March

Now we’ve taken a good look at some selected highlights of things that are in the works and coming to the simulation in the very near future, we now reach the part of the roadmap where we spend a little time reflecting on what we’ve achieved during the month just gone. In our latest ‘looking back on…’ segment, we reflect on new pieces of content, improvements to existing tracks within the simulation, review the latest Competition System musings from Marcel and point your attention to a few interesting rFactor 2 esports broadcasts that will be running over the next four weeks. 

New Content Releases – Diriyah and Rome Formula E

Formula E | Diriyah E-Prix Steam Store: Click Here

March would see the introduction of two brand-new street circuit locations to the simulation, the very fast and technical layouts of Diriyah in Saudi Arabia and Italy’s Rome E-Prix tracks – both of which afford drivers a thrilling and challenging driving experience in either the Formula E cars within the sim, or frankly any car in our wide and expansive library of content (disclaimer – Prototype cars are a bit too fast!). Both of these new tracks have been created from scratch by the rFactor 2 track development team, and both represent the latest graphical technology available within the simulation. 

Formula E | Gen2 Formula E Car Steam Store: Click Here. 

We are of course delighted to continue what is proving to be a very close and successful relationship with Formula E for these two new tracks, and to have no-less than six official circuits from the real world ABB Formula E FIA World Championship, plus the Formula E Test Track is something that brings immense pride to us here at the studio, and is a clear sign of just how far rFactor 2 has come in recent years to be trusted with such an important and high profile licence as the Formula E agreement represents. 

In terms of the tracks themselves, it would be fair to say that these two circuits are arguably the most challenging of the six Formula E tracks we have in the simulation so far. Proximity to the walls lining the track are pretty much a given in the world of Formula E racing, but something that these two venues have over the majority of the calendar is the sheer speed one can reach in a modern Formula E car – with corners that demand an incredible amount of commitment, bravery and more often than not a fair slice of luck thrown into the mix. 

Formula E | Rome E-Prix Steam Store: Click Here

Formula E Content Updates

Formula E Content Updates | March 16th: Click Here.

Not content with adding two new Formula E city circuits to the simulation during March, we also took the opportunity this month to revisit our existing Formula E offerings to tidy up a few loose ends that have become apparent since the tracks first released on the simulation over the last year or two. More a ‘quality of life’ improvement than adding significant changes or updates, we are nevertheless still very pleased to see how well these exciting city street circuits stand up in rFactor 2 – offering some of the visually most impressive content within the title while at the same time producing a great driving experience in both the official Formula E content within the sim, and if our Discord community is anything to go by, also with a selection of lower powered open wheel and tin top cars. 

New Free Content – StockCar 2018x Released

Stock Car 2018x Release | March 23rd: Click Here.

From the ultra-modern electric power of Formula E to the brute force grunt and go of American style stock cars, March would see an exciting addition to our tin top collection with the release of the new Stock Car 2018x carset to the rFactor 2 Steam Workshop. Developed with slightly less power than the current Stock Car 2018 machines, but featuring improved handling characteristics, brand new audio mixes, changes to the physics behaviour and a new visual style thanks to the updated livery designs and front facing grills, these cars are absolutely incredible to experience in either oval or road course configuration, really adding a new dynamic to the simulation and a driving experience that can be enjoyed by veterans of the title or newcomers alike. The Stock Car 2018x pack comes complete with three different model types available in both road and oval configurations, and each with their own new liveries and unique body shapes thanks to the new front grill designs. That said, it is intended to add a new 3D model to these cars at some point in the future, however an estimated date for this update has yet to be confirmed.

Fun On The Streets Of Azur – New Circuit d’Azur AI Update

Circuit d’Azur AI Update | March 24th: Click Here

The beautiful Circuit d’Azur also received an update during this month, with plenty of time allocated to our AI drivers to learn the many variables of racing on such a demanding street circuit. We used the last few weeks to revisit this DLC circuit and clean up a few items that needed additional attention post release, improving various collision meshes around the circuit, updating no rain zones, regenerating Real Road profiles and other required maintenance items that have been identified in the time since the circuit first released. Useful and needed as these changes have been, without doubt the highlight from the most recent build has to be the improvements we’ve managed to put together for the AI behaviour on this demanding circuit. Of course, with such a varied collection of cars that are available within rFactor 2 at present, not least of which is the added variable of modded content outside of our control, it was always going to be a challenge to develop AI behaviour to avoid wall contact, remain fast enough to present a challenge, race well in a pack and race hard against the player – but we do feel that this latest track build has produced a considerable improvement to the player experience on the Circuit d’Azur – one we hope you’ve been enjoying since the update released back on March 24th.

Competition System

March has been another very informative month for our competition system beta within rFactor 2, as once again we have seen a very interesting and wide-ranging selection of questions from our community – questions that we have done our best to answer as thoroughly as possible in our weekly Competition System blog postings. As always, we remain incredibly grateful to our community for their continued interest and engagement with both the competition system itself, and the interest around what we have planned and in development for the immediate future of this exciting addition to rFactor 2. 

