- The 2013 Ford Fusion NASCAR is now available!

- The Ford Fusion can load Chevy SS setups if you copy the setup files into the Ford Fusion directory within your iRacing setups directory. But setups cannot be shared between the different cars within the sim itself.

Chevy SS

- Fixed the bug where the roof flaps of opponent cars could flap while they are parked in the pit lane and you are driving around the track.

- Added the camera bubble to rear of car, but only at the tracks that should have it: road courses, short tracks, restrictor plate tracks.

- Frame rate improvements.

- The Chevy SS can load Ford Fusion setups if you copy the setup files into the Chevy SS directory within your iRacing setups directory. But setups cannot be shared between the different cars within the sim itself.

Total Views: 583

- The 2013 Chevrolet NASCAR is now available!

- Note that there is a small bug in this release that can cause the roof flaps on your opponent cars who are parked in pit lane to flap up and down if you’re out driving around the track. This will be fixed in our next release in a week or two.

Graphics

- Fix a problem that could cause shadows to sparkle.

Spotter

- Upon @ADD of a frequency to your radio, do not “select” that frequency if you don’t have rights to squawk on it.

Windows 8 Support

- Scale touch and cursor moves properly when screen DPI setting is changed.

- Turn off touch screen contact visualization.

- Properly detect touch windows, so we can turn off touch driving controls when using the mouse.

- Properly change mouse cursor without forcing a pointer move.

Total Views: 245

Links: Download PSD Template

Included in with this template are:

Color guides/labels for areas that have been questioned and assorted alpha channels, ie: Hood/roof (area cut directly under the roof rails ), decklid, side skirts and roof rails.

New decals:
Goodyears and Chev SS, including outside stroke layers that can be hidden. These layers are as close to the original as possible, done in hi rez and include the outside stroke layer. DO NOT MOVE THESE FORWARD OR BACK!! There is a small area of the decal that is on the nose layer for both sides as this goes over a seam. If you move them, this will NOT line up!!

Roof cam and decals

Jack Markers and arrows

Exhaust “stains” with exhaust plate (plate can be hidden) including “stains” for light and dark colored cars

Metallic Layers:

You’ll find a folder with labeled metallic layers for different areas of the car. I decided to go ahead and separate out these layers as I found that sometimes I may want higher or lower levels of metallics in certain areas of the car. You can adjust them as to your taste by trying different levels of opacity, different attributes, doubling them up with a highlight and a multiply, etc………..Or you can merge them all as one and just use them as an overlay. There is also ” flake” layer that again can be used many different ways. The way they are in the template are exactly how they are in my example picture. Experiment and enjoy!!!

I would appreciate that if used, that occasionally you give credit, that they NOT be posted for download without my permission and most of all, please don’t claim them as yours. A lot of work went in to these and I would appreciate that respect.

Total Views: 891

Here are some of the bigger things currently in development without timing or priorities. Our priorities can change at any time. This is simply a list to give members a rough idea what is currently in the works. The Steve Myers car herder blog discussed much of these things below. This list is absolutely not what is coming in next build. Maybe even coming this year and maybe never if we change our minds based on new technology available or new priorities or new view of the investment of time compared to adding the feature. Again, just things in the work plans right now for those that like to understand what is being worked on generally speaking. Also what listing below will not fill up everyone’s time for the year so many other things will be worked on and some things being worked on as well right now that not in position to share.

Also remember, that skills sets need to line up with projects if you are thinking to yourself why they are doing this versus that. In addition, some projects lead to other projects technically and that might be the real goal and what you might want. Pretty much every single technical person has unique strengths and skills. The software engineers are not interchangeable without in some cases a large learning curve, same with artists, web engineers, database engineers, production folks, oracle engineers, etc. Lastly, remember there are 40,000 people with different priorities. Our goal is simply to improve the racing and racing experience for all as best we can!

Tires, released new tire carcass in last build, now hoping to further improve tire compounds, wear/heat and other miscellaneous items.

