iRacing Update News - New Driver Animations and Dirt Footage!

[Paul Jeffrey]

iRacing.com have released a couple of interesting new videos recently, featuring the first ever moving footage from the upcoming loose surface content update, and a very interesting W.I.P. video of new driver arm movement animation, vastly improving on the cumbersome version found in the current build.

The inclusion of loose surface dirt racing was one of iRacing's biggest announcements in recent memory, and represents a huge technical undertaking by the team to bring a wildly different form of motorsport to the predominantly American centric simulation. Little major information has been shared by the team since the announcement, apart from a few thinly spread images of the Dirt Street Stock Car and Ford Fiesta Rally-Cross vehicle, expected to be made available once dirt finally hits the simulation.

In the below video, the Dirt Street Stock Car can be seen piloted by Vice President and Executive Producer at iRacing Steve Myers, circulating around Eldora Speedway, a laser scanned location already confirmed to release as part of the initial build. Keep in mind the below video showcases work in progress footage, as the video may not necessarily represent what the finished product will look like once upon release.

iRacing Dirt in Action Video:

With the obvious excitement about dirt oval racing not to be overestimated, iRacing have seemingly not focused all their development attention to the new surface, with a preview video showing off driver arm / wheel animation having been recently posted by the developers. Driver animation has long been out of date in iRacing, with some very rudimentary implementation glaringly showing the age of the base software, especially in direct comparison to some of the more recent sim racing title's to hit the stores in recent years. As is always the case with iRacing, the developers continue to find ways to update and improve the software and the new Work in Progress video shows considerable improvements over previous implementations.

Now giving a full range of movement, for those iRacers who don't turn off the in game wheel this is a vast improvement over the current standard within the sim. Again the released video shows WIP footage, and no serious indication of when we might see this feature included in the title has been shared by the developers.

iRacing New Driver Animations Video:

Check out the iRacing sub forum here at RaceDepartment for news and discussions regarding the sim. Download or share a setup or two and engage with your fellow iRacing fans today!

Do you like the new driver animations? Looking forward to dirt? Let us know in the comments section below!

 

[Blimey]

those hands look like little chopsticks coming out of your chest.

 

[P*Funk]

Two points.

#1 why is that TV so far from the wheel! Tell me that's not a developer's station.

#2 does anyone in actual professional racing do the hand over hand thing? I thought there were better ways to do that I should be forcing myself to learn? Lord knows when I do the hand over hand thing and have to contend with slides it feels very cumbersome to have to countersteer that way.

 

[James Nance]

#2 does anyone in actual professional racing do the hand over hand thing? I thought there were better ways to do that I should be forcing myself to learn? Lord knows when I do the hand over hand thing and have to contend with slides it feels very cumbersome to have to countersteer that way.

Its a basically a road car, so you kinda do.

 

[gamer19]

Why the hell all the "dirt" is accumulating on ...helmet (looks more like it's on our monitors) and not, like it supposed to be, on front shield glass !??
It's like it magically goes through glass and then magically materialized to your ...helm.
Surreal.

 

[Dennis]

Finally, having working arms will increase immersion for VR

Am I the only who noticed this ?

The car in the video doesn't have a windscreen.

 

[gamer19]

Ah I see now...

Forget about it then...

 

[Juliusz Baczynski]

Its good to see iRacing making things right but this should have been done long time ago really. But then again so has iRacing always been haha

 

[Associat0r]

#1 why is that TV so far from the wheel! Tell me that's not a developer's station.

Many real drivers suffer from eyestrain when the screen is close.

 

[ZombieInfected]

those hands look like little chopsticks coming out of your chest.

If you have that, go see a doctor.

 

[Lino Carreira]

The hands are mainly for VR imho

 

[Blimey]

If you have that, go see a doctor.

saving up for a Porsche DLC, cannot go.

 

[David Wright]

The hands are mainly for VR imho

I'm sure the improvement has been made with VR in mind, but racing sims have had animated driver arms since Grand Prix Legends way back in 1998. For me they add greatly to the immersion factor even with my single screen setup, and luckily for me almost all sims have this feature.

 

[MoerasGrizzly]

If you have that, go see a doctor.

As it happens, having a light source casting light directly into your eyes is not really what our eyes have evolved towards doing.

 

[GMcA_74]

The future is now!

Would like to see how the F1 style rim version of this is looking.

 

[Tobiman]

Competition is a good thing.

 

[Vojko Music]

Why the hell all the "dirt" is accumulating on ...helmet (looks more like it's on our monitors) and not, like it supposed to be, on front shield glass !??
It's like it magically goes through glass and then magically materialized to your ...helm.
Surreal.

Maybe it represents their pricing model?

 

[Ghoults]

The hand animations look good. Definitely better than pcars where the driver looks like he is driving through the corners one handed while using the other hand to bless his steering wheel.

Two points.

#1 why is that TV so far from the wheel! Tell me that's not a developer's station.

Putting the monitor too far away is very common basic mistake. I'd guess most of the time it is done that way so other people behind the driver can also see the screen (which is useful for expos and events). Also if you buy a rig chances are the rig comes with monitor mounts that are not adjustable and put the monitors too far away. For actual racing rig the monitor should always be right behind the wheel.

The monitor distance in sim racing is imho almost a common joke at this point. It is easily the most common mistake you see in youtube where people show off their racing rigs for example. The monitors are usually just miles away. In the most hilarious examples you may have a guy showing off his triple 4k 3x60" setup and the monitors are all the way across the room! But you you see tons of console gamers too who have bought a portable sim rig who basically just put the rig in the middle of the living room a very far away from the tv sets. It is just really really common.

#2 does anyone in actual professional racing do the hand over hand thing? I thought there were better ways to do that I should be forcing myself to learn? Lord knows when I do the hand over hand thing and have to contend with slides it feels very cumbersome to have to countersteer that way.

In real life you can use different techniques for different corners. If you need just little more rotation of the steering than you can manage at 9-3 while holding the wheel then you can move your hands slightly on the steering wheel (say 7-12 for right hand corner so you can make the corner without having to take your hands off the wheel in the corner) before the corner. Or you may need to alter your grip because of gear change.

In sim these kind of corner-fine tuned hand animations this is really hard to do because the game never knows how much the driver is going to turn the steering wheel.

For replays such system would be probably posdsible to code (have more than one animation for example) and blend from one to other because the game can see from the replay what is coming up next and so can choose animation that will be perfect for that corner. Just like you do in real life.

 

[Deleted member 130869]

Next up: helmets.

 

[Lino Carreira]

I'm sure the improvement has been made with VR in mind, but racing sims have had animated driver arms since Grand Prix Legends way back in 1998. For me they add greatly to the immersion factor even with my single screen setup, and luckily for me almost all sims have this feature.

Yes but look at how long they had the limited hands movement, the reason they are fixing it now i feel it is mainly because of VR, i feel its immersion breaking when using HTC Vive and not seeing the full movement. To be honest i have always left the hands on even on triples, but, most people i know with rigs usually turn the hands and the wheel off. It seems now is the proper time to finally fix that.

I might be wrong of course