rFactor 2 Developer Q&A

[doggod]

@ FFB Dev

This is something that has been bugging me on a number of games that support ffb wheels
I'm hoping that ye can be the first to clear it up with rfactor 2

The issue is driver settings used by devs when testing the ffb is not information
that is ever posted with the game(whatever one it is)

If driver settings(im on a g27) can effect the ffb can ye please post the ones that ye used
so everyone has a base from where to start adjusting (if the user feels its necessary)
so for me i would need

Logitech driver settings for G27
Overall effects strength %
Spring effects strength %
Damper effects %
etc

Users should get this info for each wheel that the game is going to support
and a test car(this can be one in game) that has been tuned with a locked tuning settings profile that ye used
and a particular track picked as a ffb test track(this can be one that is in game)

Now when everyone gets the game they follow the info for their wheel and go and
test using the same car, the same tuning and on the same track
see how the like or dislike(this will always be personal)
but at least everyone is on the same settings for that first run
eg all g27 users are getting exactly the same feel etc
same for other users wheels.

Hoping that this is not an unreasonable request

PS if ye are designing a system that is going to bypass the driver settings
can ye test that those driver setting do not change the feel of the ffb
and make that info known

[Wayne Reed]

That was a good read after so long with not hearing any thing. There is a lot there that just sounds awesome. I really cant wait for the base game to get here now. One thing I would like to ask is will it be more easy to get skins in the game or are you looking to have the system about the same as now?

[RoguePossum]

Awesome. Nice to get some info. This certainly cleared up alot. Something I was wondering (no hurry for an answer as I'm aware you're all VERY busy) Will the AI be tied to the new tire model same as player? So as to eliminate the AI tyres being miraculously warmed up by the first corner.

Really looking forward to RF2. Cant wait, and Thankyou for taking the time out to give some feedback to the Q's.

[mianiak]

Thanks for the update Tim! :beer:

[michael1]

looks good i have built a pc just for rfactor2 + a leauge i am just waiting for the new simulator.

[Tim Wheatley]

It`s mentioned many times, that work on rF2 will not stop after initial release. The biggest question for me is what the payment system will be for rF2? Because to work hard on rF2 after release you will possibly need continuous payments. "We have our own online distribution system in development." - leads me to speculations that rF2 may have subscription system like iR. And I can not afford it. It will be very sad.

How do you think rF2 is being funded now? How was rF1's development funded post initial release?

ISI has many types of business which keeps things healthy.

[Pau]

Will the headlight receive more attention with rF2? I mean, it always has been unsuited for night racing conditions, I found the on-road projection not illuminating sufficient and/or correct. For example, Enduracers had to adapt their headlight projection in order to increase visibility and night racing feel, same with HistorX and the Toyota Supra mod(they've also pioneered light flare in rF, which is another feature worth considering).

[Tim Wheatley]

i'm really looking forward to the new tire physics, should really show who looks after their tires better during longer races.

Should stop a lot of situations where the winner is always the guy with the best setup. That guy might have enough change to cope with now to give others a chance.

Will there be some sort of system that will make it easier for racers of similar ability to find each other online or is that considered mainly a community responsibility? Now fast drivers are spread out very thinly between a lot of leagues/servers and it's hard to find top level leagues/servers.

I'm not aware of anything in place at this point. As Gjon always says to us though, the initial release is what we think you want and further releases would be based on feedback, etc.

This is the same series that Mr. Mayfield and myself run in.

It is our goal to reflect the multiclass endurance racing that occurs at the 24 Hours of Le Mans, and the racing series like the American Le Mans Series (ALMS). The mod features at least 5 different cars in 3 different classes, all fighthing for their individual class win while racing alongside the traffic of faster and slower classes of cars. We've been able to run races anywhere from 4 to 12 hours, and usually have at least 15-25 cars still running by the time the race is over. Due to many of the rF multiplayer issues that happen when too many cars on the server, we limit the field to 40 cars. Because of the length of the races, teams must have 3-5 drivers for the race. This means around 100 people at some point or another during a race join the server. Naturally, we see more issues that we'd care for, but its a blast and worth it. We're looking forward to continuing in rF2. (If you need a bunch of people to test server stress for max cars or lots of driver swaps, im sure our league could easily help with that )

As Ryan said, one of the issues most common is the ability to repair a car. Brake failures happen in real world endurance racing. The pit crews are able to replace the blown rotors or pads in a matter of minutes. As Ryan said, this year at the 12 Hours of Sebring, Audi Sport had to replace half of their rear suspension, and did so in 15 minutes. This isnt uncommon, as usually someone is doing at one point or another at the 24 Hours of Le Mans (Corvette, BMW, Audi last year as exs). Teams can also repair certain parts of the engine. rFactor current doesnt allow for these repairs, but we're hoping rF2 will help with this issue.

