iRacing: Audi RS3 LMS TCR Preview

[Paul Jeffrey]

iRacing have revealed a new preview trailer of the upcoming Audi RS3 LMS TCR car set to join the simulation this September.

Having been in the works for a little while, including the odd teaser mention in recent videos and news snippets from the studio, we now finally have some official details about the upcoming RS3 LMS TCR... it's coming to iRacing this September.

Yes, touring car racing is set to take centre stage in iRacing once again next month. The highly competitive TCR specification RS3 LMS is set to be made available to players as part of the 2019 Season 4 update, expected to be deployed to the simulation in the next few weeks.

Touring car racing has taken something of a back seat in iRacing these past few years, so the arrival of a modern TCR specification car is a nice move from the American developers, and is something I'm highly interested to try out for myself when it becomes available in the near future.

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[nerdthewise]

Super excited for this.

 

[blot]

Watched the trailer, This sim is looking graphically pretty dated now?

 

[Eckhart von Glan]

Yep, but it's still the go to service for fun online competition, so no worries. With Barcelona and the Audi both in the new build, I'll get two items for the first time in a long long time.

 

[Ryno917]

Watched the trailer, This sim is looking graphically pretty dated now?

It's based on the engine from NR2003, which itself was based on the engine from NASCAR Racing 4. IIRC it even had its roots in the engine used for GPL but I might be mistaken on that.

It's not surprising it's not looking too modern. I'd say they'd done a great job incrementally improving it, though, and to my (colour blind) eyes they have the best colour balance of any sim out there right now, even if they are lacking all the bells and whistles.

I'm debating giving it another chance, but both times I've tried it I didn't like the physics/FFB.

 

[M D Gourley]

I have not re-subscribed to my iRacing membership for over a year now but if they bring in the TCR series of cars this will be fantastic...but may wait a little longer till iRacing gets a few more cars of the series and the long awaited AI...then I.m in

 

[TheReaper GT]

So DSG or XTrack?

 

[Deleted member 526227]

This car is going to be a very popular one.

 

[RichardHessels]

It's based on the engine from NR2003, which itself was based on the engine from NASCAR Racing 4. IIRC it even had its roots in the engine used for GPL but I might be mistaken on that.

It's not surprising it's not looking too modern. I'd say they'd done a great job incrementally improving it, though, and to my (colour blind) eyes they have the best colour balance of any sim out there right now, even if they are lacking all the bells and whistles.

I'm debating giving it another chance, but both times I've tried it I didn't like the physics/FFB.

Please stop that crap...
Their graphics engine code does not even look remotely on the code they used for that 15 year old title. Not on the outsiode, nor the inside.
It's probably totally re-written a few times by now.
But when you host a service like this you want all members to have somehat the same surrounding.
So not only people with the latest graphic cards get to see what the game is about.
It's a very solid and optimized piece of software that runs on almost any machine.
E-sports is not about graphics. It's about gameplay.
Setting the same stage for everybody and than compete.

 

[Ryno917]

Please stop that crap...
Their graphics engine code does not even look remotely on the code they used for that 15 year old title. Not on the outsiode, nor the inside.
It's probably totally re-written a few times by now.

To my understanding, at no point did they completely re-write the graphics engine, it's all been incremental changes. That's the point here; when you update something incrementally you always have some legacy code in there. There may no longer be any code from the original incarnation of the engine, but the incremental approach always means it's behind the times because you build in steps, which takes longer and usually requires some kind of workaround to make some newer things work with some older things, even if only temporarily.

They haven't started over from scratch, and it shows. That's what I was getting at.

It's not a slight, by any means, either. It's still a pretty good looking game, all things considered, and the incremental approach was a smart move from them for exactly the reasons you mentioned; it's easier to keep the whole player base on the same level that way than it would be if they introduced an entirely new engine that left behind the older machines.

