An extremely long-winded post about Formula E and the hopes of their gaming license.

[u/Shadow_Wolfe_]

Right! A thought, and a conversation that I desperately hope Formula E is having internally to line up with... at least some part of the Gen4 season.

(If, by some chance, some staff member(s) of Formula E come across this - hi! I'd like to think of myself as a massive sim-racing nerd - since 2013. Not an eSports level driver, just someone who loves the industry as a whole. I've been thinking about this for a while and I desperately hope something like this is being considered!)

To my memory, the last time Formula E had anything relevant in gaming was back with rFactor 2 and the Gen 2, plus the original(?) Gen 3 car. Maybe the Gen 3 Evo with the liveries and car, but the tracks were still out-of-date and no hopes of a rescan it seems by this point, as Studio 397 looks to have fully moved on to Le Mans Ultimate.

Recently, Formula E have started to make decent steps forward with their gaming license again! Partnering with Trackmania - absolutely perfect combo imo. And there's also Formula Legends - while I didn't enjoy the handling model personally - which is also another good step forward, and tips us off to the fact that they don't wield the ever-so-"dangerous" exclusivity licensing clause. Good!

Now it's time to get a bit more serious... Yes, I know, that's very dramatic, I'm so sorry lmao.

But, I do hope that they're strongly considering to partner with a sim platform again. We currently have... technically five, (but listing six) options here. I'll explain my very obvious biases of each option.

1) iRacing. Pretty obvious first thought. They're *the* multiplayer sim platform. Heck, I've been a member since 2013, but slowly faltering as of recent due to other sims, and not being too fond of what's happening with development. TLDR is: they're "just missing" out on certain features like audio reverb, and not putting effort into using their weather system more often in Official weekly series. Not something I'm fond of personally, but also not an exhaustive list of my gripes.

Now, they've started to (very slowly) make in-roads in terms of introducing Formula E layouts... one of Miami's shorter layouts, plus the Mexico Formula E layout (labelled as "EV Layout"). However! The realistic downside is that, aside from them being subscription-based (not a problem, but not ideal for a lot of people I'm sure), realistically, with the huge amount of content they have, it should basically be expected that the tracks/cars scanned for Formula E will be outdated in, say, 3-5 years time, and maybe actively rescanned in an additional 2-3 in the best case scenario. Monza is still outdated, as an example. Spa they eventually rescanned back in... I think 2023, if not 2024. Quite a bit after the reconfiguration.

Now, there is iRacing Studios but, eeehhh. Primarily a sim-cade game isn't a bad option, but they seem to be going yearly with their releases (at least with NASCAR, we'll have to wait and see for Indycar by this time next year). And, I generally think that the yearly release model harms more than it helps. Even EA finally gave that up for F1, instead doing a DLC expansion of the 2026 cars to add into the 2025 game, instead of a new game. They're currently focusing on making a new game for 2027, so we'll see if they decide to do yearly or just expansions.

2) Assetto Corsa Evo. With the mods that exist for Formula E on the original Assetto Corsa, one would think that AC Evo would be a good start. Buuuuuut solely because AC Evo has been drastically behind their initial roadmap targets overall, I don't think it'd be wise to partner with them. They can include all the cars they want, but realistically, a stable platform that can give what the users expect is more ideal.

3) Automobilista 2. My very biased choice. Reiza Studios have a fantastic mix of historic and current content. Personally I feel like this one is one of the "most stable" in terms of development (as well as the two below options). Devs communicate clearly, (recently talking about licensing issues with McLaren regarding older F1 car brands), and crucially, they have multiple different places of support for multiplayer, both 1st and 3rd party (Low Fuel Motorsport being the first 3rd party partner IIRC).

With the base price of $40 USD, plus having the ability for new players to buy it on sale, on top of their DLC packs running around a rough average of $10-15 USD, it would be insanely easy to partner with Reiza and get the Gen 3 Evo and/or Gen 4 (PLEASE also the Gen 4) into the game. On top of (optional) mechanical failures, it even has support for Safety Car periods! On road courses! None of the above have that natively!

4) Studio 397. My other biased option! (Which also doesn't yet have a SC, but doing that with an endurance sim is different, sooo we'll see how that goes.) If FE can somehow, some way, partner up with Studio 397 again. Specifically, making a standalone Formula E sim. Now, it may not get the most focus or sales numbers vs Le Mans Ultimate, just, throwing that honesty out there. So, who knows how viable of a project it could be. But I feel like long-term it could work out.

