iRacing News

[vobler]

Here is a link to whats coming in the next iRacing release in the beginning of February.

http://www.iracingworld.com/_A-day-in-the-life-of-a-cat-herder6/BLOG/146773/57752.html

[vobler]

Ultimate Corvette Racer Coming to iRacing
Virtual Version of Le Mans & ALMS-Winning C6.R Available in New Year


BEDFORD, MA (December 5, 2008) â€" The Chevrolet Corvette is the definitive American sports car, and the C6.R is the ultimate production-based racing version of this iconic automobile. Winner of the GT1 class at the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 2006 (the most recent of Corvette’s four Le Mans triumphs), and the American Le Mans Series GT1 champion in each of the four years it has competed (running Corvette’s ALMS championship total to eight), the current version of the C6.R is scheduled to retire from the race track following a final shot at Le Mans in June, 2009. The Pratt & Miller team â€" with GM Racing the co-developer of the C6.R â€" will then field a new version C6.R in the GT2 class, where rules require use of more of the production car’s architecture and Corvette will take on Porsche and Ferrari.

“As the current C6.R prepares to leave the field of battle in the physical world, we’re very pleased to make a home for it in the virtual one at iRacing.com,” said Scott McKee, the company’s vice president of marketing. “Pratt & Miller will be taking on new challenges in the more restricted GT2 class, so the current C6.R will stand as a performance high-water mark. Our current members, and the many Corvette enthusiasts who have followed the C6.R’s competition history, will be able to experience this car’s remarkable capabilities long after the flag falls at Le Mans next summer.”

Acknowledging that the C6.R’s addition to the iRacing fleet wasn’t exactly a well-kept secret â€" Dale Earnhardt, Jr. dropped a hint during an interview on SPEEDtv’s Wind Tunnel with Dave Despain in early November, and Corvette Quarterly broke the full story a week later â€" McKee pointed out that eight of the 11 tracks on the current American Le Mans Series schedule are either already in the iRacing track inventory or in development, so iRacers will be able to experience the car’s performance on most of the tracks where it competed in the physical world.

“All of us on the team and at General Motors are proud of the success that the GT1-class C6.R has achieved during its racing career,” said Doug Fehan, Corvette Racing Program Manager. “Every good thing must come to an end, and so it will be this June at the 24 Hours of Le Mans with the GT1 car’s real-world racing career; we’re on to a new C6.R project now. But, it’s good to know that in the virtual world this car will continue to compete, and that the fans who have supported us over the years will have the opportunity to experience the C6.R for themselves through the creativity and innovations at iRacing.”

McKee hailed the Corvette as a particularly important addition to the iRacing inventory of cars, and stressed that the techniques iRacing uses in the development of all of its vehicles will ensure the performance fidelity of the virtual duplicate of the C6.R.

“Our friends at Pratt & Miller are sharing with us the necessary CAD files and other data,” McKee said. “When we’re finished the only element of the actual race car we won’t have is the air conditioning system.”

The iRacing Corvette C6.R is expected to be available to iRacing members before its real-world counterpart makes its final start at the 24 Hours of Le mans, June 13, 2009.

[Doorman]

...and only available to A and B class drivers I'll be bound! I really don't mean to be a damp squib but it's all very well bringing this new stuff if you can't race, and I use the term loosely, with your mates. :sad:

[vobler]

...and only available to A and B class drivers I'll be bound! I really don't mean to be a damp squib but it's all very well bringing this new stuff if you can't race, and I use the term loosely, with your mates. :sad:

No sim developers has the momentum in the sim world as iRacing has. If you choose to ignore that and don't want to know about it, I'll be more than happy to stop posting.

There usually is long threads in both LFS and NKP camps about lack of development and progress. Here I show people news about a sim with constant new content and functionality added.

And yes, you can race with your fiends. If you stay in there long enough the people you race become your friends. Thats the way it works.
But in two months time, iRacing will most likely, at least, have open practice servers.

[Doorman]

No sim developers has the momentum in the sim world as iRacing has. If you choose to ignore that and don't want to know about it, I'll be more than happy to stop posting.

There usually is long threads in both LFS and NKP camps about lack of development and progress. Here I show people news about a sim with constant new content and functionality added.

And yes, you can race with your fiends. If you stay in there long enough the people you race become your friends. Thats the way it works.
But in two months time, iRacing will most likely, at least, have open practice servers.

You post what you want to post mate. It's for me not to post negatively. believe it or not I watch the development almost as closely as you do and when (and if) iRacing suits me I'll be in it again. For the time being though it doesn't suit my...temperament. I won't make any more grouchy posts.

