rFactor 2 Feb, 2021 Update Now Available, Updated Indy

Studio 397 have today deployed a new update (sort of). As stated in the roadmap last month this update is opt-in. I personally think this adds a layer of complexity and confusion that rF2 really didn’t need, but here is their explanation anyway…

…in order to mitigate any potential risks to the stability of the public version of the simulation we have elected to move future build updates to a temporary “release-candidate” branch of rFactor 2 – accessible by right-clicking rFactor 2 in your Steam library, and selecting ‘Properties – betas – release-candidate’.

The ‘release-candidate’ branch containing the new fixes will be active between a week to a month or so, and should no significant issues be reported we will import the update to the main public branch of the simulation after this review period has been completed.

Indianapolis Motor Speedway has been updated. The most notiable change being that they have brought it up to spec with PBR shading.

Build notes for IMS and the new rF2 build are below the IMS screenshots.

IMS notes:

Update of 2013 Release to 2020.
Replaced 2013 layout with modern equivalent
Full PBR Conversion of all assets
Replaced Crowds with new assets
Replaced Marshals with new assets
Added Pitlane Props (Pit Stands, Fuelling Rigs, Pit Markers)
Added accurate background nightlighting
Added Advertisements
Added building at Road Course S1
Improved various assets such as armco barriers
AI Updates to 2007 GP and Modern GP layouts.
Various other improvements and tweaks

Build notes:

We’ve removed the Max 2012 plugins as they no longer work, and provided the last working Max 2017 plugins. We have no intention to upgrade them any longer as we can’t get these versions of Max any more to test. Furthermore, we urge the modding community to upgrade to current Max versions.
Fixed: Reflection mapper in Scene Viewer, so it renders from the same point as the user sees.
Fixed: Bind a mouse click to any input control.
Fixed: Issues with showroom performance.
Fixed: Missing error prompt when textures are missing from content.
Fixed: Issue with a white screen you get when you try to assign a control.
Fixed: Visible damage sometimes corrupting car bodies, to properly fix the hotfix that temporarily disabled the visible damage.
Fixed: Issue where clouds could show similar corruption as car bodies.
Fixed: Showroom Upgrades not displaying which require MAS Files.
Fixed: Glitch where “the lights would suddenly go off” when transitioning from light to dark at dusk.
Fixed: Exploit where you could still set the FE car to use 250kW in the setup in a race when that setting is reserved for “attack mode”.
Fixed: Overlays would not correctly follow the attack mode countdown timing.
AIW Editor: Added new line smoothing option, and added soft selection for manual adjustments.
Added an internal option to the player.json to turn off multi-threading in the UI. Defaults to “on”.
Added code support so we can detect a disabled Steam overlay, to warn you about why a shopping cart won’t show up.
Changed how a dedicated server shuts down when asked so it no longer crashes with a non-zero return code.
Pausing sessions in a dedicated server will now only pause the first one.
Increased an internal timeout when talking to Steam to give it more time before we give up or retry.
Scene Viewer Changes: Moved Web UI Port to 5396 by default and added support for up to 128 scenes in configuration file