May 12, 2023 • 53 mins
We're getting ready for 2023 Season 3 on a new iRacing Downshift! We've got some teasers on new content and series, including the all-new Ring Meister concept (stay tuned for more info on that) and continued updates on our console games and esports. This month's guest, David Tucker, is one of our most active company voices in the iRacing forums—and as someone who touches so much on iRacing, one of your most asked-for guests in the history of the podcast!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
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(00:03):
This week on the I Racing DownShip. Great WhatsApp blows up. No,
most of them have found my WhatsApp. Oh perfect, Kevin Bison tractor.
Some people go out my fourth cardI bio practice. You bought a
long tractice and I really show myage. I'm one pair of white Newbellus
is away from fuldapp mode. Allthis and more strap in Welcome to the
(00:28):
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 upwith 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. Reallyepisode forty nine though I know started what
started off as a joke in amarketing meeting like three years ago, and
(00:50):
here we are, forty nine episodeslater, still testing video coming. It's
almost like a dare and like,yeah, okay, you guys do that,
fine, Yeah, we dare todo that. Okay. When we
thought about, you know, startingthe podcast, we thought we're gonna go
like full Dale Junior download. Webought a bunch of like four k cameras,
and we thought we're gonna do allthis stuff with it, and now
(01:10):
actually almost fifty episodes in, we'rethinking about finally maybe well maybe doing video
once and seeing what happens. Whoknows, but whatever, it's a good
time. I think what our fancount or up to two? We have
two fans? Do we have threefans? It's the third one? Oh
see? Okay, at least Chris, you got bullets in the outline finally,
(01:37):
but you don't have a I wantto. I would like a fan
counter moving forward. Three, we'regonna 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, andI'm racing podcast fans. Three. Yes,
(01:57):
please tweet at us individually so weknow to add you and we will
thank you by name, all threeof you. Here we go. I
love it. We'll give you ashout out. Why not, right,
you've done it before, Kevin,Yeah, no, it'll be. It'll
be like those fan cars. Youpay fifty dollars and you get the brick
on whatever. I don't know thatthe conceptually, No, you're not paying
(02:22):
to I guess that would be asponsor, wouldn't it. I racing down
shift NFT coming to Well, what'sbecause sponsors? We could use a sponsor
if we have our number of fourfan wants to sponsor us. Yeah,
we're open for that. So yeah, okay, what else is new?
What's going on? We're already offthe rails. Cisco and Drew Or in
(02:43):
the in the production room, andI 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 youdon't have like an infobox to describe what
we're talking about? Well, Iguess we're finding that. They're gonna find
out tomorrow. Yeah, we'll havethem come up with some like lower thirds
(03:05):
or whatever, story time with UncleGregor or whatever. Oh, Kevin,
what's been going on in your world? Well, it's finally getting warm.
Pollen is out, so I'm takingmy allergy medicine. You'll be happy to
hear like my white car is nowyellow, which is awful. I hate
that. But some very exciting newsOn the personal side, I finally bought
(03:28):
a lawn tractor. How about thatyou Yeah, yeah, and it's not
the portion lawn tractor that we scanneda few years ago. It's an actual
lawn mowing tractor. So midlife hittinghard huh yeah. Yeah. Some people
go out by sports cars. Ibuy a tractor. You bought. I
told my boys, who have bothbasically moved out, and they're like,
really, you waited until we movedout so that you know they don't have
(03:50):
to use to push mower. I'mlike, 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 lawntwice. Okay, but when are
we getting the other Kevin to scanthe tractor to put in a future bill?
We could have like a whole serieson tractors, right, different classes,
multi class tractor racing multila No muteDrew, mute them both. No,
(04:17):
no this, we can do nightracing in my tractor time out.
I need thirty. This is adisclaimer from iRacing dot com. We are
not introducing tractor racing in any formor fashion or any type of scanning of
any other tractor farming equipment in anyfor any way at all. None.
Greg greg is the fun police today, So thanks a lot for inquiries about
(04:42):
farm equipment scanning and I racing Kevindot Bobbitt at iRacing dot com. Anyway,
I guess we're moving on from thissubject. We have a long tractor.
It's pretty exciting. I sprayed someweak killer. Oh you're bad for
the environment. I'm sorry. I'vebeen bark mulching that anything. Wow,
(05:02):
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 fromfull down mode at this point with the
Velcro I mean, I but that'sa yes. Yeah, everybody has to.
(05:25):
If there's one thing that I learnedfrom the g RC days, it
was the time that Chip Pankou toldme everybody has to have standards. Um
didn't work out so well for uson 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
(05:46):
them to the next trade show wego 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'slet's move on on track. All right,
what's up in the world of eyeRacing. As I read it directly
off Chris's script, Thank you verymuch. This is bulleted and everything,
so it's very nice. Work continuestowards the twenty twenty three season three build.
(06:12):
We've released some teasers. More willcome, not sure parenthesy, If
anything Parenthesy we can name specifically.Did I say the quiet part out out
again? I feel like I'm backin 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 somenew cars, we have some new tracks,
(06:35):
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. Along awaited track, right, I mean,
it's one of these classic kind ofclub tracks in the in the US
(06:57):
the teasers is that we put outamazing, right and obviously we always we
always say things like that, butreally like the surface model and everything,
it just looks amazing. So Ican't wait till this track it's out there.