If you missed any of our recent postings, worry not, we’ve taken the opportunity to link them below for your reading pleasure…

• Week 11
• Week 12

Recommended Viewing – rFactor 2 Esports Competitions

As ever, we have a packed month of esport racing events taking place in April, from our own thoroughly exciting GT Pro and GT Challenge categories continuing into their third and fourth events of the season, to some awesome adventures in the BMW CS Racing Cup car and plemty more besides, with quite a few other high profile community events being held during the coming weeks too. 

In order to help you keep track of some highlight events next month, check out a few of these races to see exactly our amazing rFactor 2 drivers are capable of delivering:

Thursday 1st April | 20:00 CEST | RCCO World eX Championship Round 2 | Various

Sunday 4th April | 20:45 CEST | Formula Sim Racing Round 3 | FSR YouTube

Monday 5th April | 19:00 CEST | BMW SIM Round 3 | rFactorLive Twitch / TraxionGG YouTube

Monday 5th April | 20:00 CEST | GT Pro Round 3 | rFactorLive Twitch / TraxionGG YouTube

Saturday 10th April | 16:50 CEST | Virtual Endurance Championship Round 7 | VEC YouTube

Sunday 11th April | 20:45 CEST | Formula Sim Racing Round 4 | FSR YouTube

Monday 12th April | 20:00 CEST | GT Challenge Round 3 | rFactorLive Twitch / TraxionGG YouTube

Monday 19th April |19:00 CEST | BMW SIM Round 4 |  rFactorLive Twitch / TraxionGG YouTube

Monday 19th April | 20:00 CEST | GT Pro Round 4  | TraxionGG YouTube / TraxionGG YouTube

Sunday 25th April | 20:45 CEST | Formula Sim Racing Round 5 | FSR YouTube

Monday 26th April | 20:00 CEST | GT Challenge Round 4 | rFactorLive Twitch / TraxionGG YouTube

Thursday 29th April | 20:00 CEST | RCCO World eX Championship Round 3 | Various

As always, thank you for taking the time to keep up-to-date with the latest happenings here at the studio. Don’t forget you can join the conversation over on our ever expanding rFactor 2 Discord channel for instant chat with fellow fans of the simulation, and stay safe, stay healthy and see you out on the virtual circuit soon! 

Roadmap Day!

Hello fellow virtual racing fans and welcome to the latest of our monthly rFactor 2 Development Roadmap postings. It will come as no surprise that once again the last four weeks have been pretty full on here at Studio 397 as we continue to push hard on the development of rFactor 2, with plenty happening both on the public facing side of the business, and behind the scenes and in our quest to keep improving and expanding the title.

So, without further ado – let’s have a look at the great and the good of the past, present and future in rFactor 2…

New Builds & Bug Fixes

As we detailed in the last Development Roadmap back at the end of January, a lot of the attention from our development team continues to be focused on addressing a number of the identified and existing bugs within the simulation, with extra attention having been spent in recent weeks verifying and analysing a wide variety of different aspects of the software that can be fixed in the short, medium and long term development of rFactor 2. In an effort to ensure we deploy our resources in a sensible and structured way, we have gone to great lengths to understand where we can make the most impact on the highest number of important fixes within the sim, whilst keeping a close eye on the potential effects this might bring into the codebase within the software. When working on a piece of software as complex as rFactor 2, it is often the case that one change within the development code has unintended consequences elsewhere, and what initially felt like it would be a relatively straight forward change ends up eating into considerable amounts of time that we have budgeted for the fixes, which in turn can have an impact on how many issues we can address in a given timeframe.

In order to facilitate our ongoing development process, we have taken the decision to have a closer look at the underlying code within rFactor 2, and how various pieces of the software depend on other aspects of the code, and what these functions aim to achieve in how rFactor 2 operates behind the scenes. This is proving to be a fruitful exercise, and many fixes and improvements have already been identified and resolved by the development team – which helps put us in a stronger position moving forward. The downside to this is a lot of our resource has been applied to fixing areas of the software that will perhaps not manifest themselves as noticeable changes to the public, but they have certainly been required in order to give us the stable base on which we need to keep pushing forward, and start bringing together those big ticket changes that really uplift the user experience for our players. 

Earlier this month we deployed a new build update to the ‘Release Candidate’ branch of Steam (more on RC builds below) that contained the first round of tweaks and improvements we have been working on. So far, we have received a positive reaction to this build, and community feedback suggests we are very close to putting these fixes into the main public branch of the software. The benefit we’ve found in having a release candidate branch has been significant, as it allows us to gauge the reaction of our community and identify if any issues become apparent that did not show themselves during our internal testing, whilst still offering players the opportunity to stick with the main stable branch of the software if they so choose. We are pleased with how this is working initially, and will continue to adopt this development strategy for the foreseeable future. 

