Potete leggere dal blog Codemasters un breve ma interessante articolo che ci parla delle caratteristiche del multiplayer del prossimo F1 2015. Non mancano alcuni screens inediti scattati in Ungheria ed a Spa.

What are the key changes to the online experience in F1 2015?
“We use the new Hopper matchmaking system for F1 2015 meaning we offer players a wide variety of preset session types they can take part in. The session type spans various circuit type preferences, ability levels, race distances and more. Players can easily search for the kind of multiplayer session experience that they want, making the online racing experience in F1 2015 even more exciting.

Fra i tantissimi screenshots e video di anteprima dedicati al prossimo F1 2015 della Codemasters, che arriverà sugli scaffali dei negozi il 10 Luglio, vi segnalo questo trailer inedito che ci presenta l'affascinante circuito di Abu Dhabi.

Patch 2.0 (JR+) (30/6/15)
Project CARS – Patch 2.0 – Release Notes

Performance Improvements
* PC – up to 5% frame rate improvement when using Ultra settings
* XB1 – up to 17% frame rate improvement in extreme conditions

Online & Community Events
* Multiplayer search filter 'Skill' now finds games based upon certain lobby game configuration criteria. For example, “Pro” setting now searches for Full Damage, Auto-start Engine, Forced Cockpit, Mechanical Failure, and so forth.
* Community events page – when an event cannot be entered, it will now display the reason why: ‘Coming Soon’ along with a countdown, or ‘Expired’.
* Online – Ensure that vehicle light repairs are synchronized in MP races so that repaired headlights are visible by other racers.
* Xbox One - fix attempt for a hard-to-reproduce issue where the game would at times freeze or crash when 8 or more players joined a session all at once.
* Xbox One – fixed an issue that at times would prevent a player from establishing full connectivity when leaving a lobby and trying to reconnect to it.
* PS4 – fixed an issue where, after the PS4 resumes from Rest Mode, no network features can be used.

Controls – All platforms
* Adjustments made to the gears system, to prevent gears being skipped under certain conditions. This addresses an issue where gears would at times jump straight down to 1st, potentially causing engine blowouts.
* Steering wheels – reduced the centering rate of the steering spring. This improves the feel of steering wheels at very low speeds.
* Added support for the use of all active controllers for menu input. You can for example now use a steering wheel to race, and a gamepad to control the menus and photo mode.
* Gear shifters – when using an H-shifter on a car that has a sequential gearbox, the gearbox will now switch through the gears until the gear selected on the H-shifter is reached.
* Fixed an issue in Force Feedback calibration that would prevent a player from setting "Soft Clipping (Half Input)" back to 0 after modifying it from the original value.

Controls – PS4
* Thrustmaster T100 Force Feedback improvements.
* Fixed the Force Feedback dynamics for wheels with physical steering locks which were less than the steering lock of the vehicle in-game. This fixes the Force Feedback on the Thrustmaster T100 and similar wheels.
* Added a Motion Sensor controller profile.
* Fixed a crash issue when disconnecting and reconnecting Fanatec wheels.
* Enable support for USB keyboards to be used for in-game controls.

Controls – Xbox One
* Built in protection to prevent unsupported controller devices from crashing the game.
* Gear shifters – fixed an issue that prevented the selection of neutral when using an H-gate shifter add-on with a car that has an H-gate shifter in-game.
* Implemented accelerator vibration on the gamepad right trigger to indicate when and how much the tyres slip under acceleration.
* Madcatz wheel - fixed an issue where the switch on the wheel to change between 270 to 900 degree mode stopped functioning.

Physics & AI
* Slowed down the AI opponents in the rain when using racing tyres, to make racing against them better balanced.
* Adjusted the AI tyre wear rate to better match the player’s tyre wear rate.
* Adjusted wear of Slicks and Rain tires to more realistic levels where needed. Typically GT/LMP/Formula cars will get slightly more than a full fuel load on soft or default slicks (depending on fuel load amounts).
* Adjusted the heating of slicks and rain tyres to more realistic levels.
* Adjusted tyre temperature sensitivity on several cars.
* Adjusted rain tyres to generally be more sensitive to overheating, and less efficient in the dry.
* Improvements to AI navigation to lessen collisions during cramped race starts, improve detection of other cars during cornering, and improve clean overtaking
* Improved the AI pitting logic during practice and qualifying so that the AI cars run more realistic stints before pitting.
* Reworked the AI’s fuelling logic during qualifying sessions where no refuelling is allowed, so that they don’t always fill up the fuel tanks and negatively impact their qualifying ability. The AI will now deliver far more competitive lap times during qualifying.
* Fixed an issue where the AI would set impossible lap times during races with pit stops.
* The AI will now pit as soon as possible when low on fuel to prevent them running out of fuel and retiring from the race.
* Reduced the effect of damage to the car’s cooling system when suffering aero damage. This prevents engines from overheating and blowing at an unrealistic rate.
* Fixed an issue that prevented bump starts from working properly on some cars. An example case – with gears and clutch set to manual, take an Ariel Atom out on Brands Hatch. At the first right hander, stall the car, ignition on, 2nd gear, roll down the hill up to about 15kph and drop the clutch. The car will now bump start. Exact conditions for a successful bump start will vary slightly by car.
* Fixed an issue where at times some AI drivers in a race would use much higher skill levels than the rest of the field.
* Fixed an issue that prevented the AI from pitting within the final 3 laps of a race
* Further tweaked the AI ability in wet races to more closely match the player car’s ability in the wet
* Improved the AI’s efficiency in pit timing when needing to change tyres due to weather conditions.

