07.23.2013 Release Notes

Website: Leagues Page Members – League admins can assign members a nick name – League admins can assign members a car number League Info – League admins can tag their leagues with keywords and other pre-set filter options under the Set League Filters button. This information allows members to find leagues through filtering and is a complement to finding leagues via name search. – Admins can create a comma-separated list of keywords from a drop-down or enter new keywords which will be saved for use on other leagues. The Save button needs to be clicked for keywords to take effect. – Keywords can be removed from the list, thereby, disassociating the league from those keywords. – Checked pre-set options are saved or removed immediately as the admin clicks on the checkboxes. This allows members who are filtering for leagues to see leagues in real-time as admins make their changes. League Directory – Next Page and Previous Page buttons are working. – A new Filters button was added. This brings up a form allowing members to search for leagues via pre-set filter options and keywords. This compliments the league name search option. – Members can create a comma-separated list of keywords from a drop-down and/or select from pre-set filter options. If filtering with keywords only, the member must click on the Done button to set the filter. – Clicking on the pre-set filter options immediately filters the list of leagues as options are selected/unselected. The list of keywords are automatically used in combination with the pre-set filter options. The filtering is persisted until the member clicks the Reset Filters button or clears cookies from the browser. This allows the member to view details of/join the filtered leagues without losing the filtered list, even through multiple sessions. Preferred Car Number – Has been changed to allow for three digits File a Protest Filing protests can now be accomplished by clicking “File Protest” in the header of the member site. Fill out the appropriate information, and submit. In some cases, you WILL have a time limit to get these protests into the system. You will be emailed a notice of receipt of the submission. These protests will be sent to the iRacing.com Appeals Board, and the appropriate measures will be taken to resolve them. This new system will help us utilize a more orderly way of resolving problems and issues, as well as keep you informed of the situation as it progresses. Downloading Software The page that allows you to download the iRacing software just got smarter. It will now offer an appropriate download option for the operating system you visit it with, as well as offer a choice of alternate download options, if that’s needed. The page has also been updated to be friendlier and easier to use. Check it out at http://members.iracing.com/download/member/noservice.jsp – At this time there is only the PC version of software available. The Mac version will be released in the next few weeks. Awards – Consistent Finish awards were added. These awards are given for finishing 2, 5, or 10 races at your own iRating or higher. There are awards for both road and oval, for a total of 6 new awards. These awards are not retroactive. Race Guide – Improved the performance of the Race Guide Full Grid Control for League Racing – When configuring league races you now have the option to configure the grid in advance rather than relying on a qualifier. To do so you should select the new league session type “Open practice + race”. The session is configured exactly the same as other sessions except you will now see a link to “Click here to configure your field and grid”. This session type is the only one that allows you to configure the grid because all of the other configurations either don’t have a race component or have a qualifier component that will determine the grid. – When you select “Open practice + race” you will see a “Click here to configure your field and grid” link. When you click on the link you will see the “League Session Grid Builder” user interface. – Similar to tournament session grids, configuring a league session grid is a 3 step process: Load drivers into the race field. You can load all league drivers, all league drivers who participated in a prior race in the same season, or individual league drivers selected from a list. Move drivers from the race field onto the grid. You can drag and drop drivers or use one of the grid algorithms to set the grid automatically. When loading drivers from a prior race the system will use that race’s finishing positions to determine a position for this race. Additional drivers will be slotted behind drivers who participated. Click Done to save the grid. As with tournament sessions you have the option to drag and drop racers on the grid. This gives you total flexibility to set the grid exactly as you want it. For example, let’s say you are using a sequential gridding algorithm to pull racers from your most recent league race. Let’s also say that one of the