Another positive benefit of having a Release Candidate branch for our new update is it allows us to split development focus between closing up any outstanding issues on the RC build that may appear, whilst simultaneously continuing to advance the process of creating our next build – something that is well underway at the Studio and should be very, very close to being deployed to the RC branch once we’ve moved the current changes into the public version of the software. Oh and yes, wheel and pedal inputs will return for the next update…!

‘Release Candidate’ Builds

As detailed above, rFactor 2 currently has two main builds which players can choose to activate. As described in the last Development Roadmap, and again detailed below, players can select ‘None’ in the beta tab of rFactor 2 on Steam, which will give them access to the main public build of the software, or they can choose the ‘Release Candidate’ option that allows players to drive with the latest updates developed by Studio 397. After a period of time the Release Candidate changes will be transferred into the main public build of the simulation, and will become the default installation setup. 

In the last development roadmap we spoke about a streamlined way to report issues with the latest build of the software, and we are still finalizing and tweaking how this will work in reality. The goal of the process is to efficiently capture as wide a selection of community identified areas of rFactor 2 that you want us to review, but without making the process overly burdensome for the end user to provide valuable information for us to action. As an added aside, we also want to make it so we can clearly and easily see what has been reported, with hopefully all the information we need in order to translate that report into an actionable instruction to our development team. We anticipate these reporting feature are very close to being rolled out to the public, however once the final version has been developed and tested, we will speak more about how you can contribute to this important initiative closer to the time. 

Currently In Development

As we continue to dig further and further into the codebase of rFactor 2, and continue to monitor and action community generated reports about the software, we are pleased to see considerable progress is being made around finding, replicating, reviewing and resolving a wide variety of different aspects of the simulation that we would like to see fixed and improved. Of course, this is very much a long term process and quite frankly no piece of software will ever be entirely free from the need to update and improve, especially one such as ours where we intend to build upon the core offering with more and more functionality and features over a number of years into the future. 

Already we’ve released a new build and a new ‘Release Candidate’ build that we discussed earlier in the roadmap, and much of the next ‘RC’ build is already at an advanced stage of development and testing – so expect some nice changes to brought to the wider community in the not too distant future. 

Of these changes, we have continued to focus on the core bug fixing aspect of the title for now, so those of you at home eagerly awaiting brand-new features and physics updates will, I’m afraid, have to remain patient for a little while longer as we continue to work hard to ensure our core base of the simulation is robust enough to allow us to develop the improvements we would like to see brought into the title in the days, weeks, months and years ahead.

That said, we have managed to sneak in a nice collection of tweaks that we think the community will be pleased to see added or returning to rFactor 2 as part of this developing new build, This list is not complete yet, so make sure to check out our changelog once that new build becomes our next release-candidate.

Related to content, we fixed a CTD when you tried to launch with a series selected that was uninstalled, we made sure there are no ways anymore to select upgrades that were different from the ones the server forced, and we addressed an issue where sometimes when you tried joining a server you would end up selecting cars from the wrong list. Finally, we have extended the logging to include more details about the content that’s being loaded.

Fixed issues with the UI sometimes running at an insane framerate. In the options screen, if you would change FFB settings, they would not register until you go on the track for the second time. The session settings screen saw a bunch of fixes, most of them related to making sure settings get reset at the proper time, such as when changing tracks or series. In the package management screen, we fixed a sometimes not working refresh button. Favorites are also refreshed if you add new ones from the full server list and finally the garage screen now also shows wheel loads.

In the graphics department, after discovering, in testing, some graphical glitches in the skies, included those in the permanent fixes we did that would also sometimes cause the car bodies to glitch and “blow up”. We removed the faint boundaries you would see in VR when looking at the edges of the UI. Last but not least we fixed an issue where secondary wet weather reflections would not show up on damp road surfaces.

Added driver and car info displays to the full screen replay. This includes inputs like steering, brake, clutch and throttle and a g-force circle graph. On top of that we also now always display the correct driver before and after driver swaps. In a race session we now show the time remaining in a session. The message centre now consistently shows the same naming and numbering for values as the garage when changing settings such as ABS and TC while driving.

New Content Next Week – Diriyah Formula E

Moving on to the world of content releases, as our ever insightful Discord community have already managed to work out, we are incredibly close to releasing a brand-new circuit to the simulation – yes, the Saudi Arabia round of the ABB Formula E World Championship is coming to rFactor 2 – the Diriyah E-Prix! The new track DLC should be released as early as next week, and having enjoyed the pleasure of driving it in rFactor 2 these last couple of weeks I can safely say I’m confident our sim racing community are really going to enjoy the challenge it offers to players. Unlike many street circuits typical of the Formula E calendar, Diriyah offers up a very high speed combination of corners, many of which are blind on corner entry and require the driver to fully commit to the racing line well in advance of a clear line of sight to the apex – something that is incredibly challenging with walls lining the circuit on either side, and I must say it’s a rather thrilling experience, especially in the new Gen2 2021 Formula E cars we recently added to the game.

Formula E 2021 | Steam Store: Click Here.

