For you filthy non-iRacing members

One of the iRacing guys posted the Week 13 schedule today, and said the Corvette would be racing at Mosport and the Indy Car will be at Indy "when the build comes out" during Week 13 so we'll be able to drive them some time next week.

Quote from bbman :

So, is everybody still busy drooling over the Corvette pics why nobody has posted them yet?

For all those who don't get into the member forums, here are two screenies:

http://www.virtualr.net/wp-content/gallery/1963/c6r1.jpg
http://www.virtualr.net/wp-content/gallery/1963/c6r2.jpg

Hotlink denied.

You can see them here: http://www.virtualr.net/iracin ... orvette-c6-r-screenshots/

I can't wait to drive the Corvette, but as far as the drooling goes the iRacing graphics engine still makes the cars look flat.

Quote from P5YcHoM4N :

I'd say this crash started with those two famous words:

WATCH THIS!

I think you forgot the 4 words that come before that

"Hold my beer and..."

Quote from The Moose :

It's nothing more than superb marketing, making the entry fees look a third cheaper than it was.

It was really just terrible marketing in the first place. They made the subscriptions look more expensive than they needed to be, which isn't exactly the smartest thing to do considering your sim is ALREADY priced higher than everything else out there. The new pricing model is what they should have used from the beginning.

I can't help but laugh when I see people on the iRacing forum talking about how great of a deal the old way was with the "free iRacing credits" they were getting. I guess they don't realize they were just loaning iRacing money. Then when you point that out to them, you get called out for whining. Actually, any time you ever say anything negative over there you're a whiner, even if all you're doing is stating the facts.

Last edited by UncleBenny, Fri, 16 Oct 2009 15:36.

Quote from buck77 :

do you guys know when is the next update with new car/track going to be?

This season ends October 26th, so sometime in the 7 days after that.

And the new schedule is out. Corvette is on there for the full season, guess that means its going to be ready for the new build. I'm pretty pumped about that.

Full press release for outsiders:

Quote :

iRacing Announces Added Features, Lower Prices: Private Hosted Racing & Race Participation Program Introduced; Annual Subscription Cost Cut 37%; New Public Site Unveiled

BEDFORD, MA (October 15, 2009) – Members of iRacing.com’s popular motorsport simulation service will now enjoy additional features as well as lower subscription and content prices. The new pricing structure, which decreases the cost of an annual membership by 37%, goes into effect immediately. The new features, including private-hosted sessions and a program that awards credits for regular race participation, commence with the November 3rd start of iRacing’s 2009 - Season 4.

The announcement was made by Tony Gardner, iRacing’s president, who said the increased value for members was made possible by the service’s remarkable growth since membership was opened to the general public in August, 2008. Gardner also announced a brand new version of iRacing’s public Web site (www.iracing.com) designed to introduce prospective members to the inexpensive fun of online racing with authentic virtual versions of popular race cars and tracks.

“More than 15,000 people have joined iRacing.com since we fully opened our doors 15 months ago,” Gardner said. “Because our membership has grown rapidly, we are able to both lower prices and increase features. We anticipate that by adding value, we’ll increase the enjoyment of our current members and bring even more new members into our community.

“We are committed to making iRacing a thrilling experience for current and new members. The larger the membership, the better the racing will be for everyone. We believe that lowering our prices will open the doors to whole new segments of the racing community.”

Lower Prices

iRacing.com offers a variety of subscriptions, ranging from month-by-month to a new two-year plan that reduces the monthly cost of membership to less than $7.50. Additional content is also available beyond the three cars and seven tracks that come with every subscription. In each case, the new price is lower than its predecessor. A summary of the price reductions:


Term & Old Price:
1 month, was $ 19.00
Term, New Price, Reduction, New Monthly:
1 month, $ 14.00, -26%, $ 14.00

3 month, was $ 50.00
3 month, $ 36.00, -28%, $ 12.00

6 month was $ 90.00
6 month, $ 60.00, -33%, $ 10.00

1 Year, $ 156.00
1 Year, $ 99.00, -37%, $ 8.25

New Term, Price, Monthly:
2 Year, $ 179.00, $ 7.46

Cars were $15.00, now $ 11.95. -20%
Long Tracks were $20.00 or $25.00, now $14.95. -25% or -40%
Short Tracks were $15.00, now $11.95. -20%

Members who have recently purchased additional content are protected by a pair of price-guarantee programs. Any member who has bought content (cars and tracks) within the 30 days preceding the new pricing will receive within 14 days via e-mail a code for iRacing credit for the full amount of the difference between the old and new prices. Similarly, members who have purchased content between 31 and 90 days from the onset of the new pricing will receive a credit for 50% of the difference between the old and the new prices.

