Also, from Tony Gardner:
http://members.iracing.com/jforum/posts/list/1712965.page

Quote :

I hope everyone is enjoying their summer and having fun driving/racing. Now that another build is behind us I thought I would let everyone know what our talented technical staff is working on currently. This is NOT a list of what will be in the next major quarterly build (October) but rather what is in the works at the moment. On the other hand some of it could and will be released before the next major build. Also remember that software development is not always a perfect fit of priority that one might ideally want. It is also about matching skill sets, considering size of projects, balance of short and long term projects and also about laying foundations for things to come.

Here we go:

Priority: New Tire Model improvements to overall model - improvements to specific cars already released - working to get NTM on more cars

Specific work on Ford GT outside of New Tire Model (and NTM). We just received much better data on car so one of our engineers is doing a full review and making appropriate adjustments as needed.

Working on tweaks to several other cars outside of tire model for example to aero and damage

Working on new and more setups for cars with NTM

Working on memory/file size for tracks in general. Very nice progress on this front. Should be a nice overall improvement for frame rates and stuttering issues that some people have.

Specific work to Suzuka to compress graphics to help frame rates and stuttering- want to get this out in a build soon

Replay versioning project: This is significant because it has prevented us from graphically improving cars once we release them. The issue was if we added something new to cars, anything, like brake glow which we have done behind the scenes, we could not add to cars because replays with that car would not work. With this project done, essentially the replays will ignore the new things added to the cars after the replay was captured. This will allow us to add a whole bunch of cool things to the cars that our artist and one of our engineers having been dying to do like brake glow, backfire, pit speed limiters, grill tape (graphically), etc and even things like roof flaps on a stock car although something like roof flaps also requires the physics guys to get involved.

A new bug for bump issue at Darlington track (high groove)

Team racing/Endurance racing/Driver Swaps- BIG project. Single Driver teams with spotter, crew chief and all that plus multi-driver teams. Will be for official racing and hosted racing and special events as in up to 24 hour racing capability which also means being able to join races during the race, leave and come back and all that good stuff. Along with the functionality itself, basically lot of reengineering and additional architecture flexibility needs to be made to overall engine. Lot more news to come about this but can pretty much guarantee this will not be in the October build but making progress.

Making good progress on advancements to new sound system plus adding all sorts on new sounds. Really trying to bring the pits alive for example with new pit sounds. Also new environmental sounds like flyovers, crowd noises, etc.

New graphics and animation: Adding war wagons to pits, work on pit boxes, driver animation, planes, birds, etc

Significant shader project under way – probably see some of it in next build and the build after.

Some forum functionality improvements already completed and bug fixes done. Also fixed some bugs and made some improvements to the text chat system we just released.

Working an adding a new server farm in Holland. Working on a project at the same time which will allow us to turn server farms on and off by three different settings. Hosted only/Hosted and open practice only/Open All

Three tracks currently in active production: Oulton, Kentucky and Twin Ring. Oulton will be finished first of the three.

Seems like every other build we come back to this. Never ending project working on site optimization. For example, continued refinement of local caching and database optimization which will save hundreds of thousands of calls to the database. Always a big priority, frankly almost above anything else at this point to have fast and stable site. Never ending project, not that sexy, but a substantial use of resources.

Making some improvements to recently released tournament racing. Redesign of hosted page for ease of use and usability. (Lot more will be added to it with driver swaps, etc) While on the subject of tournament racing we can see that over 60 tournaments have been started. I hope people are having fun with that.

Bunch of other little tweaks and bug fixes.

This is not a complete list and subject to change and also not to say something does not get finished, goes into QA and new things get started.

Good Racing!
Tony

Sounds decent. Oulton Park:headbang:

Not really. Same business model. They haven't expressed their opinions about the current tire model at all. Especially the fall off on the oval side.

What Oulten i like it but wtf why no Oran park or New Jersey motorsport park ect, i thought they were essentially finished....?
Its odd that i check here for iracing news rather then the actual website, Thanks PMD and others for keeping me informed

Quote from AstroBoy :

.. but wtf why no Oran park...