Um, we'll have to. Idon't know what what series you're gonna
put it in, Greg, butI imagine it'll be in a bunch,
right, Yeah, I think you'regonna see this low Power ten Top Racings,
(07:20):
probably gonna. I can go aheadand tell you it'll make it a
series, probably not rookie, Probablynot not rookie, but D series,
right, but D series for sureyou'll see it. And I think you're
gonna you'll find it on GR eightysix, Cleo Formula Forwards, things of
that nature. Some kind of Canwe get a some kind of Week thirteen
(07:41):
Wake Wake, Yes, if you'rereally nice and you get Kevin new Balances
with Bell Grow Okay, fine,No, Well, the reason I say
it is, you know, backin the day, Horse Thief Mile at
Willow Springs used to be one ofour team's biggest test tracks. So,
um, a lot of versatility ofWillows brings a lot of utility, you
know what That entire facility. SoI clarification horse thief is not included with
(08:05):
our Willow Springs well, fair enough? What about can we do tracktor racing
there anyway? Moving on? That'smostly sam so probably not right with drop
my simtown to ask. So anotherthing that's coming very important and been a
big topic of discussion and news storiesas well as foreign posts from Tony Gardner
(08:26):
and Tyler Hudson our long Way toDirt Refresh as part of our twenty twenty
three season three build. This hasbeen uh, you know, first principle's
look at our dirt racing product asa whole and how we can make it
more realistic, better from all thelessons that we've learned over the years doing
our dynamic track. So we've hada big team that's been working on it
(08:48):
for I think the past nine monthsand very excited to see what the community
thinks of it. Doing some lastminute polish work on it right now.
If you'd like more details on what'sgoing on with it, read the forms.
When we have our kind of weeklymeetings with and Tyler and Traviser and
there they can't talk enough about it. They're so excited for it. So
(09:11):
I think this is gonna be greatfor the whole dirt community. Yeah,
we're pretty excited about that. Notto mention some of the people who didn't
like dirt racing that have grown tolove it through the refresh. I thought
you were going to talk about offeringtrucks. Well I thought they were just
which I am. Obviously they arein Yes, anything on dirt is included
on this. Oh man, thecamera, the truck guys got the b
(09:33):
roll ready to go. Too bad, You guys can't see this. This
is pretty good. We're setting thebar too high for the next show that's
going to be on video. Butyeah, 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 PublicEye Racing website in front of me.
(09:56):
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, alot of different vehicles get touched on that
water content variation in track where youname it, you know, pretty much
everything down to the details, youknow, not to mention some of the
(10:18):
other tracks. I believe that wewent 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 arejust recently started in production, So we
could still be a couple builds outon these. But Machello long Away to
track, you know, Formula onef I a Grade one track, noted
(10:41):
dirt track, Mugello now not throughsarcasm Greg, also Massano, so we
have the Italian swing for the scanteam decided to go enjoy the hills of
Italy. Maybe a little bit ofwine while they were there. Good time.
But yeah, we're a couple ofgood tracks coming. Uh. Like
(11:03):
I said, we're probably a couplebuilds out on these, but production has
just started. Yeah, so prettyexciting stuff. Speaking of road racing too,
Kevin, we have a new seriesconcept debuting, is a pilot series
for season three. Well, it'ssuper exciting, but I think you're the
one that should announce it because thiskind of been your thing, right,
(11:26):
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 someiconic German, big huge track, a
really long lap that people drive allkinds of cars on something. Yeah,
(11:46):
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 theJune build, we're gonna bring a new
concept. It's called Ring myster.It is a pilot series program. We're
(12:07):
trying to make some of our techthat that flits our races up work with
this concept. There'll be a coupleof quirks that will outline in the in
the announcement story, but for themost part, over the course of twelve
weeks, we're gonna race a singleMake race, every single Make races every
week. So we'll start off we'llhave a GT three, and maybe the
(12:28):
second week it's a GT four,and then you have a touring car.
Maybe we throw in like the Geighty six of the CLEO one week formula,
you know, F sixteen hundred somethinglike that. But every week you
get a different car. It's alwaysa 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'sgonna be a great place to farm
(12:50):
some safety rating two. And thisis the one track that I consistently beat
you with lap times, so youjust 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'rebeing 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 andgo elsewhere in Germany. Then that's correct,
(13:13):
probably, yeah darn so yeah.More details coming on that very soon.
But yeah, we're we're looking forwardto think it's gonna be h It's
it's super fun. So it's alittle different, um, and I mean
this is the perfect track for this. Now, there's some others that we
could do, you know, atsome point I think. Yeah, but
we're gonna start here and see howit goes, right, yep, And
(13:33):
just for everybody's knowledge, these arethey're gonna run every two hours. It's
four lap races around the industrial partingversion of the North of the Norde Life,
so you know classic Norde Live butLas vehicle class. I believe this
is uh C C nice. Ohwell then I do accessible. I can't
(13:54):
run it? Well, Chris havea license. You just need to get
good. Yeah, that's that's goingto come up in your annual review.
I'm sure you don't have a Clicense. 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 wouldhave thought it? Yeah? Right,
(14:16):
all right, moving on and throwingit back to Chris. UH twenty talks
us about woo yep, as we'vealluded to in previous podcasts and social posts
and everything. Work continues on thetwenty twenty three season update for World of
Outlaws Dirt Racing. A lot ofracing continues on that platform. We still
have the weekly challenges that go upevery Monday. Um. If you continue
(14:39):
to check out World of Outlaws gamedot Com on race weeks that coincide with
real world World of Outlaws visits tothe tracks that are in that game.