[Gnomie]

Vobler, it's nice that you post these updates! Makes it easy to keep updated on what's going on in the iRacing world. And that seems to be a lot these days.

[vobler]

Here is a little post made by Tony Gardner at iRacing;

Good afternoon:

Fresh out of a development meeting and here are some of the items that are currently in QA and look real good to be in the development build at the end of this month (roughly) and ready for start of next season. Further detail will be available in release notes or other informational releases but just thought I would provide a high level briefing.

Open Practice Server Sessions! Will be able to see who is in practice sessions and jump in out of sessions. More detail to follow.

Replays! All races will be recorded and available to save. We have also optimized the memory usage.

Informational local yellows and informational blue flags for road courses!

Spotter!
Chevy Impala!

DP car not quite in QA yet but working on it.

Suspension improvements for Truck. Will require redo of spring perch on setups. We will provide some new baseline setups.

We have changed license progression math. Moving up license class will be easier.

New rollout of club structure - 36 clubs rolling into 7 regions. More exciting news on that next week!

Host of other Web and reporting enhancements

I'm guessing there could be a new track or two as well!


Good racing!


Tony

[vobler]

Here is John Henrys response/explanation to the Easier progression topic.
-----------
OK here's the lowdown!

License progression doesn't change at the Rookie and D levels.

There is a slight change at the C level (trying to earn a B license).

And there is a more moderate change at the B level (trying to earn an A license) and A level (trying to earn a Pro license).

OK so what changes? A slight change in C will make quite a difference for some but not for others. The only thing changing is the number of corners per incident. It's being lowered 10%. That 10% makes a difference and this will increase every C license SR. But it's not much of a change.

At the B level (trying to acquire an A), it's a 30% reduction. That's a big change. A little less of a change than that in trying to acquire a Pro license from an A license.

So the major changes are at the B and A levels. And why? Because in looking at our C and B licensed drivers there are currently only about 15% of oval drivers and 7% of 950 road course drivers in the service able to meet the requirements of obtaining a pro license. That's one reason.

Only about 28% of road drivers 40% of oval drivers have CPI's high enough to get an A license. And we know our current B and C licensed drivers are pretty damned good drivers.

It also appears we need to have different SR requirements for road and for oval because it's just easier to get oval licenses than road. We'll have to balance those out.

I believe you may already be seeing the changes (except for balancing road with oval). Your SRs should be higher if you have a C or B license right now.

The biggest reason for the change is this: You have to be a pretty damned safe driver to get a B license. That isn't changing much. The way we had it, it was incredibly tough to an A license. We think once you've reached B, we don't need to see log changes to or big changes to get to A. Pro is still difficult, but attainable.

If you have or get a B license, you are a safe driver in our book. I know this won't satisfy some of the really vocal people here, but a lot of thought and research has gone into this change. Let's see how it plays out.

I know many of you won't like this. But 're good enough to get a C license - have enough car control, you should be
There are only
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The last uncomplete sentences is also in the original.... vobz

[vobler]

Steve Myers has posted the 7th installment of "A day in the life of a cat herder" on iRacingWorld.com.

http://www.iracingworld.com/_A-day-in-the-life-of-a-cat-herder7/blog/163903/57752.html

Steve's blog is always a popular read as it gives a lot of development news, discusses specific features, and talks of new releases that are on the horizon.

Remember that you can share this link with those who may not be members of the service. iRacingWorld.com may be read by anyone. You may have some friends that have left the service or are waiting to join the service because of certain features that they may be waiting for.

Enjoy the read and enjoy your racing,
Nim

[vobler]

News on iRacing

http://www.iracing.com/newsEvents/article.php?id=91

[vobler]

Website

Replays page

Saved replays are stored on your local hard drive. The web interface to your saved replays allows you to filter which ones you'd like to look for and easily launch the simulator to view them.

STATS > Clubs & Divisions has been removed and replaced by STATS > Regional
Here, you can look up Overall Standings and Standings by Series for current and past seasons. Several new data columns have been added. Top 10 and Top 25 Drivers may be looked up by Region, Club, and Division under Standings by Series.

Home Page Region Standings

These standings have been enhanced to provide Top 5 drivers per Race Type, Division, Region, and Club.

Home Page Reigning Champs

This has been enhanced to provide champions lookup for all past seasons.

Race, Qualify & Time Trial What’s Hot Widget

The columns ‘time’, ‘track’, and ‘session type’ have been added to the widget. This will make it possible to know the type of session (race, qualify or time trial) and track before going the sessions page.