drivers did something and the league administrator has issued a penalty that the driver should start at the back of the field. After applying the sequential algorithm you can drag the driver from the top spot to the back of the field. It is possible to create the session without setting the grid. This should allow people to configure their entire season in advance and configure the grid prior to each race. If you don’t set a grid the session will allow any league drivers to enter and the grid will be set by iRating The grid is presented as a two-column list that supports dragging and dropping drivers to change their position in the grid. In oval-racing terms the left column is the inside lane and the right column is the outside lane. Each grid position is presented as a rectangle with the driver’s name. The current row and grid position of the driver is shown in a box to the left of drivers in the left column and to the right of drivers in the right column. A current limitation of the system is that there is no way to delete the grid. At the moment the only way to delete a grid after you have saved it is to cancel your session and recreate it. Simulation: Teams A prior build added the ability for your teammates to become your “crew chief” (though only one at any given time). Doing so allowed them to make “black box” changes to request adjustments at the next pit stop. This build introduces the ability for your teammates to help out with setting up your car in the garage. Apply whatever term fits your mental model for this; possibly “head mechanic”, though internally we call this person the “garage editor”. As with the crew chief, any of your teammates can take-on and give-up the garage editor role at will, but only one person may claim that role at any given time. You can envision visiting the garage screen as picking up a clipboard that has the team’s setup sheet on it. In order to make any changes, you need to request that you become the team’s “garage editor”, and that the team’s car be physically put into the garage, where the mechanics can flail away at it with tools, and the effects of any updates can be measured. You do this by clicking the green “edit” icon near the upper-right corner of the garage screen. If you are the only person on your team that is connected to the session, the “edit” button is automatically clicked for you. If the icon is gray, then the car is forbidden from being placed into the garage (generally after a race session starts). While the car is in the garage, the [Drive] button on the session screen will be disabled, and will be shown as [Garage], instead. The helmet and name of the person that is adjusting the car is displayed on the garage screen to all the team’s members. All of the teammates can see the changes the garage editor is making to the car’s setup each time the setup finishes “tech inspection”. Many changes tech quickly and are automatically sent, but some require the [Apply] button to be clicked, or for the [Apply] to be automatically executed. All changes to the team’s car setup are tentative, and will only be committed when the garage editor clicks the garage screen’s [Done] button. Clicking on this button relinquishes the garage editor role, and physically releases the team’s car from the garage with the latest changes applied to it. The garage editor can discard any changes they’ve made and revert to the team’s car as it entered the garage by clicking [Cancel], the “edit” icon, or [X] to close the garage screen, and then confirming that the changes are to be thrown away. Discarding the changes from having clicked the “edit” icon or the [X] will also give up the garage editor role. The garage editor has access to all of the car setups that iRacing includes, any setups they have stored locally, and any setups that have been “shared” by other users in the session. They do not have access to setups stored on the disks of other team members. If a particular member of your team has a setup you wish to use, let them become the garage editor so that they can load it, and then hit [Done] to apply it to the team’s car. Any other team member can then make additional changes to that setup. No one on the team will be allowed into the garage screen until the team has a car setup. When the team’s driver first connects to the session, their last-used setup is loaded and applied as the team’s car setup (unless this is a fixed-setup race, in which case the appropriate fixed setup is used, instead). To prevent the loss of any changes you might be making to the car’s setup near the end of a session, you can continue to edit your team’s setup across session transitions (for example from practice to qualify, or qualify to race). Except in fixed-setup sessions, where your garage editor status is revoked, and the “preferred” or “mandated” setup for the session is forced onto the car. The garage editor can exit the garage with a setup that fails tech inspection, but the driver will not be allowed into the car until the setup is