Latest Roadmap Update - March 2019

It's funny you mention the Redline GTP UI. Let me share a little story with you. It's done by the same designer that's doing the new rF2 UI.

 

Since you're a software engineer, let me give you some insights into this task:

• When designed well, UI and logic are totally separated (often using a pattern like MVC) but this was not the case here. The UI contained both state and logic in the actual UI elements, so there was a lot to analyze and untangle. Did I say a lot?
• Whilst I can somewhat agree with the statement that "UIs are easy to write" there is definitely a lot of nuance there. It's not uncommon for developers to spend most of their time on the UI, compared to whatever backend, as that is what users are exposed to every day and if you look at companies like Apple you could say they obsess over all the graphical and functional details and probably even spend up to 80% of all their time on that.

 

Hi marcel

You know me ask ask ask. Lol

Whats the chances of adding a random weather variable.? I know probably sounds easier than to do. But would add a great dimension to offline play

Dan

 

The screen shot showing the weather interface greatly disappointed me.

I hope it will be worked on later.

For example, as Dan says, the variable weather.

I hope that a maximum of things will be done for offline, by no means at the expense of online of course.

 

I don't know why everyone seems to expect a massive amount to change with the first release of this UI. It's obviously been a task just to make it functional with the competition structure they're doing, and pulling everything out into a new code structure, so maybe at first it won't be much different in functionality to now. And by the same token some of the design might suck a bit (large blank areas etc) because they're basically rearranging what's already there.

The point is the new UI is then a fresh base they can work on and add stuff to.

Unfortunately it probably also needs saying again - if it were easy, they'd do it easily. If it were able to be done quickly, they'd have done it quickly. To suggest otherwise is bringing either their competence or motivation into question.

 

I expect the enhancement of features and the addition of features.

More ergonomics and more possibilities.

The infrastructure of the competition yes, but a real improvement of the offline (by the UI, ex: offline championship, weather interface strongly improved, etc.).

If your reasoning is good, I would be more than disappointed, after 2 years of waiting and full support for S397.

I'm expecting more and more of something disappointing.

We will see.......

 

That is the Point
When you expect too much, you get disappointed for sure.
What i expect, is a new UI, nothing more and nothing less.
And i see it as a Preparation for Features that will be added or, if they exist already, expanded in the Future.
For me that are 2 different things.
One is the UI and the other is Features.

 

Maybe best look look at things this way

ISI did a fantastic job producing Rfactor2 advanced in many ways however it for ISI rf2 was reaching the end of its development life

Studio 397 comes along and starts addressing needed updates & projects forward an exciting path

Maybe we the users should be thankful & supportive , we are in very exciting times happy days

 

There is a workaround: close your eyes and click randomly for some time on weather settings section and don't look when you open you eyes.
I guess in a new UI with sharing feature you'll be able to share UI to a friend to set up random weather for you.

 

I'm a karting driver, and I have to thank studio 397 for their great work with rf2. It's really spectacular to see the difference 2 years ago. regards

 

When I get angry with the piece of software that I am working now, migrating to a SPA model from pure "old" MVC, I remember what you are doing to migrate the GUI from a desktop application to a web model (webkit or gecko + restful api?) and I start to feel better. What a nightmare!!! ROLF

 

Software Engineer here as well, and yes UI might be easy to write, specially with angular or reacts, but here the team has to deal with totally different beast.
It's not just a UI, you have to first decouple the UI components and features from a monolithic written in C++ (I guess a lot of reverse engineering need to be done as well), this task alone might take several months. Of course, a lot of refactoring is also required in the bloody C++ code.
You have to build a reliable communication between the game and new UI, deal with security and several other factors to make it fool proof.
Business applications as example usually take years to be rewritten, and it's not common to throw everything away and start from scratch cause it ends up been a big pile of mud.
Of course you know about it, you have +40 years of experience. What should make you consider that is not just about writing a UI.
Now thinking about the future, imagine how fast features could be added into the new UI using modern technology and good practices, once it's stable.

By the way, isn't iRacing, even with all their resources, taking ages to build/finish their new UI that a lot of sim racers rate it as crap?

 

I agree, the new UI will be like removing the cap from Pandora's box.. but in positive. From then there will be a wealth of possibilities and features and customization that probably will change the game forever.

 

Yep, that's why they should take their time, if UI comes in December i'm ok with it...

 

I spent the last 10+ years untangling legacy code while it was in use in billions of phones so I sympathise! ("An API? What's that?" sums up where we started from, code for a dozen entirely different subsystems written by teams in different parts of the world had grown up being allowed to fiddle with variables in other subsystems' code. It took roughly a year just to introduce APIs between the subsystems/teams.) ISTR you said that rF2's UI re-used a lot of rF1 code (that would probably have made sense at the time) so it would have seen the same, er, organic growth in functions to add a bit of functionality here, a bit of functionality there. Our already oversized functions ended up three times larger and no-one dared touch them because of the ever-present unintended result of breaking something in very complex hard real-time system.
[Apologies for getting some way off topic, though what you said has at least explained why it's taking so long so that's useful.]

Yes, UIs are easy to write but nearly impossible to get right. Apple are some way ahead of Microsoft in that. Just remember, "Don't let perfect be the enemy of good"

 

I've heard that pitch several times, every time the shiny new architecture rapidly succumbs and we start looking at a "do-over" using the latest "modern technology and good practices"

 

Let me manage your expectations. The reason we are doing this new UI is because it allows us to both improve the usability of the existing features and to add new ones. For the first release of the UI our focus is on functionally replacing everything in the old interface and adding a few features and lots of usability tweaks. The first big enhancement will be the introduction of the on-line competition system, which is a major feature that a lot of users requested (and that I'm personally looking forward to a lot).

The first version will not ship with a full off-line championship, but given the groundwork we've laid with an on-line system, that is certainly a possible next step. A few other, smaller, things such as random weather and weather linked to the real-time weather are also on that list, and many more to be honest. With the basics in place, it will allow us to move forward more quickly, but there is no magic formula, it will require hard work on our side!

 

I know nothing about making software and all improvements are welcome, but keep it simple, specially the replay functions. That was a great feature of NR2003 (and also of the GTP mod), derived from the 1998 GPL replay system. It would also be great to get some sort of NR2003 Replay Analyzer.

 

Well, at least these are not off the table...….maybe just another 2 years away

 

Thanks for these informations.

Good luck for the rest to do.