Tag: iracing update

iRacing 2019 Season 3 Update from Tony Gardner

~ Jeff Kendrick ~ Leave a comment
iRacing President Tony Gardner
iRacing President Tony Gardner

iRacing president Tony Gardner has once again stepped up with a small development update for the 2019 Season 3 build coming up in early June. For those who have not seen it, I’ll provide some highlights plus the full update.

  • The new form of racing — Short-Course Off-Road Trucks is on pace for the June release. This includes two trucks and two tracks.
  • Fairbury American Legion Speedway (FALS) is in development but will not make the June release. Look for that in September.
  • On the NASCAR side, the Ford Mustang Cup Car and the 2019 Chevrolet Silverado should be in the June build.
  • The Modified Cars may also make the June build. The 208 Tour Modified champion’s car was scanned. This will bring brand new Tour and SK Modified cars to iRacing.

Below is the full update.

Good day,

Thanks to everyone for your membership and the time you spend iRacing!

I know some members are curious about what is coming next so I figured a good time to do a brief content production update with the quarterly software update about four weeks away.

I’ll start with the new form of racing — Short-Course Off-Road Trucks. The Pro 2 and Pro 4 trucks are on pace for the June quarterly release as are two tracks, Wild West and Wild Horse. It is going to be Wildly fun! Later this week we will work on a video for your viewing pleasure. You will get both the Pro 2 and the Pro 4 truck for the price of one vehicle.

While working on the short-course trucks, we improved the dirt particle effects which will carry over to other forms of dirt racing. Speaking of that, we are in full production of Fairbury Speedway. That will miss June, but it will release in September (or earlier) probably. It is far enough along to take screenshots, and we will do that soon with videos to follow. We have also started work on Lernerville Speedway which would be next after Fairbury. We have a full list of tracks that we are doing and then will take it from there. Most on the list have been scanned.

Staying on dirt, we also are working on our first ever purpose-built RallyX track. That track will not make the June build, but plenty more will, keep reading.

We are shooting to get NASCAR Ford Mustang (Cup) in the June build. Same with the 2019 Silverado.

We also are working hard to get a brand new NASCAR Modified car in the build. An all new car including a complete physics update. We scanned the reigning champs car, Justin Bonsignore, who is the 2018 NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour Champion. We will simply replace the old Modified car so if you own the old one, you will get this for free. We will also be providing two versions like we do now, same car body basically but two different engines (SK and Tour). Again both cars are in the same package for one price if you were to buy it new. (This car will be used in the playoffs for the 2019 NASCAR Ignite Series by the way. The regular season will be the Legends Car, just like last year. A press release is coming out this week about that.)

I don’t want this to turn into a development update, but here is a little tidbit while talking about NASCAR. We are fairly optimistic we will get green-white-checkered into this build. We also have one of the 2019 Xfininity cars done but waiting to get them all done before we release them. As usual, a time consuming and painful process getting all the licensing done and getting our hands on the data to build the cars. On the bright side, we are having some good conversations with our wonderful partners to make this process easier in the future.

Flipping to the road side, we are close on the Audi RS3 LMS TCR car. However, it will miss the June build as I mentioned in another post. I think a completely updated Silverstone will make the June build but it will be a little tight. Barcelona is in full production as well and on track for a 2019 release.

There are multiple other cars and tracks in production but we don’t want to get too ahead of ourselves. That can get us in trouble.

There is also a tremendous amount going on in regards to new and improved features, some of it, you already know about. AI, new damage model, new sound engine, updated tire model, rain, etc. and making good progress on all of it.

Good racing!

iRacing Dirt 2019 Season 2 Update

~ Jeff Kendrick ~ 2 Comments
Steve Reis, iRacing Vehicle Dynamics Engineer
Steve Reis, iRacing Senior Vehicle Dynamics Engineer

iRacing Senior Vehicle Dynamics Engineer Steve Reis provided an update for iRacing Dirt changes coming in the 2019 Season 2 build. Reis says that uncounted caution laps are coming. I’ll have to take his word for it. I think he believes it. I’m not sure if I do. Anyway, here is all of the information that Steve provided.

