Latest Roadmap Update - January 2020

Average Joe lol just because your frustrated at Rf2 doesn't mean your an average Joe mate.

I'm fed up With tinkering at Rf2 my times of messing about with the plr file are well but over. So in due respect watch where your chucking the average Joe comment eh please..

But @Marcel Offermans as lazza said now that's a road map. Nothing wrong with marketing a game and I'm glad your doing so but that is better for social media etc
 
@Marcel Offermans

The roadmap is in my opinion the right format and the right frequency.

But I think you should give a lot more information, more precise, and on the main themes that interest your fans (not exclusively the 2 or 3 things that you want to say).

I am obviously not talking about confidential information.

Also, for information that your fans might consider important, save exceptions, prefer the roadmap or the official forum, rather than discord.
It would be preferable.

These are just wishes and advice, follow them only if you think there are good. :)

Also, giving visibility to the short, medium and long term future of rF2 and being transparent is THE key to reducing frustration, criticism and impatience.

Have a nice day.
 
Marcel Offermans said:
...looking at AI and FCY are on our shortlist, being investigated and discussed
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This really needs to be sooner rather than later, the iRacing AI is already up to par (in close racing terms) with RF2, also RaceRoom is very good offline and even ACC has decent AI now. (AMS2 released shortly but knowing Reizas record the AI will also be good, ergo yet more competition).

As a long time fan of RF2 I am concerned that there's been too much emphasis to Online Racing whilst the AI has simply been forgotten and with it stalled & fallen behind others, with a few bug fixes it'll be back to being one of the very best, but it needs much more beyond that for the future... especially an Offline Championship, something that is desperately missing but that's already been said a hundred times across this forum over the years.

Personally I've been enjoying RaceRoom recently, I've enjoyed and seen the success of ACC, iRacing adding AI is a massive bonus and with AMS2 on the horizon I am fearful that RF2 will just become another "what could've been" Sim instead of the King it always promised to be for the ultimate offline experience.

No, you can't do everything all at once and that's too be expected, but IMO a better use of resources to fix aging bugs/issues should've been higher up the Priority List.
Alas hindsight is a wonderful thing, I'll keep my fingers crossed for RF2 as I'll always love it, but 2020 really needs to be the year you push the Game forward - otherwise i fear it may be too late.
 
Hi @Marcel Offermans thanks for replying on the forum, it's nice to know you're listening. A small request is that maybe you, or one (or more) members of the team, monitors the forum a bit more closely and becomes more involved in discussion here. rF2 has a great community and it would be nice to see the devs more involved and active here. Obviously you guys deserved a break after the UI release, but there's been little to no activity since, and the forum has turned into a negative echo chamber and is pretty much out of control at the moment.


I'd like to offer some constructive points to your comments above...

Marcel Offermans said:
For cars we are now roughly working our way backwards through our content portfolio. The latest we did was the Nissan GT500. Next up are our historic McLaren cars. Internally we've talked about doing the Radical after that.
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Saying things like 'roughly working', and stating that you have plans for the McLarens and that you've 'talked about' the Radical does not fill me with confidence. I'd like to see a much longer and more organsied plan - 1. Here is a list of all Studio397 cars. 2. This is the order that we will update them. 3. This is where we are and what percentage of cars is updated. 4. Most importantly - Be transparent and let the community know.

Also, if you're unable to update older cars, please unlock the files so that the community can 'unofficially' update them. Seeing things like the Howstons all now encrypted is not very encouraging for modders old and new who are looking for examples. Also the older cars could be unofficially updated by the community taking some of the weight off of S397.


Marcel Offermans said:
For tracks we are holding off on updates for a bit longer. This has, I think, a good reason, which is that we're still working on a global lighting review ....Once that is done, we are confident we can go back and adjust the tracks.
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How much longer? I agree with this to a certain extent, but actually all tracks should at least be up to standard no matter what the background developments. You can't have a portfolio of some tracks which are better than others with the vast majority in a half finished state. Again, there should be a list of ALL S397 tracks, with an indication of where the track is in regard to development, and a full list of order in which they'll be updated. And again, most importantly - be transparent and let the community know details.