Open Practice What’s Hot Widget

This widget has been added to the home page to support open practice sessions and displays the ‘sessionid’, ‘series’, ‘track’, ‘no. of registered drivers’, ‘time left in the session’ and ‘drivers list of registered users’. This widget updates approx. every 30 secs. Mousing over the helmet will provide the list of currently registered/participating members.

Session Page - Open Practice

Open Practice sessions have replaced ‘Practice’ sessions. Each open practice session will display how much time is left in the session, and mousing over the grey helmet next to the session will provide a list of currently registered/participating members for that session.

Series Page

A Minimum Participation Requirement (MPR) indicator has been added to the Series page. A green arrow or yellow equal sign indicates that participating in this series will count toward the MPR for license advancement (you will be “racing up” or in your license class). A red arrow indicates that participating in this series will not count toward the MPR, since you would be “racing down”.

Browser Support

As WebKit-based browsers gain popularity for their faster, leaner browser experience, we are adding support for these browsers, including Safari and Chrome.

http://www.apple.com/safari/
http://www.google.com/chrome

Race Control

Local yellow flags are available in road course practice, qualifying, and race sessions to warn you of possible trouble ahead. These are currently informational only, there is no penalty for passing while under a local yellow. A local yellow will appear as a blinking yellow flag in the top left corner of the screen

Blue flags are available in road course qualifying and race sessions. Blue flags are informational only, advising you that you may be impeding someone. In a road course qualifying session, if you are on your out lap and someone who has finished their out lap (and is therefore likely to be on a hot lap) is close behind you, a blue flag will appear in the top left corner of the screen. In a road course race session, if anyone about to lap you or multiple laps up on you is close behind you you will see the blue flag.

Trackside caution lights and the pace car's lights now work.

Spotter

The spotter is disabled by default, and can be enabled in-sim under Options / Sound.

Volume can be adjusted by setting volume up/down controls in Options / Controls and use those controls while in-car.

Currently, the spotter only warns you of nearby cars. Much more is planned for the future.

Replays

Replays can be edited & saved in-sim.

To save part of a replay:

On the Replay screen, click on the tools (‘wrench and hammer’) button in the replay controls to show the edit controls.
Move the current view to the start or end of the portion you want to save and press the ‘scissors’ button to mark where you want to cut from.
Move the current view to the other end of the portion you want to save and press the ‘disk’ button.
Name your replay and save.

To save the entire replay:

Show the edit controls as explained above.
Don’t set any cut points. You can clear an existing cut point by clicking on the ‘undo’ button.
Press the ‘disk’ button to save.
Name your replay and save.

You can view replays on computers that don’t have pedals. The ‘drive’ button will be replaced with ‘Configure Controls’.

Controls
The sim can be launched without needing to configure controls; you still need to configure your controls to enter your car. If you have unconfigured controls, the ‘Drive’ button will be labeled, ‘Configure Controls’ and will bring up the options screen.

Open Practice Sessions

Support for open practice sessions has been added. On the sessions page, each running open session displays a session number, the remaining time, the number of drivers currently on track versus the number of drivers allowed on track at once, and your ping to the server. A list of the drivers in the session is available by mousing over the helmet next to the session info.

To join a session, click the red session link, and the race panel will briefly display “staging,” followed by a “join” button. If the session fills up before you are able to register you will instead receive a message that the session has become full.

Each open practice session has a limit of how many drivers can be on track at the same time. When the track is full, no other drivers may join the session until someone else withdraws. Also, each open practice session’s entry list is currently limited to a total of 64 unique drivers. Once the entry list has become full, only drivers who were previously in the session, and therefore already in the entry list, can re-join it.

If you get disconnected from an open practice session you can simply click the join button again to get back on track. But, if you wait too long (about 4 minutes), you will be automatically withdrawn. If this happens, you need to go to the “select session” web page and re-register for the session. Once you re-join you will get your old car back.

Finally, when a new driver first comes out on track you might see them for several seconds in a white car, and with gray helmet images in the user interface - this is working as designed. After your system finishes creating their textures and helmet images, their proper paint schemes should appear.

Cars

The Chevy Impala SS has been added.

Physics
The suspension on the truck has been improvedâ€"better and more realistic available travel, the perch adjustability should allow enough range of ride height, spring rate, cross weight, etc. The aero numbers for the truck are improved.

The “backwards aero” issue has been fixed.

There is now a minimum tire pressure required at each track for the Truck (and Impala) which follows what is required in the real world.

There is now a maximum right height for the Truck (and Impala).

The tires on the Truck and Impala have more of a fall off in grip as the tires wear.

[vobler]

They also released info on how to make or use 3'rd party spotter packs

[vobler]

The also informed us that the DP Riley will be delayed.


