Text Chat Macros - can't believe it has taken them this long to implement what LFS has had from beginning!

Looking forward to trying NTM updates, New Steering Model and flexible drivetrain updates.

And the Ford GT has had a total overhaul of physics (must be my birthday is all I can say )

Interlagos

Old thread : https://www.lfsforum.net/showthread.php?t=37853


Website:

　

Hosted/Leagues/Tournaments

- The number of cars that can be used in a hosted, league or Tournament multi-car session has been changed from 3 to 4. The frame rate and performance in a session with this many cars will depend upon your pc and hardware.

- You no longer need to own all of the cars in a hosted multi-car session to participate. You now only need to own the Track where the event is being held and one of the Cars in the session. You will only be able to drive in a car that you own and you still must meet all of the other criteria of the session. You will need to download the cars you do not own. This update applies to Hosted, League and Tournament sessions

- Please Note: The "League Sessions" page and the "Hosted Racing - Join a Race" page are the only places on the site that support this functionality at this time. We are still working hard on implementing this functionality for helmet pop-ups and the "Spectator Sessions" area of the site.

　

Downloads

- The downloads page has been updated to support the downloading of cars that you have not purchased, that may be required to participate in a multi-car hosted events where you only own one of the cars. Cars that you do not own, that you do not have installed on your machine will appear in a new section of the download page call "Optional Unowned".

　

New Awards

Nine new awards have been added.

- Young Star - win official races in four different cars

- Honorable - win official races in eight different cars

- The Feared - win official races in sixteen different cars

- The Alien - win official races in all cars

- Runnin' Down a Dream - win official races on four different tracks

- On the Road Again - win official races on eight different tracks

- The Long and Winding Road - win official races on sixteen different tracks

- I've Been Everywhere - win official races on all tracks

- Photo Finish - win an official race with a margin of one twentieth of a second or less; this award is not granted retroactively

　

License Banner Update

The License Banner has been completely redesigned for clarity and visibility.

- The color of your license will change to reflect your License Level.

- You can toggle between road and oval licenses by clicking "Road" or "Oval" in the top -left area.

- You can toggle between iRating and ttRating by clicking "iRating" or "ttRating" below your name.

- Calendar, MPR and Credit maintain their existing functions, but have been restyled.

- Ping has been moved to the sub-navigation next to "Support".

　

Payments with PayPal Billing Agreements

** This section is awaiting a configuration change from our payment partner - we expect within the week.

- The iRacing Member's site now supports PayPal Billing Agreements. Once you have a billing agreement in place you can renew your account automatically, purchase content and recharge your account without logging into the PayPal site. A billing agreement is setup automatically whenever a member purchases a subscription using PayPal. You can also configure a billing agreement without purchasing a subscription by going to the "My Account" page on the Member's site (look for the link inside the "PayPal Billing Option" section of the page).

- From the "My Account" page you can remove an existing billing agreement (look for the link inside the "PayPal Billing Option" section of the page).

- If you have both a PayPal Billing Agreement and a credit card on file you should visit the "My Account" page and select your preferred payment method for auto-renewals and instant recharges. The link for this is located in the "Billing & Shipping Information" section of the page.

- Additional enhancements to this page are links to remove your credit card on file and to cancel auto-renewal (this was moved from the Cancel / Renew Membership page).

　

The following areas of the site have had a visual redesign

- "My Account"

- "Account Recharge"

- "Gift Card"

- "Promotions"

　

Bug Fixes

- Spotter passwords can no longer be blank. You must uncheck "Require a spotter password" if you decide not to have a password.

　

　

　

Simulation:

　

Tilt / Touch Driving

- Added tilt sensor support to the existing touch driving controls. Now you can choose to use a tilt sensor to control steering or gas/brake or both. The sensor auto calibrates based on your device orientation at startup, but there is a 'recenter' button on the driving screen (also mapped to the 'y' key) that will let you change your orientation at any time. The tilt sensitivity can be adjusted in the black box along with the FFB sensitivity and touch sensitivity. And the throttle and brake can be inverted with an option in the setting tab.