The new track will be our fifth E-Prix release, after the original Hong Kong, Monaco, New York and Berlin circuits that we brought to the sim over the last couple of years. The circuit has 21 corners, as mentioned before many of which are high speed, and benefits from the rather unique desert location, which coupled with the impressive architecture scattered around the perimeter of the circuit, certainly lends itself to a visually impressive and immersive piece of new content.

Of course, being a part of the 2021 Formula E season, the track will include or latest Formula E specific feature, Attack Zone, where players have the ability to activate an onboard ‘attack mode’ for two additional boosts in speed during the course of the race, following successfully navigating through the attack zone gate located within the circuit configuration. 

Another Track Coming Soon

Not content to rest on our Formula E laurels with the Diriyah E-Prix release in the first few days of March, the coming month will also see another new circuit addition rFactor 2 – although just to keep suspense a little longer I’m going to hold off telling you exactly which track it is – but I can confirm this is a surprisingly fast, very technical and rather undulating layout that is an absolute blast to drive… stay tuned to the rFactor 2 Social Media channels in the days and weeks ahead for more news about the track, and when to expect it to become available for the sim later this month…

Additional Track Updates In Development

As well as working on the actual code itself, the studio have also been rather busy in the track development department, as our super talented artists continue to work on both new projects, and breathing life into older content within the simulation. We have a fairly substantial schedule of updates for a number of circuits in the near future, including a new build of Azure with greatly improved AI across the varied car types within the sim. Azure is pretty close to final testing now, so expect that one to drop during March, but we’ve also got a few other tracks that are currently receiving fixes and PBR graphics updates – some of which are edging ever closer to hitting our testing team for final approval.

It’s probably a bit too early to give estimates of when exactly these updates are likely to appear in the public, and we don’t want to set expectations by telling you exactly which tracks are at what point in development, but I think it would be fair to say that we can expect a couple of nice new builds of popular venues to be dropping into the sim in the reasonably near future…, more on those a little later in the month…

Competition System Blog Going Strong

In this section of the roadmap we want to take the opportunity to thank our awesome community for their outstanding engagement in our weekly Competition System blog posts. Frankly, we have been astounded with the level of interest and engagement in our new system, and the curiosity the community have to find out more about our direction of development travel, and what the short, medium and long term goals are for the studio in relation to getting the CS fully feature rich and into a main V1 public build status. 

In all honesty, we took a bit of a dip into the unknown with these blog postings, with a very open mind as to the level of interest and how many questions we would actually receive with such a regular posting schedule. As I’m sure you have noticed, despite the Competition System being still very much in a beta phase and with little in the way of promotional activity behind it, our community have really taken the potential behind this system to heart, and are seemingly full of interest to hear more about how the mechanics of it work, and what is coming up next.

We love taking the opportunity to try and answer your questions and provide further clarity on the system itself, even if it has resulted in a few late night dashes to the finish line in order to get it out on our regular Wednesday slot! Please do keep the questions coming, and we will continue to try and be as open and honest in our responses as we possibly can be. Plenty more updates and improvements are on the way, so I’m sure we will have much to discuss in the weeks and months ahead!

If you want to catch up on everything Competition System related that you may have missed, be sure to check out these handy links to our blog postings released so far:

• Week 1
• Week 2
• Week 3
• Week 5
• Week 6
• Week 7
• Week 8

A Postcard From The Desert

I’m sure a fair proportion of you will know that this weekend the first round of the newly World Championship classified ABB Formula E championship kicked off in Saudi Arabia on Friday and Saturday, marking the return to action on a circuit outside of the many configured Berlin street course for the first time in nearly a year for the series – but what you perhaps don’t know is rFactor 2 has a very strong presence trackside this year, thanks to our special Formula E specific ‘Game Zone’ that will be following the championship throughout the season.

Sadly, the current travel restrictions prevent the staff here at Studio 397 from having a bit of friendly ‘who gets to  go out to the track’ rivalry between ourselves, but our colleague Martijn has been fortunate enough to represent the studio on site, and ensure everything continues to run smoothly on the various rFactor 2 simulators that are available to both the real drivers and members of the public to try their hand on the simulation.

Unsurprisingly, it looks like it’s pretty warm in Diriyah, and a fair bit of sand keeps making its way onto the stage too….

Looking Back On February

Now that we’ve spoken at length about the future of rFactor 2, let’s take a few moments to review what happened during the first month of the new year, with a quick recap at some highlights for rFactor 2 players in the month of January.

Indianapolis Motor Speedway PBR Update

Indianapolis Motor Speedway | Steam Workshop: Click Here.

This is one that we’ve been looking forward to deploying for quite some time. OK, I think it’s fair to say that the modern incarnation of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course configuration is a bit of a ‘marmite moment’ for many sim racers – you either seem to really love the way the circuit flows and the corner variety, or on the other end of the spectrum you really, really don’t like the track at all! That’s perfectly understandable, and it would be fair to say that oval aside, no one is going to remember the layout as a legendary circuit in the same breath as somewhere like Spa-Francorchamps or Suzuka, but even so the track certainly has its own particular unique charms, and it often seems to generate really close and intense racing, no matter the category or style of car. 

