iRacing update delay

[Joe Hubbard]

http://members.iracing.com/jforum/posts/list/1820220.page

I hardly ever really post on the iRacing forums but today I did. See below:

I don't really mind if they need to take an additional week or even a few if they needed. That shows me that they are at least trying and are thinking about making iRacing better for sure.

However here is my real concern. The huge thing with 2.0 was the NTM and the "Revolution" right. The Corvette was suppose to be in the first line up and we still don't have it. I'm ok with that but a bit put off with all of the cars that don't have the NTM. There are alot of things that could happen in iRacing to make it better and yet there is time to create and implement birds, and a plane taking off? Most of which will never been seen unless you are looking for them. Ok so that might add a bit of cool little details into the sim but I would have thought there were bigger fish to fry here. Especially when alot of series might have one or two official races in a 7 day period. At least in my time zone...

Now I'm not bashing iRacing in all honesty, but more of wondering what on earth is going on. In my eyes it doesn't make sense at all with some new sims/games getting ready to hit the market that WILL take members away from iRacing not to have their i's dotted and the t's crossed.

 

[Jan Roman]

EDIT: I'm stupid, didn't read the topic properly.

Disappointing. Seriously, who races Rookie cars? Not for fun, but for SR and iR? Well, I have to stick with the Stang and Vette with the NTM for a bit longer. No big deal.

 

[Dario Jagar]

my expectations from another thread:

http://www.racedepartment.com/showthread.php?t=68258&p=961046#post961046

in short:

-NTM/Ford GT improvements - check
-no new NTM cars until it is "done" - well, they say it is "done" or at least better
-Oulton Park - check

wishfull thinking:

-one more night track - two coming :drink:
-EU server farm - well, next time maybe?

in short quite happy with this build, can wait one more week for it, would be nice if they release Oulton though

 

[Jan Roman]

I'm thinking about driving Ford GT or HPD instead fo Vette. What do you think? I don't even know the Vette handles so I have to try it, but I don't want to buy all the content (60$ at least) and then race Mustang (not NTM as well, a bit disappointed as far as NTM is concerned). We'll see what the release notes bring.

 

[Dario Jagar]

nothing wrong with OTM on Mustang, it is just the way how this car behaves by its nature, I needed two full seasons in Grand Am to become safe mid pack driver with it, now I wouldn´t change it for any other iR car, why go in proto&GT when you can have loads of fun with just buying Riley, look at this this way:

-buying Riley $11.95
-posibility to drive Grand Am with eather Riley or Mustang

or

-buying Vette+FGT+HPD = $11.95*3

isn´t it better option to buy Riley and two (popular, used) additional tracks?

 

[George Pilkington]

+1 Joe...
Birds...

 

[Jan Roman]

Well I was looking into Grand AM some time ago, but when I saw the tracks, I was quite shocked. So many oval based tracks I've never heard of. I'd rather drive European tracks from Formula 1 or so. I was seriously considering joingin GrandAm, but there's no point in moving from Thrustmaster Mustang Challenge to GrandAm. The only positive thing would be a bit safer racing (C class+), but I'd have to buy a lot of tracks (more than for Proto/GT). I mean, Mustang is an amazing car and I don't want to compete with a handful of other Stangs while being passed by the Prototypes all the time, I'd rather race the Mustang challenge with no additional cost invovled (well, Oulton Park).

I'll probably go to Proto/GT challenge and drive Vette even though it has the OTM. Mustangs are amazing cars, but I've been getting to much contacts from D class drivers that I cant stand it anymore. I'm not fast enough to qualify in the front of the field, but I learnerd how to survive in the middle of the pack and I'm able to drive almost 0 inc race, but there are always drivers hitting me in the back/side, damaging my car and forcing a tow.

Seriously, I don't know what should I drive next. I'm C 3.97 now so I have to gain 1.03 in order to get to the B class. I'll do that in Mustang Challenge, so I have to stick with it for a couple of weeks. (And I'm done qualifying, it's better to start from the back at this point).

Any advice?

As for the graphical update... I seriously don't understand who had the idea of making birds and planes. I mean, seriously? How much drunk you have to be in order to come up with this ****? But if I saw a plane crashing onto the racetrack after sucking a couple of birds into it's motors, that'd be a whole new story!

 

[Dazmaniac]

Regards the additions of the birds and the planes and the driver animation updates you have to remember that the team working on this kind of stuff are totally separate to the team working on the NTM, so I personally don't see a problem with things like this being added. They are working on their projects and have their release dates to try an meet and whilst what they churn out may not be to everyone's liking, it is hat they are employed to do.

It's a total fail IMO that the NTM is still yet to be made available for all cars, as it was the big fanfare announcement for August 2011 and iRacing 2.0, but still we are waiting. So I don't think they are making 'artistic' changes to the service a priority in anyway, just that the team working these things are meeting their targets whilst Dave and his NTM team are failing in meeting theirs.

