The COT setups have only been updated for NHMS, Michigan and the first two weeks of Season 3. We will be releasing an update in the next week or so to update the remaining setups.
Website
Club Scoring
Starting this season, we are moving to a completely new scoring system in which every race counts toward the Club competition. No more dropped races or weeks, no more averaging in the club scoring system. Each non-Rookie driver racing in an officially scored, Advanced Rookie or higher series will have the opportunity to score club points based on where they place and the size of the field. Other championship scoring systems remain unchanged. See the updated Sporting Code for details.
Paint Shop
Car number and sponsor previews are now functioning
NAV 2.0 Overview:
The top portion of the site has received a significant overhaul?
Primary Nav:
Settings Panel button added on the right. Settings Panel discussed below.
Secondary Nav:
This is now permanently visible so you can access all pages in any subsection without going through the default section landing pages (which is what previously made the secondary nav available).
Session Panels:
The immediate sessions of any enabled series are displayed in the Session Panels. You can monitor and register for sessions from anywhere on the iRacing.com member site.
Provides notification of license ineligibility and content status
Filterable by race type and session type
Additional options available in Settings Panel
Tickers:
Two tickers are available on the member site, NEWS and SERVICE
NEWS displays at-a-glance news items or other pieces of information that will be useful for members to know.
SERVICE displays sets of statistical data such as Event Results, personal stats, general service stats, and World Cup stats.
Full stat customization for SERVICE is found in the Settings Panel (primary nav) in the “Tickers” tab.
Tickers may be turned off via the iRacing icon to their left
Settings Panel:
Contains three areas of customization: Session Panels, Tickers, and Dashboard
Deployable from the gear/arrow icon on the right side of the primary nav.
New Home Pages: PRESS ROOM and DASHBOARD
The home page has been split into two sections: Press Room keeps you up to speed with the latest news, stories, and promotions from iracing.com. The Dashboard offers deep service-enhancing gadgets and customization.
Navigation between the areas is handled though the secondary nav, or through the more prominent page flipper underneath the nav.
Press Room:
“News”: All the latest news stories are encapsulated here. By default, the most recent Top Story will be expanded, but you can collapse it to focus on other items.
“Service Status”: This gadget will inform you of the status of your iRacing service and build.
“Feature Story”: This will showcase a key story from iRacing.com
“Special Offers”: This will display the current promotions running at iracing.com
Dashboard:
This is your one stop shop for everything iRacing. All gadgets are fully collapsible, and you can move them wherever you wish by dragging on their title bars. Most are fully removable, and may be recalled or deselected through the Settings Panel (in the “Dashboard” tab). Your settings for positioning, collapse and expanding, and filtering options will all be recalled.
8 gadgets are available:
What’s Hot:
A large advancement on what was previously available. What’s Hot breaks down into two areas, “Race Qual and TT” and “Open Practice”.
Advanced filtering power:
You can filter between or across “Oval” and “Road” race types, between “Eligible” and “Populated” and display a custom number of events per subsection.
The “R, D, C, B, A, P” license buttons toggle on and off to filter sessions from those respective license levels. They all default to on, and will ‘grey out’ when you click them off.
Columns are now sortable with a secondary sort on the number of users registered.
New columns:
“Series” now uses visuals for easy recognition.
“Duration” has been added (laps, or time).
“Reg” allows you to register directly from What’s Hot in one click. This column also informs you of your registration status (if you are ineligible or require content, etc). Mouse over popups are available to explain each icon.
“Serv” (Open Practice) indicates server location. The locations currently available are USA and Australia.
This gadget is removable
Recent Events:
A focus on your recent racing activities in two sections “My Events”, and “My Recent Series”.
“My Events” offers all the relevant filtering power explained above in “What’s Hot”, listing your latest Event Results. Your finishing position and points are displayed, along with the driver helmet pop-up for quick access to the participant list. The handy R icon links directly to your Event Result. Most columns are sortable.
“My Recent Series” remains unchanged in this release. This gadget is removable.
Standings:
“World Cup of iRacing” and “Reigning Champions” are wrapped into this gadget. This gadget is removable
Community:
Features “Talking Points” which was previously available
News:
Described above in the notes for Press Room. This gadget is not removable.
Service Status:
Described above in the notes for Press Room. This gadget is not removable.
Featured Story:
Described above in the notes for Press Room. This gadget is removable.
Special Offers:
Described above in the notes for Press Room. This gadget is removable.
Cars
Lotus 79 has been added
There are an additional 10 number font types for the cars that can have their numbers changed.