Something else that would be great would be a better pace car/safety car. The current (or outdated) safety car is sometime unpredictable, randomly brakes or accelerates, etc. We'd love to see one that properly picks up the leader, and directs cars that are being wave'd around. Have there been any upgrades to the safety car?

Any chance for a flatbed? Say theres a broken car on track and cant return to the pits. Can it be sent back (with a time penalty) to be worked on, and eventually return to the track to race?

For the multi-class updates, while driving will we be able to know what position we are in class? Lets say im driving in a slower class, and 17th overall, it would be great to know where I am class wise, like 4th, something in the HUD.

Temp. Cars. Ive heard that theres a fix for rF1, but havent found it. A thing that bugs me is when im on track in practice, and a new person joins the server, I have to exit the track to load their car. If I dont, and they pull alongside on track, they're a big gray box. Will this happen in rF2?

We're very glad to hear that you guys are working on the possibility of being able to rejoin a race while the race is live. We would love this feature. Nothing hurts more than working 3 weeks on a setup and pace, only to have a sudden disconnect or error while 4 hours into a 8 hour race. If we would be able to come back, even several laps down or after a time penalty to re-enter the track, it would get so great.


We're looking forward to many changes, especially the weather and tires updates. Cant wait to see the final results ourselves! Thanks for your time

JT

The problem I see with long repairs is the lack of 'playability' for most users. Certainly something to consider though.

Safety car issues I've seen are usually mod related. Someone can correct me if I am wrong on that.

Some kind of tow functionality as you suggest is worth consideration as a part of the long repair.

You guys should really enjoy the changes with rF2. As the quote at the end of the video says, you'll REALLY see those changes. Even driving into a turn under a shadow can affect your grip with the weather system, so you guys will have a lot to deal with, especially as it transitions to nighttime.

[CdnRacer]

Even driving into a turn under a shadow can affect your grip with the weather system, so you guys will have a lot to deal with, especially as it transitions to nighttime.

This is really awesome news!!

[LesiU]

Tim, yes, we will be enjoying rF 2 as it is for sure, but... rF 1 is missing many important endurance racing related features, that should not be that hard to implement, but are somewhat significant. One of them, is the ability to rejoin the race. Then, you have all sorts of repairs that are not available in rF 1: from such simple as replacing broken discs and worn out pads to significant suspension damage.
Endurance racing in rF 1 is only about drivers... while in real world, it's more about car reliability (and then the drivers). That really makes the difference!

[RMayfield]

The problem I see with long repairs is the lack of 'playability' for most users. Certainly something to consider though.

I don't quite know exactly what you mean by 'playability'...perhaps that we'd be sitting there doing 'nothing' while the repairs were going on? For most of us during an endurance race, that's a pee break, water break, mental break, etc. To recycle an earlier example, when Audi Team Joest fixed that rear suspension in 15 minutes, the driver (Dindo Capello I believe) sat tight in the cockpit and had a sip of whatever elixir he needed

Now I can totally see how there may not be much use of 'long repairs' for the weekend racers or sprinters, but it's awesome features like these that would give Endurance racers a permanent home with rFactor 2

[sg333]

.... you guys will have a lot to deal with, especially as it transitions to nighttime.

On this subject, has there been much improvement with night time regarding lights, shadows, reflections etc? Its the kind of thing that can really add atmosphere to racing sims

[LesiU]

@RMayfield
Exactly! First of all, "weekend drivers" probably will never participate in a true endurance events...I think there's no need to explain that A different attitude is required... 24h race is not a 20 minut sprint so not every one will try that.
Another thing - how long such repairs will take - depends ONLY on mod creators. Suspension repair might take 10 seconds (lol, much shorter than refuelling a GT1 car) or 30 minutes. It is up to us to setup such things.

And I don't see much connection between beeing or not able to replace damaged suspension, brakes etc. and the time specified in the file, how long such repair will take.

As for safety car improvements.
Can it be possible to allow real players to drive SC (as a proper SC, not a typical car placed in standard garage, but with SC livery or stuff like that).
And maybe a small cosmetic change - in real world, there is a pace car and a safety car. Each of them is active during different situations. In rF 1 there is only one kind of car. Can that be upgraded to what (I think) should be available?

Also, please add a marker at which SC lights are turned off before race start or restart. In rF 1 SC have active lights all the time up to a point where it stops in the pits.

[Nibo]

How do you think rF2 is being funded now? How was rF1's development funded post initial release?

ISI has many types of business which keeps things healthy.