Always working on a variety of items physics wise for the cars both generally and car specific.

In the back ground working on updating sound system, but like last build trying to add & improve sounds in the shorter term. Also currently redoing exterior sounds on several cars like we did for V8 super car last build, for example the stock cars, Corvette and Cadillac in the works.

Working on improving build process code, cutting the time of the dozens of builds we do each month internally in half, which will free up considerable time for everyone.

Update of in-sim UI, load screens, and start of race and after race experience. Very big overall project.

“Race against yourself project” that we plan on putting in Time Trialing to spice it up. Basically racing against saved replays of ghost cars starting with your own laps. Possibility to add other saved ghost cars/laps to race against.

Working on refresh & redesign of car/helmet/suit paint area on members with more options.

Working on having Your Name on windshield for new NASCAR cars which will translate to other cars that have that in real world.

Getting close on team and driver swap projects. Spotters done already, crew chief portion of project should be in this next build and full driver swap, team racing & creation of teams possible in July build or at least another phase of it.

Working on graphical & dynamic graphical projects. Collideable cones and leading to parts following off cars, etc is one of the bigger ones. Also working on some graphic improvements like trees and tree shadows.

Further work on minimizing expensive graphical processes like the way we store and deliver the graphics, i.e. shadow maps. Update on DX11: Since it is such a large project, we wanted to try to add shadow mapping into the existing engine before tackling the port to DX11 so the project has slipped a bit but on our plate for 2013. The good news is that we’ve still been improving on the Direct3D 9 engine with some good stuff. One of the main benefits of DirectX 11 should be to eliminate the CPU bottlenecks in the engine and get better utilization of the GPUs. DirectX 9 has a bottlenecked API for our scenes, and DirectX 11 sports a much improved API, which should allow us to solve these issues. Also, with DirectX 11’s geometry shaders and multiple render target support, our shadow technology should improve substantially while further offloading from the CPU. We’re also planning to build the new DX11 engine using high dynamic range frame buffers and lighting from the start, which will improve the overall appearance.

Working towards dynamic skies & time of day change in the relatively near future.

Working on two new G6 cup cars currently (Ford and Chevy)

Working on Lotus 49, new Kia and Ruf car. (Will try and send out very early stage model pictures for Ruf) Also working on an overhaul of DP car physics wise.

Tracks in process are Kansas, Montreal and Bathhurst. Also updating old tracks USA and Laguna. Also R&D project working on how we treat massive backgrounds (For example the mountains at Laguna)

Working on new Race Guide on home page

Working on database overhaul in background

Architecture & Hosting – Working on several upgrades to backend hardware, software and architecture. Also working on some security projects

Working on a bunch of other “smaller” things and some bigger things that we are not ready to even mention.

About 100 other things want to do obviously, some big and some small and I’m sure dozens of those projects will be done or started this year and others are still way off in the future.

Total Views: 1377

- Substantial reduction in microstutters due to off-screen shadow map generation.

- Optimized render state changes with shadow maps enabled.

- Increase the framerate limit option’s maximum from 169 FPS to 334 FPS.

Force Feedback

- Increase maximum force feedback strength from 40 to 60 to help compensate for the weaker forces some cars are producing with this season’s physics.

- Added in new app.ini parameters to reduce the amount of FFB communication we do. This may help with a few users with buggy wheels.

- Add in app.ini [Misc] FFBAlwaysReset=1 Setting this to 0 will force the FFB code back to the old way where we only reset at startup and shutdown (and hopefully when changing wheels).

- Add in app.ini [Misc] FFBRetryCount=5 Setting this to 1 goes back to the old way of only trying to initialize the FFB once, even if we failed for any reason.

Chat Hotkeys

- Make chat hotkeys work when out of car. This allows for custom hotkeys of admin commands.

Reloading Car Textures

- Fix a bug that would let you unload the car textures but not be able to load them again, when you turned off ‘load textures while driving’.

