rFactor 2 August Roadmap: Big Things Coming to the Sim Expo...

[Paul Jeffrey]

The August 'Development Roadmap' for rFactor 2 is here!

Studio 397 have been kind enough to release a monthly 'Roadmap' blog posting since taking over development of rFactor 2, giving fans much desired insight into the inner workings of the simulation, and of course using it as a nice opportunity to tease us all with upcoming content and features!

As usual the new posting for August offers plenty to get excited about, however this time the developers are keeping things a little bit closer to their chest... teasing not one but three announcements at the upcoming Sim Racing Expo... something that we will keep a very close eye out for during our three days on sight with RD colleagues and community members.

So what exactly does the latest post say? Well you can read up in full below:

Sometimes you look at the calendar and realize that time can fly past faster than our LMP2 cars ingame. It’s already end of August and we have been so busy with working on rFactor 2 that there is no Roadmap yet. But we couldn’t do without one, right? That would be like breaking a family tradition, and since our team is more about fixin’ things than breaking them, let’s put together a Roadmap for August! As said above already, we’re pretty busy, but with what you might ask? As most of you probably know, SimRacing Expo at the iconic Nürburgring track in Germany is just around the corner and it will kick off big things for us. But let’s do this step by step, it’s a roadmap in the end! (wink)

SimRacing Expo 2018
There is enough going on at this years Expo that we could probably fill the whole Roadmap with it, so let’s concentrate on the major things you should know about it. Obviously we will have a booth at the Expo, so you can come around and meet the team, as we will bring plenty of people along. But just talking to us might be a bit boring all day long, so we will make sure that you will have plenty of reasons to visit the rFactor 2 booth. One of them will be new content that we will show exclusively at our booth, a pre-release of course. Hypemode intensifies!

You want to know more about what this could be? For now you need to live with just 3 words: iconic, fast, competition proven, more at the Expo! (wink) You think that’s it already? Enough reasons to visit us? Nah, we’re in for way more this year! The content shown at the booth will be our first announcement during the Expo, but as Germans say “Alle guten Dinge sind drei”, literally meaning “all good things come in threes”, meaning we will follow up with another announcement during Saturday afternoon.

This second announcement will probably tick a lot of boxes for simracers in terms of their dreams-list for our simulation. We are more then excited to finally share that with you. Sunday will see a third announcement (yep, you’re not getting a day to get back your breath) which will show our dedication to further improving your simracing experience. What happens if you can’t be around then? Don’t worry, we will stream all announcements and first talks about them live from our booth onto our channels. Missing them is not an option at all.

Before we all now dive into the guessing-game about what could be in the announcements, let’s have a look at the other topics of our roadmap…

UI and Competition
We are fully aware that everyone is awaiting news on the UI and we’re still working hard every day on this topic. Many steps are needed to implement an UI like the one we envision, which is taking a lot of time. We are still tweaking and optimising, and we will be able to show parts of the new interface at the Expo. Of course we are very curious to get your feedback there!

On the competition side, we have been integrating different session types so we can have events that consist of combinations of practice, qualification and race sessions and we are looking at different ways to score events. In the last month or so we have also been researching and testing a rating system, feeding it data of many races and evaluating its outcome. We’re nowhere near done, but some of these improvements we will certainly already bring to the McLaren Shadow competition next month.

Content
On the content side, we won’t yet spoil the surprises we have in store for the Expo. Previously we’ve announced both Zandvoort and the Reiza Pack to be almost ready and we do anticipate both to become available in September.

Sounds like good stuff to me, roll on the Sim Racing Expo 2018!

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!

Like what you see here at RaceDepartment? Don't forget to like, subscribe and follow us on social media!

 
Looking forward to hearing what is in line for rF2 in the immediate future? What do you think the studio could be hinting at in their roadmap post? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below!​

 

[Nevini]

Or as it it really known, How else can we milk our clients. WTG studio 397 cash cow.
BTW I ended up buying sebring,. Not that great really....... Modders did a pretty good job.

 

[Will Mazeo]

gosh it started early..... cant people give it a break? ffs
Hope the announcements at the Expo are really good as they say.