It's all there AstroBoy. You have to read all Tony's posts that's all. See red text below.


http://members.iracing.com/jfo ... 2965/3683765.page#3683765

Quote from Tony Gardner :

Three tracks currently in active production: Oulton, Kentucky and Twin Ring. Oulton will be finished first of the three.

http://members.iracing.com/jfo ... 2965/3684408.page#3684408

Quote from Tony Gardner :

I also forgot to mention working on oval at Mosport so if you own that track will get a very nice short oval configuration to go with it.

Also aside from tracks mentioned above,next on our list will be Oran Park in Australia. That is the track we scanned before they tore it down.

http://members.iracing.com/jfo ... 2965/3684663.page#3684663

Quote from Tony Gardner :

Zolder would be my guess for next road track after Oran.

.

Quote from PMD9409 :

Not really. Same business model. They haven't expressed their opinions about the current tire model at all. Especially the fall off on the oval side.

http://members.iracing.com/jfo ... t/75/1712965.page#3684408

Quote from Tony Gardner :

I understand why but some are taking things to next level of detail so if I dont mention something don't assume the worse. We are looking at tire falloff rates and making adjustments. Lot is being looked at and and reviewed under my one sentence for NTM. The guys have been talking a lot about fall off rates and looking at the data and getting feedback from real world drivers about falloff from the guys that drive the cars in real life. So yes, we understand complaints in this area on some cars and looking at it and making adjustments.

Mind you it's hard to follow news when it's lost in that hopeless offtopic forum.

Tony:

Quote :

Adding more than 3 cars to mixed class racing is being worked on as well. Another thing I missed. It is a bandwidth/memory sort of issue and half of it solved we think with something we just did in regard to memory to add a 4th car and have an idea how to get the rest of the way there but certainly do not want to add a 4th car at the sacrifice of performance. Again, another thing one of our engineers hopes to figure out and he is playing with currently. No promises but funny just talked about it this morning as something that we are getting closer on.

Quote :

Also to answer some questions, not really working on any new cars this build from a development perspective. We have too much to do with existing cars. (From a licensing perspective couple nice things in the works but nothing to announce at this point)

Also, fun!
http://members.iracing.com/jforum/posts/list/1716968.page

Quote :

http://twitter.com/#!/iRacing/statuses/103906221635026944

that plus sign just killed all my hopes for this season...

Okay last one for tonight. Reading up on the old court battle iRacing went through before its actual creation. I remember when this happened. I wasn't a huge fan of what was "First Racing" at the time. The attacked US Pits, one of my favorite websites.

http://members.iracing.com/jforum/posts/list/1715170.page
http://www.business-litigation-associates.com/iRacing.pdf
http://web.archive.org/web/200 ... ur.net/viewtopic.php?t=52

Quote from JasonJ :

http://members.iracing.com/jfo ... t/75/1712965.page#3684408



Mind you it's hard to follow news when it's lost in that hopeless offtopic forum.

Thanks Jason.. It seems the next WC Spa race will still be with the OTM. It would have been nice to make a comparison with the february race.

Quote from PMD9409 :

Okay last one for tonight. Reading up on the old court battle iRacing went through before its actual creation. I remember when this happened. I wasn't a huge fan of what was "First Racing" at the time. The attacked US Pits, one of my favorite websites.

http://members.iracing.com/jforum/posts/list/1715170.page
http://www.business-litigation-associates.com/iRacing.pdf
http://web.archive.org/web/200 ... ur.net/viewtopic.php?t=52

Quote from TMcArthur :

John Henry has been refering to Tim R and myself as "dumb and dumber" in the First-Racing.net Beta Testing Forums.

While calling himself the "Minister of Change" in those same forums.

I thought this was humorous enough to share

haha

There is so much to read in those articles and that forum.

If you don't know who Tim is btw, he owns Race2Play.

Looks like nothing new.... I was expecting to finally find out what the verdict was in Tim's case...

Quote :

Adding more than 3 cars to mixed class racing is being worked on as well.

:doh:
wth they dont even mention fixing the owning all content problem, then they go & invent another thing to work on which not only doesn't need doing, is the complete opposite of what they said they would do. Absolute bullsh1t!!

Could someone quote what Tony said in the "Please fix the multi-class issue" thread. He basically goes around saying what people want to hear just to keep everyone happy.

Tony G you stink more than muck on my fields.

