Quite a few people complain about the lack of grip on a ‘green’ track. It should be kept in mind that ‘green’ really means NO grip, a theoretical situation that rarely occurs in real life. Even after a rain shower, the track surface will still offer some amounts of grip. In rFactor 2, this state is called ‘Light Rubber’, and requires a file to be created which contains this initial Real Road state. The basic idea is to start an OFFLINE session with 3-4 AI cars and join them on track. Drive SMOOTH lines until you feel you can comfortably match the relative gap you have to AI @ 100% strength on other tracks, presuming the AIW FastPath has been defined properly. For example, if you are 10% off the AI pace, drive until you feel you can do laptimes that would put you close to that 10% reference. If you’re an alien, drive until you feel you can beat the AI by a fair margin. Usually, the entire process takes about 6-12 laps of human driving, depending on the complexity of the track’s layout. After a handful of laps on the ideal racing line, also do a lap where you imagine overtaking another car or defending your position (i.e. the inside lines; pretend to go for a late lunge up the inside and run a bit wide on exit, hug the inside line to defend, ...). If a corner has multiple lines, drive each one of them at least once. For example, a late apex in some corners will produce a faster laptime in some cars, but will leave you vulnerable to attacks up the inside. Oh, and don’t feel bad if you spin on your first lap on a green track. It happens too in real life racing! It is recommended to pick a slow car (e.g. Clio, Skip Barber) so you can focus on getting the lines right and smooth, and feel in total control. If you still find yourself spinning after 2 laps, it may be a good idea to choose a slower car. Use a setup that is close to the default setup with minimal tweaks (e.g. brake balance) with default fuel level to put yourself and the AI on a level playing field. All running should be done in real-time obviously, with NO time acceleration; and don’t forget to actually SAVE the file after your run. Use a descriptive name, such as Light_Rubber. Again, this procedure should take about 10 laps roughly. Some AI drivers will have done slightly less laps. This doesn’t matter. There is no mathematical formula to generate these Real Road presets. All that matters is that it feels natural, and that there is some grip where you expect to find it. With 3-4 AI drivers, you should have a good mix of rubber on the ideal racing line, and a bit of rubber where you ran a bit wide, … When setting up the track’s default .WET weather file, you can now assign the newly created ‘Light_Rubber.rrbin’ preset to be loaded at the start of practice. Qualifying and Race sessions should remain set to Naturally Progressing. Before creating the final track component package, copy the Light_Rubber.rrbin to the track layout’s subfolder. One last note: if you change the geometry of the RaceSurface GMT objects, the Real Road preset will no longer be 100% accurate. It is therefore strongly recommended to create the preset when the terrain is completely finished.