- Added in support for reloading individual cars textures from telemetry. This will make it so the white flash will only occur for a single car when a new texture arrives.

- If you have turned off the ability to reload textures while driving, the sim will queue up any requests for new textures and the next time you get out of your car the sim will load those textures then.

Telemetry

- Add SimMode: replay or full to telemetry, this lets motion platforms determine if they are in a user loaded replay or they just hopped out of a live car.

- Output car class position to telemetry.

- Output league ID to telemetry for Trading Paints to use.

Race Control

- Triggering a gained time slowdown at any point during qualifying will invalidate the current lap.

Spotting

- Fix a bug where having a spotter could cause private messages or admin commands to go to the spotter instead of the driver.

Sponsors

- Fixed the DSD sponsorship so it shows up in the paintkit properly.

Flexible Drivetrains

- Fixed the bug where sometimes downshifts wouldn’t complete in the cars with computer shifter gearboxes, such as the Williams FW31, McLaren, and Dallara.

- The new flex in drivetrains seems to make it a little riskier to blow up a motor from aggressive downshifting. We have eased the engine damage thresholds correspondingly for the following cars:
Chevrolet Corvette C6R
Chevrolet Monte Carlo SS
Ford Mustang FR500S
Legends Ford ’34 Coupe
Legends Ford ’34 Coupe – Rookie
Modified – SK
Modified – Tour
Radical SR8
Riley Daytona Prototype
Skip Barber Formula 2000
Spec Racer Ford
Star Mazda
VW Jetta TDI Cup

Multiclass

- Removed some unneccessary textures to help reduce texture memory usage in multiclass races from the following cars:
Ford Falcon V8 Supercar
Chevrolet Corvette C6R
Ford Mustang FR500S
Radical SR8
Riley Daytona Prototype
Pontiac Solstice
Pontiac Solstice – Rookie

Drafting

- Slightly reduced the oval car draft. The list of cars affected are:
Chevrolet Impala
Chevrolet Impala Class B
Chevrolet National Impala
Chevrolet Monte Carlo SS
Chevrolet Silverado
Modified – SK
Modified – Tour
Silver Crown
Sprint Car
Street Stock

Chevrolet Corvette C6R

- Add interlagos_fixed setup.

Chevrolet Impala

- Added the missing daytona_fixed and talladega_fixed setups.

- Fixed the baseline setup to pass tech.

Chevrolet Impala Class B

- Fixed the baseline setup to pass tech.

Chevrolet National Impala

- Added the missing daytona_fixed and talladega_fixed setups, and also sonoma_fixed and watkinsglen_fixed setups.

- Fixed the baseline setup to pass tech.

Chevrolet Monte Carlo SS

- Added a roadcourse setup.

Chevrolet Silverado

- Fixed the gearing of the daytona_fixed and richmond_fixed setups.

- Fixed the baseline setup to pass tech.

Ford Falcon V8 Supercar

- Fixed the windshield from drawing twice when in the cockpit with car damage.

Ford GT

- Add interlagos_fixed setup.

- Increased fuel usage by 11%.

Ford Mustang FR500S

- Fixed the overly soft steering.

Street Stock

- Added a roadcourse setup.

Oulton Park Circuit

- It is no longer possible to cut the chicanes on the back straight and still gain overall laptime.

Total Views: 1002

Links: Schedules & Events Page | Daytona Int’l Speedway Page

Total Views: 18218

Links: Schedules & Events Page | Daytona Int’l Speedway Page

Total Views: 1294

Objective: A new, special event style official series aimed at providing fun and competitive NASCAR racing for every license level except the rookie license level. This series also intended to have a direct tie-in to the excitement of the real world NASCAR Sprint Cup by being at the same tracks each week and battling through a long and varied schedule like the real-world drivers.

Total Views: 437

Links: Schedules & Events Page | Chevrolet Impala Page | Daytona Int’l Speedway Page

Total Views: 1435

Monday morning after the Super Bowl is always an interesting day. I always kind of feel like I fought someone and I didn’t come out the winner. All the crappy food I ate all night comes back to haunt me like 12 rounds of solid body shots from a heavy weight fighter. The beer doesn’t help either but it’s Oh so delicious…..

