2024 Release Candidate - will there be one?

2024 Release Candidate - will there be one?
Obviously small dev team focusing on Leman Ultimate - fingers crossed we may see some "new or improved" functionality added in due course.

 

Release candidate? Think the title is confusing. You mean regular patches that rF2 has received for the last 10 years? There is no indication that wouldn't continue once the bulk of workload from Le Mans Ultimate is complete. I expect we could receive a Q2 update around May and then hopefully get back to the quarterly feature and update schedule.

 

rF2 is at Sirens island now.

 

Regular patches for the last 10 years is a bit of a stretch but to be fair since MSG acquired S397 there has been regular progress over the past couple of years. Here’s hoping for some Q2 love.

 

... and nearly every update in the last x years has been a release candidate prior to becoming the main build.

I don't share your optimism. With LMU being early access this month, it seems possible we could get through most or even all of 2024 without any rF2 updates. Perhaps more likely a small bugfix or feature added thanks to LMU development, with more substantial (and numerous) updates at the bottom of the likelihoods list.

 

I think what @Lazza states, makes sense. With the LMU planned full release moving from december to february and transforming into an early access version, it seems likely that the team at Studio 397 will continue to work on the title. No new release date for the finished product has been mentioned, but if I may take an educated guess, I would not be surprised if they will take the rest of 2024 and aim for a full release at the end of the year. Meanwhile the content team will certainly have to work on the 2024 season content, and possibly a few other DLC packs for LMU to ensure people keep playing the title. That will take us well into 2025 and by that time it's probably too late to restart development on rF2. It's probably a better time to start work on rF3. Or start porting LMU to consoles.

 

Too late for what exactly? rF2 development has been glacially slow during its whole existence. We waited four(?) years to get a new UI and a working competition system and finally that's now functioning in some form.

The online player count is at steady 500 average or however this is calculated here since well, forever. Nothing has changed. If they plan on making a new sim they somehow need to move the existing player base and convince them to re-buy all DLC's again. I just don't see the point in making new major version products of sims with this DLC sale concept unless you plan on making something completely different.

I'd be very surprised if LMU can manage a steady 500 player average for even a year, but I'd be happy to get proved wrong. Consoles have more potential but even there an endurance title sounds like a very niche category.

 

I guess it all depends how fast they can ship further content and establish a full release with fully working features. Now that you mentioned it I took a look at the development of the playernumbers for ACC because it's a similar focused endurance title and that game had around 300 players average for over a year. One of it's biggest obstacles was the lack of track content so it's something that S397 should have on the radar. And with the 2024 season adding four new tracks it's easy to guess wich DLC will be released first. Also makes sense as you could ship a full fleet of GT3 cars and use them to boost the MP system. And I am pretty sure that people wouldn't want to wait too long to get their hands on the new Hypercars in WEC with the MBW, Lambo and Isotta and Alpine. If they do it right they have a very good platform to work with. ACC showed that you can grow such a title nicely.

 

All the eggs are in the LMU basket. Perhaps partly because the MSG drama means S397 were forced to do it that way, but it is what it is now. I personally doubt we will ever see new rF2 content again.

 

I'm looking at this mainly from a technical perspective. Let me explain...

Based on the initial announcement for LMU, where they anticipated a Q4 2023 release, my guess is that development started roughly at the start of Q1 2023, assuming they would estimate that building a new game on top of the rF2 platform would take at least a year. So at that point they forked the codebase and started work on the new title. Because they no longer had to support modding or any of the existing content, this allowed them to make changes to the codebase that break compatibility.

Fast forward to 2025 and you have a codebase that has drifted away from rF2 for well over two years. At that point even "cherry picking" bugfixes, let alone back-porting major features is going to be a challenging task and you can be sure that some of the more interesting changes can't easily be brought into rF2 anyway because it would again break compatibility.

Assuming LMU does well enough to support the current team, which is basically back to the original size of Studio 397 before the acquisition, would you then bet on the fact that resuming with rF2 is the best way to build a sustainable company, when early 2023 you clearly decided it was better to stop working on rF2 and focus on LMU? To me that just does not sound logical.

Granted, building rF3 might not be the most sensible thing to do either. I am following the developments at Kunos with interest as they are going to attempt this first (AC -> ACC -> AC2 is in some ways similar to rF2 -> LMU -> rF3) so you could say it's a great test case for other developers to watch. I don't expect AC2 to support modding. This will be another test. Is the community going to jump onto AC2 in the same way, even without it? We live in interesting times!