And again, consider if the community can help with older content, unofficially.


Marcel Offermans said:
Daily races are at the top of our agenda for the competition system. Beyond the fact that we're working on it (and privately testing certain aspects) there is not that much to say. That is why I decided not to mention it this month and start by announcing some of the other things we're planning (big events, our GT3 competition, which btw is not an endurance event).
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The competition is vitally important no doubt. But I'm left scratching my head as to why so much so my attention is spent on eSports competitions which probably appeals to 5% of your userbase, with the other 95% of the userbase feeling left out. By all means advertise and promote the eSports competitions, but I suggest maybe having a a separate 'eSports/Competition Roadmap', and keep the 'Development Roadmap' for things that are purely development, technical features, physics etc. Personally for me, in the 95%, I'm not that interested in eSports and get depressed when half of the roadmap is taken up by it. What I'd like to read more about is technical advancements and development, maybe the Development Roadmap could include a few more technical details for nerds like myself.

Marcel Offermans said:
This month our focus is on addressing feedback we got from the initial release of the new UI (and fixing the join lag). Looking at AI and FCY are on our shortlist, being investigated and discussed.
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It might be an idea to publish a quick list of the main areas of feedback that you'll be looking at, the major bugs, and obvious areas of improvement you'll be working on. Again all about transparency, so that users don't feel like they're out in the cold.

Marcel Offermans said:
We are reading along. I don't mind people venting their frustration and everybody's feedback is taken in and helps us set priorities for short and long term goals.
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It's nice to hear this, and encouraging to everyone here I'm sure as it's been a long time since we've had any official posts from the devs here on the forum.


Please take my above comments as constructive. I'm really just trying to address the underlying feeling here on the forum and within the wider community regarding rF2 at the moment. All of which could be improved with a just little more communication and involvement.

Finally, keep up the good work! Everyone here is behind the team and wants rFactor 2 to succeed and to be where it truly belongs, even if they have lost faith recently.
 
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@Marcel Offermans Thank you very much for the reply. I think it is clear that this is the stuff that people want to get informed about in a roadmap. Ofcourse I don't know the ins and outs of your whole project planning but I wouldn't push the implementation and maintanance of such features too far into the future. Updaing the McLarens would go hand in hand with updating the March and the Brabham, as that content is used in combination. I guess you want to release the comp infrastructure with a nice selection of polished content and offer a solid experience. From the people who I have worked with and what I gathered from people working in the gaming industry, standardization of content has allways been one of the most important key aspects. And reading the comments here and on RD - ofcourse allways with a grain of salt - the impression of rF2 being a mess is deeply rooted in the lack of standardization. I still remember how you implemented DX11 with all the rain features, how you responded to feedback and how the content was brought up to scratch, atleast most of it in a timely fashion. So I know that you can do it.

Please keep up at it. ;)
 
Traction control bug is really annoying, needs a fix ASAP. There is a bug with the new Audi, at certain tracks like Imola theres a weird moving refelction of the track surface on the inside of the roof, v offputting whilst driving. Reiza pack cars have some AI issues, MCR's dont use full revs on start grid, always beat them off the line, and seems little variance with MCRs at Ibarra (not sure if this is track or car related though, but with a field of 16 theres less than a seconds difference between fastest to slowest. Also The AI loose no cornering ability if they loose a wing, this is just not on, yes they will pit for it but if you have a crash with them, you both loose wings, you have to limp back to the pits whilst they blast off cornering with zero problems. Apart from that, I had a great night racing AI on this sim last night!
 
LokiD said:
I'm fed up With tinkering at Rf2 my times of messing about with the plr file are well but over. So in due respect watch where your chucking the average Joe comment eh please..
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You shouldn't need to mess around with plr files. Obviously there are issues with AI etc., but on top of my head I can't think of a single plr setting that I would recommend for every new user to configure. I also see threads where people recommend to edit plr settings that no longer have any effect, many of the settings date years back to rF1 times. I found that messing with the plr file is a waste of time unless you know exactly what you are looking for.
 
stonec said:
You shouldn't need to mess around with plr files. Obviously there are issues with AI etc., but on top of my head I can't think of a single plr setting that I would recommend for every new user to configure. I also see threads where people recommend to edit plr settings that no longer have any effect, many of the settings date years back to rF1 times. I found that messing with the plr file is a waste of time unless you know exactly what you are looking for.
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Yes I dont tinker with it anymore. But I used to back in the isi days to adjust ai etc or certain settings. Now I can't be bothered.
 
