This week on the I Racing Down Ship. Great WhatsApp blows up. No,
most of them have found my WhatsApp. Oh perfect, Kevin Bison tractor.
Some people go out my fourth card I bio practice. You bought a
long tractice and I really show my age. I'm one pair of white Newbellus
is away from fuldapp mode. All this and more strap in Welcome to the
I Racing Down Ship Timey Hols, Greg West. I am back with the
boys, Kevin Bobbitt and Chris Leone, and we have a great show for
you. I need to come up with a fresh intro at some point,
because I say the same thing everything. We could use the same one for
the last forty nine episodes. Really episode forty nine though I know started what
started off as a joke in a marketing meeting like three years ago, and
here we are, forty nine episodes later, still testing video coming. It's
almost like a dare and like, yeah, okay, you guys do that,
fine, Yeah, we dare to do that. Okay. When we
thought about, you know, starting the podcast, we thought we're gonna go
like full Dale Junior download. We bought a bunch of like four k cameras,
and we thought we're gonna do all this stuff with it, and now
actually almost fifty episodes in, we're thinking about finally maybe well maybe doing video
once and seeing what happens. Who knows, but whatever, it's a good
time. I think what our fan count or up to two? We have
two fans? Do we have three fans? It's the third one? Oh
see? Okay, at least Chris, you got bullets in the outline finally,
but you don't have a I want to. I would like a fan
counter moving forward. Three, we're gonna keep keep score like an old school
like uh wet on the website, like the bottom of website said a hit
counter. Yeah, just sits there, static like the national debt, but
it doesn't move. Yes, and I'm racing podcast fans. Three. Yes,
please tweet at us individually so we know to add you and we will
thank you by name, all three of you. Here we go. I
love it. We'll give you a shout out. Why not, right,
you've done it before, Kevin, Yeah, no, it'll be. It'll
be like those fan cars. You pay fifty dollars and you get the brick
on whatever. I don't know that the conceptually, No, you're not paying
to I guess that would be a sponsor, wouldn't it. I racing down
shift NFT coming to Well, what's because sponsors? We could use a sponsor
if we have our number of four fan wants to sponsor us. Yeah,
we're open for that. So yeah, okay, what else is new?
What's going on? We're already off the rails. Cisco and Drew Or in
the in the production room, and I can see them rolling their eyes even
though they're not on camera. Sorry, guys, apologize, I asked.
I asked Cisco before the show, like, what are you gonna do when
we get off the rails and you don't have like an infobox to describe what
we're talking about? Well, I guess we're finding that. They're gonna find
out tomorrow. Yeah, we'll have them come up with some like lower thirds
or whatever, story time with Uncle Gregor or whatever. Oh, Kevin,
what's been going on in your world? Well, it's finally getting warm.
Pollen is out, so I'm taking my allergy medicine. You'll be happy to
hear like my white car is now yellow, which is awful. I hate
that. But some very exciting news On the personal side, I finally bought
a lawn tractor. How about that you Yeah, yeah, and it's not
the portion lawn tractor that we scanned a few years ago. It's an actual
lawn mowing tractor. So midlife hitting hard huh yeah. Yeah. Some people
go out by sports cars. I buy a tractor. You bought. I
told my boys, who have both basically moved out, and they're like,
really, you waited until we moved out so that you know they don't have
to use to push mower. I'm like, yeah, I'm not stupid.
I'm not pushing that thing around anymore. So that's what I'm doing this weekend,
essentially the tractor and mowing the lawn twice. Okay, but when are
we getting the other Kevin to scan the tractor to put in a future bill?
We could have like a whole series on tractors, right, different classes,
multi class tractor racing multila No mute Drew, mute them both. No,
no this, we can do night racing in my tractor time out.
I need thirty. This is a disclaimer from iRacing dot com. We are
not introducing tractor racing in any form or fashion or any type of scanning of
any other tractor farming equipment in any for any way at all. None.
Greg greg is the fun police today, So thanks a lot for inquiries about
farm equipment scanning and I racing Kevin dot Bobbitt at iRacing dot com. Anyway,
I guess we're moving on from this subject. We have a long tractor.
It's pretty exciting. I sprayed some weak killer. Oh you're bad for
the environment. I'm sorry. I've been bark mulching that anything. Wow,
we really all getting outside? Yeah, no, I thought this was about
eye racing. It's not at all. Yeah, but yeah, I'm one
pair of white new balances away from full down mode at this point with the
Velcro I mean, I but that's a yes. Yeah, everybody has to.
If there's one thing that I learned from the g RC days, it
was the time that Chip Pankou told me everybody has to have standards. Um
didn't work out so well for us on the GRC side of things, But
well, I racing Christmas Party, Dirty Santa. I am bringing Velcro new
balances this year. I like it. Yeah, maybe we could all wear
them to the next trade show we go to. Like, Hey, yeah,
Ken, Yeah, Kevin. Yeah, you totally. Yeah, We're
totally doing that as a group. If nobody can see me winking. Right
now, let's move on. Let's let's move on on track. All right,
what's up in the world of eye Racing. As I read it directly
off Chris's script, Thank you very much. This is bulleted and everything,
so it's very nice. Work continues towards the twenty twenty three season three build.