The Solstice now has ABS (anti-lock brakes).
Increased brake bias adjustment range on the Spec Racer Ford.
Tire temperature distribution is now properly based on a tire’s load and pressure, making it easier to use tire temps as a setup tuning tool.
Improvements have been made to the sounds generated when a car is bottoming and scraping on the ground.
Chevy Impala (A-level)
Aero modeling has been updated and now incorporates ride height and pitch sensitivity, which includes longitudinal aero balance changes. Bottoming the chassis now causes a loss of downforce similar to real world racecar aerodynamics, and this is also modeled now.
Rear sway bars are now available. Please note that these WILL NOT disable old setups which will have set the rear bar to ‘none.’ Although the bars are disconnected at Daytona and Talladega, they will remain visible in the garage screen.
Sway Bars now have limits on the amount of preload you set into them. This is consistent with the series rulebook that states no preload is allowed, although a small amount is overlooked.
Shocks are now adjustable for bump and rebound. Old setups? shock valving now gives an approximate setting relative to the old specified value. An old “1” shock now has the bump and rebound set to the minimum, while an old “5” is now set to nearly max stiffness (30 of 32 clicks). This doesn?t necessarily directly compare to the old damping values, but it allows the sim to run and does not completely invalidate old setups. There is a wide range of adjustment at the higher speed end of the curve, though the lower speed adjustment is quite similar regardless of the track type. Those of you asking for separate high and low speed adjustment may be disappointed, but the rulebook states only single adjustable shocks are allowed, and in effect we are giving you 32 different shocks to choose from. You should be able to find something that works within this wide range of options, so these may need some attention.
Chevy Impala SS (B-level)
Aero modeling has been updated and now incorporates ride height and pitch sensitivity, which includes longitudinal aero balance changes. Bottoming the chassis now causes a loss of downforce similar to real world racecar aerodynamics, and this is also modeled now.
Rear sway bars are now available. Please note that these WILL NOT disable old setups which will have set the rear bar to ?none.? Although the bars are disconnected at any oval track longer than 1.5 miles, they will remain visible in the garage screen. Sway Bars now have limits on the amount of preload you set into them. This is consistent with the series rulebook that states no preload is allowed, although a small amount is overlooked.
Shocks are now adjustable for bump and rebound. Old setups? shock valving now gives an approximate setting relative to the old specified value. An old “1” shock now has the bump and rebound set to the minimum, while an old “5” is now set to nearly max stiffness (30 of 32 clicks). This doesn?t necessarily directly compare to the old damping values, but it allows the sim to run and does not completely invalidate old setups. Those of you asking for separate high and low speed adjustment may be disappointed, but the rulebook states only single adjustable shocks are allowed, and in effect we are giving you 32 different shocks to choose from.
Silverado
Rear sway bars have been added here as well, and are treated the same as the Impala (B-level) with the bar disconnected on oval tracks longer than 1.5 miles.
Preload limits have also been set for the front and rear sway bars on the Silverado.
Shocks are now adjustable for bump and rebound. Again, this is consistent with the Impala (B-level), so those comments apply here as well.
Differential ratios have been refined to match the prescribed options for the 2009 season, and this may cause some ratio issues. Please test your old setups on the tracks prior to racing there. There is a duplication of the shortest ratio, which is specifically to make certain old setups don’t fail to load.
Tracks
Chicagoland has been added.
New track configurations have been added to Summit?s Jefferson course and VIR?s Patriot course that reverse the racing direction.
Tire barriers are now all made of tires, instead of some of them being made of concrete.
We have added free of charge a track called the Centripetal Circuit which is a 200 meter radius skid pad.
Race control
We fixed some rules that did not properly apply as the race was finishing, such as detecting a driver cutting the course.
Towing has been added, replacing resets during a race. Tows are always available in any series. Exiting your car or disconnecting while driving will automatically trigger a tow. A tow will place you in your pit stall until the specified tow time has passed. The pit crew as yet can not repair any damage, but the types of damage we currently support are either not typically repairable during a race, or have no
physical effect and are therefore not worth repairing. If you bust your car up too much you may not be able to keep it on the road.
For lower level races (Rookie and D license level races) you get 1 “fast” tow, after that any further tows are regular speed. A fast tow takes a little less time than a regular tow, and will give you a fresh car, restoring tires, damage, etc. Note that even a fast tow takes more time than a reset used to take, although your car is towed forward around the track instead of being moved backward, as with a reset. In non-race sessions, resets are unchanged.