As they said before, they will take care of it when the driver swaps are finished. The problem with owning all cars lays deep in program architecture and only the guys that are currently working on the swaps know that code segments. At least that's their official response to that.

edit: Montreal track was supposed to be scanned this week but Montreal city killed it.

Thread: http://members.iracing.com/jforum/posts/list/1148006.page

Quote :

If we could snap our fingers and have it so you don't need to buy the other cars in mixed class racing we would do so in a heartbeat but it is a substantial development project. We are not trying to "extort" money out of people. That makes no sense to me. We want long term happy customers. Problem is in extremely simplistic terms is that our underlying engine built for iRacing well before we opened the doors in 2008, did not contemplate mixed class racing and being able to deal with racing against cars that have not been downloaded. We could have held mixed class racing back and not released it last year until we reengineered the architecture to address this but figured for the people that really wanted to do it would be able to mixed class race.

We have large pockets of people, thousands even who want things. We have decisions to make. We care about every member but even 1,000 people wanting a feature is still only 3% of the membership. The choices are tough and we do the best we can. I promise you that we would like to have mixed class racing the way you want it and not have to own the other cars. We will make it this way and will try and get you a better idea of timing. Just so you know for example that doing this would completely replace the driver swap/endurance racing project in terms of timing, just an example of a choice, they both would not be worked on at the same time. Our plan was to do that and then come back to this. Both are very complicated and really only our system architecture engineer can efficiently do these type of projects. The software engineer working on driver aids who is tremendously talented cannot do this project let alone a software engineer off the street, FYI.


Keep in mind that because you want something more than anything else it does not make it the most important thing for us to work on for the good of the overall community. We don't always make the right choices on priorities and for that I apologize but if you think about it, our objective is pretty easy, just make the best product that we can for the most sim racers that we can.
There are literally hundreds of things for us to work on but hear you loud and clear you want this done and so do we.

I sincerely apologize for the delay and thank you for your patience.

Good Racig


Tony

This took 9 months to get an answer from, but it isn't like the staff didn't know about the thread before. Shannon responded a few days after the thread was created just to say "Speculations, not facts" because some said it was more about the money.

Why the hell can't they just let a car be downloaded but only used if it shows that it's been purchased - using their current online authentication?

Dude - Dynamic HTML selection form is hard thing to codez.....

I think iRacing has many fundamental problems with their engine which are now becoming a severe limitation on the sim. Seems like the whole engine was copied from NASCAR 2003 and they are severely limited by the amount of detail the engine can produce, since it was made for relatively small tracks: ovals. Long Beach has been scanned for ages but can't be finished because the track would be impossible to handle for any PC. Suzuka and Spa are already pushing the engine to the max and so much time is lost on optimising instead of doing other neat things with the (graphical) development of the sim...

The multiclass issues are just another example of clunky design really.

Quote from Jertje :

I think iRacing has many fundamental problems with their engine which are now becoming a severe limitation on the sim. Seems like the whole engine was copied from NASCAR 2003 and they are severely limited by the amount of detail the engine can produce, since it was made for relatively small tracks: ovals. Long Beach has been scanned for ages but can't be finished because the track would be impossible to handle for any PC. Suzuka and Spa are already pushing the engine to the max and so much time is lost on optimising instead of doing other neat things with the (graphical) development of the sim...

The multiclass issues are just another example of clunky design really.

Yeah. And some pretty everyday tire physics features were apparently postponed (and still are) because it was no use to develop them (flatspots, tire dirt, visible tire deformation etc.) for the old tire model when the new one was in the works. And now with the new tire model it's even more basic.

It is kind of funny as using the old code should speed up the process but in iracing's case it seems to slow them down. Of course it needs to be said in their defense that their approach has made things a bit more complex. Their replay system for example which shows all replays ever driven with official versions despite the fact that counting all cars and tracks there have been hundreds of variable size physics patches. That alone must slow their ntm patches too.

In my opinion though I don't see the car buying for multiclass a really big deal. It is annoying but if it is hard to fix I'm just glad they work on some more important things first.

I'm not really complaining about the speed of their development. Compared to some other sims they are going at lightspeed. But the attitude and their way of dealing with the latest issue which is the serious delay of all things of iracing 2.0 is just...sad.