We've released some teasers. More will come, not sure parenthesy, If
anything Parenthesy we can name specifically. Did I say the quiet part out out
again? I feel like I'm back in freshman year of high school and having
people read a power point to me. Yeah, that was pretty pretty poor.
But okay, it's all good, all right. So we got some
new stuff coming. We have some new cars, we have some new tracks,
some of which we've even talked about. Willow Springs. If you were
if this was a video podcast, you would be seeing the tweet teasers that
we have put out. But Kevin, Willow Springs coming to eye Racing hashtag
very soon, very soon. A long awaited track, right, I mean,
it's one of these classic kind of club tracks in the in the US
the teasers is that we put out amazing, right and obviously we always we
always say things like that, but really like the surface model and everything,
it just looks amazing. So I can't wait till this track it's out there.
Um, we'll have to. I don't know what what series you're gonna
put it in, Greg, but I imagine it'll be in a bunch,
right, Yeah, I think you're gonna see this low Power ten Top Racings,
probably gonna. I can go ahead and tell you it'll make it a
series, probably not rookie, Probably not not rookie, but D series,
right, but D series for sure you'll see it. And I think you're
gonna you'll find it on GR eighty six, Cleo Formula Forwards, things of
that nature. Some kind of Can we get a some kind of Week thirteen
Wake Wake, Yes, if you're really nice and you get Kevin new Balances
with Bell Grow Okay, fine, No, Well, the reason I say
it is, you know, back in the day, Horse Thief Mile at
Willow Springs used to be one of our team's biggest test tracks. So,
um, a lot of versatility of Willows brings a lot of utility, you
know what That entire facility. So I clarification horse thief is not included with
our Willow Springs well, fair enough? What about can we do tracktor racing
there anyway? Moving on? That's mostly sam so probably not right with drop
my simtown to ask. So another thing that's coming very important and been a
big topic of discussion and news stories as well as foreign posts from Tony Gardner
and Tyler Hudson our long Way to Dirt Refresh as part of our twenty twenty
three season three build. This has been uh, you know, first principle's
look at our dirt racing product as a whole and how we can make it
more realistic, better from all the lessons that we've learned over the years doing
our dynamic track. So we've had a big team that's been working on it
for I think the past nine months and very excited to see what the community
thinks of it. Doing some last minute polish work on it right now.
If you'd like more details on what's going on with it, read the forms.
When we have our kind of weekly meetings with and Tyler and Traviser and
there they can't talk enough about it. They're so excited for it. So
I think this is gonna be great for the whole dirt community. Yeah,
we're pretty excited about that. Not to mention some of the people who didn't
like dirt racing that have grown to love it through the refresh. I thought
you were going to talk about offering trucks. Well I thought they were just
which I am. Obviously they are in Yes, anything on dirt is included
on this. Oh man, the camera, the truck guys got the b
roll ready to go. Too bad, You guys can't see this. This
is pretty good. We're setting the bar too high for the next show that's
going to be on video. But yeah, no, but I'm distracted by
pretty pictures right now, Oh sparkles. See that's why. That's why I'm
not distracting myself with the stream. That's why I've got Tony's foreign post,
which is also available in the Public Eye Racing website in front of me.
Um. Just a quick little reminder, Yes, everything on dirt, and
that does also include, of course, all of the stock cars that run
on dirt. So yeah, a lot of different vehicles get touched on that
water content variation in track where you name it, you know, pretty much
everything down to the details, you know, not to mention some of the
other tracks. I believe that we went a little off topic towards the end
of that post on Tony's part, but we named some other tracks that have
gotten signed along the way too. Yeah. Now these are not for the
June build, but things that are just recently started in production, So we
could still be a couple builds out on these. But Machello long Away to
track, you know, Formula one f I a Grade one track, noted
dirt track, Mugello now not through sarcasm Greg, also Massano, so we
have the Italian swing for the scan team decided to go enjoy the hills of
Italy. Maybe a little bit of wine while they were there. Good time.
But yeah, we're a couple of good tracks coming. Uh. Like
I said, we're probably a couple builds out on these, but production has
just started. Yeah, so pretty exciting stuff. Speaking of road racing too,
Kevin, we have a new series concept debuting, is a pilot series
for season three. Well, it's super exciting, but I think you're the
one that should announce it because this kind of been your thing, right,
So we're gonna try a little, a little something a little different. We're
very used to on I Racing. You know, twelve weeks, twelve different
tracks, and we have a champion. What if we had one twelve weeks
with one track, like maybe some iconic German, big huge track, a
really long lap that people drive all kinds of cars on something. Yeah,
and then over the twelve weeks, every week we drive a different car.
Interesting, we could call it. Why don't we call it Ringmeister. I
like it, Let's do it. We're gonna do it for can we to
h I Racing into the In the June build, we're gonna bring a new
concept. It's called Ring myster. It is a pilot series program. We're
trying to make some of our tech that that flits our races up work with
this concept. There'll be a couple of quirks that will outline in the in
the announcement story, but for the most part, over the course of twelve
weeks, we're gonna race a single Make race, every single Make races every
week. So we'll start off we'll have a GT three, and maybe the
second week it's a GT four, and then you have a touring car.
