Video Driver Compatibility Fixes
Added a new graphics option to tessellate the entire track surface and walls/fences into static video memory during track loading, which then avoids any dynamic track tessellation during racing. Previously, portions of track would be pre-tessellated at only 2 levels of detail, but the highest levels of detail would be provided via CPU side dynamic tessellation. This option adds a 3rd level of detail to the pre-tessellated track, allowing dynamic tessellation to be completely disabled at run-time. The primary benefits of using this option include avoiding CPU usage to tessellate the track, avoiding track related dynamic geometry transfers to the GPUs and between GPUs, and we believe and sincerely hope that this option may also work around a bug that was causing freezes and corruption for some GPUs with certain versions of video drivers (nVidia’s latest few WHQL drivers with 400/500 series GPUs). The drawbacks of enabling this option include using up to an additional 12MB of video memory to store the extra geometry (at the largest track), and an overall slightly higher triangle count per frame – due to the loss of the continuous levels of detail that is available with dynamic tessellation. This new option is available on the “graphics options” screen, and is labeled “Store racetrack in GPU mem”. It will automatically be enabled by default when you first launch the sim if you have more than 384MB of
video memory specified, and also have pixel shaders enabled. If you change this option, you must exit and restart the simulator for it to take effect.
Altered the generation of distant shadow maps to cast the distant track side object’s shadows using lower levels of detail. This speeds up the generation of distant shadow maps.
Slightly altered a portion of the loading sequence that renders the track and objects at several spots before loading completes. This step now performs screen updates more often, rather than doing the entire process as one frame render. This change probably has no effect, but it may reduce stress on the video drivers.
Made a change to the renderer’s scene compiler to help reduce the potential of it accidently reusing memory after that memory has been released.
ALSO SEE
Build Release Notes: 12-21-2011
New Smyrna – Now available! Replays – Fixed a bug where the sim would crash trying to load certain replays. Chevrolet Corvette C6R – Improved many of the fixed setups. Chevrolet Impala – Updated the Hall of Fame setups to suit this season’s physics.Build Release Notes: 12-13-2011
Hosted Sessions Fixed a bug where the “host a race” page wouldn’t work properly if the member’s account had a very small balance.Release Notes: 12-06-2011
Account Recharge + Gifting There is a new link called “Account Recharge” at the top of the member’s site that is used to recharge your own account or to give a recharge gift to another iRacer. Recharging Your Own Account When you click on the “Account Recharge” link the system will check to see if…Build Release Notes: 12-01-2011
Kentucky Speedway – Now available! Race Control – Fixed a bug where cars that have been waved around the pace car to regain a lap during a caution would have their pit entrance stay closed once green flag racing resumed. Chevrolet Impala Chevrolet Impala Class B Chevrolet Impala SS 2009 – Updated to support Kentucky…Build Release Notes: 11-18-2011
Website: Spectator Sessions – Fixed a bug where the spectator registration code was not determining car ownership correctly. This could prevent people from registering as a spectator for hosted sessions. Tournament Sessions – You can now create multiclass tournament sessions but please note that the grid builder does not have multi-class support and does not…Build Release Notes: 11-09-2011
Chat Settings Fixed timing issue where chat settings changes would not stick in some cases. iRacing Installer Fixed file extension issue when downloading the iRacing install with certain versions of Internet Explorer.
