The online racing simulator
iRacing
(13603 posts, closed, started )
Quote from Flame CZE :You probably got lucky on the support person. I got this reply:

"No, unfortunately although numbers do get added automatically in our system if someone signs up with a duplicate name, we can not manually add numbers at the end of names."

Oh.. I never had a number added thankfully. "Cameron Corns" and that's all for me thankfully.
I will have as many numbers added to my surname until the existing membership will be inexpedient.
Glorious.
Nicely put togheter, made me giggle at "no GOD no, no, NO, NO! NooooooooOOOOOOO"
Want a 3 Months Free memebrship? (just put me as your referal)

First one to pm me can have it.
lolfest tonight
some screens




Quote :Several weeks ago I mentioned in the forums that we had spent a significant amount of engineering resources creating a 64-bit version of the iRacing simulator, and that it was about to enter alpha testing. Since then we have received a lot of questions and worries from customers regarding the impact of this conversion. We want to assure everyone that customers with 32-bit systems should not be alarmed. Hopefully this post will help put a lot of the questions to rest.

First of all, let me provide some motivation for why we tackled this complex and difficult conversion. Most PC’s these days feature amazing 64-bit processors, and they also ship with a lot more system memory (RAM) than they did just a few years ago. The percentage of iRacing customers with 64-bit processors and operating systems is rapidly increasing. While 32-bit applications often run fine on 64-bit processors, they run somewhat handicapped compared to native 64-bit applications:

- 64-bit applications can utilize more system RAM than 32-bit applications can utilize – a primary benefit of the extra bits (64 vs. 32) is that more memory may now be utilized by a single application (if it is 64-bit).

- 64-bit applications can talk directly to the native 64-bit operating system, rather than going through a 32-bit to 64-bit mode translation (and back again) for every interaction. So there is slightly less performance overhead when calling into lower level systems including Direct3D, DirectSound, and the windows kernel – which are already 64-bit if you have a 64-bit operating system and processor.

- 64-bit applications have access to about double the number of internal processor registers, which often speeds up programs by helping reduce the number of memory accesses required to perform a task. The extra registers also reduce the overhead of function calls through an improved register based calling convention.

- 64-bit applications have guaranteed access to most of the modern processor extensions that have accumulated in 32-bit processors over the years, but which were not always available on all 32-bit processors. This makes it easier and more cost effective to use these extensions for optimization purposes.

Given the above benefits, the number of customers with 64-bit systems, and the fact that our simulation and our race servers were already beginning to bump up against the 32-bit memory limitation, we realized it was just a matter of time until we would need to convert our simulation to run native 64-bit. Although we knew it was a large complex project given our code base, and that it would be accomplished by delaying other features, we felt it needed to be done, and it looked to us like the sooner the better. Fortunately, it actually went a bit quicker than expected. But, we still have a long way to go to unlock the full potential of modern 64-bit processors as time and priorities permit.



Now, on to the main reason for this post, which is to provide some information in response to some questions and worries we have been receiving:

- Customers with 32-bit systems should not be alarmed. In the future we may stop supporting the 32-bit version, but right now we have far too many customers with 32-bit systems to do anything like that. We would give plenty of advance notice if we were contemplating such a drastic change.

- The 64-bit version still needs to pass alpha and beta testing. There is a possibility we may need to delay its release if some major problem is identified. At this time it’s still looking pretty solid for release.

- If we do release the 64-bit version, it will automatically install for everyone along with the 32-bit version in the system package update. So all customers will automatically have both versions of the executable. At this time, all of the simulation data is identical and shared between the versions (cars, tracks, replays, etc.), so the overhead for the 64-bit is just a couple of extra executables residing in the iRacing install directory.

- We still have not worked out the final details of how each customer will select to run either the 32-bit or 64-bit version of the simulator. But, we have designed the service so that if a customer accidently selects the 64-bit version on a 32-bit platform nothing bad will happen. We will detect this error when the simulation is to be launched and the service will automatically fall back to the 32-bit version. One can’t pick the wrong thing and have it not work.

- We may decide to set it up so that by default everyone is set to run the 64-bit version, and to just fallback to the 32-bit version if they are on a 32-bit platform. But, if we do this, and a customer is encountering an issue with the 64-bit version, or they just like the 32-bit version better for some reason, there will be an option somewhere (possibly in the member site account settings) to allow a customer with a 64-bit system to force the service to launch the 32-bit version for them.