-----
Regrettably, I have to tell you that the DP car will not be rolled out on Friday when we deploy the new build. As I mentioned in my post yesterday, things have not unfolded like we would have hoped this week on preparing a build for release. It is our intention to deliver this car next week unless we have any unexpected issues pop up when the new build comes out.

As for an explanation, we made some changes to the replay system last week to shrink the size of the replays so you could capture longer sessions and this introduced a problem that we have only fixed as of a few minutes ago. We felt that fixing this problem was of a higher importance than rushing out the DP car in a state that none of us would have been proud of.

I know that the question will come up that how does the development work on the replay system impact the DP car? The answer to that question is that the same resources that have been working to shrink the size of the replays are also involved in the development of the DP car.

I have adjusted the schedule for the Class A road series to start next Saturday night with the hope that the car will be ready by then. That season will now feature an 11 week schedule and will make divisions in week 2. I have also trimmed one drop week off of this schedule so it will only have 3.

We hope you can understand that we take great pride in meeting our deadlines but not at the expense of quality. We know that this car is a highly anticipated addition to our lineup and we apologize for its delay. I will make sure to update you on its progress next week when I have new information.

Steve

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[Gnomie]

When does all this take effect? Fancy a practice session some day?

EDIT: Doh, should have read your second post.. :doh:

[vobler]

Pat Iannucci: First Car Race, First Win

BEDFORD, MA (January 29, 2009) â€" You’re a kart-racing star who’s never raced a car before and suddenly you’ve got a chance to drive in Grand-Am’s Koni Sports Car Challenge in a top car in the season-opener at Daytona International Speedway. What do you do? Well, if you’re Pat Iannucci, 22-year-old karting star and auto racing novice, you join iRacing.com’s motorsport simulation service and spend two weeks in the virtual world, learning every inch of the track and how to drive it. The result? Iannucci and his co-driver, Lawson Aschenbach, swept to the ST-class victory in their Georgian Bay Motorsports Chevrolet Cobalt.

“I became a member of iRacing a couple weeks before the Daytona race so I was able to put in a lot of laps there,” Iannucci said following the race. “It definitely helped me learn the track.”

Iannucci’s not a stranger to racing or to succeeding behind the wheel. In 2005, his first year racing karts at a national level, he was selected one of the Skip Barber Racing School’s “Sweet 16” kart racers, and had the opportunity to do some laps in a Skip Barber Formula 2000 open-wheel car. But Daytona marked Iannucci’s first experience with wheel-to-wheel competition in the automotive arena.

The word’s out, particularly among young drivers on their way up, that time spent with the iRacing service helps make the most of precious real-world track time, and in that way can accelerate a career. Finishing sixth in the ST class at Daytona was 2008 Volkswagen Jetta TDI champion Josh Hurley, an iRacing member who made regular use of the service in preparing for races during his championship-winning campaign.

Second-place in the Grand Sport class at Daytona’s Koni race was Ford Mustang driver Jack Roush Jr., a regular front-runner in the series and an iRacing member who served as a volunteer alpha and beta tester during development of the simulation. Altogether, between the Rolex Sports Car Series and the Koni Sports Car Challenge, 30 drivers who competed in the Rolex 24 weekend are iRacing veterans.

“It’s a pleasure to see so many iRacing members competing successfully in the real world,” said Scott McKee, iRacing’s vice president of marketing. “And it’s just as gratifying to see how much our members enjoy all of the race series we organize in the virtual world. It’s all about the thrill and fun of competition.”

McKee also noted that two other iRacing members have recently made news with their on-track success. Court Vernon, 16, and Sage Karam, 13, took top honors at the 12th annual Skip Barber Karting Scholarship Shoot-out at Sebring International Raceway.

“We congratulate Court and Sage on having won entries in the 2009 BFGoodrich/Skip Barber National Presented by Mazda series,” McKee said. “The further good news is that the Skip Barber Formula 2000 they’ll be racing this year is part of the iRacing inventory, as are most of the tracks where they’ll be competing.”

What’s next for Daytona winner Iannucci? He plans to continue racing karts for the time being, and he’ll race the Cobalt again with teammate Aschenbach in the Koni Sports Car Challenge race at the Homestead Miami Speedway, March 12-15, where the ST class has its own separate race.

“I’m new to the car scene and have not been to many tracks yet,” Iannucci said. “iRacing is going help me out a great deal this year learning tracks so I don’t have to waste the limited practice time on race weekends trying to find my way.”

With nearly two months to practice in the simulator, Iannucci should know Homestead Miami Speedway like the back of his hand before he drives through the tunnel on March 12.