COTA is coming to iRacing

[Niel Hekkens]

From the Twitter feed of @iRacing:

We are busy scanning today.

And

@circuitamericas scanning now #iRacing pic.twitter.com/MZTbU4yIMv

Finally this big track is coming to iRacing. Very good for a lot of series in iRacing, i think.

 

[Bakkster]

Big news, very awesome! There's not a car on the road side the track won't suit.

Kevin Iannarelli confirmed the orange pyramid apex curbs are still there. Hopefully they figure out a way to make them optional (and possibly have the option of the V8SC-style 'sausage' curbs) so we can avoid this every race.

 

[Niel Hekkens]

I think it will be high on the priority list once they have the data back to iRacing HQ!
Won't be that hard because there are not a lot of trackside objects, like Bathurst, Montreal or Sao Paulo.

 

[Bakkster]

Not a lot of objects (from the track, there's an amphitheater and such), but there is a giant mullet

Looks like they're going to explore the option of getting all the different additional curbs the various series other than F1 have run as well. It would be great to have the exact tracks ALMS/WEC and V8SC/SCCA WC raced on.

 

[Niel Hekkens]

That would be very nice indeed. No extra high kerbs for F1. Those nice launch platforms for sports car racing and those round high kerbs on the short lay-out.
Are there any tracks now with different kerbstones on different lay-outs?

It shouldn't be that difficult as they can have different off-track triggers at Spa, for example.

 

[Michael Hornbuckle]

I will probably re-sub when this comes out just to make laps on it....

 

[Bakkster]

That would be very nice indeed. No extra high kerbs for F1. Those nice launch platforms for sports car racing and those round high kerbs on the short lay-out.
Are there any tracks now with different kerbstones on different lay-outs?

It shouldn't be that difficult as they can have different off-track triggers at Spa, for example.

Not sure about curbs, though they definitely throw cones and such in the spots were needed. So while they throw tire walls across shortcuts and have that capability, I'm not sure about if they can adjust the racing surface itself.

On the other hand, I'm not sure any other tracks lay different temporary curbs depending on the series visiting...

But absolutely agreed having an authentic layout for each series is vital, which is why I wanted to mention it to them while they're on site. Especially with the curbs being unsuitable for open wheel cars, but the course cut system being so strict the closed fender cars probably prefer a physical curb to mark the apex.

 

[Dazmaniac]

Work is progressing with the track (per FB page)

What is also interesting is the pic at bottom right. It shows the tires on the open wheeler with a flat-spot, dirt and grass effects. Nice to see iRacing trying to keep up (if a few years behind, lol). Shame they aren't more pro-active with features and not always playing catch-up.

 

[Martijn Hoekstra]

Can't wait for this to come out!

 

[Niel Hekkens]

I may be totally insane, but watching from 7:45 to the next shot in the same place... kinda looks like the sun came down a bit, and the lighting changed. Maybe it's just me being too hopeful for Day / Night Trans. but I definitely notice SOMETHING.

Edit - Nevermind, looks like they just cut between a screen cap, and a real camera. DANG IT!

We can dynamically move the sun and time of day now. That is not the problem. It is all the associated graphics work like doing all the shaders, shadows, lighting/clouds properly and all that goes with it. However so we don't have to do a lot of this work over again in the near future, first we decided to upgrade to DX11 and while doing that graphics engine upgrade it is also pretty straight forward to also port to the OpenGL graphics engine so doing that as well. Along with having better graphics and graphic options with these graphic engine upgrades in the future, it also opens up lot of things for us if we want like running native on linux and mac etc.

Cheers.

(We are also working on a similar video piece like this on building a car in iRacing, featuring the BMW GT car. )

 

[Michael Hornbuckle]

We can dynamically move the sun and time of day now. That is not the problem. It is all the associated graphics work like doing all the shaders, shadows, lighting/clouds properly and all that goes with it. However so we don't have to do a lot of this work over again in the near future, first we decided to upgrade to DX11 and while doing that graphics engine upgrade it is also pretty straight forward to also port to the OpenGL graphics engine so doing that as well. Along with having better graphics and graphic options with these graphic engine upgrades in the future, it also opens up lot of things for us if we want like running native on linux and mac etc.

Is that recent because I could have sworn they said the exact same thing a year to a year and a half ago....Didn't they already upgrade to DX11?

 

[William Levesque]

That's been a while I think.

 

[Niel Hekkens]

They announced DX11 a while ago, but it's not upgraded yet.

 

[Bakkster]

Is that recent because I could have sworn they said the exact same thing a year to a year and a half ago....Didn't they already upgrade to DX11?

He was catching someone up. They do change the lighting on the tracks, the sun just doesn't move.

The new information is they've expanded the DX11 update to include an OpenGL port. iRacing suffers from feature creep just like everyone else