As one of the older circuits within rFactor 2 (having released all the way back in 2014), and despite further post-release updates, the circuit was certainly starting to show its age in comparison to more recent content releases for the simulation. As a staple venue in the world of endurance racing, and as part of our significant schedule of content updates that we have been methodically working through in recent months, it felt like the ideal time to give our American track a bit of the PBR magic treatment, bringing the track up to spec and taking the opportunity to add a few more handy fixes, optimizations, tweaks and improvements. We are really happy with how the update has turned out, and we are sure you will agree that the track looks and drives better than ever. 

RCCO eX ZERO 2021 1.17 Update

RCCO eX ZERO 2021 | Steam Store: Click Here.

Also on the topic of updates, our most recent car release has seen some positive improvements brought to it earlier this month, as we spent time as a studio looking adding yet more new technology to the rather splendid RCCO eX ZERO 2021. As many of you will be well aware by now, the ex ZERO is a high technology electric race car that we developed for rFactor 2 in conjunction with Mike Rockenfeller and the RCCO team. Although the car exists only within the realms of rFactor 2, the physics calculations and parameters used within its creation marry up to those of real life – giving players a realistic and believable experience of how this car would behave should it ever make it into production in the real world.

As the car is powered by a 100kWH battery, one that produces an astounding 1000hp, we thought it would be a good opportunity to add some additional regeneration technology into the power unit, effectively adding the ability for drivers to charge their power supply when out on circuit, by way of regenerating electricity through heavy braking on the track. This has required a bit of back end coding in both the car and simulation, and we feel this added element to the driving experience really helps further differentiate how this car behaves in comparison to more traditional internal combustion engine machines within the sim.

Although the regen technology was a significant upgrade to the car, we also took the opportunity to further upgrade the visuals on the eX ZERO, adding new LED lighting and customisation options, as well as a revised animation for the windscreen wipers and updates to the audio effects produced by the car.

With these latest changes, and considering the fact this is a 1000hp, 4WD high downforce, high torque thoroughbred racer, we think this is firmly one of the most challenging, and satisfying cars currently available within rFactor 2.

GT3 BOP 

GT3 Bundle DLC | Steam Store: Click Here.

Moving on to Internal Combustion engine machinery, and probably the most popular class of racing in the world today, the month of February would also see a significant update applied to our sizeable collection of GT3 cars within rFactor 2 (13 and counting). Earlier this month we deployed our February 2021 BOP update to the GT3 class, where we strived to ensure a level of performance parity across the category to ensure all our drivers have the opportunity to choose their favourite car to race, whilst maintaining a reasonable chance of keeping the car somewhere near the sharp end of the grid.

It’s always something of a challenge to come up with a reasonable and fair balance between such varied types of machinery as we currently enjoy in rFactor 2, and I’m sure plenty of people in the community would argue that their favourite brand has been disadvantaged in some way or another – but we are confident that our data and the many thousands of laps logged during this testing phase have resulted in a very solid approximation of parity across the class – helping to further strengthen our most popular form of racing within the sim.

As an additional note, although this release was firmly marketed as a BOP update, we also used the opportunity to review some physics behaviour with these cars, with a view to providing a slightly more realistic experience with tyre behaviour and driving characteristics. We feel that the update has certainly moved us a step in the right direction here, although we acknowledge we have more to do in order to get these cars, and by extension the whole collection of cars within the simulation, working within a range of parameters that we feel satisfied maximizes the full potential of the simulation. We certainly aren’t in a position to talk about the measures we have undertaken to review how tyres / sliding ./ temperatures behave within rFactor 2 just yet – however rest assured that significant work is being undertaken behind the scenes on this front, and we hope to see the early fruits of these labours in the near future.

Competitions

Just before we sign off for another month here on Development Roadmap duty, we wanted to take a few final moments to signpost you to some outstanding esport content on the horizon that you might want to keep an eye out for, either as a spectator or even as part of the racing action yourself.

As a premium racing simulation, we take a lot of pride and put in considerable efforts to ensure events and series that we are a part of reflect the nature of the product we are developing. From home grown categories like the GT Pro and GT Challenge series, to partnered events such as the RCCO championships and Formula E Accelerate, we are delighted to see rFactor 2 continue to be strongly represented by a fine selection of drivers, communities and organisations througout the world. 