 

[Globespy]

To my understanding, at no point did they completely re-write the graphics engine, it's all been incremental changes. That's the point here; when you update something incrementally you always have some legacy code in there. There may no longer be any code from the original incarnation of the engine, but the incremental approach always means it's behind the times because you build in steps, which takes longer and usually requires some kind of workaround to make some newer things work with some older things, even if only temporarily.

They haven't started over from scratch, and it shows. That's what I was getting at.

It's not a slight, by any means, either. It's still a pretty good looking game, all things considered, and the incremental approach was a smart move from them for exactly the reasons you mentioned; it's easier to keep the whole player base on the same level that way than it would be if they introduced an entirely new engine that left behind the older machines.

Right on the money.
With a subscription based service they have to consider all the users and the different levels of hardware.
New Shiny things come and go, ACC is a prime example of a title that's essentially dead because they focused on a graphical engine that was rough even for a high end PC and forgot about all the things that made the original AC so popular.
iRacing's color palette is still more realistic than the over-saturated ones of other titles, and the entire package makes it my go to SIM.
They are making a lot of positive changes, and I'm sure with their announced cessation of support for Win 7 next year, we might see some changes to the core graphics engine since they can move on from DX11 which is holding things back.

 

[dumdidum]

Watched the trailer, This sim is looking graphically pretty dated now?

In my opinion it hast the best Sim-Racing graphics, maybe with RRE, clean look and no flickering and **** like that.

 

[fxr]

In my opinion it hast the best Sim-Racing graphics, maybe with RRE, clean look and no flickering and **** like that.

Is amazing in VR as well. Can't get any sim too look as crisp as iRacing. Not crazy about how it looks (trees yuck) and in some places it looks like a 11 year old game (I guess it was released 11 years ago) but how it runs and how crisp it looks make me overlook this.

 

[tlsmikey]

I'm a big fan of iRacing but i've learned to not buy cars that only race in one series. When they add more TCR's i'll take a look.

 

[RichardHessels]

To my understanding, at no point did they completely re-write the graphics engine, it's all been incremental changes. That's the point here; when you update something incrementally you always have some legacy code in there. There may no longer be any code from the original incarnation of the engine, but the incremental approach always means it's behind the times because you build in steps, which takes longer and usually requires some kind of workaround to make some newer things work with some older things, even if only temporarily.

They haven't started over from scratch, and it shows. That's what I was getting at.

It's not a slight, by any means, either. It's still a pretty good looking game, all things considered, and the incremental approach was a smart move from them for exactly the reasons you mentioned; it's easier to keep the whole player base on the same level that way than it would be if they introduced an entirely new engine that left behind the older machines.

Hardly any software that size is written from scratch.
If you change pieces of code all the time you end up with something thats a little to do with the codebase of 15 years ago. Every software runs on pieces of code that originated long ago.
Why re-invent the wheel? Your X86 CPU runs on pieces of code and instructions that originated in the 70's.

 

[David Wright]

Wow! Sliding cars in iRacing. Looks like a lot of fun. Given they are not trying to simulate WTCR or another real TCR series and given the TCR cars are all FWD turbo 4 cylinders weighing pretty much the same, I think I can forgive that there is only one available. Saves all that BOPing nonsense. Not sure how popular the previous touring car was but this seems like a good move to me. Only thing I'm not keen on is the sound. Probably realistic but would give me a headache.

 

[Raymond 18]

Watched the trailer, This sim is looking graphically pretty dated now?

Yes, it reminds me Race07/Injection. Very very similar in terms of graphics/FX. The problem is Race 07 was published in... 2007! (and still very good simracing)

 

[Jordan Dion]

PLEASE UPDATE FFB AND TIRES IRACING!!!!

 

[Nick Gregory]

Glad I decided to get back into iRacing.

 

[Wayne Hutchison]

PLEASE UPDATE FFB AND TIRES IRACING!!!!

But they already have the best FFB and tire model of all sims...