spyder

v1.05 (2021-07-14) - Fixed a surface hole near Campofelice di Roccella - Added additional road subdivision & bumps near SS113 209

KartSim Hotfix Update Released Hello sim racers! Following up on the major new KartSim release from over the weekend, we are delighted to today deploy a further complementary update to this awesome collection of content, as we look to continue fine-tuning and improving what has already proven to be a very well-received new release within our kart loving community here at rFactor 2. KartSim Esports Pack | Steam Store: CLICK HERE Available as a free update to the main KartSim build, the new hotfix deployed today addresses a number of reported issues from our community, ranging from visual tweaks to the behaviour of the karts themselves on the 10 tracks available across the European and UK KartSim Track Packs. In terms of the karts, this build looks at making further developments to the brand-new KZ shifter kart that some users have been reporting generates a crash to desktop situation. Although this issue hasn’t manifested itself across all players, the potential cause of the problem has been identified and should be repaired as part of this latest build, with further work on the kart also addressing a reported glowing parts problem when racing in nighttime conditions. Other kart updates include fixes for the Rental, X30 and X30 EU Mini Cadet, plus further AI development work at Whilton Mill, Glan Y Gors and Adria circuits that aims to reduce the tendency for the AI to take excessive curbs which can lead to destabilization, and in some extreme cases, flipping of AI controlled karts. KartSim Hotfix Update Notes IAME KZ EU 2021 v1.73 Improved nighttime PBR shaders Improved compatibility issues IAME X30 2021 v1.68 Improved nighttime PBR shaders fixed tyre temp sensor bug Rental 2021 v1.68 Fixed UI Bug IAME X30 EU Mini Cadet 2021 v1.73 Improved night time PBR shaders Kristianstad 2021 v114 Improved AI Glan Y Gors 2021 v130 Improved AI Adria 2021 v120 Improved AI Whilton Mill 2021 v120 Improved AI The new update is available now, and should download automatically the next time you restart your Steam client. The latest fixes are available free to players who already own the content, and will be included in the base KartSim installation for new players who purchase these items going forward.

Major KartSim Update + New Karts and Tracks Update time! Virtual kart racing fans have many, many, many reasons to be cheerful today, thanks to a substantial new update release for the popular KartSim content within rFactor 2 – adding a full PBR refresh of the entire collection of karts and tracks, two brand-new vehicles and four new circuits – a whole host of great things to race and discover in the premium kart racing offering within rFactor 2. As many hundreds of thousands of racing hopefuls can attest, karting is a fantastic way to get out onto the racetrack for a (relatively) modest amount of money. From drivers looking to take their first tentative steps into professional motorsport, to hobbyists and career karters that just love the unfiltered fun that is so unique to the sport, kart racing is without doubt one of the most direct, intense and purest forms of racing anywhere in the world. KartSim Esports Pack | Steam Store: CLICK HERE Despite having a wide global appeal, like all motorsport, karting still requires serious money to compete at the sharp end of most championships – often pushing the sport out of the reach for all but a fortunate few. Thankfully, just like when we sim racers look to replicate other forms of racing on our PC’s, the virtual world can be our place to share in those very same thrills and spills of competitive action – and in our KartSim pack, the experience behind the wheel offers a great insight into how these powerful yet light machines can be wrestled around a wide variety of faithfully recreated venues available within the software. Developed with a precise attention to detail in a bid to produce the most authentic kart racing experience possible, KartSim has already set the bar exceptionally high with their current content range, and now we have the pleasure of a major new build update – adding a full PBR refresh of all the content currently available, plus the added bonus of two new karts and four new circuits on which to go racing – good times roll on! KartSim European Track Pack | Steam Store: CLICK HERE KartSim Change Log X30EU MINI CADET 2021 v1.72 – New Model aimed for young sim racers 8-13 years old X30 2021 v1.67 – New PBR shaders, Scaled helmet and updated driver model, New Tyre 2d Art, New icons for recently released Rf2 UI RENTAL 2021 v1.67 – New PBR shaders, Scaled helmet and updated driver model, New Tyre 2d Art, New icons for recently released Rf2 UI, New Sounds KZ EU 2021 v1.71 – New shifter kart model! Whilton Mill 2021 v118 – New Consumer track Larkhall WSKC 2021 v116 – New Consumer track PFI 2021 v126 – New PBR Shaders, New AI, Update to tracks Buckmore 2021 v122 – New PBR Shaders, New AI, Update to tracks Glan Y Gors 2021 v128 – New PBR Shaders, New AI, Update to tracks Zuera 2021 v110 -New Consumer track Wackersdorf 2021 v110 -New Consumer track Kristianstad 2021 v112 – New PBR Shaders, New AI, Update to tracks Alaharma 2021 v114 – New PBR Shaders, New AI, Update to tracks Adria 2021 v118 – New PBR Shaders, New AI, Update to tracks Joining the already impressive collection of highly detailed circuits and vehicles within the KartSim offering, today the new PBR update also brings with it two exciting new karts for our drivers to enjoy, with the introduction of the IAME Senior X30 and the new Shifter Kart, the IAME KZ! Before we move on, let’s take a closer look at these new machines: New Karts KartSim Upgrade Pack | Steam Store: CLICK HERE A racing kart is a racing kart, four wheels, a seat, engine, chassis and steering wheel right? Wrong! Despite the premise of karts being a very simple one, the various different types of machinery that exist within the sport mean that drivers can have a wildly different experience behind the wheel dependent on which type of vehicle they so choose. From basic, low speed rental machines with safety bumpers, brake lights and a relatively simple steering action, to fantastically fast karts that have obscene amounts of power for their weight, gears and a direct steering input that requires use of brakes and throttle just as much as the wheel to get round corners – variety is very much the spice of life, and things just got a whole lot more spicy with the introduction of not one, but two very different new machines to the KartSim world… IAME Mini Cadet X30 In the real world, the IAME Mini Cadet X30 is aimed at younger drivers around the 8 – 13-year-old range, however that doesn’t mean this new model is anything short of exciting to drive, far from it. Featuring a water cooled 60 cc engine, perhaps this kart is a more settled vehicle that some of its bigger brothers, but the X30 still requires drivers to master karting techniques like brake and throttle steer, and it can certainly punish anyone who doesn’t obey to the rules of carrying the maximum amount of momentum around the circuit at any given time. Thanks to the lower overall horsepower of the Cadet X30, keeping up that minimum speed is more important than ever, and should you find yourself getting too crossed up mid-corner, you will find it very difficult to recover that time loss as your rivals swarm past in a pack so closely matched they almost appear to be running together as one! Primarily used in the IAME Euro Series and local National championships, the Mini Cadet X30 isn’t the fastest machine in the collection, but it’s one that certainly encourages great, close racing action. IAME KZ The biggest, fastest, craziest and most powerful kart within KartSim; the new IAME KZ is the very first ‘shifter’ kart to be introduced into the KartSim world – and it’s a crazy ride! Almost too powerful for a traditional kart track, the IAME KZ comes complete with a 6 speed manual gearbox and 125 cc racing engine – bolted to a chassis that weights barely more than an adult person. Needless to say, the way the IAME KZ is driven is wildly different to any other type of kart within the simulation, with outlandish speeds possible to achieve and fantastically short braking distances, this kart will keep drivers firmly on their toes regardless of the type of circuit in use. Very firmly a kart used by seasoned, senior drivers, the IAME KZ is the chassis of choice for the official European and World Championships in kart racing, offering KartSim players the chance to experience the absolute pinnacle of real world kart racing from the comfort of their own home. As an added bonus, as these karts are so incredibly quick, taking to a full size racetrack is also very possible, opening up some incredible combination opportunities to really experience just how quickly these machines can travel. New Tracks Thanks to the seemingly endless enthusiasm for kart racing on both an amateur and professional level, and the inevitable additional conveniences that come with requiring considerably less land space to build a track than one would need for a full size circuit, kart tracks are plentiful in their number around the world – from high level professional grade facilities that would put most national racetracks to shame, to the more sedate and simple constructions often found at your local venue hosting arrive and drive activities. With this fantastic diversity of venues to tap into within the world of KartSim, this new release brings with it not one, but four new circuits on which to try out the varied machinery found within the pack. With two circuits based in the United Kingdom, and two new venues from Europe, the update today brings the total collection of racing venues to 10 – all in full PBR graphical glory! Whilton Mill 2021 The first of the new pair of UK tracks to come to KartSim, Whilton Mill has been a popular venue for karters since first opening its doors to the racing public, offering a fine driving experience across the 1200 m circuit length. Based in Daventry in Northamptonshire, Wilton Mill is often considered an ideal candidate for the many test days undertaken by drivers, and the circuit remains a mainstay on many national competition calendars throughout the racing year. Popular with ‘arrive and drive’ guests as well as hosting high level professional championship races, Whilton Mill is fast, flowing and an exciting layout that produces great racing action. Larkhall WSKC 2021 Larkhall is one of the premium kart racing circuits in Scotland. Having recently undergone a major refurbishment programme to increase the circuit length to 1140 m, the new Larkhall venue is very much at the forefront of modern standards in terms of both facilities and safety. Now holding the honour of the longest kart racing lap in Scotland, Larkhall plays host to regular ‘arrive and drive’ public events, as well as professional meetings for both the British Championship and West of Scotland Kart Club events, who are based at the Merryton Road venue. Zuera International Circuit 2021 The first of our European pack new creations, the Zuera International Circuit is a high profile professional racing venue based in the Zaragoza region of Spain. Running to a total lap length of 1700 m, The facilities and circuit at Zuera are of the highest standard in Spanish kart racing, and the venue remains a regular on the FIA European Kart Championship calendar, having been raced on by a vast number of current Formula One drivers, including the likes of Max Verstappen and Lando Norris during their junior careers. From a driving perspective, the track is fast, open and quite bumpy, which should lead to plenty of drama and opportunities to overtake during the course of a race. Wackersdorf 2021 Another regular of the FIA European Championship calendar, Wackersdorf is a fine example of some of the best kart racing tarmac in Germany. Based in Wackersdorf, Allemagne, the track comes in a just over 1220 m in length, featuring a fearsomely fast final sector closing off what is a generally a very technical and entertaining overall layout. Recognized as one of the premier outdoor karting facilities in Germany, Wackersdorf recently benefited from a full circuit resurfacing in 2018, and with the track coming in at between 9 and 12 meters in width, this is another layout where kart racers enjoy multiple opportunities to race with and alongside their opponents. Updated Tracks As well as the new additons to KartSim, existing circuits have also undergone a pleasing transformation with the introduction of full PBR shader technology, substantially uplifting the visual aspect of the tracks and introducing a collection of smaller fixes and improvements. Adria Alaharma Buckmore Park Glan Y Gors Kristianstad Paul Fletcher International Competition System Races Aligning with this new release, we are also very pleased to confirm the KartSim content will be coming to our rFactor 2 Competition System! Set to go live from today (Saturday 10th July), Competition System drivers will have the opportunity to take part in regular short races within the system, with different tracks rotating throughout the day as we offer up sharp, short and exciting racing across the full spectrum of content within the pack! The Competiton System will host 15 races per day from Saturday to Thursday (except Wednesday for maintaince day) using the UK track pack, with Friday to Tuesday set to feature the circuits that form the European Track Pack. These events should produce a very different online racing experience for our drivers, one that we really hope will be embraced by the community and lead to some thoroughly enjoyable and entertaining side by side action. In order to access the races, load up your rFactor 2 install, navigate to the Competition tab within the UI, locate the KartSim events and sign up for the races you fancy – simple, and fun! Buying Options – Packs, Items and Deals As the substantial amount of content that makes up the KartSim offering within rFactor 2 continues to grow, we have introduced some new Steam Store pack options to offer up the best collection of deals for our sim racing community. Ideal for those just getting started in the world of virtual karting, or a great option to add the latest content to your existing collection, below you can find the different packs on offer within the rFactor 2 Steam Store, and the contents they contain: A great discounted package featuring all 10 of our consumer UK and European Kart Tracks and all of our 4 consumer kart models. Ideal for Esports competitions Steam Store: CLICK HERE Already own everything, but want to add the four new tracks and two new karts released today? Grab the KartSim Upgrade Pack – a specially designed collection aimed to offer the cheapest and easiest way to add the new content to your growing collection! Steam Store: CLICK HERE This pack adds the IAME X30 EU Mini Cadet 2021, the X30 Senior 2021, the Rental and the new IAME KZ shifter kart to your rFactor 2 instal. Steam Store: CLICK HERE A great discounted package featuring all 5 of our consumer UK Kart Tracks and all 4 of our consumer kart models. Ideal for Esports competitions. Pack includes Whilton Mill 2021, Larkhall WSKC 2021, Paul Fletcher International 2021, Buckmore Park 2021 and the Glan Y Gors venue, plus the IAME X30 EU Mini Cadet 2021, the X30 Senior 2021, the KZ Shifter and Rental karts. Steam Store: CLICK HERE A great discounted package featuring all 5 of our consumer European Kart Tracks and all of our 4 consumer kart models. Ideal for Esports competitions. Pack includes Zuera 2021, Wackersdorf 2021, Kristianstad 2021, Alaharma 2021 and Adria 2021, plus the IAME X30 EU Mini Cadet 2021, the X30 Senior 2021, the KZ Shifter and Rental karts. Steam Store: CLICK HERE Some great content that should lead to exceptional racing. The KartSim team have done a fantastic job of bringing the full PBR treatment to these karts and tracks, and we hope our community enjoy hitting the virtual tarmac and sampling how pure racing is felt within rFactor 2. If you like going fast, sideways, side-by-side and 2 inches from the ground, all at the same time, you are going to love these karts! KartSim is available now in the rFactor 2 Steam Store