- Fixed a bug in touch that caused touch up events to get lost if you released your finger over another control.

　

Text Chat Macros

- Added in an 'auto chat' feature that lets users hit 10 different hotkeys to auto transmit a chat message. By default the keys are mapped to the 0-9 keys above your keyboard, but that can be remapped as needed. The default messages can also be edited in the sound settings tab. Adding a '$' symbol to the end of a line will automatically send the chat message for you, without it the message will be left waiting for you to edit or send as you wish.

　

Spectating

- No longer report connecting admins as being admins, or show Join/Leave announcements for spectators that are admins.

- Spectators don't need to do tech inspections in a fixed setup session.

　

Options

- Gray out driving controls and aids that are not used in the current session. But still let the user set their preferences for future sessions. This includes indicating if the h-pattern shifter will be active or not, based on your car type.

- Remove a lot of text from the controls page and push it into mouse over tool tips in order to improve visual clutter.

　

Spotting

- Change to not do tech inspections on spotters' machines.

- When you use the [Start Spotting] button, you will now see the live action, instead of the slightly delayed replay tape. You can still use the replay controls to rewind and review action from the past. To get back to the live action, use the "fast forward to end" button (>>|), or simply fast forward and the replay will stop and switch to live action when the end of the tape is reached. While spotting, you can tell that you're seeing the live action when the playback state says "Live".

　

Camera Tool

- Allow the camera tool hotkey to be remapped (ctrl-f12) to provide better compatibility with laptops and Mac devices.

- Fixed a bug where you could not edit the camera shot aim type if your custom camera file ended in 'track.cam'

　

Telemetry

- Add lap information to telemetry. (LapBestLap, LapBestLapTime, LapCurrentLapTime, LapLastLapTime)

- Add delta time information to telemetry. (LapDeltaToBestLap, LapDeltaToBestLap_DD, LapDeltaToBestLap_OK, LapDeltaToOptimalLap, LapDeltaToOptimalLap_DD, LapDeltaToOptimalLap_OK, LapDeltaToSessionBestLap, LapDeltaToSessionBestLap_DD, LapDeltaToSessionBestLap_OK, LapDeltaToSessionOptimalLap, LapDeltaToSessionOptimalLap_DD, LapDeltaToSessionOptimalLap_OK)

- Add radio channel information to telemetry, see the "RadioInfo:" section in the session string, and RadioTransmitCarIdx in the telemetry data.

- Add pit service time to telemetry. (PitRepairLeft, PitOptRepairLeft)

　

Race Control

- Qualifying laps will now be invalidated if any 0x or 2x car contact occurs during the lap.

- Many non-significant race control rules are no longer active once you finish your race. This could confusingly penalize people after they finished their race and cause their finishing position to drop as the post-race penalty was applied.

　

Graphics

- We have updated how we draw extra track surface details so they conform correctly to the road surface better and render more efficiently. This gets rid of our good old "floating skid marks" that we've come to know and love/hate.

- As part of the track detail improvements the race track’s surface is now always converted into a set of static meshes and stored in video memory. The old option to convert it on the fly, which had the benefit of utilizing slightly less video memory at the cost of performance, has been removed from the graphics options screen.

- Every car has had its paint adjusted to improve how paint will reflect more at low incident angles than when directly facing the viewer.

- Windshield glare at night is much reduced down to a reasonable level.

- Fixed a bug that was preventing the brake rotor glow effect from being visible.

- The sim can now reload custom car textures with the ctrl-r hotkey. This is useful if you like painting your own cars by being able to quickly load and see your work in progress paint scheme without having to reload the sim many times. When reloading is triggered, all of the existing paint jobs are immediately unloaded and will default to white. They will then begin automatically reloading one at a time. Reloading happens in the background. If the loading causes performance issues while you are driving on track you may disable from loading while you are in car via the "LoadTexturesWhenDriving" setting in the renderer.ini configuration file.

- Also, it is possible for an external application such as Trading Paints to tell the sim to reload car textures by sending irsdk_BroadcastReloadTextures using the SDK.

