ICYMI: Laserscanned Nordschleife Coming to rF2...

[Paul Jeffrey]

At the 2018 Sim Racing Expo Studio 397 had plenty of big news to share, not least of which was the announcement of a laserscanned Nordschleife coming to rFactor 2...

Now I know this is pretty late in being written up, I blame too much beer and too good company for that, but I think it is probably big enough and exciting enough to deserve an article all of its own - even if it is several days after the actual event.

Clearly very pleased with their latest licence agreement, Marcel Offermans and Christopher Elliot of Studio 397 used the recent Sim Racing Expo in Germany as an opportunity to announce to the world the recent acquisition of a licence to recreate the spectacular Nordschleife in rFactor 2.

Nordschleife is often one of the most favoured and requested race tracks in sim racing circles, with many of the current breed of sim games already featuring the epic circuit, however what makes the move to bring the circuit to rF2 a little bit more special is that Offermans and co have secured brand new laser scanned data, giving the studio the opportunity to recreate the circuit as it is in 2018, including several updates to the track that are not present in other recreations of the venue elsewhere in sim racing.

This is good, and marks a significant step for Studio 397 as they continue to look to bring yet more interesting official content to the simulation.

As well as the big hitting news of Nordschleife coming to rF2, the Dutch developers have also announced and subsequently released three new historic McLaren Formula One cars, of which you can read about HERE, plus they have previewed some rather impressive shader improvements that are coming to the title very soon - Studio 397 making yet more progress with an increasingly improving graphical power of the simulation.

You can check out some of the shader preview images below:

Sim Racing Expo 2018 was a big weekend for Studio 397, and it looks like things can only keep on improving from here...

rFactor 2 is available exclusively for PC from Steam now.

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Happy with the rF2 announcements last weekend? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below!​

 

[Peter Koslowski]

Yes, that's good news with the new scan it will be awesome!!!
I love this game, but still they need a new UI and the possibility to adjust the graphics for natural colours (reshade can do, but why?).

 

[Neils on Wheels]

If it's as good as Sebring should be in for a treat.

 

[UnixRoot]

A dream comes true for me. Historic cars and the Nordschleife is all I need. Ok some beer is nice too.

 

[pitcock_90]

Give us a proper support for surround sound like AC,AMS, ACC, R3e..Yes i can choose 5.1/7.1 in the setup but the actual audio samples are only in stereo/mono.

 

[IMrIMike]

but the actual audio samples are only in stereo/mono.

 

[dreamer al]

YAY!!! (nothing more needs to be said )

 

[pitcock_90]

No wonder
White, Middle-Age Suicide In America Skyrockets..

 

[rabbitapple]

I'm not good at English　　　　　　
When will it be sold?

 

[Theodore 2019]

They should buy the point cloud from one of the 542655 companies that performed the laser surveying before. The same work being made over and over again..

 

[UnixRoot]

Because the track is not the same anymore?

 

[Dady Cairo]

And I will hope there will be the GP / GT track too
DC

 

[Will Mazeo]

They should buy the point cloud from one of the 542655 companies that performed the laser surveying before. The same work being made over and over again..

afaik there was one company that had this data and was old. I think they are being smart redoing some scans if they sell it for other companies then. Or maybe it's just cheaper for them to make their own, who knows what kind of tech they developed for this

 

[Brownninja97]

I always wonder how they are getting the funds for all of these licenses, i dont think their sales are enough to afford all the licenses and then wages and other misc things.

 

[John-Eric Saxén]

They should buy the point cloud from one of the 542655 companies that performed the laser surveying before. The same work being made over and over again..

They didn't make their own scan, it would make no sense to have all these sim racing companies buy scanning equipment and redo work already done. Scanning is provided by the company that manages the track.

 

[Theodore 2019]

Because the track is not the same anymore?

And will not be again in one month, so no point ..

 

[Theodore 2019]

They didn't make their own scan, it would make no sense to have all these sim racing companies buy scanning equipment and redo work already done. Scanning is provided by the company that manages the track.

This would make more sense...

 

[SoulMaTriX3]

All these "updates" are at a "premium price" greater than the game itself for how old it is. I like the direction they are taking the game, just not the cost. They are using the "DLC" cash cow process.

 

[Oldzeb]

They didn't make their own scan, it would make no sense to have all these sim racing companies buy scanning equipment and redo work already done. Scanning is provided by the company that manages the track.

which company? source?

 

[David Jundt]

And I will hope there will be the GP / GT track too
DC

They said they'll do all possible layouts, which could include:

With/Without Mercedes Arena(Nürbrguring Historic and VLN/24H use the one without, but the later use at least the "fast" version of the NGK chicane)
With/Without Dunlop Kehre/Ford-Kurve/Schumacher-S(DTM uses the "Kurzanbindung/Sprint")
Müllenbach-Schleife(maybe useable as a karting layout)

They've also said that they possibly create a non-laserscanned version of the old Südschleife(South Loop), which could enable them to make a historic combination of both North and South loop.

Now I don't think I've seen that a lot, I've raced the Südschleife like once on rF1 with the HistoriX mod.