Slow Motion
After several months of silence here we are to announce this new version with a question: do you like to know the bad news or the good ones in advance? Well, I prefer to start talking about the bad news...
The first one is that we discovered severe problems on Windows 8 injecting the RFE code into rFactor 1255G to bring alive the missed or incomplete original code.
The second bad news is that Iñaki Lopez, that is developing RFE as a hobby stealing his free time to the family, has at the moment, unfortunately, different priorities: his life is evolved, he has more duties at home (kids are growing), more duties at work and he was also contacted several times by big “entities” for developing features similar to RFE for commercial purposes and, finally he is moving in Australia from Spain.
On the contrary, the RFE project is free of charge for you, as “free of revenue” for us!
Sometime in the life (or several times) it is almost impossible to transform our own dreams in reality: I think we can be happy to use RFE also at its first levels of development. Nobody can be more depressed than me in saying that, because I know what the plugin is able to do at its next steps. And nobody can be more depressed than me saying that the development of RFE Plugin Series must slow down, at least for the moment.
The good news? Any good news is easy to explain: this version 1.2 of RFE Plugin Series works with all available versions of rFactor and obviously with both 1255F and 1255G executable files on Windows XP, Vista, Seven and Windows 8.0 / 8.1, as well as under Server 2003, 2008 and 2012 both 32 and 64 bits, because finally Iñaki was able to discover the unique way to potentially fix crashes, disconnections and DQs. We have applied this new technology only partially for lack of time and for this reason we hope to release another version as soon as possible with other implementations.
But now, it's time to reveal other good news: there are few new functionality that work into the RFETrack and RFEWeather Components, like the reactivation of the wind at a visual level only, the increasing, very lightly, of the grip of the track in the areas where the groove is visible (the grip addition depends of the amount of groove), the washing away the groove if is raining and a better management of the look of the groove from wet to dry surface; the RFETrack Component is now ready to manage different fast and wet paths in real time too, also if this feature is not yet available to the public.
We also added a new Random Mode for the weather that will bring a better environment as you expect and a RealTime Mode to be controlled by external tools.
Finally the whole RFE Plugin Series in now free from VC++ dependency.
But we like to remark that the most significant improvements are at the code level, to bring to you a more stable RFE Plugin Series with less disconnections!
We have also chosen to create two installers to make the installation process easier than ever and to cover a wider range of needs from the installation of the “RFE Plugin Series” only, useful to update or replace older or corrupted files, to the installation of the “rFactor Enhanced - RFETest Pack”, useful for the first installation of the essential files of Factor - or a new instance - plus the RFE Plugin Series, one mod and one track RFE ready and the new version 1.1.5 of the G.I.D.by Fazerbox. We want to remark that you must have a regular license of rFactor 1 or this instance cannot work even in demo mode, for a better protection of the ISI's rights.
Please, visit symracing.net to download the installer that better matches your needs: http://symracing.net/rfeseries/forum/viewtopic.php?f=32&t=908
The first one is that we discovered severe problems on Windows 8 injecting the RFE code into rFactor 1255G to bring alive the missed or incomplete original code.
The second bad news is that Iñaki Lopez, that is developing RFE as a hobby stealing his free time to the family, has at the moment, unfortunately, different priorities: his life is evolved, he has more duties at home (kids are growing), more duties at work and he was also contacted several times by big “entities” for developing features similar to RFE for commercial purposes and, finally he is moving in Australia from Spain.
On the contrary, the RFE project is free of charge for you, as “free of revenue” for us!
Sometime in the life (or several times) it is almost impossible to transform our own dreams in reality: I think we can be happy to use RFE also at its first levels of development. Nobody can be more depressed than me in saying that, because I know what the plugin is able to do at its next steps. And nobody can be more depressed than me saying that the development of RFE Plugin Series must slow down, at least for the moment.
The good news? Any good news is easy to explain: this version 1.2 of RFE Plugin Series works with all available versions of rFactor and obviously with both 1255F and 1255G executable files on Windows XP, Vista, Seven and Windows 8.0 / 8.1, as well as under Server 2003, 2008 and 2012 both 32 and 64 bits, because finally Iñaki was able to discover the unique way to potentially fix crashes, disconnections and DQs. We have applied this new technology only partially for lack of time and for this reason we hope to release another version as soon as possible with other implementations.
But now, it's time to reveal other good news: there are few new functionality that work into the RFETrack and RFEWeather Components, like the reactivation of the wind at a visual level only, the increasing, very lightly, of the grip of the track in the areas where the groove is visible (the grip addition depends of the amount of groove), the washing away the groove if is raining and a better management of the look of the groove from wet to dry surface; the RFETrack Component is now ready to manage different fast and wet paths in real time too, also if this feature is not yet available to the public.
We also added a new Random Mode for the weather that will bring a better environment as you expect and a RealTime Mode to be controlled by external tools.
Finally the whole RFE Plugin Series in now free from VC++ dependency.
But we like to remark that the most significant improvements are at the code level, to bring to you a more stable RFE Plugin Series with less disconnections!
We have also chosen to create two installers to make the installation process easier than ever and to cover a wider range of needs from the installation of the “RFE Plugin Series” only, useful to update or replace older or corrupted files, to the installation of the “rFactor Enhanced - RFETest Pack”, useful for the first installation of the essential files of Factor - or a new instance - plus the RFE Plugin Series, one mod and one track RFE ready and the new version 1.1.5 of the G.I.D.by Fazerbox. We want to remark that you must have a regular license of rFactor 1 or this instance cannot work even in demo mode, for a better protection of the ISI's rights.
Please, visit symracing.net to download the installer that better matches your needs: http://symracing.net/rfeseries/forum/viewtopic.php?f=32&t=908
