Release Date - Date 2011?

I'de rather see people whining about a product not beeing released yet because the developer is not entirely happy with it, then the constant flooding of un-finished games we have seen in the past, oh say 20 years. (and the endless whining from their clients)

We are lucky ISI doesnt have a big publisher behind them whom is saying, 'this is the date, it will get released, finished or not, people pay for it and when they discover its not finished its too late for them because we will allready be on the bahama's with their money ahahaha'

I will much rather wait for a good release then wait for a developer to fix their crap and beeing so slow at it that people lose interest innit all together.

 

Denstjiro, your are right.
Excepting that you forgot that no one product is ever finished and always has issues which gives reasons to whining.
Dev may chose to infinitely improve the product trying to make it perfect. But there is a risk to end-up with outdated product line.

 

When is anything ever realy finished?
You are right about that but i'm quite positive that the guys at ISI are intelligent enough to make the distinction between a game ready to be released and just needed some additional stuff or a game that needs some essential fixes or whatever.

We can't look into their garage so all we can do is asume. I for one will asume they have their reasons. i'm also pretty sure they are aware of the effects of the way they are doing it currently. Dont you think that if they feel the product will be out-of-date-on-release they would have done something about it? (either release or update)

And who knows, it could all be part of their campaign. Creating a buzz, feeding us tidbits, making people talk about it.

 

Well we're actually not intending to openly market the product in any big way until 2012. We'll also not be 'finished' when the beta hits, when the initial release hits, 1.1 or 1.2. There's longer term plans to improve. We're not waiting for a 'perfect' scenario, we're just getting what will be in the beta to a place it needs to be, while also refining exactly what those features will be (or whether any of those features will have to be pushed).

 

I don't recall ISI EVER making any release date promises so, no, there have not been any false pretenses. Just because you might infer a promise from a statement they make does not mean that it was a promise unless they actually said, "we promise ..." and they have not done that. If anything you should infer the phrase, "we hope to ..." when a developer states a release date because there are any number of things that can change it. This is not semantics either. I take promises very seriously and unless I actually read or hear the word I never assume anything is a promise.

 

A beta with modding tools would be nice, or just a beta....hell i can`t wait

 

Correct. ISI haven't mentioned a release date that I know of until 2011, which is when we said TBA 2011. Any other dates which we "missed" were not our dates, so being annoyed at us about them seems like misplaced anger.

 

Tim, you may name it as you wish. Today, it is easy to say 'I never used word "promise"'. But it is just manipulating.

If such number of people has interpreted words as some promises or approx release dates, it is a reason to start to think about how to say things.

 

Those people took rumors from within the community, nobody with factual info, as fact. Nothing which originated from us. The community manipulated itself on this one, I'm afraid. So please don't say we've done things we haven't.

What would possibly be the reason for ISI to manipulate? It's not like we've tricked you into buying something. We've had one date and we're still going for it... Manipulation would be the very opposite of that. The best thing for us to do, for our sake, would be to not communicate with you at all. Better? Please don't misinterpret communication as manipulation. Some things just can't be answered, some things have to be vague until they're solidly known. I've even been accused of taunting by releasing screenshots... So, no more screenshots?

Please...

Infact the only time I recall it (a release date) even being mentioned prior to "TBA 2011" was when Gjon said something to the effect of "I'll have my hands on it this year, but I don't think you will" when he was on SRT a long time ago. And I'm not sure how that could have prompted a suspected release date as to me that doesn't sound in any way close to soon... But it did! We've had to say no to release dates a lot (like this time last year), but didn't say yes until this year.

And right now if you go to various sim sites you can even see specific release dates posted which are not from us: http://games.gamepressure.com/game_info.asp?ID=16154 See? 100% fictional date. It's a decent guess, of course, if you're not paying attention to the whole TBA 2011 thing, but nothing from ISI went into that. And another, even later: http://www.simracingworld.com/games/281-rfactor-2/ Again, nothing to do with us.

These sites and lots of others have been bumping those dates for a long time now - nothing to do with us. That's the reason for the confusion about release dates.

 

enough talked...release now the beta and everyone is happy. maybe one lap in the nissan GT-1 could let me wait 1 or 2 days longer ;-)

 

No, it's not only for modders. They will be concentrating on feedback from modders (because that's a harder thing to judge up front, so it would be expected modders will hit 'walls' more often than general users) but it'll be an open beta for anyone willing to pay for it. This has been stated several times on this very forum, so your understanding is uninformed.

Open betas come after closed betas. Do you not realise they've been giving rF2 to beta testers for months already?

 

There's much, many, don't realise and I'll have to be fair and count myself in for some that too .... but I don't go speculating stuff because I realise there are things even I, the great me , don't fully appreciate or realise.

seriously ...

All this does show just what anticipation there is for this product inside this community however.

Given that rF2 is a longer term product/project/simulator/thingy and has a future which is not a new revision every 12 months or whatever .... the wait will be worth the effort and hair pulling.

All the speculation and mis-understanding will be forgotten in a blink and the next stage will start. Feedback and commentary, criticism , sickofan and hater comments .... it'll be a blast to read some of it, educational to read more if it and saddening to read a little of it! The fabric of an online forum where few ever meet face to face interacting ............ hmmmm .... but I digress.

Getting in up front and experiencing this rF2 thing mature into what it may become will be cool.

Perception however IS the reality for many [Ironic as hell to post that comment on a simulator site right ]

Anticipation drives us to think between the lines, dig, scratch and interpret anything and everything in an effort to gain an getting insight into it.

It's not bad, it's just mostly useless!

Hey, it's a whole nudder day . ... one more less for 2011 [and that actually does make sense]

 

It's always very interesting to look purely after some time here.
When will the beta start?
What will contain the beta?

 

The answer is very soon.

 

I do not understand why no one called beta date.

 

Perhaps you don't understand what's going on here. ISI likely have a plan, a list really, of what they want in the beta. They don't want it perfect, but they will have a certain level they want to get to so they can feel satisfied with it. When they get to that level, they'll release it.

You can't put a date on that. Doing so would either mean you release before it's ready, or you set the 'due date' so far into the future that you probably end up releasing before it anyway, rather than sit on the 'finished product' just to wait for the date.

 

Limited content. Possibly just two content packages with applicable cars and tracks. The main target of the test is to look at the modding, packaging and updates systems. The confusion over what version of a mod to run should be a thing of the past, as you can now do a lot of things in-sim to manage things. Probably the #1 thing I've heard non-rFactor users say about rFactor is how confusing it is to manage mods... That's a part of the online services mentioned in the recent Q&A and we need to test all that. People who are in the open beta will get 18mo instead of 12mo when they purchase.

 

Yeah the list of features which will be in the open bets versus the initial release goes forwards (and backwards) quite a bit. Eventually we'll reach a cutoff where the ones we need (not necessarily what the end user needs - unfortunately beta testing is about the dev, not the customer) are in a suitable state.

 

Who can access the open beta group?

 

Closed beta right now. The open beta will only be announced here on the forum (as we do not want people to confuse the open beta with the initial release).