I would have thought they had the balls to say that why and what they wanted to release with the ntm and then explain why the tire wear and tire pressures for example do not work. Or even awknoledge those clear issues instead. Then clearly post that on the forum instead of giving the random "our work is tough" excuse in the middle of some random hard to find thread on their shitty forum where you can't find even your dick even if you were writing one handedly while holding it on the other hand.

I said years ago that their engine is too restrictive for their own good... Every obstacle they now face is a direct result of not thinking long-term when they started the project...

Remember what hassle it was to get hosted and spectating? And it'll only get worse: how feasible are weather and day/night-transition when the current engine coughs with a few dynamic shadows?

It would probably be easier (and faster) for them to start from scratch than trying to tack on ever more things the original engine wasn't meant to do...

Quote from Ball Bearing Turbo :

Why the hell can't they just let a car be downloaded but only used if it shows that it's been purchased - using their current online authentication?

The only thing stopping you from using content that you have on your computer, say from someone else's account, is the website - it should be quite simple, either create a MC licence for $1 or something, or just do "if(car_not_bought){open sim, but don't allow you to drive that car;}"

On a unrelated note: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVkjjJzmDKk

As for their forum, it's the biggest pile of shite ever. Apparently every time they edit a staff post, all of the staff posts then appear on the recent posts page... not to mention is shite search function, lack of moderation and general idiots in there.

Quote from Ball Bearing Turbo :

Why the hell can't they just let a car be downloaded but only used if it shows that it's been purchased - using their current online authentication?

Actually, they already do. Download the content from a friends account, try it, and then go back to your account. Notice it is on your PC, yet you can't drive it. Funny how that already works.

Quote from Jertje :

I think iRacing has many fundamental problems with their engine which are now becoming a severe limitation on the sim. Seems like the whole engine was copied from NASCAR 2003 and they are severely limited by the amount of detail the engine can produce, since it was made for relatively small tracks: ovals. Long Beach has been scanned for ages but can't be finished because the track would be impossible to handle for any PC. Suzuka and Spa are already pushing the engine to the max and so much time is lost on optimising instead of doing other neat things with the (graphical) development of the sim...

The multiclass issues are just another example of clunky design really.

But but but, they rewrote the whole NR2003 code! :rolleyes:

Quote from Hyperactive :

Yeah. And some pretty everyday tire physics features were apparently postponed (and still are) because it was no use to develop them (flatspots, tire dirt, visible tire deformation etc.) for the old tire model when the new one was in the works. And now with the new tire model it's even more basic.

Isn't that quite funny? I understand they wanted to go from a spreadsheet sim to a live tire model, but what's with losing basic knowledge in tires? Pressures make no sense anymore. Temps are important, but not correct. And don't even get me started with tire wear.

Quote :

In my opinion though I don't see the car buying for multiclass a really big deal. It is annoying but if it is hard to fix I'm just glad they work on some more important things first.

Well, it isn't a big deal until someone with not much money to toss around has issues getting cars. Sure it is "only another $25" but it all adds up in the end. People have been going on about it since October of last year, so it's already been pushed to the side quite a bit.

Plus it is basically already there. Download content using someone's account. You can drive it on their's, but you can't on yours.

Quote :

I'm not really complaining about the speed of their development. Compared to some other sims they are going at lightspeed. But the attitude and their way of dealing with the latest issue which is the serious delay of all things of iracing 2.0 is just...sad.

They release things at a decent pace, but their attitude mixed with what they are actually releasing isn't appealing at all.

Quote :

I would have thought they had the balls to say that why and what they wanted to release with the ntm and then explain why the tire wear and tire pressures for example do not work. Or even awknoledge those clear issues instead. Then clearly post that on the forum instead of giving the random "our work is tough" excuse in the middle of some random hard to find thread on their shitty forum where you can't find even your dick even if you were writing one handedly while holding it on the other hand.

Not a chance. There are a business that looks at responses in a "PR" way. Tony seems to be their PR guy recently, back in the day it was a bit different. Annoying though how he never brings up the current issues, and instead says how "our talented technical staff" is finding stuff...

Quote from bbman :

It would probably be easier (and faster) for them to start from scratch than trying to tack on ever more things the original engine wasn't meant to do...

You mean like what LFS is doing?

