Website
The iRacing member site has undergone a major art and design overhaul. Please be advised that the website redesign is not finished and there are still incomplete pages and functionality. There is also quite a bit of work that needs to be done for the site to look as it should using IE6 and 7.
The changes are too numerous to list in their entirety but the most notable ones are…
The entire site has been re-skinned with an all new look-and-feel.
The License has been removed from the Race and Test panels and the license information has been moved to the top of the screen. This new Identity section will always be visible on the site. You can toggle between your road and oval rating information by clicking on the ROAD and OVAL buttons.
The banner area that shares space with the Race and Test panels has been re-designed to illustrate where you are on the iRacing site, and in some cases it will display the content that you currently have selected for testing. While at the list pages for Series, Cars, and Tracks the banner will display your current series selection, test car, or test track. While at the drill-down pages for a series, a car, or a track the banner displayed will be appropriate to the particular series, car, or track that you are viewing.
The Series list now includes license icons which illustrate the eligibility requirements for participation in each season.
Once signed up for a session you will arrive at a Driver’s Briefing page where you can join pre-race chat or take a moment to become more familiar with the track you’re about to drive on.
The Car and Track lists have been enhanced and now include informational drill-down pages for each car and each track. These drilldowns are filled with interesting information and screenshots relevant to the particular car or track. Each track page includes an interactive track guide which has many features such as an image-based lap around each track configuration, turn numbers and names, and pit road layout and speed information.
The My Profile page has been both re-worked and re-located to reside under the new ?myRACING? section of the site. myRACING includes a Contacts section where you can add or remove Friends and Studied drivers or look up any driver on the service; the Customize Car(s) page; Customize Helmet page; and Customize Suit page. Results no longer reside here; they have been moved to the STATS section of
the site.
A new section has been added: STATS. This section is the informational hub for all statistical and result related material on the site. This section is split into six sections: Personal, Friends, Studied, Series, Clubs, and Drivers. The Personal, Friends, and Studied pages are set up similarly and display the official career stats for yourself, your friends, and your studied drivers — note: these career stats are derived solely from official events. At the top of each of these pages are links that flip between the aforementioned career stats and the regular session results which are in the same format as they were on the last incarnation of the site. The Series page allows you to look up the Season Race Standings, Season Time Trial Standings, Season Qualify Results, and Season Time Trial Results for any season that’s been run on the service, be it a retired season or one that is currently active. The Clubs and Drivers pages are coming soon?
A CHAT section has been added. This page acts as an interface for joining and creating chat rooms. Chat rooms launch in an external application and support both voice and text communications.
A STORE section has been added.
The SUPPORT section now has a FAQ and Knowledge Base mini-site and an easy to use web form to submit support requests.
The INSTRUCTION section now has the FIRST Sporting Code, which is the rule book by which all iRacing.com members are expected to abide.
Chat
Voice support has been added to the chat system. Select your desired audio devices within the chat client using its Options->Audio menu. You may then adjust your microphone’s level by monitoring the digital volume unit meter on the bottom right corner of the chat client’s main window. Your microphone’s volume should be adjusted such that you light approximately 80% of the bars when you transmit voice. Access to the microphone’s volume control can usually be found within the Sound/Audio devices portion of the Window’s control panel, and also from within the Window’s Sound Recorder Applet (XP: accessories->entertainment->sound recorder). If you see that another customer’s audio level
is too low when they speak kindly suggest that they properly adjust their microphone’s volume.
You may have more than one chat room open, in such cases you can hear the voice chat from all of those rooms simultaneously. You may mute any specific room(s) using the mute button near the volume unit meter. Whenever you transmit voice you will only speak into the chat room that has your input focus.
To transmit voice you need to either push the Talk button or use the configured key-combo (also in the
audio options). Only one person may speak in a chat room at a time.
Graphics
The problem where some walls flashed shadows when driving near them (only on some graphics hardware) has been fixed. Also many z-fighting issues have been improved.
TrackIR
TrackIR support has been added to the simulation, but is pending support in the TrackIR driver software/game updates.
Scoring
The license colors have changed. The current mapping is now:
Rookie = Red
Class D = Orange
Class C = Yellow
Class B = Green
Class A = Blue
Pro = Black
Unofficial race sessions are now weighted the same as Time Trial sessions towards your Safety Rating.
Rookies are now placed into a separate Rookie division when they participate in Advanced Rookie Series, or higher level series that also allow Rookie participation. The 4-week introductory Rookie series, as before, do not have divisions.
Rookies no longer contribute to Club Standings.
Physics and Garage
Additional chassis and suspension settings now work–camber, caster, rear toe (when available), track bar (panhard bar) height. This means you can now use the legends car on road courses!
The baseline setups have all been tuned and some cars like the legends car have additional setups supplied.
The setup screens have generally been split into two tabs: Tires and Chassis. There was a bit too much information for one screen.
The tires now are affected by temperature and wear. Locking up a wheel induces quite a bit of tire wear, so don’t do that too often. Trying to get temperatures spread evenly across the tire is not necessarily the best use of the tire. There are advantages sometimes to finding an inflation pressure and camber combination that increases grip in the corners, but that ends up giving uneven temps.