modified so that it passes tech. Collidable Cones – All cones at all tracks are now collidable. Reflap Car – The Splits/Delta system has been expanded to be able to show a transparent car representing your currently selected reference lap. We call this a Reflap Car. – By default the Tab key cycles through the modes, including Off. The key can be remapped in the Options screen. First time into the sim we default the Reflap car to being on. There are 6 reference lap modes: Off All-time Best Lap – Your fastest lap ever recorded All-time Optimal Sector – your fastest sectors even if they were not part of the same lap Session Best Lap – best lap this session Session Optimal Sector Session Last Lap – the last lap you drove – The Splits/Deltas function in all modes, but the Reflap car is only viewable in Testing or Time-trial events. – The UI will hide itself as you enter the grid to start a race, but tapping the Tab key will make the UI visible again. – The transparency of the Reflap car is adjustable via an app.ini setting: [Graphics] reflapCarTransp=0.350000 ; Set level of transparency for reference lap car. – There is a hotkey to toggle the display of the ReflapCar, the default keypress is ctrl-c. – There is a Reflap car button in the delta time window, that if clicked toggles the Reflap car. Weather – You can now control some weather parameters for Hosted sessions and off-line Testing. There is no rain. – Temperature, from 65°F to 90°F – Humidity, from 0% to 100%. – Humidity is combined with fog – continuing up past 100%RH, you can select a fog level from 1% (light fog) to 100% (heavy fog). Note that the maximum fogginess level is far beyond what any race organizer would consider to be “safe” conditions under which to race – especially at a fast race track. You should experiment with your desired fog level in testing sessions before creating a hosted session using such conditions. 25% is probably a good real-world safe level of fog in which to race. – Wind speed, from 0MPH to 30MPH – Wind direction, specified as “from which direction is the wind blowing?”, with 8 selections on the compass. – Cloud cover. “Clear,” “Partly Cloudy,” “Mostly Cloudy” and “Overcast.” – You can choose to specify the temperature in either °F or °C. You can choose to specify the wind speed in either MPH or KPH. Regardless of how the session’s host specified them, the sim will display the values in the units you’ve chosen in-sim. – You can also choose “Realistic” weather. The sim will randomly choose weather conditions that, on average, meet the conditions that we specify on a track-by-track basis. The values that are randomly chosen will have the same limits as listed above. Weather conditions can vary slightly during the session (the temperature can change, and the wind can be variable). Note that wind gusts can go over the 30MPH max. At a night event, the realistic setting will bias towards lower temperatures and higher humidity than a daytime event. – All official iRacing sessions continue to use the usual iRacing Default weather conditions. But, we have changed the iRacing Default weather to now be “Partly Cloudy”, where in the past it used to be “Clear” even if you saw a cloudy sky. This change will result in the track temperature being a couple of degrees cooler, which will produce a subtle difference in lap times and tire feel. – Cars will drive differently as the weather changes. You may find that you need to alter your setup to get the most out of the car under different weather conditions. – Whenever you join any session, the sky (which defines things like the sun position, lighting conditions, reflections, and shadow angles) will be chosen at random to match the selected cloud cover setting. – Cars turn on their headlights on foggy days. Tech Tracks – Tech Tracks are essentially tracks that, for one reason or another, are unfinished iRacing tracks but are to the point of being driveable. – For a track to be considered a Tech Track, the track is not on our current production list to complete. We may someday complete a given Tech Track, OR NOT. We are making Tech Tracks available because of the many requests we get from real world drivers and members. – Tech tracks will not ever be put on a schedule for official series. However they can be used for testing or private sessions. They will include race control and grid boxes and can be used for private or league racing. – The standard license fee of a Tech Track will be US$5. – A Tech Track is what it is, and we will not be actively updating the track in any way unless we decide to fully finish it. If we do finish it, we will take the tech track away and issue iRacing credit for the purchase price to any member who purchased it. Again, do NOT buy a tech track with the assumption it will someday be finished. – Tech tracks will not be part of any volume discount purchase program like the 100% club. – Settings are available in renderer.ini to override the dimensions and density of the laser scan dots. We recommend using the default