Paul Jeffrey
Premium
With the recent Endurance Pack DLC, Studio 397 have also introduced some interesting new features to the sim, not least of which is the welcome inclusion of Position Lights...
Of course the release of five new cars rightly took much of the limelight from the new rFactor 2 update, however it might have been easy to overlook some very interesting and welcomed feature additions to the title, not least of which is the very important introduction of position lights, a relatively recent introduction into real world racing and a feature that will be a big help to players who enjoy long distance multiclass racing in the simulation.
So what are Position Lights?
Simply put Position Lights are illuminated lights on each car within class during an endurance race, and the aim of them is to help easily identify both where the car is in the race, and what position they hold in their respective class. Ideal for multiclass events, the new position lights that come with this new pack in rFactor 2 will "not only show your individual position, they will also show your position in class with colour coding. On top of that, the lights turn into a pit stop timer ‘counting up’ when you pit".
Still keeping endurance racing in mind, Studio 397 have also upgraded the simulation to include a new "in car traction control" feature. Essential for helping adjust settings with the game AI when different types of car configurations and rules apply, Studio 397 had the following to say of this other upgrade to the core software:
rFactor 2 already featured “driving aids” that provided both traction control and anti-lock brakes, but like all driving aids they are global for all cars in a session. Especially in multi-class racing, and this pack is a good example, it is common to have different classes that might or might not have traction control available. Therefore we decided to add the option for specific cars to feature traction control (and anti-lock brakes) as part of the car, completely separate from any “aids” settings. On top of that, we can configure the exact number of “levels” the real cars have and decide if you can adjust those levels in-car or just in the garage as part of your setup, and even if you can turn it off or not, as some cars have such aids built-in and you can’t even disable them.
For this pack, traction control is available only on the LMP2 and GTE cars, and there are a couple of things you need to know to set it up. First of all, as this is a system that is separate from the driving aids, to make in-car adjustments you need to go to your controller settings and map the following four new keys:
On top of that, you can also configure these settings in the garage setup:
As a final note, if you also have driving aids enabled for one of these cars, the effects of both will correctly be combined. For example, if you set traction control to 2 (which is fairly low) in the in-car setting and then turn on the driving aid to “Medium”, the end result will be that you have medium traction control. We expect most servers and people to simply disable those aids for official races though.
During the new car pack announcement Studio 397 also revealed some interesting information with regards to their current understanding of the tyre model in rF2, something that is already at a very high standards in the genre. The Dutch developers have confirmed they have learnt quite a bit about the way the tyres behave in both the real world and the simulation, something they intend to apply to the recent 'GT3 Power Pack' DLC that was released recently. The same rule applies to the position lights and traction control settings introduced with this new content, both we be retrospective applied at a future date:
New cars and features always trigger the question “what about the existing cars”? Our close collaboration with teams and manufacturers have given us even more detailed insight into the tyres that they are running on these cars. On top of that, our laser scanned version of Sebring gave us an excellent opportunity to compare data to a 100% accurate track. The data prompted us to make some updates to our model, and since the GT3 cars are using the same tyres, our next step will be to go back to and implement and test the tyres on those cars too, which in general will make them a bit slower.
The same applies to the position lights as well as the in-car traction control and anti-lock brakes, which will be added as features to each individual GT3 car. We don’t have an exact ETA for these changes yet, as we also need to make sure these changes don’t affect the BOP within the class, but we will certainly keep you up to date in our monthly roadmap. We will also add documentation to our website for third parties that wish to implement these new features on their cars, as well as publish example tyres.
The Endurance Pack DLC can be purchased from the rF2 Steam Store page for £13.11 HERE.
rFactor 2 is available exclusively for PC from Steam now.
Check out the rFactor 2 sub forum here at RaceDepartment for all the latest news and discussion with regards to the simulation. You can take part in lively debates with fellow rFactor 2 fans and take part in some great Club and League racing events..! Head over to the forum now!
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the physics of the new cars
