Build Release Notes: Season 4-2011

Our plan is to finally roll out Season 4’s build tomorrow (Thursday). In anticipation of the new build, here are the release notes for you to read. Website: Multi-Class Racing – For multiclass series (this does not apply to hosted or tournaments) you no longer need to own all of the cars in order to participate or spectate. You do need to own at least one of the cars. For example, season 4 of the GRAND-AM series will run the DP and the Mustang. If you own either the DP or the Mustang you will be able to join any of the sessions to race (or watch). Your available selection of cars to drive will be limited to what you have purchased but the system will allow you to download the others car(s) so the sim can render everything properly. Editing Hosted Sessions + Tournament Sessions – You can now edit hosted sessions (regular and tournament) that are scheduled to run in the future. To do so locate your session in the “Pending Sessions” section of the “Join a Race” page and mouse over the right-most column. If the session is editable (i.e. it is scheduled to launch more than 5 minutes into the future), the popup will include an edit link. When you click this link you will see the same interface you use to create sessions. All attributes of the session can be changed with the caveat that you cannot change the session to launch now. You will need to specify a time that is at least 5 minutes into the future. Chat Changes – Moved the chat configuration settings into a popup that is accessible from the site footer. If you click on the chat icon, which is located just to the right of the “# myRacers Online” indicator, you will see a new Chat Settings dialog. From here you can do the following: 1) Hide / Show online status. This setting was previously available only from the settings panel. If you hide your online status, other members won’t be able to see if you are online or currently in a session. An additional impact is that chat will be disabled. 2) Enable / Disable chat. This setting was previously available only from the settings panel. This is only relevant if you do NOT hide your online status. 3) Enable / Disable chat audio alerts. This is a new setting. – There is also a new chat caution status icon that can be displayed in the site footer. Our chat feature will not work properly if you have multiple browsers open. We enhanced our conflict detection to detect more conflict situations and work better across different browsers and different pcs. When the chat system detects that you have multiple connections open it will display a caution icon. Clicking on the icon will display more information. The important thing to know is if you see the conflict status and you want to use chat in that browser window you will need to close your other browser windows. – Added new type of chat notification. When a chat message arrives the page title (shown on tab and/or in the browser title) will flash between the normal value and “Chat received from x”. The flashing stops when the page gets focus and any mouse event is received. Notification Status – Added a new notifications feature to the site footer. A notification icon is now situated between the chat status icon and the facebook icon on the right side of the footer. The icon will be gray when you have no notifications pending and will flash blue when you have notifications pending. The types of notifications supported are: 1) New friend requests. This will link to your myRacers page where you can accept or ignore the friend request. The notification is cleared the next time you go to the myRacers page either using the link or otherwise. 2) New awards. This will link to your awards page. The notification is cleared the next time you go to the awards page either using the link or otherwise. 3) Private message box full. This replaces the former PM full icon that appeared on the site footer. It links to your forum inbox. 4) Private messages unread. This replaces the former PM unread icon that appeared on the site footer. It links to your forum inbox. Tournament Changes – Changed tournament results page so searching by session name is no longer case sensitive. – Added ability to terminate an active tournament at any time. This is accessible from the “Host a Tournament Race” page. – Modified the grid builder to include a driver search popup. This should make adding additional drivers to a grid easier. Previously the only option was to add drivers by custid. – New filter on the tournament results page to view all ongoing tournaments. – When creating a tournament round we will automatically pull settings from the prior round in the tournament. For tournaments where the same car/track/setup are being used in multiple rounds this makes configuration much easier and less error-prone. – On the “join a race” page we split out the tournament sessions into their own sortable table to make them easier to find. Hosted Sessions – Added ability to limit entry into hosted sessions by iRating and/or license level. These are configured in a new “ENTRY REQUIREMENTS” section