Hopefully you have had the opportunity to take in some of the racing action yourself in recent months, but if you are yet to sample so of what rFactor 2 has to offer in a competitive online environment, here are just a small selection of things you might want to check out for yourself during the month of March: 

Monday 1st March | 20:00 CET | GT PRO Draft | rFactorLive Twitch

Sunday 7th March | 20:45 CET | Formula Simracing Round 1 | The Race YouTube

Monday 8th March | 19:00 CET | BMW SIM Round 1 | rFactorLive Twitch

Monday 8th March | 20:00 CET | GT PRO Round 1 | TraxionGG YouTube

Thursday 11th March | 20:00 CET | Formula E Accelerate Round 4 | Formula E YouTube

Saturday 13th March | 16:50 CET | Virtual Endurance Championship Round 6 | VEC YouTube

Monday 15th March | 20:00 CET | GT Challenge Round 1 | rFactorLive Twitch

Thursday 18th March | 20:00 CET | Formula E Accelerate Round 5 | FE YouTube

Sunday 21st March | 20:45 CET | Formula Simracing Round 2 |The Race YouTube

Monday 22nd Match | 19:00 CET | BMW SIM Round 2 | rFactorLive Twitch

Monday 22nd March | 20:00 CET | GT PRO Round 2 | TraxionGG YouTube

Thursday 25th March | 20:00 CET | Formula E Accelerate Round 6 | FE YouTube

Monday 29th March | 20:00 CET | GT Challenge Round 2 | rFactorLive Twitch

As always, thank you for taking the time to keep up-to-date with the latest happenings here at the studio. Don’t forget you can join the conversation over on our ever expanding rFactor 2 Discord channel for instant chat with fellow fans of the simulation, and stay safe, stay healthy and see you out on the virtual circuit soon! 

Roadmap Day!

Hello dear sim racers! That time of the month is here once again, where we put our collective heads together (socially distanced of course) and have a look at pulling together a neat summary of the month just gone, while casting our virtual gaze further afield to share some insight into the immediate future of our simulation, and the continued workings behind the scenes. 

Unbelievably, we’ve pretty much finished the first month of 2021 already, boxed up and put away the festive decorations, started our varied regimes to lose those additional kgs we acquired during the holidays and generally started to get back into the swing of normal life (well, as normal as is possible in the current climate) following the merriment of December. 

Here at Studio 397, we’ve had an incredibly busy month of activity with rFactor 2, some of which went well, some slightly less so… 

Build Updates

Let’s get this one out of the way right at the very start of the Roadmap. Back in the early days of January we released a new build of rFactor 2 to the public branch of the simulation (6098993), containing a number of fixes and a few nice improvements that we hoped would drive the simulation forward, and act as a base for continued development during January. Despite our best intentions, it quickly became apparent that a some unforeseen issues had crept in with the update, and the following days would generate a number of reports from the community about areas of the build that required our attention. 

Keen to rectify these issues and put the new release back on the right track, it quickly became apparent to us that despite deploying follow-up hotfixes, the fundamental issues discovered within the latest build would be significant enough to require a roll back to an earlier version of the sim, allowing us to take further time to investigate and understand what we need to do to improve and stabilise the build. The decision to roll back to an earlier version, with a few smaller updates included, was in the end an easy one to make in order to ensure each of our players enjoyed a stable base on which to play rFactor 2 – but of course this is certainly not a situation we like to see within our simulation, and something that we are working hard to address to ensure a similar situation does not happen again in the future. 

Mitigation Plans – Future Builds

With the lessons learned from the build update that swiftly wasn’t, we’ve doubled down on our processes here at the Studio in an effort to avoid similar such situations occurring in the future. Of course, software development is a deep and complex activity that often throws up the unexpected, and we feel we have room to further strengthen our internal processes to reduce the risk of similar scenarios occurring in future updates – coupled with a simplified and streamlined method of issue reporting (more on that later in the roadmap), we expect that the measures put in place now will prove beneficial in the long term development of rFactor 2. 

Of these changes, many of which are related to internal processes, one of the most visual changes to the public will be related to the way we release updates in future. When a new build has been created and tested by the internal beta-test team, we will release a “public-beta” branch of rFactor 2 that users can activate. The public beta contains all the proposed changes and improvements, and will run for a period of a week to a month before it is transferred to the stable public build – assuming no major issues are detected. With this new process, our players have the choice of remaining with the main build of rFactor 2, or opting in to try the new updates early – giving us the opportunity to monitor the state of the branch against a wider section of our player base, and ensure we don’t hit upon any unexpected issues that failed to crop up during internal testing. The new process will be applied for our next build update in February, and compliments the improved bug reporting mechanism we plan to launch next month, of which more will be explained a little later in the Roadmap…

Bug Fixing – Now And In The Future

Our plan for the immediate future is to spend considerable development time addressing the most urgent bugs/features based on the community feedback and our internal testing. We’ve spent a lot of time recently checking up on the status of our current coding backlog, and digging into the various communication platforms we host in order to ensure we’ve captured the vast majority of the issues that have been reported by our community here at rFactor 2. A lot of these issues we’ve managed to recreate internally and pass to the development team to investigate, and some of you will have already received direct communication from the team in order to provide further insight into issues where we need additional information in order to understand exactly what you’ve been experiencing, so we can look closer at the problems and put the relevant measures in place to work out the right solutions. 

