RaceRoom: May Developer Notes

Paul Jeffrey

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RaceRoom Group 4 BMW M1.png

A new blog posting from Sector3 Studios details what's been going on at the studio, and what we can look forward to in the near future...


Its been a while since Sector3 put virtual pen to paper and wrote about what's going on behind the scenes with RaceRoom Racing Experience, however this month the crew over in Sweden have given us a nice update on how things are developing with the sim - including some interesting hints about new features and content that is set to release in the coming weeks and months.

If you want to know how things are going with RaceRoom Racing Experience, from the developers own words, check out the blog post in full below..

…….

This is a follow-up to the March 2019 thread.

Yes, I did miss the opportunity of writing one in April... Last month is a big blur for me while we were dedicated to the Volkswagen ID.R project and putting in long hours. I was mostly just focused on that while the team kept cracking on with more good stuff.

So let's catch up together with what they've been doing. But first let's recap the status of all the items discussed in the March 2019 thread:

Progress update on the March thread:
  1. Adjustable Tyre Pressure - Shipped! How are you all liking this? We'll be adding this as planned to all new cars and reviewed cars in future updates.
  2. Flat spots, suspension damage and damage settings - Still being fine tuned in betatesting, and the damage settings revision is probably going to be the most time consuming to make as it involves UI's, backend, and some refactoring of the game code.
  3. New dedi features - Shipped! So, how many griefers have you banned?
  4. Shared Mem updates - Shipped! Check out the 3rd party apps section for all kinds of awesome.
  5. In-game web overlays - Shipped!
  6. Oschersleben new layouts - Shipped!
  7. Fanatec SDK update - We had some last minute modifications to allow toggling LED's and Displays in various ways. Support for the DD2 is already added, so we're looking good to include this in the next game update.
What we're working on at the moment
  1. Cars : Esports, esports, esports! We are currently busy on the 2019 season of the FIA WTCR. I can't show you much as things still need to go through approvals and all, so here's a blurry car. Which car can it possibly be?
RaceRoom Lynk & Co WTCR.jpg

We're doing our best to complete this 2019 set and have them available towards end of June, so expect the esports WTCR 2019 to start soon after that.

Then, probably later due to BOP requirements and WTCR taking priority, we'll be bringing you a BMW M1 Group 4, to fight alongside the Porsche 934 RSR.

RaceRoom Group 4 BMW M1.png

Of course, let's not forget the Volkswagen ID.R ! Our initial version of the car will receive several adjustments in physics. The real car has now been on two practice sessions around the Nordschleife and the telemetry and comments from Romain Dumas will allow us to bring the car closer to its real performance. We have several visual updates to the car that are ready to ship, such as adding the DRS box.

Once the ID.R physics are completed and published, a second round of the Volkswagen ID. R Challenge will open with the updated car, and it will likely be finally available in the store around that time.

2. More Cars : Sadly can't say much else than "more cars are being licensed for a release in 2019" at this point. Until papers are all in order, it's all a bit hush-hush.

3. Soon™ cars : The next update should see the release of the Formula RaceRoom X-90. Designed to bring you back to the visuals and sounds of the early 90's formula series, this car will come in three engine flavours : V8, V10 and V12. Do I need to tell you they all sound awesome? After endlessly lapping the Nordschleife in the relative silence of the highly technological VW ID.R, this one will turn your ears back on.​
RaceRoom FR90.png

4. Tracks : 4 active projects at the moment, and not enough time. Sorry but still can't disclose anything until we get closer to release.

5. Force Feedback updates : Working on two separate areas of FFB improvements.
  • One started as a bug fix and quickly turned into a feature as we realized the static friction (the fact that turning the steering wheel should be more difficult when your car is standing still) wasn't working at all. As a result we not only now have a working friction, but also a proper fully simulated power steering. Turning off your engine and power is even taken into account. Rumor has it that Anthony is even going to add a sound sample for turning wheels.
  • The other is about introducing pneumatic trail effects. ( wiki and some other source that requires aspirin) This will give some very welcome information about the amount of grip available on the front wheels.
6. Moving / resizing HUD elements : Since the release of the in-game overlays feature and its ability to handle moving widgets around the screen, many asked why this wasn't possible for the regular HUD. This will now be possible. (except for the top position bar, which occupies the full width of the screen and could only be moved down in a very impractical fashion to whoever wanted to see what's happening outside of the car) You will finally be able to move and resize that big virtual rearview mirror!

