Rain and Mt. Washington Hillclimb Coming to iRacing

iracing rain.jpg
iRacing associated Twitter accounts shared screenshots on Saturday of two exciting new developments for the racing sim: rainy conditions and Hillclimb racing.

A long-debated topic surrounding iRacing has been the exclusion of rain and wet weather racing. Inclement conditions are very much a part of real-world racing, so the sim community has been asking for the addition of weather variability in iRacing for years. And it appears that the wait is nearing an end.


The sim’s official Twitter account shared an image of a very wet Hockenheimring circuit, citing an interview with iRacing Executive Producer Greg Hill during a recent stream and noting the image as “Work-in-Progress.”

No date was set for release to the public, but iRacing’s 2021 yearend update is a plausible time frame for at least the first stage of release.

Greg Hill’s own Twitter account caught the attention of the sim racing world later the same day, when he shared a tweet thread detailing the process of adding the Mt. Washington Hillclimb to iRacing. The first tweet showed a snowy track, which precluded the laser scanning process. Subsequent tweets in the same thread showed the thawed track, which presented a new challenge for the team: the density of vegetation and rocks.


But it appears the team were able to overcome the new challenges to recreate the Mt. Washington Hillclimb course, and early access to the course is expected “in time for the 2021 real world event.”

Both the inclusion of rain and the hill climb course are exciting news for fans of the popular multiplayer sim. The excitement in the sim community in response to the forthcoming changes in iRacing was reflected in the hundreds of retweets for both posts.

Let us know in the comments which of these additions you are looking forward to most.
About author
Mike Smith
I have been obsessed with sim racing and racing games since the 1980's. My first taste of live auto racing was in 1988, and I couldn't get enough ever since. Lead writer for RaceDepartment, and owner of SimRacing604 and its YouTube channel. Favourite sims include Assetto Corsa Competizione, Assetto Corsa, rFactor 2, Automobilista 2, DiRT Rally 2 - On Twitter as @simracing604

Comments

Rain is still overrated in simracing.. but maybe they can finaly learn something during that process and give us a realistic tire physics for the road Indycars.
Im not sure if its overrated, people like it for the looks, im interested in the new difficulty to racingit will add, just like night racing. Imagine 24hr nurgburgring at night with full thunderstorm rain, that would be interesting to see.
 
Rain is still overrated in simracing.. but maybe they can finaly learn something during that process and give us a realistic tire physics for the road Indycars.
Where is overrating coming from ? I see it oppositely, I think rain is massively underrated. Many people doesn't have any clue about what racing in wet track should really be like, all must can think off - less grip. It is way more sophisticated than that. And implementing rain is a huuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuge task for devs, because it takes together crazy amount of additional features, some are necessary and many to wish for. And all that just to have people not driving there as much because they are afraid of challenges and want self driving cars. But in iRacing it could be different and people might use it a lot, because we know that iRacing people puts up with challenging cars, and they literally pay for time they spend mastering stuff while in other sims people pay to shuffle through content fast.

I am interested very much how iRacing rain physics will work, because they seem to make good physics, but also they seem to have a bit of too much off in some cars. They don't seem to have the best understanding about tires, some cars are awesome, some terrible. Rain physics are very subtle, depending on tire, it should be narrow gap between good grip and a twitch festival. Pretty much it should be how their tires of many of their cars is in dry now lol just with lesser high peaks.
 
The offroad physics are pretty good at iR ... so the rally stuff will be done pretty amazing thats for sure... but not the high downforce cars. But yea maybe iR will be the first sim where their fastest line in rain won't be the same as the rubbered-in on the dry track. It all comes into play... They would not have started to do rain before they finished the dirt side of their physics... and their living evolving track conditions.
 
excited about both bits of news and really curious how this trusty old engine will deal with all the new complexities. Am I mistaken to think that at heart the engine they are using is a dozen years old, at least?
 
maybe iR will be the first sim where their fastest line in rain won't be the same as the rubbered-in on the dry track.

Hopefully, it is very important detail of driving on wet tracks, smooth surfaces when wet creates so called "viscous hydroplaning" learn the name someone please.

Also ACC did implement this thing, although not dynamic, but still highly realistic even if at scripted places. Too bad they chickened out as they did with their whole physics to present anything that would be too challenging or too odd for an average simracer. Thats why I hope better from iR, they seem not to care too much about how much people find something difficult in their sim, which perhaps is a downside when something truly is wrong, but on the other side they display a lot more signs of trust that they goes after what they believes is right rather quckly doing U turns to chase where average Joe says to go (like ACC).
 
Shovas
Premium
Love all these new features but it's going to have to come along with tyre model improvements at some point that bring them up to par with their competitors as they're getting left behind by more and more sims, rF2, ACC, AMS2, and even R3E has upped their game. I want to enjoy the driving itself in iRacing as much as I do in other sims.
 
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Love all these new features but it's going to have to come along with tyre model improvements at some point that bring them up to par with their competitors as they're getting left behind by more and more sims, rF2, ACC, AMS2, and even R3E has upped their game. I want to enjoy the driving itself in iRacing as much as I do in other sims.
iR tire model is on par or better than the other sims now. If you haven't raced seriously in iR for a couple of years you might be quite surprised. I know everyone likes to say that rF2's is better but it's really just simpler - it doesn't even take track temp into account.
 
excited about both bits of news and really curious how this trusty old engine will deal with all the new complexities. Am I mistaken to think that at heart the engine they are using is a dozen years old, at least?
The iR devs will tell you that there is very little of the original 2008 code left - after 13 years the difference is like night and day. That's the beauty of having your own engine and a large dev team - you can do whatever you want.
 
It scares me, more than 10 years to make a viable tyre and still no soft/medium/hard and the rain is coming it's going to be fun! but after losing 1k sr people will move on :D
edit: but for me it's not a problem to run in the rain in an oval
 
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Finally let it rain! I'm so excited for this. And you'll know that the leader is pitting now when it rain's.
 
Shovas
Premium
iR tire model is on par or better than the other sims now. If you haven't raced seriously in iR for a couple of years you might be quite surprised. I know everyone likes to say that rF2's is better but it's really just simpler - it doesn't even take track temp into account.
I actually like iR, don't get me wrong, but it's absolutely not on par with any of the others yet. It's better than it was but it's not there yet. My concern is if they add rain then you'll need to feel something more through the wheel to handle it.
 
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I actually like iR, don't get me wrong, but it's absolutely not on par with any of the others yet. It's better than it was but it's not there yet. My concern is if they add rain then you'll need to feel something more through the wheel to handle it.


I suspect with wet surfaces you will have less FFB feeling in the wheel rather than more. I am not sure this relates to the tire model exactly though, more their approach to FFB replicating only steering column forces from what I understand.
 

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