Build Release Notes: Season 1-2012

Website: Hosted Sessions / Tournaments – There is a new function to limit the entry into a hosted session to members of one or more clubs. This will hopefully lead to more club vs. club competition. To facilitate this new feature we moved the “Entry Requirements” section into a new collapsible section called “OPTIONAL SETTINGS”. Click on the “Only allow drivers from selected clubs” checkbox to activate the feature and then add as many clubs as you would like. – There is also a new function to specify one or more session admins at the time that you configure a hosted session. This feature is also located in the new “OPTIONAL SETTINGS” section. The host is always on the list. You can also select people who you have previously designated as admins, people on your friends/studied list or by name using the driver search function. – There is a new section on the “Join a Race” page that shows you future tournament sessions that have been scheduled that have you on the grid. Previously, you wouldn’t have seen the tournament session until it launched and you would have to look at the tournament results page to see if you were on the grid for the next round. This should help people to plan for future races. – The “Host a Race” page now defaults to your last session settings on page load. Personal Stats Page – The personal profile section has been redesigned. – There is a new charting section that displays career charts for iRating, ttRating and License Class. The charts are designed to plot a single data point per week. The data snapshots are taken on Monday evenings just about the start of each new race week. The default chart view will show you your entire career. You can use your mouse to select a subset of the chart and zoom to a finer granularity. Additionally, when you zoom a chart you will see a “view results” link that will popup a separate window containing the official race results that contributed to the values on the chart. Once you have zoomed a chart you can select the “reset chart” link to return to the default view. Forums – A badge will now be displayed on the forums next to a members post if they have been a member of the service for a year or more. There are currently 5 levels of badges 1+ year member, 2+ year member, 3+ year member, 4+ year member and 5+ year member. The same badge is also displayed on the members personal stats page. My Racers – Incoming Friend Requests – You can now accept/ignore multiple incoming friend requests at once, instead of being limited to one at a time. This will be helpful for some of our more popular members. Miscellaneous – The Race/Test panel has had a styling update. The colors have been changed and the size of the RACE button has been increased. – Removed the obsolete “sessions” panel from the global settings panel. – Added a new “Add to Cart” button to the track and car pages. The button is only displayed if you don’t already own the content. – Added a gift history section to your order history page so you can see the gifts you have sent and received. Simulation: New Tire Model – There are improvements to the tire damping forces, both vertical and lateral. There are improvements to the carcass torsional stiffnesses, which affect the load sensitivity. Fixed a significant bug with lateral/vertical force coordinate transformation. These changes have made all the cars more predictable and have improved the tire feel. – The NTM is now on the Star Mazda, the Radical SR8, the Riley Daytona Prototype, and the Williams FW31; in addition, improvements have been made to the 14 cars already using the NTM. 18 cars now have the new tire model: Chevrolette Corvette C6R Chevrolet Impala Chevrolet Impala Class B Chevrolet Monte Carlo SS Chevrolet Silverado Ford GT HPD ARX-01c Legends Ford ’34 Coupe and Rookie Mazda MX-5 Cup and Roadster Radical SR8 Riley Daytona Prototype Skip Barber Formula 2000 Spec Racer Ford Star Mazda Street Stock Williams-Toyota FW31 – The local driver’s (your) car now produces tire smoke for cars with the NTM. – For all the cars that now have the NTM, existing setups may need some work. There are good baseline setups for all the cars; you may want to start by loading those. Typically, the NTM cars require more front brake bias to avoid spinning under braking. They also often require pressure and camber adjustments from the old tire model setups, as well as ride height adjustment. Graphics – Your DirectX install may now require some of the latest DirectX updates to be installed. The iRacingUpdater will check if you need these updates and automatically launch the DirectX setup when necessary. If after updating you encounter errors when launching the simulation regarding “d3dx9_43.dll” or “d3dx9_31.dll” missing from your system, please update your DirectX install manually via this link: http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=35 – Modified the graphics engine to utilize a newer version of the HLSL shader compiler, which produces more efficient shader code. Most GPUs, especially if they are DX10 compatible, will be compatible with this new compiler. However, if you have a very old GPU, such as an nVidia 7900 series GPU, you may need to turn off the “use DX10 optimizer” in the advanced graphics options so that you will revert back to the old compiler. If you have a DX10 compatible GPU, you will probably want enable the “use DX10 optimizer” setting if it doesn’t default to enabled for you. – Improved the reflectivity effects of many different surface materials. Telemetry – Only log a car as being in their own pitstall, not just in any pit stall. – Delay finalizing of iRSDK headers until after physics finishes initializing for the first time in order to catch some physics variables. Controls – Calibrating pedals will no longer reset the brake curve factor. – Allow automatic shifting to work even if user has selected an h-pattern shifter, instead of not shifting in any way at all. Voice Chat – Fixed a bug that caused voice chat volume changes to not always display. Cameras – Only override aim-at-group for the default camera set. – Fixed an issue where the cockpit camera view would glitch when the car rotated through certain upside-down orientations. Administrator Commands – Added admin commands ‘spchat’ and ‘nspchat’ to turn spectator chat on and off in a race (defaults to on). Race Control – Fixed the bug where the Jump Start rule would sometimes not penalize a jumped start. – Changed the Prototype & GT Challenge and Grand AM series to grid cars by class. Spotter – The spotter has much more to talk about. The spotter will report engine smoke, engine damage, and wheel damage, and pace car status, if cars ahead/behind are for