 

[Denis Betty]

Or as it it really known, How else can we milk our clients. WTG studio 397 cash cow.
BTW I ended up buying sebring,. Not that great really....... Modders did a pretty good job.

EDIT: I don't see any mention of you being asked to hand over any cash against your will in the OP, so your post doesn't really seem relevant or on topic for this thread to me (just my opinion). However -
I thought S397 Sebring was great. I'd be happy to pay for more content of that quality, especially if it helps to pay for the further development of (what I personally think, is) a great sim.
To each, his own and long may that continue.

 

[Jason Mullin]

Or as it it really known, How else can we milk our clients. WTG studio 397 cash cow.
BTW I ended up buying sebring,. Not that great really....... Modders did a pretty good job.

So much negativity, they're doing a great job providing life to rF2.
If you can do it better please do!
If you can't just move along man.

 

[Cote Dazur]

An announcement about announcements, how exciting!

 

[mrbungle83]

So much announcing announcements these days totally agree with the above post. Also fix up that god damn UI already every damn roadmap "were working on it" i assume its a monolithic task ok so scrap it or stop talking about it also also also stop making out like your doing us a favor with these announcements of dlc, its overpriced , we are doing u lot a favor in buying it. Good luck to you seriously but please blow the competition away with your content and justify your prices because at the moment AC just blows you out of the water.

 

[Amanda]

I was one of those who gave Studio397 some harsh comments in the past, but I've come to appreciate what they're doing with rFactor 2.

Just remember how badly ISI treated the game. They created the engine and couldn't port it to DirectX 11, and development seemed to have stalled for several years.

Do things take a bit longer to come downstream? Yes, that has to be addressed, but I think repeating the same comments on every post about their roadmaps does nothing to help the situation. They've grabbed the game almost dead, and IMO the only way to help development is buying their releases.
S397 have released broken and unfinished content before, but I see them putting a LOT of effort into the new releases, besides fixing bugs AND finishing their past content. I was pretty disappointed with the GT3 Pack, but after a few months I say it's really good, it's nice to see the cars updated to their latest standard, and this is what made me, a guy who uninstalled rFactor 2 a few months back and promised never to come back to it, keep racing on it more and more. I even uninstalled Assetto Corsa, and to me that tells something.

So in my opinion S397 is heading on the right direction. Keep up the good work!

However, I have to address something that impacts me. I bought the GT3 Pack even when it used to cost the same as the entire Assetto Corsa game (for Brazil). I know that you guys need money to keep rFactor 2 growing and evolving, but I cannot keep supporting you when the prices keep getting jacked up. I think initially the GTE Pack was 65 bucks, then it was 68, then 71, and now it's 73. This needs to be addressed, I want to support the game but I cannot do it when the prices keep going higher and higher. I assume it's almost impossible to make a sale for Brazil, but those of us who like buying content are having somewhat of a hard time doing so when the prices keep going up, specially for someone like me who is not employed and thus have to conciliate supporting developers with supporting myself.

Cheers

 

[Will Mazeo]

Or we can start solving our own problems in Brazil voting right in October and hoping the economy minister will be free to do what he wants... but that's another topic

 

[davehenrie]

However, I have to address something that impacts me. I bought the GT3 Pack even when it used to cost the same as the entire Assetto Corsa game (for Brazil). I know that you guys need money to keep rFactor 2 growing and evolving, but I cannot keep supporting you when the prices keep getting jacked up. I think initially the GTE Pack was 65 bucks, then it was 68, then 71, and now it's 73. This needs to be addressed, I want to support the game but I cannot do it when the prices keep going higher and higher. I assume it's almost impossible to make a sale for Brazil, but those of us who like buying content are having somewhat of a hard time doing so when the prices keep going up, specially for someone like me who is not employed and thus have to conciliate supporting developers with supporting myself.

Cheers

I don't believe S397 has changed the price on the GTE pak. What has changed is the value of certain currencies that have lost value compared to .... the Euro or US Dollar....(I don't know which). So when you see the prices change, it's the local national economy that is dictating the price increase, not S397.