values, but if you experience poor performance when rendering laser scans it may help to reduce the point sizes or density. PointSizeMM specifies the physical width of each dot in world space (in millimeters) – dots far away will render smaller than points near the camera. PointSizeMax specifies the upper limit of how big of a dot will be rendered on screen (in pixels), and PointSizeMin specifies the size of the smallest dot to be rendered on screen (in pixels). The MaxLaserScanVidMem setting specifies how much video (GPU) memory may be used (at most) to contain the laser scan, lowering this value will reduce the density of dots. [Laser Scan] MaxLaserScanVidMem=128 ; Max scan density to load into vidmem (32 to 128 MB) PointSizeMM=90 ; desired physical point size width (mm): 1 to 120 PointSizeMin=2 ; min point size in screen pixels (1 to 15) PointSizeMax=8 ; max point size in screen pixels (1 to 20) Pit Macros – Add new pit service text chat macros. Parameters include: #help – print help message #clear – unselect all request for service #ws – use up one tear off to clean the windshield #fuel – Add fuel. Optionally specify an ammount to add, defaulting to your displayed units if not specified. (#fuel 5, 5g[allon], 5l[iter], 5k[ilo], etc) #lf – replace left front tire. Optionally specify the pressure, defaulting to your displayed units if not specified. (#lf 30, 30p[si], 30k[pa]) #rf, rr, lr – same as lf but for the other three tires. – Add in 5 new text chat macros, and populate them with reasonable defaults for pit service. The new macros default to keys shift-1 to shift-5. – Renamed chat macro 0 to 10, this will break any custom macro already defined for that slot. – Added an option to turn off the automatic request for full pit service every time you exit pit road. The default is to leave this behavior active, just like it was previously. The setting can be found in app.ini [Pit Service] autoResetPitBox=1, setting it to 0 turns off the auto check behavior. Oculus Rift – Added preliminary support for the Oculus Rift VR Headset Development Kit. Follow the instructions of the dev kit to install it as either an extended desktop monitor (recommended) or as a duplicated monitor (may allow you to see on a monitor what is visible inside the Rift). The resolution for the dev kit monitor should be 1280×800. When launching the simulator, it will attempt to detect the Rift. If it is detected, a dialog box will prompt you if you want to use the Rift. If the simulator does not properly detect the Rift, try configuring it differently on the PC. Centering the Rift: When the simulator first launches, the 2D loading screen image will appear (as usual), about a meter way from the view point. While on the loading screen, hold your head straight and level, and press any key to re-center the head tracking. Any time after loading completes, such as on the replay screen or while driving, you may use the assignable hot key (options screen, default is ‘;’) to re-center the head mounted display (HMD). You may want to assign this command to a button on your wheel, to make it as easy as possible to re-center if necessary. VSYNC is optional when the Rift is enabled, specified via the graphics options screen. VSYNC is recommended to prevent tearing, but many report less latency and better tracking with it disabled. Multisampling is supported with the Rift. The number of samples per pixel is specified in the graphics options screen (AA #samples) and is applied to the Rift’s display if supported on your GPU. The user interface screens now pan (to a limited extent) with head tracking. This allows navigation of the garage and options screen within the Rift. It also allows the black boxes and other driving UI to be viewed while driving. This is a work in progress. In general, achieving higher frame rates is very important when using the Rift. Reduce graphics quality as necessary to achieve low latency head tracking. There are several new options located renderer.ini related to the Rift as follows. [Oculus Rift] CorrectYaw=1 ; Enable magnetic yaw correction CorrectPitch=1 ; Enable gravity based pitch correction UsePrediction=1 ; Enable motion prediction PredictionTimeMS=20 ; How many milliseconds to use during prediction ForceVSYNC=0 ; Force on VSYNC for Rift even if disabled in the graphics options settings PanUserInterfaceToEdge=0 ; Allows user interface to pan further with head tracking ForceVSYNC causes VSYNC to be enabled whenever the Rift is in use. When set, it overides the setting from the options screen only for the Rift. We don’t currently set this option by default because it increases controller lag and head tracking latency on some PC’s. The CorrectYaw and CorrectPitch settings, when enabled, use the Rift’s magnetometers (for yaw/magnetic fields) and accelerometers (for pitch/gravity) to help correct any drift accumulated during driving. When Yaw correction is enabled, whenever you recenter the Rift (using the hotkey) a magnetic calibration will automatically begin – the