As you can imagine, identifying and working on certain issues often has some level of cross pollination with other aspects of the software, so it isn’t simply a case of “fix A” and move on, but more a process of looking at the individual issue in regard of the wider impact of the overall development of rFactor 2. That said, with a view to opening up a more transparent relationship with our community and giving you all some better insight into the inner workings of the activity here at Studio 397, we’ve noted down in this Roadmap a selection of some key issues / developments we are paying particular attention to in the immediate future:

• Bring back the steering and pedal inputs overlay in the replay viewer.
• Fixing and documenting our anti-aliasing options.
• Bringing back and improving the driver labels showing above cars.
• Fix broken mouse click assignment in UI controls. 
• Review and improve the performance of the way the showroom behaves.
• Investigate and fix potential white screen crashes related to controller assignments. 
• Add code for informing users around disabled Steam overlay related to shopping cart appearance in Competition System. 
• Permanent fix for corrupted car bodies in multiplayer. 
• Review and rectify showroom upgrades not showing issue. 
• Review and improve day to night transition.
• Look at UI behaviour and performance.

Bug Fixing – New Reporting Process & Overview

While the above list has been put together with the intention of showing our community some of the key areas we are looking into at present, we also felt it would be beneficial to offer a more permanent review tool for our users to review whenever they want a little insight into the status of our development. A simple-to-read front end dashboard, together with a more streamlined and practical reporting procedure is something we think will go a long way towards helping both the studio and the community understand where the most pressing concerns exist within the software at any given time.

Bug Reporting – At present it has become somewhat apparent that reports from the community about existing issues can arrive in many and varied places on the internet, and often without the necessary information required to help us understand and reproduce the problem back at the studio. Not only does this present the potential danger of important reports being missed by the team, but inevitably if we don’t have the information required to properly reproduce the issue back at base, delays in rectifying the issue will be encountered and valuable development time lost to trying out different scenarios without guarantee of a valuable outcome. 

As such, we have resolved to release a dedicated bug reporting form within the Studio-397 forum software that walks users through the required steps needing to be completed to create a bug report, breaking down the report into various categories and channelling the user into providing the information we need to act upon the report – this should prove a very powerful tool to aid the development process.

Bug Reviewing – Additionally, we plan to develop a public facing dashboard view that allows our community to see what bugs have been added into the reporting system, and a broad view of the status of the report – developed with the intention of providing an easy-to-understand basic reference for interested people to see what is in our system for review and action, and broadly what status of development each particular issue is at. We are still looking at how this might look and work in reality, however we hope to put something together over the course of the coming weeks.

Competition System – Blog Next Week

January has also seen the launch of our new, weekly, Competition System Development Blog postings here at Studio 397, where we offer insights and updates into the ongoing development of our newest rFactor 2 feature, and where we give our community the opportunity to post their own questions about the system for answering by the Studio. Already we’ve posted three separate blogs on the new Competition System (Blog 1 / Blog 2 / Blog 3), however as we’ve been a little on the busy side over the last few days, we’ve elected to move the fourth post over one week, with a scheduled release date of Wednesday 4th January. We are still logging community questions, so if you’ve got something pressing you wish to ask, feel free to pop it down in the comments section of THIS THREAD and we will do our best to answer it in the next, or upcoming blog postings.

Competition System – Development

On the subject of our Competition System, we are delighted to see many of our players are engaging in the daily races and having fun racing in rFactor 2 against other drivers – exactly why we developed the system in the first place! Although we are very much in a Beta phase with the CS so far, I think it would be fair to say we are quite pleased with how things are progressing, and the improvements brought to the system since we launched at the end of 2020 have for the most part been well received, and have gradually enhanced the end user experience. Don’t worry, these are just the very tip of the iceberg for the Competition System, with plenty more tweaks, changes, features and depth set to be added as we progress through the development phase. 

A side effect of running so many races using the Competition System, was the rather visually impressive but incredibly annoying ‘laserbeam’ cars – where a graphical glitch on some vehicles would explode car bodies and take up a lot of the visual real estate of the player – making participation in races a bit more challenging. This bug has been a tough one to track down and resolve, however after much investigation we finally managed to get to the bottom of the issue, and deployed a hotfix update to temporarily remove the problem. Since that hotfix, we have found a more permanent solution to the issue, and will include that fix in the next upcoming update to the sim. It turns out this bug has been in the codebase for more than two years now, so we’re glad it’s gone now!

In terms of the system itself, so far we have put together a nice mix of free and paid content for our drivers to enjoy, with players having the opportunity to race in such varied machines as LMP3, GTE, GT4, Cup and Tatuus formula cars. Speaking for myself personally, this has opened my eyes to a number of interesting combinations that I’ve not previously explored fully, and I think it fair to say the variety of content used so far has proven popular with our active racers – with more to follow in the next weeks and months! 

Formula E 2021 And Attack Zones

January would see another piece of premium content added to rFactor 2 with the introduction of the 2021 ABB Formula E FIA World Championship DLC – bringing the very latest and greatest from the world of Formula E back to rFactor 2 once again. Rather than “just” a new season pack DLC, this new release would prove special for a couple of very good reasons. From a performance point of view, the 2021 car features brand-new and overhauled physics and tyre behaviours, producing a very different driving characteristic to the way the cars act out on circuit, improving what was already a very fine racing experience. 

