rFactor 2 – April 2022 Release Candidate Available

Ahead of the upcoming 2022 Q2 Content Drop and update, Studio 397 has deployed the Release Candidate V1.1128 Update for the rFactor 2 racing simulator.

In this latest build, the development team implemented a number of significant developments aimed at improving the ongoing experience of using the simulation.

For more details, check out the full changelog below.

Studio 397 Quote:

Sound Engine

This is a big one, an entirely new sound engine has been developed for the simulation, and in this Release Candidate, we encourage you to check how this behaves with our current content selection. Please note, the sound engine is a global update, so you should hear improvements immediately, however, we will deploy specific updates to cars going forward, in order to fully benefit from the improvements this new engine has introduced. The first of those car-specific changes will be included with the new content that forms part of the 2022 Q2 Update and Content Drop.

Shift Protection, Engine and Brake Cooling

As these are new physics features, we wanted to use the Release Candidate as an opportunity to ensure these work as designed for all our users. As such, you will find a new category within your car list called ‘TEST’. Under this heading, we have added the Dallara IR-18 (v0.93) and Formula Pro (V0.93) cars that have all these features included – these updates have only been applied to the content under TEST for the purposes of this Release Candidate, and the standard version of these cars will remain within your install.

Wet Weather Update

Here we have considerably reworked how wet weather behaves across the simulation, from how the rain falls and dries on the circuit, to how the AI choose their tyres and manage the wet conditions. We encourage you to have a look at these changes during the Release Candidate phase and report any inconsistencies in the expected behavior of both the weather itself and the way the AI interact with their tyre choices. Worth noting here, users can now select the level of wetness on track before the session, allowing players to dictate the track surface conditions to their own preferences. 

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Official Webpage – www.studio-397.com – The rFactor 2 Racing Simulator is available via Steam for €29,99.

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Release Candidate V1.1128 Update Notes

• Client 8551968
• Dedi 8551974

General

• Updated Safety Car added to Retail and ModDev. Old Safety Car removed.
• Added a visual driving line feature, this can be toggled from settings
• Removed texture cache to simplify loading a bit
• Added an option to set the amount of water on roads at the start of a session.
• Increased the rate of RealRoad calculations by approximately x4.
• Added a server option to disable faster real road calculations, as this adds approximately an extra 4KBps per client to server overheads.
• Minor update to default weather conditions for different profiles (Rainy/Overcast/Sunny etc)
• Updated how road and rain conditions are reported. Old percentage values now snap to a set percentage for each tyre of condition, masking the true absolute condition in the game. The Default HUD has been updated to show a text description.
• Corrected Rear Flap System default wet weather disable point to work with new weather ranges.
• Fixed an issue where Cameras constrained to specific paths would not work correctly in replays.
• Extended Freelook mode to allow control via joypads as well as adjustments of exposure, aperture, sensor size, and focus.

Graphics

• Decreased interval of Static Mapper updates from 5 minutes to 10 seconds. This should result in smoother lighting changes at dawn/dusk and as weather conditions change.
• Corrected Sky Colour to remove Cyan Effect
• Slight adjustments to exposure for sky color adjustments when sun at its highest.
• Minor Atmospheric Corrections, including linking AirMass to AirPollution,
• Reducing Fog Brightness Slightly
• Reduced Exposure a touch when the sun is around 10 degrees of altitude.
• Improved cloud selection at different weather settings
• Minor cloud texture improvements
• Fixed an issue where Clouds would disappear at really high altitudes
• Fixed issues with lighting interpolation in sky rendering at Dusk/Sunrise, which would result in jumps in lighting values.
• Fixed puddle splashes not setting when raindrops are not used (set to off or scene viewer)
• Fixed lighting on spray during wet conditions, and tweaked particle profile
• Updated reflections on PBR Road and Curb Shaders
• Updated Rain Particle settings and fixed rendering on ultrawide screens
• Passed through particle settings refining Spray, Dust, Smoke and more.
• Fixed an issue in VR where the scene would overexposure
• Fixed an issue in VR where replay mode would not render correctly
• Driver labels now work in VR
• Sparks!
  • New behaviour archetype concept in the rF2Particles.pcd file.
  • New sparks archetype that brings:
    • Particle movement and camera movement based motion blur that can be clamped to a target camera refresh rate (shutter speed)
    • Movement behavior based on airflow estimations around the car.
    • Terrain and car underbody collisions.
    • Additional light emission from particle. 
• New sparks particle effect that gets activated when undertray points of the car scrapes on the ground.
• Backward compatibility with existing cars and tracks.

Physics

• Implemented enhanced cooling system for oil & water with new parameters in the .hdv file The new model includes:
  • Direct heat transfer between water and oil
  • Oil radiator
  • Switchover Thermostat
• Separated front and rear brake ducts
• Added configurable gear shift protection
• New algorithm for wet road calculations affecting how quickly surfaces get wet and dry, taking into account drainage, humidity, ambient temperature and sky weather conditions.
• Updated tyre grip calculations on rubbered in areas when surfaces are wet

AI

• Added AI Dry Tyre strategy (Random Dry Tyre in Practice, Softs in Qualifying and try to pick an appropriate tyre for race strategy in race)
• AI now check if to change Tyre Type just before the pit road entry rather than at the start of the lap
• Fixed various issues around AI Tyre Selection when session changes and weather changes – such as not switching to wet tyres when it was dry before but now is wet.
• Fixed an issue with calculating road conditions when changing sessions where they would not fully compute.
• Fixed an issue where cars that don’t allow pit stop refueling would run a full tank in practice and qualifying
• Prevent AI from leaving pits in closed session
• Fixed an issue where if there was a set of valid wet tyres, intermediate tyres would default to dry tyres.