calibration will automatically complete after the headset is rotated over a large enough range (it helps to look around after initiating the calibration). Garage – The sim now monitors the performance of its “real time” thread. The “garagePhysicsSpeedup” entry from app.ini has been removed, and the sim will now dynamically adjust how aggressively it runs the physics while in the Garage. If you have a slow computer, and you used to have the garagePhysicsSpeedup tweak set to 1, it could have caused the sim to drop out of real time, causing clock smashes, lots of skew, and probably any replay recorded while you’re in the garage to be bad. Now, if you have a fast computer, the physics will settle more quickly in the garage. If you have a slower computer, it will take longer, but the sim won’t drop out of real time while you’re in the garage. Replay – Added a volume level adjustment for overall replay volume vs driving volume (eg: Hall of Fame can turn down the volume level coming from non-driving pods). App.ini only so far, no UI. [Audio] loudnessReplay=0.0 ; Volume adjustment for overall replay volume versus driving volume in dB Controls – Default Fanatec display to on, now that it has been stable for a while. – Request all forces to start every tick to resolve certain FFB issues. Telemetry – Dump the garage tire measurements to telemetry so members no longer need to enter garage to log data. We only update the data every time the garage takes a measurement. – Fix a small bug that caused a telemetry variable to not be unregistered properly when the car was reinstanced. iRacing API – Added support for chat and pit script control to remote api – Add support for remote pit control to session display (so the crew chief can use automated tools). – Include the additional weather related info in the irsdk output. Voicechat – Fix potential sim crash when keying up voice chat. – Add a mic VU meter to the voice chat UI cluster. – If you attempt to transmit and someone else is speaking on your transmitter’s frequency, a “no microphone” icon will be displayed to you, indicating to you that you are not being heard. When the server takes the frequency away from the other person and gives it to you, this indicator will be removed, so that you know others are now hearing you. Graphics – Allow the FPS display (system meters) to work on the session screen during replays. Bump Drafting – Reduced bump friction to help reduce hooking bumpers while drafting. UI – Add new app.ini setting which, when enabled, stops the UI from reappearing when the iRacing window gains focus or is clicked on. [Graphics] KeepUIHiddenOnFocus=0 Options Screen – Re-arranged many of the tabs. Most key definitions have been moved into a single tab with a scroll bar. – All hotkeys can now be reassigned, including the replay controls. – Fixed a bug in the code that generates the “Your control is assigned to this device” string for “two sided” controls, like Look Left/LookRight, when the control is assigned to a single two-sided axis. It likely would have said something like “Dev 0 Axis 3 <<” instead of “Dev 0 Axis 3 <>”. Helmets – Stamp iRacing logos over the top of helmet license stripe. Tire Model – Fixed a bug that would allow the tire carcass to move too rapidly as it passes through zero deflection. This helps the tires to feel less twitchy. – Fixed a bug in the temperature calculation that helps the over-the-limit feel. Cars – Added Lindblad chassis sponsorship. ABS – Updated the ABS algorithm on all our ABS cars for less jarring force feedback. Chevrolet Corvette C6R – Damaged cars no longer have the dash and interior door panels disappear. Chevrolet Impala Class B – The track bar split rule instituted at the beginning of the season has been withdrawn. Chevrolet SS-Gen6 – The track bar split rule instituted at the beginning of the season has been withdrawn. – Fuel load is now adjustable in the garage for practice only. Ford Falcon V8 Supercar – Fixed an aerodynamic drag bug that could occur if ride heights got into places that were outside of the aerodynamic map’s limits. Ford Fusion-Gen6 – The track bar split rule instituted at the beginning of the season has been withdrawn. – Fuel load is now adjustable in the garage for practice only. Kia Optima – Fixed a problem where the telemetry reported incorrect fuel levels. Lotus 49 – The Lotus 49 is now available, and is using the Version 5 Tire Model. Radical SR8 – Added a kph label on the digital dash. – Updated external engine sounds. Silver Crown – Updated external engine sounds. Sprint Car – Updated external engine sounds. Skip Barber Formula 2000 – The Skip Barber car is now using the Version 5 Tire Model. Street Stock – The Street Stock is now using the Version 5 Tire Model. Tracks Circuit Gilles Villeneuve – Now available. Long Beach Street Circuit – Now available as a Tech Track. South Boston Speedway – Racing at night is now available. Lanier National Speedway – Racing at night is now available. Irwindale Speedway – Added a Figure 8 configuration.