More Teasing in iRacing Development Update

iracing.jpg
Just a day after teasing the circuit of Jerez on their Twitter account, iRacing came out with more juicy informations in an open letter to the community. The publication is quite lengthy and goes into extensive details about physics, so we'll focus on key points here.

First, they claim the dev team has been expanded, with some of the new hires coming from the competition: several people previously working at Slightly Mad Studios and a high level engineer from " a different sim" are mentioned.

The team is apparently working on a "full review and full refresh" of dirt oval racing in the game, with dynamic track surface, tyre model and car tuning tools all being worked on. Public release of these improvements could happen in March but the studio sets June as the more realistic expectation. Of course, those improvements should have some influence over the other types of dirt racing in the game. In a similar way, a dedicated team is apparently working on improvements for paved surface oval racing, although the changes shouldn't be as drastic on that side of things.

Rain is also being talked about and is regarded as a "massive project" requiring a tremendous amount of work, and the team is too shy about that to provide with a target release date so far.

The letter goes on into very technical details about tyre model simulation, before switching the focus to planned content - and there's a lot of it apparently. Currently under development tracks include Algarve, Aragon, Jerez, Misano, Pukekohe, and Lédenon. Zandvoort is also being updated, as the team scanned the track a week ago. Deals have also been signed with other "great international tracks", but these names are being kept secret for the moment being. The sim is also still working in collaboration with NASCAR, with a team being on their way to capture data from a dirt oval and a short paved oval in California.

The full development update statement is available on the next page.
Next page: iRacing Dev Update
About author
GT-Alex
Global motorsports enjoyer, long time simracer, Gran Turismo veteran, I've been driving alongside top drivers since the dawn of online pro leagues on Gran Turismo, and qualified for the only cancelled FIA GTC World Tour. I've left aside competitive driving in 2020 to dedicate myself to IGTL, a simracing organisation hosting high quality events for pro racers and customers, to create with friends the kind of events we wished we could have had. We strive to provide the best events for drivers and the best content for viewers, and want to help the simracing scene grow and shine further in the global esports scene.

Comments

i am a member and i also have more than $800 in cars I cannot use offline unless i pay the monthly hostage fee..

Not a bother though, nowadays I just fire it up to see whats new after a release, hop in a car, wait for the inevitable passenger slide to happen, crack the sh!ts and ALT-F4 back out.

Lets hope the new devs that have joined the team now can fix this hot mess of a sim.
You never bought them, you a renting them.
I have spend twice that amount by now (since 2009).

If i buy a car or a track and i have a few nice sessions on it's good enough for me.
Could have spend that money on a Starbuck coffee's
But hey, i don't like coffee at all.
So more money left for things that matter.
 
Premium
I fail to see how it is "ransomware" when you were fully aware what you signed up to in the first place. Or weren't you? That would then not be on the company who sold you their service, wouldn't it? The deal is perfectly transparent as far as I can see, at least it was for me back in 2012.
Well, if you somehow lack reading comprehension skills...? That might explain things. :coffee:
 
Great news, but I'm still waiting for the next-gen graphics overhaul. I will switch back to iRacing once that's done. One day it MUST come.
It won't come because it's simply not possible. You can't just press a button and have all the content brought up to 2023 visual standards as if you just released a new game done on the latest game engine. Expecting this is simply living in the land of dreams, nothing more.

they are using a certain engine and have a certain baseline for texture work, how much resources a texture, a track or a car should use, a max number of polygons allowed per car, per certain trackside structure and so on. Everything you see in this game is placed BY HAND, you can't simply take a bucket of paint and just throw it over all the content and, et voila, its "next gen graphics".

you can see from the latest tracks that they are everything BUT the greatest and latest looking in terms of visuals. But what they are: they look coherent and do their job very fine while indeed looking like its 2013.

everything about this game's improvement will always be iterative, thats the magic word. they will slowly improve textures and geometry with every new track or car and then sometimes go back to a very old track or car and bring it up to the standard they currently have the latest track, and so on.
 
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Premium
Seems odd they are probably the richest sim developers but it's not the most developed sim.
I think they have found a sustainable balance between product investment and financial health. They obviously know what their customers want by the number of subscribers and prices they can charge. From a business point of view, I’m sure they are the benchmark for what other sim racing companies want to become.
 