7. Small feature for LED / wheelbase displays: Some 3rd party tools offer the ability to push custom information to the steering wheel displays such as Fanatec's rev LED's. It was unfortunately cumbersome for the users of those apps to prevent RaceRoom from sending data to those rev LED's and diplays. We will offer new controls that will allow those users to cycle through different modes for rev LED's and displays, allowing to just turn them off completely.

8. Moaaaar dedi features : We're currently testing a live penalty system allowing the league admins to hand out penalties during a race: Slowdown, drive-through, stop-n-go or just plain Disqualification. We're also working on the ability to read and send chat messages directly from the dedicated server manager UI.

9. Discord : Thought I'd just mention it here: You NEED to join the RaceRoom Discord channel. Link here. We've just restructured it a bit to bring it more in line with the current standards.

10. Feels like I should reach 10 to look as busy as in March.

RaceRoom Racing Experience is a PC exclusive racing simulation from Sector3 Studios, and is available to download now.


Check out the RaceRoom Racing Experience sub forum here at RD to join in the discussion, find some awesome League and Club Racing events, and of course download a mod or two as well..

Like what we do at RaceDepartment? Follow us on Social Media!



 
 
3. Soon™ cars : The next update should see the release of the Formula RaceRoom X-90. Designed to bring you back to the visuals and sounds of the early 90's formula series, this car will come in three engine flavours : V8, V10 and V12. Do I need to tell you they all sound awesome? After endlessly lapping the Nordschleife in the relative silence of the highly technological VW ID.R, this one will turn your ears back on.
raceroom-fr90-png.305775
1282786204310.jpg
 
I'm going to sound pretty harsh, but I have to admit it's hard for me to say I'm impressed. What could possibly make so hard to implement this feature? You had it in Race07 and that used the same base engine as R3E, but even though less than 20% of the original is present I'm still baffled by the time it took you guys to add such basic feature.

Still, it's still a good addition to R3E.

The road from the 2013 launch of RR to what it is today has been mostly about re-doing all the race07 features that had been cut out during the design phase of RR.

It is sad in a way but back in the design days, the scope and the goals of the platform were also very different from what they are today.
 
Really enjoying these dev notes, thanks @J-F Chardon. :thumbsup: Exciting times ahead in R3E land! Love the M1 so looking forward to that, and of course the `90's F1 will be nothing short of fantastic. It seems the sim is coming on leaps and bounds at the moment which is great to see. :cool:
 
Happy to see a early 90s F1 car coming but shame there are no custom liverys possible. I mean…who in the world wouldn’t like to reproduce a let’s say 1991 season?

Will buy it nonetheless.
 
3. Soon™ cars : The next update should see the release of the Formula RaceRoom X-90. Designed to bring you back to the visuals and sounds of the early 90's formula series, this car will come in three engine flavours : V8, V10 and V12. Do I need to tell you they all sound awesome? After endlessly lapping the Nordschleife in the relative silence of the highly technological VW ID.R, this one will turn your ears back on.
Early 90's formula series. Great.
And both update to the VW ID.R and a normalisation of this "thing" to be ready for the store (and hopefully for most tracks and normal races).
Look like the 2 group C cars will get tuff competition on my HD.

Great info update Sector3 Studio:thumbsup::thumbsup:
 
Time to update that dated graphics engine :roflmao:
Generic cars with no custom liveries :thumbsdown:
Lighting still looks better than AC with shaders patch/SOL 1.2 RC1, and with significantly less GPU power needed. The residual GPU power can then be applied to either better AA or VR at a solid 90fps.

The car textures are incredible vs AC's often-blurry low-res liveries. Custom liveries usually means I have to look at a hand-drawn penis or a half-naked anime chick (or whatever sophomoric nonsense they've come up with) on an opponent's hood. No thanks. I'll take proper historic liveries.

Night would be "nice", but it's hardly critical.