We've got calls for you to sharesome you know, some of your own
screenshots, photos, videos of youplaying the game in those classes at those
tracks. Um, we're keeping everythingactive. We're going to keep move moving
(15:00):
until we have that twenty twenty threeseason update available later this year. That's
gonna have some new cars, somenew 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 newexperience. 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 outon for the PlayStation and Xbox consoles,
(15:24):
and it'll be included within the NintendoSwitchport Hits also later this year. Awesome,
it's great to see the games stillgoing strong, people using it,
you know, tons of online sessions, and it's great to see that,
you know, some new stuff comingas well. So yeah, a lot
of leagues. Yeah, I thinkwhat I'm excited to see is built a
(15:46):
lot of hype with the release ofthat title and then leading into the dirt
refresh on I Racing proper and tosee maybe how much of that comes over
to I Racing And yeah, that'dbe good to see the numbers the Influx
and Chris. We've also been workingon our other console title, Exocross YEP,
Exocross, which will also be deployinglater this year. That has been
(16:07):
a blast. I mean, I'mnot sure if you guys know, but
obviously I fashioned myself a tiny bitof an off road expert. Was just
to sit, please tell me morewell, if any, for our listeners,
maybe explain what Exocross is in caseI didn't read the stories that we've
put out. Yes, certainly so. When we acquired Aarontis Games around the
(16:30):
same time that we acquired Monster Games, Aurantis had been working on a title
called Drag outer Worlds. This titleis unmanned sort of futuristic off road vehicles
racing on different planets. What we'vedone is we've taken that game and sort
of refashioned it into something that ismore oriented towards being able to play on
(16:52):
console and having single player modes.The original version of Drag Outer Worlds was
designed in a lot of ways tobe primary multiplayer, but the game has
been improved upon, reworked, hada few things added to it. Some
of these things continue to be indevelopment, like there will be a career
mode, there will be single playerracing, some of the boost mechanics that
(17:15):
if you were just playing in singleplayer time trial license type things are going
to be a little more accessible acrossthe board regardless of when you're racing.
So work continues on that. ButI tried the Xbox build the first for
the first time a couple of weeksago, and again, I'd like to
(17:36):
think of myself as a little bitof an off road expert. The way
that those vehicles drove is something Ifeel like I've been chasing for twenty years
across just about every platform. Iwas over the moon, having just spent
about forty five minutes, and whenit came back from the development lab to
(17:57):
yeah, just yes, you soundedwork. Yeah. I was over there
for like four hours doing research researchlaser. Yes, yeah, I have
another meeting as soon as we wrapup the podcast on it. But then
I'm going to be zooming right backover there and uh, you know,
playing it a little bit again.The vehicles you playing it right? Product
(18:21):
product, yes, yes, ofcourse, 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 issomething that you know you certainly even see
in the eye racing ladder as youmove up from rookie to D to see
(18:42):
to B to A. Not thatI would know that in anything but dirt
road sounds like that. And that'stim moving up your eye racing license.
Yeah, that needs to go outby 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 iton a committed to late this year maybe
(19:03):
Yeah, that's the market anyway,right, Still the fair amount of work
to go to make it kind ofconsumer ready, but a lot of progress
has been made so yes. Butmost importantly, if you already own Drag
Outer Worlds or if you buy thatnow, 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. Allthe new stuff, but it's there.
(19:26):
Yes, I got a steam keyfor 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, Wegot a great guest this week.
We sat down with one of oursenior software engineers, David Tucker, and
(19:49):
he handles a lot of our periphieldevelopment force feedback and also is one of
the most vocal developers we have ineye Racing, working with the community in
the forms and one of the specificcauses he champions is working with our disabled
community, the adaptive controllers things likethat does some super cool stuff with that.
(20:10):
It's pretty mind blowing and probably Kevinone of our most requested staff member
guests, would you say, Iwould agree he's uh. People have been
I think since episode one, likewhen you get in Tucker on. We
finally got him and only took fortynine episodes, feeling he will be back
for more. That won't be thelast time we have money. Yeah,
he's great. So without further ado, let's sit down with David Tucker.
(20:36):
All right, Kevin and I areexcited to be back with our next guests,
probably the most requested guest we've hadas far as staff by far,
by far, like standard deviation furtherthan nobody wants to hear from Steve Ratona
anymore because they have nothing. Theydon't spell secrets anymore. So we've got
Tony David. We have senior softwareengineer David Tucker joining us on the podcast
(21:02):
today. David, thanks for takingthe 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
(21:22):
I didn't. So I got allthe weird everything that we put off and
we're like, ah, we'll getto that someday. And then I hired
you. Is that exactly? So? I got so our first job was
probably making the cameras cooler. Imade the telemetry system, all right.
At some point in time I gotinto wheels and started making that a big
(21:45):
part of my job. So Iget to do a lot of work with
wheel manufacturers. And then, didyou I work a lot of stuff working
with the disabled community, trying tomake that better. Just a whole host
of other little tiny features all overthe SIM. So you you have a
(22:07):
pretty well rounded knowledge base of theEye 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 mythat's my take from that is completely untrus.
A lot of the things you domaybe 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 trackor just or that. But it's all
(22:30):
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. AndI was hired on my birthdays ago,
(22:52):
So happy birthday, thank you wheneverthat is. It's a while ago.
But yeah, you can said moneyand 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 themthere. So all right, well let's
(23:17):
let's get into it a little biton what you've done a little bit of
everything. But you know, yourday to day these days is you're working
with uh, I mean a myriadof things, but specifically lately you've been
working with wheel manufacturers and making surehardware works in the sim so it does
when you turn left, it turnsleft? Am I correct? Yeah?
So yeah, I'm doing that,working on making wheels more safe, adding
(23:41):
an high frequency data so I havea whole system to drive base shakers and
the truth, well, hold ona 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 youknow, I figure maybe a quarter of
(24:02):
our users have a wheel that couldprobably just look at your thumb without much
effort. So I'm putting in thingslike 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, butyou will be very thankful when when you
Crashly, I r O one anda mock two now have an oval package,
(24:25):
you hit the wall at two supercool, and then you send a
thank you card to David Tucker becauseyou have thumbs still. That's basically what
I'm hearing. Yeah, yeah,so you know, it's just uh,
in general, I just trying tomake the wheels work as good as they
can. So I do a lotof work with the wheel manufactures themselves doing
testing. I've specialized hardware I madeto be able to really get in and
(24:48):
test the wheels out good, andthen we work back and forth. I'm
better firmware that's probably expanded a lotsince when you started fourteen years ago.
I felt like there were only acouple of kind of mainstream wheels back then,
and now they're almost a new onecoming out every month. Yeah,
I know, it's getting crazy.I mean I actually I had to build
special shelves in my garage to holdall the different wheels I have. I
(25:10):
try not to tell people that somedayyou should send us a picture of the
library of tech that you have.That would be pretty funny, But I
find that, you know, everywheel is a little different, and whenever
we have a problem, I needa wheel at hand to test with.
