rFactor 2's Quarterly Content Release and UI Refresh Out Now

rFactor 2 Quarterly Content Release 01.jpg
An update to rFactor 2 is live now on Steam, and the sim now welcomes four new pieces of content.

Studio 397's social media has kept us busy over the past weeks with the implementation of a new user interface and teasers of upcoming content. That content is now live on Steam for purchase, and the UI has been given an update.

The rapid-fire nature of the content release is part of a new strategy from Studio 397 and Motorsport Games for rFactor 2. Rather than release each bit of new content as it is becomes ready for release, there will be quarterly releases of multiple projects the team has been working on.

The four pieces of content welcomed this quarter include three new cars and a racing circuit. The first and perhaps most notable release is the Dallara IR18 INDYCAR. Studio 397 has bundled all of the teams, drivers and liveries from the 2021 NTT INDYCAR Series for this release.

Along with the INDYCAR, another impactful piece of content released today was Daytona International Speedway. This track has seen a recent boost in popularity in sim racing, with Automobilista 2 and iRacing already having official versions of the circuit, plus a popular mod for Assetto Corsa and an upcoming appearance in Gran Turismo 7.

Two more cars to join the sim this quarter are the Ligier JS P320 and BMW M4 GT3. The former joins a Norma competitor in the LMP3 class, and the latter helps fill out the GT3 class. If you've yet to try the LMP3 class in this title, you may enjoy the ease of use of the car thanks to its aero package and low, wide stance. The BMW has proven to be a popular choice of car in Assetto Corsa Competizione, and should find itself many fans in rF2.

With so many new choices now on offer in rFactor 2, it may be tough to decide what to purchase. If you've bought and experienced any of the four new pieces of content, let us know your thoughts below in the comments.
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About author
Mike Smith
Mike Smith
I have been obsessed with sim racing and racing games since the 1980's. My first taste of live auto racing was in 1988, and I couldn't get enough ever since. Lead writer for RaceDepartment, and owner of SimRacing604 and its YouTube channel. Favourite sims include Assetto Corsa Competizione, Assetto Corsa, rFactor 2, Automobilista 2, DiRT Rally 2 - On Twitter as @simracing604

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Comments

kart1
maybe but the 5 or 6 whiners who post at every tread whatever the subject here for AI are always the same...
 
Ghoults
Kenny Paton said:
You say we, but the reality probably is that there's still more players playing offline than on. Somewhere in the depth of the internet there may be data to back up my assertion.
Click to expand...
Could be that because the online pickup play component of rf2 is dead that all the players it has left are offline players. The percentages could favour the offline the but that's because people who want to play rf2 online just play other game online instead. The competition system has been an improvement but it can not do it all alone.

That being said if you want data about offline vs online I think acc gives a good comparison. It has the bare minimum offline with its insanely basic career mode (to call it even that is a stretch!). What keeps acc popular and makes it even grow? The online racing! The new content releases are just spikes, the online is what makes people stay. The ranked competitions and the pickup and play servers. You need both. Leagues are extra. That's how acc not just keeps existing but attracts new players and grows. That's also how rf2 can become popular. It is not magic or anything revolutionary.

And that being said I don't think pitting offline and online against each other in this way is right. Rf2 ai bugs need fixing and ai cars brake checking on ovals is pretty obvious issue. Just like ai pitting on last lap or cautions not working as expected. Fixing those obvious issues should not stand in the way of better online in rf2. It really shouldn't be a question of whether to fix online or offline in rf2. Both need improvements. Bugs need fixing regardless of whether that area of the game is its primary focus or something it can do as well.

But if rf2 wants more new players the only way that will happen if it can leverage its physics, pretty solid online play once you get on server and its excellent endurance content in online play. And rf2 does that really poorly and in flawed way atm.. And despite doing these huge events with F1 world champion and other big name real race drivers and simracing streamers racing in rf2 it just doesn't see the growth you'd imagine from that. The online just needs to be better. Instead of attraction the online in rf2 is a barrier to entry. But once it is better the numbers will increase. Offline focus won't save rf2. But clear offline bugs need fixing, obviously.
 
Austin Ogonoski
MJQT said:
As usual, dark, but on point. And think in relation to this Daytona release: if rF2 can't handle multiclass AI at the road course without carnage or high class cars acting stupidly on the banking, or can't handle oval racing in stock cars, how will these upcoming games possibly handle Indycar at Texas or WEC at Le Mans? Not a good omen. Other than the small progress I saw in oval racing at Indy in the Indycars, but I may have gotten that wrong too honestly (as an outside observer who hasn't tried it myself).
Click to expand...

It's worrying, for sure. Same scenario played out in the Madden, NCAA, & Arena Football games over the years. Using the same modular engine across multiple products streamlines the workflow but any crippling bug or shortcoming will show up in every product that "season." With Madden it was LB's having the uncanny ability to intercept passes over the middle. Entire years worth of multiple EA football games ruined by it as opposed to just a single release.