If I am lucky to have my hometown team in the game (Patriots) every muscle in my body is stiff from feeling like a compressed spring ready to explode all night. Unfortunately the Pats choked two weeks ago so I only feel like I fought a middle weight boxer today instead of a heavy weight…

As I sit here on this Monday morning trying to nurse my “injuries” I have started the mental transition from football season to racing season. Yes the Rolex 24 was last weekend and really is the start of the racing season but let’s be honest: until the merger of the ALMS and GRAND AM happens the race really feels like a minor league baseball game with a handful of Major Leaguers getting in some rehab work.

In my opinion the racing season starts in three weeks when the beautiful Gen6 NASCAR cars take to the high banks at Daytona. I am legitimately excited that NASCAR has finally gone back to its roots with the concept of “win on Sunday, sell onMonday” and brought back cars that at least resemble vehicles we can drive ourselves.

Okay, so technically that phrase was coined by Bob Tasca, Sr. who had a Ford dealership up here in Providence, Rhode Island along with an NHRA team, but you get my point.

The good news for you and me though is that we don’t have to shell out tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of dollars to drive a new street Chevy SS or NASCAR SS Cup car. We are going to get to drive the NASCAR version in about four weeks on iRacing and for only “pocket change” compared to the real world versions.

The Chevy SS will come first and the Fusion should be released a few weeks later. Yes, I have been working on trying to get the Toyota signed and hope to accomplish that “soon.” I have been working on it since last summer but working with the big corporations means the “soon” clock runs on months instead of hours….

I have been asked quite a bit whether we will have driver names on the windshields of the Gen6 cars and I can confirm we are working on it. We may not be able to get this done for the new car’s release in a few weeks, so it may need to go out with the next 13th week build.

The next car in the development pipeline will be the Ruf Rt 12 R which I can say has personally given me more heartburn than any car to date for a number of reasons I care not to divulge. I do not anticipate this car being in the next build but there is a very good chance that the Kia Optima SX race car will be in the Season 2 build.

I have to admit that I was not super enthusiastic when this Kia deal came together and then I drove the car…….and it was fun…..and I kept driving it……..for hours. It actually makes me even more excited to get the BTCC Honda Civic done which we are currently working on trying to scan.

The art and production team continues to impress me with the work they do in building our tracks, and our recently released Autodromo Jose Carlos Pace is no exception. The track better known as Interlagos has long been a favorite of mine from my very early days of sim racing and running Geoff Crammond’s GP games. The flowing uphill, double apex Laranjinha corner has always been one of my favorite sections of track in the world to “drive” — even if only virtually in my case.

With the release of Interlagos, the guys have turned their considerable talents to Kansas Speedway while as continuing work on Montreal and Bathurst. When we finish-up Kansas and California Speedway this year we will have finally completed building all of the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series tracks on the schedule.

At this point it is likely that Kansas will be the next “new” track completed but probably not for the next 13th week deployment. However, we should have a fresh coat of paint on Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca and USA International Speedway to bring them closer to our current standard of new tracks. The art guys staged a pixel protest and demanded that we stop shaming them by flaunting their early work to the masses . . . and we caved.

Keeping on the visual topic, we have a bunch of projects in the works to add some depth to our in-sim world. We almost had the new shadow map work done for the last build so it is almost certain that it will be done for the next build. We are also in the process of changing the way that shadows are cast from trees. This project is pretty much the first required step to be able to get dynamic skies into the sim which is another project on the horizon. Pun intended.

Our newest engineer, Richard Jobling, whom you met in our last episode of iRacing TV, is working on the first project to improve our collision and crash models. This may sound silly but starting with something simple like making cones “collideable” is a significant step forward in making the environment more alive. This is a big, hairy, monster of a project but when interviewing him for the job he made it clear he was perfectly comfortable wrestling big hairy monsters.