Maybe we throw in like the G eighty six of the CLEO one week formula,
you know, F sixteen hundred something like that. But every week you
get a different car. It's always a single make race and at the end
of the season we crown the champion. They're ringing master. I love it.
I'm pretty excited about it. It's gonna be a great place to farm
some safety rating two. And this is the one track that I consistently beat
you with lap times, so you just destroy me. You should go back
to throw and go or something, or we could just participate in the series.
This is the this is Nimes Challenge. I'm in let's do it,
Chris, I'm in sanatory. You're being und you must do this. I'm
being volunteld. Yes, all right, well I guess I should stop practicing
the Austro Slave in Cea circuit and go elsewhere in Germany. Then that's correct,
probably, yeah darn so yeah. More details coming on that very soon.
But yeah, we're we're looking forward to think it's gonna be h It's
it's super fun. So it's a little different, um, and I mean
this is the perfect track for this. Now, there's some others that we
could do, you know, at some point I think. Yeah, but
we're gonna start here and see how it goes, right, yep, And
just for everybody's knowledge, these are they're gonna run every two hours. It's
four lap races around the industrial parting version of the North of the Norde Life,
so you know classic Norde Live but Las vehicle class. I believe this
is uh C C nice. Oh well then I do accessible. I can't
run it? Well, Chris have a license. You just need to get
good. Yeah, that's that's going to come up in your annual review.
I'm sure you don't have a C license. That's a problem. It is
almost June, isn't it. Yeah, it's funnier I and everything, but
dirt road it's weird. Who would have thought it? Yeah? Right,
all right, moving on and throwing it back to Chris. UH twenty talks
us about woo yep, as we've alluded to in previous podcasts and social posts
and everything. Work continues on the twenty twenty three season update for World of
Outlaws Dirt Racing. A lot of racing continues on that platform. We still
have the weekly challenges that go up every Monday. Um. If you continue
to check out World of Outlaws game dot Com on race weeks that coincide with
real world World of Outlaws visits to the tracks that are in that game.
We've got calls for you to share some you know, some of your own
screenshots, photos, videos of you playing the game in those classes at those
tracks. Um, we're keeping everything active. We're going to keep move moving
until we have that twenty twenty three season update available later this year. That's
gonna have some new cars, some new tracks, all sorts of different exciting
new things coming to that game. In a lot of ways, it's going
to be like it's a whole new experience. But if you've loved World of
Outlaws Dirt Racing up to this point, then you know you're getting a whole
new season that'll be a paid out on for the PlayStation and Xbox consoles,
and it'll be included within the Nintendo Switchport Hits also later this year. Awesome,
it's great to see the games still going strong, people using it,
you know, tons of online sessions, and it's great to see that,
you know, some new stuff coming as well. So yeah, a lot
of leagues. Yeah, I think what I'm excited to see is built a
lot of hype with the release of that title and then leading into the dirt
refresh on I Racing proper and to see maybe how much of that comes over
to I Racing And yeah, that'd be good to see the numbers the Influx
and Chris. We've also been working on our other console title, Exocross YEP,
Exocross, which will also be deploying later this year. That has been
a blast. I mean, I'm not sure if you guys know, but
obviously I fashioned myself a tiny bit of an off road expert. Was just
to sit, please tell me more well, if any, for our listeners,
maybe explain what Exocross is in case I didn't read the stories that we've
put out. Yes, certainly so. When we acquired Aarontis Games around the
same time that we acquired Monster Games, Aurantis had been working on a title
called Drag outer Worlds. This title is unmanned sort of futuristic off road vehicles
racing on different planets. What we've done is we've taken that game and sort
of refashioned it into something that is more oriented towards being able to play on
console and having single player modes. The original version of Drag Outer Worlds was
designed in a lot of ways to be primary multiplayer, but the game has
been improved upon, reworked, had a few things added to it. Some
of these things continue to be in development, like there will be a career
mode, there will be single player racing, some of the boost mechanics that
if you were just playing in single player time trial license type things are going
to be a little more accessible across the board regardless of when you're racing.
So work continues on that. But I tried the Xbox build the first for
the first time a couple of weeks ago, and again, I'd like to
think of myself as a little bit of an off road expert. The way
that those vehicles drove is something I feel like I've been chasing for twenty years
across just about every platform. I was over the moon, having just spent
about forty five minutes, and when it came back from the development lab to
yeah, just yes, you sounded work. Yeah. I was over there
for like four hours doing research research laser. Yes, yeah, I have
another meeting as soon as we wrap up the podcast on it. But then
I'm going to be zooming right back over there and uh, you know,
playing it a little bit again. The vehicles you playing it right? Product
product, yes, yes, of course, um, but the vehicles as
you progress, they drive differently. They force you to apply your skills from
one level and build off of them, but be a little more deliberate as
you continue progressing through. Which is something that you know you certainly even see
in the eye racing ladder as you move up from rookie to D to see
to B to A. Not that I would know that in anything but dirt
road sounds like that. And that's tim moving up your eye racing license.
Yeah, that needs to go out by June. So and when are we
expecting this to come out? Chris? Also later this year? Um,
I don't believe that we've committed it on a committed to late this year maybe
Yeah, that's the market anyway, right, Still the fair amount of work
to go to make it kind of consumer ready, but a lot of progress
has been made so yes. But most importantly, if you already own Drag
Outer Worlds or if you buy that now, you will automatically get the upgrade
two exocross win Exo Cross line, which is available on Steam currently if anybody
wants to check it out. All the new stuff, but it's there.
