Studio 397, the new developers of the PC sim racing title rFactor 2, have posted their November Roadmap update on the newly created official rFactor 2 forum site. The latest roadmap certainly makes for an interesting read. During a recent face to face meeting with Marcel Offermans in Apeldoorn, the Netherlands, during which we discussed a wide range of topics, it is very apparent to me that Studio 397 is going to be stepping up their efforts in all areas of the title!
Marcel has some interesting plans for the future of rFactor 2 and the inclusion of VR will be a very big deal indeed. The popularity of VR in sim racing is growing rapidly and the prospect of having VR support in this title will draw many players back for more as the physics and FFB in rFactor 2 have always been up their with the best of them. Add VR to this mix and driving the title will be a true journey of re-discovery for, what perhaps in some cases, is a forgotten sim racing game.
Hopefully we will have more to report on regarding VR or any other important developments coming to rFactor 2 in the not too distant future. Stay tuned, folks!
Complete rFactor 2 November 2016 Roadmap:
Last month I mentioned that the USF2000 was almost ready and some of you have been asking when it will be released. I am happy to announce that it will be released on Wednesday, November 23rd. This release features the 2016 car and teams, and we are happy to announce that we have also licensed the 2017 car. The 2017 chassis, which is very similar to the F4 car, will be released somewhere next year.
We also wanted to take this opportunity to congratulate our fellow simracer Pablo López on being selected by our colleagues at iRacing to take part in the Mazda Road to 24 Shootout. Since that event took place at NOLA Motorsports Park we sent him an early build of the layout he would be driving to practice.
Community wise we updated our forums and, behind the scenes, also moved our beta forums to this new location. Over the next couple of weeks we will be moving more of the website, including the development blogs, some of which have already been moved.
Development has been focussing on the DX11 engine and laying down the groundwork for our new UI. There’s not much we can show here yet until we’re a bit further along, but we are very happy with the current progress. In the mean time we are getting closer to our next Steam-only build. Remember to take advantage of the free option to migrate to Steam if you have not done so yet. Apart from a lot of smaller fixes this build will also feature the work we’ve done with the Stock Car community and we hope this will make rFactor 2 an even more enjoyable simulation for oval racing. As soon as the new build is out, we will also update you on Fallston.
Another new feature we would like to announce is support for paid content. It will integrate nicely with our workshop, and modders will also be able to leverage it to sell their creations. Obviously we would like to use this feature to offer you a wide selection of high quality and high profile content. This does not mean that all future content we create will be paid though.
That’s all for the second monthly update. Happy Simracing!