Roadmap Update – June 2021 Roadmap day! Believe it or not, the end of June is here and much of the world should be, in theory at least, basking in glorious sunshine as we approach the height of summer across much of Europe. While the warmer days and shorter nights are a pleasant distraction for sure, it most certainly doesn’t mean things have slowed down any here at Studio 397, with our dedicated team of developers and artists continuing to work long into the nights to bring all the latest goodies and improvements to rFactor 2. We’ve certainly had another busy month here at the Studio, with plenty of new content being released, a big ‘Release Candidate’ build deployment and lots of work behind the scenes to make sure all the building blocks are lined up for successful future development, so let’s take a quick look at some of the things we’ve got to look forward to in the weeks ahead, and catch up on a few of our key achievements from the month gone by… Announcing The New Formula Pro Car A new car is about to be released for rFactor 2, in the form of the mighty Formula Pro – a realization of how top tier open wheel formula racing will be represented in the years ahead. The introduction of the Formula Pro in rFactor 2 will mark the fastest and most modern open wheel machine within our collection of vehicles, featuring no-less than an eye watering 800 HP delivered to the real wheels of a car that weighs just 680 KG. Complete with modern safety devices like Halo head protection system, this new car takes a lot of skill and effort to race, and gives us all a small insight into how open wheel racing is set to develop in the very near future In order to bring the car to players early enough to allow drivers to become acquainted with the nuances of such a demanding machine in race conditions, we have decided to release the new Formula Pro in a two phased approach, with an early ‘Shakedown’ build set to be released this July 1st, ahead of the qualifying rounds of the upcoming new Formula Challenge S1 Championship, and then a further development update set to drop ahead of the full ‘Version 1’ release scheduled for a little later in July. This means that the initial build of the car scheduled for tomorrow afternoon will receive more development work and improvements in the very near future, so get practising and enjoying the incredible performance this car offers ahead of more goodies and tweaks coming to the machine over the course of the next few days. Keen to try this new beast out in the spirit of competition? The brand-new Formula Challenge Series qualification begins on on July 2nd and runs until July 12th, all within the rFactor 2 Competiton System. Find out more about how to take part in this new series by clicking on the following link: HERE. Release Candidate and Beta Progress June Release Candidate Update | More Information: CLICK HERE Earlier this month, we deployed a substantial new ‘Release Candidate’ build update for the simulation, bumping the version number for this latest RC build and adding the new and (we believe) dramatically good-looking first pass at Screen Space Reflections (SSR) – vastly improving the way rFactor 2 represents reflections in wet road conditions, adding a much appreciated level of graphical depth and quality to the simulation when racing in the rain on any given track within the title. Of course, with such a considerable improvement to the graphics of the software, we anticipate small fixes and updates will be required over the comings weeks to ensure everything is performing exactly as expected, something that we are monitoring and working on at a near daily basis back at HQ. What this does mean, following a release of this size, is that much of our attention is currently focussed on supporting the quality of life and development of the latest Release Candidate update – addressing any issues that have been presented by the community and generally making sure that everything is performing correctly, and addressing any bugs and problems that crop up between now and when we turn this latest Release Candidate build into the main rFactor 2 branch on Steam. Already we have received a few reports of various items of interest from the community, which we are in the process of reviewing and tweaking for the next hotfix update currently in development. Although a lot of our resource capacity is quite rightly focussed on the continued improvements to our current RC build, we are also turning our attention to the next batch of updates that are underway behind closed doors (the workflow never stops!) – although these changes are still at an early stage as we focus mostly on supporting the current RC, we have plenty of interesting fixes and improvements planned for our next update. Tyre Compounds In Overlay One of the key areas we are looking at expanding in the near future is the amount of information shared to the game overlay, something that should help enrich the various rFactor 2 broadcasts that are regularly run both centrally here at Studio 397, and out within the wider rFactor 2 community. With the introduction of the upcoming Formula Pro open wheel car, and the inevitable selection of tyre compounds that machine comes with, we have resolved to upgrade our overlay system to show the viewers at home which compounds are in play for each driver at any given time – something that we feel will bring a positive improvement to the broadcast experience within the simulation. As many of you will likely have noticed from the last Release Candidate update, we have already added a few new features to the in-built overlay that have proven to be popular amongst our active racing community, namely the introduction of a brand-new DRS display, as well as the welcome addition / return of RMP, speed, gear and pedal inputs. Needless to say we will continue to look at refining and expanding this powerful tool within the simulation, as well as continuing to enjoy the many varied event broadcasts our outstanding community so impressively produce. Competition System Linked Sessions We are delighted to see our Competition System continues to produce some excellent regular online racing action within the rFactor 2 community, and while progress from the outside may seem to have slowed down a little in recent months, we can assure you that we continue to look at ways we can improve and add value to this aspect of rFactor 2 going forward. Right from the very early days following the introduction of the CS back in late 2020, our community have requested the ability to join different races directly after the previous event has finished, without the need to back out of the Competition System itself and register for the next event. Although we have long agreed with this desire, we have had to temper expectation a little as we work behind the scenes to test out various different scenarios and ensure what we have already is robust enough to act as a base for further developments and expansion. Although we feel testing and tweaking with this sort of thing could very easily go on for the foreseeable future, we do feel that we now have a good gap in our development schedule to look at how we can best included ‘linked’ sessions within the Competition System – which will basically mean that a driver can join an event and race, and stay within the system and progress straight into the next track session – something we are very excited to finally be able to work on and hopefully bring to the community in the very near future. 2022 BMW M4 GT3 Announced BMW M4 Class 1 2021 | Reveal Event: CLICK HERE If you tuned in to the recent BMW Reveal Event ahead of our new BMW M4 Class 1 2021 announcement, you may have noticed a cheeky little reference to another new car towards the end of the show – that’s right, we have signed a licence agreement with BMW to bring the new for next season 2022 BMW M4 GT3 to rFactor 2 – a car that will represent the 14th GT3 model in the simulation, and should prove to be a very exciting and dramatic modern upgrade for the rapidly expanding field of GT3 cars already on offer in rFactor 2. Developed as the successor to the M6 GT3, the new machine represents what BMW hope will become the new standard in GT3 performance. Based on the latest generation BMW M4, the new car not only looks dramatically different to its predecessor, but should pack a greater punch out on the circuit with improved consistency and tyre life one of the key cornerstones of this latest design. Of course, it is still very early days for the sim version of this car, as the real world M4 GT3 is still very much undergoing intensive testing and select race outings ahead of its 2022 competition debut, so stay tuned on the Studio 397 website and rFactor 2 social channels for further updates and news about this exciting new addition to rFactor 2 in the weeks and months ahead. That’s about it for the things we can talk about going forward, rest assured these are just the very tip of the iceberg here in rFactor 2 land – we’ve got PBR updates, new licences, new cars, feature improvements, bug fixes and many other things besides all cooking away in the background – but more on some of those topics another day.