  • The non-wing sprint cars will both have their cockpit shock adjusters re-enabled.
  • The “damper adjustments no longer influencing heights and weights while the car is sitting in the garage” has been applied to all of the sprint cars, midget, late models, and modified. It has a fairly large impact on the sprints and midget, and much less so on the late models and modified. Expect your old setups to need some height/corner weight adjustments to pass tech, especially in the sprints and midget.
  • There has been no major development on dirt tire wear. I’d expect it will happen once V7 is fully up and running on the asphalt side of things.
  • Caution laps not counting is still a work in progress. It will happen eventually!
  • Outside pits is not something we are currently pursuing.
  • I’d expect the tire/track interaction update to go out at this point. As Tyler Hudson mentioned, it’s a fairly substantial change in grip, feel, and lap time between the tacky and the slick.

iRacing 2018 Season 2 Release Highlights

~ Jeff Kendrick ~ Leave a comment

iRacing will release it’s major quarterly update this Tuesday, March 6. Here are some highlights from the update.

iRacing Beta User Interface
  • [Much needed] extensive background system updates have been completed for the iRacing beta user interface to greatly enhance the speed, responsiveness, and stability of the application.
  • Fixed Setups are now available when creating Hosted Sessions!
  • You can now spectate sessions for the beta user interface. To do so, you activate the “show running sessions” switch on the top right in the official races section.
Dirt
  • Dirt heights [piles of dirt, ruts?] across all areas of the track now allow for a greater possible range of dirt amounts [piles of dirt here and there, more realistic dirt buildup?]. It will allow for more build-up of dirt in some areas and more digging down in some areas.
  • Dirt cushion modeling [can we get an outside racing line?] has been improved. This will bring a big change it the way that dirt ovals behave as the tracks are worn in. The cornering force from the increased banking and the cushion of dirt should be noticeably greater than before. The outside line should become faster.
  • The starting usage for official races has been increased. [You’re going the wrong way.]

Cars

  • Dirt Late Model – The following updates apply to ALL Dirt Late Model Cars
    Updated front bump stop rate curves with more accurate data.
    Updated shock lengths and positions using more accurate data.
    Adjusted weight and inertia properties. Setups can now be more easily shared across all versions of the dirt late model.
    Trimmed nose valence and door skirts in the solid model to more typical lengths and adjusted collision elements accordingly.
    Adjusted collision elements in the nose and tail to allow closer racing per member suggestions and feedback.
    The driver’s view position has been adjusted slightly.
    iRacing setups have been updated.
    Limited Late Model only – Improved cockpit engine sounds.
  • Dirt Sprint Car – The following updates apply to ALL Dirt Sprint Cars
    The 2018 Season 1 suspension update has been reverted [The Dirt Winged Sprint Cars will be fun again].
    Nose wing angle can now be adjusted in the garage.
    Fixed fuel – There will be three fuel settings in the Dirt Sprint Cars. Low for qualifying, middle for heats and consis, and high for feature races.
    iRacing setups have been updated.
  • Dirt Street Stock – The rev limit has been increased from 6200 RPM to 6800 RPM and the iRacing setup have been updated.
  • Dallara DW12 – Everybody gets a free DW12 this season and the car is considered part of the iRacing default (free) content.

iRacing setups have also been updated for the following cars. I include this because this could involve some changes to the cars themselves although I don’t see anything about that in these release notes.

  • Chevrolet Monte Carlo SS
  • UMP Modified
  • SK Modified
  • Whelen Tour Modified

Tracks

  • The Dirt Track at Charlotte
  • Limaland Motorsports Park
  • Pocono Raceway 2011 – Everybody gets this track for free now.
  • Richmond International Raceway has been renamed Richmond Raceway in both the real and the iRacing world.
  • USA International Speedway Dirt – Fixed a surface bug on the back stretch.

Sounds like a great release with two new dirt tracks, the reversion of the Sprint Cars to when they were fun, and changes to the Dirt Late Models. You can find the full release notes in the iRacing forum.

 

iRacing 2017 Season 3 Patch 3 or I Hope the Dirt Late Models are Improved

~ Jeff Kendrick ~ Leave a comment

iRacing released Patch 3 for the season today and there are some Dirt Late Model updates. I haven’t had a chance to try them yet. If you have leave a comment, or maybe I can post my thoughts here later today.

Here are the changes that apply to iRacing short track drivers:

Dirt Incidents – The car-to-car incident detection threshold for generating 2X contact penalties has been increased. This means that a stronger hit will now be needed on Dirt Tracks to generate a 2X penalty. I know a lot of people think dirt participation is low because there is no dirt license. I doubt that. It really doesn’t matter. When dirt was released, iRacing basically cut the incident points from paved ovals in half. Now they have raised the threshold on what it takes to get a 2x penalty. You will have to hit the other car pretty hard (or the other car will have to hit you pretty hard) to generate a 2x penalty. I don’t even see a need for a dirt license. One may come in time, but I will speculate that we won’t see a dirt license for at least a year.