I mean, I've got five wheelssitting right here on the floor. I've
been testing with all week. Sohow much time do you spend unplugging and
(25:32):
plugging in USB cables? So muchtime? It's all. Yeah. Now
you do a lot more than justthe hardware, though. You also do
a ton of work with our spotterpacks, specifically the regional spotter packs.
I saw some notes this morning ona new one you're working on, right,
Yeah. So a while back Igot given the spotter and I did
(25:56):
a lot of clean up to it, and then users at the time,
you couldn't change the sound of thespotters, so users are really itching for
that. So I put in supportto the spotter packs, or at least
made it work real good. Andthen um yeah, and then along the
way, I made it so thatyou could translate the spotter into different languages.
(26:17):
So right now I think we've goteight different spotters the different languages,
and we've got three or four membersthat really work hard to to translate the
spotters as good as they can intoevery different language that you know, so
they'll give you the recordings and stuffyou can tell. Yeah, And so
I've been working with with a coupleof Italians on Italian spotter packs and they're
(26:41):
really top notch. There there anythingchanges, they're on top of it.
And so I don't really do Iput 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 toeach message could be ducated up to
(27:04):
I think thirty times. So aproper Spotter pack is many thousands. And
if you're looking, if you're interestedin and I toyed with this idea and
then walked away from it because it'sa it's a heck of a project.
But there are instructions on the forumson how to build your own if you
want to hear yourself yell at yourselfwhen you do dumb things in the sim
(27:27):
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, anduh, 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
(27:49):
think has like four or five thousand, Oh yeah, messages eleven's pretty good.
But all right, well let's let'sswing it over a little bit because,
as people are going to notice,you do a lot of a little
bit of everything, um, andwe'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'veworked on eye racing. But one of
(28:12):
my favorite, one of my favoritethings is the work that you've done with
our disabled community to make eye racingeven more accessible for everybody. Right,
let's talk about that a little bitand some of the tools that you have
implemented in the SIM to increase theaccessibility. Yeah. So well, first
(28:33):
off, I mean, we havea 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 ofhelp them out a little bit. Um.
But you know, when I gotstarted, there wasn't any support from
the hardware manufacturers for disabled players.Weren't any wheels with hand controls, and
(29:00):
it was really hodgepodge. They wereworking really hard to try to include together
things to make it work, butthey were really struggling. So um,
you know, I as soon asI got contacts of the manufactures, I
started pushing on them, encouraging themto put in hand controls um I at
some point in time was asked toadd in touch until support to the SIM,
(29:21):
and I went ahead and added inmouse driving and as well, and
and that's helped a lot. There'sa 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 thatjust don't have a hand strength to hold
their hands up on a wheel,but they can use a mouse. And
(29:45):
then just a lot of little things, you know, users would reach out
to me and ask for this tothat. And so I've been you know,
slowly, you know, with thehelp of Brandy and some other people,
and been slowly adding in lots oflittle features to help, you you
know, to have better I didthe driving aid uh back stuff like that,
just to kind of augmented. Andthen recently some users were reaching out
(30:08):
to me and really talking about oddtalking about things that I hadn't thought about
before, like they're having a difficulttime seeing or whatever, so we put
in a bunch of new features tolike 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 funto get to work with them and
(30:30):
uh and see how hard they workto make anything work, and then being
able to come along and kind ofmake 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 thatpop out to you, like things that
you're like, that was pretty coolto work on that. I'm really happy
with how that turned out. Well, my favorite, my favorite feature and
(30:52):
I need to bring it into thesim and give with everybody, is I
put in code to draw a lineinto 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,
(31:12):
it's just I put in the world'sugliest 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 andlittle thing that makes a big difference,
right, Yeah, so I needto get the art team to give me
a better looking mouse. Wine.Mine was hand drawn by me and it
(31:34):
just went into paint, drew amouse and here it is now. But
so all right, let's let's movingforward. And you don't have to give
a lot of detail here. Iknow 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
(31:56):
implementing any specifically to make for thecommunity, to or for the disabled community.
Where are the places that you wantto go moving forward? And we
just haven't had the time yet.Um, that's a good question. I
mean, you know a lot ofwhat I've done is looking at Hyer,
(32:19):
you know, getting more feedback tothe users. So I've spent a lot
of time trying to get We've gotthese space shakers that I drive, getting
wheelmakers to implement high frequency effects likethe true force, so that we can
uh, you know, add backin all the vibrations and the and the
rumblings and the you know, theimpacts that you feel in a real car.
(32:42):
So I'm really just about that.I've been spending a lot of time
on that, you know, justanything to kind of make the sim feel
more like real life. So I'veactually got some projects on the horizon for
that. I'm real excited about thesenew 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
(33:07):
on the disabled side, I meanit'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 outto me with needs, I just keep
trying to tick things off. There'sbeen a lot of work in the background
that hasn't made it out to membersto try to make our UI more friendly
(33:28):
to color blind people. Um thatI 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'tI don't know if we'll be able to
get to it. But user justrecently built a tool to take our voice
chat and translate it to text andput up a dialogue that you could watch
(33:50):
the text on and that that wasa 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 usbring that into the house, but I
don't. Yeah, we're not thereyet, but there are some series on
Friday nights that I'm not sure i'dwant to turn that on. We need
the potato filters. Like I said, the community is sproad, you know,
(34:16):
so we've we've got lots of youknow, lots of people with lots
of needs. So I remember earlyon that there were a lot of not
a lot, but there were afew 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 Gtwenty five back in the day, right,
(34:38):
and they would they would rig upkind of looked bizarre. It was
made out of like balsa wood orwhatever they had, and they would make
hand controllers, which I was justblown 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 backin the day that you were remember
(35:00):
that you were just like, holycow, that is so cool. Um,
and then who makes some really greatcontrollers. I know I'm not asking
you to endorse anybody or this orthat, but like, is there like
and obviously there's such a variety ofkind of physical challenges and disabilities. There's
not one that's perfect for everybody,but is there are there some that are
(35:20):
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 toit, people with zip tie and game
pads to it. Yeah. Yeah. The similar Steel Series have the sr
WS one wheel, which is alittle like a wee controller that you can
(35:42):
I remember I had one of those. It was cool. Yeah, So
they'd take the rim up there Gtwenty five and bolt that to it.