 

[Will Mazeo]

I don't believe S397 has changed the price on the GTE pak. What has changed is the value of certain currencies that have lost value compared to .... the Euro or US Dollar....(I don't know which). So when you see the prices change, it's the local national economy that is dictating the price increase, not S397.

Yep, this is the case, latin america currencies have been melting in past weeks. When I bought the GT3 pack it costed R$54, now it's R$71
Wish I could sell it LOL I'd have a profit

 

[Durge Driven]

rFactor2 is my favourite sim but hardly groundbreaking news after x years,.how long ago ? .........seems a lifetime and my F3 Evie still looks like the modeler was on something p

For me is no groundbreaking news besides ISI developing a new engine lol

Uis for me seem largely treated as bling and is another area I would be totally happy if all sims used the same one for universality and functionality

Certainly they are more important aspects to me then what a Ui (which you use for probably 5% of sim career) looks like

 

[Amanda]

I don't believe S397 has changed the price on the GTE pak. What has changed is the value of certain currencies that have lost value compared to .... the Euro or US Dollar....(I don't know which). So when you see the prices change, it's the local national economy that is dictating the price increase, not S397.

Although I have to agree on the price of the USD fluctuating, I think this is the first time I've seen a Steam game fluctuate along with it. All developers I bought games from since 2011 (when my steam account was created) have fixed prices, usually going something like: if the game costs 25 USD, it'll cost 50 BRL. And while I know the conversion means quite a bit of a loss for the developer, most realize they won't sell if they simply convert [insert currency] to BRL. That's why only Youtubers buy The Sims 4, for instance, because while it may cost "50 bucks" to someone living in the US, it'd cost 200 for us. EA put down the price a bit, now it costs 149,99 for us, but still it's not enough for us to be able to keep the gaming industry going around here. It's a sad reality.
If we had EUR or USD as a currency I'd be more than happy to pay double their original price.

 

[Durge Driven]

Yep, this is the case, latin america currencies have been melting in past weeks. When I bought the GT3 pack it costed R$54, now it's R$71
Wish I could sell it LOL I'd have a profit

Personally I think it is multi million dollar wrought of business practice

Real-time purchases should be based on real-time exchange rates

Steam has always been very slow to move transfer rates when it is better for you and much faster when it is better for them

Just track them for a year if your dollar moves up and down a lot and you will see

 

[anton_Chez]

I'm not sure what I am expecting with the new UI but damn with the amount of attention it's getting from the team and the amount of time that it's taking to implement it, who knows. Are we looking at something like rFactor 2 in game being dropped into an entirely new menu system, HUD, and various other elements that make up the user interface? It seems like we'll be looking at a rFactor 2.5 at this point. Hopefully it's worth the wait and improves the sim in a substantial way. Otherwise they're better off changing the font, scaling the HUD properly and call it a day.

This is not a negative post, by the way. It just seems like every road map there is a mention of the UI but there has been nothing for as long as I can remember. I am not a dedicated rFactor user, but I do run a league one night a week in it since recently and hope to see these things make their way into the sim in the short term.

 

[dale223223]

They just need to get Lemans and do a 24 hour game focus. Been saying this for years - a sim focused on 24hr races (and endurance races in general 12 hr or whatever, time scaling, etc)

 

[Amanda]

I have some authority to say the next: creating a UI is *hell*. I'm making a game of my own, and creating the UI has been the single worse experience so far, there's a LOT of logic behind what each button does, and it takes a long time to create all the HUD/Menu images, test if they do what you want, and so on.

It's hell even with my simple game where all the buttons are static and do what I want them to do, I can't imagine what S397 is going through with, for example, making sure the HUD loads properly whenever a change to the game is made, like when a user installs a MOD.

 

[OZ67]

So much negativity, they're doing a great job providing life to rF2.
If you can do it better please do! If you can't just move along man.

He must be a Democrat or from CNN Fake News

 

[NASCRAP]

Whatever the nature of the S397 content is, you can rest assured it will be buggy and poorly optimized.

 

[aka2k]

I really find the cult around rF2 to be really funny. Especially considering it's an almost 7 years old game now and it still feels like an alpha version of a 2010 game.