Tony Gardner took to the forums today to clarify and issue with which all dirt drivers are concerned: The separate iRacing dirt license.
We all hoped the license would be there and ready right from the start with dirt racing, but it wasn’t, and another iRacing staff member recently posted that it is not a priority and that it won’t be ready any time soon. Tony clarified that it is a priority, but it will take some time to get the license working. The way I read it, it’s either part of the new in-sim interface, or dependent on it. Here’s what he had to say:
Good morning,
Let me try and update you but it is a little complicated.
We actually are working on creating new license types like dirt and in fact are actively working towards that. Steve Reis simply heard a conversation in the sim engineering meeting that he attends remotely. (There are several other engineering meetings depending on the type of engineering.) It is not a “big” project on that side compared to the overall project so he heard a someone tell a sim engineer don’t worry about that for now for your part, it is not a priority, work on xyz.
The most amount of work for this is on the front end end web, back end web, data and infrastructure side and it involves multiple people. The entire (large) infrastructure and data system are built on road and oval only and we essentially have to rip out the guts of that and do it all over again to have the flexibility to create new license types. On top of all that, we are building essentially an all new infrastructure and application. You have hopefully already noticed some of the backend work in regard to this project including better site stability, etc. but it is also front facing. As we are building the new infrastructure/application we are building it with the ability to create new license types. It made much better sense from an efficiency perspective to build in this capability in the new infrastructure rather than the old. We are actively doing that.
Projects like this and like most things have multiple projects within the overall project. We also have done some work particular to dirt licenses but it will move much faster hopefully relatively soon as more people free up off their current projects. All the different people needed to work on their part (skill set) are not yet available to work on this particular project currently so it is tough to give timing but it will not be in the short term unfortunately. However, it is one of the top few priorities for the overall web team and like I said it is mainly on their shoulders.
We apologize for any confusion. We probably should not have mentioned it was part of the plan from the start but also nice to try and give people a sense of the longer term.
I think it was mentioned as part of the plan from the start because 5000 people asked if it was part of the plan. Personally, I don’t care one way or the other but that’s just me. I may never run an official dirt race. I prefer league racing. I’m a lot more concerned with other areas in the dirt racing part of the simulation.