But you know what, I gotto give a shout out to Glenn over
at Simability. He came along afterthe US are, after Steel Series wheel
was gone, and built these customwheels for the community that just in his
(36:05):
garage. Yeah. I'm sure he'sbuilt hundreds of them by now, but
you know, he just completely filledthe hole in the market where he'd you
know, make a little bolt onthings for your thrust master, your Logitech
so that people could drive, andthen uh, you know, and then
more recently Fanertech and then thrust Masterand Logitech, and then now some of
the high end wheels all have atleast one rim that has analog paddles on
(36:29):
him. So we're actually there's alot 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. Sothe 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 controlsare almost built like to be a super
(36:52):
high end Formula one wheel that hasa clutch paddles and things like that.
But you can map them to bethrottle and break if you want, right,
is that kind of how they're oryeah, exactly, so, yeah,
you can map them to be thrownon the break. And I actually
drive most of the time like that. My dog likes to sit under my
desk, so I just leave mypedals out of the way the hand controls
and it's you know, they workthere. They're very quality. I'm very
(37:15):
impressed with the community. Though Iused to bring that Steel series wheel around
like when I was traveling for businessbecause I could run. It would fit
in my suitcase and i'd do alittle demo somewhere on my laptop and I
could plug it in. And youknow, I wasn't competitive because I didn't
practice enough. But I could showthe soom, I could show a track,
I could do whatever. It wassuper cool, like you know,
just wind up the cable and putit in your bag and off you go.
(37:36):
But unfortunately don't. They don't makethose anymore. Probably if you had
one, you could probably sell iton eBay for a good price. I
think they're coming out with the versiontwo of it. Actually, I saw
a teaser the other day. OhGoogle that put it in the comments below.
Maybe bluetooth instead of the long cableor something, right, but yeah,
yeah, I think also, notto be contradictory here, the but
(37:57):
fan attack actually lowered the price.I think it's the McLaren Wheel. Yeah.
I think that's down to like twohundred dollars now. So if somebody's
listening and is in this situation wherethis is, you know, you have
the need check that out. Maybethat was one I'm googling right now.
You do it. Yeah, butI believe the price on that one has
dropped significantly, which might be inan entry level solution for those that are
(38:23):
you know, might be interested andlooking into this. If that would make
your life a bit easier and itmakes 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
(38:44):
interview we have had for a gueston 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 isgoing to bring up even more questions from
the community. So so make sureyou make some time for us. White
and you ask this, why didn'tyou ask this? I'm sorry because you
weren't smart enough to think of thequestion. That's why. Greg So,
(39:06):
okay, well that's that feels alittle direct and my feelings a little bit
hurt, all right, But Ithink see, David, I told you
this is why the people listen tothe 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 thereal thing. You're You're smoked, buddy.
All right, on that note,back to the show, all right.
(39:30):
So great to sit down with DavidTucker, senior software engineer at I
Racing. Kevin and I had areally nice conversation with him, moving into
the next item on Chris's agenda thatI'm reading right off the email community events
in bold thank you makes it easyto tell. Yes, of course.
We have a special event this weekend, the Nurburgring twenty four on I Racing,
(39:52):
one of our biggest events of theyear. We got five classes racing,
got GT three G four's the PorscheGT three Cup car uh as well
as a touring car in GR eightysix, so a lot of cars.
Race eight eight makes Racing and Kevin. This has been very interesting for me.
(40:15):
I have been lobbied more for aBOP for this race than all other
races probably in the last three yearscombine, which I find ironic. Are
they sending it to your email atBreg dot West at iRacing dot com,
because that's not even nice. No, most of them have found my WhatsApp
(40:36):
perfect. Oh my gosh, absolutelyjust getting blown up with BOP requests and
it's all the teams trying to messwith other teams. Obviously, what's funny
is they're talking about the differences betweenthese cars being less than a second on
(40:58):
an eight minute lap, so we'retalking 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 thinkthis race is about surviving. Get in
the tank, right, that's whatyou do. Yeah, but I would
(41:20):
say arguably the least impactful race forBOP 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 ifpeople care that much. So you know
obviously the guys here that the teamworks hard to make it as balanced as
possible. There's probably no perfect numberanywhere, right, somebody's always going to
(41:43):
say something. So I think theteam works really hard and does a great
job at it. So even ifwe secretly made all the cars identical and
didn't tell anybody, there would beoh 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 finalBFP announcement. Today's Wednesday. So
(42:04):
when's this going out, Chris,Friday, Oh comes first race. First
race is on Friday night, EastCoast time, so we're then, yes,
so twenty two GMT on Friday night, but we have in the regular
special event time slot, so Fridayat twenty two GMT Saturday seven twelve and
sixteen GMT. Convert that to yourlocal time zone as you're listening to this
(42:29):
podcast. But no surprises there asfar as the times, and once again
twenty four hour Race. A reminderon that, as part of our twenty
four Hour Racing special events, themembers site will not be available for registration.
You will have to register through theUI, as we've done for the
last few events. But reminder onthat there'll be a banner up on the
(42:51):
website, in forums and in theUI by the time you read this.
There's that awesome next big event comingup 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 youhave that day night transition and the biggest
endurance test on ovals, Right,Chris, Yeah, for sure. I
(43:15):
mean, we only have a handfulof these NIS events every single year that
go the full distance. A lotof them are shorter. But yeah,
again, that day night transition isalways to me one of the prettiest and
coolest things I think we do inanything. You know, certainly if you're
running the Nerveagring twenty four, you'regoing to be seeing that day to night
and back today. But you know, I've always just had so much fun
(43:37):
watching stock car races that start outin the day and end of the night.