on the “Host a Race” page. These are also available for tournaments. – Fixed issue where you couldn’t include # characters in your hosted session password. – If you select a practice-only session type it will now default to the max number of minutes based on the session duration (rather than 5 as it did prior). World Traveler Award – Fix to this award so we no longer require that people run a session on the Centripetal Circuit. The change will take effect when the user runs their next non-testing event after the update. Reigning Champs Widget – Fix to properly show 1 champion for each class in a multiclass series. Paint Shop – Fix to the sponsors in the paint shop. There was an issue with sponsors on cars where a different list of sponsors is allowed for sponsor 1 vs. sponsor 2. The front end was showing the wrong list of sponsors for sponsor 2. The user would select a sponsor from the list but it wouldn’t stick because the database wouldn’t accept it. Series Results Page Splits – Fix to how we number splits on mixed-class series. Event Results – Fixed issue with fast lap highlighting on event results. This had been fixed previously but we had missed a few spots. Results Page – The sorting of gross club points was broken. Renamed to club points in the process. Also resized a few fields to make the points columns more readable. Series Home Page – Fixed bug where the series home page wasn’t showing tt and qual standings. Region Standings Widget – Removed obsolete gross club points from region standings widget. How-To Videos – We have added a How-To video section to the website. You can find it under “Resources” on the navigation bar. iRacingTV Podcasts – Podcasts have been sorted, cleaned up and a few new segments were added so members can take iRacing news and iRacingTV on the go. Link: http://bit.ly/dCrzwm iRacing Race Schedule PDF – Added list of cars to the series information. Simulation: New Tire Model – The new tire model is now available on many new cars including most of the Rookie cars: the Legends Ford ’34 Coupe cars (both Rookie and Advanced), Mazda MX-5 Cup and Roadster, the SCCA Spec Racer Ford, Street Stock, Chevrolet Monte Carlo SS, and Chevrolet Corvette C6R. It continues to be the tire model used on the Skip Barber Formula 2000, Ford GT, Honda Performance Developments ARX-01c, and the top three NASCAR oval track vehicles, the Chevrolet Silverado, Chevrolet Impala Class B, and Chevrolet Impala cars. There are several improvements that apply to all the cars with new tires, including those you are familiar with already. – You will probably want to start with the baseline iRacing setups provided with these cars – any old setups are likely to need some work at the very least, and they may not work well at all. The new tire model generally requires more forward brake bias than the old tire model, so if you are spinning under the brakes on turn entry, adjust the brake bias forward. The Legends car also has a road setup (road.sto), which is worth trying to get a handle on at Oulton Park – it will really teach you how to drive this car! Hint-mostly with your right foot… – The modeling of tread compounds is improved, with road compounds that are softer and have a better feel. Work continues with the compound modeling, and the tread/surface interaction-tires are still a bit too grippy when cold, but that will continue to improve. – The tire carcass stiffnesses and motion are more realistic, giving a better feel. Known issues: – The carcass lateral stiffness is a bit low at typical real world pressures – you will need to run 5-10 psi higher pressures than you might expect to get the tires to feel predictable. – The tires are overly sensitive to rolling onto an edge, so you will want to run cambers that may be a bit closer to zero than you might otherwise for now. This is also helped by higher pressures. – Very slow speed (< 12 mph or so) behavior is still not 100% – you may notice some cars wobble while stationary, or make tire skidding noises at very low speeds. Best fix is to not drive at very low speeds! – The slow speed issue also arises in the garage for some cars, causing the readings to bounce around a bit. This is usually not a big issue – it is exacerbated by low pressures and large cambers. Scoring – Scoring has been adjusted slightly for all official series to take into account the size of field. This will not have a significant effect, except in very small fields, such as occur in multi-class series when the overall minimum field size is met for at least one car class, but the field size for another car class is too small. Since those races are scored as official races, it is not appropriate to have some drivers racing for official points, and other drivers not, but drivers in “too small” a field were winning more points than they likely would in a larger field. Now, the championship points given to the winner are scaled by N/(N+1), where N is the field size for the car class being scored. It was decided to apply this change across all series, not just multi-class events with the above “too