Latest Roadmap Update - July 2017!

I guess some people think business runs on hopes and dreams alone, not money.

 

I perfectly understand the need to move to DLC policy. Nothing against it. However, the lack of support to people still having problems with dx11 is difficult to swallow. Latest update was July 7th and all efforts seem to be on solving VR related issues. Full screen and lack of consistency issues making people have to restart their systems in order to normalize behaviour seems unaddressed.

 

I paid about 20€ when the first rf2 beta came out and paid for lifetime some years later. Some weeks later online access was available for everyone for free.
Now I'm reading about paid content and I think it's ok. The guys did a great job and I'm happy to “support“ the ongoing development. If you don't want to pay, you don't have to.
Just watched the DTM race in zandvoort and I hope the track will be as bumpy as in rl. Screenshot are beautiful.
Keep on going the good work guys.

 

Do you want the devs to work for free to fix these bugs then,their pay checks have to be generated by something,money doesn't just grow on trees.
You do know that there isn't just one guy fixing bugs,coding the game and doing all the graphics,just because content is being created doesn't mean Every guy is working on said content.

 

Same question here. I really hope S397 could elaborate on those improvements

 

How long has dx11 been in beta,you do know this is a small team,man have some damn patience,while your having problems many aren't,yet you probably would want all future project shelved so they could work on your problem.

You and Stan need to realise the world doesn't revolve around you

 

Being small does not justify dropping support to the problems that many others apart Stan and myself are suffering. It is not only two guys with full screen issue. Read the forums.

 

I'd happily pay for the ultra high quality road tracks of iracing all over again to have in rfactor2

Yes please

 

Where does it say they are "dropping support"? I read the complete opposite in the Road Map.

 

nicely pointed out

 

The new UI can't come soon enough. Will be getting something that will allow for custom single player championships? Right now most of my racing time is in single player, and one-off races are fine but a small championship would be much nicer. Also how much longer until some of the other DX9 content is ported up to DX11, such as the Skip Barber, Lime Rock & some more of the ISI Ovals?

 

On the Subject of Custom Championships we really need Talent Files for Series, as I have just ranted about on RD (!) the lack of Talent files in the Radicals & Civics is just strange and IMO a poor choice. The RF2 AI was the world leader (other Sims have caught up and Kudos to them) and one of the reasons was the great Individuality set up in the Talent File - how good a start they get, how fast they are in qualifying, how prone to crashing they are etc etc. To have Series in a Championship without that Individuality is IMO quite absurd, as all you'll get is random AI each race instead of "known" fast AI at the front and the "known" backmarkers at the back.
It's like S397 are ignoring a key area in the already very good AI, now we haven't heard diddly squat about future AI improvements generally speaking (many areas needed) and I can live with that as S397 are clearly set on a path with DX11/UI/Other important areas, that's fine, but to leave out Talent files is something I'm personally dead set against and I would like to see a change of thinking from S397 in this regard please.

 

Going to create 2 posts - both likely to turn into a wall of text anyway but there are two different issues.

Part 1: Funding On-going Development

S397 opted to keep this as an existing game when they acquired rights from ISI. Whilst that gave them an instant user base, it brought with it the expectations of continued use by that base (for free) and no new seed money for initial developments.

S397 did make it fairly clear when they bought this that they were going to need to have DLC (paid new content) to fund the development. This has to cover licensing and production costs for the content, and now, also on-going development of the code/infrastructure.

At the current time, iRacing are the only company that has both an annual subscription model and a DLC model. There are two other types: pCARS and Reiza have a new game (seems to be every 2 years or so) basic license plus paid DLC; Sector3 and now S397 seem to have a content-only model. The lack of an annual subscription model means that both base code and infrastructure can't be separately funded. I know many people hate subscription fees (cost to continue to use) but in many ways this allows for infrastructure - but that is for my second post...