Pitting, tuning, setups
* Fixed an issue where wet tyres were fitted too long before the rain starts, causing excessive overheating and wear on the tyres.
* Fixed an issue where, when running low on fuel, the Pit Board would appear to tell the player to do a scheduled pit stop when the player did not schedule a pit stop.
* Fixed an issue where flat tyres were fitted to the car during a pit stop, by ensuring that the tyres are correctly inflated.
* Fixed an issue where the car’s bump-stop value decreased after leaving a race session and joining it again.
* Reworked the brake bias display information so that changing the values is more intuitive.

Tracks
* Performance optimisation pass done on: Brands Hatch layouts, Cadwell layouts, Oulton Park layouts, Bathurst, Azure circuit, and Zolder. This helps improve the overall smoothness when racing on these tracks with large grids of cars.
* Track cutting tolerances reduced on all tracks where it was too forgiving.
* Fixed an issue where a pit crew character would at times appear floating above the race track on various tracks.
* Silverstone Stowe – fixed render issues on some tyre stacks, and addressed an issue with cars driving through certain objects.
* Road America – fixed an issue where a line of grass line appeared in the air near a concrete barrier.
* Spa Francorchamps – fixed an issue where cars under AI control would bump into the pit wall when exiting the pit lane. Fixed an issue where the AI were running too wide over the exit curb at the Bus Stop Chicane.
* Brno – fixed an issue where cars would at times start in the same grid positions, fixed garage six to prevent the AI from getting stuck on the right side wall when exiting the garage spot, fixed an issue when running more than 20 cars in a race would cause the car in 21st to slide into the pits.
* Le Mans – fixed an issue that would at times cause the car to crash while in the pit lane, leading to a disqualification. Improved the AI race line for better speed, and improved the AI behaviour on curbs.
* Laguna Seca – improved the AI performance as they were running too slow in some sections.
* Imola – Improved the pit lane AI navigation, and fixed an issue with a section of the fence at the pit entrance that appear to float.
* Bathurst - fixed a render issue with shimmering edges in parts of the track.

Career
* Added a new RUF RGT8 GT3 contract to ensure that the player can enter the RUF GT3 series on contract renewal and not just when starting a new career.
* Fixed the unlock details for the Supercar Ardennes Club Day Invitational.
* Fixed an issue where skipping the session during a race caused the player to move up in the session results.

Vehicles
* Group 5 cars – adjusted the gearshift timing tolerances to fix an issue with the gearing when pausing and restarting a session.
* Gumpert Apollo – fixed an issue with the livery sets that caused the livery selection to display wrong liveries.
* Aston Martin Vantage GT3 – tuned engine lifetime and brake cooling parameters for better accuracy.
* Lotus 98T – tweaked turbo to improve AI estimation of top speed.
* McLaren F1 GTR – modified the default setup and reduced front bump steer to improve straight line stability, fixed an issue to ensure that the car’s specific HUD motec display is used
* McLaren F1 - Fixed an issue that caused the car to use the wrong default tyre compound.
* Ford GT40 MK4 – Reworked in several areas to improve handling and match the real car closer - Bump stops settings exposed in setup with better tuned setup defaults, increased wrap around stiffness of the tire carcass, rebalanced base vs tear grip, rebalanced player vs AI rain performance against the AI.
* All Formula vehicles – Stop brake light reflections appearing on cars that don’t have brake lights.