- Shut off the auto rotate display feature in Windows 8, and force orientation to landscape. Use app.ini [Graphics] displayRotateMode=1 to override the default screen orientation.

　

Sponsors

- DSD and Lionel Racing sponsors added.

　

Sound

- Cold brakes now squeal until they warm up, unless the car has carbon brakes, which don't squeal. Note: the sim still does not model any brake performance changes with temperature at this time.

- Engine sound power now continues to get louder as rpm nears max.

- Fixed a bug in the opponent cars that would make them sound like they were driving around at full throttle even while coasting or hard braking.

　

Flexible Drivetrains

- All cars now have flex modeled in their drivetrain math, instead of being perfectly rigid. This gives all kinds of subtle and interesting audible and physical engine rpm wobble effects. Note: our model of the detroit locker differential that many of the oval cars use can cause some pretty rough sounding off throttle rpm bouncing as the locker and drivetrain get into a oscillation as the locker clatters between driving the left or right wheels. We're looking into that.

　

New Tire Model

- There have been improvements to the modeling of the tire carcass motion, which improves the handling on all the cars. All our NTM cars feel much better with this tire model update, and have had some amount (anywhere from a little to a lot) of re-tuning, so even if a car doesn't have its own release note does not mean that you shouldn't try it out to find out how it drives now!

- Tweak skid widths, smoke and skid amounts.

　

New Steering Model

- All the cars have better constrained steering systems to go with the tire carcass improvements, giving more precise feel.

　

Drafting

- Road course and oval drafting have been reworked to improve the racing experience.

　

Chevrolet Impala

- New rules limit track bar split left to right to a maximum of 3" at all tracks.

- Right rear underbody collision surfaces have been lowered to hit the ground after the proper amount of compression.

　

Chevrolet Impala Class B

- New rules limit track bar split left to right to a maximum of 3" at all tracks.

　

Chevrolet Monte Carlo SS

- Fixed cockpit view windshield duplication when the car was damaged which caused double darkening and reflection issues.

　

Chevrolet National Impala

- New rules limit track bar split left to right to a maximum of 3" at all tracks.

　

Chevrolet Silverado

- New rules limit track bar split left to right to a maximum of 3" at all tracks.

- Right rear underbody collision surfaces have been lowered to hit the ground after the proper amount of compression.

- Logitech sponsorship on the windshield has been removed.

　

Ford GT

- This car has had a physics overhaul to improve how it drives.

　

Ford Falcon V8 Supercar

- Added new exterior engine sounds that better capture listening at a distance. The previous exterior sounds are now only for the on-car sounds.

　

Mazda MX-5 Cup and Roadster

- Nvidia sponsorship has been removed.

　

McLaren MP4-12C GT3

- In-car ABS controls are now available to be assigned, in addition to the usual black box method of adjustment.

- Updated the rpm mapping for Logitech G27 shift lights.

　

Radical SR8

- Updated the rpm mapping for Logitech G27 shift lights.

　

Autódromo José Carlos Pace

- This classic Brazilian race track, also known by its former name Interlagos, is now available!

　

Bristol Motor Speedway

- Update GPS position. It was off by 10 meters or so, and had been 30 meters too low.

　

Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps

- Improved the Endurance configuration surface types near La Source to try and avoid accidental black flags.

　

Lime Rock Park

- The first pit stall has been moved back one to make it easier to exit the pits past the armco wall.

　

Oran Park Raceway

- Added a checkpoint so turns 7-10 can no longer be shortcut.

- North B pit lane speed reduced to 20mph to make it so that driving through the pit lane takes more time than staying out on track.

　

Sebring International Raceway

- New track surface shaders have been added.

　

Virginia International Raceway

- The last 10 pit stalls have been moved away from the pit wall to make pitting easier.

This message was edited 1 time(s). Last update was at 1/25/2013 9:28 p.m.

You can download now

Quote from menantoll :

One of the things that really annoys me about them. Unless you are reading all threads on the forum or have all staff on your watch list you are likely to miss a fair few posts which can contain important information to you.