So you know, it's an endurancetest Charlotte four hundred laps. You
know, it really is a matterof survival. It's a matter of racing
smart. It's a matter of youknow, picking the right strategy and staying
clean and you know, just notgetting ahead of yourself. It's a long
(43:59):
rate since the longest race you'll doall here in a stock car unless you're
doing something that even Yes two wouldn'ttouch No Bop for this race, which
is nice, Yes also that andthen on May twenty seventh we've got the
next Crevintic race at Manza. Sothose's the twelve hour races sponsored by our
(44:21):
friends A Cravinti to put on thetwenty four hour races all over Europe and
Asia. But yeah, that onekicks 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 goracing there, and those races have
become more and more popular. Itwas kind of a niche series two years
ago and now it's, you know, one of the premiere endurance you know,
(44:44):
special series. It's not really aspecial event, but it's not a
regular race series. Yeah, weneed 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, allright? Moving on pro E Sports,
Chris talking about the Cooke Series.Yeah, definitely a lot of things going
(45:06):
on over the past month in theCoke Series. We had that back to
back, not only starting at Monzain the first race outside of US Soil,
well virtual US soil in e NASCARhistory, but then the following week
at Talladega, the first fixed setuprace in series history. Manza. Not
too much of a shock to seeBobby Zelenski with Joe Gibbs Racing return to
(45:30):
his road course winning ways Talladega wildfinish as always, Unlike last year,
Casey Kerwin manages to get it donejust at the final straight away Talladegan the
playoffs. Last year it was Kerwinand Colin Bowden at rac Or getting into
it and Zelenski managed to slide bythem. This time it was Kerwin at
(45:52):
x Set getting by Malik Ray leadinginto the final lab. For Jim Beaver,
e Sports came so close to gettingthat first win, but he had
the throw the block to prevent therun on one side on the high side,
and you know, Casey was justable 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
(46:15):
and this is his final year,but he's running at some of the highest
level that he's run in quite sometime. And you know, and we're
still talking about a driver who winsmultiple 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 victoriesyou know in hand. He should be
a lock for the playoffs just aboutat this point. But now, of
(46:37):
course we're heading into Darlington and alsoCharlotte later this month. Darlington we're gonna
have the throwback schemes a lot ofdrivers who are starting to drop them already.
Charlotte again, you know, aspecial event for the Coke series as
well. You know you have thatfinish under the lights at Charlotte. It's
going to be an interesting month andI think that especially on a track like
(47:00):
Darlington that's just so tricky for somany 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 seriesat all, so I'm allowed to have
a favorite. I like Michael Contibecause he sends donuts to the office after
he wins. It's a good dayafter a win. So yeah, I'm
(47:22):
on team Conti for the rest ofthe season because that's that's not bad at
coming to the office and the doordash donuts be there from dunks. I
may have had two last week.Score more. Yeah, this is this
not a good camera angle showing offmy second and third chin. All right,
moving on, Kevin portion tag Hoyer, East Sports Super cups heading into
(47:45):
the home stretch. Yeah, tworacists to go. Oh, I think
we're at Lama next, and thenwe finished up at Monza. So been
a great season. H Jordan Caruso'skind of running away with it, but
not quite yet. He hasn't wrappedit up anything happened at Lama, So
I mean it's kind of a youknow some in some ways, it's a
simple track to run, it's notoverly complex, but a lot can happen
(48:08):
draft this or that. You don'tstart well, you don't qualify well,
who knows, so m should bea pretty exciting final two rounds of that
series. The All Star Race seasonhas been going well and Casey Corn is
running away with that so no surprise. The guy can drive pretty much anything.
(48:30):
So there's been some lobbying behind thescenes to see if we could,
you know, either dock him somepoints 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 excitingto 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,
(48:50):
look at that. I'm not usedto this. Yeah, so it's uh,
the twenty it'll be great. Checkout 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 thatclip you guys put out of it was
like t K, Casey Kerwin andQuirk you don't know as Matt Malone,
(49:17):
Casey Crowin and Quirk battling it outwhile also we had their you know,
in car cameras per se and they'retalking 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. Qualifyingcontinues for WOO Late Models and the off
(49:45):
Road series. Yep, definitely aWorld of Outlaws butt Kicker Late Model Series
qualifying started May first, so we'rea couple of weeks into that seeing which
drivers are going to be taking onthe late Models you know later summer that
series will go on. For theEye Racing off Road Championship Series, we're
much deeper into that. That seriesif you're a long time I Racing member,
(50:08):
uses a more old school qualifying formatwhere 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 qualifyingseries. It's something we just learned from
doing dirt road over the years.We had done a couple of standalones with
(50:28):
previous Dirt Road Championships and it wasjust more representative of the drivers who should
be there to make it a partof that. You know, that that
public series that's not standing on itsown is what we found. So a
lot of drivers still kind of hammeringin there. You know, your best
eight weeks count, So a lotof drivers kind of frontloaded and are now
(50:50):
sitting back and waiting. So youknow, if you're if you're on that
butt, you know, if you'reon that bubble, you still have a
few weeks to really make a pushand break in at that you know,
break into that top twelve. Theyget those invites. But speaking of invites,
I need to start doing my owninvites for the off Road All Star
Series, and you know, Ithink I got a good list coming ahead.
It'll be it'll be some different folks. But we had some good shows
(51:14):
in those last time around, andeven I showed up a couple of times.
Maybe we're not going to be thatdesperate this year. But I don't
know. You guys want to runsome off road All Star races. I
think I'm busy that day. Ididn'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
(51:37):
you go, and then Kevin.We also have another championship series coming up
with details announced hashtag soon. Butanother 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
(52:00):
be good to have that back.We ran that in twenty one, twenty
one, the last one ran itand it was some fantastic racing. So
more details to follow, we'll leaveit 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 lookat hosted sessions, the folks driving
(52:22):
that on ovals are having a blast. They're seeing that some of these superspeedways.
