January 2021 Roadmap for rFactor 2

As rFactor 2 fans will know, the end of the month brings an update from the developers about the progress of the development team, recent updates and forward looking to the future of the simulation platform.

Last month saw the release of the new Endurance Bundle, and the release of the new competition platform. Additionally, there was some reflection on the release of the fantasy electric RCCO eX Zero car and some improvements to a number of pieces of content.

You could read the whole article on Studio 397’s website or read on for the handpicked highlights below from the Traxion team:

Build Updates and Public Betas

As we recently reported, there have been a number of updates and hotfixes for rFactor 2 recently, primarily because of some graphical issues that users were reporting. Although this is now reportedly fixed, the Studio 397 team are committing to a new way of deploying these updates.

Future builds will be first tested internally, then released as a “public-beta” that can be activated by users in Steam (right-click on the game in your library, select “properties” then “betas”). These are then “out in the wild” for at least a week before being pushed to the public build.

Essentially, you’ll now have the choice about whether you want to opt-in to new build updates before everyone else.

Bug Fixing

In this section, Studio 397 commit to spend a “considerable development time addressing the most urgent bugs/features based on the community feedback and our internal testing.”

Here’s the list of bugs that they will be paying particular attention to in the immediate future:

• Bring back the steering and pedal inputs overlay in the replay viewer.
• Fixing and documenting our anti-aliasing options.
• Bringing back and improving the driver labels showing above cars.
• Fix broken mouse click assignment in UI controls. 
• Review and improve the performance of the way the showroom behaves.
• Investigate and fix potential white screen crashes related to controller assignments. 
• Add code for informing users around disabled Steam overlay related to shopping cart appearance in Competition System. 
• A permanent fix for corrupted car bodies in multiplayer. 
• Review and rectify showroom upgrades not showing the issue. 
• Review and improve day to night transition.
• UI behaviour and performance.

More good news is that the Studio 397 team will be streamlining the way users can report on their forum. This will be a form that guides the reporter to submit the kind of information the developers need.

There will also be a dashboard that will allow the community to see the status of the bugs. However, this may be a some time in the making.

Competition System

Just before Christmas, rFactor 2 launched their competition system. Although initially limited, this system is aimed at growing the rFactor 2 online community by making it easier to find and join multiplayer races.

Unfortunately there have been some issues so far – including some “laserbeam” cars (which has now been patched). So you can now race slightly more safely online without “exploded” cars.

Recently, the Enduracers Alpine 3rd party mod was added, a first for the system which has been using 1st party content until now.

We’re sure there’ll be more updates to the competition as it develops in 2021.

Formula E

Recently the Gen2 Formula E car was updated for free. The new updates included 2021 liveries, Attack Mode and new physics.

You can read more about the update to this car here.

Other Developments

In short here’s everything else that you need to know:

• Indianapolis Motor Speedway has been updated to include PBR (Phyiscally Based Rendering) shaders, AI tweaks and a new layout – it’ll be released (for free) in February
• GTE cars – some BoP updated have been made to weight and power to make the performance closer together. There’s also a fix for how the cars drive in proximity to each other.
• Formula E: Accelerate – the new competition‘s first race was last Thursday and we’ll be bringing you all the news and race reports here on Traxion

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