So it’s starting to get cold up here.  Having lived in the Northeast pretty much my entire life I can honestly say there are very few things I enjoy doing when it’s cold anymore.  One thing I do enjoy about winter is that there are a lot of occasions to see family and friends and catch up on what’s new in our lives.  So let’s pretend we are all sitting around a fire sipping some hot coco (or maybe something stronger) and how about I catch you up on what we are working on?

Let me start by saying this is always the most difficult milestone of the year.  Typically this is the time of the year that we take the shackles off the engineers that bind them to their desk and actually let them see what the bright yellow thing in the sky is or meet the people that live in their houses.  Let’s be honest, as much as we love our jobs, our product and community, taking some time off around the holidays to spend with family and friends is nice.  Don’t get the wrong idea though; we have a lot of very cool things we are working on, so here is what’s cooking.

One of the things I am most excited about is that we are finally getting the spotter and crew chief working.  I don’t think anyone will be very surprised to hear that it is looking like it will work very much like it did in the Papyrus products.  We have recorded all new samples using our favorite Australian, Greg Hill of Soundwave Concepts for the spotter.  Yes, that’s right; our spotter is going to be Australian.  This is a little shout out to our loyal customers down under and a personal tribute to Greg for all the hard work he does in creating our sounds.  As of right now he is the voice for the crew chief also but we may have time to make that some one else.  For those of you that are dreading the thought of listening to Greg drone on as I do, we are going to do our best to make it so you can use your own samples that you create instead. 

Here is a random yet somewhat related Papyrus fact brought to you by Clip’em Lawn Service, the industry leader in lawn care repair for victory donuts.  The voice actor for the spotter and crew chief for NASCAR 4 on was the same guy that did the voice for Duke Nukem, Jon St. John.

Another big project that I honestly thought was not looking like it would make the next big build was open practice servers.  As of today we actually have a very, very, early development version of this working.  It still has a long way to go, but it is looking very promising that this will be here sooner rather than later.  Basically, once this is completed, you will be able to go to the sessions screen for each series and join a practice session that is already in progress.  We know you have been asking for this and we are doing our very best to bring it to you for next season.

One item that has already been rolled out that you will notice if you join our 24 Heures du Fun series is unofficial series server allocation is now most heavily weighted by your friends list.  I encourage those that are looking to get on track with your friends to make sure you all have each other on your friends list.  I know that many of you have requested more opportunities to race with your friends and this is a good first step in that direction.

Another feature that you have been asking for is local yellow flags on the road courses.  I can confirm that this is being worked on and will tell you in the same sentence that race control is the last thing I will ever promise you a completion date for.  Our loveable Kiwi Grant Reeve never gets too excited or too mad, but if you told him that race control coding was easy or HAD to be done on a certain date he may actually raise his voice at you.  Just trying to test and uncover every potential issue in race control is a very difficult task and as you can see from the number of “emergency” releases we have done this season to fix problems that popped up.  Trust me when I say that Grant is working as hard as he possibly can to finish this up because he desperately wants to work on something else!

Replays are in fact on the horizon.  This is a much more daunting task than what it may appear because of all the different pieces of the service and software that actually interact when the software launches.  We have a few more tasks left to complete like compressing the data and the interface in how you select and play a replay from the website, but it is looking promising that this will be complete for the next major build.  A related task that is much further down the road is figuring out a way to broadcast live events to the internet, but it’s on our list to do especially with our desire to launch a professional series.

I have seen a few threads in the forums as we head into this holiday season asking about gift cards.  Our elves are furiously working in their workshop to try and get these completed for this holiday season but it will be close.  These will be electronic gift cards that can be emailed or printed and can be purchased by someone that does not have an iRacing account.  These gift cards will only be good for use on the member site and cannot be used on our merchandise site.

What is probably the most obvious announcement in this entire blog is that the Daytona Prototype and Impala SS will be the next two cars released.  These two vehicles are slated to be in our Class A road and oval series.  I would like to publicly thank our good friend Dale Jr for all the work he has done in collecting data for us, especially for the Impala SS.  We consider ourselves very lucky to have him helping us in so many ways.  I am very excited for the launch of both of these cars.  I have driven the DP car some and even in its very early state it is probably my favorite road car right now.  I am very much looking forward to the Impala SS also because I think it will obviously be a true benchmark for how far we have come from NR2003.

I have seen a number of posts in the forums asking about the development status of the Spec Racer Ford and Lotus 79.  The SRF’s graphics model is complete as is the sounds, but unfortunately we have not had any time to work on its physics model.  The Lotus 79 3D model is almost complete and is heading to the texture guys, but we have not had a chance yet to get our hands on a car in a state that we can take the necessary measurements we need.  I expect the SRF development will move very quickly once we get a chance to work on it and could be out early next year.  The Lotus 79 will be a much longer project due to the fact that there is just not many of these cars around and very limited hard data that exists that we can use.  We will build a fantastic car, it’s just going to take longer than anyone will like including us.

There will be a number of other features and fixes that will go into this next build that I have not listed here.  All of the items that I have listed are “cooking in the kitchen” so to speak and when these dishes are served and the next order is up I will plan to do another blog on what’s next for your table.  In the mean time I hope you enjoyed our little chat around the fire and I wish all of you a very happy holiday season.

Steve