small” fields. This results in fairer scoring, as it is possible to win slightly more championship points in a larger field, if the strength of field is the same. For example, consider a race with a SOF of 1600. Formerly, the winner would get 100 points, regardless of field size. Starting with the new season in November, 2011, the winner will get 106*N/(N+1) points (rounded to the nearest integer) if the field size is N. In a field of 15 drivers, this results in 99 points. In a field of 30 drivers, this results in 103 points. That ensures that the points you are expected to win, given your iRating, will now be consistent across different field sizes. Race Control – Cars that have been waved around to reclaim a lap during a caution by being in front of the leader at the one-to-go lap (but not admin or lucky dog wave-arounds) now have their pit entrance closed until the green flag flies. Entering the closed pits at this late stage in the caution will result in having to serve a green flag penalty pit stop. – During double file restarts where lapped cars are moved to the back of the field, lead lap cars that have not yet pitted during this caution should have their pit entrance closed to them from when they take their two-to-go crossing. This will discourage them from not pitting early in a caution to deliberately prevent lapped cars trying to get their lap back from getting their lap back. Entering the closed pits at this late stage in the caution will result in having to serve a green flag penalty pit stop. Pit speeding rules have been updated: – Green flag pit speeding is now able to adjust its penalty to the peak seen speeding velocity, rather than setting it once for an initially low speeding amount then not increasing it as the driver keeps getting faster. – Speeding penalties can accumulate over separate passes through the pit lane, so speeding down the pitlane to serve a speeding penalty will give you additional penalty time. – Exceeding the pit speed limit by a significant degree during a caution pitstop (>20mph over the limit) will result in an additional “excessive pit speeding” green flag penalty of 1 lap hold time. This is to discourage people who gratuitously speed during cautions because the penalty used to only be to restart at the end of the longest line. Controls -Logitech G27 shift lights now work when watching your car in a replay. – Added an app.ini [misc] steeringFFBSmooth=1.0 parameter to enable smoothing of FFB forces. A value of 0.1 seems to tame the Fanatec wheels without hiding too much of the FFB forces. Driver Aids – Casual mode added as an option to hosted sessions. This allows you to use roof cameras when driving. – Physically impaired members can contact customer support to request that driving aids be turned on for all session types if there is a need. Graphics -Select more appropriate LODs of objects when rendering them into shadow maps – previously very high LODs were always used even when the shadow map would only be used very far from camera. – The sim now attempts to keep code and data segments paged in to try to reduce possible freezes and stutters. – Allow the fps limit to be adjusted to the full available range, and not clamped to the suggested value on the high-end. – Graphics level slider on replay settings tab works again. Replay – Fixed the “save replay on quit” setting so that it will not pester you about saving the replay if you have loaded a previously-saved replay. – Add in app.ini [replay] pauseReplayOnExit=1 to pause replay tape on exit of your car. Sound – Move all shifter sound sources to a fixed distance from the drivers head. This should normalize the shift volumes across cars. – Crash sounds should sound slightly better. – Added in scrape sounds for most of the missing wall types. – Added in controls for spotter and voice chat volumes. – Moved voice chat and spotter controls to sound tab. – Increased range of volume sliders to -10dB from previous of -5dB. – Display volume when adjusting spotter volume . – Removed buggy masterVolume setting from app.ini and replaced it with proper masterVolumedB. Should be seamless if you had masterVolume set up already. ****Note, On windows vista and 7 masterVolume adjusted the mix level for the iRacing application in windows. If you have ever messed with that setting your mix level is now set incorrectly. You need to launch iRacing, alt-tab out of it to the desktop, click on the speaker icon and select mixer. From there you can adjust your iRacing volume back up to the defaults. Also using the built in volume keys on your keyboard can trigger the same problem. Spotter – Replaced Lance with Steve Letarte in spotter pack, renamed pack to TJ_and_Steve. – Filled in missing TJ spotter samples. – Removed sub directories from spotter pack, existing spotter packs will need to be tweaked. – Spotter text messages wrap when they get too long. – Eliminated about 250 unused spotter messages. -Spotter should do a better job estimating how many laps of fuel are remaining (but not the F-box, yet). – Spotter notifies you when you run out of fuel. – Fixed