Q&A with Paul Jeffrey the Community Manager from S397 about the new GT3 Tire & BOP update! Greetings my dear SimRacing and Motorsport fans. Two worlds that are now firmly rooted together. Today I have Paul Jeffrey on the mic, the community manager of S397, as well as commentator of TCR Europe and various E-sport SimRacing events and former Editor Chef at RaceDepartment. The man knows what he is talking about. After all, that's what he does for a living. Q:1 Paul, I know you are a busy man, so let's get right to it. The long-awaited tire update for GT3, after GTE where the feedback is very positive, is finally here. Tell us about it, please. What do we really need to know about it? How long was the development? How satisfied are you with your results? Paul: Hello, thanks for having me as a guest! Well, I suppose it would be fair to say this update is one that a lot of rFactor 2 fans have been looking forward to for a long time. The GT3 cars were pretty much one of the first pieces of content we licenced for rFactor 2 after Studio 397 took over development of the simulation, and because of that, these cars obviously hold a pretty special place in our hearts. That said, the simulation itself has been under heavy development since those days, and a lot of the content we’ve released in recent months has access to a considerable number of advancements that just wasn’t available at the time of our initial GT3 content development. Of course, the GT3 specification of cars remain hugely popular in sim racing, you just need to join an open lobby in pretty much any sim to see that for yourself, and this remains true of rF2 as well, even though we’ve had these cars out for quite a while. With all that said, we’ve long had a desire to bring about some much needed changes to these cars, but as I’m sure you can imagine, with 14 different cars to deal with, it’s always going to be a massive time commitment from the studio to effectively apply the new technology to the cars, and the balance of performance work needed to get them all working properly across a wide range of different tracks. Towards the end of last year, we decided this is something we wanted to get into place early in 2023 so we could really start seeing the benefits of our new physics developments. Already, we managed to upgrade the similar GTE cars within the title and this proved to be a hugely popular move within the community, so we knew right from the very beginning that any advancements we make with our GT3 cars would be eagerly awaited by the fans. I suppose the real heavy lifting work took place over the holiday period and into January this year, especially reworking our new tyre understanding to behave in a realistic fashion with GT3 style cars – a very similar sort of characteristic that we introduced with the aforementioned GTE update last year. When doing this sort of development, like most things in a simulation like rFactor 2, the key is to progressively work through each aspect of the changes, test heavily, change and tweak and test some more – especially when we are doing this across all 14 vehicles at the same time. One of the biggest challenges however is the Balance of Performance, or BOP as it’s more commonly known. Here, we’ve worked with a dedicated group of testers across different scenarios to ensure the cars are evenly matched, not just over single lap pace, but during a competitive race stint. This is such a time consuming piece of work, so massive congratulations to everyone involved in making that happen, however, we fully expect that more work will need to be done to refine the BOP post release, especially when a much wider range of drivers have the opportunity to put these cars through their paces, so we’ve tentatively decided to call this BOP a ‘Phase One’, with the next phase to be released during our Q1 2023 update on February 21st. Q2: I had the pleasure of pre-testing the GT3s. They are a dream to drive with the new tire. I feel and hear the limits of the tire when braking, when the ABS takes hold, when turning into the corner entry, when the traction limit is exceeded, the sensitivity with which the tire works on the asphalt, how the tire says to me, treat me with respect. Respect my limits. How the grip slowly builds up from the third lap onwards and when exactly the grip breaks down. It's sensational how quickly I was able to perform with this new tire. I can only describe it from a driver's point of view, I guess with all the resources available, technically you guys are clearly the closest, in terms of the open market, to simulating a race tire. Do you have any feedback from real GT3 pros in this regard? Paul: Well, truth be told it is often quite difficult to correlate real world driver feedback to a racing simulation, I think I’ve heard many different development studios say the same sort of thing in the past with their own products, and here at Studio 397 we have the same sorts of issues. We do of course value real world driver feedback, in fact we have a perfect example of that with Porsche Carerra Cup Germany driver and World’s Fastest Gamer, Rudy van Buren helping us out, but