General
* Fixed an issue where the player position would at times change to last when player crosses the starting line during rolling starts.
* Fixed an issue that could cause the game to crash when selecting the ‘Edit Tuning Setup’ option in the ‘PIT BOX’ screen.
* Fixed an issue that could cause the game to crash while watching a saved replay.
* Driver Network Profile – fixed an issue where entering Free Practice mode would count toward Races Entered.
* PS4 – fixed an issue that required the game to first restart after installing an in-game DLC before the DLC would be available for use.
* Audio – rebalanced the volume of skid sounds to make them a bit more audible.
* PC, Oculus Rift – added Oculus 0.6.0.0 SDK support, enabled positional tracking in non-helmet player camera views, implemented initial menus and HUD support, auto reset player view position at the start of a race, and disabled all non-VR-friendly scripted pre-race camera sequences.
* PC, D-BOX – fixed an issue that caused cars to lose power when playing with D-BOX connected.
* Updated the achievement "I am the 5%" to ensure that it can be achieved in non-Pro-modes as well.
* Fixed a game crash issue caused by an overflow of the email inbox when the player received above a certain amount of invitational emails.
* GUI – fixed an issue where the controls configuration arrows in Options would not respond correctly to mouse input when attempting fine adjustment.

Con l'inizio delle prime prove libere del GP d'Inghilterra di Formula 1, non potevano mancare alcuni screenshots inediti di anteprima del prossimo F1 2015 targato Codemasters: ecco la Toro Rosso e la Red Bull sul tracciato di Silverstone.

Bandai Namco e Codemasters hanno pubblicato il nuovo trailer in italiano di F1 2015, chiamato "Features", che ci mostra tutte le varie caratteristiche del gioco. Il titolo segna il debutto della serie nella nuova generazione e sarà disponibile dal 9 luglio su PC, Xbox One e PlayStation 4.

I ragazzi del portale di SimHQ hanno pubblicato a questo link una interessante intervista fatta a vari membri del team ISI, i quali ci parlano di numerosi aspetti, anche in dettaglio, del loro rFactor 2: scopriremo i segreti del Contact Patch Model (CPM) relativamente alle gomme delle stock car, dei tracciati ovali, regole, penalità ed altro ancora. Commenti sul forum.

Doug: From what we have heard, the CPM was the most significant delay in the stock cars progress. Are there any other items slowing down development of the stock cars?
Tim: Priorities have shifted a couple of times, but the stock cars and what they needed became focus again in the last few months. The CPM is now public, and the rules plugin is well into development. Having the same highly skilled software engineers doing both of those obviously limited the speed we could get them done.

Altre vetture saranno svelate ogni settimana fino al lancio del gioco, che avverrà il 15 settembre 2015.

Apart from that, selected highlights include some very nice tweaks to the AI, such as detection of being on two wheels and the ability to recover, reduction in the needless braking/slowing in panic situations along with better support for pack racing and drafting. We've also raised the default car limit to 45 (previously 30), as the move to 64bit means most people have enough RAM available to run that many cars (32bit users will still run out of RAM at/around 25-30 cars).
We're quite sure you'll be happy with the full release note (see below). Probably something in there to please everyone...

Downloads:
http://www.mediafire.com/download/pgwo5988ui7d6p5/rF2_Example_Plugin_#7.7z- Internals Plugin v7 - 20.4KB
http://www.mediafire.com/download/1kdnovs7ykvbosu/rFactor2_LiteBuild_982.exe- Lite Installer - 287MB
Content Installer - N/A
http://www.mediafire.com/download/5ex6rj22d7u5vm7/rFactor2_DemoBuild_982.exe- Demo Installer - 836MB
http://www.mediafire.com/download/w87usdg9n6mb10u/rFactor2_SDK_982.exe- SDK/Dev Mode - 360MB

Build Notes:
FEATURES:
- This build represents the first major step in migrating our game rules out of the base game and into plugins. This system is intended to allow easy adjustment of rules for your races without waiting for ISI to add or develop them. We're still working on this, so feedback is very welcome. NEW PLUGIN SYSTEM RELEASED.
- Max vehicles for the All Cars & Tracks default mod was increased to 45.
- Added a configurable control for "Skip Formation" (but if none is configured, the Space key will be used).
- Added AI self-preservation reaction to preventing tipping.
- Increased effect AIW parameter AISpec has on AI acceleration and max speed.
- Added cockpit readouts "BESTLAP" and "LASTLAP" for modders to use.
- Clean up of AI multiline pack driving. More tolerance of nearby cars when slowingly moving towards grid or pit spots.
- Assume any future Thrustmaster wheel will need its FFB direction reversed and do so automatically. If for some reason that is not desired, open up the Controller.JSON file and set "Steering Effects Strength" to 9999 instead of 10000.
- FOV now stored per (exact) vehicle.
- Added steering wheel ranges to plugin telemetry.
- Now recognizing GDB track type of "Oval" in addition to the original types "Superspeedway", "Superspeedway Oval", "Speedway", "Speedway Oval", "Short Track" and "Short Track Oval". Despite all these choices, the app code doesn't actually differentiate them, other than to identify these track types as not being a "Road Course". The main differences in behaviors between ovals and road courses are 1) whether the spotter works (oval only), 2) whether formation/caution lines are called "inside/outside" (ovals) or "left/right" (road courses), 3) auto-shifting and AI shifting behavior, and 4) some scoring things that will soon be obsolete because they will be controlled by plugins rather than the app code
- Added a plugin interface to view some pit menu data. Currently, you can only change the pitstop choices by using this in conjunction with CheckHWControl().
- Expanded the virtual vehicle creation to optionally include vehicle description and vehicle number.
- Adjustment parameters for multiview are now available in config.ini. You must manually edit the values in this file until the in-game tool is available. You can revert to the original multiview method by setting UseSubViewParams to 0. Setting UseSubViewParams to 1 assumes a symmetric setup and will use the ViewParams for all viewports. Exit the sim, edit config.ini and restart for settings to take effect.
- Forcing vehicle body collision model to be below a certain limit now (automatically LOD'ing if necessary). This is done for performance reasons.