the bogus 3-wide spotter calls. – Add in 3-wide calls to roadcourses. iRacing SDK – Added in a new remote command to erase the replay tape if the player is out of the car and not using replay spooling. – Log acceleration from a replay, may be a bit noisy so filter it before driving a motion platform. – Rev limiter now added to session string. – Track details added to session string. – Log player car velocity to both live and disk telemetry. – Log player car yaw/pitch/roll to disk. Cars – The driver has been re-modeled with higher detail. – The driver now has multiple helmet types based on the type of car which you are driving. – The driver now animates as he steers the car. You can enable or disable his arms in the cockpit camera depending on your preference. For now the driver’s arms are limited to only +/- 180 degrees of steering until we put together an animation to cope with crossing over the driver’s arms. Hardware shaders must be on to see the driver animation. – Pit road stop/go person re-modeled. – All cars now have some form of pit object associated with them. These objects will show up at most tracks except for tracks with garages very close to their pit lanes. The pit road objects can be lowered in detail or disabled in the graphics options menu under pit objects. – All the cars that are on the New Tire Model are in the process of having their iRacing default setups updated. We don’t yet have all 12 weeks worth of setups available, but we have tried to get the first 3-4 weeks of setups in there for this release and will add the remaining setups over the next few weeks. Chevrolet Corvette C6R – Now has the New Tire Model. – Pit limiter graphical effects enabled. – Position lights for 2nd place reversed. Chevrolet Impala – Many tire improvements. – Altered how rear wheel camber is defined. Members must review these settings. – Increased fuel consumption to align better with real life counterparts. – Reduced aero drag, aero push, and aero side force effects while increasing aero lose effects except at Super Speedway tracks. Chevrolet Impala Class B – Many tire improvements. – Altered how rear wheel camber is defined. Members must review these settings. – Increased fuel consumption to align better with real life counterparts. – Reduced aero drag, aero push, and aero side force effects while increasing aero lose effects except at Super Speedway tracks. Chevrolet Monte Carlo SS – Now has the New Tire Model. – Improved rear spring motion ratio control (loses less rate with large deflections). – Incorporated ackermann and lateral force compliant steering. – A small increase in engine performance. Chevrolet Silverado – Many tire improvements. – Corrected left to right weight distribution, per NASCAR rules. -Altered how rear wheel camber is defined. Members must review these settings. – Increased fuel consumption to align better with real life counterparts. – Reduced aero drag, aero push, and aero side force effects while increasing aero lose effects except at Super Speedway tracks. – A small increase in downforce based on new wind tunnel information. Dallara IndyCar – Now displays correct wing and tire packages when using Indy Pit Oval. – Pit limiter graphical effects enabled. – Caution light fix. – Has car specific fuel cans and pitwagons. Fuel cans swap out to Indy specific model for Indy 500. Ford Falcon V8 Supercar – Pit limiter graphical effects enabled. Ford GT – Many physics and tire improvements. – Position lights for 2nd place reversed. HPD ARX-01c – Many tire improvements. – Higher yield and break force required for collisions. – Rear wing adjustment added, using HPD angle convention where setting 1 is highest wing angle (understeer) and 16 is lowest wing angle (oversteer). – Position lights for 2nd place reversed. – Gear set speed estimate bug fixed. Legends Ford ’34 Coupe – Now has the New Tire Model. Mazda MX-5 Cup and Roadster – Now has the New Tire Model. Riley MkXX Daytona Prototype – Pit limiter graphical effects enabled. SCCA Spec Racer Ford – Now has the New Tire Model. Star Mazda – Pit limiter graphical effects enabled. Street Stock – Now has the New Tire Model. – Improved rear spring motion ratio control (loses less rate with large deflections). – Incorporated ackermann and lateral force compliant steering. – A small adjustment to front end suspension geometry. – Now has stagger adjustment similar to Late Model. Tracks – Most tracks now have functioning scoring towers. – The iRacing blimp now has a night version. – Miscellaneous improved animation at tracks, such as animated birds and planes. Oulton Park – Oulton Park Circuit is now available and includes eight configurations. Charlotte – Now raceable at night. – Cones added to Charlotte’s full road course config which block the legends oval. Iowa – Now raceable at night. Road America – Optimizations have been made to improve frame rate. Spa-Francorchamps – Optimizations have been made to improve frame rate. Stafford – A bump was fixed in Stafford’s Turn 1 area. Suzuka – Suzuka’s West and West Chicane configurations now have more pit stalls.