You might find the following website useful then

http://iracerstuff.com/

Bezels are a bit like glasses bugs the hell out of your the first time you use them but you soon forget about them

The V8SC on the OTM is not close to real life at all - Scott and Shane have both said so and it is obvious even without their input as evidenced by the required rally style driving to be fast.

I believe that Shane is happy with the progress of the NTM on the V8SC but I only know that third hand.

It's still a fun car as is though and was my favourite up until the Ford GT came out. The latest version of the NTM on the Ford GT is sublime

A sim doesn't have to be all that accurate to be useful as the human brain has an amazing capacity to effortlessly fill in the gaps. If that were not true why would a driver waste their time visualising a lap prior to going out and doing a qualify run.

100% accuracy doesn't matter creating strong muscle memory interactions does and that doesn't have to be all by physical laps on a track it can be by visulisation or other techniques.

Although sims have a way to go and will not likely reach the level of realism I'd like to see any time soon I don't think they are all that far away from being a valuable tool to a professional driver and I can see it as being a more interactive version of visulisation in the not too distant future if not already.

I've tried the NTM1.1 on the following:
Ford GT, Corvette, SRF, MX5 Cup and MX5 Roadster.

I am pretty impressed with the NTM so far, and think it is a big step forward! (from a roadies perspective)

There is still known issues such as the tyres do need to be run with higher pressures than real wolrd setup (although this has been improved greatly over the last version) so that might be why the FFB feels more dead to some

On the NTM I run about 30-40% more FFB as well, what level are u guys running your FFB?

Quote from Gnomie :

Is there any way of telling whether iRacing is making money? In my country (Norway) all registered companies have to disclose all such information, and it's readily available on the internet for anyone to see. Is there a similar system in the US?

(Something tells me the answer is 'no'..)

That wouldn't be of any help! The World economy is in a mess because it has been all too easy for companies to have their financial statement read any way they wish

Just make all Open Practise sessions to be multiple short races! That way you can join mid session or jump out when you have had enough, hmm that would just be like LFS then and lets face it there is probably no better format for pick up racing

Unfortunately there is no magic bullet that I've found.

If you are the type that likes to learn then don't be afraid to read even stuff that is out of your depth as eventually you will refer back to it and it will make sense just don't get to hung up about it the first time you read it.

There is no quick way to become proficient at anything in life including sim racing. You need to dedicate time over a long period to learning and training.

The best way to learn is read some stuff try apply it and then re-read the stuff and assess what you have learned. Read some more stuff and repeat After some time review all that you have read and learned on track and then read some new stuff!

If you have specific questions about the stuff your reading or what is happening on track then post here and I'm sure someone will be able to answer or help you understand better.

The more specific you are with your questions the more helpful people will be, best of luck in your quest

The diffs needs to be set up the same for a good comparision. Preferably as tight (most locking power) as possible and preload at 0 as that is when the effect is worst.

I recall having all sorts of problems trying to drive the XRR with the clutch pack before I learnt how to set it up properly especially in slow speed corners so the effect is not new I recall most using the locked diff because of this situation. But with the diff setup nicely for the combo the XRR was pure driving pleasure with the clutchpack.

My personal view is that with a tight diff (which is what you want for fast lap times and the default sets have) the GT would be a real bitch in low speed corners and will always require a long gentle throttle aplication out of hairpins. This is made worse by the fact that most drivers like a very pointy set which amplifies the situtaion (not a problem with the default sets but is for most 'fast' sets).

I don't have a problem with the car spinning I think that is realistic and only happens when I'm pushing too hard (talking about Suzuka hairpin) I do think the way the car spins though is a little odd as the yaw angle seems to accelerate which does make it harder to catch slides (but not impossible)

At the moment if I overdrive it by a small margine I can recover it, sometimes even from tank slapper status, but if I overdrive it slightly more it just goes around on me and in that situation when it does it will be at least a 270deg spin.

I think a lot of the frustration people have with the GT is that they aren't able to get the diff setup so they are comfortable with the car and/or they don't have a working knowledge of how the clutch pack LSD diff will behave under different conditions and therefore drive the car inappropriately.

