The iRacing development model was always the right one to take. It takes time to develop, test and package all the code and content to support a quarterly release. iRacing have long term developments (AI, rain, tire model etc.) where they may or may not slip a quarter with a release, and they rarely tell us ahead of time what is going to be in a specific release unless they are really sure of it. I suspect this will happen with rain, which will affect nearly everything in the same way as Dirt and new surface model did. If we look back to past release history with rF2, especially content, we can see that this was already in fact what was happening. Though the releases were December (to hit Xmas buying), May/June (to hit peak racing season) and September. This fell apart in the last couple of years but was getting quite reliable. I found the Roadmaps were useful for anticipating this. In the "release when ready" model, Roadmaps cease to be useful. MSGS has to perform quarterly updates to Wall Street. When stating you have a new license, like for IndyCar, that is a significant (i.e. "material") event which can affect the stock price and needs to be controlled. Licensing a single new track or car for rF2 isn't, and so there should be no restrictions in announcing such. With the upcoming IndyCar release, the CEO already stated on the earnings call they were going to do an esports series in Q4 using rF2 as the platform, so there was nothing stopping S397 pre-announcing this because it was already public. S397 need to sort out this messaging; its badly wrong now. The upside for a quarterly release, is that there's the inevitable "push"/"crunch" to get stuff out to hit what is usually an arbitrary deadline. And we all know, quality suffers when you do this oftentimes (see: Ignition release, clearly wasn't ready but had to hit Xmas release). That said, a specific release window does focus the minds of the devs. I've seen it in other Enterprise software; either for a single client or for global releases, which we used to do every 6 months and is arguably an even better option. If you don't have this to focus things, stuff tends to drift and not get completed. I think we see clear evidence of this at S397. When focused on something important, like Virtual LeMans, stuff gets done (like our GTE Ferrari). If not, we get 2 years delay in a UI reskin.
I think the recent developments have been good and the last update kind of restored my hope that this product will get a more polished software and the studio finding the right path again. For alot of people the new UI is not that important, but I think it is a very solid base to work with that frees up other resources for other parts of the game and that allows new users to get into the sim faster while making the experience more enjoyable. This is a win-win situation for everyone: more people to race with, more money for the Studio, wich means more frequent releases and updates. The quarter based release strategy seems good aswell. Less marketing talk but actually substantial updates that bring something to the table and not so much trouble in the forums that devs have to deal with. It works for iRacing, so I see no reason why it shouldn't work for S397. And Daytona is the right content to start the year. Meaninung full content with high quality, that fits the scope of the product, with the focus on endurance racing, the new Indycar, new features like p2p to go along with it and something for the Stockcars. Very well done. I hope that they don't forget the DW12 though. It's a very interesting car that shouldn't be abandoned. I guess, we all hope for the AI and rules fixes, so going by the UI update, I guess we will see something similar in that area of the sim.
To answer some people asking about announcing update contents a little here, in reality what this new release cycle will mean is that on the build-up to launch day we will announce content details (as we have / are doing at the moment), however in terms of the builds themselves - no, we won't be announcing the contents in advance - unless of course it has something exceptionally notable such as, for example, new game modes, or things we believe will benefit from a 'deep dive' style further explanation). Of course, with our RC process then a lot of the build details will be known anyway in advance as it will go through Release Candidate, but we don't feel that we need to 'announce' build updates ahead of time - very few studios do. Reasons for this are many, not least of which is changing priorities and resource capacity, and one thing we most certainly do not want to do is promise things that do not end up happening for whatever reason. Frankly, it's a compromise. If we say we do x / y / z and don't deliver all of those things, we will suffer from the perception of making promises we don't keep. If we don't make forward looking announcements and release the build update, then we will suffer from people deeming things not transparent enough. We feel that, on balance, taking the approach of saying when the release window will be (as we have done), and then using the RC process and detailing at launch the change logs for these builds is our best solution - although I'm most certain this will not be the ideal scenario for everyone.
Yeah, but where are the physics features promised a few blogs back? Got scratched because it was too hard or something and it was badly done?
Things take time to do - if it was easy, everyone would do it! Have patience and faith - we are working incredibly hard behind the scenes to bring together many, many different aspects of the simulation - from new things to improvements and the full range between. Sadly, the fruits of these labours can't all appear immediately, but we continue to give it our all to make good things happen
Paul, I congratulate you on your patience in dealing with these never-ending demands. Complicated but part of it because dealing with the public is never easy.
Well it looks like i will never know what there plans are now with VR getting fixes and optimization the only thing that they have not updated that they have implemented. OH well i will just have to wait and ponder and wonder if it will ever happen. Dreaming and waiting patiently while playing another sim.
