rFactory
The concept is a GUI that allows you to tweak the major game settings in a similar way to Assetto Corsa's Content Manager. Taking offline first: you select which car you want to drive, what and how many opponents and which circuit, all with the aid of filters. You can then tweak the graphics settings if needed before saving the whole thing as a "scenario". For online you do much the same (even though car, opponents and circuit are set by the server rFactory still needs to know) and pick the server you're going to race on.
When you click 'Run rFactor 2' rFactory will do its clever stuff (this is planned, doesn't exist yet)
Set the graphics settings (your preferences plus factors like: some tracks are graphics hogs; VR is different to a monitor; if it's not going to rain you don't need raindrops)Set the AI strength (a combination of the overall strength you want but also factoring in how strong the AI are in the car you've selected and for the track you picked, how well the AI were designed)Set the driving controls appropriate to the car (so for example if the car has a dogleg gearbox it would set up your shifter for that. Or TC settings or engine management) and appropriate for VR vs. MonitorSet the weather conditionsSet the other settings such as damage, time multiplier and so on
Back to what it does already do: rFactory then runs rFactor 2, logging you in to the server if you're racing online. (Hey! It can start up Crew Chief and Discord or TeamSpeak too!)
Next time, you select a different "scenario" and rFactory goes and sets up rFactor 2 to run a completely different car/track/opponents/weather selection.
Behind all this are databases with details of all the cars and tracks. Each car and track has a JSON file with the details rFactory needs to know. The data is extracted from rFactor's data files and then run through my "AI" to make some sense of it but that's only a start point, it's up to the rFactor community to edit them and share. One of the entries is F/R/FWD which is possible to get from the data files for some cars but not others. Another is a star rating for you to mark your own personal favourites.
Download the rfactory.zip from the releases page and unzip it into a new folder (referred to as <rfactory> from now on) and run rFactory.exe There will be a page scrolling away for many seconds as it makes its own data files from your rFactor 2 installation (it only needs to do that once).
If your rFactor 2 is not installed in the usual place then edit <rfactory>\Datafiles\favourites\rFactoryConfig.JSON and change this entry
"rF2root": "%ProgramFiles(x86)%/Steam/steamapps/common/rFactor 2"
Pick the car and track you want. Use the filters at the top and sort by clicking the column headings
If you right-click an entry you can edit it. (Warning: at present you can edit any of the values but it may not work afterwards if you edit the wrong one!)
The only Options that work at present are the Other programs to run with rF2
Again you can find the commands for the programs in <rfactory>\Datafiles\favourites\rFactoryConfig.JSON
Once you've set everything up then the menu Scenarios/Save scenario as... saves all the options so you can reload it later. (Also rFactory saves all options in <rfactory>\Datafiles\scenarioFiles\lastScenario.rFactoryScenarioJSON every time you close it down and reloads them next time.)
Before it can connect online you need to edit <rfactory>\Datafiles\favourites\favouriteServers.JSON
{
"Server name": "Password",
"Some server that doesn't have a password": "",
"Another server that does": "PaSsWoRd"
}
There is another tab that lists all the servers like the lobby in the game but it has a couple of extras. This tab is not yet working.
Once everything is set click Run rFactor 2 and it all happens automatically: CrewChief and Discord start up (if you selected those options), it runs offline (using the car/track you selected) or connects straight to the server (no need to enter the password).