The more I watch Motorsport Games evolve, the more I'm convinced that they might not be entirely to blame for their mis-steps.

My own personal belief is that someone misled them about the state of rFactor 2. Who that someone might be, I'm not sure, but they were very clearly an rFactor 2 fanboy who was either new to the hobby and just parroting things he saw stated by other equally mis-informed sim racers, or his idea of a "good time" in sim racing was endlessly tweaking a piece of software that even on it's best days, was an eternal science project.

MSGM, I speculate, took this guy's word for it on good faith that he knew what he was talking about (he didn't, he was a fanboy) and went full send on acquiring S397 believing they were getting this highly impressive, technologically advanced racing sim engine that could be used to push out not one but four products in a single year. Essentially free money to make a video game that had already been built by someone else, only needing to insert their own menu, car models, track models, and vehicle attributes.

They then actually got their hands on the engine and realized that no, this was not the cutting edge piece of sim racing promised, but this weird hodgepodge of a game that it's own community was having to troubleshoot on an hourly basis and most had already abandoned.

But their entire business strategy had already been set in stone, because from the ground up that's how the company had been constructed - a middle man that inserted new cars and tracks into rFactor, and sold it as a new product (or as rF2 DLC). They are now stuck with a product that doesn't really work outside of extremely specific circumstances, and a payware mod team as opposed to a highly experienced staff that can go in and make necessary QoL improvements that the sim has needed since 2013.

So in short, their library of games might never actually improve, but by 2024 the rF2 store will have like 20 pages of add-on content that we'll discuss ad nauseam just as we did in this thread, and all of their mass market releases will suffer the same fate as NASCAR 21.

Oops lol.
 
V
Premium
MrLonguinha said:
A question. In these new updates for Rfactor 2, does anyone happen to know if they have added the possibility to choose our opponents in offline races? I still haven't found it if it does. I'll give an example: if I do a Daytona 24 Hours race I would like to choose some 8 DPI cars, 12 LMP2, 10 LMP3, 26 GT3...specifically ( ready made skins made by some modder like IMSA 19, GEM 21/22 )...or being able to choose 2 or 3 cars from each GT3 brand as in the Assetto Corsa.
Click to expand...
You can select opponents manually while on track, so if you know the car number associated with driver A, B, etc, you can jump into the track and then kick or select AI opponents manually.
It sucks, but for the moment is better than nothing, which was how the previous UI had left it.
 
Last edited:
T
Ghoults said:
Could be that because the online pickup play component of rf2 is dead that all the players it has left are offline players. The percentages could favour the offline the but that's because people who want to play rf2 online just play other game online instead. The competition system has been an improvement but it can not do it all alone.

That being said if you want data about offline vs online I think acc gives a good comparison. It has the bare minimum offline with its insanely basic career mode (to call it even that is a stretch!). What keeps acc popular and makes it even grow? The online racing! The new content releases are just spikes, the online is what makes people stay. The ranked competitions and the pickup and play servers. You need both. Leagues are extra. That's how acc not just keeps existing but attracts new players and grows. That's also how rf2 can become popular. It is not magic or anything revolutionary.

And that being said I don't think pitting offline and online against each other in this way is right. Rf2 ai bugs need fixing and ai cars brake checking on ovals is pretty obvious issue. Just like ai pitting on last lap or cautions not working as expected. Fixing those obvious issues should not stand in the way of better online in rf2. It really shouldn't be a question of whether to fix online or offline in rf2. Both need improvements. Bugs need fixing regardless of whether that area of the game is its primary focus or something it can do as well.

But if rf2 wants more new players the only way that will happen if it can leverage its physics, pretty solid online play once you get on server and its excellent endurance content in online play. And rf2 does that really poorly and in flawed way atm.. And despite doing these huge events with F1 world champion and other big name real race drivers and simracing streamers racing in rf2 it just doesn't see the growth you'd imagine from that. The online just needs to be better. Instead of attraction the online in rf2 is a barrier to entry. But once it is better the numbers will increase. Offline focus won't save rf2. But clear offline bugs need fixing, obviously.
Click to expand...
Well put. I guess as with everything, the truth is somewhere in the middle. I think most people start with offline racing when they acquire a product to test out different content and features. After that they mostly go online. The new rain shaders in rF2 are a prime example for this problem. They look fantastic and it is a great experience. But most new players won't get that far to experience it, if the AI allways pits after the first lap. It's a recipe for ragequits and people refunding the game. It's sad, because this worked at one point, same as SC and FCY. At one point this were some of the standout features, even for coop online racing. Right now the biggest part of online players are in leagues in rF2 and this is where the product really shines. Those people propably don't see the issues that an average joe sees. With all the can of worms that S397 opponed they started too many cosntruction sites from my POV. The server browser should have been finalized before the competition server went online for example. It's crazy, that we don't have any info about the cars used on a server and wich sessions are currently running.