The question now becomes how to do DLC content. The Roadmap says we are getting one car (Macca) and implies there will be 'coherent' other content to follow it. So the big question is: are you simply paying for individual pieces of content, or will they do it more like Sector3 and now have 'series packs'? iRacing discovered that if you have an individual content model, that becomes a serious impediment to racing in a series with multiple cars - in old days, you had to own all content in order to compete. They subsequently allowed a download of all content but you cannot race with content you haven't paid for (so, compete using car A but can see and compete with car B). The downside to this is that you have to download all content; I believe Sector3, all cars and tracks already exist on your local storage, but that takes up a massive amount of space. iRacing allows you to pick and choose what you store locally. So if I buy the Macca, am I only buying the Macca or buying into the GT3 content pack? You need to have resolved this question before you start to sell,because you won't get a chance for a do-over. We need some sort of Roadmap statement on how this is going to be structured before it gets launched.

 

"Rest those F5 fingers now" oh man, finally.

As an open-wheeler I'm not very interested in the new McLaren but I'm willing to throw some money in and surely I'll buy it.
I hope we can have track pack DLC soon. Laser scanned? I would pre-order it.

 

Part 2: Competition Infrastructure

This also needs to be part of a Roadmap statement on how they see this working, and its probably even more important than the funding question. (I also accept many people use rF2 as offline and race against AI, but the big knock on this currently is the lack of structure for online competition).

I originally began my online racing career on ISI games, and found leagues with people willing to host (and who built additional software infrastructure to support it including race results, championships, anti-cheat etc, etc.). Trying to run that is a lot of effort and time. iRacing are the only company right now that fully hosts both public official series and hosted. Basically, there is nothing to manage and pay for (servers etc.) by users. Leagues can be formed, championships and races organized entirely within a UI, all the server stuff then 'just happens'. For me, this was the defining reason to stop using rF and move to iRacing (though it began with public series and I still think that is a much better method than closed-participation leagues). iRacing also offered a way of matchmaking racers of similar skill (though even with their userbase, races often don't split so the matchmaking never gets a chance to work). Many detest both the iRating and Safety Rating but they are critical to getting good, fair competition. When iRacing run week 13 series without IR/SR, they turn into the cesspit of other public online racing. I never take part in those. There needs to be a mechanism in place where serious racers can learn online racing etiquette and skills, and for keeping out 'wreckers'.

It sounds like S397 are proposing a hybrid model. They may host some competitions, or they may have the community host some. The community still have to do a lot of work to build hosted environments; the dedicated server allows a basic race but not much else. No tools exist for this to my knowledge and without them, I don't see that approach working on a large scale. S397 can self-host, but they understand there are huge infrastructure costs to do so. See Part 1 - how do you fund that. I think they are basically admitting they can't or won't fund it, and that this hybrid model is all they can really do. But without thinking about how to do it in great depth, it'll run the risk of not being fundamentally any different than the technical environment we have now, which isn't working. Funded esports like WFG or other such competitions (like Sector3 occasionally run, and I think we'll see SMS do more of with pCARS 2) are one method, but there are very few such competitions in relation to the number of people who want regular daily or weekly racing.

How to build and infrastructure for regular daily and weekly competition? It's the big question mark.

 

Personally I think these are good times for the sim racer. We have choices and most of these titles are reasonably good. Of course they have their flaws but there is plenty of competition in the market and surely that will drive up the level of quality. I wish S397 the best.

 

It says they will maintain dx9 until new UI is ready. Doesn't it? How far ahead is UI? If in that time issues with dx11 are solved it would be fantastic. However if dx11 issues persist, some will have trouble playing rF2.

 

I don't get through here very often anymore, but this reference to talent files really caught my attention. For some reason, this morning, out of the blue, I started wondering why in the world no one has created an app to pull in talent files for drivers of the Stock Car series like was created for Nascar 2003?? Now someone mentions that two car series now, dont even have any at all! I mean, really? Just my opinion, but this doesn't seem right at all.
At first I was a little interested in an individual using a built in handler for running your own race season championship, but no talent files....whats the point! I guess we can just be happy running personal hot laps.

 

Maybe I miss that,could we try the paying cars before purchase or no ?

 

Why do you think they would scrap dx9 knowing that some users wouldn't be able to use rf2 at all,I would like to think they would fix said issues first,but your presuming they won't.
Like I said,give the new team a chance,I'm one to particularly moan,as I lke to have a good belly ache about something,but we at least have to give them a chance first