Weather would be great, but thus far all implementations are GPU-killers (ACC, PC2) or are half-baked (AC+shaders patch; no dedicated rain tires except on DRM 1.2 with no AI integration, no modeling of standing water, implemented inconsistently on a per-track basis = Basically just a cosmetic graphics hack atm).

Maybe you just need to see "DX11" to think it looks better?
 
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While I agree on some AC skins/textures being lowres (Nissan skins in ACC are so lowres they need to be redrawn from scratch, otherwise they look like 512*512 GT1/GT2 textures upscaled to 4096*4096 which is really bad), your uneducated take on "custom" skins is laughable and outdated as neither anime chicks nor drawn dicks have been featured on custom skins in a very long time. If you've seen otherwise, you either need to get your eyes checked or engage in the wrong communities or, worse still, you still have PTSD from being a regular on PRC, where it was once shown a livery featuring the catchphrase "Hitler did nothing wrong" that the author/owner of the website proudly used in a few iRacing events before being banned.

On the other hand, as cringeworthy as it is, the "Itasha" car culture from Japan/Korea (which is the closest thing to anime chicks with dicks drawn on cars) is restricted to either local drifting teams and/or SuperGT teams due to how influential manga are on their culture, especially for the younger generations. Nobody outside of Eastern Asia likes them, nobody outside of Eastern Asia is making them, unless people are recreating liveries used by real life GT3 teams (Hatsune Miku-sponsored cars and the like) and even then, it's not their fault if the Japanese/Korean car culture involves these things which are then "exported" to the West the moment a GT3 team announces an entry to the Spa 24 Hours or the Nurburgring 24 Hours.

Fun fact, a lot of ex-modders (skinners) started making custom skins and ended up either becoming professionals working for the industry or went freelancer creating liveries for real teams. Redcart, Alex Koda, Keane Design, Arnorallye, Andy Blackmore are the first that come to mind. And none of them ever made a single custom skin featuring anime chicks with dicks. Nor did the tenths of thousands of people that made custom skins for any game over the last couple of decades.
 
The road from the 2013 launch of RR to what it is today has been mostly about re-doing all the race07 features that had been cut out during the design phase of RR.

It is sad in a way but back in the design days, the scope and the goals of the platform were also very different from what they are today.
Thank you for clarifying it :)

I wish all the best to the people in Sector3. Race07 is still one of my favorite sims, even to this day, along with R3E.

Cheers.
 
While I agree on some AC skins/textures being lowres (Nissan skins in ACC are so lowres they need to be redrawn from scratch, otherwise they look like 512*512 GT1/GT2 textures upscaled to 4096*4096 which is really bad), your uneducated take on "custom" skins is laughable and outdated as neither anime chicks nor drawn dicks have been featured on custom skins in a very long time. If you've seen otherwise, you either need to get your eyes checked or engage in the wrong communities or, worse still, you still have PTSD from being a regular on PRC, where it was once shown a livery featuring the catchphrase "Hitler did nothing wrong" that the author/owner of the website proudly used in a few iRacing events before being banned.

On the other hand, as cringeworthy as it is, the "Itasha" car culture from Japan/Korea (which is the closest thing to anime chicks with dicks drawn on cars) is restricted to either local drifting teams and/or SuperGT teams due to how influential manga are on their culture, especially for the younger generations. Nobody outside of Eastern Asia likes them, nobody outside of Eastern Asia is making them, unless people are recreating liveries used by real life GT3 teams (Hatsune Miku-sponsored cars and the like) and even then, it's not their fault if the Japanese/Korean car culture involves these things which are then "exported" to the West the moment a GT3 team announces an entry to the Spa 24 Hours or the Nurburgring 24 Hours.

Fun fact, a lot of ex-modders (skinners) started making custom skins and ended up either becoming professionals working for the industry or went freelancer creating liveries for real teams. Redcart, Alex Koda, Keane Design, Arnorallye, Andy Blackmore are the first that come to mind. And none of them ever made a single custom skin featuring anime chicks with dicks. Nor did the tenths of thousands of people that made custom skins for any game over the last couple of decades.
TLDR. You like them, I don't. I'll take proper historic skins.
 
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