Voice Chat
A mute control has been added. You will still see notifications of who is talking when muted. The notifications display for a few moments after someone stops talking, making it easier to tell who was speaking. The current volume will be displayed when adjusting the volume. A small notification is shown when you are transmitting and when adjusting the volume even if you have voice chat notifications set to ‘None’.
Improvements to initializing the car
Car will now produce 100% identical results each time you enter the garage and work on settings.
Tech inspector is more reliable now.
Resetting the car will properly give you fresh tires and car in non-race sessions
Cameras
Cameras have been gutted and mostly replaced with the following improvements:
A new camera edit tool is available by hitting ctrl-f12 in replay mode only.
User edited camera sets can be saved and shared. The driving camera is the only camera that cannot be edited.
Cameras can be edited in real time, using either a keyboard or joystick.
Cameras attempt to frame a shot based on neighboring cars and the race track. They no longer keep the focus car centered on the display.
All cameras can be combined into groups, not just TV cameras. A group of cameras picks the active camera based on what camera has the best shot. Cameras? ranges can now overlap so more than one camera can have a shot at the same time.
Added TV All group that combines all three TV camera groups and the blimp/chopper cameras, to show off the random shot selection.
Hitting ‘b’ or ‘shift-b’ cycles to the next/previous camera in a group.
Added a proper blimp camera and renamed the zeppelin camera to chopper camera.
Chase cameras now follow a car?s velocity vector, not body orientation, so lurid slides should be more visible.
Removed ‘n’ to select ‘no driver’.
Shift-num1/shift-num3 properly selects next/previous lap and continues over from warm-up to race laps
Cameras try and ?pan? to next active car when selecting a new driver.
3-View Mode (TH2Go related)
If you are using a TH2G type setup you may now configure the simulation to render separate views to each monitor with bezel management built into views. The settings are available on the graphics options screen. You need to specify three monitors, enter the dimensions of your monitors, the angle between them, and check ?render view per monitor?. This does affect FPS but not as much as you might think it would. If you also enter the distance of your eyes from the center monitor the system will compute the FOV such that the monitors are windows into the virtual world and everything will be at the correct sizes and positions.
Change max cockpit FOV from 165 to 179 degrees when 3-view mode is enabled
Changed the loading screen to use only the center 1/3rd of the screen with very wide aspect ratios
Graphics
Many of the graphics options may now be changed without restarting the simulation. Shadows maybe be turned off, but they may not be turned on if they were off at simulation startup time without a restart.
Two sets of graphics options are now provided, one set for when in car, and one set for when out of the car (watching replays, etc.). There is a new ‘Replay’ tab in the options screen where the out of the car settings are specified. Note that if you have shadows enabled in the replay settings this may affect driving (even when they are off in the driving) because all of the shadow data is still loaded into memory.
The hard shadow faceting on the sides of the car bodies has been virtually eliminated when two pass shadows are enabled. The artifacts are still present with 1-pass shadows.
The cockpit mirrors are now adjustable via an F9 black box. The settings are saved per car in the car?s setup directory.
A few issues regarding cockpit mirrors and multi-car class races have been improved/fixed.
Controls
Brake calibration has been updated to work well with both pressure-sensitive and deflection-sensitive brakes. There is now an option to control the linearity of the simulator?s brake pressure response to your physical brake pedal travel. Potentiometer-based pedals (most pedals) can adjust this value to suit what feels best for them; lower values give a more linear brake response (more initial brake force with pedal travel than before), while higher values give a more non-linear increase in brake force (less initial brake force, more force near full pedal travel). Linear pressure sensitive pedals (with load cells) should set this value to zero for the most linear true to life feel. A brake force curve factor of 2.0 is close to the
brake force curve before this change. This factor is now reset automatically to 1.8 any time the brakes are calibrated?you will need to change it to your preferred value after calibrating the brakes if 1.8 is not to your liking. For most pedals this gives a good feel.
The pedal meters on all screens reflect this change. The throttle meter has also been corrected to match on all screens.
Spotter
By popular request, the spotter now explicitly tells you that you are two-wide after being three-wide.
The Spotter now warns you about black flags, pending black flags, ignoring a black flag, and gives a little more detail when entering caution.
You will be notified when gaining position.
Downloader
The downloader has been tweaked.
Previously, if a file timed out while being downloaded, it would be set to an error state. You’d have to come back and try to get that file again later.
Now when a file times out during the download, the downloader will move on, but it will come back and try that file again. (It will try up to a third time before giving up on the file). I think that, more often than not, trying the file even a second time will result in the file succeeding.
