iRacing New Build, Chilli Bowl and Pitstop Animations Released

[Paul Jeffrey]

iRacing have released the much anticipated "HolidaysPatch" today, adding plenty of fixes to the title as well as some new content, and Dallara pitstop animation.

Say what you will about iRacing, those lads and lasses over in the US of A sure do know how to put together a new update, and today is no exception, even if the new 2019 Season 1 Holiday Patch isn't one of the core major updates to the sim, it certainly packs in plenty of new fixes and improvements to the rapidly improving title.

Alongside the usual array of fixes and changes comes pitstop animation. Now at first I thought this new graphical update would apply to just the 2018 spec Dallara IndyCar, however it appears as if iRacing have gone a little bit further than expected, extending the new feature across all Dallara content within the title, which is pretty pleasing to see and covers off a nice portion of interesting cars currently available as part of the simulation service (full list can be seen as part of the change log below).

December 19th Update Notes:

iRacing BETA Interface

• Fixed a background issue that was causing some users to experience a slow response when taking some interface actions.

Rendering

• A curative elixir has been given to all crew members who were suffering from a metallic skin condition. Hopefully, there are no lasting side effects.
• Fixed an issue where headlight flare effects were not rendering correctly during the day.
• Fixed an issue where the sky was not appearing behind the rest of the scene, and at a distance in 3D, when using nVidia3D.

Dynamic Sky

• Fixed an issue where track-side objects could turn black at twilight when vehicle headlights were disabled.
• Some diffuse light is now added to the reflections of objects at night. This will correct an issue, as seen on the cones at Lime Rock Park, where reflective areas could appear black at night.
• Fixed an issue where static shadows on the track surface were not turning on or off when getting in or out of a car with different Replay vs Graphics settings.
• Fixed an issue with cloud lighting where it would incorrectly dim and then get brighter again at sunset and sunrise.

Time of Day

• The “Clock:” label has been changed to “Sim Time:” on the Replay screen.
• The short day-of-week name has been added to the displayed value, and changed the color of the value from red to black so that it does not stand out as much as the Session Time.

Pit Stops

• Fully animated IndyCar pit crews have been hired to work on all Dallara models!

Dallara DW12
Dallara F3
Dallara IR18
Indycar Dallara – 2011​

Be sure to take a pit stop with one of these cars to see the team in action!

• A rule change for GTE pit stops has been implemented.
• Cars must now re-fuel first and may only change tires once re-fueling is complete. This addresses both Members’ requests and the anticipated change in real-life WEC rules for the 2019/20 season.

Telemetry

• The variable name “dc” has been changed to “dp” based on if a driver control is tied to the F7 black box or not.
• Fixed an issue where the “TimeOfDay:” and “Date:” strings were not being pulled correctly.

CARS:

Dallara IR18

• Fixed an issue where some wheels on opponent cars were not spinning correctly or were floating above the ground.

NASCAR Monster Energy Cup Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 – 2018

• Additional details have been added to more distant LODs of this vehicle to reduce popping seen when the model and textures down-sample.

TRACKS:

Charlotte Motor Speedway

• The flagger is now properly situated in his box.
• Removed some of the extra blue cones that block off the old Roval configuration road.
• Fixed a bump located at the exit of the infield road course near the light pole, and stitched up a terrain seam under the pit-out wall.

The Chili Bowl
NEW TRACK!

• The Lucas Oil Chili Bowl Nationals, a brand new indoor dirt oval track, is now available for purchase in the iRacing Store! Located at the Tulsa Expo Center in Oklahoma, racers from around the country across multiple disciplines come together to bear witness to what has been dubbed the ‘Super Bowl of Midget Racing’. The Chili Bowl Midget Nationals is a prestigious dirt racing event that has seen the likes of Tony Stewart, Kasey Kahne, Christopher Bell, Kyle Larson, Rico Abreu, and the Swindell family fill the grids. The inaugural Chili Bowl was organized by Lanny Edwards and partner Emmett Hahn. It was named after a local company who sponsored the first event. The race has been hosted at the Tulsa Expo Center since it was founded in 1987. The inaugural 1987 event consisted of 52 midgets competing in the 2-day event. The event now consists of four days of qualifiers for the Saturday night A-main event. The Chili Bowl’s key ingredient is the clay which once covered the adjacent fairgrounds. Without sun or wind to harm it, the indoor garden (roughly a quarter-mile circle) is heavily saturated so that the boldest dirt track artists of our time can truly shine. It accommodates over two hundred race rigs, bleachers for thousands of people, and an ever-growing trade show. To stroll the aisles of Tulsa’s QuikTrip Center, the home of The Golden Driller, is to rub shoulders with champions from across America. Grab yourself a helping of the fabled indoor dirt oval from the iRacing Store!

Circuit des 24 Heures du Mans

• Additional lightmaps have been added for greater detail at night.

Williams Grove Speedway

• Fixed a terrain seam located on an access road on T2 outside access road.

iRacing.com is a PC exclusive online only subscription racing simulation available through the Steam network.

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[Jonny Austin]

When you race in a series with pit crews & then go back to a series like MX5s with no pit crew it is disconcerting to come into the pits & there is no pit crew....It all goes back to being invisible except the pit board.

