Race Campaigns

Where to find it

Click the Races tab. It shows every mission that lives in the currently loaded track’s folder. If the list is empty, the track simply has no missions authored for it yet — the tool looks only at the current track, not at a central library.

How to start a race

There are three ways to launch a race, all equivalent once running:

• From the Races tab. Pick a card, choose a difficulty, press Play.
• From a race marker in the world. Some missions place a visible marker at their start position. Driving into the marker triggers the mission directly — no UI needed.
• From the phone menu. Hold the P key to open the phone, tap the message icon, pick Race, and choose a difficulty. This is the quickest way to start a race without leaving the cockpit.

How difficulty actually changes the race

Difficulty is not just a label — it changes the size of the field, the pace of your opponents, and how dense the traffic around you is. Each race remembers its own difficulty, so you can set one race to Hard and another to Easy in the same campaign.

How the unlock progression works

The first three missions of a campaign are always unlocked. From the fourth onward, each mission needs a minimum number of earlier completions — mission N requires N − 2 completed missions. The final mission requires every earlier one to be completed at least once.

Completions are binary. Hard does not count more than Easy, and replaying a completed mission does not move the counter. The gating is there to prevent a day-one jump to the hardest mission; it is not a grind.

How a running race behaves

When you press Play (or cross a marker, or confirm via phone), the tool takes over the UI, runs a short countdown, and starts a millisecond-accurate clock. Your place (P1, P2, …) is computed continuously from progress along the author’s player route, not from checkpoints — that means shortcutting the route neither breaks nor rewards the leaderboard.

Crossing into the finish radius ends the race and records your time. Pressing Cancel Race aborts the run with no recorded finish — the mission stays uncompleted.

Racing opponents react to the player

AI opponents replay lines that were recorded once by a real human in Racemaker. That is the base behaviour — they follow the recorded trajectory. But they are not mindless playbacks: they also react dynamically to the player so races do not turn into deterministic crashes.

Specifically, a recorded opponent will avoid slamming into you. If you are right next to them, directly in front of them, or they are bearing down on you and the geometry would cause a collision, the opponent brakes to avoid contact. Once you clear the way — move aside, pull ahead, or drop back — the opponent accelerates to catch up to the position their recorded line would have them at by now. The effect is a competitive AI that pressures you without guaranteeing a pile-up every time you share road space.

Opponent top speed also scales with the difficulty. On Easy the opponent drives below pace; on Medium faster; on Hard at full recorded pace.

Traffic during races is partially randomised

The traffic you encounter in a mission is not a live, re-rolled fleet. It comes from the traffic snapshot that Racemaker captured when the mission was recorded — the same cars in roughly the same positions. But the system does not reproduce the snapshot exactly every time: a fraction of the recorded cars is dropped at random at the start of each run. Which cars are dropped changes from attempt to attempt.

How much is dropped depends on difficulty:

• Easy — roughly 50 % fewer recorded cars spawn, and which ones are dropped varies strongly each run. The road feels noticeably randomised and much lighter.
• Medium — about 20 % of recorded cars are dropped per run. Still randomised, but much closer to the recorded density.
• Hard — only about 10 % are dropped. The race is the closest to the author’s original traffic, with the least run-to-run variation.

The idea is that Easy does not just have less traffic, it has less predictable traffic — you are not expected to memorise it. Hard is the most repeatable: if you want to optimise a run, Hard gives you the traffic that stays closest to the same between attempts.

How a mission is structured

Every mission — shipped or authored in Racemaker — contains the same ingredients:

• Player route. A trajectory the author drove once. The player uses this route as a suggestion and the tool uses it to measure progress.
• AI opponent lines. Each rival has a recorded line that plays back during the race, layered with the dynamic reaction behaviour described above.
• Finish line with a radius. Crossing inside the radius ends the race.
• Traffic snapshot. Density and traffic feature set at record time, re-applied (with difficulty-based randomisation) when a player starts the mission.
• Metadata. Name, duration, distance, opponent count — what the Races tab card shows.

Interaction with other features

• Traffic Density. Your density is overridden by the mission snapshot for the duration of the race and restored after. You do not need to set density manually for a race.
• Police Chases / Race Cars. If the author baked them into the snapshot, they are part of the mission. You cannot toggle them off mid-race.
• Weather and time of day. These are not part of the mission snapshot — they follow whatever session you started. Author missions accordingly.
• Stats. Finishing a race contributes to career rank and shows up in the run selector.
• Racemaker. This is where missions come from. See the Racemaker chapter to create your own.

Resetting progress

The Reset Progress button at the bottom of the Races tab wipes the “Completed” flag for every mission on the current track. Future unlocks have to be earned again. Best-run times recorded in Stats are not affected by this reset — career data lives in the Stats tab and has its own reset control.

When the track has no missions

If a track has no mission files in its folder, the Races tab offers three help buttons rather than a list:

• Try to Fix rescans the track folder — useful if you just installed a mission pack.
• Find It opens a Google search pre-filled with the track name and “2real race”.
• Get Help opens the 2Real Discord.

You can also author your own missions for the current track via Racemaker. The workflow is designed so that a mission you record shows up in this list the moment it saves.

Troubleshooting

Races tab is empty

No mission files exist in this track’s folder. Use Find It to search, or build one in Racemaker.

A race stays locked

Check the unlock hint on the card — it shows how many earlier completions are still needed.

Timer never stops

You did not cross inside the finish radius. Turn back and drive through it again, or cancel the race.

Opponents brake in front of me for no reason

They are avoiding a collision with you. Move aside or drop back and they will resume their line.

Traffic feels different every attempt

Expected — a fraction of the recorded cars is dropped at random each run. Hard keeps the most, Easy drops the most.

Reset Progress cleared my best time

It shouldn’t — Reset Progress only touches completion flags. Personal bests live in Stats and reset there separately.