v1.29 Full update to PBR on all assets and materials Remodelled and updated Hotel Updated Spectator and Foliage materials Added various updated support and rescue vehicles Reviewed Visgroup settings for more optimal performance on Medium/Low details Minor adjustment to AI line at T10 Fixed Inconsistent Pit Exit placement Fixed issues with shadows on tyre barriers

Roadmap Update – May 2021 Welcome to the Monthly Development Roadmap post for May – the latest look behind the curtain of Studio 397 as we continue on our exciting rFactor 2 journey. Thankfully and somewhat later than hoped for, the warm weather is starting to take hold around Europe (allegedly), and even with the significant temptation to venture out into the great outdoors, our team here at Studio 397 have remained hunkered down in our home offices working hard to keep up the flow of updates, tweaks, improvements and fixes to the title coming together at a pace – with plenty having gone on behind the scenes in what has been a satisfyingly successful and busy few weeks of development. As is always the case with these development roadmap posts, the intention today is to give you a brief insight into what we are working on within the simulation going forward, and to wrap up our most recent achievements for those within the community who perhaps don’t follow our progress on a day-to-day basis. Studio 397 Now Officially Part Of Motorsport Games Family Now with that introduction out of the way, and before we dig deeper into upcoming developments, we must start off with some rather big and satisfying news for everyone here at the Studio. Following up on the announcement about our impending purchase by Motorsport Games, we finally managed to see that deal over the line earlier this month, and from here on in are now a part of the ever expanding Motorsport Games network – a move that we believe will significantly help us strengthen our core skills and resources as we continue to push forward and develop rFactor 2 in the weeks, months and years ahead. Motorsport Games Complete Purchase of S397 | More Details: CLICK HERE The new relationship is still very much in its infancy at the moment, with much of the current activity focusing on Motorsport Games and Studio 397 colleagues getting to know each other, understanding where our respective skills, strengths and weaknesses all lye and slowly starting to get a feel for how we can collectively work together to drive our various roles and responsibilities forward in the years ahead. Although these kinds of major ownership changes take time to bed in and settle down before any real insight into what benefits each party can and will bring to the table, we are just as keen as the community is to know how this new arrangement will impact the development future of rFactor 2. As such, in a bid to help clear up some facts and share insights with the community here in rFactor 2, we have planned a long and detailed video interview with Motorsport Games President Stephen Hood, where we plan to sit down at the Motorsport Games HQ in Silverstone and really get into the details about how this new arrangement is expected to work going forward. Furthermore, once that interview has been released, and the subsequent questions that will no doubt produce, we will produce a follow-on session with Marcel Offermans from Studio 397, where we plan to mop up any following questions from the community, and likely throw a few curveballs at Marcel from our side as well! Unfortunately, the initial plan was to head down to Silverstone week ending 28th May, however quite frankly I had a delayed Covid-19 vaccination jab the day before departing, and suddenly the task of a 240-mile round trip felt significantly less desirable than when the meeting was initially arranged. As such, the original plan has been delayed slightly, with a new date for the interview set to be arranged for the first week or two of June. Development Focus For June Each month in these development roadmap posts we attempt to share a little insight into some activities and developments we are working on behind the scenes with rFactor 2. Due to the level of complexity of game development, and the many varied states of either bug fixing or feature improvements we are working on at any given time, with the software, sometimes the amount of information we feel able to share with the wider public can vary in its detail. This can be for a number of reasons, some related to our confidence on getting round to starting / finishing any given piece of project work, through to certain aspects of development having a longer lead time than others, often meaning that key areas of improvement can roll over into consecutive months, especially if some of the necessary background work that needs to be undertaken is often behind the scenes, and doesn’t produce something that will affect the game play experience of the public in general. With that said, much of what the team are focusing on for this coming month will centre around some key areas of the software – from background tooling, maintenance and code revisions that will support future development objectives, to other major changes the likes of our new SSR implementation, that although set to bring a significant visual improvement to the title, are major pieces of work in their own right. Following up from what we discussed in the April Development Roadmap, this month much of our work continues to look at ways we can develop and improve the user experience within the simulation, as the team look at the smaller and more fine detail aspects of the UI in a bid to streamline and smoothen out both the experience and the flow of using the front end aspects of rFactor 2. Much of the ground work for these changes has already been discussed in our previous roadmap post, however for the month ahead we hope to bring many of these small but important updates forward within the next upcoming Release Candidate build of the simulation – with much work still being undertaken by the development team to further polish and improve the experience and performance within the UI. Shadow Cascading Improvements A long time issue of the graphics engine in rFactor 2, I’m sure many of you will have noticed the shadow cascading (or so called running shadow) effect in rFactor 2 over the years. As we continue in our push to improve the overall visual experience for rFactor 2 players, this is one of the aspects of the simulation that has long been on our laundry list of items that we would like to review and improve over time. Back at the very start of the rFactor 2 journey we considered this to be one of those aspects of the graphics engine that would unfortunately prove to require too significant of a development to effectively review and improve in the immediate future, however as the graphical prowess of rFactor 2 has moved on significantly in recent years, it has become more and more apparent that this aspect of the way shadows are produced in the software needs to be improved, and upon closer inspected we are delighted to report that early trials and investigations have brought back some very encouraging results so far. Although it would be fair to say we are still some way off from creating a solution that is robust enough to move into any public facing build versions of the simulation, we still feel it is a point worth raising with the community that this side of the graphic engine is being looked into, and that we are optimistic that the work being undertaken at present will have real value to the ongoing visual improvements in the software in the near future. To give you a little bit of insight into the current state of these tests (very early and without any AA applied), check out the comparison gifs from before and after the changes below: Before After Additional Hardware Support Another aspect of the continued strive to make our UI experience easier and more customisable for the end user has led us to look at the introduction of further visual references for the calibration of hardware within the simulation. As many of you will know, rFactor 2 works with an incredibly wide range of sim racing hardware, from all different kinds of popular (and not so popular) wheel and pedal sets, to handbrakes, motion systems and pretty much any other type of hardware device one can imagine. Of course, with such a varied amount of hardware now available within the sim racing marketplace, we recognise the fact it is important to our users to have the power to adjust and tweak their equipment to provide an realistic and enjoyable experience. That said, we also recognise that further fine tuning and adjustments are valuable to our players in order to perform those final tweaks to dial in their hardware, as such, we have resolved to bring further pedal calibration options into the UI, that will allow players to access a simple and visual tool within the software that will enable maximum and minimum inputs to be set across the whole raw range of pedal travel – similar in functionality to what was available in the former UI configuration pages. Furthermore, we also intend to look at offering a reverse FFB forces option natively within the UI, which will be helpful for correcting forces on some wheels that are inverted on calibration. These changes, along with the previously mentioned sever password save option, asynchronously server loading, new sorting options, removed waiting time for ‘favourite servers’ and other quality of life improvements are all at lesser or greater stages of development, and should be making an appearance within upcoming builds of the title in the very near future. New Overlay Features With the next Release Candidate build we intend to ship a new overlay feature for DRS (Drag Reduction System) within the core offering of rFactor 2. Many cars in the title, both first and third party, feature some kind of DRS functionality, and while we already support this natively on certain tracks with DRS zones, as well as on all tracks as unregulated activations, the next build of rFactor 2 should bring with it the ability to visually represent how DRS is being deployed on the broadcast overlay functionality within the sim. Telling a story to the viewers on a broadcast, either from the commentary team or on screen by way of broadcast graphics is an important aspect of producing compelling racing coverage, and we are excited to introduce some very interesting DRS related features within the next build. Chief amongst these updates will be the introduction of a ‘1v1 battle box’ that will display in scenarios when a chasing driver has enabled DRS, plus the ability to display each row of drivers with active DRS in the timing tower and the extended battle box, as well as a “DRS ACTIVE” text in the 1v1 battle box if the chasing driver has DRS active – all part of the ongoing improvements and additions to our broadcast overlay system within rFactor 2. Competition System – New Features The main noticeable change to the Competition System this month will undoubtedly be the introduction of our new three-race ‘Summer Showdown’ series of events, where we have compiled three very different types of racing action in our StockCar, IndyCar and GT3 car sets across three very different circuits, with the top split qualified drivers featuring in their own live streamed race on the rFactorLive Twitch channel on Saturday evenings. We are quite frankly delighted with the level of interest and engagement these races have generated within the community, and it has been a great pleasure for us to see the enjoyment (and excellent racing) that these events are producing so far as we head into the final ’60 Minutes of the Ring’ later in June. With such a great uptake on this new format of special edition races, we very much plan to continue this trend going forward for a little while longer – so expect more special edition broadcasted events in the weeks and months ahead! Still keeping to the topic of the Competition System, one other new feature that is likely to be introduced into the main system in the very near future is the ability to host fixed setup race events, something that we have heard many requests about from the community and are happy to finally be able to introduce into the system for future events. Of course we recognise that some players enjoy the aspect of building and racing a custom setup, so don’t expect all events to feature this new option – we will work hard to ensure our planning of future races offers up a nice mix of both fixes and custom setup racing, much like we do with our mix of paid and free content within the Competition System – as we try and offer a mix of something for all different types of rFactor 2 users. Earlier this month we also provided an update to our roadmap, making some changes and elaborating on a few others. Monza! New Track Announcement Finally we have been able to confirm the latest new circuit to be added to rFactor 2, with the announcement of the much anticipate addition of the Autodromo Nazionale di Monza – fully laser scanned and up-to-date with the current racing season. We headed out to the beautiful Monza park back at the end of March, and since then the track team here at Studio 397 have been working at an incredible rate to bring together the many hundreds of GB of data into a working circuit model within the simulation. Now of course I’m not going to fall into the trap of predicting a release date for this new circuit, however I think (ha, ha) I’m probably on safe ground to say we should be looking to get this out to the public within the next two or three months. Monza Announced | More Details: Click HERE As work continues at a pace back in the studio on this track, we will continue to keep you all updated with regular progress reports on the various Studio 397 social media channels, from video previous, shots of the work-in-progress development and side-by-side comparisons to the real circuit, so if you aren’t already following us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, make sure to give us a like and not miss out on any of the awesome progress that is happening with this great new track. Major Sebring PBR Update Incoming Sebring International Raceway | Steam Store: CLICK HERE Keeping very firmly on the subject of tracks, despite the announcement of a brand-new venue in the form of Monza, and with a couple more we are about to secure licences for in the next few weeks, we are still very much focussed on updating and refreshing the current roster of content within rFactor 2 to ensure all our content offerings to the community reach a certain level of quality expected by our community. Recently we introduced a pretty substantial PBR update to the free Lime Rock Park track within the sim (more on that below), and the next venue in our list to get the PBR update treatment is one of our absolute favourite tracks in rFactor 2 – the Sebring International Raceway! We’ve had a version of the newly updated track in our internal testing team for a little while now as we look to ensure everything is behaving as expected from the new update, and so far things are looking very good indeed for a release within the month of June. As one can expect from a full PBR refresh, we think Sebring looks absolutely spectacular in this new build, and we cannot wait to get this big update out into the general public for you all to enjoy the fruits of our track teams labour. Already the track looks fantastic in the different time of day and weather conditions in rFactor 2, and coupled together with the upcoming SSR update, we thing our players will notice a considerably improved visual experience in this top draw American race circuit. More PBR Track Updates and Remodelling In