On the 48th episode of the iRacing Downshift, hosted by iRacing staffers Greg West (Associate Producer at iRacing), Kevin Bobbitt (Director of Marketing at iRacing) and Chris Leone (Marketing and Communications Manager at iRacing), a tease about the upcoming rain system in the sim was mentioned at the start.
The episode, which runs just over an hour, released earlier on Friday (14th April). At about 12 minutes and 50 seconds into the episode, West and Bobbitt transitioned the podcast’s conversation to updates on the rain. “All we’re saying is ‘hashtag soon’,” said Bobbitt.
“The good news is there’s progress, and Greg Hill was able to give us a picture to show. He doesn’t do that if we’re not making progress on things… It’s coming.” iRacing just recently teased the rain system in social postings on April Fools Day. While not a prank, it did surely get social media buzzing.
“It is not coming in June though,” West replied. “I realize I’ve said that for every build for the last while. Don’t anticipate rain in June. Let’s set realistic expectations. Rain is hard.”
West went into some of the further details of what some of the challenges of adding rain to the existing sim are. While this is surely somewhat disappointing for iRacing fans looking to get into wet weather racing on the sim, it is worth noting that between the first pictures and the most recent ones, visually it looks to be making huge strides.
From the sounds of what West and Bobbitt have outlined in the short blurb, Greg Hill (Senior Vice President and Executive Producer at iRacing) is making good progress on the system together with the development team. We already knew though, back from an earlier broadcast last year, that they are taking the time to make it right.
DIRT #SOON-ER
There should be a “Dirt refresh” in June’s 2023 Season 3 build, however, as also mentioned on the podcast. Later in the show, iRacing eSports Senior Competition Manager Tyler Hudson, one of the guests for this episode, also hinted that the updates will encompass more than just the dirt side of the sim.
“It’s more than just the Dirt refresh, it’s Oval too,” said Hudson. “Our vehicle dynamics guys are going through and we’re reviewing our short track stuff to get our laps times and grip settings more in line with real-world data that we have to correlate. It’s a project that kind of morphed into the oval side of things too.”
The full episode is available on multiple podcasting platforms, and all of them can be found over on the iRacing site. Be sure to also check out our iRacing rain wishlist we made last year as well!
SOURCE: iRacing