Appreciate it can be a frustrating experience, as a fellow VR user I too would love to see further developments in this aspect of the sim - heck, as a predominantly offline single player racer, that is another aspect that on a personal note would be highly appreciated for big steps forward as well. All I can say is we are a very diverse team here at the studio, from all parts of the globe and walks of life - but we are united in one single thing - an overriding passion to develop the very best and most realistic simulation we possibly can. Does this mean we won't make mistakes along the way? Absolutely not. Does this mean we won't be able to develop certain things as quickly as we like? Certainly. Does this mean we are unaware of the frustrations of various aspects of the sim, both our own and those of our community? No, it doesn't. We see, hear and feel the temperature of the players and what matters most to them. In order to continue moving things forward, and let's not forget, we have moved a lot of things forward, we need to balance many things - capacity, business priorities, timeframes, resources and many, many more. Inevitably this means some things people want are higher, or lower on the list, and to be perfectly frank, some will just quite simply not make it into the software at all, or at least to the scale we would all like to see. But rest assured, we all work exceptionally hard - this is our profession, or hobby and our passion - and in some cases, a good portion of our life work. Hearing, acknowledging and addressing feedback both good and bad is very much part of how we can all pull together to make things even better going forward - (this next bit isn't in reply to you Binny, more a general statement) - it is also necessary for people to temper their expectations and desire to push the simulation forward from their own perspective. We need to focus more on enjoying what we have, taking pleasure from our hobby, as well as supporting each other and the devs in our quest for improvement. Things are most certainly happening behind the scenes, and we are doing absolutely everything we can, with the resource we have, to achieve the goal we all want to achieve - the biggest, best and most engaging and enjoyable racing simulation possible. It's easy for me to say, but hard to do in reality - but just keep the faith. Have trust in our intentions and ability to deliver, learn from mistakes, celebrate successes and enjoy rFactor 2 for what it is now, and the potential we hope to realize for what it can and will become in future.
Unfortunately I could not find this with English subtitles, but there is a very famous interview in Poland. It became a meme. Our Prime Minister was asked a simple question: "How much does a regular loaf of bread cost today". That lunatic spoke for 1.5 minutes. About everything. Going to a shop, looking at prices, about farmers, about pigs and wheat, about taxes and pensioners. It was 1.5 minutes of waffle. The one thing he did not say was: how much does a regular loaf of bread cost today.
If there are no real plans outlined and shown to us and I see no real improvements to the things I need to see improved in a simulation then I'm sorry but I'm not gonna support anymore yours or any other studio. You can be limited in all you want and I understand that part, but then there are things that are unxecusable for a professional developer... Temper my expectations for the S397 not being the genuises behind the ISI physics motor is one thing, another thing is that it seems to be comepletly impossible to add and solve physics issues and even then being so slow at fixing some of content related issues... Doesn't inspire any confidence. Team is bigger, new blood and talent has entered possibly and it can mean real change, but if you can't even outline some of the plans for core gameplay stuff and phsyics updates so many of us have been asking and waiting for and being hinted, then I'm sorry, patience wears off. Undelievered promises; to do lists items of big importance never fixed; half assed content with issues you don't fix and go deliever more half assed stuff (I mean bugs and issues that should be fixed as soon as possible and sometimes aren't addressed at all). The track record is not good! RF2 deserves more and we deserve more! You could and I'd wish you S397 deserved more and it has to be a bit frustrating for you all because RF2 hasn't succeed yet and sometimes it seems you can't ever find the propper way to make it succeed. The frustration has been incomensurate honestly. Physics features hinted at October or November! For December! Where are them?! I just can't trust you anymore... You guys don't deserve my money anymore like this. February might shut my mouth still, but this 31th January blog was a big big disappointment!
Give Paul a raise! I'm not even making fun, these responses are worded like a true PR expert. We're probably the most fickle community to have to answer to. I think the community communication has overall been pretty transparent and regular over here. Given the lack of communication recently by a certain Brazilian developer, and a certain content release of a DLC pack, it's been refreshing to see a little more activity going on here!
I'm not sure that's something to be proud of. After all there is a difference between a community manager and a company's spokesman.
Paul thank you for all the feedback. I really just want to know, will Monza finally be fixed? 2 Lesmo curves AI.. And the rain line. Doesn't belong here, but we'll keep bringing this up. .
cheers Paul, sometimes i do get frustrated i just thought it was a lot easier for you to maintain the things s397 implemented over the rest. i will do what you have said and enjoy it for what it is and just not race large fields at night in the rain with VR then i know i wont be disappointed as my system handles that easy.
"As a side effect of, this new way of doing things should also make our roadmap posts a little more interesting and full of information, so that's always nice." Holliday December Update. Good joke! "With RC to Opt-Out set to happen at the very early part of November, that means we are set to put together a brand new Release Candidate build that will of course include the above-mentioned return of Driver Labels, plus a couple of new physics features that we hope should provide some nice additional options for our community to enjoy. With that RC build right around the corner, we aren’t going to get into those details right now, we think we will save that bit of excitement for the release notes of the build when it deploys in the near future." Good joke!
I think many of you suffer from "grinding game mechanics", enjoying the software as it is is up to you obviously, but I can't understand the logic of "not playing until this is fixed", or better, I would understand it if it was not a mobile target. Everytime something get fixed, you put the target a little forward just to keep have an excuse to say you will not play this mess, but at the same time, you are always back here complaining. I honestly don't visit forums of the games I stopped playing You really do? (you is a generic you, not aiming someone in particular).
Here is arguing and wishing like little children do. If this isn't fixed by then, I won't play it anymore and I won't buy anything else. The only thing missing is: if the ....... is not fixed by ...., then I will uninstall everything and never play it again. Honestly people, I am also disappointed by some things or wish one or the other faster. But some here really overshoot the mark.
I still think that some verbosity would be more beneficial than some vague blog posts, e. g. a trello/ kanban board so see what is actually adressed. Basically the stuff other game development studios do aswell. Of course nobody is demanding a full disclosure of not-yet-announced stuff here, but I think it would help users to see progress instead of having do dig out 12+ pages long forum threads where nobody has a single clue what is going on after some point.