Garage – iRacing fixed and issue where the ride height adjustments would continue to “modulate” while sitting in the garage. This affected the iRacing Dirt Street Stock car more than any other of which I am aware. There was really no way to know what your ride height would be until the car “settled,” and that took a full minute. It also had a very noticeable effect on the iRacing Winged Sprint Cars. Personally, I’m very happy to see this fixed. I build a lot of setups and this is one thing that took more time. In the case of the Street Stock, I just took a shot in the dark by getting the cross weight about where I believed it should be and letting the ride heights fall where they may.

EasyAntiCheat – Now EAC will give you a reason when it removes you from a session, you cheater. 😆 Just kidding about the cheater part. Sometimes EAC has some issues.

And now for the good stuff:

Dirt Late Model

  • Rear differential model changed from locker to spool. Well now we get into the technical stuff about rear ends. I’m not going to sit here and BS you, I don’t know that much about it, but I am pretty decent at finding information online. I’m sure somebody else could explain this better, but here is what I understand about this from what I have read online.

    Despite it’s name, a locker will actually unlock in the turns, allowing the rear wheels to turn at different speeds. The right rear wheel will turn a bit faster than the left rear wheel in left hand turns, always, unless maybe you’re going backwards and that would just be silly. This has a pretty dramatic affect on what your rear stagger setting should be if real world physics is applied. We will see how it affects rear stagger in iRacing. I can imagine that it will also affect the way the car behaves when cornering and when exiting the corner and going to a straight line. Let’s hope it’s a positive effect because the DLM needed some work in this area.

    A spool keeps both rear axle shafts locked together, which I guess behaves pretty much like a solid axle in the rear. Again, this should affect rear stagger and the way the car grips in the corners and, to some degree, on exit, as you still have the wheels turned and you’re rolling back into the throttle.

  • Reverted changes to aero balance from the Season 3 update. I have no clue what this will do to the car or how it will feel, but I’m all for anything that reverts any changes made to the Dirt Late Model in the Season 3 update.
  • Reverted changes to torque curves from Season 3 update. Same as above although I have a very vague idea about what changes to the torque curve are.

In addition to that, the setups have been updated for the Limited and Super Late Models. I haven’t tried the things yet, but this is an indication that the old setups for those cars won’t pass tech, or that they are total crap now and you might as well start over from scratch. It’s not good news unless the cars are significantly improved.

New iRacing User Interface

There were a lot of updates to the new UI. I saw one update that I suggested in there. I’m sure I wasn’t the only one:

When creating a Hosted Session, all cars and tracks are now sorted alphabetically by display name by default. Thanks for that, it sure makes it easier to find what you’re looking for without having to go sort them by clicking on the column header.

This was a big patch. I only listed what is relative to dirt and short tracks. If you’re interested in the many UI updates, or any of the updates to other cars and tracks, etc., you can find the entire list in the official iRacing Forum.

iRacing Dirt Updates and More In Patch Four

~ Jeff Kendrick ~ 3 Comments

iRacing rolled out 2017 Season 2 Patch 4 today, and here are a few things you can expect for dirt racing.

  • Paint Kit – No more solid black cars. Cars that have never been painted will automatically have the member’s helmet color scheme applied along with a random pattern and random sponsors. If you never painted your helmet, you get a random pattern and color scheme that will also be applied to your cars.
  • Dirt – The dirt and dust that the cars sling when they dig into the cushion has been updated. Does that mean rooster tails?
  • Dirt Late Model – First gear has been removed.
    Engine sound samples have been improved.
    Opponent’s car wheel positions have been adjusted.
  • Dirt Sprint Car
    Cross weight bounds were increased.
    Fuel economy has been adjusted. Now maybe 35 lap races will work.
    No more tech on tube heights.
    Maximum rear stagger reduced from 17 inches to 14 inches.
    Opponent’s car wheel positions have been adjusted.
    The damage model has been updated.
    Engine sound samples have been improved.
  • USAC Non-Winged Sprint Car Introduced
    USAC 360 West Coast Sprint Car
    USAC 410 Sprint Car

For the dirt tracks, the starting stalls have all been angled slightly to the right. At Volusia Speedway, pit entry should no longer cause off-track penalties.

It’s not a huge update, but there’s some pretty good stuff here. Most notably, the removal of first gear on the Dirt Late Models, and the fuel economy adjustment on the Sprint Cars. I look for bigger stuff in the new build coming up in May.