 

[Kurupt CDN]

iRacing is going to feature 6 world championship esport series in 2019 with $300,000 in prizes!!!

https://www.iracing.com/iracing-to-award-300000-in-2019/

 

[Andy_J]

Jeez, do I wish their was a offline single player version of this. It is quality.

 

[Sigmar Bomar]

RD has their own esports series (you can win some cockpit whatever). iRacing cannot match that obviously LOL. I wonder, what is the reason why RD hates iRacing so much.

 

[Eckhart von Glan]

rd doesn't, there is a very vocal minority who do not like the sums involved in paying the service rather than the game. oh, yes, and then there is the "shitty tire model" group, too. iracing's online service basically makes rd's core strength - organizing high quality online games and leagues - obsolete, so no wonder the iRacing boys like me do not play much of a role here. it certainly doesn't seem intentional to me, just a logical by-product.

 

[Mircea Rad]

Actually both of the arguments (pricing structure / access to content and "shitty tire model") are valid, but many times they are presented in a very fanboy-sh way which then enables the iRacing subscribers/fans to simply shrug it off as "fanboy talk". But in reality both are valid arguments and ideally would be debated and lessons would be learned by the right people. Unfortunately this is the real world, so no chance of that ever happening

And no, iRacing's online service doesn't make RD's core strength obsolete, simply because iRacing offers the online service for one simulator, which is very far from meeting the sim-racing market needs. That's why many other people invest time and money to enjoy (also) other titles. Plus, even if iRacing's online service is far better than anything else around, in order to actually enjoy it fully, you pretty much have to build the same type of community/relationships that you build on RD or any other private league. Jumping into a random race will provide a far better experience than any random online race from other sims, but it still doesn't guarantee a fair/clean race, and in my view it's unacceptable given the fact that you pay a monthly fee just for this.

 

[Eckhart von Glan]

well, watching 40 players who never met before tackle a multiclass race with no incident in the first four turns at road atlanta (blind apex?) convinces me over and over again that yes, league races are great because you "know" chaps, but the sr-system and tournament structure in iRacing do a good job as well. for someone who cannot join regularly on a certain weekday, iRacing is the next best thing to sites like rd.

 

[Kurupt CDN]

Jumping into a random race will provide a far better experience than any random online race from other sims, but it still doesn't guarantee a fair/clean race, and in my view it's unacceptable given the fact that you pay a monthly fee just for this.

There's no guarantee you'll have a fair/clean race if you know or don't know the opponents you race with in any sim. All you can hope for is that other users have enough experience with the car and know how to handle it and have good situational awareness.

For the most part from my experience outside of rookie class the racing is pretty clean while being competitive and I believe people take it a bit more serious soley due to the fact there paying for it.

A monthly subscription pays for a hell of a lot more than just an unguaranteed clean race lol

Locked monitored forms that only paying subscribers can access with tons of valuable information.....for me, I really enjoy this as I rarely have to worry about opening a thread just to find out it's 5 pages of off topic, arguments & derailments.

Solid stable world wide servers.
24/7 available practice servers.
67 online race servers with 12-24 races a day.
Endurance racing based off of RL endurance events.
Esports 2019 will have 6 esport championships with a total of $300,000 in prizes.
Weekly detailed hotlap track videos by aliens to compare your pace against.
You have a vote and say in the race schedule for the upcoming season..... RD
Season and career stat tracking.
A license system that attempts to class you against similar talent based on entrants.
Pretty decent protest system to decipline dirty drivers.
And the winning reason.....the ability to race at a time that suits me

People complain about the cost...yes it can be expensive but to be honest I've spent more money on sims + dlc seeking a quality game and community to race with regularly than I have spent in iracing over the past 7 yrs.

With the season participation credits received for completing 8 out of 12 races combined with the annual subscription discount of 30-50% off.
A annual subscription "can" be cheaper or similar to a yearly full price RD membership.

Content can also be cheaper.
iRacing has an annual credit sale ex. Pay $75 receive $100 in credits.
Discounts when you buy in bundles or after owning xx amount of content as well.
Do I wish it was cheaper? Hell ya...I wish everything was cheaper lol

Don't get me wrong Rd is a great place to race for fun if the time slot works for you but for those in North America making a race between 11am-1pm is a bit difficult for most.
Asides from iracing there's not a whole hell of a lot of races to be found in other titles during the evenings here.
RRE, AMS, RF2 your lucky to find more than 10 people online after 8pm est.
PC2 & AC have a few leagues you can sign up for but than your at the mercy of the organizers scheduling.....I like my freedom and it makes things easier when you got 2 kids up till 8pm

 

[Mircea Rad]

Don't get me wrong, I never said iRacing doesn't have its very very strong points when compared to other sims. I fully understand the benefits, hell, I was among the first subscribers in 2008 and I remember reading about it the old sim-racing PDF magazine when it was just a beta test... Those were good times For me personally the price is not too big, but you have to agree that on a general level price is an issue, especially considering different parts of world (15$ is not the same in US and in Costa Rica, as a random example). And not only price, but the fact that you don't have access to the content you actually purchase when your sub runs out. This premium monthly price you pay only adds to the frustration when you get taken out lapping someone in a wrecked car and you end up with a ruined race and IR/SR Anyway, what I wanted to say is that iRacing's faults should not be just shrugged of as "hater talk", there are some valid points. In the end, each will choose based on their personal benefits, nobody should tell you that iRacing is not worth it for you. But you should also understand that iRacing is not worth for some people and they have valid arguments. Yes, there's a lot of hater talk, but there's also people discussing things because they want to see iRacing reach an even higher quality in content/service/player base/etc.