FIXES:
- Fix for the "WCCLOUD.GMT" multiplayer loading error.
- Fixed mod sig missing when server publishes to matchmaker.
- Fixed some controller detection and rearrangement issues.
- Addressed issue where a matrix in AI physics drifted away from being orthogonal.
- Some improvements/fixes to replay and resume-from-replay for non-race sessions.
- Hopeful fix for skin transfer icon mistakingly showing successful completion of a skin that didn't.
- Gold playerfile now stores Mod name instead of RFM file name for "Game Description", since we can't guarantee that each mod will have a unique rfm name. (potentially resulting in multiplayer issues when a client loads the wrong rfm file and joins).
- Fixed AI tendency to sometimes decelerate needlessly while transitioning from main path to pit path.
- Fixed issue when a client loses their connection during a race and rejoins, and then subsequently the race is restarted, the client didn't know their correct grid location.

MODDING / PUBLIC DEV:
- Fix for driver editor so you can go back to main menu from track specific parameters menu.
- Added camera editor ablity to change trackside carema names. Created AI limiter slider gizmo.
- Look for digital flags up to the number of corner workers so that track builders don't need to name digital flags consecutively.
- Fixed potential bug with custom rFm file when creating mod with wizard.

MULTIPLAYER
- In multiplayer cars will now reload if using the car switcher only to change upgrades.
- Fixed remembering of column sort state for matchmaker list.
- Fix for number of pitstops being reported as zero in multiplayer.
- Added admin command "/forwardseconds X" in order to fast forward time by X seconds, where X is from 0-65535.
- Added admin commands "/pitbydriver" and "/pitbyteam".

GRAPHICS:
- Fixed rear view tonemapping
- Adjust post-gamma
- Fix for dirty sideviews in multiview
- Fixed extra slashes at end of Shader dir in viewer
- More HDR process optimizations
- Improved spotlight priority sorting
- Added multiview adjustments. Values in Config.ini, as well as parameter to disable new functionality (to retain use of older FOV options).
- Fixed for FXAA not working since last release.
- Additional SLI optimizations when using reflections.

UI / HUD / OPTIONS:
- Made the UI consistent with in-game with regards to the names of the Steering Help levels.
- Added indication when upgrades are required on track to the upgrade tree list on the tuning page.
- Changed password failure page to be more informative
- Added a "remove forced upgrade" button to the tuning page to easily undo user created "force upgrade" actions.
- Shrink button text to fit inside bounds

Non si può fare un percorso all’interno dei simulatori di guida, senza prima citare brevemente i titoli che hanno fatto la storia di questo genere così difficile e appassionante.
Facilissimo collocare la vera nascita di questo genere, visto che praticamente all’unanimità, si identifica Grand Prix Legends come il capostipite di tutti gli altri. Gioco monumentale, il primo vero simulatore usufruibile anche online, si occupava di simulare le gloriose monoposto di Formula 1 degli anni 60, con nomi illustri come Lotus, Ferrari, BRM e con tutti i circuiti del campionato riprodotti con un motore grafico 3D che all’epoca era letteralmente anni luce avanti agli altri e che aggiornato, riesce ancora adesso a farsi guardare.
La fisica era sopraffina, la pagina dei setup soddisfava anche gli ingegneri di pista veri, era talmente fatto bene che è sopravvissuto fino ai giorni nostri e c’è ancora chi lo apprezza e lo gioca. Non sono tanti i giochi che possono vantare ciò e specie nei simulatori si può dire tranquillamente, che è l’unico.