Quote from boothy :

The only thing stopping you from using content that you have on your computer, say from someone else's account, is the website - it should be quite simple, either create a MC licence for $1 or something, or just do "if(car_not_bought){open sim, but don't allow you to drive that car;}"

Correct. It's almost like we've already tried it before.

Quote :

On a unrelated note: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVkjjJzmDKk

As for their forum, it's the biggest pile of shite ever. Apparently ever time they edit a staff post, all of the staff posts then appear on the recent posts page... not to mention is shite search function, lack of moderation and general idiots in there.

Awesome video, and yes, their forum is something to feel very bad about.

Well,

....

When I first saw and experienced what was happening at iRacing I was really into it because of their vision, and the enticing amount of resources poured into it.

In my head I kind of envision "Scawen with some millions behind his passion".

Don't you agree that that would be bliss? I mean here we have had a visionary (an abundantly intelligent one) making a great, physically based sim for damn near a decade now. He had a couple buddies that could contribute things.

On the other side, you have a very talented pioneer of old tech in this same niche, who probably has the same passion or close to it but started a little earlier with older tech. Except he didn't develop any further until 2008 when someone threw insane amounts of the green his way.

As has already been said, using NR2003 code for a 2008+ product (and that 2003 code already being depricated, severly so at the time even) was a massive, massive mistake. I don't even understand how that was allowed to happen unless there was dollar signs in the eyes of those involved.

Running LFS, playing with LFSTweak etc in the past shows just how logically and physically LFS calculates everything and I'd taken it for granted that ANYONE worth their salt would have the same approach. Basic physics has basic laws that any physical modelling engine should adhere to, and to departed from or "fudge" those things is a pretty strange, embarassing circumstance to be willing to subject yourself to with an audience as critical as the sim-racing audience. Sure there are nitwits here like anywhere but by and large and almost by definition sim-racers are looking for something very specific and difficult to generate. I've pumped some dough into iRacing the last few years because I believed that they had the ability, passion, resources, and combined brainpower to achieve something amazing. I've given them reasonable doubt for a year, and this is the first year I will be pulling my contribution from their financial books.

I feel a little naive for all this, but that's how it goes. this is just an entertainment product and I enjoyed it a lot but if LFS ever gets revived it STILL has a number of advantages. It's clear iRacing now has no idea what those are, and Scawen still has better physical model with more features, and more believable behaviour over a wider ranger of circumstances. Which is both sad, and amazing, but that's what it is.

Genre is a bit of a joke isn't it?

About time you see the light!

I wouldn't say that lfs has more physics features or just features. Tbh I have no idea how someone could even say that...

I mean, here's just short list of things that are missing from lfs and are in iracing: ground effects and ground clearence and rake having an effect on df, setup options based on real values and limited by real values and car type, tracks that are trillions and trillions times better in every way than anything in lfs, many more different type of race series and cars, bumpstops, replays that work even if physics have changed, event result .csv exporter, sucky forum, driving school videos, night racing, much much complex aero as a whole, spotter, multicore support, a TON more realistic setup options like arb preload, live rear axle, asymmetric setups, voice chat, better replay controls, delta timing so you can compare your lap times to your optimals when live.. There's the document on iracing forum (if you can find it ) where 3 years of updates are listed... I could keep going listing stuff forever.

Lfs has good crash physics, visible tire deformation, skin sharing, flatspots, great forum with good mods, autocross editor, driving tests, sound system using really short sounds making all cars sound crap.

Both sims are very reliable and crash rarely. Due to their nature the online experience is different in many ways though. Many features are in both.

But to say lfs has more features is just not true. Lfs has still some ground breaking features but having few features the competition does not have does not make it have more.

If I had millions to spend on a racing sim I'd buy nkpro. There's imho a sim that with proper funding and someone else making the schedules than kunos could show iracing how it is done. All it needs is tons of bug fixing, aero updates and some extra content and it is a killer. Then add stock cars and ovals and the muricans run in through the windows with their credit cards in their hands.

Or buy racing legends and never be heard of again.

I don't think the genre is joke either. Maybe it was in 2005-2006 when lfs was the only real sim. Not because lfs was bad. It wasn't! But the competition was. I mean a 3 man team working in sheds across the europe is the first one out with new online business model and a good racing sim. Looking at what lfs was then and what the competition was I think sim racing maybe was a joke then. But today? No.