position, information on the leader (pitting, ahead, etc.), if slow or stopped cars are on track, status of race (10 laps to go, race is over). The spotter will also try to warn about serving black flags before being DQ’d by the end of the race. – The spotter can optionally call lap times/lap speed, selectable in the settings tab. – Added entries to the app.ini, [SPCC] reportLapsPrecision=3 to let you adjust how many decimal places when reporting lap times, and [SPCC] reportLapsMinute=1 for including the minutes in the call, or only reporting the seconds on the laptime. – Reset fuel estimates at session boundaries to stop bogus fuel usage calls. Sounds – Transmission clunks when shifting hard into 1st or reverse. – Shifting into neutral can make a noise if you don’t push in the clutch. – New shift sounds. – Improved gear grinding sounds. – Updated sounds for the Chevrolet Corvette C6R, Dallara IndyCar, Ford GT, HPD ARX-01c, and Williams-Toyota FW31, including new tire, and wind sounds for each car. – New crash sounds. Garage – In the garage and tech inspection make sure to use ambient air temperature for the tires instead of the slightly variable track surface temperature that would cause setups that would pass tech during the day to fail tech at night. Drafting – The drafting aerodynamics model has been revised to create much improved super speedway pack racing. But these improvements are not just limited to super speedways, they can be felt by all cars at all tracks. Brake Modeling – Almost all our cars now feature a model of brake temperature. When your brakes get hot enough you will see them begin to glow. At a daytime track you can start to see glow if the brake rotor surface is getting hotter than about 1380 degrees F (750 degrees C), but at night you can see glow as the surface exceeds 1200 degrees F (650 degrees C). – The only physical effect, currently, is that the brake rotor can radiate heat into the wheel rim of any car that has the new tire model. The old tire model does not model wheel rim temperature, so this effect does not apply. Hot brakes can really heat up a wheel rim, which will bring up the hot air pressure of a tire by several more psi over the course of a stint than without the brake heat being modelled. – Currently these cars don’t have a brake heat model plugged in, but will soon: Chevrolet Monte Carlo SS, Lotus 79, Street Stock. – Currently these cars don’t have rotors that visibly glow even though their brakes are being modelled, but will soon: Spec Racer Ford, Pontiac Solstice. Cars – New Sponsors have been added to the paintkit: Doghouse Systems Simxperience Nascar Hall of Fame – In addition we have added a memorial decal to the secondary sponsor position on the Star Mazda in memory of one of our members, Gary W. Clark. Chevrolet Corvette C6R – The amount of computer resources this car uses has been reduced to help improve computer performance during multi-class racing. Chevrolet Impala – Limit maximum tire pressure to 80 psi. – Aerodynamic response to extreme ride heights has been retuned at super speedways. – Two car tandem drafting at super speedway tracks reflects current trend (as of pre-2012 Daytona testing). – For super speedways, the rev limit has been increased and engine cooling has been modified. – Now has Goodyear logos on the tires and fenders where appropriate. Chevrolet Impala Class B – Limit maximum tire pressure to 80 psi. – Aerodynamic response to extreme ride heights has been retuned at super speedways. – Two car tandem drafting at super speedway tracks reflects current trend (as of pre-2012 Daytona testing). – For super speedways, the rev limit has been increased and engine cooling has been modified. – Now has Goodyear logos on the tires and fenders where appropriate. Chevrolet Impala SS 2009 – Engine specification and gear selection have been updated to match NASCAR K&N series regulations. – Now has Goodyear logos on the tires and fenders where appropriate. Chevrolet Silverado – Limit maximum tire pressure to 80 psi. – Aerodynamic response to extreme ride heights has been retuned at super speedways. – Two car tandem drafting at super speedway tracks reflects current trend (as of pre-2012 Daytona testing). – For super speedways, the rev limit has been increased and engine cooling has been modified. – Now has Goodyear logos on the tires and fenders where appropriate. Ford GT – The amount of computer resources this car uses has been reduced to help improve computer performance during multi-class racing. HPD ARX-01c – The amount of computer resources this car uses has been reduced to help improve computer performance during multi-class racing. – Fixed an incorrect rpm for one of the off throttle sound files in the exterior engine sound. – Increased the weight of the car to meet the LMS minimum weight regulations. Radical SR8 – Now uses the new tire model. Riley MkXX Daytona Prototype – Now uses the new tire model. – Reduced dive plane effectiveness, it should be quite usable now. Star Mazda – Now uses the new tire model. – Front and rear wings have better aerodynamic accuracy. – Reduced aerodynamic drag by 10%. – Added a taller gear set for use on larger ovals. Williams-Toyota FW31 – Now uses the new tire model. – Fixed the problem where the engine could blow up on the grid while pegging the rev limiter. – Subtle refinements to aerodynamic side forces. – Reduced temperature of the tire warmers. – Gear speed table lines up better with actual on track speeds. Tracks – Fixed a bug where certain configurations of track surface geometry could cause an inexplicably very bumpy driving experience such as trying to drive the high line around Darlington. – An improvement has been made to how many polygons the visual representation of the track surface chooses to use. There were certain portions of track surface that could choose to use too few polygons resulting in very visible facets when shadow volumes are cast onto the track from cars. – Fixed a bug where a chunk of track might pop back to medium resolution when it should have been at high resolution, which was causing some very noticeable visual pops to happen. Darlington – The nasty bumps in the high line, particularly in Turns 1 and 2, have been fixed. Daytona International Speedway – Now has new lighting and a new sky. Kentucky – The missing drain is added. – Lowered Legends oval pace speed. Laguna Seca – Fixed a major bump on second to last straightaway. Web Release Notes – Jan 3, 2012 Facebook integration – Facebook now requires that integrating sites use oauth2.0. We needed to make some changes to support this. Personal stats page – Performance bug fix. The tabs on the personal stats page had become exceedingly slow on Firefox.