StockcarFactor 2

[Kevin Knorpp]

When did rFactor 2 become StockcarFactor 2?

I thought their strategy was to create one of each of a variety of vehicles to demonstrate ability of physics engine but seems a lot of attention concentrated on oval content. Is strategy changed now? Just curious.

 

[Daiman Patel]

ISI are still working on their own mods and features for rFactor 2. They are not developing many of these oval tracks themselves; rather, the tracks have been produced by 3rd party modders, with support from and distribution handled by ISI.

 

[Kevin Knorpp]

Fair enough but one cannot deny the special treatment stock cars are getting from ISI. Is there another series that has received this much attention?

 

[JeffL]

Stock car as in singular, I think they spent a good amount of time on bringing the AI and stock car rules to the game. Which is almost another sim in itself. I think as the 3rd partys are bringing ovals for their leagues you'll see ISI back to working on content and road courses, just seems to be how it's going.

 

[William Wester]

Other than iRacing, there was an oval racing void. I think it was a smart move by ISI to go after this market. Even though I don't race the stock cars very often I think they have done an excellent job with these cars (default setups, etc.) and tracks. Not perfect by any means (AI, etc.) but a nice start.
I personally don't like much open wheel racing (do love Eve and Spark though!) but I understand why ISI supports open wheel.

 

[Brandon Wright]

Other than iRacing, there was an oval racing void. I think it was a smart move by ISI to go after this market. Even though I don't race the stock cars very often I think they have done an excellent job with these cars (default setups, etc.) and tracks. Not perfect by any means (AI, etc.) but a nice start.
I personally don't like much open wheel racing but I understand why ISI supports open wheel.

Yep, it's almost non-existent outside of iRacing or dedicated NASCAR racers, so might as well take advantage of a gap in the market. Also, from the little bit I've read it's apparently proven a bit difficult to make the AI/oval rules all work smoothly and properly so it probably required a bit more attention on their side to get things working nicely. Doesn't mean they've decided to only focus on oval racing from now on, just means they've decided to focus on oval racing until they get it right. I can't see anything wrong with that logic.

 

[Emery]

You're forgetting that "National Stockcar" was the second wave of rF1 content from ISI?

Stockcar fills a niche market (a LARGE niche!) and it was the test case for adding different rulesets as plugins rather than trying to build those rules into the game since plugins can be enabled & disabled. Stockcar work began at least 2 years ago when Tim Wheatley asked for contacts with racing teams to gather data in a quest to provide the very best stockcar experience possibly.

Oval AI is definitely still a work-in-progress. Especially when it tries to follow the plugin rules. I suspect Stockcar was not released as soon as we expected due to the poor AI.

3rd party affiliates were used to produce most of the ovals that have been released, so the quality varies a bit more than standard ISI tracks. I know who my favorite author is out of the TPA oval authors so far...

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Another iron in the fire is updating content. About half of the cars aren't on the latest model tires and about half of those also need graphic updates since they predate when the graphics engine stabilized.

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And finally there's the new content that is and has been in the pipeline. We know Toban (fictional track) is coming. There are a bunch of other cars that have been seen in various stages of completion, some still dating back to before the beta!

 

[Kevin Knorpp]

You guys all make sense and I think stock cars required (or were delayed because or both) tire model changes too. Just seems like a lot of work and strange timing (along with Steam implementation I might add) given how unfinished everything else is.

 

[F_B]

I play Iracing quite frequently but never dare to enter oval races somehow. So I think it’s nice to try some races with AI in rfactor 2. On a sidenote Iracing is the only serious sim which offers much oval content so far and now there’s rfactor which also tries to get a foot into the door.