Yes, I got a steam key for that. I ain't to install that
right after this. There we go. Yeah, testing purpose is not playing
purpose. Yes, sure, yeah, that that what you said? Yes,
all right, moving on, We got a great guest this week.
We sat down with one of our senior software engineers, David Tucker, and
he handles a lot of our periphiel development force feedback and also is one of
the most vocal developers we have in eye Racing, working with the community in
the forms and one of the specific causes he champions is working with our disabled
community, the adaptive controllers things like that does some super cool stuff with that.
It's pretty mind blowing and probably Kevin one of our most requested staff member
guests, would you say, I would agree he's uh. People have been
I think since episode one, like when you get in Tucker on. We
finally got him and only took forty nine episodes, feeling he will be back
for more. That won't be the last time we have money. Yeah,
he's great. So without further ado, let's sit down with David Tucker.
All right, Kevin and I are excited to be back with our next guests,
probably the most requested guest we've had as far as staff by far,
by far, like standard deviation further than nobody wants to hear from Steve Ratona
anymore because they have nothing. They don't spell secrets anymore. So we've got
Tony David. We have senior software engineer David Tucker joining us on the podcast
today. David, thanks for taking the time. Sure, anytime, All
right, So let's get into it. What is it that you say you
do here for office space fans? You'll get the reference. Oh boy.
Um, So when I got hired, I everybody else had a job and
I didn't. So I got all the weird everything that we put off and
we're like, ah, we'll get to that someday. And then I hired
you. Is that exactly? So? I got so our first job was
probably making the cameras cooler. I made the telemetry system, all right.
At some point in time I got into wheels and started making that a big
part of my job. So I get to do a lot of work with
wheel manufacturers. And then, did you I work a lot of stuff working
with the disabled community, trying to make that better. Just a whole host
of other little tiny features all over the SIM. So you you have a
pretty well rounded knowledge base of the Eye Racing platform, is what I'm hearing.
You've done a little bit of everything. Yeah, well, I do
everything that's not important. That's my that's my take from that is completely untrus.
A lot of the things you do maybe we don't see. They're not
there, may not be sexy. You know, you're not working on the
art for a new car or track or just or that. But it's all
the stuff that makes it work better. It kind of in the background.
That's the way I look at it. But I don't know if that's right.
But that's when I think of you. That's what I think of the
guy that's making it work. Yeah. So you said you've been here since
fourteen years and right after beta. Yeah so I think we'd come out of
beta maybe six months before. And I was hired on my birthdays ago,
So happy birthday, thank you whenever that is. It's a while ago.
But yeah, you can said money and gift cards. I won't give your
address out, that's probably inappropriate. I typically give Kevin's email address out.
It does every podcast. Pretty Vin, don't share your phone number with Dot
cost for complaints, please send them there. So all right, well let's
let's get into it a little bit on what you've done a little bit of
everything. But you know, your day to day these days is you're working
with uh, I mean a myriad of things, but specifically lately you've been
working with wheel manufacturers and making sure hardware works in the sim so it does
when you turn left, it turns left? Am I correct? Yeah?
So yeah, I'm doing that, working on making wheels more safe, adding
an high frequency data so I have a whole system to drive base shakers and
the truth, well, hold on a second before we go, I have
to interrupt to make them more safe. That that intrigues me. What do
you mean by that? So? Uh, you know, wheels just keep
getting stronger and stronger, and you know, I figure maybe a quarter of
our users have a wheel that could probably just look at your thumb without much
effort. So I'm putting in things like cutting the force when you hit a
wall or have another large impact. See again, these are quality of life
improvements that you don't see, but you will be very thankful when when you
Crashly, I r O one and a mock two now have an oval package,
you hit the wall at two super cool, and then you send a
thank you card to David Tucker because you have thumbs still. That's basically what
I'm hearing. Yeah, yeah, so you know, it's just uh,
in general, I just trying to make the wheels work as good as they
can. So I do a lot of work with the wheel manufactures themselves doing
testing. I've specialized hardware I made to be able to really get in and
test the wheels out good, and then we work back and forth. I'm
better firmware that's probably expanded a lot since when you started fourteen years ago.
I felt like there were only a couple of kind of mainstream wheels back then,
and now they're almost a new one coming out every month. Yeah,
I know, it's getting crazy. I mean I actually I had to build
special shelves in my garage to hold all the different wheels I have. I
try not to tell people that someday you should send us a picture of the
library of tech that you have. That would be pretty funny, But I
find that, you know, every wheel is a little different, and whenever
we have a problem, I need a wheel at hand to test with.
I mean, I've got five wheels sitting right here on the floor. I've
been testing with all week. So how much time do you spend unplugging and
plugging in USB cables? So much time? It's all. Yeah. Now
you do a lot more than just the hardware, though. You also do
a ton of work with our spotter packs, specifically the regional spotter packs.
