The end of the year is still a time to push from the Studio 397 camp, as RFactor 2 had another big release this Saturday (22) in form of the GT3 Challengers Pack that bring five more cars for the production-based sportscar class and showcases some good work with the latest technology the Dutch studio is working.
Take note that the late December release will feature only four out of those five cars, with the fifth being the new Aston Martin Vantage GT3, but with the car awaiting approval, it will be part of the pack only in January 2019. The pack was released having the BMW M6 GT3, the Porsche 911 GT3R 2018, the Audi R8 LMS GT3 and the new McLaren 720S GT3.
As for the BMW M6 GT3, it is in the same situation as the Mercedes AMG GT3, a car that will not be in the Evo wagon for 2019, but still can deliver great results, as proved by Augusto Farfus in the FIA GT World Cup and by Walkenhorst Motorsport at the 2018 24 Hours of Spa, which is why Schnitzer and Walkenhorst will represent BMW in the IGTC next year.
The Porsche 911 GT3R isn’t that new to the sim racing scene, though the RFactor 2 version is the only one coming with the final update package for the 991-spec car, as 2019 will see a new car based on the 991.2-spec hit the road in real life. Despite being a monster in the corners, the 991-spec car is still behind the pack in terms of straight line speed, though this tends to be compensated by the Balance of Performance, which wasn’t the case for Stuttgart Motorsport in Endurance Brasil this year.
The Audi R8 LMS GT3 also is no stranger to the sim racing community, an all-rounder that showed that Audi learned their lessons with the previous generations of the R8 LMS by bringing a car good for cornering and also taking advantage of its powerful V10 on the straights. This is another case of a somewhat dated car that’s appearing in the pack, considering that the Evo version had already hit the road this year to compete with full homologation in 2019 around the World.
The only new car at the moment is a surprise for everyone, as the McLaren 720S GT3 started testing this year and competed his debut race a few weeks ago, and seeing a virtual version of a new car come too soon isn’t exactly common practice in the industry, though KUNOS Simulazioni proved the contrary with some of the content present in Assetto Corsa.
By the way, the partnership between McLaren and Studio 397 worked better than KUNOS having the Blancpain GT licence, as it’s still uncertain whether that the 720S GT3 will be part of the Blancpain GT Series grid, and with this, be part of Assetto Corsa Competizione. The car proven that has good speed, though judgement needs to be reserved to the next season.
The GT3 Challengers Pack also brings another new thing, as all cars of the pack make use of a new graphic technology called Physics Based Rendering, which will be extended to the older content and was explained by Studio 397 this month in their roadmap post. Due to the work on this and more, all GT3 Challengers Pack cars come with a single works livery, while more liveries and templates will be brought at a later date.
IMAGES: RFactor 2 screenshots
Comments
Post a Comment
Do you have an opinion? Feel free to comment.