@Hyperactive - I believe that LFS throttle response has not been linear for some time? Wasn't it changed around the time Scawen released a major drive line overhaul some time back? With fly wheel inertia and implementation of different diffs, thats my recolection anyway but it's been a while so my memory could be off

Quote from BlueFlame :

The cost of this game per year it's close to being MORE than the cost of running a nitro car at a local RC track per year, and WAY more than the running cost of an electric car over the space of THREE years.

You have to evaluate if it is worth it for you and if not don't buy it like any other product

I personally can see some value if I were racing Nitro road RC or something similar, when you consider all the costs including wear n tear, event fees, travel, preperation time, etc. But I can certainly see it wouldn't be for everyone. In a quick browse around RC forums here in Australia I see that a tight budget is $50 per race weekend and could easly be double that.

If I wanted to run 1/8 nitro road though my nearest track is 200km away so my travel costs alone would be $50 a weekend! Sucks to be so remote sometimes, one reason race sims are so attractive, you have access to many tracks instantly 24/7.

The cost effectiveness is always going to depend on an individuals circumstances.

Quote from BlueFlame :

Lower the prices and you'll get a bigger increase in playerbase.

If they make it free they will have the biggest user base of all

Serriously though I'm sure that they have sat down and worked out pricing levels base upon target audience and what levels they predict/want to achieve for return on money.

This product is not tageting computer gamers as such but people that either are thinking of racing RC cars or are already racing RC cars at a serious level. In that case it is probably appropriately priced.

I'd certainly consider signing up if I was thinking of purchasing an RC car with the intent of competing at a serious level. And it has actually got me thinking along those lines when I have never considered it previously I already spend more time than I ought on iRacing though that I should be spending on building my business but hey life shouldn't be all work and no play!

Brings me to a question though Todd, on VRC 3 I see they sold a bundle which included a USB controller I don't see that offered on the info page of VRC Pro. Is it still available for VRC Pro as a package?

Quote from jtw62074 :

It's been a long six years, but we've finally got it ready and out to the public.

Congratulations m8 fantastic effort, wish you great success. I'm sure those serrious about RC racing will adopt it with enthusiasm!

Quote from Ball Bearing Turbo :

I didn't know that about the iRacing steering setup, I thought it worked like in LFS so that pisses me off

It does work like LFS if you leave it at 900 and calibrate it as instructed by iRacing, the thing is that many are having an issue with the 8:1 steering ratio and are forcing iRacing calibration to recognise higher steering ratios by not following iRacing procedure in calibrating their wheel!

Quote from PMD9409 :

Single seaters sure, but those big cars, I just don't feel that is accurate.

Seems like quite a bit of steering involved to me.

I use 16:1 in oval. I'm weird.

I am not an oval racer at all but I suspect higher ratios are more appropriate on an oval by their nature.

The other thing is that we don't know is that in iRacing they have replicated the steering ratio but have they replicated the power steering characteristics? They did adjust it last patch in iRacing, but it may be too linear where in the real car the power steering might be more progressive? Either way I don't have a dramatic difference in how much I turn the wheel compared to the video, a little yes but not light years away.

Quote from PMD9409 :

The thing is a bus, needs to!

I don't disagree but those sets aren't helpful for people just trying the car unless they are very accomplished drivers used to similar handling cars already.

A better balanced set is far easier to handle in the slow stuff and is a better starting point for the average driver. For me the extreme ARB sets do yield potentialy better lap times but I prefer the rear and front roll stiffness to be more balanced (default sets often go to the other extreme) and use other setup peramaters to achieve the results rather than rely on ARB too much. That way I get a car that feels very good and can still do decent lap times, although I'd never endanger any records

Quote from PMD9409 :

The steering ratio in the Ford GT is another thing wrong with it. Supposedly if you set it in between 450 and 540, it makes the steering less sensitive. At 900 it is ridiculously twitchy. Not sure how that makes sense but whatever. So him having less than 900 means it is actually less sensitive therefore the 45 degree steering input still plays a role.

Thats correct most people are forcing a higher steering ratio (say 12:1) instead of getting comforatble with the real cars steering ratio of 8:1 which imo isn't rediculously twitchy and is in fact an appropriate ratio for the car.

