iRacing Studios has updated fans on future developments coming to the popular racing simulator, including news about current and long-term plans and the new graphics engine.
To kick things off, Executive Producer Greg Hill spoke about some audio development updates. Prior to Season 2, iRacing Studios spoke about an update to Spatial Reverb that was almost ready to be released. Unfortunately, it’s still being worked on, so it’s not quite ready to release.
However, with the extra time, the developers have been able to cut the computing power required by the core audio engine by over 50%. With this new efficiency comes new ideas to improve audio, which the team is exploring.
Development on dirt racing against AI is also coming along well. More details and updates on it will be coming when Season Two comes to an end.
There’s also quite a bit of physics development happening, and it’s been split into two groups: long-term transformation and continuous improvement. For long-term transformations, the team is working on developments that include the following:
- Next-gen tire models
- Enhanced force feedback
- Advanced arrow modeling
- Multi-threaded architecture
These will be the building blocks for the future of iRacing, and they improve things like stability and precision.
However, the continuous improvement development work is still focusing on the current state of iRacing. They’re working on tire balance, asymmetric asparity pressure, and tire surface temperature sensitivity.
There’s also a new graphics engine being worked on, which is code-named Spark. Development of Spark is on schedule, and the team is currently focusing on night lighting. A deep dive into the development of Spark should be released in the next few months.
Fans can listen to Hill speak on these updates in the video below. For those interested, the beginning of the video talks about Season 2 of iRacing, which kicked off earlier this month.
