rFactor 2 – Toban Raceway Park Announcement

The past few months, the Image Space Incorporated track team posted a selection of teaser screenshots showcasing a mystery track that is in the works for rFactor 2.

While many of the sim racing community members already guessed the track name of the WIP screens, today Image Space Incorporated officially announced that the teased rFactor 2 track is indeed the popular RF1 Toban Raceway Park circuit.

The rF2 version of the track was first announced in 2011. We are now five years later and despite the long waiting time, ISI is delivering as promised. There is no exact release date given, but to quote the ISI track team, Toban Raceway Park will be available in the not-so-distant future. ISI is aiming to put the rFactor 2 Toban Raceway track into Release Candidate testing in a couple of weeks.

Interestingly, it is stated that the track is not upgraded conversion of the original, but a new scratch build version that will also feature two new layouts alongside the existing selection.

ISI Dev Team Quote:

We had started an update for Toban, and it was progressing nicely, BUT, we had to set that aside for a bit to work on another track to go along with a new car license we have. After that, we should be able to complete the Toban update. The “new” Toban will be different to the new Mills. Where the owners of Mills had money to upgrade the track, garage and grandstands, Toban has only gotten 6 years older with very little upkeep. So, visually it will have a much different look.
Other high priority projects got in the way of that planning, but now Pier and I decided that it is finally time to deliver on that promise, having made plenty of technical and artistic advances since our 2011 track releases. So not only will the place have aged a further five years, it will also be the most detailed track we have done to date a treatment Toban deserves due to popular demand.

 

The fact that some of you managed to guess the track correctly within minutes after we posted the first ambiguous teaser shot is a mind-blowing testament to the knowledge and passion of our little niche community, and shows just how popular that demand has been.

 

So what can you expect in the not-so-distant future? As explained by Scott, the track owners are operating on a low budget and they haven’t had a chance to modernize the infrastructure too much. But it definitely isn’t an upgraded conversion brought to our latest standards. It is a scratch built track, made with modern techniques and populated with our finest props to date. Going for the scratch built option does require a lot more time and effort, but it was a necessity in order to address the oversized scaling of most original rF1 objects which were used to fill the scene with as few objects as possible in turn a necessity for the hardware requirements a decade ago.

 

In fact, scale was one of the biggest challenges we faced during development. The look and feel of the original objects don’t always translate well when everything is scaled down to more appropriate proportions and all the extra details get added. Some compromises had to be made, whilst keeping a good level of fidelity compared to the rFactor version we all loved.

 

Some things have definitely changed though. For artistic reasons, we have relocated the track to California where, in its finished form, Toban’s excellent racing terroir will be encompassed by lush vineyards. Two new layouts will join the existing line-up in the track owners’ hopes of further building upon the legendary Long and Short layouts.

 

And perhaps the biggest change, and this may come to a surprise to some of you, the cheap track owners had found a few buckets of the original yellow paint and had applied a fresh coat to the curbs several years ago. A close inspection shows that some bits of paint have worn off, revealing a few spots of blue paint that the rF1 modding community used in texture updates for this track, and that a lot of you were familiar with. Well, they’re yellow again …

 

Even though there are still a lot of tasks to be completed as we work hard to improve the quality of nearly every asset, there’s light at the end of the tunnel and we’re still aiming to put Toban into Release Candidate testing in a couple of weeks. Fingers crossed!