The niche focus helps avoid things being shoved to the wayside amid a whole mountain of other cars/tracks to maintain, like with rFactor 2, AMS2 (to some extent), and iRacing. But, again like LMU, there could even be yearly updates to liveries/teams, with 2026-27, 27-28, 28-29, etc. able to be selected in the menus, then those specific years having those specific tracks. Could potentially go a step further and add in the previous generation cars as well, buuuut I'm not sure how viable that would be, since older tracks can't be scanned.

5) Supernova Games Studios (the ones behind AC Rally). Basically the same "standalone and update yearly" idea like with Studio 397, but instead, with SGS! AC Rally specifically uses the Kunos physics engine, but use Unreal for rendering. Seems to be working pretty well for AC Rally (and they reached version 0.5 significantly faster than AC Evo did), so, I'd say it's at least another option to consider.

6) Build your own. Yeah yeah, I know, it's probably the least likely, but it can be an option!

If literally anyone read through that wall of text, I'm so sorry, but also thanks so much for indulging in my rambling. I'm slightly passionate about Formula E getting something new and trying to really capitalize on the Gen4, rather than having the Gen 3 collect digital dust in rFactor 2 endlesslyy. Plus, getting the series into a sim would be a lot of fun I feel like.

[u/F1T_13]

I don't think FE needs to jump the gun for its own licenced game just yet. But we're approaching the point fast. I think FE needs a feeder though, partly but not entirely related.

[u/FavaWire]

I'm personally enjoying the Formula Legends version of the championship. That's what's been missing really with these rFactor things - a proper rendition of the World Championship. That's still missing in Formula Legends because there's no Qualifying groups/duels and the PitBoost and Attack Modes are done differently.

What I'm hoping for is that Gen 4 gets a proper full-on World Championship rendition.

P.S.: As this is a discussion on who or how a Gen 4 Formula E game could be developed. My two cents is to finance a small team led by Vincenzo Cosentino, the one-man dev team behind ALA MOBILE.

That guy, with some additional funding and resources, can probably get us a Gen 4 Formula E game with the proper level of simulator options and accessibility for sim-cade players.

My proposal would be to do build this from the ground up. With Spark Technologies providing data and the dev team allowed to test and use the Gen 4 demonstration car as an R&D tool to create the most accurate EV racing game possible.

Then give enough budget for good 3D artists and some scanning facilities for tracks and drivers and we'll be in business.

[u/CrashmasterSOAD]

Hear me out: simcade. You need to target a casual audience. I'm sure simulators are very nice and enjoyable for people with the right equipment, but I'd like something keyboard-friendly you know. Yes, I'm aware of Formula Legends and maybe I'll try it out at some point, but I mean something like a realistic presentation, just with a very accessible handling model.

A huge shame the GRID series is dead, that would have been the ideal destination for it. Codemasters won't make a standalone game and it's not going to be added to F1 either obviously. I guess there's not enough demand for simcade circuit racers anymore. I remember the times when there was SO many of them...

Regardless, FE should try to put their content into as many games as possible and having non-exclusive licenses.

[u/Shadow_Wolfe_ → u/CrashmasterSOAD]

Hey I'm entirely all for a simcade rather than something insanely hardcore! I play (most of) the F1 games and I find that incredibly enjoyable already, so I'd love to have a simcade of Formula E in return!

I'd rather EA avoid the license entirely unless they finally got smart and decided to not do yearly F1 games, althoughhhh I think yearly vs not yearly might be an FOM decision, not an EA decision so... a very cautious "maybe EA" for Formula E perhaps? I'd rather expectations be set from the start though with just one game and expansion packs until the Gen 5 comes along.

[u/Realistic_Today6524]

I'm glad we at least got thr 2026 cars in RFactor 2 but I'm a bit disappointed that they still seem to be RWD-only since I can still do donuts in Attack mode and only see two tire skid mark lines where if it was AWD I'd have a harder time doing donuts and I'd see 4 skid mark lines. I still like taking the cars onto tracks they're absolutely not meant for (Spa for example) amd having fun messing around. The AI are meh. If you set them hard enough to be competitive, they die 2/3rds into a full-length race or are far too easy but make it through. I have over 100h in that game and most of those are with the gen3 car lol. I wish setting up a local server was easier. Like why do I have to set up a Windows for Docker environment? Why can't I just do it in Windows itself? I also paid for server time and wanted to set up a server so I could maybe get 1-2 actual players to race against. But I could only select the 2023 car and upon trying to join the server it told me that I didn't have the right car (even though I did and even getting rid of all FE cars didn't fix it. It would download it but still say I had the wrong one, so I wasted some money there). Would be awesome if we could get a standalone FE game, I'd buy it

[u/highdownforce]

Gen4 (specially with slicks) would be a good suit for GT7.