The Works With a PBR update release of Sebring quite close to being deployed to the public, we have already started work on an even bigger PBR update and remodelling task for another of our existing tracks within the simulation, however we will keep the details of that to ourselves for now, and likely tell you more about what is next on the list in the June Development Roadmap – needless to say, our track team are very busy with new and existing content ! Looking Back On May May was a very busy month for the team here at Studio 397, and we have been delighted to get plenty of goodies out into the public domain for our wonderful community to enjoy. From new content updates in the form of our massive Lime Rock Park PBR refresh, to a pretty significant development by the KartSim team, plus a number of fixes and tweaks to the core simulation itself – May was a good one indeed! Lime Rock Park PBR Refresh Lime Rock Park | Steam Workshop: Click Here. A popular track made even more attractive thanks to the great work of the rFactor 2 track team, we were absolutely delighted to release the free PBR update refresh for this mighty little American venue last month, and the reaction from our community has been incredibly heart-warming to see how much fresh love and affection this little and often overlooked venue has received since the new update was deployed back on the 5th May. We’ve always been fans of the lesser known venues here at Studio 397, despite acknowledging that many players very much appreciate the more well-known tracks we have to offer, we are sure many of you like ourselves enjoy the odd guilty pleasure of tearing up the tarmac on lesser known little gems like this one. Lime Rock Park has been a staple venue of rFactor 2 for many a year, having originally released for the simulation all the way back in the 2013, and thanks to its grand old age it would be fair to say that the little 2.462km track needed this new refresh in order to bring it back into line with the quality standards you’ve all now become accustomed to with our more recent content offerings. For us at the studio it was an really rewarding experience bringing this track back into the spotlight, and so far it very much looks like all of our hard work is paying off, as the track has been very warmly received by the community, and already has been the scene of some epic racing adventures in our Competition System. Lime Rock Park is back, and more beautiful that ever! Opt-Out New Build rFactor 2 Build 6660506 | More Details: CLICK HERE May would also see the introduction of a new build of rFactor 2, as we moved over the existing ‘Release Candidate’ version of the software into the main public build of the simulation. The latest new release, deployed to the title on May 19th was the result of several weeks of development focus on address key areas of bug fixing and development that have been identified through both our internal testing processes, and via the valuable feedback reported from our community. Under normal circumstances, the introduction of a new build release would generate a complementary new ‘Release Candidate’ update for players to choose if they wish to opt into that experimental build, however due to the size and complexity of the new for the next RC build SSR implementation, we have taken the decision to delay the launch of our next RC update, until such a time in the very near future that we can be sure the build is stable and suitable for the public to try. What this means in reality is the current public ‘Opt-Out’ and ‘Release Candidate’ builds of rFactor 2 are for the moment identical, until such a time as when we elect to deploy the new Release Candidate build to Steam. Client 6660506 Dedicated 6660508 General Added SteamID of each client to race results logs generated by a Dedicated Server Fix issue with Attack Mode overlay information not correctly resetting. Stopped AI playing wipers when in Garage Added automatic headlight and wiper settings for player. These show as an extra step in the key toggles (Headlights: Off / Auto / On) or (Wipers: Off / Auto / Slow / Fast) Skip Auto option when the setting is disabled Added a message about windscreen wiper state to the message centre. Don’t show a message if the vehicle does not have wipers. Auto Headlights and Windscreen Wipers are forced on if no key is assigned” Fixed issue where automatic gears would require a false top gear to correctly downshift for some vehicles Report steam branch and build number on startup HUD Fixed spacing for weather info in HUD Graphics Renamed Anti-Aliasing options to show the amount of MSAA applied. Adjust Sunflare strength so that they work with different field of views Added a blend out at screen edge to smooth transition of Sunflare going off screen. Fixed an issue where a texture sampler would not set correctly Fixed an issue that DigitalFlags would behave as Marshals online Reworked Auto Exposure to reduce the calculated exposure “bouncing” around in different conditions Enabled Auto Exposure in Cockpit Cameras Fixed Water not rendering on TV Screens Removed GPU V-Sync option from Graphics Configuration settings Updated Environment Reflection Settings Low/Medium/High/Ultra settings which increase refresh rate and resolution. Ambient light probes now allow for more advanced blending options Fixed stuttering on Replay Monitor screen. UI Added sector and lap timing to full screen replay bar. Updated the styling and alignment of the full screen replay bar. Fixed UI stopping updating when clicking repeatedly on the track map in the event screen. Corrected the display of FXAA to On/Off Fixed the units to seconds for displaying Transparent Trainer Lead Timer Fixed the display units for Low Speed Information to show a percentage Fixed race countdown not always showing for a multiplayer race. Fixed showing the maximum time for a single player race before the race start. Improved formatting of time durations. Fixed issue where RealRoad setting was carried over from previous track selection in session setup screen Fixed an issue where some tracks would not show in game due to having packed SCN files which were not valid track layouts Added Auto Blip, Auto Lift, Hold Brakes, Hold Clutch, Repeat Shifts, Start Engine, Auto Wipers and Auto Headlight settings to difficulty screen Modding Fixed some minor issues with sample ModDev content Added pop up (mod dev & scene viewer only) / logging to paths where the RRBIN file fails to load Force an update after loading RRBIN in scene viewer or moddev so that it shows correctly straight away. Updated default RRBIN filename scene viewer / moddev tweakbar rollout Setup a stable and beta version of Max Plugins 2021. Stable is the last fully tested internally. Beta is built to the absolute latest code. Ligier JS P217 Update Ligier JS P217 Released | More Info: Click HERE. The lovely Ligier was another piece of content that received update treatment during the course of the month about to pass, as we took out the time to check back and review this awesome LMP2 car and address some of the issues that have cropped up since we released the car as part of the Endurance Pack 2 DLC back in December. More of a quality of life tidy up than a major development overhaul, the new build took the car to version 1.17 and as well as adding a new O-Rouge themed livery, also cleared up some issues around the cockpit graphics – namely tidying up a reflection issue on the steering wheel glass, repaired the underbody shadows of AI cars bug and other minor wiper and IBL shaders on wheel rims issues, as you can check on the update release notes link above. Competition System Well, well, well – plenty has been happening in the world of the rFactor 2 Competition System this month! We’ve had the debut of regular hourly races in the legendary USF2000 open wheeler, the final throws of the GT Challenge series and of course, a brand-new initiative in the form of the very first ‘rFactor 2 Summer Showdown’ series of events – an open invite three race competition where rFactor 2 drivers are invited to register within the competition system and set a time for three high profile and very different types of racing action. Quite frankly we have been delighted with the uptake from our community with these races so far, and already the first two events (StockCar Challenge at Portland and the rF250 at Indianapolis) have already produced some excellent top split broadcasted racing action. We’ve only got the final 60 Minutes at the Ring event left to run on June 12th, but don’t worry – this type of thing looks like it is something our community enjoy, so expect more of these type of events in the immediate future. In terms of the Competition System itself, as part of the now bi-weekly CS Blog postings Marcel has issued a new and revised top level development roadmap for the Competition System, details of which you can see just below the catch up links to the latest Q&A sessions below: Week 15 | CLICK HERE Week 16 | CLICK HERE Latest Competition System Roadmap Update: More competition formats — we decided to pull some of the different competition formats forward, and we just finished running the first season of GT Challenge in the Competition System. That taught us some valuable things about where we need to add more flexibility to the system, and how we can better accommodate the different styles and formats of racing that we know are so important to our existing and potential new players of rFactor 2. With these findings in our growing databank of knowledge, we’ve elected to spend some more time focussing on this area in the immediate future, however that said, this is probably going to be a continual task, so expect more formats to emerge in the upcoming months. Protests and decisions — This is a topic that we have decided is best managed by splitting it into two distinct parts. The first part of it, making sure we can handle protests and having race control take decisions, is in place in terms of the basic mechanics, which we will continue to monitor, test and expand upon as the system matures and clear trends and requirements make themselves apparent. We have some firm ideas of what we expect this system to look like and the things we plan to achieve with it, however we are also finding it valuable to absorb the excellent feedback from within the community, feedback which will no doubt have an impact upon the finished product going forward. Ratings — based on the data we have gathered, we have completed the internal testing of our algorithms, so our next steps are to look at how to integrate them into the UI and decide what competitions we want to use them for. In parallel, we’ve also been looking at some forms of safety ratings, but as I’m sure you can imagine, this is an aspect of the system we want to be fully confident is producing fair and balanced results for all of our users, as such this is very much under evaluation back at the studio as we look to ensure we can offer a robust and well-thought-out solution come public release. Stewarding — This is another thorny topic of discussion, and arguably one of the most labour-intensive aspects of running racing events on any sim racing platform. When we introduced the idea of the Competition System in rFactor 2, one of the key goals of the platform had to be around how to make life easier for event organizers to put on top quality racing activations, rather than being bogged down with unnecessary levels of administration that doesn’t add to the quality of life experience of our drivers and participants. With this in mind, we have always aspired to offer a significant amount of automation within the system, with aspects such as protests and decisions being one of the key areas we are working to streamline. Of course, this is a rather large area of discussion, and as the system continues to evolve and develop in this regard, we will expand further on this top separately. Our goal is definitely to let the in-game systems do a lot of the (easy) work here, monitoring when you cut the track or commit other offences and directly handing out penalties. At the same time we are aware that not everything can be decided by robots. Broadcast integration — no big changes here, as we are gradually introducing these features, first internally and then also as part of our overlay package. Some things you will have seen in GT Pro and Challenge over the last couple of months. The goal is still to make sure that overlays showing standings, points, participants and calendars accurately reflect the competition they’re a part of. Roles and team based driving — This is something that many of you within the community have been requesting from the rFactor 2 Competition System in recent months, and as keen endurance racing fans ourselves, we are certainly incredibly enthusiastic to bring this level of functionality to the system for you to enjoy. As things stand currently, we are working on adding the ability to allow multiple drivers to share an “entry”, or car, in a competition. Additionally, we plan on allowing roles to be defined within the system, which means that teams can elect to allocate specific roles for a manager or race engineer for example. Other roles are stewards, race control, and cameramen to facilitate broadcasts. Offline Championships — I’m sure you will appreciate that a lot of our development attention has been focused on improving the online experience of rFactor 2 lately, however with these changes we are also looking at introducing new features to benefit the offline portion of our player base. Already we have identified ways to implement the much request offline championship mode within the core simulation – this will be added once the online part is running smoothly. We will leverage the features introduced as part of the Competition System to allow players to develop their own custom championship tool to race against the AI, something that has been a long time coming to rFactor 2, but hopefully should be worth the wait! Integration — This is a topic that is currently under active discussion within Motorsport Games, the new owners of Studio 397 and rFactor 2 With the rFactor 2 engine becoming the base of many new games, the Competition System is being reviewed and considered for those, as well as integration of it in the Traxion.gg website. No decisions have been made here. We’ll update you as time goes on. Recommended Viewing – rFactor 2 Esports Competitions Fun as it is to get out onto the virtual tarmac for yourself, it is also somewhat enjoyable to watch the efforts of others in one of the many sim racing esport broadcasts available on the internet during these boom days of virtual motorsports. As a leading simulation platform, rFactor 2 enjoys its fair share of esport racing action, and to keep things nice and easy we’ve once again put together a list of some potential highlights for the month ahead: Saturday 5th June | 14:30 CEST | VEC 24 Hours of Le Sarthe | VEC YouTube Monday 7th June | 20:00 CEST | GT Challenge Round 6 | rFactorLive Twitch/ TraxionGG YouTube Saturday 12th June | 21:00 CEST | Summer Showdown Race 3 | rFactorLive Twitch Thursday 17th June | TBC | Something Special – TBC | rFactorLive Twitch/ TraxionGG YouTube Sunday 20th June | 20:45 CEST | Formula Sim Racing Round 8 | FSR YouTube Monday 21st June | 20:00 CEST | GT Pro Relegation Season 4 | rFactorLive Twitch/ TraxionGG YouTube Thursday 24th June | 20:00 CEST | RCCO World eX Championship Round 5 | Motorsport.TV Saturday 26th June | 14:00 CEST | GTR24h Nürburgring 12h | GTR24h YouTube As always, thank you for your time in reading our latest update from the world of rFactor 2. Please do continue to stay safe, stay fast and see you out on the (virtual) track!