I saw some notes this morning on a new one you're working on, right,
Yeah. So a while back I got given the spotter and I did
a lot of clean up to it, and then users at the time,
you couldn't change the sound of the spotters, so users are really itching for
that. So I put in support to the spotter packs, or at least
made it work real good. And then um yeah, and then along the
way, I made it so that you could translate the spotter into different languages.
So right now I think we've got eight different spotters the different languages,
and we've got three or four members that really work hard to to translate the
spotters as good as they can into every different language that you know, so
they'll give you the recordings and stuff you can tell. Yeah, And so
I've been working with with a couple of Italians on Italian spotter packs and they're
really top notch. There there anything changes, they're on top of it.
And so I don't really do I put in the tools, but they're they're
the ones doing the hard work. So how many messages are in the base
spotter pack these days? Uh, you know, it's a thousand or so,
and then they can add up to each message could be ducated up to
I think thirty times. So a proper Spotter pack is many thousands. And
if you're looking, if you're interested in and I toyed with this idea and
then walked away from it because it's a it's a heck of a project.
But there are instructions on the forums on how to build your own if you
want to hear yourself yell at yourself when you do dumb things in the sim
David Tucker has given the documentation. I already do that. I don't.
I don't need it to be automated, like I already curse myself when I
go off track. Yeah, and uh, I'd encourage anybody that wants to
make Spotter packs. I mean, go to the forums and figure it out.
It's it's it's not that hard. What's you get going, it's just
super time consuming. It's time consumer. Was the Jimmy Johnson Spotter pack I
think has like four or five thousand, Oh yeah, messages eleven's pretty good.
But all right, well let's let's swing it over a little bit because,
as people are going to notice, you do a lot of a little
bit of everything, um, and we're just scratching the surface here, and
we don't have, you know, the hours that it would take to go
through all of the things that you've worked on eye racing. But one of
my favorite, one of my favorite things is the work that you've done with
our disabled community to make eye racing even more accessible for everybody. Right,
let's talk about that a little bit and some of the tools that you have
implemented in the SIM to increase the accessibility. Yeah. So well, first
off, I mean, we have a really amazing disabled community. They it's
very large, it's varied. Um, they're really enthusiastic about the SIM,
and I'm just here to kind of help them out a little bit. Um.
But you know, when I got started, there wasn't any support from
the hardware manufacturers for disabled players. Weren't any wheels with hand controls, and
it was really hodgepodge. They were working really hard to try to include together
things to make it work, but they were really struggling. So um,
you know, I as soon as I got contacts of the manufactures, I
started pushing on them, encouraging them to put in hand controls um I at
some point in time was asked to add in touch until support to the SIM,
and I went ahead and added in mouse driving and as well, and
and that's helped a lot. There's a lot of our disabled users have to
use you mouse with their mouth, you know, so they can drive using
that. Or we have users that just don't have a hand strength to hold
their hands up on a wheel, but they can use a mouse. And
then just a lot of little things, you know, users would reach out
to me and ask for this to that. And so I've been you know,
slowly, you know, with the help of Brandy and some other people,
and been slowly adding in lots of little features to help, you you
know, to have better I did the driving aid uh back stuff like that,
just to kind of augmented. And then recently some users were reaching out
to me and really talking about odd talking about things that I hadn't thought about
before, like they're having a difficult time seeing or whatever, so we put
in a bunch of new features to like make the driving line really big,
or make the mouse really large, or you know, other other such things.
So it's been a lot of fun to get to work with them and
uh and see how hard they work to make anything work, and then being
able to come along and kind of make it a little bit easier for him.
Yeah, for sure. What's uh, maybe one or two of the
projects specifically within this vein that that pop out to you, like things that
you're like, that was pretty cool to work on that. I'm really happy
with how that turned out. Well, my favorite, my favorite feature and
I need to bring it into the sim and give with everybody, is I
put in code to draw a line into the pit Road entrance. For some
uh, we didn't do that, and I gotta tell you, I can't
find Pitt Road and half the tracks, so you know, that's that really
stands out to me. But anyway, the one that's probably the most popular,
it's just I put in the world's ugliest mouse pointer that's you know,
about the size of a quarter, and then everybody loves it because it's just
hard to see. So again and little thing that makes a big difference,
right, Yeah, so I need to get the art team to give me
a better looking mouse. Wine. Mine was hand drawn by me and it
just went into paint, drew a mouse and here it is now. But
so all right, let's let's moving forward. And you don't have to give
a lot of detail here. I know there's you know, obviously things we
don't talk about feature development or whatnot, but maybe you know, what are
some some ideas on the horizon, things that are that you want to continue
implementing any specifically to make for the community, to or for the disabled community.
Where are the places that you want to go moving forward? And we
just haven't had the time yet. Um, that's a good question. I
mean, you know a lot of what I've done is looking at Hyer,
you know, getting more feedback to the users. So I've spent a lot
of time trying to get We've got these space shakers that I drive, getting
wheelmakers to implement high frequency effects like the true force, so that we can
uh, you know, add back in all the vibrations and the and the
rumblings and the you know, the impacts that you feel in a real car.
So I'm really just about that. I've been spending a lot of time
on that, you know, just anything to kind of make the sim feel
more like real life. So I've actually got some projects on the horizon for
that. I'm real excited about these new force feedback pedals that are coming out.