Subtle animation enhancements and the oval pit stall updates are things that have been requested and they have finally seen the light of day, shame same cannot be said of the much hyped NTM.

 

[Dazmaniac]

EDIT: I'm stupid, didn't read the topic properly.

Disappointing. Seriously, who races Rookie cars? Not for fun, but for SR and iR? Well, I have to stick with the Stang and Vette with the NTM for a bit longer. No big deal.

I think quite a few folks still drive the MX-5 in official series at iRacing.

 

[Dario Jagar]

and on top of that iRacing Grand Touring Cup is great series with great schedule, call me crazy but I really like Jetta :thumbup:

 

[Jan Roman]

Oh come on Persoanlly, I like MX-5 very very much, but I can't imagine driving it as my primary series and I don't know many people (let's say B class+) who race for iRating among rookie drivers. But of course, I admit you have considerable more experience than me and there are probably some of them.

 

[Eric Estes]

Still nothing for Endurance racing... puts it to end of January at the soonest.

NBM = New Bird Model

Hope the driver animations are only for replay or are switchable off - I find them distracting in other sims.

Other than that - Happy with it overall. It's progress.

 

[Lars Strijdonck]

I am kinda amazed that people think you can just throw some resources in a specific department of software development and think that stuff goes faster then. Believe me this is not how software development works.
If they wanne put more resources on physics thats going to take some time to get the new team members up to knowledge let alone work on it. I am happy to see that the things that are more or less easy to implement are at least brought into the iRacing service.

 

[Joe Hubbard]

I think you guys are mis-understanding me here... I'm totally aware of the issues being different projects and not even part of the same team. I'm aware that a man/woman that is someone who is over graphical things such as textures or lighting would not be part of a team that is doing the programing/coding for the NTM.

What I am talking about is project management... What happens in real life when a business has a project that requires multiple teams to complete the project. This team does that, and this other team over there does this right? Ok, now what happens when this project has a deadline and one team is dropping the ball? Project resources are pulled from other areas to help or outside help is brought in to put that project back on track and equal out the equation until it's all where it needs to be. If you don't do this in the business world most of the time it doesn't end well.

Now lets put this back in the iRacing/sim/game perspective for a second here. I understand they most likely under funded compaired to some of the other software companies that are being backed by EA or another huge publisher. Which is fine, and I personally would hope they have the ability to stay away from things such as that. My point to what I had said was basically that it didn't make sense that the NTM and other features to keep them ahead of the the titles coming out soon didn't seem to have the priority I would think it should.

 

[Tom Van Put]

I don't know a lot about programming and writing software & games, but I can imagine that a team working on graphics knows little about car physics or a tire model. So just transferring people might not be possible or easy.

I hate waiting as much as anybody else, but it is better to be patient and have a good product then to release something crappy.
rFactor 2 is already 2 years delayed, so we can asume that just creating and releasing a tire isn't as easy as some people might think.

There are a lot of people whining about why they are working on birds & planes, but I think it is a great thing. The same with the pit objects. For the moment the tracks look really nice, but they are a bit "dead". For things to look realistic, you need the little details: birds, flags waving, people in the pits,...

For me, iRacing is moving in the right direction al be it slower then one might want.

 

[Tim Mawson]

Very disappointed there's no word on an NTM update for the Star Mazda

 

[Jan Roman]

Great physical model has always been the main reason why I joined iRacing instead of buying rFactor for example. So the NTM is crucial to me and I'm disappointed MY cars didn't get it. But I think they made a great choice by making the NTM for Rookie cars, because it can really attract a huge amount of people. However, they should hurry now in order to realease the NTM for all cars after the fourth season, because many players won't be willing to move from the NTM to the OTM in higher spec cars.

The new build is going to be great, it's just a shame Vette or Stang still haven't recieved the NTM, that's all In my opinion, graphics are awesome right now (a couple of minor things are missing like SSAO, better crowds and a pitcrew and a flagmen, but I can live without it) and they should focus on physics.

 

[Dazmaniac]

Whilst I applaud the efforts/updates being made in other areas of the service, the main focus of the 2.0 updates - the NTM - would seem to have had more 'slippage' than what we saw with the likes of GT5 and Duke Nukem Forever, lol.

I appreciate the NTM recoding is a massive undertaking, but surely they knew well in advance that an August 2011 release date was never going to be met, so why market it like it was?

 

[Lars Strijdonck]

I do understands every ones eagerness to have the NTM. But look what happended to the oval cars that have it... iam running as fast a lap in my 35th lap as in my 5th. They cleary had some testing issues or didnt test enough, and yes for that i think we can blame them. I do however hope they wont release the current model to any other car, it just does not make sence without any drop off to have a NTM...

 

[Chris Butcher]

It's impossible for me to get out of the rookie ranks, so I don't get to experience any of these other cars - every oval race I am in there is always a mssive pile up and I'm sick of it - the SR is a joke, you get hit with -SR because someone hit you? It's a joke, I'm not renewing.