On the visuals side, another new element to this DLC that we are very proud to introduce to rFactor 2 for the first time is the inclusion of Attack Zone – a unique to Formula E strategical element of racing where a driver must navigate through a dedicated Attack Zone gate during the race, to activate an additional boost for 35kW of power – for a limited time period. The Attack Zone has been added to our four existing Formula E circuits, and is represented by an on track graphic that lights up during activation; and of course the LED Halo illumination that flashes blue when a driver has the additional power boost activated within their car. 

This is an interesting and unique strategic element of racing within our Formula E content, and something that adds a very exciting new strand to what are already highly entertaining cars to drive and race. 

As an further bonus, we have added the 2021 pack to the existing 2020 Formula E store item, which means anyone who already owns the 2020 cars will get this content for free, and any players who purchase the 2021 pack will also get the cars, teams and drivers of the 2020 season included in their download! 

Formula E 2021 | More info: Click Here

Formula E 2021 | Steam Store: Click Here

Track Updates – Indianapolis PBR

February is set to be the month where we release something that has been on the wish list of our community for quite some time – the much anticipated PBR update to our fabulous Indianapolis Motor Speedway circuit! Yes, one of the older but still wonderful tracks within rFactor 2 is set to be given a new lease of life this coming February thanks to the excellent work of our track team here at Studio 397, with all the latest PBR graphical development goodness set to be applied to Indianapolis Motor Speedway, and the various configurations found within the simulation. Yes, gone is the original 2013 version to be updated to 2020 standards – including the modern track layout! 

A fresh lick of PBR magic, a wholesale asset update, some AI tweaks and a new variant – it’s going to be wonderful, and it releases for free in early February!

Looking Back On January

Now normally we start these Roadmap posts with a look back on the month just gone, then move on to future matters – however seeing as we’ve had some pretty pressing things to discuss about the immediate future, we decided to switch it up a little and put the rearwards facing element of the roadmap towards the bottom of the post. Updates and rollbacks aside, which we spoke about at the very top of this article, what other rF2 related things have been happening in the opening days of 2021?

GTE Updates

Warming to the theme of updating content, January 2021 would see a nice fresh set of tweaks applied to our existing GTE class of cars within the simulation. Comprising of models from Ferrari, Aston Martin, BMW, Chevrolet and Porsche, the new build deployed on January 6th brought about a number of small but important improvements to our closed top GT machines. Tweaks to the balance of performance parameters around weight and power, plus an important fix for some aerodynamic drop off issues we had been experiencing in close proximity to other cars were just the headline items, plus of course the introduction of these vehicles within our Competition System – making for some very nice and close racing within our community!

rFactor 2 | Steam Store: Click Here

Formula E Accelerate Start

Super tight driving and plenty of attacking – here are your highlights from round 1 of Formula E: Accelerate! #FEAccelerate pic.twitter.com/yxGeKCaqB5

— ABB FIA Formula E World Championship (@FIAFormulaE) January 29, 2021

In terms of competitions, at the time of our Formula E 2021 release January would also see the launch of the brand-new Formula E Accelerate Esport series – the official Formula E esport championship that brings together an impressive collection of big name drivers from the virtual world across a six round championship with our new Formula E cars. Reigning F1 Esports World Champion Jarno Opmeer, 2017 Vega E-Race champion Bono Huis and rFactor 2 star and World’s Fastest Gamer finalist Erhan Jajovski are just some of the big names fighting to take home their share of the 100,000 euro prize pool (and a test in a real Formula E car!) this season, and if the opening round at New York is anything to go by – the series looks set to provide some fantastic action.

Formula E Accelerate | Catch all the action: Click Here

Sim Formula Europe 2021

As one Esport series starts, so another completes. January would see the conclusion of the 2021 Sim Formula Heusinkveld Peregrine competitions on rFactor 2, which brought together some of the top rFactor 2 drivers via a qualification process to race head-to-head on the Zandvoort Grand Prix Circuit in the now legendary McLaren Ford MP4/8.

While the main series did much to entertain the viewers at home, just a few days prior to the finals we also ran our Heusinveld Peregrine competition for drivers who qualified through a hotlap competition.  Taking to the circuit in specially liveried Audi R8 LMS GT3 cars adorned with community created livery designs in the theme of the Peregrine Falcon, the Heusinkveld Peregrine race at the recently updated Maastricht Street Circuit produced a fantastic event from start to finish, showing off both the driving skill of the racers, and the wonderful artistic talents of our sim racing livery painting community.

Another great competition, and one to look forward to seeing more of next season.

Sim Formula Europe | Catch up on the racing: Click Here

So that’s it for another month ladies and gentlemen – plenty happening and plenty still to come. Thank you once again for taking the time out of your day to read this latest roadmap post, stay safe, stay healthy and see you all out on the virtual racetracks of the world!