Info sobre próximo update - season 1 de 2009

[Francisco Suarez]

E para quem achou pouco o adiantado há dias, aí ficam maiores detalhes num blog.
Impressionante o ritmo de trabalho.

http://www.iracingworld.com/_A-day-in-th...57752.html

In my last blog entry I had talked about how I’m not too fond of the cold weather. To prove to all of you that I’m a man of my word, I was on a beach in the Pacific for the last 10 days. At least this is what I told my boss as the reason I had to be gone last week, but let’s keep that between you and me… I’ve been thinking about blogging this week on why it is acceptable to have a beer at any hour when on vacation, but I was reminded that I had also promised to give you an update on development, which, because I am a man of my word, I will do instead. As a silent protest, I will be consuming an adult beverage as I write this…

We have made a lot of progress on the spotter and the testing on this has gone extremely well so far. I have not heard any complaints at all about listening to the Aussie Greg Hill as the spotter and crew chief, but as I mentioned in my previous blog you will be able to create your own samples to use instead. We will eventually have a more elegant way to change between spotter and crew chief packages, but for now this is how it will work...

First, your files need to be saved in the following format: PCM, Mono, 5.512Khz, 8 bits per sample. Second, there is a specific list of files that the sim looks for; you can replace some or all of these, but you cannot (yet) add additional files. Once you have placed your new samples in the directory the sim will use your samples instead of the ones we supply. Don’t worry; we will have a well documented process on how to do this when the new build is released.

I can also confirm that the open practice functionality will be done for the start of next season. It’s really slick and I hope it will become the place that people “hang out” now instead of on the forums or in chat. This is basically how it will work…

Each open practice session has a limit of how many drivers can be on track at the same time. When the track is full, nobody else will be able to join the session until someone else withdraws. Also, each open practice session’s entry list is currently limited to a total of 64 unique drivers. Once the entry list has become full, only drivers who were previously in the session, and therefore already in the entry list, can re-join it.

Whenever a new driver enters the session, your computer will generate the several textures and helmet images that make up that driver’s paint selections. When this new entry comes out on track you might see him for several seconds in a white car or with gray helmet images in the user interface. Once your system finishes creating their textures and helmet images, their proper paint schemes should appear.

One very cool feature the web team has developed for the open practice servers is a new popup window that shows the current drivers that are registered for the selected open practice session. The popup can be seen on the home page’s new “What's Hot” open practice widget as well as on the session selection page and it is deployed by mousing over a helmet icon that is displayed to the right of each open practice session.

I mentioned that we will have a new “What’s Hot” for the open practice sessions but we will also have a new design for the “What’s Hot” section that will now be a widget that includes more useful information such as the starting time, the track, and the type of session.

Grant has made a lot of progress on race control since my last blog, but as always, I will neither confirm nor deny that this work will be done in fear of suffering the wrath of the mostly evil Mr. Reeve.

I will tell you that as of right now local yellows AND blue flags are in limited testing. I am sure this will be a hotly debated topic in the forums but the blue flags are informational only. In qualifying if you are on your out lap and someone who has finished their out lap is close behind you, a blue flag will appear in the top left corner of the screen. In a race session if anyone who is about to lap you or is multiple laps up on you is close behind you, you will see the blue flag.

We have made terrific progress on the replay system and this will definitely be in our next rollout. The web site is used to filter, sort and otherwise navigate the saved replays, as well as to play them. Replays are saved within your My DocumentsiRacing\replay folder. You may create subdirectories within there either from within the sim, or from Windows itself, and save/load replays from those directories as well.

You will be able to add saved replays from other users to this folder, and the web site will see display them and allow you to play them. You must own and be up-to-date on all of the content used by a replay file in order to watch that replay. For example, if a replay contains a Radical being driven at Sebring, you must own and have up-to-date versions of the Radical and Sebring.

We have done some physics work and have a lot more we would like to get wrapped up for the final build. The Silverado's suspension has been markedly improved, but this means old setups are only marginally useful now. The main difference is the perch heights--they are all always 0" or negative. If you load an old setup, be sure to change the 4 perch offsets or you won't be able to leave the garage. The motion ratios are a bit different as well, so spring and bar rates will have to change. Coil bind setups can be made (and they work!) The ride height minimums have been raised to 5", as that is more in keeping with real-life rules (and it helps keep the truck off the ground).

We have also started testing the Impala SS which we are getting a lot of positive feedback on. I put up a 200 lap race at Vegas for the guys to test the other night and our lead testing coordinator Chris Weidner told me it was the best race he has ever participated in and many other of the guys said the same thing. As always what we have complete when it’s time to ship this car will never be a finished product. Dave is already thinking about a significant update to his tire model that should be a dramatic improvement on what is already a great model.

Dave and Ian have also done quite a bit of work improving the Late Model (and eventually the Silverado and Impala) for use on the road courses. The Late Model now has an option to attach the left side of the sway bar which makes it possible to create a roadable setup. No ballast changes are implemented yet, however, so it is still fairly spooky turning to the right.

For what may be a cruel tease on the licensing side of things, we are getting very close to being able to announce a handful of SIGNIFICANT deals we are working on that I think will be incredible for all of us. For those who have been asking for more tin-tops, I will tell you that I expect to be signing one of those significant contracts that will put at least three in the development queue.

One contract that we have signed on the technical side of things that we plan on implementing this year is the Akamai IP Acceleration technology. Akamai is a very big partner with us in that they handle all of our data distribution which is why our content is delivered very efficiently whenever you download a new build or package from us. We have used Akamai from day one for this, but the new piece of technology we are going to incorporate should make everyone’s connections to our race servers even better than they are now. The general idea is that Akamai is going to figure out what the optimum path through the internet for you to connect to our race servers is so you will always have the best connection possible. We hope this will especially help improve all of our international customer’s online experiences. Chris Page is going to do a blog post on this in the next few weeks that will go into more detail on how it will work.

Okay, my adult beverage is empty and my hands are cramping… I think I have written enough for this blog. As always, we will be doing everything we can to add as much as we can into the next build. I expect that we will be releasing this build during the 13th week of the current season which is the last week of January.

Good luck to everyone in the final weeks of your championship battles.

Steve