 

It has been debated to death the fact that changing the product title from 2 to 3 would end all active licenses for all the content, so the only thing quite sure (to me), is that Rfactor won't change number anytime soon. I don't understand this doomsday attitude. RF2 has been in a poor state / half baked product for YEARS and YEARS, and actually nobody complained. Now, that the game is playable , lemmings jump the cliff.. why? RF2 has never been so good.

 

Building a sustainable company with licensing limitations and costs over a niche market like simracing, where users are willing to spend thousands on hardware but they want the software and content for almost free is very hard already. Putting out a new title doesn't solve any of these problems, in fact, they become worse.

They stopped working on rF2 because MSG had to deliver on the license requirements and had no better team to do it. I guess they decided it was better to put rF2 on hold than giving up the license or hiring another team that might be not up to the task (already happened). They left rF2 in a very good state anyway. The multiplayer area is where they could put a bit more work on, but since RC will be shared between rF2 and LMU, I think this means rF2 development won't be stopped for a year.

rF3 might mean further evolving what they do in LMU, but it would also mean leaving behind a lot of content, licenses, users and probably features that would be put again on hold for the future. It would have to be a substantially different title, because only loosing legacy for better graphics or other gaming touches might kill the studio.

But producing a new title from rF2 with handling adapted to consoles and maybe a bit more arcadey, with RC behind, could be a success and would help financially. I think S397 needs both products to grow its user base. LMU isn't enough, it's tied to a license and controlled by the licensee.

Backporting a graphics engine isn't that hard when developers know what they're doing. I don't think they've rewritten the physics engine and any fixes to it can be backported. Legacy content can be dealt with by deprecating features and later removing them. There are less risky ways to move forward than throwing everything away for the promise of the new. Specially reasonable in the case of rF2 with its state-of-the-art physics engine. It's not the same case than AC/AC2.

 

I remind you that there is still something very important missing, which is to launch the career leader

 

I hope LMU doesn't kill RF2.

Development seems to be at full stop, we'll have to live with current bugs and limitations
But looking at the bright side... at least no new bugs will be coming for a long time.

 

My prediction would be: they will do updates to rF2 to keep the platform for Race Control consistent with LMU, primarily. In terms of new features, for the core sim, I would expect only minimal transfer of some subsystems they may update for LMU. For instance, if they came up with something new/different for use of controllers, they felt was worth backporting. I don't see them adding the new hybrid capabilities they will add for LMH/LMDh cars, because I don't expect to see that content in rF2.

As regards content, since they have now lost BTCC and IndyCar, the only one that remains is Formula E, so we might get to see a next Gen car when that approaches. But even that, they'd have to determine whether it makes sense from ROI to pull people off doing new work for LMU (e.g. historical content packs) and I don't see it. I think the best we could hope for would be some other historical content like we had for the Mini or one-offs like a Radical or Caterham. I don't see new GT3s, that needs to be done for LMU first. I just don't see anything worth doing.

Track team? Well, they have a lot to add for 2024 WEC season. Qatar, Imola, Sao Paulo and COTA got added. So, they'll be busy too.

I think Marcel is right that they will be tied up for at least a year with LMU stuff. So, best to just enjoy what we have.

 

Even if the worse comes to worse the modding community will keep RF2 alive for a good few years, I already have enough content to last a lifetime...

 

Look what they did for Historic Belgium and Italy.
They all deserve medals.

Start a rF2 Co-Op.
Yearly mermbership among other things gives you a vote for next Co-Op commissioned content which is released free to "members"

 

So a "Patreon" type of system?
What would the subscription amount be set at?
And would there be any commitment from the modders to create new content?
It's difficult to work a subscription service as the early members will be paying for the initial set of mods so won't see anything for a while. The later joiners will, on theory, get all the initial mods that the early members have paid for without paying for them.

 

Do they have a code of conduct, standards and ethics.
This is foundation principles of any organization.
International body overseen by studios, modders and painters set the rules.
You either co-op approved or your not.
All hobbies have international bodies.
Modding would only be a part of it.

 

A word from the devs on this would be nice! I've invested more money in this sim than any other, infact more than any other program i've ever owned! I have to say I am not happy with this silence, I've still got two cars (one payed for) That do not have working gearbox's (Caterham & Mini). I was looking forward to having these fixed (even though they should'nt need to be, they should have been released with properly working H Patern gearbox'es. If MSG have forced S397 to quit on RF2, I'llb be severly upset!