I'm hoping to get a pair, so so as everybody else they went
two thousand dollars of pedal. Yeah, they're a little pricey. And then
on the disabled side, I mean it's just it's just so many little things
that are still left to do. So, you know, as I have
time and and as people reach out to me with needs, I just keep
trying to tick things off. There's been a lot of work in the background
that hasn't made it out to members to try to make our UI more friendly
to color blind people. Um that I would love to see that get finished
up. There's um, you know, just it just looks a little little
details. I uh, I don't I don't know if we'll be able to
get to it. But user just recently built a tool to take our voice
chat and translate it to text and put up a dialogue that you could watch
the text on and that that was a need that I didn't even realize we
had, and that's you know, that's really neat. So you know,
someday I would like to see us bring that into the house, but I
don't. Yeah, we're not there yet, but there are some series on
Friday nights that I'm not sure i'd want to turn that on. We need
the potato filters. Like I said, the community is sproad, you know,
so we've we've got lots of you know, lots of people with lots
of needs. So I remember early on that there were a lot of not
a lot, but there were a few kind of custom hand built controllers that
people would take a you know, a Logitech gosh what was it. It
was the G twenty seven maybe G twenty five back in the day, right,
and they would they would rig up kind of looked bizarre. It was
made out of like balsa wood or whatever they had, and they would make
hand controllers, which I was just blown away that that there was that much
of a dedicated community to do that. Are there well two questions, One,
is there anything like that from back in the day that you were remember
that you were just like, holy cow, that is so cool. Um,
and then who makes some really great controllers. I know I'm not asking
you to endorse anybody or this or that, but like, is there like
and obviously there's such a variety of kind of physical challenges and disabilities. There's
not one that's perfect for everybody, but is there are there some that are
like check this out? You know? Uh? Yeah, I mean so,
yeah, back in the day, you would taking G twenty five and
kind of strap anything you could to it, people with zip tie and game
pads to it. Yeah. Yeah. The similar Steel Series have the sr
WS one wheel, which is a little like a wee controller that you can
I remember I had one of those. It was cool. Yeah, So
they'd take the rim up there G twenty five and bolt that to it.
But you know what, I got to give a shout out to Glenn over
at Simability. He came along after the US are, after Steel Series wheel
was gone, and built these custom wheels for the community that just in his
garage. Yeah. I'm sure he's built hundreds of them by now, but
you know, he just completely filled the hole in the market where he'd you
know, make a little bolt on things for your thrust master, your Logitech
so that people could drive, and then uh, you know, and then
more recently Fanertech and then thrust Master and Logitech, and then now some of
the high end wheels all have at least one rim that has analog paddles on
him. So we're actually there's a lot of choice now, you know.
I there's probably been ten different manufacturers. The one thing that we're still missing
is a low cost choice. So the cheapest one I think is for Bannertech
and it starts around six hundred dollars. Yeah, I was gonna say a
lot of those with the analog controls are almost built like to be a super
high end Formula one wheel that has a clutch paddles and things like that.
But you can map them to be throttle and break if you want, right,
is that kind of how they're or yeah, exactly, so, yeah,
you can map them to be thrown on the break. And I actually
drive most of the time like that. My dog likes to sit under my
desk, so I just leave my pedals out of the way the hand controls
and it's you know, they work there. They're very quality. I'm very
impressed with the community. Though I used to bring that Steel series wheel around
like when I was traveling for business because I could run. It would fit
in my suitcase and i'd do a little demo somewhere on my laptop and I
could plug it in. And you know, I wasn't competitive because I didn't
practice enough. But I could show the soom, I could show a track,
I could do whatever. It was super cool, like you know,
just wind up the cable and put it in your bag and off you go.
But unfortunately don't. They don't make those anymore. Probably if you had
one, you could probably sell it on eBay for a good price. I
think they're coming out with the version two of it. Actually, I saw
a teaser the other day. Oh Google that put it in the comments below.
Maybe bluetooth instead of the long cable or something, right, but yeah,
yeah, I think also, not to be contradictory here, the but
fan attack actually lowered the price. I think it's the McLaren Wheel. Yeah.
I think that's down to like two hundred dollars now. So if somebody's
listening and is in this situation where this is, you know, you have
the need check that out. Maybe that was one I'm googling right now.
You do it. Yeah, but I believe the price on that one has
dropped significantly, which might be in an entry level solution for those that are
you know, might be interested and looking into this. If that would make
your life a bit easier and it makes it easier to enjoy the iRacing product.
You know, we're all for it. But well, David, thank
you for taking the time today. We really do appreciate it. Um.
Like I said, your fan favorite. This has been the absolutely most requested
interview we have had for a guest on I Racing. So we're glad you
you were able to pencil it in. And I think we're gonna have to
have you back again because this is going to bring up even more questions from
the community. So so make sure you make some time for us. White
and you ask this, why didn't you ask this? I'm sorry because you
weren't smart enough to think of the question. That's why. Greg So,
okay, well that's that feels a little direct and my feelings a little bit
hurt, all right, But I think see, David, I told you
this is why the people listen to the podcast, just for the insults to
go back and forth between Kevin. I'm waiting for mind. So oh you'll
get it next look you record the real thing. You're You're smoked, buddy.
All right, on that note, back to the show, all right.
