Latest Roadmap Update - February 2018!!!

The same folks complaining about lack of development are complaining about dlc,in this day and age,you can’t have one without the other,when it comes to a small development team.

Hell the big teams do it and their budgets probably dwarf s397s,people really need to stop being so narrow minded and see this is a business venture,not just some game for you to play

We don’t know s397s budget for rf2,but it’s a safe bet to enable dlc along with purchase price to further fund development,otherwise it would stagnate just like it did under isi,is that what folks want so they don’t have to pay 15 bucks for some new content.

And no this can’t be compared to iracing,you aren’t renting anything,if the doors shut on rf2,you still have everything you bought on your hardrive,if the doors shut at iracing,you can’t use a damn thing.

Also @SPASKIS
The reason why nothing but dx11 has been released is probably because they are working on features that need the core of rf2 to be reworked,so all those features you quoted are intrinsically linked to one another

Let’s not kid ourselves here,s397 have a massive undertaking here,it won’t happen altogether at the same time in the first year or two

Development goals are on a multi year basis,not month by month so let’s judge it the same,on a year to year basis,and for me the first year of s397 has been a success for rf2

People really need to realise that if s397 is make a proper go of their rf2 venture,they have to work on the mundaine boring and behind the scenes stuff first,adding content,which is the easy part,along the way to further fund development is a good move

 

project cars sack 1 and 2, and they are more of the same, with some new animations and graphic effects, but it makes you pay for a new game, with the same code

who does not want to be in rfactor 2, is free to leave, no one forces him to buy dlc, there is a lot of free content, which I doubt there is in iracing or proyect cars

good trip friend, good luck

good roadmap

 

Nice!!! My favorite track being laser scanned, GTE/GTLM pack incoming, LMP3 cars being developed, new compwtition system being developed...

This is probably the best roadmap ever released in this forum!

 

Suzukinol is blackgoku, the banned kid months ago

 

An enjoyable roadmap.

Performance: there's not a man/woman amongst us for whom performance is not an issue. We spend generally a huge amount of time trying to tweak the parameters at our disposal to get the best compromise of smooth fps and image quality that we are able. Any gains here are very welcome, but you need to make sure this doesn't become overly complex based on the 'class' of GPU users have, sensible defaults should be made rather than making everyone click every option.

Content: I guess I'm OK with the GTE, and that the car will be part of some sort of pack. Not sure if I'll bite on that, if it doesn't include the major brands (Ferrari/Porsche). The LMP3 on the other hand is a car many will enjoy; I'll probably get that. Hopefully the new single seaters are still on their way along with further FE developments. I also like the idea of the KartSim content, that can provide a really good starter set for online competition before progressing to the single seaters and maybe touring cars/sportscars. I think that is unique content and thus a great gateway to all forms of online racing. Again, not sure I'll buy this. But good progress rate on this, and the revenue from DLC is needed to fund all other developments so I'm OK with it.

As regards Sebring being the laser scanned track, I'm a bit torn on this one. We already have a great mod track from VLM here, so I don't feel the need for a replacement. As a track choice, it matches up to the strengths of rF2 which is endurance racing (leveraging large mixed fields, day/night, weather, driver swap etc.) but its really rather restricted to that. I believe there are other better, high participation tracks that should be prioritized; for Europe, this is Spa, Monza and probably Barcelona; for US, this is Watkins Glen and Road America. But, Sebring does have the advantage of being extremely complex/detailed (old, lots of bumps, lots of surface changes) so it'll prove out their technology for converting a point cloud to 'representative' polygons/race surface. But: tell the damn scan team to get out of the way of the lasers! I hope we won't get 'ghosts' on the front straight

UI/Competition: Like everyone else I am keen on how this shakes out, but I'm now less confident than I had been. Roadmap is a bit more worrying that things may still be in the conceptualizing and design stage than the build stage for competition, seems to be way further behind getting realized than what I'd thought. Perhaps if this is in fact the case you can find some way to decouple these - I know its been said these are interdependent, but maybe a step back is warranted?

 

A lot of great info in the latest roadmap. I am stoked to get a laser scanned (And likely optimized) version of Sebring. Our league uses it as the final track in every series and since the DX11 update the performance of the VLM version has been very taxing on the systems of our drivers. Too bad it wont be out before the final race of our current GT3 series.

Speaking of performance issues; I am really hoping the performance/optimization update comes very soon. I don't know if any of the other League Admins out there have been experiencing issues, but we have been losing drivers due to poor performance of rF2 on modern hardware. It could be the choice of tracks in the last couple of weeks (Istanbul, and Abu Dhabi) but also there is a more general performance problem that other games (AMS, AC, PC2) don't suffer from. We are losing drivers to those games simply because they perform well. Everyone who has moved over has said they prefer rF2 but the poor performance is spoiling the experience. BTW, some of the drivers are long time members of the league who are simply fed up with the problems. One actually called rF2 a "constant science experiment."