I use 10:1 and sometimes 8:1 on the V8SC as well, I have no idea why people like 12:1 and 14:1 so much

The other thing a see a lot of fast sets are running very hard rear stiffness and ultra soft front stiffness in combination with a tight diff which when put in the hands of someone learning the car or track is just LOL

Quote from CdnRacer :

No the motec and atlas read surface temps as was explained by dk.

I wasn't indicating that they don't read surface temps, I was indicating that atm it averages surface temps in a similar way that core temps are averaged and so has the same problems in how you read them

Quote from CdnRacer :

I hear ya. The temps I'm talking about though are surface temps I got from MoTec.

For what it's worth from what I understood the MoTec surface reading were also being averaged at least over 1/5 of the tyre for each sensor and did include the shoulders so would give similar readings methodology to the core garage temps until this situation is changed (not a high priority apparently).

@PMD9409 no argument from me about data sources, I think we all assumed he had a lot more real data to work with for each car than he does seem to have. The reality is that he is likely to have done extensive tests on a variety of tyres and does have some data to benchmark against but the rest remains educated guess work. We know at the very least that he has data downloads and info for the V8SC from the Giz so will be interesting to see how that pans out. It is also very evident that although he has developed a good solid base theoretical model in the NTM he has a hell of a long way to go before we are all were we thought we were going to be now

And it looks like I'll be retired old man before we have in a sim all the aspects I've dreamed about

Quote from CdnRacer :

No matter how much you lower the tire pressure on the impalla the middle of the tire is hotter than the edges on the right sides.

DK explained that at great length, you are assuming you are looking at spot core temps at 25%, 50% & 75% accross the tyre which is a reasonable assumption as thats how it is most often done, but the way that it is curretnly being measured is an average of the first 1/3, an average of the middle 1/3 and and average of the last 1/3.

These averages include the shoulders of the tyre and therfore the reported temps on the two outer are lower than what you would expect if you were doing 25%,50% & 75% spot checks.

DK said he will likely change this to be more like spot checks, but he also went into detail on how you can use the data in its current form to 'read' a setup which makes sense entirley and works when building sets. The same principles DK mentioned on reading the temps I have seen referenced in books such as Tune to Win so they are not new principles its just the data readings are in a slightly different form than most people are comfortable with.

Quote from cargame.nl :

I sense some frustration. Why bother?

As bad as it may seem if it wasn't for iRacing I'd very likely have dismantled my racing rig by now as it would have been a waste of space for the last two years

Finally a word on tyre pressures, it fits what we all assumed but why couldn’t they have admitted this in the release notes or the first few days?

Probably because we would speculate that other factors in the tyre model were severely fudged as well!

Well there strategy back fired as there has been intense analysis by the community and they have concluded that themselves anyway

Quote from Dygear :

I've been told this is true of diesel engines, where if you take them on the motorway and run them flat out for a few miles it has the effect of 'cleaning out the headers', making it run better. I've heard this from many diesel mechanics.

I have a diesel 10kva genset on the farm and the manual recommends running it under at least 80% load for best efficiency and to maintain engine health so mybe it is true for diesel cars also?

All you have to do to maintain better than average engine health is change the oil more often than recommended.

Modern engine/fuels burn a lot more effiecently than old cars did so the carbon build up is no way as near as big a problem as it used to be.

My dad religiously changed oil every 3 Months using a good quality cheap oil (doesn't have to be expensive). Whenever he did an engine rebuild on one of his cars it was like new on tear down even after fifteen years

Use only premium fuel and change your oil regularly and your engine will out last the car for normal everyday use. Good oil health = good engine health.

Interesting discussion here:

http://www.techsupportforum.co ... nge-frequency-114349.html

Driving your engine to its limits to 'clean' it is a myth imo it may have an effect but to say it is better than or replacement to good engine care is not a good idea. If you do a lot of city driving it can do it good to take it on a long country run but doesn't have to be driven at its limits, pushing an engine to its limits increases engine wear and may blow out a few cobwebs but that is only if the engine hasn't been cared for properly in the first place.