Tag: iracing new build

2015 Season 4 Brings Big Changes to iRacing

~ Jeff Kendrick ~ Leave a comment

iRacing will release the 2015 Season 4 build on Tuesday, September 8 [The 2015 Season 4 build was delayed 24 hours by iRacing]. Expect the iRacing member website to be down for around 5 hours beginning at 5:00 am eastern time.

This build brings a whole bevy of significant changes to the iRacing simulation as well as the member website. iRacing changes a lot of things that I don’t really see as all that important, so we’ll start with some of the significant website changes. Some of these involve the new dynamic track feature.

  • Tooltips were designed to provide descriptions of track conditions in official series and results.
  • Members will be able to set and preview custom track conditions in test sessions and hosted sessions.
  • The iRacing member website was modified to provide better compatibility with Windows 10 and Microsoft Edge. I never had any problems with it, but for those who did, this is good news.
  • The schedule PDF will now display more race setup options as well as a clickable table of contents to find series or sections more easily.

The bigger, more significant changes are in the racing simulation itself:

  • EasyAntiCheat has been added to the software package that you will download with the new build. This is supposed to make it harder for cheaters to cheat.
  • Dynamic Track Surfaces – This is the first of two major changes in the simulation. Track surfaces will now change with ambient temperature, rubberization, as well as the activity on the track. As races progress, the track will naturally get hotter as the cars run. There will be rubber buildup on the surface in proportion to how hard the tires are working. The rubber will roll up and marble. Initial track conditions can be specified for hosted and test sessions. Marbles can be cleaned off the track prior to the race session as well as during caution periods on ovals, or they can be left.
  • New Tire Model – This is the second major change in the iRacing simulation. iRacing made a change in the lateral stiffness calculations of the v6 tire. This calculation was missing in all previous tire versions including  v6. All of the cars that were already on the v6 tire have been updated, and many more cars have been upgraded to the new tire model.
  • All short track cars will be on the v6 tire.

In addition to the v6 tire model updates, some cars got additional updates:

  • The iRacing Late Model got some additional rear end ratios, and a bug fix in the chassis ballast adjustment.
  • The SK Modified got an 8:1 steering ratio option, and a slightly raised center of gravity. The engine efficiency was adjusted. iRacing offered no explanation as to what that means. The minimum tire stagger limit was removed. This was a useless update. If you run less than 2 inches of stagger on a Modified, you’re shooting yourself in the foot. Aero revisions were allegedly made. Apparently there has been some sort of bug in the chassis ballast adjustment for several cars. iRacing claims they have fixed this on the SK and the others. It’s nice how iRacing keeps these things a secret until they quietly announce that they have fixed it. I’ve been trying to use ballast adjustments all this time. Now I don’t even know if they ever did anything. If they did, it wasn’t much anyway.
  • The Tour Modified got the same updates as the SK Modified.
  • The Super Late Model got the same updates as the Late Model.

In summary, the interesting things will be the v6 tires and the dynamic surface model, and that wraps it up for the important changes coming in the new iRacing build.

iRacing 2015 Season 2 Release Notes

~ Jeff Kendrick ~ Leave a comment

Here are some interesting details for the iRacing 2015 Season 2 build.

Website

  • The global wrapper for the member website has been cleaned and polished. The navigation has been reorganized (thank God!) to help both old and new users find things more easily.
  • The News Room, Race Guide, and Hosted Races pages now have buttons to help members jump to popular activities such as practice, popular races, official races, and hosted races.
  • Many redundant dashboard widgets have been removed. The Race Planner and Service Status widgets remain, and can be reordered but not removed.
  • The What’s Hot widget has been removed and replaced with a Popular Races guide. (I liked the What’s Hot widget. I used it every day. I’ll reserve judgement until I see the replacement but I don’t like the sound of that.)
  • The Settings panel has only one pane of settings because there are no widgets to configure, and no tickers.

Documentation

  • The Quick Start guide has been revamped so that it will actually be quick.

Leagues

  • On the page for ignored league applications, clicking the red X will now delete the correct entry. (Yes! Yes! Finally, 6 months after I reported it, it’s going to be fixed. Probably. Maybe.)
  • League Seasons are now sorted by the most recent races that have occurred.

Simulation

  • The total number of fast repairs available for a race are now displayed on the session’s Info tab.
  • Improved the suspension modeling to account for flexibility of the suspension mounting points. This softens the resulting wheel rate of every car by 2-20% depending on the car. Car setups are likely to fail tech inspection and will need to have their ride heights adjusted to restore their previous levels, and also may need to have slightly stiffer springs selected to offset the extra flex and to regain desired handling characteristics. Most cars have had some degree of tuning to make sure there are no problems with suspension travel and to make sure enough range of adjustment is available.
  • All cars have updated iRacing setups for the suspension changes.
  • All cars now spawn with a warmed up motor. They start at about 170° Fahrenheit instead of ambient air temperature.
  • All cars now have a checkbox in the F4 Fuel black box to allow the driver to choose whether or not they want to use a fast repair in the upcoming pitstop. Also shown beside the checkbox is the number of remaining fast repairs. If a race is configured for unlimited fast repairs, that will show as 255 remaining. The checkbox will not check when no fast repairs are remaining (0 shown). Fast repairs are only available for use during races, so during testing or practice or qualifying you will see 0 fast repairs remaining.
  • Updated general drafting behavior a little to improve racing.

Cars

  • Chevrolet Monte Carlo SS (Late Model), Legends Ford, SK Modified, Tour Modified, Street Stock, and Super Late Model – The pit crew can now replace parts that are damaged beyond repair, instead of simply ending your race with a disqualification for being too damaged.
  • Super Late Model – Changed from adjustable packer and bump stop stiffness to adjustable packer only.

That’s all of the relevant updates for the upcoming iRacing season. I look forward to testing the cars with the suspension changes.