Ok . I understand that we`ve got many updates for rF1 for initial payment, but I just worry. Payment model of other title I mentioned for me is crazy. If rF2 will cost somewhere near what rF1 price was, I`ll be happy.

[deBorgo83]

Thx for the Q&A and other updates Tim (and the rest of the ISI team), the info about the new tyre, weather and road models and how they interact is positively tantalising, I'm looking forward to rF2 all the more now!
Regarding repairs in endurance races (my preferred sort of racing btw), just as we now have time-scaled options for mechanical failures and the day-to-night cycle, couldn't we similarly have time-scaled repairs? If I compress a 6-hour race into say 2 hours, the daylight and mech. failures can be scaled at 3x, why not repair times as well? A repair time that's normally defined as 30 minutes would then take 10.

[K Szczech]

Thanks for the Q&A.

Safety car issues I've seen are usually mod related. Someone can correct me if I am wrong on that.

Some of them yes, but not all. I've posted a list of issues we had with SC in NASCAR and IndyCar series on RSC forums and on this forum.

By the way - speaking of ovals - spotter in rFactor couldn't keep up with the pace of IndyCar racing on ovals. In reality spotters don't say: "You've got car on the inside." - they just say "Inside, inside".
Also, they don't work like FIFO queue. If something new suddenly comes up, they will drop what they're talking about and get you up to date. You don't tell IndyCar driver his laptime if he's approaching T1 apex with another car on the inside. You also don't waste time on telling him, he's 2-wide, if a third car just got involved.

[JoshJ81]

I run an F1 league and we strive to keep the rules as close to real and current as possible. With that...

Will there be parameter settings to force the use of any number compounds within the tires files provided in a mod? Such as rfactor will detect that (in F1's case) only one of the two the compounds was used and therefore your end result will be a DNF. Or we should be able to set what the penalty will be. Can there be away to so in the race result output file when a driver pitted and what tires was put on? For our league, we have our starting temperatures for both compounds different for easier detection, but we have to review DAQ style files, it's a pain... Or another way to do this would be allowing real tire side wall graphics change with the compound type? IE, driver started on hards (side color is Red) pitted and changed to softs (side wall color should change to white).

Will we be able to force the use of the compounded used in Q, to be used at the start of the race? In Rfactor 1, you tell the rFm to force which number drivers to start on Q tires but the drivers could still start on a different tire (even though that % would still be gone, none the less, it's still the incorrect tire). We can parc Ferme the tires to force this but then we can not change the compound during the race, which in modern F1 we need to use both compounds.

Any idea if F1 KERS style boost will be available to match true F1 parameters? (6.8 seconds available at the push of a button per lap giving 80ish extra horsepower. The 6.8 seconds can be used as we see fit, all at once or broken up during the lap)

Thoughts on F1's DRS system, the driver can hit a button the steering wheel to make the rear wing move 50mm to reduce drag on the straights until they hit the brakes. (long shot but I figured I'd ask :P)

On race lap times. Will/can there be options to see the sector times and sector intervals to your best race lap? What about having options to veiw against your best lap or the race leader's best lap or the fastest lap over all? This way we will be able to gauge performance during race rather than just seeing an interval to the next closet drive ahead or behind.

PS I think that tire model video is amazing!

[Andrew McP]

Any idea if F1 KERS style boost will be available to match true F1 parameters?

No need to waste time on something which is clearly a waste of time and effort on the real thing! :-) Someone in F1 loves the idea of KERS and is reluctant to let it die. But it will die, and probably quite soon based on the first race.

That stupid wing flap will go next, I hope. The FIA need to remember that sometimes "less is more" and I think the same can probably be said for rF2. There's no way a small team can deliver every feature this community wants, and do it well. So as long as what they deliver is solid, and has some flexibility to allow modders to do their thing, I'm sure just about everyone will be happy in the end.

Or at least as happy as sim racers ever get. ;-)

[nommura]

In the video shows the maximum graphics settings?

Ugly graphics. The game does not look attractive.
Can you show at least a screenshot with the highest graphics settings, HDR, and Blur?

Now I do not see the graphic difference between rFactor1 and rFactor2.

Look at the screenshot GTR 3 of the company SIMBIN. The game is not ready yet, and may be at an early stage of development, but she looks very at.

[DeDios]

Tim, yes, we will be enjoying rF 2 as it is for sure, but... rF 1 is missing many important endurance racing related features, that should not be that hard to implement, but are somewhat significant. One of them, is the ability to rejoin the race. Then, you have all sorts of repairs that are not available in rF 1: from such simple as replacing broken discs and worn out pads to significant suspension damage.
Endurance racing in rF 1 is only about drivers... while in real world, it's more about car reliability (and then the drivers). That really makes the difference!

+1. I'm totally agree. We need more endurance racing features