Two hundred and forty five miles anhour down the backstretch going in a
turn three is hauling the mail.It was one of my favorite, if
not my favorite, non off roadvehicle on I Racing before we gave it
the Oval package. And now I'min that car all the time. It
(52:45):
just sounds so good, just athrowback to Screaming V tens, good old
three Leader V ten and just abouteverybody made them. Yea, all right,
Well, thanks for listening to thisepisode of The I Racing Downshift.
Don't forget to rate, review,and subscribe on Apple Podcast, Spotify,
and anywhere else. Chris has putthis thing for Kevin Bobbitt, Chris Leoni,
(53:08):
I am Greg West, and we'llsee you on the North Slife on
the Ringmeister,
This week on the I Racing DownShip. Great WhatsApp blows up. No,
most of them have found my WhatsApp. Oh perfect, Kevin Bison tractor.
Some people go out my fourth cardI bio practice. You bought a
long tractice and I really show myage. I'm one pair of white Newbellus
is away from fuldapp mode. Allthis and more strap in Welcome to the
(00:28):
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 upwith 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. Reallyepisode forty nine though I know started what
started off as a joke in amarketing meeting like three years ago, and
(00:50):
here we are, forty nine episodeslater, still testing video coming. It's
almost like a dare and like,yeah, okay, you guys do that,
fine, Yeah, we dare todo that. Okay. When we
thought about, you know, startingthe podcast, we thought we're gonna go
like full Dale Junior download. Webought a bunch of like four k cameras,
and we thought we're gonna do allthis stuff with it, and now
(01:10):
actually almost fifty episodes in, we'rethinking about finally maybe well maybe doing video
once and seeing what happens. Whoknows, but whatever, it's a good
time. I think what our fancount or up to two? We have
two fans? Do we have threefans? It's the third one? Oh
see? Okay, at least Chris, you got bullets in the outline finally,
(01:37):
but you don't have a I wantto. I would like a fan
counter moving forward. Three, we'regonna 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, andI'm racing podcast fans. Three. Yes,
(01:57):
please tweet at us individually so weknow to add you and we will
thank you by name, all threeof you. Here we go. I
love it. We'll give you ashout out. Why not, right,
you've done it before, Kevin,Yeah, no, it'll be. It'll
be like those fan cars. Youpay fifty dollars and you get the brick
on whatever. I don't know thatthe conceptually, No, you're not paying
(02:22):
to I guess that would be asponsor, wouldn't it. I racing down
shift NFT coming to Well, what'sbecause sponsors? We could use a sponsor
if we have our number of fourfan wants to sponsor us. Yeah,
we're open for that. So yeah, okay, what else is new?
What's going on? We're already offthe rails. Cisco and Drew Or in
(02:43):
the in the production room, andI 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 youdon't have like an infobox to describe what
we're talking about? Well, Iguess we're finding that. They're gonna find
out tomorrow. Yeah, we'll havethem come up with some like lower thirds
(03:05):
or whatever, story time with UncleGregor or whatever. Oh, Kevin,
what's been going on in your world? Well, it's finally getting warm.
Pollen is out, so I'm takingmy allergy medicine. You'll be happy to
hear like my white car is nowyellow, which is awful. I hate
that. But some very exciting newsOn the personal side, I finally bought
(03:28):
a lawn tractor. How about thatyou Yeah, yeah, and it's not
the portion lawn tractor that we scanneda few years ago. It's an actual
lawn mowing tractor. So midlife hittinghard huh yeah. Yeah. Some people
go out by sports cars. Ibuy a tractor. You bought. I
told my boys, who have bothbasically moved out, and they're like,
really, you waited until we movedout so that you know they don't have
(03:50):
to use to push mower. I'mlike, 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 lawntwice. Okay, but when are
we getting the other Kevin to scanthe tractor to put in a future bill?
We could have like a whole serieson tractors, right, different classes,
multi class tractor racing multila No muteDrew, mute them both. No,
(04:17):
no this, we can do nightracing in my tractor time out.
I need thirty. This is adisclaimer from iRacing dot com. We are
not introducing tractor racing in any formor fashion or any type of scanning of
any other tractor farming equipment in anyfor any way at all. None.
Greg greg is the fun police today, So thanks a lot for inquiries about
(04:42):
farm equipment scanning and I racing Kevindot Bobbitt at iRacing dot com. Anyway,
I guess we're moving on from thissubject. We have a long tractor.
It's pretty exciting. I sprayed someweak killer. Oh you're bad for
the environment. I'm sorry. I'vebeen bark mulching that anything. Wow,
(05:02):
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 fromfull down mode at this point with the
Velcro I mean, I but that'sa yes. Yeah, everybody has to.
(05:25):
If there's one thing that I learnedfrom the g RC days, it
was the time that Chip Pankou toldme everybody has to have standards. Um
didn't work out so well for uson 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
(05:46):
them to the next trade show wego 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'slet's move on on track. All right,
what's up in the world of eyeRacing. As I read it directly
off Chris's script, Thank you verymuch. This is bulleted and everything,
so it's very nice. Work continuestowards the twenty twenty three season three build.
(06:12):
We've released some teasers. More willcome, not sure parenthesy, If
anything Parenthesy we can name specifically.Did I say the quiet part out out
again? I feel like I'm backin 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 somenew cars, we have some new tracks,
(06:35):
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. Along awaited track, right, I mean,
it's one of these classic kind ofclub tracks in the in the US
(06:57):
the teasers is that we put outamazing, right and obviously we always we
always say things like that, butreally like the surface model and everything,
it just looks amazing. So Ican't wait till this track it's out there.