There is alot I really like about this sim but there are still odd things going on with the tires, but up until the point of just over the limit they feel really good! Theres just this certain window beyond the limit where things just get a bit odd!
()
The problem is not just with the grip loss, but also the way it comes back, its snappier than a crocodiles bite, but like I said, not totally impossible, and like I said there's alot that I like about the tire model which feels pretty damn spot on up until a point, so im not slating it.
I think you are more or less spot on on this.
But the problem is that its the regaining part of grip/slide that is the difficult part to calculate for a tire model.
Almost all the commercial tire models are able to calculate a quite realistic behaviour up to the point where the tires loose contact with tarmac.
Its more or less only this crucial regaining part where iRacings tire model is a complete looser compared to almost all other tire models.
Because after all these years it does become more and more obvious that it must be because of some basic fault in the whole construction of iRacings and Kaemmers tire model that they have been unable to solve the problem.

CatsAreTheWorstDogs: This is the reason I personally dont believe iRacing will be able to fix this problem by some iterative tweaking their existing tire model. I think the english term for this is called Blind Alley. :whistling:
 
Terence Groening plus the years of experience iRacing already had is The Traveling Wilburys of sim racing.
Maybe the tire work mentioned relates to Groening's offline carcass model similar to the one from RF2.
We can find some fault on everything if we look for it but for me Roaning Tires just goes to 11.
 
i am a member and i also have more than $800 in cars I cannot use offline unless i pay the monthly hostage fee..

Not a bother though, nowadays I just fire it up to see whats new after a release, hop in a car, wait for the inevitable passenger slide to happen, crack the sh!ts and ALT-F4 back out.

Lets hope the new devs that have joined the team now can fix this hot mess of a sim.
What if your real problem isn't the sim?
 
Terence Groening plus the years of experience iRacing already had is The Traveling Wilburys of sim racing.
Maybe the tire work mentioned relates to Groening's offline carcass model similar to the one from RF2.
We can find some fault on everything if we look for it but for me Roaning Tires just goes to 11.
what's the offline model you speak of?
 
If iRacing could only bring Group C cars, and add 300mhz+ FFB for surface details . If only RaceRoom would convert to a subscription model like iRacing, they would make more money and better compete with their little FFB/Physics and Sound gem...
 
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what's the offline model you speak of?
Offline as in the non-real-time carcass model in rfactor 2 which is stored in a lookup table within the .tgm files.
You can download the tgm files from rfactor 2 site and load them in the tool by adding +ttool to the launch arguments.
Then in the tool you can run the brush model that runs in real-time in the game using the lookup table or separately the carcass deformation model which is way slower.
 
It won't come because it's simply not possible. You can't just press a button and have all the content brought up to 2023 visual standards as if you just released a new game done on the latest game engine. Expecting this is simply living in the land of dreams, nothing more.

they are using a certain engine and have a certain baseline for texture work, how much resources a texture, a track or a car should use, a max number of polygons allowed per car, per certain trackside structure and so on. Everything you see in this game is placed BY HAND, you can't simply take a bucket of paint and just throw it over all the content and, et voila, its "next gen graphics".

you can see from the latest tracks that they are everything BUT the greatest and latest looking in terms of visuals. But what they are: they look coherent and do their job very fine while indeed looking like its 2013.

everything about this game's improvement will always be iterative, thats the magic word. they will slowly improve textures and geometry with every new track or car and then sometimes go back to a very old track or car and bring it up to the standard they currently have the latest track, and so on.
I don't agree. If they cannot do that then they should start working on iRacing 2. They cannot stay forever in the past. Now the graphics are still "acceptable" for most but this will also change in 5 years from now. But I think that they COULD change their graphics with the current content. Examples:

The skybox is shared with all tracks and could be renewed.

The shaders on the tarmac, grass, curbs, trackside objects, textures etc. could all be upgraded for all track with new lighting, ambient occlusion, shadows, new textures with better mapping and other effects that made it look modern.

All trees have certain places on the tracks, they can be updated on a track basis tot 3d trees. Same for track side objects.

Of course this is all a lot of work but if they don't do it this sim will one day bleed to death. They should start with it now. If they don't start with it within 5 years then it could be to late because other sims like for example AC2 will be out by then. ACC and AMS2 already look way better now, so future sims will look even better and iRacing will look even worse compared. And who knows what other competing sim will be out in 2027, nobody will accept the graphics of iRacing anymore by then. That's just how it works, they don't have a choice.
 
Premium
I don't agree. If they cannot do that then they should start working on iRacing 2.

There are already releases with each season during the year and additional updates in between.

They add new features like the crash model, AI, new cars, new tracks, track scan updates, rain is coming, etc.. etc..

The whole concept of another version is flawed. It's always evolving.
 

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Alexandre Tonini
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