v1.01 (2021-04-26) - Reworked and fixed all Trackside Cameras - Removed unused SCN files - Fixed a few objects and textures

Ευτυχώς που ο Κύριλος και ο Λουδοβίκος δεν τρέχουν στη κατηγορία μου αλλά το Τζούλιεν δεν τον πιάνω και εχω το Τακουλατ που είναι γρήγορος και ένα καινούργιο ο Μπλάνκο που είναι κι αυτός γρήγορος. Με τον Ερικ θα χτυπιέμαι.. Την ανάβαση την τρέξαν προχθές οι Γάλλοι στο πρωτάθλημα τους και τη ξέρουν πολύ καλά. Εμείς τι θα κάνουμε... μια βροχή μπορεί να μας σώσει Πάω να βρώ αφρικάνικη κούκλα και πολλές βελόνες ?

v1.00 (2021-04-24) - Eliminated all surface gaps and holes, simplified great amount unnecessary meshes. - Added additional subdivision for road edge. - Added additional 1-2cm random surface height variation. - Smoothed out all "poly-like" road meshes. Road now bends and changes elevation more naturally. - Improved and fixed most of terrain surface (previously floating land pieces) along with various scenery objects. - Merged over 9000 objects (all road, terrain, tree, wall, grass objects), re-split & grouped them evenly into 300 sections (now about 2000 objects). - Adjusted & added hundreds of trees to fit better with reconstructed terrain. - Rebuilt all 3D grass with extra variations, cleaned up overgrowing grass, planted extra flowers. - Rebuilt all invisible boundary walls according to the new terrain. - Manually set and optimized more than 1000 object's LOD values for cockpit camera at forward driving direction. - Rally Stage now only loads terrain objects that is visible, which helps both performance and loading time (previously this was impossible due to thousands of unsorted objects) - Fixed great amount misplaced UV mapping for background tree walls. - Removed collision for various scenery vehicles at garage area, to prevent stuck inside. - Fixed many half-side buildings.

