Video game development is full of names that have made groundbreaking steps you’ve never even heard about. Shawn Nash is a behind-the-scenes pioneer responsible for SODA Off Road Racing’s incredible physics, Papyrus’ graphical advancements and iRacing’s use of laser scan data for the physical track surfaces.
This interview with RSC, published in 2021, details his early life and career, through both his own company, Papyrus, Electronic Arts, to his time at iRacing.
As a direct ancestor of iRacing, the ‘Grand Prix Legends engine’ had multiple stock car racing false starts, before eventually releasing as NASCAR Racing 4. The original NASCAR 3, cancelled and replaced by one that used NASCAR 2’s engine, is barely remembered.
In a thread on the Steam community forum for rFactor 2 a user is reporting recently seeing “Server credit” as an item to purchase in the rFactor 2 steam store. While it has now been removed from the store this does appear to indicate that, like iRacing, rFactor 2 users will soon be able to setup a server – for a fee – using someone else’s hardware. Queries on whether this would replace the free hosting options were quickly pushed aside with a Discord response from a developer that stated “Normal hosting is untouched by this”.
It’s very likely this feature will also be present in Le Mans Ultimate so it remains to be seen (and confirmed) just how this is going to work in rFactor 2. As an employee of ISI when the packaging system was first developed, and someone who actually hated it because of the complexity it added for hosting, I’m really hoping this simplifies the whole process. However, I do wonder whether this will have mod support… Ideally I’d love to see it hook into the rFactor 2 Steam workshop in some way…
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