RaceRoom: May Developer Notes

[Paul Jeffrey]

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?

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.

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.​

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..

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[bgil66]

X-90!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[Neils on Wheels]

I actually quite like the look of raceroom, only thing that looks a bit rough is the cockpits maybe this is a limitation of shaders or whatever.
looking forward to the additional content & extra features, good to hear we getting some more tracks this year i'm finding myself spending more & more time in this sim.

 

[anton_Chez]

I'll always maintain that Raceroom is easily one of the best looking sims on the market. There aren't many obviously but it's always a pleasure to look at from my perspective. DX9 and all.

Especially through that blurry AF next generation Pimax 5K+ HMD I force myself to use......

......................

 

[xx-Tim-xx]

Would like to see some more GT4 Cars

 

[Kevin Troschinski]

Hi,

maybe i am still blind but such obvious features like camber or tire pressure are still pretty useless in R3E....
Because i can`t see any possibility in game for example to read the tire temperatures ??
I completly don´t know what the tires are doing .... so how should i adjust these setup features things correctly ??

 

[RoccoTTS]

Hi,

maybe i am still blind but such obvious features like camber or tire pressure are still pretty useless in R3E....
Because i can`t see any possibility in game for example to read the tire temperatures ??
I completly don´t know what the tires are doing .... so how should i adjust these setup features things correctly ??

You can see the tire temperatures if you use the new WebHUD.

 

[J-F Chardon]

Take a look at all the 3rd party apps @Kevin Troschinski
https://forum.sector3studios.com/index.php?forums/community-workshop.73/

For example with tyre temps, have a look at this one : https://forum.sector3studios.com/index.php?threads/secondmonitor-timing-status-app.9587

 

[Yetch]

Time to update that dated graphics engine
Generic cars with no custom liveries

Party Poo Poo more like!

 

[Yetch]

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.

Plenty of Sims give the ability for mods'n'modders to dabble at their heart's content, R3E is unique by not offering this (as of now), for which we get consistency, in both the graphical and performance department of every track and car released. Modders can brush up on their technique with AC, AMS & Rf2, perfect their art, then join the S3 team and fill out the existing classes with some new meat!
RR has so many empty classes that when drawn out as a diagram it resembles the expanding universe in all its glory, getting bigger and bigger but so are the gaps in between, could really do with some class filling in 2019/20. Sooo many series with just 2 or 3 cars in and with such a small team, I fear I will not be here to see the majority of missing cars come to fruition. The very best thing about RR is the close, wheel to wheel racing experience we all crave but unless you're gonna race GT3 or DTM, you're basically cup car racing in a car that deserves the competition it was designed to race against.
Not one who usually complains too much, more of an observation than complaint really. Would be interesting to get an insight @J-F Chardon whether this is in the business plan? I get licensing causes issues but would it not make sense to make sure enough car licenses were available in a series before embarking on releasing an individual vehicle. Serious amount of Jonny no mates kicking around my virtual garage, thick in dust, not because I don't enjoy their company, just no one to play with!

 

[ChaosZeroJK]

snip

Tell me about it. I have been painting complete TCR grids for 2 years now and it's an exhausting task for a single person, yet satisfying when I load the game and see all the championships represented. Last year I probably painted close to 400 TCRs on my own and only stopped because I ran out of time (2018 ended), this year I have already close to 150 cars painted and I'm working on a lot more as I speak. I'm targeting all "TCR -nameofthecountry-" to consider it a complete set and as it stands I'm about a third of the way there, with extras such as complete TCR classes competing in IMPC, TC America (both of which are already painted) and a few others as bonuses.

The issue comes when I -as a modder- have no legal obligations towards the various parties represented (licensing and whatnot) due to my work being non-commercial, while the "professionals" such as developers/publishers don't have the same freedom as I do in this regard.

I'd gladly join their team and paint more TCRs for them if they wanted me to (or needed someone to do so in general), but unless something changes on a licensing level (say, obtain blanket rights/permissions to paint all cars running under WSC Ltd. sanctioned competitions, or any TCR championship in poor words), WTCR will remain the only skinpack that they'll be allowed to make.

Fun fact: for the last couple of years, cars racing in TCR Thailand in 2018, TCR Malaysia in 2019 and TCR Asia in both 2018 and 2019 have (or have had) the Raceroom logo as one of the mandatory contingency decals that must be applied on the cars. They're the only championships that require teams to do so, but I've never understood why as none of them are represented in the actual game. Which is a shame as Eastern Asian teams have absolutely gorgeous liveries, for the most part.

 

[wajdi]

I’m new in this sim. I’m liking it but damn my DD steering wheel doesn’t feel good. rfactor2 FFB is perfect with my AccuForce. I hope they can integrate better DD system in their game. Said this, I like the content, cars and tracks. Great sound and great motion FFB with my 4 actuators motion system.

 

[FeltHat]

I’m new in this sim. I’m liking it but damn my DD steering wheel doesn’t feel good. rfactor2 FFB is perfect with my AccuForce. I hope they can integrate better DD system in their game. Said this, I like the content, cars and tracks. Great sound and great motion FFB with my 4 actuators motion system.

there are some changes and additions to ffb in the upcoming update, hopefully it will fix your issues

 

[anton_Chez]

Also, @wajdi, try changing the FFB options from Steering Rack 100% (if you have this) to Steering Rack 50% or 0%. I had this on 100 with my OSW and in some cars the FFB was awful. I changed this and it changed my life. Also, you probably should remove all the options at the bottom of the FFB settings, the canned effects, so that nothing is getting in the way of the direct drive signal. I know that having collision effect on even a very small amount completely broke my FFB when I was bumped or touched a wall.

Raceroom is probably the worst title to set up for FFB (AC, rF2, iRacing all just have a strength slider which is MUCH easier for direct drive because direct drive uses the raw signal so well) so it takes a little bit of mucking around to get it feeling right. One thing I'd love to see is a 'Direct Drive' option, which just removes most of the options and just leaves a strength slider and the damping slider as well. This would make it a lot easier to find good feeling with a direct drive wheel base.

Not sure if this is realistic depending on the way the FFB works but it would make it a lot easier for people that struggle to find enjoyment in the title.

 

[RoccoTTS]

 

[F_B]

Best F1 era imo. First day purchase.

 

[Zoltan76]

Moving to UE4?

 

[UMC 22]

Moving to UE4?

No.

 

[Zoltan76]

No.

But there was news about that.

 

[UMC 22]

But there was news about that.

A long time ago they said maybe, but no time soon. It's what they've said here, and what they've said on their own forums. When they make a decision and start work, they'll announce it. Everyone asking every time a patch comes out is not going to oblige them to answer again, or make it happen any faster.

 

[Neils on Wheels]

I was under the impression there was something in the works, i guess that was fake news or my misunderstanding. Not sure its a bad thing all things considered.