I think the question I get asked most often in the forums and on my twitter account is when the Lotus 49 will be completed. The good news is that it’s done….well except that it needs NTMv5 which isn’t done yet. I know I sound like a broken record but Dave really is making great progress on the tire model and feels that he is getting closer to getting NTMv5 released. He made a significant advance in this last build which really is NTMv4.5. We are hoping the remaining 0.5 is in this next build.

We are finally getting to a point in our development life here at iRacing that, not only can we can start looking at things that just are not working the way we like, but we can do something about it! We have a number of projects we are starting work on in this department.

Early UI Concept
One area of the service that has been neglected has been our UI. I don’t think we have really changed anything since we launched the service. We have taken a fresh new look at what we can do not only with the in-game interface but also with the loading screen and post-race. This is a significant project requiring work from both the sim and web engineering teams, so a release schedule for this is still hard to predict.

Also, we are going to try and kill two birds with one stone by introducing an exciting new feature and at the same time try and give the time trial session some TLC. We are starting work on adding the ability to integrate a ghost car into the session that will allow you to select the best lap of the session, your best lap ever or even a loaded lap from someone else. We have a lot of exciting longer term ideas as well but in the short term you should be able to work on improving your performance while you spruce up your safety rating!

Yet another project that we are coming back to is our paint kit. We want to evolve the paint kit, both in terms of its design and layout as well as the introduction of new features such as a new color picker and increased font options. We have even kicked around the idea of adding the ability to download the templates directly from this page. Brian Simpson actually paid me in peanut butter pattie girl scout cookies to write that last sentence and this is the first time the engineers will hear about it…..

The web team has a number of different projects they are working on in support of features like team racing and our UI re-design. They really are the unsung heroes of the development team. These poor guys often are crunching right down to the wire trying to tie-up a feature that literally can’t be deployed without their interface.

One exciting project they are working on right now is a re-design of how you view and join race sessions. Imagine your TV guide view of nightly television and you get the general idea of where we are going with this. Soon you will actually have a visual depiction of the racing schedule that you can complain to me about!

I think the second most asked question I receive is the status of team racing. I can confirm for you that I was sitting in Randy’s office the other day and I watched him make in-race setup adjustments on one iRacing account and machine — and it changed on a second iRacing account and machine. This is a significant step forward on this project, and although there is still quite a bit of work to be done both in-sim and on the website, I am cautiously optimistic that it will be in the next build. Once we get the crew chief portion of team racing done actual driver changes are not far off.

I think one of the most significant advances we made in our last build was the improvement Grant made to the drive-train model. It is amazing how this change has not only transformed the immersion factor in the cockpit but also how the cars actually feel. The funny thing about it is that this is the end result of us having him work on improving the sounds! Long term he is still heading towards converting our software to use X-Audio but our lovable Kiwi does have plans to try and make some advances in the near term as well.

For those of you that have not done so, I would highly recommend taking the Ford Falcon V8 Supercar for a spin and then watch the replay from one of the TV cameras. Aussie Greg Hill has made a huge breakthrough on these external sounds and, coupled with Grant’s work on our sound engine, I think we have the best sound EVER in a racing game or sim. Expect this same treatment with as many cars as we can get samples for in the service but this new technique will require new recordings so, realistically, this will be a long project. We are doing our best to launch the Gen6 Cup cars with these new sounds and the Cadillac and Corvette will have them in the next seasons build as of now.

As always there is much more going on behind the scenes then what I have spelled out here. I make no promises on when any of this will make it on to the membersite but at least you get a little glimpse into what we are working on! I would encourage those who have joined us in the twenty-first century to follow me on twitter at @iRacingMyers because I often send out some charming 140 character updates on what’s going on in the iRacing universe. For those of you leery of being sucked into the social media blackhole — don’t worry! It will be on the forums in thirty seconds.

Now I am off to get some Tums…

Total Views: 1337