iRacing Development Update from Tony Gardner

Tony Gardner posted another iRacing development update this afternoon for those who are curious about what is next in regard to development. I’ll include some of the highlights here.

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• New graphical and physical damage model. This should be released this year but no promises. Let’s hope the crashes get at least a little more realistic, especially in the winged sprint cars.
  
• Dynamic time of day including moving clouds and day to night transitions. iRacing is working night and day on day to night transitions. Goal for release: this year.
• New tire model version. This is a big one! If you whined and cried when iRacing made changes to the Dirt Late Model physics, you better get a new box of Kleenex, snowflake. Let’s hope this includes the dirt cars which still desperately need some kind of change to the tire. Dave Kaemmer will have more information on the new tire model in a few weeks. Goal for release: this year.
• Continued work on the new interface. It needs a lot of work.
• SHOCKER: iRacing is working on AI. Gardner says that they are “very far down the road with it.” As you can imagine, this opens a lot of doors. Practicing in an actual race with AI cars before you enter an official race is one of those doors. A more fun and relaxed format is another. The current plan is to offer one-off AI races as well as a career mode in which you can build your own series and schedule. There will be an AI difficulty adjustment. Nothing will ever replace racing against real drivers, but I think this will be great, especially for new members. Even if you don’t want to race AI, the development has helped iRacing with their netcode and prediction code issues and all members will benefit from that. Goal for release: this year.
• Multiple new tracks for all forms of racing. One oval track [surely Pocono Raceway] is being completely reworked. Dozens of cars are also in the works.

Good stuff here from Tony Gardner. It’s always nice to hear about what is in development at iRacing, and some general release time frame.