with Rudy that is quite a special case, as he’s an accomplished sim racer as well as real world driver, so he finds it much easier to articulate his experiences and feelings in a way that our development team find useful when building the physics of our various cars. We are lucky at Studio 397 in that our physics engine in rFactor 2 is an exceptionally powerful tool capable of undertaking any number of complex physics calculations – this allows us to be heavily data driven in our development of physics features, imputing real world figures into the engine and more often that not getting a very proximate to reality end result in the simulation itself, and this has again been the case with these new updates that form the GT3 release. Already we had the benefit of significant learnings from the GTE developments, so it was mostly a case of using that knowledge and applying it to the GT3 cars, then getting out on track and refining the details to make sure everything matches up with our data and works out as expected in real terms. Q3: Away from the GT3 update, the Q1 pack is already outperforming 2022 from you. You guys are inhuman from your performance. Hybrid for BTCC, Motion Blur & Cinematic Photo Settings in replay mode, New Package Management System, Race against unowned content online. Plus new content you haven't announced yet. Paul, honestly, before you tell us about all the listed items, are you guys still sleeping? Paul: Sleep is something we’ve heard people talk about before, but I’m not sure we’ve actually discovered what it means yet! Jokes aside, I must say right now that the work the team at Studio 397 have been producing is just incredibly impressive. Anyone who knows me from my other adventures will know I’m very much a sim racer first and foremost, so these last three years where I’ve been privileged enough to work behind the scenes here at rFactor 2 have been a real eye opener to see just how hard this team works, and how committed they all are to the software. It always sounds so very cliché and a little bit tacky to say this, but honestly it’s perfectly true, the team here at Studio 397 work from a place of deep rooted passion for the title, and for motorsport and sim racing in general, and I think that really does shine through in the work we produce. I mean, I’m not going to get into exact figures here, but I can firmly say that the whole of S397 are just a fraction of the size of many other development teams, and everyone inside the studio has to pull double duty on various tasks just to get everything done, so considering the resources we have available to us, it blows my mind to see what we are able to achieve. Does that mean we are satisfied? Absolutely not! We would love to be able to do more, and do it quicker, but the reality of the situation means it is just not possible to tick off every box all at once. One thing I will say though, is we hear the community, we know where the things are we need to add / change / improve, and we are working hard, and working diligently towards getting as much of that done as we can. Q4: Is there something on your mind that you would like to share with the community? Paul: Wow, where to start lol! I think a lot of what I have said above covers off a good portion of the news side of things, I suppose the only thing I really want to say further in this interview is a massive thank you to all our community, new and old, for staying with rFactor 2 and Studio 397 through all these interesting and exciting developments. It often humbles me to see the level of passion from our community, even if sometimes that can lead to frustration, but as a sim racer myself, I can easily feel much of how the community themselves feel, and we love to see that dedication, commitment and desire from everyone to see rF2 realise the potential we all know it has. I think the last couple of years have been great for rFactor 2 and Studio 397 in many ways, with the odd hiccup in between, and I’m certainly excited for what the future holds for the studio. I know that this year we’ve got some pretty major things to talk about, so I’m sure if you’ve been around the community, or are new to it all recently, 2023 is going to be one to remember. To long, didn’t read? Thanks to you all for your support, let’s keep pushing! Q5: Thank you for your time, stay as you are, and greetings to the team from us. Paul: Thank you man and thank you to your and your audience for the opportunity to have a chat today and for your continued support. By the time everyone sees this interview, the GT3 cars should be out, so hope you all have a great time with them, and see you on the Q1 2023 update day on February 21st!! I thank Paul for his time and you for reading this Q&A with interest. I would be happy about a positive feedback, because then the S397 officials would certainly get involved more often in something like this, despite their rare time. Don't forget to check out my Youtube channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCl2_eZ7nQZIXHqvOZcE4-OQ Besides top times, there is also free setup for you, with which you can certainly improve your times.