Roadmap Update – January 2021 Hello dear sim racers! That time of the month is here once again, where we put our collective heads together (socially distanced of course) and have a look at pulling together a neat summary of the month just gone, while casting our virtual gaze further afield to share some insight into the immediate future of our simulation, and the continued workings behind the scenes. Unbelievably, we’ve pretty much finished the first month of 2021 already, boxed up and put away the festive decorations, started our varied regimes to lose those additional kgs we acquired during the holidays and generally started to get back into the swing of normal life (well, as normal as is possible in the current climate) following the merriment of December. Here at Studio 397, we’ve had an incredibly busy month of activity with rFactor 2, some of which went well, some slightly less so… Build Updates Let’s get this one out of the way right at the very start of the Roadmap. Back in the early days of January we released a new build of rFactor 2 to the public branch of the simulation (6098993), containing a number of fixes and a few nice improvements that we hoped would drive the simulation forward, and act as a base for continued development during January. Despite our best intentions, it quickly became apparent that a some unforeseen issues had crept in with the update, and the following days would generate a number of reports from the community about areas of the build that required our attention. Keen to rectify these issues and put the new release back on the right track, it quickly became apparent to us that despite deploying follow-up hotfixes, the fundamental issues discovered within the latest build would be significant enough to require a roll back to an earlier version of the sim, allowing us to take further time to investigate and understand what we need to do to improve and stabilise the build. The decision to roll back to an earlier version, with a few smaller updates included, was in the end an easy one to make in order to ensure each of our players enjoyed a stable base on which to play rFactor 2 – but of course this is certainly not a situation we like to see within our simulation, and something that we are working hard to address to ensure a similar situation does not happen again in the future. Mitigation Plans – Future Builds With the lessons learned from the build update that swiftly wasn’t, we’ve doubled down on our processes here at the Studio in an effort to avoid similar such situations occurring in the future. Of course, software development is a deep and complex activity that often throws up the unexpected, and we feel we have room to further strengthen our internal processes to reduce the risk of similar scenarios occurring in future updates – coupled with a simplified and streamlined method of issue reporting (more on that later in the roadmap), we expect that the measures put in place now will prove beneficial in the long term development of rFactor 2. Of these changes, many of which are related to internal processes, one of the most visual changes to the public will be related to the way we release updates in future. When a new build has been created and tested by the internal beta-test team, we will release a “public-beta” branch of rFactor 2 that users can activate. The public beta contains all the proposed changes and improvements, and will run for a period of a week to a month before it is transferred to the stable public build – assuming no major issues are detected. With this new process, our players have the choice of remaining with the main build of rFactor 2, or opting in to try the new updates early – giving us the opportunity to monitor the state of the branch against a wider section of our player base, and ensure we don’t hit upon any unexpected issues that failed to crop up during internal testing. The new process will be applied for our next build update in February, and compliments the improved bug reporting mechanism we plan to launch next month, of which more will be explained a little later in the Roadmap… Bug Fixing – Now And In The Future Our plan for the immediate future is to spend considerable development time addressing the most urgent bugs/features based on the community feedback and our internal testing. We’ve spent a lot of time recently checking up on the status of our current coding backlog, and digging into the various communication platforms we host in order to ensure we’ve captured the vast majority of the issues that have been reported by our community here at rFactor 2. A lot of these issues we’ve managed to recreate internally and pass to the development team to investigate, and some of you will have already received direct communication from the team in order to provide further insight into issues where we need additional information in order to understand exactly what you’ve been experiencing, so we can look closer at the problems and put the relevant measures in place to work out the right solutions. As you can imagine, identifying and working on certain issues often has some level of cross pollination with other aspects of the software, so it isn’t simply a case of “fix A” and move on, but more a process of looking at the individual issue in regard of the wider impact of the overall development of rFactor 2. That said, with a view to opening up a more transparent relationship with our community and giving you all some better insight into the inner workings of the activity here at Studio 397, we’ve noted down in this Roadmap a selection of some key issues / developments we are 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. Permanent fix for corrupted car bodies in multiplayer. Review and rectify showroom upgrades not showing issue. Review and improve day to night transition. Look at UI behaviour and performance. Bug Fixing – New Reporting Process & Overview While the above list has been put together with the intention of showing our community some of the key areas we are looking into at present, we also felt it would be beneficial to offer a more permanent review tool for our users to review whenever they want a little insight into the status of our development. A simple-to-read front end dashboard, together with a more streamlined and practical reporting procedure is something we think will go a long way towards helping both the studio and the community understand where the most pressing concerns exist within the software at any given time. Bug Reporting – At present it has become somewhat apparent that reports from the community about existing issues can arrive in many and varied places on the internet, and often without the necessary information required to help us understand and reproduce the problem back at the studio. Not only does this present the potential danger of important reports being missed by the team, but inevitably if we don’t have the information required to properly reproduce the issue back at base, delays in rectifying the issue will be encountered and valuable development time lost to trying out different scenarios without guarantee of a valuable outcome. As such, we have resolved to release a dedicated bug reporting form within the Studio-397 forum software that walks users through the required steps needing to be completed to create a bug report, breaking down the report into various categories and channelling the user into providing the information we need to act upon the report – this should prove a very powerful tool to aid the development process. Bug Reviewing – Additionally, we plan to develop a public facing dashboard view that allows our community to see what bugs have been added into the reporting system, and a broad view of the status of the report – developed with the intention of providing an easy-to-understand basic reference for interested people to see what is in our system for review and action, and broadly what status of development each particular issue is at. We are still looking at how this might look and work in reality, however we hope to put something together over the course of the coming weeks. Competition System – Blog Next Week January has also seen the launch of our new, weekly, Competition System Development Blog postings here at Studio 397, where we offer insights and updates into the ongoing development of our newest rFactor 2 feature, and where we give our community the opportunity to post their own questions about the system for answering by the Studio. Already we’ve posted three separate blogs on the new Competition System (Blog 1 / Blog 2 / Blog 3), however as we’ve been a little on the busy side over the last few days, we’ve elected to move the fourth post over one week, with a scheduled release date of Wednesday 4th January. We are still logging community questions, so if you’ve got something pressing you wish to ask, feel free to pop it down in the comments section of THIS THREAD and we will do our best to answer it in the next, or upcoming blog postings. Competition System – Development On the subject of our Competition System, we are delighted to see many of our players are engaging in the daily races and having fun racing in rFactor 2 against other drivers – exactly why we developed the system in the first place! Although we are very much in a Beta phase with the CS so far, I think it would be fair to say we are quite pleased with how things are progressing, and the improvements brought to the system since we launched at the end of 2020 have for the most part been well received, and have gradually enhanced the end user experience. Don’t worry, these are just the very tip of the iceberg for the Competition System, with plenty more tweaks, changes, features and depth set to be added as we progress through the development phase. A side effect of running so many races using the Competition System, was the rather visually impressive but incredibly annoying ‘laserbeam’ cars – where a graphical glitch on some vehicles would explode car bodies and take up a lot of the visual real estate of the player – making participation in races a bit more challenging. This bug has been a tough one to track down and resolve, however after much investigation we finally managed to get to the bottom of the issue, and deployed a hotfix update to temporarily remove the problem. Since that hotfix, we have found a more permanent solution to the issue, and will include that fix in the next upcoming update to the sim. It turns out this bug has been in the codebase for more than two years now, so we’re glad it’s gone now! In terms of the system itself, so far we have put together a nice mix of free and paid content for our drivers to enjoy, with players having the opportunity to race in such varied machines as LMP3, GTE, GT4, Cup and Tatuus formula cars. Speaking for myself personally, this has opened my eyes to a number of interesting combinations that I’ve not previously explored fully, and I think it fair to say the variety of content used so far has proven popular with our active racers – with more to follow in the next weeks and months! Formula E 2021 And Attack Zones January would see another piece of premium content added to rFactor 2 with the introduction of the 2021 ABB Formula E FIA World Championship DLC – bringing the very latest and greatest from the world of Formula E back to rFactor 2 once again. Rather than “just” a new season pack DLC, this new release would prove special for a couple of very good reasons. From a performance point of view, the 2021 car features brand-new and overhauled physics and tyre behaviours, producing a very different driving characteristic to the way the cars act out on circuit, improving what was already a very fine racing experience. On the visuals side, another new element to this DLC that we are very proud to introduce to rFactor 2 for the first time is the inclusion of Attack Zone – a unique to Formula E strategical element of racing where a driver must navigate through a dedicated Attack Zone gate during the race, to activate an additional boost for 35kW of power – for a limited time period. The Attack Zone has been added to our four existing Formula E circuits, and is represented by an on track graphic that lights up during activation; and of course the LED Halo illumination that flashes blue when a driver has the additional power boost activated within their car. This is an interesting and unique strategic element of racing within our Formula E content, and something that adds a very exciting new strand to what are already highly entertaining cars to drive and race. As an further bonus, we have added the 2021 pack to the existing 2020 Formula E store item, which means anyone who already owns the 2020 cars will get this content for free, and any players who purchase the 2021 pack will also get the cars, teams and drivers of the 2020 season included in their download! Formula E 2021 | More info: Click Here Formula E 2021 | Steam Store: Click Here Track Updates – Indianapolis PBR February is set to be the month where we release something that has been on the wish list of our community for quite some time – the much anticipated PBR update to our fabulous Indianapolis Motor Speedway circuit! Yes, one of the older but still wonderful tracks within rFactor 2 is set to be given a new lease of life this coming February thanks to the excellent work of our track team here at Studio 397, with all the latest PBR graphical development goodness set to be applied to Indianapolis Motor Speedway, and the various configurations found within the simulation. Yes, gone is the original 2013 version to be updated to 2020 standards – including the modern track layout! A fresh lick of PBR magic, a wholesale asset update, some AI tweaks and a new variant – it’s going to be wonderful, and it releases for free in early February! Looking Back On January Now normally we start these Roadmap posts with a look back on the month just gone, then move on to future matters – however seeing as we’ve had some pretty pressing things to discuss about the immediate future, we decided to switch it up a little and put the rearwards facing element of the roadmap towards the bottom of the post. Updates and rollbacks aside, which we spoke about at the very top of this article, what other rF2 related things have been happening in the opening days of 2021? GTE Updates Warming to the theme of updating content, January 2021 would see a nice fresh set of tweaks applied to our existing GTE class of cars within the simulation. Comprising of models from Ferrari, Aston Martin, BMW, Chevrolet and Porsche, the new build deployed on January 6th brought about a number of small but important improvements to our closed top GT machines. Tweaks to the balance of performance parameters around weight and power, plus an important fix for some aerodynamic drop off issues we had been experiencing in close proximity to other cars were just the headline items, plus of course the introduction of these vehicles within our Competition System – making for some very nice and close racing within our community! rFactor 2 | Steam Store: Click Here Formula E Accelerate Start Super tight driving and plenty of attacking – here are your highlights from round 1 of Formula E: Accelerate! #FEAccelerate pic.twitter.com/yxGeKCaqB5 — ABB FIA Formula E World Championship (@FIAFormulaE) January 29, 2021 In terms of competitions, at the time of our Formula E 2021 release January would also see the launch of the brand-new Formula E Accelerate Esport series – the official Formula E esport championship that brings together an impressive collection of big name drivers from the virtual world across a six round championship with our new Formula E cars. Reigning F1 Esports World Champion Jarno Opmeer, 2017 Vega E-Race champion Bono Huis and rFactor 2 star and World’s Fastest Gamer finalist Erhan Jajovski are just some of the big names fighting to take home their share of the 100,000 euro prize pool (and a test in a real Formula E car!) this season, and if the opening round at New York is anything to go by – the series looks set to provide some fantastic action. Formula E Accelerate | Catch all the action: Click Here Sim Formula Europe 2021 As one Esport series starts, so another completes. January would see the conclusion of the 2021 Sim Formula Heusinkveld Peregrine competitions on rFactor 2, which brought together some of the top rFactor 2 drivers via a qualification process to race head-to-head on the Zandvoort Grand Prix Circuit in the now legendary McLaren Ford MP4/8. While the main series did much to entertain the viewers at home, just a few days prior to the finals we also ran our Heusinveld Peregrine competition for drivers who qualified through a hotlap competition. Taking to the circuit in specially liveried Audi R8 LMS GT3 cars adorned with community created livery designs in the theme of the Peregrine Falcon, the Heusinkveld Peregrine race at the recently updated Maastricht Street Circuit produced a fantastic event from start to finish, showing off both the driving skill of the racers, and the wonderful artistic talents of our sim racing livery painting community. Another great competition, and one to look forward to seeing more of next season. Sim Formula Europe | Catch up on the racing: Click Here So that’s it for another month ladies and gentlemen – plenty happening and plenty still to come. Thank you once again for taking the time out of your day to read this latest roadmap post, stay safe, stay healthy and see you all out on the virtual racetracks of the world!

