March 31st RaceRoom Update

Sector3 Studios, developers of RaceRoom Racing Experience, released a new update today bringing new features, improvements and bug fixes.

The biggest update in the build is the custom championship feature.  The custom championship is pretty much what it sounds like, allowing players to create a schedule with whatever cars and tracks they choose.

A couple other stand-out updates is the implementation of time of day per session in multiplayer, revised physics for all GTR2 cars and updated webpage portal.  While this update doesn’t have any ‘big ticket’ items in it like new content – the forthcoming Cadillac CTS-V Racecar not available yet – it does come with quit the changelog.

What’s New (Summary)
– Custom Championships.
– Mouse Steering. You can now select the mouse steering profile in the controller settings.
– Track rotation in Multiplayer.
– 3 new FFB multipliers for spring, damper and friction in FFB settings.

Game:
– Added Custom Championships in RRE.
– Shadow map improvements to make car shadows smoother.
– Put local shadow map back to 32 bits for smoother car shadows.
– Added car shadow kernel and epsilon.
– Implemented better device support by changing device ID to include instance, wheel type and rim type ID’s to support several devices of the same type and to differentiate between devices that share the same product ID. (Fanatec CSR and CSR Elite for example). More default profiles will be added later.
– Fixed the mixup in ADAC championship screen where tracks showed under cars header and vice versa.
– Fixed IBL (Image Based Lighting) not loading for Sonoma in replays.
– Fixed AI hitting pit wall from standing start in Sonoma.
– Fixed cut track penalty message coming up after rolling start in LBC start.
– Changed the banger sound priority from medium to high so they play when full grid.
– Fixed an issue with AI launch from 1st gear.
– Fixed an issue with disappearing skid sounds.
– Fixed triggering issues with pitcams.
– Changed RRE timing screen a bit to make IN PIT (yellow) text more readable.
– Added Mouse Steering.
– Added 3 new FFB options. Spring, Damper and friction strength. These work as multiplers and multiply what is set in the driver. Default profiles have these off by default.
– Tweaked all the default profiles due to changes. Please note your old control profiles will be backed up and won’t be usable.
– Default Controlset: Changed ffb steer friction and damper coefficients to 0.0
– Default Controlset: Changed ffb steer friction and damper saturations to 1.0
– Default Controlset: Changed spring saturation and coefficient pos and neg to 1.0
– Default Controlset: Added ffb steer spring coefficient.
– Default Controlset: Changed default spring coefficient per axis to 1.0

Multiplayer:
– Implemented Time of Day per session support.
– Implemented password support on dedicated side.
– Implemented track rotation.
– Implemented Server names.
– We now cache ping in MP browser to avoid unnecessary pinging.
– Made changes so the server list refreshes are only processed when not connected to a server.
– Made changes to make sure pending server browser updates are cancelled when joining a server.
– We no longer auto refresh in MP browser.
– Added the Community Dedicated groundwork for release soon.
– Various dedicated side improvements.

AI & Physics & Camera & Audio
– Sonoma – Fixed AI having issues with pit entry and tweaked AI speed.
– Portimao – Fixed hairpin inside cut rules for Amateur
– DTM 92 cars – AI tweaks, Improved Audi handling.
– Revised all Gr.5 class car physics.
– Revised all GTR2 class car physics.
– Sonoma – Fixed helicam sound trigger.

Art
– Increased Shadow draw distance.
– Lowered shadow noise in McLaren cockpit to make it less intrusive.
– Tweaked shadow blur.
– RUF RT12R – Fixed braking light in the middle still appearing floating after wing is gone due to damage.
– Audi LMS Ultra – Fixed flipped KW logo.
– Chevrolet Camaro GT3 – Fixed mapping on the driver right arm.
– ALL CARS – General rebalancing to bring them to the same level.
– Reduced frequency of headlight flashing on all cars.
– Zakspeed Capri – Replaced redstone tyrebranding with Goodyear on livery 7 and 8
– BMW 320T – Replaced redstone tyrebranding with Goodyear on livery 9 and 10

Portal & System Backend
– Changed the portal main webpage.
– Added fan page directory.
– Various store related fixes.
– We now highlight VIP drivers, DEVs, as well as friends in MP browser.
– Implemented a new Leaderboard Updater system for better performance and to fix the issue with Leaderboard entry sometimes not updating.
– Added new tab in competition page that shows all past competitions.
– RRRE competition page now shows competitions from other experience.
– Fixed an issue with links for finished competition in fan pages.
– Fixed an issue where purchase of alternative liveries for cars purchased via packs would not work sometimes.
– Fixed an error when buying a livery before the car if they’re in the same cart.
– Fixed so that the dashboard correctly redirects to user profile page.
– Removed irrelevant text from the introduction popups in portal.
Fixed layout issues in checkout popup.
– Default user avatar helmets are now randomly assigned out of 24 new helmet images instead of the old helmet, to add more colour and variety to the leaderboards.

Known Issues:
– Multiplayer browser does not show ping times. This is only visual and the servers should work perfectly fine.