UI

• Always show official sticky servers in the server list even if filters are active.
• Enabled “Restart warmup” button also when event is in race session.
• Updated button layout in session controls and setup summary.
• Added fading out of screen when leaving event or replay.
• Added condensing of tire name when too long to fit in event standings table.
• Added help text when hovering over various settings
• Added music to showroom
• Changed breaking of long chat lines so they only break on full words
• Fixed getting stuck in assign control pop-up after assigning tab key
• Disabled user text selection everywhere except in text fields
• Added highlighting of assigned control key values when hovering over with mouse
• Improved transition between different profiles in graphics and gameplay settings menus
• Refined styling of car classes in event screen
• Refined styling of car classes in fullscreen standings ticker
• Disabled “Default max wheel angle” setting when “Max wheel angle mode” is set to automatic
• Disabled “Steering wheel range” setting when “Range set by vehicle” setting is enabled
• Hid the car selection list when the drive/spectate pop-up is showing when joining a server directly with a join link
• Changed searching for cars and tracks so that the list scroll position is kept at the top after search (clearing the search text will scroll to the selected item)
• Enabled car selection on server during a practice session
• Made it possible to add multiple custom graphics profiles
• Made it possible to add multiple custom gameplay difficulty profiles
• Always sort “All Tracks & Cars” to the top of the list in the singleplayer series selection
• Added fallback image for showcase tile in case the actual image cannot be loaded
• Updated showcase, news and store tiles background image positioning and scaling
• Added option to expand server chat window to full height
• Setup notes for the highlighted setup (the one you clicked on in the setup list but not yet loaded) are now shown on the setup summary page
• Setup notes can now be typed in the setup summary page (the setup still has to be saved to save the changes)
• When saving a setup, the folder for the current track will be selected by default (instead of the folder of the loaded setup)
• Removed automatically expanding all found items in car and track selection after search
• Added highlighting of selected opponent filters
• Fixed multiplayer screen with drive/spectate pop-up showing too soon when using +connect to join a server, and if and when content install is still in progress
• You can now select car upgrades directly from the car selection screen without going to the showroom (both in singleplayer and multiplayer)
• Disabled singleplayer grid position setting if qualifying is enabled
• Added two new gearbox graphs:
  • Top speed per gear
  • RPM after upshift
  • The existing graph, gear spacing, is kept as a third option
• Fixed occasional blank page in the first launch wizard when going to the exit screen and back
• Reordered difficulty settings and sliders
• Singleplayer RealRoad settings are now enabled only when the weather preset is set to “Scripted”
• Renamed “Steering effects strength” setting to “Force feedback direction”
• Singleplayer “Race Laps” and “Race Time” settings are now disabled/enabled based on the “Finish Criteria” setting
• A singleplayer session can now also be enabled by clicking on the disabled session button in quick event

Modding

• Added IBL Visualizer Debug tool to Scene Viewer (already present in ModDev)
• Added Texture UV Mip Debug tool to Scene Viewer (already present in ModDev)
• Added AI Vocal Strategy Player File debug option for Mod Dev (Pit Strategies, Tyre Changes, and when selected what they are doing – can be expanded in future).
• Fixed overcast preview mode (note: this is not exactly the same as in-game)
• Updated sample wet masks at Loch Drummond

Sound

• New 3D Sound Engine
• Increased amount of simultaneous effects to 256
• Environmental effects and filtering system
• Proper cockpit filtering
• Autodetection of open and closed cockpits for environment effects and filtering
• Sound effects such as skid, kerbs, gravel, wind, suspension and many more now work online and in replays
• Support for full surround sound setups
• HRTF support (Binaural headphone experience)
• Improved VR experience
• Backward compatible
• Many new sound effects
• Support for trackside broadcast microphones
• Every car now causes audible ambient noise around the whole track
• Brand new, modern, customizable file format with much more freedom for audio designers
• Improved debugging tools for dev mode

Formula Pro V0.93

Added TEST version which includes shift protection, push to pass, engine cooling, and brake duct cooling split

Dallara IR-18 V0.93

Added TEST version which includes shift protection, engine cooling, and brake duct cooling split

How to Access Release Candidate

To gain access to the Release Candidate build of rFactor 2, right-click on the rFactor 2 link in your Steam Library, go to ‘Properties’, and under the Betas tab, make sure you select ‘Release Candidate’ from the drop-down list.

Opt-Out – This is the main public build of rFactor 2, without any beta branches or additional early updates applied. This is the build that will be available as default.

Release-Candidate – This build will always feature the latest updates and improvements that have been introduced by our development team ahead of main public release. Although these changes will have been reviewed by our test team here at Studio 397 prior to deployment, we will use this build branch to give our users the opportunity to opt into these changes early, and report any unexpected issues that may or may not occur before we launch to the main public ‘opt-out’ branch of the software.

Previous-Build – This branch will contain a copy of the last public ‘opt-out’ version of rFactor 2, prior to updates being deployed, should any communities need to revert to the last known stable branch of the software for any reason.

As we release new updates for rFactor 2, each branch will ‘move up’ to the next step of the branch ladder, from ‘release-candidate’ to ‘opt-out’ to ‘previous-build’, replaced by the respective new updated version.