Nurburgring v2.21 Removed Tents from Arena section on Endurance Layout

rFactor 2 Update Client build ID: 6045847 Dedicated server build ID: 6045848 Change Log Fixed an issue with software vsync not strictly adhering to the actual limit in the UI. Several improvements to VR rendering in the UI that should eliminate the flickering people saw. Added a missing error prompt in dev mode if some file was missing. Changed a timeout value when interacting with Steam to not give up as easily.

GTE Update - January 2021 Aston Martin Vantage GTE v1.65 Weight penalty reduced by 2kg for the standard package, Engine power/torque output increased by 2%, Tweaks to aero draft dropoff (reduces excessive oversteer in close drafting) Added trackconfig.ini to upgrade.rfcmp. Aero upgrades should now be forced based on track. BMW M8 GTE v2.19 Fuel tank capacity reduced by 1L (to 99L) for the standard package, Tweaks to aero draft dropoff (reduces excessive oversteer in close drafting) Added trackconfig.ini to upgrade.rfcmp. Aero upgrades should now be forced based on track. Chevrolet Corvette C7.R GTE v2.59 fuel tank capacity reduced by 2L (to 93L) for the standard package, Tweaks to aero draft dropoff (reduces excessive oversteer in close drafting) Added trackconfig.ini to upgrade.rfcmp. Aero upgrades should now be forced based on track. Chevrolet Corvette C8.R GTE v1.07 Added trackconfig.ini to upgrade.rfcmp. Aero upgrades should now be forced based on track. Adjusted LOD distances for tires Added trackconfig.ini to upgrade.rfcmp. Aero upgrades should now be forced based on track. Ferrari 488 GTE v1.91 Fuel tank capacity reduced by 3L (to 87L) for the standard package, Tweaks to aero draft dropoff (reduces excessive oversteer in close drafting) Added trackconfig.ini to upgrade.rfcmp. Aero upgrades should now be forced based on track. Porsche 991 RSR GTE v2.55 Tweaks to aero draft dropoff (reduces excessive oversteer in close drafting) Added trackconfig.ini to upgrade.rfcmp. Aero upgrades should now be forced based on track.