So great to sit down with David Tucker, senior software engineer at I
Racing. Kevin and I had a really nice conversation with him, moving into
the next item on Chris's agenda that I'm reading right off the email community events
in bold thank you makes it easy to tell. Yes, of course.
We have a special event this weekend, the Nurburgring twenty four on I Racing,
one of our biggest events of the year. We got five classes racing,
got GT three G four's the Porsche GT three Cup car uh as well
as a touring car in GR eighty six, so a lot of cars.
Race eight eight makes Racing and Kevin. This has been very interesting for me.
I have been lobbied more for a BOP for this race than all other
races probably in the last three years combine, which I find ironic. Are
they sending it to your email at Breg dot West at iRacing dot com,
because that's not even nice. No, most of them have found my WhatsApp
perfect. Oh my gosh, absolutely just getting blown up with BOP requests and
it's all the teams trying to mess with other teams. Obviously, what's funny
is they're talking about the differences between these cars being less than a second on
an eight minute lap, so we're talking like what a third of a percentage
point on an eight minute lab. Yeah, and they're trying to have big
swings on the BOP. I think this race is about surviving. Get in
the tank, right, that's what you do. Yeah, but I would
say arguably the least impactful race for BOP on I racing, but does show
people are passionate. So you know, the positive is people care, they're
competitive. We're doing something right if people care that much. So you know
obviously the guys here that the team works hard to make it as balanced as
possible. There's probably no perfect number anywhere, right, somebody's always going to
say something. So I think the team works really hard and does a great
job at it. So even if we secretly made all the cars identical and
didn't tell anybody, there would be oh yeah, there would be one that
oh no, this one's better. That's how it would work. But yeah,
we're going to be making the final BFP announcement. Today's Wednesday. So
when's this going out, Chris, Friday, Oh comes first race. First
race is on Friday night, East Coast time, so we're then, yes,
so twenty two GMT on Friday night, but we have in the regular
special event time slot, so Friday at twenty two GMT Saturday seven twelve and
sixteen GMT. Convert that to your local time zone as you're listening to this
podcast. But no surprises there as far as the times, and once again
twenty four hour Race. A reminder on that, as part of our twenty
four Hour Racing special events, the members site will not be available for registration.
You will have to register through the UI, as we've done for the
last few events. But reminder on that there'll be a banner up on the
website, in forums and in the UI by the time you read this.
There's that awesome next big event coming up twenty third to twenty ninth. We've
got Inniske Coke six hundred at Charlotte, one of the coolest events of the
year on the NIS calendar because you have that day night transition and the biggest
endurance test on ovals, Right, Chris, Yeah, for sure. I
mean, we only have a handful of these NIS events every single year that
go the full distance. A lot of them are shorter. But yeah,
again, that day night transition is always to me one of the prettiest and
coolest things I think we do in anything. You know, certainly if you're
running the Nerveagring twenty four, you're going to be seeing that day to night
and back today. But you know, I've always just had so much fun
watching stock car races that start out in the day and end of the night.
So you know, it's an endurance test Charlotte four hundred laps. You
know, it really is a matter of survival. It's a matter of racing
smart. It's a matter of you know, picking the right strategy and staying
clean and you know, just not getting ahead of yourself. It's a long
rate since the longest race you'll do all here in a stock car unless you're
doing something that even Yes two wouldn't touch No Bop for this race, which
is nice, Yes also that and then on May twenty seventh we've got the
next Crevintic race at Manza. So those's the twelve hour races sponsored by our
friends A Cravinti to put on the twenty four hour races all over Europe and
Asia. But yeah, that one kicks off at Monza. It's they're featuring
the nine eleven GT three Cup car, the GT fours and the touring cars.
So a lot of fun to go racing there, and those races have
become more and more popular. It was kind of a niche series two years
ago and now it's, you know, one of the premiere endurance you know,
special series. It's not really a special event, but it's not a
regular race series. Yeah, we need to come up with a catchy name.
I'll talk to the director of marketing. Special series just doesn't work on
the pizzazz. Good word, all right? Moving on pro E Sports,
Chris talking about the Cooke Series. Yeah, definitely a lot of things going
on over the past month in the Coke Series. We had that back to
back, not only starting at Monza in the first race outside of US Soil,
well virtual US soil in e NASCAR history, but then the following week
at Talladega, the first fixed setup race in series history. Manza. Not
too much of a shock to see Bobby Zelenski with Joe Gibbs Racing return to
his road course winning ways Talladega wild finish as always, Unlike last year,
Casey Kerwin manages to get it done just at the final straight away Talladegan the
playoffs. Last year it was Kerwin and Colin Bowden at rac Or getting into
it and Zelenski managed to slide by them. This time it was Kerwin at
x Set getting by Malik Ray leading into the final lab. For Jim Beaver,
e Sports came so close to getting that first win, but he had
the throw the block to prevent the run on one side on the high side,
and you know, Casey was just able to move down low and push
through and snake that victory away. Then we get to Las Vegas and you
know, I know, Michael Conti, a junior motorsport says it's been great
and this is his final year, but he's running at some of the highest
level that he's run in quite some time. And you know, and we're
still talking about a driver who wins multiple races every year, so to say
that is really something. You know, he took the most recent win at
Las Vegas. He's got two victories you know in hand. He should be
a lock for the playoffs just about at this point. But now, of
course we're heading into Darlington and also Charlotte later this month. Darlington we're gonna
have the throwback schemes a lot of drivers who are starting to drop them already.