- At this time we don’t know of any racing advantages in one mode vs. the other, but we have identified that there can be small differences in ride heights in the garage with the same car setup, so we haven’t ruled out the possibility of some sort of advantage one way or the other. The 64-bit version uses different floating point instructions, different floating point precisions, and vastly different instruction sequences, so complex physics equations obtain results with different rounding errors in them between the two modes. It’s unavoidable.

- Currently there are no feature differences between the versions, except fmod sound support has been removed from the 64-bit version. We are planning to remove fmod as soon as possible from the 32-bit version as well, so this may no longer be a difference if/when 64-bit support is released.

- At this time, based on preliminary testing, it appears that the 64-bit versions runs about the same speed as the 32-bit version, as measured via frames per second, for many systems. We’ve yet to optimize specifically for x64 and some of the benefits of 64-bit are offset by 64-bit negatives. Nonetheless, a native 64-bit version of the simulation is in alpha testing, and seems to be performing quite well, at least on par with the 32-bit version.

http://members.iracing.com/jfo ... list/2055348.page#4789821
nice screenshots AVA!
Heya,

iRacing still good? Have just gotten that sim racing bug again and fancy getting back on iRacing.

Few questions though:

-Any referral bonus' anyone could get me?
-I used to love doing the unranked oval races that would rotate around 3-4 tracks, using the real beefy cars, do these still happen?
-What are the most populated series that UK times will permit? I remember trying to get into the Aussie V8's but no one in Europe raced them at normal times.

Thanks friends!
The Carb Cup still runs, which is the Nascar COT car on Charlotte, Daytona and Talladega. They are always busy.

It should be easy enough to get a race UK time in quite a lot of series. The Star Mazda is still very popular, the fixed HPD/Ford GT/C6R series is still very busy, and you can always get a race in the Indycar, either road or oval. The Aussie V8's got the NTM not long ago, and there is a European race organised, I think it's Sunday nights but you would have to check the forums.
-
(Mustangman759) DELETED by Mustangman759
Quote from DeKo :The Carb Cup still runs, which is the Nascar COT car on Charlotte, Daytona and Talladega. They are always busy.

It should be easy enough to get a race UK time in quite a lot of series. The Star Mazda is still very popular, the fixed HPD/Ford GT/C6R series is still very busy, and you can always get a race in the Indycar, either road or oval. The Aussie V8's got the NTM not long ago, and there is a European race organised, I think it's Sunday nights but you would have to check the forums.

Sounds awesome, thanks mate. Anything in the way of promotions right now?
just the content deal, and 3 months free for new users @ Cadillac cup
Only one I can really find for existing accounts is 2 years for 1, but that's a bit too long probably.
Ahh bugger, I guess I'll try and wait till there's a decent deal going since I don't even have a set of pedals right now!
Anyone know what's going on? membersite is down, forums are down, even iracing.com is down. It's not just me, http://www.downforeveryoneorjustme.com/iracing.com. My shitty website from 10 years ago running on a pentium 2 in my own house has more uptime than iracing.
All is up for me.
Seriously? that sucks, it's completely down for me and a lot of other people who have been posting on their facebook and twitter. Happily I signed up for a race right before the site went down, which now some people will be able to race, and some won't. Brilliant.
its down here
Honestly, not being over dramatic, but this is maybe the 10th time that the iracing service has completely collapsed in the last few weeks. Can anyone beat their terrible uptime record?
From the iRacing Facebook page

Quote :There are some DNS issues on the Internet. If you are trying to connect to the membersite and having issues, you can update your hosts file to direct members.iracing.com to 70.42.50.229. Be sure to back out this change once all DNS issues are resolved.

Further update via twitter

Quote :Our member website is hosted by @GoDaddy. GoDaddy and thousands of other websites are down while this situation is being resolved. More...

Quote from DeKo :Anyone know what's going on? membersite is down, forums are down, even iracing.com is down. It's not just me, http://www.downforeveryoneorjustme.com/iracing.com. My shitty website from 10 years ago running on a pentium 2 in my own house has more uptime than iracing.

That site is crap, I'm on the service right now and clicked that link and it still said the website is down.... Either that or the url path isn't quite correct.
This thread is closed

iRacing
(13603 posts, closed, started )
FGED GREDG RDFGDR GSFDG