Racing Participation Program

Finally, the new Race Participation Program, an earned credit of up to $40.00 per year ($10.00 per 12-week season) will be available to all iRacing members regardless of subscription type, replaces the previous subscription purchase incentive program. Existing quantity purchase discounts of up to an additional 25% remain in effect.

“We want to encourage our members to race more frequently, and we’re going to reward them for doing so,” Gardner said in making the announcement. “Really, it’s a win-win deal for our members. People enjoy racing against other drivers, and bigger fields just add to the fun and make the racing better. Someone who takes full advantage of the ‘Credit for Race Participation Program’ will earn $40 per year.”

The details of the “Credit for Race Participation Program” are as follows:

• To qualify for iRacing credits a driver must participate in eight different race weeks in the course of a normal 12-week season in an individual official iRacing series. (Only Race Sessions in Official Series Count; sessions in Pro and Rookie series do NOT count, nor do sessions in Week 13.)

• For the purpose of the “Credit for Race Participation Program” a driver satisfies the participation requirement by scoring championship points in his or her race session, and completing at least 50% of the number of laps completed by the class winner. Races with an odd number of laps will be truncated. e.g. If the winner of an individual’s car class completes 17 laps other members of that class need to complete only eight rather than nine laps.

• In the case of a race with no finishers, the race will still count as an official session for the purposes of this program. Drivers who complete 50% of the laps completed by the driver in that class who has completed the highest number of laps will receive participation credit.

• For the purposes of this program a driver may participate at any series for which he or she is eligible. (e.g. A driver holding an A license may participate in B, C, or D level races.)

• Payouts are $4.00 iRacing credit per official C or D level series and $7.00 iRacing credit per official A or B level series. Maximum credit per season is $10.00.

• iRacing Credits earned under this program will be calculated during Week 13 of that season. A promotion code will be generated for the proper amount of credit for each member and then e-mailed to the member prior to the start of next season.

“By both reducing and restructuring our prices, we’re encouraging our members to have more fun by racing more frequently, with more cars on more tracks, thereby increasing the value of their memberships,” Gardner said.

Hosted Private Sessions

As a new option in addition to the official weekly schedules of more than 15 regular rookie, regular and pro series, iRacing will now offer its members hosted private sessions.

For a single $3.00 hosting fee any iRacing member may organize a private race, using a variety of cars and tracks in the iRacing inventory, which is open to any other iRacing members, without additional charge and regardless of their license level.

At the option of the organizer these race and/or test sessions may be open to any iRacing member or made private through use of a password issued to a group of members of the organizer’s choosing. While the race organizer may maintain a point structure for a series of these events, a member’s official iRating and Safety Rating are not affected by the results of any hosted private session.

Gardner noted that the creation of hosted private sessions opened the service up to a large group of online racers who preferred racing in a private-league format.

“A lot of sim racers have organized their own leagues – groups of friends who like to race together,” Gardner said. “Our existing structure organizes races basically according to skill level, which is what our current members want. From the start we planned to eventually add private racing to the mix. We believe that the private league racers will join the service to take advantage of this new functionality, but will also try out our structured racing, like it, and add that to their schedules.”

New Web Site

With the advent of each new 12-week season iRacing.com updates its Members Web site with new features and functionality, the place where iRacers go to race, socialize and keep up with all things iRacing. For prospective members who want to learn more about the iRacing service and community, an all-new version of the company’s Public Web site has been launched today. Reflecting what’s been learned in the 15 months since the service opened to the public, the new site provides a clearer and more complete introduction to the fun of iRacing and affords an easy way to become a member.

I like the participation plan the most. Getting $10 a season for competing in a couple series is a great idea. They do need to increase the number of people racing so I think this will help.

Quote from bbman :

Checked, it really is cheaper now... Everything is either $11.95 or $14.95...

Membership went down as well, it seems they dropped the iRacing Dollar-bonus in exchange though...

Yeah, memebership didn't really go down at all I don't think. They just subtracted off the amount you would have gotten in iRacing dollars. Makes sense though, I think people would rather just pay $99 for a year and then buy what they want, than have to pay $159 and get $60 free credits they may or may not need.

Quote from StableX :

that's cool... where did you see that?

There's a forum thread:

http://members.iracing.com/ifo ... readID=53552&tstart=0

And I think if you go to the tracks/cars screen stuff is cheaper now. I'm at 100% so I can't check it to confirm.

Looks like iRacing is dropping the prices on content.

If this brings in more memebers, I'm all for it. Kind of sucks for people who paid the higher prices for everything, but whatever. Happens with pretty much everything when you want to be the first one to have it. They still haven't posted the full details but its supposedly coming some time today.

I'd have to imagine that there is a lot of balance that goes on in rocketry to make the thing actually go straight, if you strapped a huge engine to a tiny rocket, I could see it not ending well. I don't think it would just blow up, but I don't think it would end up where you want it to either.