Generally the center temp should be a bit higher than the average of the two edges (but not always). The inside edge of the outside tires in any given turn should probably end up a bit hotter than the outside for best grip.
Stagger changes now affect weight jacking properly, as they should.
For now, anytime you get out of the car (return to the replay screen), your car will get new tires next time you get in. It will also have fuel refilled. There is currently no way to get pitlane service; that will be coming later.
Cars in the pitstall lane of all pitlanes have collisions disabled with other cars, so there should be less trouble driving out of pitlane–try to use good habits, though, eventually there will be a penalty for driving too fast and/or too far in the pitstall lane.
Opponents in multiplayer sessions will now have the correct gear/diff ratios as set by each local driver, so engine revs sound more correct.
Race control
Black flags have been added and are active. The available black flags are:
Unsafe pit entry – Some pit roads at some tracks require you to enter the pits via entrance roads or painted lines. Not following the correct entry will result in an unsafe entry black flag.
Unsafe pit exit – Some pit roads at some tracks require you to exit the pits via exit roads or painted lines. Not following the correct exit will result in an unsafe pit exit.
Cut course – If you significantly bypass parts of a circuit’s configuration, you will get a cut course black flag.
Gained time – If you blow through a chicane or cut some corners a bit too much, race control will consider you to have “gained time”. A furled black warning flag will be shown to you. You have 15 seconds or until the start/finish line to slow down sufficiently enough to appease race control that you have given back the time you gained, or a black flag will result.
Speeding in pits – Driving above the specified speed limit in a pit lane will result in a black flag.
Jump start – During a road course standing start, if you move before the lights go green, you get a jump start black flag.
Passing the pace car – During a rolling start, if you are ahead of the pace car at the time it pulls off the track you will get a black flag.
Passing on the inside – During a rolling start after the green flag, if you pass anyone ahead of you in your line on the inside – left on a left turning oval – before reaching the start/finish line, you will receive a black flag. This rule does not apply on road course rolling starts (which we don’t have at this time anyway).
Passing the leader – During a rolling start, the leader of the second line must not pass the race leader after the green flag before the start/finish line.
Passing under yellow – During a rolling start, if you are ahead of where you are supposed to be in the pace line order at the point of the green flag, you will receive a black flag. Yellow flag functionality IS NOT enabled in this build.
To clear a black flag you must stop in your pit stall. The black flag may be a stop and go, or it may hold you in your stall for longer. There are no drive through black flags. During non race sessions you can also clear a black flag by exiting or resetting your car.
During testing sessions, only cut course and gained time black flags are active. During any online session all black flags are active.
While you have a black flag, you will receive no official lap times. But in a race your lap will still count towards the race.
When you get a black flag during a race, you must serve that black flag within 4 laps or you will be disqualified.
If you are driving backwards, race control will warn you with a furled black flag to turn around and move in the correct direction. Failure to obey this warning will result in disqualification.
“Off track” incidents are now determined by the center of the car being off track surfaces, rather than all 4 tires.
Pacing before race start on short ovals has been increased to 2 laps.
During pacing there is an information box shown on the screen. It tells you which line you should be in, and gives instructions for getting into the right pacing order. Race control will advise you to follow a car ahead of you in line, or pass the car ahead, or slow down to let the car behind you by.
In pit lane there is an information box shown on the screen. It reports the speed limit for the lane, your speed, any penalty countdowns, service time and if you are not aligned with your pit stall properly.
Sound
Voice Chat volume can be adjusted with more precision and can be set lower.
Improved sound volume fall-off and priorities, so close cars aren’t so overwhelmingly loud, and you hear the louder sounds more reliably.
Rebalanced sound levels of different sound types.
We no longer reserve a set of sound streams for crashes; as a result, more sounds are playing all the time. This will sound better, but minimum-spec systems may need to lower their sound streams to the minimum of 12. If a system ran with 12 streams previously but cannot run at all now, please report this and the system’s specs.
Crackling should be resolved for all sound cards in stereo and almost all sound cards in surround (Sigmatel chipset devices are known to crackle in surround; we cannot fix this). There may be slight crackling when driving over grass, but it should be minor.
UI
Detail options for Cars, Events, Grandstands, and Objects are now correctly labeled High / Low / Off.
General Art
An all new user interface has been added.
There are a significant number of new helmet and suit patterns.
Numerous art bugs have been fixed.
Cars
The Radical SR8 has been added.
The SK Modified has been added.
Car LOD distances have been optimized.
The driver now has LOD levels.
Cockpit shadow textures have been added. When shadows are turned off, the cockpit area of the cars should look much better.
The Car Detail option on the Options screen now works.
Replay screen car cameras have been adjusted.
Tracks
Event objects have been added to the tracks.
Crowds have been added to the grandstands.
Stop/Go man added to driver’s pit stall.
Significant Laguna Seca performance optimizations have been made.
Object Detail and Grandstand Detail should now behave properly.