I will definitely get back when they sort out the tire model, which even the biggest fans should not defend at this point. In the meantime, I'm very happy with driving laps, trying different content being released for other sims, working on set-ups, learning more about telemetry and doing occasional on-line races. Yes, actual racing is the main point of sim-racing (doh! it's in the name), but it's not exclusively about jumping in a car and race, there are a lot of things besides this that add to the whole experience. For me, at least.

 

[Eckhart von Glan]

just a vid a chap posted on iRacing forums, making my point about the many clean races one gets, gt3 race at monza this week.

 

[Eckhart von Glan]

oh, and back on topic: anyone "bought" that crazy indoor track and can tell us about experiences there? looks positively alien.

 

[dd11]

That video shows how ugly and unrealistic it gets when a) racers punished too much for contact b) when more and more people behind (sim)wheels become "invisible instructor"-driven monkeys, which is a crime imho.
Racing (and flying) is about calculating your and opponent's trajectories, about SA (situation awareness), about psychological match. What we get instead (invented by iRacing and spread everywhere) - "car right" (...you hear it, you student... go dump and just follow that outside line). Hell, even VR people use it (along with V-mirror). It's a shame, great sound stage, triple-screen a decade ago.. and now VR with realistic mirrors - it's all there, but people doing T1 and T101 of race "via google", learnïng tracks copycatting aliens, abusing <simname> physics by crazy setups they download minutes before the race. That's not racing, that's wasteyourtimecircus.

Back to the topic - it does not matter how "not so perfect" build after build iRacing guys deliver. It is amazing what they are able to achieve, iR is still the King. And it is crying shame they've decided to have 100 for 100$, instead of 1,000 for 25$ subscribers, in era when VMs (servers) getting cheaper and all they sell is "virtual copies" (1,000 people could bring even more via getting of "virtual copies" of cars and tracks). This sim deserves better popularity and more cash for new content.

 

[BrunoBæ]

I will definitely get back when they sort out the tire model, which even the biggest fans should not defend at this point. In the meantime, I'm very happy with driving laps, trying different content being released for other sims, working on set-ups, learning more about telemetry and doing occasional on-line races. Yes, actual racing is the main point of sim-racing (doh! it's in the name), but it's not exclusively about jumping in a car and race, there are a lot of things besides this that add to the whole experience. For me, at least.

Are you me?
If not I 100% agree.
If they just could create a reasonable tire model.
After my many years membership I became to really hate this complete unrealistic car behaveoring.
It really turns you off if you are ready to pay the (rather high) monthly fee and then have to accept a tire model that (IMO) isnt much better than Super Mario Race Car.

Another point not aimed at iRacing in particular is the standard/mandatory sim racer attitude that ohh I dont want to commit me to any regular time schedule - but want to be able to drop in when I feel I have time.
Yes I know - I have had small kids too.
But eventhen I was still able to use 2 hours (edit: a week) in a regular schedule to play badminton in a local club.
But anyway. To my point:
Years ago I was member of the GTP department of the US based NR2003 FSB Racing League.
And because it was so hard to get enough participation in these hard to control monster cars (Toyota 88C-V, Sauber C9, Jaguar XJR-9, Mazda 787B) we only had 1(one) monthly online race.
Hehe it was 4 aclock in the night here in Europe

But I can tell you that when we all popped in to the driver meeting before qualifying (using Teamspeak) it was just like entering your local pub where your friends was waiting for your company (and your jokes)
But my point is that because this kind of races was only one time a month the entusiasm, focus and COMMITMENT was soooo much higher than ANY of the regular iRacing races I have been participating in in my 5+ years membership period.

 

[Eckhart von Glan]

good point, that's why i like my one race/week/series iRacing habit, limiting myself to three series and hence three times i play iRacing a week (plus usually a fourth half an hour practice). a) i have absolutely no time for a minute more, b) makes it count more if it's your only chance that week to score points.

 

[BrunoBæ]

Stretching my argument that too "automatic" and blind repetitive participation in the next-next-next race does flaw and flattens ones enjoyment and long time enthusiasm can be this example of the opposite approach.
A lot of years back I experienced participating in the preparation to the 24H "half year anual" LAN races (that is still arranged by gtr24h.org CatsAreTheWorstDogs).
Because these entusiasts does still only arrange 2x 24H LAN races per year.
But they use literally months of online practice against each others where they create, tweak and discuss car setups and race strategies.
Hehe and I can garantee you that on raceday when they arrive with puters and gear their focus and COMMITMENT are about 200%