On the bright side, S397 atleast understood that you need to set some kind of basic priorities and tried to improve the first initial hurdle. And I think the UI is a good start for this, even if there are still some obvious issues. That aside, the recent updates have been pretty solid and I have enjoyed simply using the sim.
 
Ryan Soucy
reshaderacer said:
Establish the base line and go from there. Nothing is perfect really and may be they do need to fix a bug, and steering is heavy on such cars; its never fully as it is to drive one.

Just make sure the ffb is within limits. Drop it to 75% even or 65 who cares, as long as its getting
Click to expand...

@Austin Ogonoski So basically Austin, all that other stuff you've done in every other sim (this one included) that worked in the past to create a credible driving experience, change that all up entirely. Because this new content is so far advanced, that nothing you know can prepare you for how you should experience it. Once your brain gets accustomed to the increased physics calculation frequency, then maybe you'll be able to feel the front end of the car.

Are you accounting for the windscreen? Maybe that's it.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Ryan Soucy
GTxForza said:
I wish this game had championship mode.
Click to expand...

"Oh it does, its called an online league!" (Did I capture the pretentiousness of the fanboys accurately?)

The other response is "there's a spreadsheet out there where you can do it yourself..."

I'm starting to find it a massive slap in the face that providing a credible racing experience is neglected at best, and considered a waste at worst. If the dev is telling me that the only way to simulate the rest of what a driver has to consider in the cockpit is by finding 20 other random folks of similar talent who seek the same, then that software is a driving sim, not a RACING sim.
 
Ryan Soucy
Peter Kerényi said:
You wrote two paragraphs in your reply and yet did not answer my question. AI is something that needs to be discussed very much for a sim that is in active development. I could not care less about oval in rF2 personally, however it is not only oval that has issues.
Click to expand...

The sad thing is that AI probably peaked in ICR2 or Grand Prix 3. That's not to say that its not pretty good in RRRE and F120XX, its engrossing enough. But we could be so much further developed if we only paid more attention to it.

Blame the internet: online racing removed the importance of good AI, and easy distribution of hotfixes have allowed devs to release endless tech demos to us...
 
B
Austin Ogonoski said:
It's worrying, for sure. Same scenario played out in the Madden, NCAA, & Arena Football games over the years. Using the same modular engine across multiple products streamlines the workflow but any crippling bug or shortcoming will show up in every product that "season." With Madden it was LB's having the uncanny ability to intercept passes over the middle. Entire years worth of multiple EA football games ruined by it as opposed to just a single release.

The more I watch Motorsport Games evolve, the more I'm convinced that they might not be entirely to blame for their mis-steps.

My own personal belief is that someone misled them about the state of rFactor 2. Who that someone might be, I'm not sure, but they were very clearly an rFactor 2 fanboy who was either new to the hobby and just parroting things he saw stated by other equally mis-informed sim racers, or his idea of a "good time" in sim racing was endlessly tweaking a piece of software that even on it's best days, was an eternal science project.

MSGM, I speculate, took this guy's word for it on good faith that he knew what he was talking about (he didn't, he was a fanboy) and went full send on acquiring S397 believing they were getting this highly impressive, technologically advanced racing sim engine that could be used to push out not one but four products in a single year. Essentially free money to make a video game that had already been built by someone else, only needing to insert their own menu, car models, track models, and vehicle attributes.

They then actually got their hands on the engine and realized that no, this was not the cutting edge piece of sim racing promised, but this weird hodgepodge of a game that it's own community was having to troubleshoot on an hourly basis and most had already abandoned.

But their entire business strategy had already been set in stone, because from the ground up that's how the company had been constructed - a middle man that inserted new cars and tracks into rFactor, and sold it as a new product (or as rF2 DLC). They are now stuck with a product that doesn't really work outside of extremely specific circumstances, and a payware mod team as opposed to a highly experienced staff that can go in and make necessary QoL improvements that the sim has needed since 2013.

So in short, their library of games might never actually improve, but by 2024 the rF2 store will have like 20 pages of add-on content that we'll discuss ad nauseam just as we did in this thread, and all of their mass market releases will suffer the same fate as NASCAR 21.

Oops lol.
Click to expand...

Thruth bombs!
 
kart1
Dady Cairo said:
Ok,put offline AI out from the game and see,how many customers you will have in the future.Iracing will teach you.
Click to expand...
(and other)

iracing has taught us that a good online system brings people!
I'm sorry if I prefer to run against humans than stupid AIs, but stop poluting with the same request every time when you know very well that S397 said many times that AI was not the priority, and coming here is useless (except for haters who have only that to do, we know them now, always the same ones), look at all the rF2 threads that are poluted and go to fights... after a while it's enough...
 

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