‘Tis the season to be jolly… a time for giving, a time for receiving, festive merriment, a glass of something nice and more mince pies than is either reasonable or healthy. Rather than putting that much-needed pair of new socks or a thickly lined winter jumper under the tree this year, give the gift of endurance racing to your nearest and dearest (or treat yourself!) – why not take out some rather awesome endurance cars for a spin in rFactor 2? Yes dear sim racers, we’ve gone and put together our latest car pack DLC for the simulation – and I must say we feel pretty pleased with the outcome – three epic endurance machines that include some of the most beautiful, iconic and potent race cars in modern motorsport. 2020 Cadillac DPi-V.R Built in close collaboration with top North American sportscar team JDC-Miller Motorsports, the Cadillac DPi-V.R represents the very finest in American endurance racing engineering, having taken the IMSA WeatherTech Sportscar Championship by storm since an incredible debut in 2017, winning no less than the first seven events it contested in the category, including the prestigious Rolex Daytona 24 Hours. Wayne Taylor Racing pairing Ricky and Jordan Taylor would dominate the drivers’ standings in the new machine, securing the title convincingly from sister entry Whelen Engineering, themselves taking a victory at the demanding Mobil 1 SportsCar Grand Prix at the Canadian Tire Motorsport circuit in Ontario, Canada. 2018 would be just as successful for the popular return of the Cadillac brand, with a further four wins courtesy of Mustang Sampling Racing (2), Wayne Taylor Racing (1) and Whelen Engineering (1) enough to secure a clean sweep of drivers and teams’ championships for the iconic American manufacturer. A further four wins in 2019 would again see the Cadillac DPi-V.R at the sharp end of the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship despite increased competition from the likes of American powerhouse outfit Penske and Mazda, although championship success would elude the manufacturer for the first time, with the Brazilian driving duo of former Formula One driver Filipe Nasr and SportsCar star Pipo Derani narrowly missing out on top spot in what was generally considered to be the most competitive championships in the recent history of the IMSA series. Fast-forward to a truncated 2020 season and again Cadillac would prove to be force to be reckoned with, this time with JDC running two cars under the JDC-Miller Motorsports and JDC Mustang Sampling banner alongside entries from Konica Minolta and Whelen Engineering. Despite having to perform in front of mostly closed door audiences and with a hastily amended calendar, the American teams would put up another determined fight against racing royalty in the form of Acura Team Penske, with the manufacturer taking a total of three race wins and runners up position in the championship for the #10 Konica Minolta car of Australian Ryan Briscoe and Dutchman Renger van der Zande. With JDC in the unique position of being the only team to run two Cadillac DPi-V.R entries this season, we found them to be the perfect partner to team up with as we looked to maximise the available data and resources when creating this new car. Our collaboration with JDC has been nothing short of sensational these past months, and working alongside our colleagues at the team has opened up some exceptional opportunities to really get under the skin of this outstanding car, and most importantly for the players at home, recreate what we consider to be one of our most accurate and detailed vehicles for rFactor 2 so far. Key Performance Stats Engine: 5.5L V8 Power: 580HP Weight: 930kg Top speed: 360km/h 2020 Ligier JS P217 As costs continued to spiral during the previous generation of endurance racing regulations, many teams and drivers found themselves migrating to the much more financially friendly and increasingly competitive LMP2 category of racing – high downforce prototype machines that don’t quite reach the ultimate lap pace of the table topping LMP1 / LMdH / LMH group, but offer seasoned professionals and up and coming drivers multiple opportunities to race in championships throughout the world. With the recent influx of professional teams and drivers to the category, the popularity of LMP2 has exploded over the last few years. Offering arguably the most competitive and sizeable grids week in, week out in endurance prototype racing, LMP2 has become what the original Le Mans Prototype class never quite managed to achieve – the peak competitive proposition for prospective drivers looking to carve out a reputation and career in endurance prototype racing. With such popularity and the sheer volume of cars produced, many championships throughout the world have been quick to adopt LMP2 regulations within their own series, either as a standalone category, or as part of a wider multi-class structure, such as can be found in the World Endurance Championship, IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship and European Le Mans Series. We already have the Oreca 07 LMP2 car within the simulation, and keen as we are to ensure rFactor 2 has a wide range of vehicles suitable for close and competitive racing as possible, we felt the time was right to introduce another mighty LMP2 car. With the technical knowledge of a former Formula One race winning outfit in the form of Ligier, the French marque partnered up with Onroak Engineering to produce an exceptionally efficient and competitive vehicle, one that competes with some success in national and international endurance racing events. Debuting in time for the 2017 racing season, the car immediately proved to be competitive in the hands of numerous racing teams, with a debut fourth place finish (and fifth overall) at the 2017 Le Mans 24 Hours in the hands of United Autosports proving without doubt that the new JS P217 is a car to be reckoned with. That form would be carried forward in the European Le Mans Series by the US squad, the team snapping up an impressive three outright race victories for the new car en route to second overall in the teams standings. Further Le Mans LMP2 success would come the way of this attractive closed top prototype, despite the numerical dominance of Oreca within the category, with United Autosports once again carrying the flag for Ligier with a exceptional class podium in 2018, following up with a further top four finish within the series the following season. Having released in 2017, the JS P217 immediately showed promise on the circuit, and the following years have seen the car wrap up wins in various categories throughout the world. A mainstay in series such as WEC and stateside with the IMSA WeatherTech Sportscar Championship – we are sure you will agree that this is a great car to add to our ever growing collection of official content within rFactor Powered by a 4.0 litre twin-turbo V8, this almost demonic piece of joy can skyrocket you onto the first place of nearly any grid around the world. But the McLaren Senna GTR is not just the track-day car that would be outside most people’s budgets, it’s more than that. It’s our chance as a simulation studio to actually try to have a look into the not-so-distant future and create something that could be the pinnacle of the next-gen sports car racing world. LMP2-LMP3 / Hypercars ENDURANCE PACK CADILLAC DPI-V.R LIGIER JS P217 LMP2 LIGIER JS P320 LMP3 ORECA 07 LMP2 NORMA M30 LMP3 MCLAREN SENNA GTR VANWALL VANDERVELL LMH

rFactor 2 |December Build Release Today is a good day. Today is a new build day. You may have heard on the sim racing grapevine something about a new competition system within rFactor 2 that is under development..? Yes, that’s right, our December build update is here and a very first pass at organizing rFactor 2 multiplayer action has come with it, marking a very important line in the sand for us here at Studio 397 as we continue working incredibly hard to ensure the simulation delivers an experience our users demand. The Competition System is now live as part of this build update, with the first racing events due to be uploaded and set to begin on Thursday December 24th. November Roadmap | More Details On Competition Roadmap: Click Here. Before we talk about the changes that have come as part of this new build release, let us remind you a little about why we want to include a competition system within the software in the first place. Online racing, from a local level all the way up to organized and professional esport activities are an important aspect of the rFactor 2 journey, and have for a long time been very well represented by the many numerous community created sim racing leagues throughout the world. Whilst these leagues are doing an incredible job of offering sim racers outstanding opportunities to race their favourite cars within the simulation, we realize that for the largest part of our user base racing in scheduled league events isn’t always the most convenient or accessible way for them to get involved in online multiplayer action, and finding servers that host content they want to race, at a time in which they would like to race it, has proven to be more difficult than it ideally needs to be. Driven by a desire to offer quality racing for everyone, in a structured and organized way that increases the opportunities for our fantastic community to get involved, we have devised a new competition system within the software, one that offers up regularly scheduled racing in a variety of different car and track combinations within the sim and brings with it an element of matching together drivers of similar skill and ratings, to help streamline and improve the racing experience for our users, and put the emphasis back on what is important – getting on track and having fun. Of course, this new system has been developed with expansion in mind, so what you will see as part of the new build today is certainly going to grow and expand over time – with so much obvious potential to enhance our multiplayer experience, we have taken the decision to adopt a cautious and regimented approach to deployment. What this means in reality is that we intend to spend time at each phase of development taking onboard community feedback in regard to how the system is working, and what features and behaviours the community would like to see brought to the system in future builds. By adopting this approach, we aim to maximize the potential of the system based on how it is used, and how the vast majority of people would like to use it going forward, to collectively develop something that adds genuine value to your sim racing experience within rFactor 2. Before we take a look at the system in its current initial release status, it may be useful for those of you who missed it within the November Development Roadmap to have another look at our planned ‘mini’ roadmap of development over the coming months: Ratings — are probably one of the most anticipated features, and one of the reasons for not having them active right from the start is that we want to test our algorithms on real-world data before publishing anything. Our current philosophy is to have a single rating system that encapsulates both your skill and safety record. Protests and decisions — are also high on our roadmap list as we will no doubt have situations where an incident will need to be reported and evaluated by our stewards. Our goal here is definitely to let the in-game systems do a lot of the (easy) work here, monitoring when you cut the track or commit other offences and directly handing out penalties. At the same time we are aware that not everything can be decided by robots. More competition formats — are things we will probably gradually introduce but as a feature they certainly need to be mentioned on any roadmap. We intend to run our GT championship, various hotlap styles, some completely new formats as well as more “league style” competitions in the system. Roles and team based driving — will be added to allow multiple drivers to share an “entry”, or car, in a competition. Roles can be defined so teams can also have a manager or race engineer. Other roles are stewards, race control, and cameramen to facilitate broadcasts. Broadcast integration — is probably another feature that will be gradually introduced, but obviously when broadcasting sessions that belong to a competition, we want to make sure that overlays showing standings, points, participants and calendars accurately reflect the competition they’re a part of. Offline Championships — will be added once the online part is running smoothly. We will leverage the features we use online to also facilitate offline championships, where you can race against our AI. These features will take us well into 2021, and we will revise and update them as the year progresses. These features and developments will largely be driven by how the system is adopted by the current and future rFactor 2 racing community of course, and should be taken as a broad guideline as to our development intentions rather than a set of absolutes. We are exceptionally keen to ensure this development phase is driven by the wants and desires of our community racers, as we look to build something together than improves and enhances the overall experience of racing within rFactor 2. With that all said, let us take a look at what has changed as part of the new build today. Fixed v-sync not working Fixed an issue where certain car classes would not show in a session Various minor graphical bug fixes Fixed issues with aspect ratio Added competition system So that’s it for the new build update, but it certainly isn’t the end of the rFactor 2 story this month. Tomorrow afternoon we plan to release our new Endurance Pack 2 DLC, adding three pretty fantastic new cars in the form of the Cadillac DPi-V.R, the LMP2 specification Ligier JS P217 and the brand new GTE Chevrolet Corvette C8.R… three cars we are sure you will enjoy racing just as much as we have enjoyed developing over the last few months. From all at the studio, enjoy the new build and have a great Christmas and New Year!