Charlotte again, you know, a special event for the Coke series as
well. You know you have that finish under the lights at Charlotte. It's
going to be an interesting month and I think that especially on a track like
Darlington that's just so tricky for so many drivers. You know, the Cream's
really gonna rise to the top there. So I'm not involved in the production
of our NASCAR cocool I Racing series at all, so I'm allowed to have
a favorite. I like Michael Conti because he sends donuts to the office after
he wins. It's a good day after a win. So yeah, I'm
on team Conti for the rest of the season because that's that's not bad at
coming to the office and the door dash donuts be there from dunks. I
may have had two last week. Score more. Yeah, this is this
not a good camera angle showing off my second and third chin. All right,
moving on, Kevin portion tag Hoyer, East Sports Super cups heading into
the home stretch. Yeah, two racists to go. Oh, I think
we're at Lama next, and then we finished up at Monza. So been
a great season. H Jordan Caruso's kind of running away with it, but
not quite yet. He hasn't wrapped it up anything happened at Lama, So
I mean it's kind of a you know some in some ways, it's a
simple track to run, it's not overly complex, but a lot can happen
draft this or that. You don't start well, you don't qualify well,
who knows, so m should be a pretty exciting final two rounds of that
series. The All Star Race season has been going well and Casey Corn is
running away with that so no surprise. The guy can drive pretty much anything.
So there's been some lobbying behind the scenes to see if we could,
you know, either dock him some points or add some weight to his car,
but we're not going to do that. He's he's he's earned every victory
he's gotten, so but it's exciting to watch, so check that out.
The next race is not this Saturday, but the following Saturday, so that
I think that's the twentieth Oh. Look, it's on screen for me,
look at that. I'm not used to this. Yeah, so it's uh,
the twenty it'll be great. Check out the All Star Race U.
The All Star Race is as entertaining, if not more entertaining than the actual
main event that that video of that clip you guys put out of it was
like t K, Casey Kerwin and Quirk you don't know as Matt Malone,
Casey Crowin and Quirk battling it out while also we had their you know,
in car cameras per se and they're talking amongst themselves, talking to each other
as they're fighting for the win. I'd love to see us implement that in
regular the passc or Coke series. What do you guys think we're gonna bleep
button? And then Chris. Qualifying continues for WOO Late Models and the off
Road series. Yep, definitely a World of Outlaws butt Kicker Late Model Series
qualifying started May first, so we're a couple of weeks into that seeing which
drivers are going to be taking on the late Models you know later summer that
series will go on. For the Eye Racing off Road Championship Series, we're
much deeper into that. That series if you're a long time I Racing member,
uses a more old school qualifying format where the Pro four series that's at
B class with the open setups, we're actually using the points from that series
rather than doing a stand alone qualifying series. It's something we just learned from
doing dirt road over the years. We had done a couple of standalones with
previous Dirt Road Championships and it was just more representative of the drivers who should
be there to make it a part of that. You know, that that
public series that's not standing on its own is what we found. So a
lot of drivers still kind of hammering in there. You know, your best
eight weeks count, So a lot of drivers kind of frontloaded and are now
sitting back and waiting. So you know, if you're if you're on that
butt, you know, if you're on that bubble, you still have a
few weeks to really make a push and break in at that you know,
break into that top twelve. They get those invites. But speaking of invites,
I need to start doing my own invites for the off Road All Star
Series, and you know, I think I got a good list coming ahead.
It'll be it'll be some different folks. But we had some good shows
in those last time around, and even I showed up a couple of times.
Maybe we're not going to be that desperate this year. But I don't
know. You guys want to run some off road All Star races. I
think I'm busy that day. I didn't tell you what day it was.
Yeah, I'm busy. Yeah, I just want me to beat you.
I've just gotta wash my hair. I was gonna be excuse Yeah, there
you go, and then Kevin. We also have another championship series coming up
with details announced hashtag soon. But another Open Wheel Championship series with the delar
I R O one. Yeah, we're working on plans for that. Not
ready to give all the details yet, but it's coming this year, so
be good to have that back. We ran that in twenty one, twenty
one, the last one ran it and it was some fantastic racing. So
more details to follow, we'll leave it at that. We just recently redev
that car for those that don't know, and included an oval package for it,
and it has been As you look at hosted sessions, the folks driving
that on ovals are having a blast. They're seeing that some of these superspeedways.
Two hundred and forty five miles an hour down the backstretch going in a
turn three is hauling the mail. It was one of my favorite, if
not my favorite, non off road vehicle on I Racing before we gave it
the Oval package. And now I'm in that car all the time. It
just sounds so good, just a throwback to Screaming V tens, good old
three Leader V ten and just about everybody made them. Yea, all right,
Well, thanks for listening to this episode of The I Racing Downshift.
Don't forget to rate, review, and subscribe on Apple Podcast, Spotify,
and anywhere else. Chris has put this thing for Kevin Bobbitt, Chris Leoni,
I am Greg West, and we'll see you on the North Slife on
the Ringmeister,