In any case, all the news on the Roadmap has gotten me hyped again. We just need to get that performance update ASAP. The rest of it I can patiently wait for until it is ready.

And for what it's worth, I think the DLC model of revenue building is the way to go in the Sim Racing world. The developer must build compelling, high quality content and then the end user gets to decide if they wish to make the purchase. It is a win win. Assetto Corsa did this very effectively. I purchased almost none of their DLC because it contained no compelling content I wanted. But that was my choice.

Keep up the good work S397. I'll be here waiting for the next update.

 

When was Sebring scanned? If this is the same data iRacing used, the pitwall towards T1 has since moved, some differences in T17 as well.

 

S397 said they actually did the scan themselves.

 

Since someone started the DLC argument once again, lets look at the facts.

The diversity of content created by ISI for rF2 was immense. If we just look at sportscars, we had GT500, GT1, GT2, GT3 and GT4. But, only one example of each. Single seaters we had Skippy, F2, FR3.5, Marussia F1 and DW12 (and added USF2000 as well). But frankly, its this diversity that has caused fragmentation of the community and lack of online racing. Cars age, tracks generally do not. Adding up-to-date versions of the most popular classes (GT3, GTE) and additional depth in each class, far from adding to fragmentation, should reduce it. What's needed right now is to build popularity and 'volume' of racers and the DLC so far proposed/built should help that, for online. If you are only interested in offline, fragmentation isn't an issue.

As for competition, you've got iRacing with a subscription+content model, R3E with a zero cost base/all content model, PC2 with a low cost base/very limited DLC model, and then AC, rF2 and AMS somewhere in the middle. R3E has 30+ DLC tracks; PC2 comes with 34 road tracks in the base package, which is a massive set of content. AC has about 12 tracks only, and half of those are Italian club circuits. PC2 also comes with a massive set of cars. It's not really possible for S397 to emulate that, because they don't have the console volume to cover it. So, they've got very little choice but to go a similar path to Sector3. A very low 'starter cost' so people aren't discouraged from trying it out, but then a 'decide-how-far-you-want-to-go' model for those keen enough to commit. R3E has virtually no base content, and I think that actually discourages people from trying it; arguably they should pick one class and include that (say, DTM) a bit like how AMS included the Brazillian stock cars, as a focal point.

 

If only dlc was 70´s, 80´s and 90´s F1 era, i wouldn´t complain. But is always about series i dont give a damn.
I think my problem with dlc is about this "new" way of selling games. I always has a feeling that a buy something incomplete when companies release a new dlc (even if i dont care about was released) instead of thinking in building the game as my personal taste.
But, probably , dlc are made to sell. And what sells most, doesn´t seems to please people with my taste. And there is licensing problem too, i think, with F1 old sponsors and stuff.
So, whats left? Mods. A modable platform like rf2 is mandatory for me and thats why i already didn´t like ACC beside all cool stuff they are implementing (wheather transitions, dynamic track conditions, day/night cycle)
edit: modern f1 also is a must have but it is a codemaster thing, so I still depend on the work of some passionate modder

 

It looks like freedom of expression is not respected in this forum because some people get their messages deleted while other people say things like "begging mum and dad to get a new pc doesn’t like his chances of bugging the folks for more money to buy DLC" and nothing happens. This is the last time I visit this forum or share mods for rFactor 2 community. Good luck with your product, which is the only thing I will enjoy from all this movement because I paid for it.

 

Happy to read the performance tweaks are resulting good, IMO it's the main area you S397 guys need to focus. Good reading in general, I only didn't get too excited about C7R because we already have an excellent free version of this car from URD, so the energy could be better applied.

Edit-> About paid DLC crying, I spend 2x more money in a single amateur kart racing day than full license + all DLCs rF2 which I can enjoy until I'm old enough to use a walking stick, so I can understand why there're so many complaints about cheap 10 euros DLCs. I just argue about the developers choices, but the price, came on.

 

Any personal insults in here, we're just going to delete the post.

 

It might surprise you, but that's not how software development works. It's not a sequential path that they are following. You can picture development as some form of tree chart with lots of paths being worked on at the same time.

 

i m not gonna ask for fps improvement cause they said they gonna fix it

 

So when they said that the UI was under testing after summer they were joking I guess. Come on, stop giving lessons of how project management goes in software. When you put limited resources in one place you don't advance in the other.

 

So what if they said that,you’d be the first to complain if they released it riddled with bugs,damned if they do and damned if they don’t.

They have said they have found issues that need further resolving,what more do you expect

 

Lol, I would.
I was thinking the second screenshot of Sebring is an ironic choice - a corner that's no longer part of the main layout!

 

Since URD is working for them (some cars are from them) if S397 licensed all their cars to be released as DLC sounds good to me!
Would be great if S397 could have a full IMSA license to be honest...IMSA endurance races and Porsche GT3 championship...
I will buy it even for 40Eur...