Not looking forward to the snow at all. I've been looking around for used cars for the winter, going to be putting mine away in a couple weeks. It's going to be a sad 5-6 months until I get back into it in the spring.

What websites are you trying to load? Couldn't your connection to London(the server SpeedTest claims to be using) be fine, but something is screwed up beyond that?

Totally off topic but after running the test at work, I'd really like to be able to download torrents here.

Quote from BlueFlame :

He was on the outside and they were equal on the track, so Magnusson should of known he was gonna get washed up on the outside.

Should have known he was going to get run off the track? That's complete BS. If they were equal on the track then they should have been going side-by-side into the next corner and Magnussen would have had him easy, not Bergmeister automatically getting the spot and Magnussen ending up on the wrong side of the rumble strips.

If you "should know" that someone's going to dump you, then Bergmeister "should have known" he was going to get punted in the last corner.

In my opinion Magnussen should have just turned Bergmeister when he put him in the sand at the beginning of the lap.

That was an awesome battle to watch for the last 5 or so laps, taking pit exit to make a pass was pretty epic, even though it turned out to be illegal and I'm sure he knew that but had to try anyway. I thought for sure the Corvette had him when he got pushed up to the wall coming to the line, then all of a sudden he took that hard right turn and I was no longer as excited.

Quote from MAGGOT :

Cats are ****s, simply put.

That's why I like them.

I don't know how I feel about the Fast Track thing, I guess I'll have to see how it pans out. It makes sense to promote people faster as there are plenty of good racers just sitting around for months waiting to be promoted up to the higher cars. I just don't want to see people getting promoted up to the higher levels by racing down to boost their SR, and then they're not actually ready to race the faster stuff. Of course that happens now anyway(I do it in road), just seems like it could happen more with this. It could boost the numbers of guys racing in A/B though, which is definitely a good thing.

One thing I do hate is the part about Pro guys losing their license, that just seems pretty harsh considering how much SR you can loose just by having a couple of unlucky races. I could see not allowing them to race in pro races if they are under 1.0, but once they get their SR back up I think they should be let back in.

My technique is to hold W+O at the same time, then Q+P at the same time, and keep alternating. It takes some practice to get the timing down so he doesn't loose his balance, but I actually did get the dude to run for a couple meters before I screwed it up. You want to take a pretty small first step to get him moving in the right direction also, and after that it seems like its all balance to keep his legs under him.

Quote from DieKolkrabe :

At least he can't crash deliberately again.

He wouldn't need to in Nascar, just throw a piece of roll bar padding on the track and they'll throw a caution.

I don't think onboard video will work very well for your third monitor, if it works at all.

There are three ways to go about using three monitors:

1) SoftTH. This is free software(google it) that you can use to get all three monitors to work. In order to use this though, you need another video card for the third monitor output. It DOES NOT have to be a good card, but it should be PCI-e 16x. Therefore, if your motherboard doesn't have a second PCI-e 16x slot, this is probably not a good solution for you. With SoftTH you do not have to run all the monitors at the same resolution, but the sides must be the same(they can be different from the center).

2) TH2Go. This is a hardware adapter(again, google it) that you buy that takes the signal coming from your video card, and splits it up into three images for your 3 monitors. If you go with this, all monitors must be running the same resolution as far as I know, unless they changed something. This obviously costs money, so this option is more expensive than #1.

3) There is some new ATI card that just came out that supports three monitors right out of the box. I believe its called Eyefinity. You might want to look into that. Even though you sound like you just build a new PC, an all-in-one card might be the simplest route. Make sure you can run different monitor resolutions with that if you need to though, I don't know much about it but I'd make sure it didn't have limitations like the TH2Go has.

So those are your options. Also it would be good to note that you will take a bigger performance hit from SoftTH since everything is done in software. With your PC I think you would be fine though, I have a much older computer running SoftTH maxed out with no problems. My recommendation would be SoftTH if you have the extra PCI-e slot, less expensive(old graphics cards are cheaper than a TH2Go or a brand new ATI card), and if you plan on running a different resolution on your sides, then you might not have much of a choice anyway. I really don't know much about the new card though, so if that's getting good reviews maybe that's a better option.

Last edited by UncleBenny, Thu, 1 Oct 2009 20:45.

Quote from tinvek :

did anyone else see the epic thread on the general forum.. how the hell does a pro licence holder get 190 incident points in 6 laps practicing in rookie legends with only 3 other cars in the session?

I did not, and I just looked and still don't see it haha.

Quote from Boris Lozac :

If those lights inside the buildings on the third picture are not a flat texture, but 3D, then they are one crazy bunch of Japanese

They sure look like they must be 3D, if that was just a texture it would look really bad as you went by the building. I just wish there was less motion blur, brings the whole picture down in my opinion.