Hello community, hello admins,
my league is racing the gt3 content in 90 min races. we had a full distance testrace on sunday with the new bop and im simply asking, how can you say your testdrivers tested all cars for qualy and race pace with full fuel and not seeing that some cars just eat tires like crazy compared to others? to be fair qualy was very close and im fine with that but i mean the bmw for e.g. uses half the tires than we did in the porsche. and im not a beginner, i know how to drive and not overdrive these cars, also have a pretty good idea about setups...but if you burn through your tires twice as fast as the bmw, how can you possibly say that they are even in race pace on fuel? same thing goes for the audi and the corvette, which also have significant amount of tire wear on fuel. and there wasnt even an aston martin in the race...probably still better than most cars...

To be clear here, i love rfactor2, i love the content and im very pleased with the work you guys put in, but this is hopeless to go for something else that the bmw or the aston or maybe the audi for long races...i can pretty much see where this season of mine is going in the porsche...
 
Jan Wenninger said:
Hello community, hello admins,
my league is racing the gt3 content in 90 min races. we had a full distance testrace on sunday with the new bop and im simply asking, how can you say your testdrivers tested all cars for qualy and race pace with full fuel and not seeing that some cars just eat tires like crazy compared to others? to be fair qualy was very close and im fine with that but i mean the bmw for e.g. uses half the tires than we did in the porsche. and im not a beginner, i know how to drive and not overdrive these cars, also have a pretty good idea about setups...but if you burn through your tires twice as fast as the bmw, how can you possibly say that they are even in race pace on fuel? same thing goes for the audi and the corvette, which also have significant amount of tire wear on fuel. and there wasnt even an aston martin in the race...probably still better than most cars...

To be clear here, i love rfactor2, i love the content and im very pleased with the work you guys put in, but this is hopeless to go for something else that the bmw or the aston or maybe the audi for long races...i can pretty much see where this season of mine is going in the porsche...
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Perhaps this would have been better posted in the GT3 BoP thread here: https://forum.studio-397.com/index.php?threads/bop-gt3-2020-balance-of-performance.65189/
 
Really great to hear FCY issues are on a short list. I do hope that it is not just ovals part, but SC phase/rolling start on road courses. rF2 is the only sim with VR support that has SC implementation, and I really would like to see this aspect to be polished. For online, it would be nice to have human drivable SC, but really hope to see offline SC working correctly as well.

Actually, for road courses there are 2 main issues:
* SC phase never terminates, or terminates few laps after SC left. Same issue with Rolling start lap, it sometimes does not go green after SC leaves.
* Under SC phase, AI cars begin to race and do not hold assigned order. It might be that they are given instruction to take lap back, but it happens way too often, so I am not sure that is the case. Maybe, instruction to let guy behind pass would be helpful if he is indeed allowed to take lap back?
 
Look at the acc new dlc content on steam, formr our country has great price, all package is 25-tl ( less than 5 usd) while only rf2 lemans cost 65-tl (more than 12 usd)
And the dlc is on now no2 on top selling game on steam right now, rf2 devs should take some notes from it, both about pricing a content and polishing game fastly.
Forget about that competition thing, focus on core gameplay things s397.
 
I'll tell you how I see it. Only my 2 cents, no more no less. RF2 is currently the measure of all things realism and physics. Unfortunately the support leaves a lot to be desired. You have to be a lover and enthusiast to love rF2. I do it despite the fact that much of S397 is always ignored. Ok the focus is on the UI and the Competition System. Is OK for me. But what is not ok is that the paid DLCs simply cannot be completed. IT'S FRUSTRATING! In spite of that, I bought every content. Why? because it is almost unmatched in quality (apart from the shortcomings). With this philosophy, S397 clearly stands in its own way. Please S397 change that. Give your content the finish it deserves. Because actually you could be the masters in the Sim area .
 
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