iRacing President Tony Gardner took to the iRacing forums on Wednesday (19th April) to speak on the development of the previously announced Dirt Refresh.
During last week’s episode of the iRacing Downshift where it was revealed that rain would not be likely in Season 3, it was also revealed that the Dirt Refresh, mentioned by Gardner back in February, would be expected in the next big build on the platform in June of 2023.
In Gardner’s latest forum post, he gives an update to the upcoming changes to the service. Also hidden in the details are some unannounced pieces of content, some new features on the way and a vague timeline for some of these upcoming projects.
DIRT REFRESHING, BUT NOT AN OVERHAUL
Dirt racing at the simulation level through iRacing may have a whole new feel come June. Simply put, the refresh isn’t an “overhaul”, per Gardner, but it is more than anything minor that a refresh might imply.
Tracks will evolve in new ways with updated dirt values. Cars will feel different, being more in the track and now with diminishing wear. Other bugs have been squashed and new features will be enabled. The whole section from the forum post is reposted below:
Tracks:
Updated the water content of the soil resulting in a greater difference in soil strength between “fresh” and “dry.” This results in a bigger variation between driving on the ‘fresh or tacky’ part of the track vs the ‘dry or slick’.
Updated the relationship of the dirt surface and the tire allowing for a more “in the track” feel.
Updated variation in track wear / track prep. There is a larger gap between low track wear and a lot of track wear as a result of laps being run.
Added track bumps through dirt and water variation. This adds a layer of variation in track prep session to session. Some races may have a smooth surface (think what is on members now) and some races may have a more rigid and bumpy surface. Bumpiness may vary session to session and change slightly throughout the track wearing process.
Added water variation scaling. This is another variable that may be noticed session to session. Think of a water truck watering the track. The higher parts of the track may be drier than the lower parts due to gravity and the water seeping to the bottom. For example, the top of the track may be drier than before and the bottom may be wetter. The water truck is not a perfect science so it may vary in how dry or wet specific parts of the track are race to race.
Vehicles:
Every oval car that races on dirt was tuned either through tires, physics, or both. This includes Stock Cars (Current NASCAR Cup Cars, NASCAR Trucks, ARCA Menards Impala) and as a bonus also includes the Off-Road Trucks (Pro 4, Pro 2, Pro 2 Lite)
Tire wear was introduced to the Dirt tire model, and independently tuned per vehicle. Whether a 75 lap super late model race or a 30 lap 360 sprint car race, paying attention to your race length and tires will be important.
Some vehicles received sound improvements and updates.
New Damage Model Enabled:
Super Late Model
Pro Late Model
Limited Late Model
New features:
The ability for Hosted Racing hosts to disable the virtual mirror for their session.
Bug Fixes:
A handful of dirt tracks had dark seams around their perimeter. This was visual only and did not affect the physics. This has been fixed.
Remote car wheels could seem to twitch oddly. This has been fixed.
Certain tracks did not have collisions applied to their catch fencing. This has been fixed.
Rebuilding DTI data to fix odd cushions at certain tracks.
And more…
This looks to be the biggest dirt update since the discipline launched in 2017.
Perhaps the development with the wet weather system allowed for a better moisture meter for the intricacies of dirt racing. It’s not fully confirmed for June, but Gardner hopes it is ready by then.
OTHER UPDATES TEASED
There were a bunch of other nuggets of information in that post. Keeping with the Dirt theme, the iRacing AI is set to include Dirt racing at some point, but it won’t be in June, unfortunately.
Surely, the development of World of Outlaws: Dirt Racing together with Monster Games allowed for the publishing company at iRacing to get an idea of what to do for such a development on their PC simulation.
As also mentioned prior, the Oval refresh has been underway as well, with some of those updates overlapping with the Dirt revisions. Items that will be tuned when the Oval refresh is finalized include “dynamic track and its impact on multi-groove” racing, as well as the current version of the tire model.
So, rain isn’t coming just yet, but Gardner expects it to come “later this year”, which is huge for the service. He does specifically only point out the Road competition being affected, but hopefully, that doesn’t mean it won’t affect oval, dirt or off-road too.
When we find out more about the upcoming update to iRacing, we’ll have you covered. Keep it pinned.
SOURCE: iRacing Forums
