iRacing’s 2022 Season 3 Patch 2 Hotfix fixes visuals on new Atlanta

Last week, the new, superspeedway-type version of Atlanta Motor Speedway‘s oval was added to the iRacing service just in time for this weekend’s NASCAR races in the real-world.

After a week or so of having it in hosted and official racing, a hotfix for the 2022 Season 3 Patch 2 was dropped on Thursday (7th July 2022) which updates some of the visuals on the new Atlanta track.

For one thing, the virtual sun will now be in the right spot through the virtual day, as north is now properly set on the track. This should prevent late-day darkness cast in the shadows on the frontstretch across the finish line. The pavement also will also appear darker, as it does in the real-world.

Unfortunately, night lighting is still not included with this hotfix, so there’s still that to hopefully look forward to. In terms of other updated content, some vehicles with the New Damage Model, such as the Dirt Sprint Car and the new Radical SR10, have also been updated today. NDM vehicles on dirt should also be more accurate in general.

There are also some iRacing UI updates, and one of the included additions is OpenXR support. Those utilizing OpenXR can now properly augment with native Oculus VR and OpenVR support. Virtual Reality racing is becoming more popular and having extra support continues to empower those utilizing.

The entirety of today’s iRacing hotfix notes are listed below, courtesy of the iRacing forums and support pages. How are you enjoying 2022 iRacing Season 3 so far? Let us know in the comments below!

iRACING UI:

Display Mode

• OpenXR is now a selectable option in the Display Mode picker menu.

Profile Widget

• Awards which have been awarded multiple times now show additional tooltip information that differentiate each.

Profile

• Fixed an issue where Profile Info updates do not appear after saving them until the page is refreshed.

Time Attack

• Fixed an issue where some Time Attack Competitions were showing as “Multiclass” when they only had multiple cars in the same class.

iRacing Awards

• Fixed an issue where the “First Win” Award was only finding asphalt Oval data.

SIMULATION:

New Damage Model

• The algorithm for handling tires colliding with dirt surfaces has been updated for increased accuracy, particularly for surface normals and bumps.

Virtual Reality Devices

• Native OpenXR support has been added to augment our native Oculus VR and OpenVR support.
• – – You may select OpenXR from the Display Mode picker in the iRacingUI before launching the Simulator. The OpenXR option will only show as available if the currently “active” OpenXR runtime selected on your PC reports that it is compatible with your HMD. In order to do this, first you will need to make sure you have the best OpenXR runtime set as “active” on your PC. There are several different OpenXR runtimes available, but only one is “active” on your PC at a time. And you want to make sure the “active” one is the best one for your HMD.
• – – – – NOTE: depending on your HMD, more than one runtime may be compatible, but only one is best. For instance:
• – – – – – – If using an Oculus HMD, you should use the Oculus OpenXR runtime directly,  but you still have the option to try the SteamVR OpenXR runtime (Not worth trying).
• – – – – – – For Windows Mixed Reality compatible HMDs, you should first try using the Windows WMR OpenXR runtime (over SteamVR), but often these HMDs can also fall back to SteamVR’s OpenXR runtime.
• – – – – – – For other HMDs, such as the Valve Index, the SteamVR OpenXR runtime is what you want.   
• – – – – – – And there are also other OpenXR runtimes by some other HMD manufacturers.
• – – Generally, you should use the VR application software for the HMD to select its OpenXR runtime as “active”. For instance:
• – – – – To select Oculus as active, you run the Oculus App, and in the settings, there is a button to make Oculus the active runtime (if it is already active it says that and the button is disabled).
• – – – – To select SteamVR’s OpenXR runtime as active, launch SteamVR, and there is a similar button inside the steamVR settings to set it active.
• – – – – To select the Window’s WMR OpenXR runtime as active, one method is to install the Microsoft “OpenXR tools for Mixed Reality” application, and use its settings to select WMR’s runtime as “active”.
• – – NOTE: There is a compatibility issue with the third party OpenXR toolkit application. The developer is aware of the issue. If you have that third party tool installed, and the Simulator crashes during startup when using OpenXR, you can go into that toolkit application and temporarily disable it while running iRacing using its settings. The Simulator is using an OpenXR feature correctly, but the Toolkit doesn’t support that feature yet.

CARS:

Dirt Sprint Car

• (ALL) – For the New Damage Model, the broken actuator models have been updated to better reflect damage when the wing is ripped off.

Radical SR10

• For the New Damage Model, some damage morphs have been improved.
• For the Old Damage Model, fixed an issue where the mirror stems were not removed when the nose was detached.

TRACKS:

Atlanta Motor Speedway

• (Oval) – North is now north.
• (Oval) – Ambient occlusion for posts has been updated.
• (Oval) – Pavement textures have been darkened.
• (Oval) – Fixed an issue with some dark lines appearing in the grass.