Um, we'll have to. Idon't know what what series you're gonna
put it in, Greg, butI imagine it'll be in a bunch,
right, Yeah, I think you'regonna see this low Power ten Top Racings,
(07:20):
probably gonna. I can go aheadand tell you it'll make it a
series, probably not rookie, Probablynot not rookie, but D series,
right, but D series for sureyou'll see it. And I think you're
gonna you'll find it on GR eightysix, Cleo Formula Forwards, things of
that nature. Some kind of Canwe get a some kind of Week thirteen
(07:41):
Wake Wake, Yes, if you'rereally nice and you get Kevin new Balances
with Bell Grow Okay, fine,No, Well, the reason I say
it is, you know, backin the day, Horse Thief Mile at
Willow Springs used to be one ofour team's biggest test tracks. So,
um, a lot of versatility ofWillows brings a lot of utility, you
know what That entire facility. SoI clarification horse thief is not included with
(08:05):
our Willow Springs well, fair enough? What about can we do tracktor racing
there anyway? Moving on? That'smostly sam so probably not right with drop
my simtown to ask. So anotherthing that's coming very important and been a
big topic of discussion and news storiesas well as foreign posts from Tony Gardner
(08:26):
and Tyler Hudson our long Way toDirt Refresh as part of our twenty twenty
three season three build. This hasbeen uh, you know, first principle's
look at our dirt racing product asa whole and how we can make it
more realistic, better from all thelessons that we've learned over the years doing
our dynamic track. So we've hada big team that's been working on it
(08:48):
for I think the past nine monthsand very excited to see what the community
thinks of it. Doing some lastminute polish work on it right now.
If you'd like more details on what'sgoing on with it, read the forms.
When we have our kind of weeklymeetings with and Tyler and Traviser and
there they can't talk enough about it. They're so excited for it. So
(09:11):
I think this is gonna be greatfor the whole dirt community. Yeah,
we're pretty excited about that. Notto mention some of the people who didn't
like dirt racing that have grown tolove it through the refresh. I thought
you were going to talk about offeringtrucks. Well I thought they were just
which I am. Obviously they arein Yes, anything on dirt is included
on this. Oh man, thecamera, the truck guys got the b
(09:33):
roll ready to go. Too bad, You guys can't see this. This
is pretty good. We're setting thebar too high for the next show that's
going to be on video. Butyeah, 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 PublicEye Racing website in front of me.
(09:56):
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, alot of different vehicles get touched on that
water content variation in track where youname it, you know, pretty much
everything down to the details, youknow, not to mention some of the
(10:18):
other tracks. I believe that wewent 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 arejust recently started in production, So we
could still be a couple builds outon these. But Machello long Away to
track, you know, Formula onef I a Grade one track, noted
(10:41):
dirt track, Mugello now not throughsarcasm Greg, also Massano, so we
have the Italian swing for the scanteam decided to go enjoy the hills of
Italy. Maybe a little bit ofwine while they were there. Good time.
But yeah, we're a couple ofgood tracks coming. Uh. Like
(11:03):
I said, we're probably a couplebuilds out on these, but production has
just started. Yeah, so prettyexciting stuff. Speaking of road racing too,
Kevin, we have a new seriesconcept debuting, is a pilot series
for season three. Well, it'ssuper exciting, but I think you're the
one that should announce it because thiskind of been your thing, right,
(11:26):
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 someiconic German, big huge track, a
really long lap that people drive allkinds of cars on something. Yeah,
(11:46):
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 theJune build, we're gonna bring a new
concept. It's called Ring myster.It is a pilot series program. We're
(12:07):
trying to make some of our techthat that flits our races up work with
this concept. There'll be a coupleof quirks that will outline in the in
the announcement story, but for themost part, over the course of twelve
weeks, we're gonna race a singleMake race, every single Make races every
week. So we'll start off we'llhave a GT three, and maybe the
(12:28):
second week it's a GT four,and then you have a touring car.
Maybe we throw in like the Geighty six of the CLEO one week formula,
you know, F sixteen hundred somethinglike that. But every week you
get a different car. It's alwaysa 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'sgonna be a great place to farm
(12:50):
some safety rating two. And thisis the one track that I consistently beat
you with lap times, so youjust 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'rebeing 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 andgo elsewhere in Germany. Then that's correct,
(13:13):
probably, yeah darn so yeah.More details coming on that very soon.
But yeah, we're we're looking forwardto think it's gonna be h It's
it's super fun. So it's alittle different, um, and I mean
this is the perfect track for this. Now, there's some others that we
could do, you know, atsome point I think. Yeah, but
we're gonna start here and see howit goes, right, yep, And
(13:33):
just for everybody's knowledge, these arethey're gonna run every two hours. It's
four lap races around the industrial partingversion of the North of the Norde Life,
so you know classic Norde Live butLas vehicle class. I believe this
is uh C C nice. Ohwell then I do accessible. I can't
(13:54):
run it? Well, Chris havea license. You just need to get
good. Yeah, that's that's goingto come up in your annual review.
I'm sure you don't have a Clicense. 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 wouldhave thought it? Yeah? Right,
(14:16):
all right, moving on and throwingit back to Chris. UH twenty talks
us about woo yep, as we'vealluded to in previous podcasts and social posts
and everything. Work continues on thetwenty twenty three season update for World of
Outlaws Dirt Racing. A lot ofracing continues on that platform. We still
have the weekly challenges that go upevery Monday. Um. If you continue
(14:39):
to check out World of Outlaws gamedot Com on race weeks that coincide with
real world World of Outlaws visits tothe tracks that are in that game.
We've got calls for you to sharesome you know, some of your own
screenshots, photos, videos of youplaying the game in those classes at those
tracks. Um, we're keeping everythingactive. We're going to keep move moving
(15:00):
until we have that twenty twenty threeseason update available later this year. That's
gonna have some new cars, somenew 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 newexperience. 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 outon for the PlayStation and Xbox consoles,
(15:24):
and it'll be included within the NintendoSwitchport Hits also later this year. Awesome,
it's great to see the games stillgoing strong, people using it,
you know, tons of online sessions, and it's great to see that,
you know, some new stuff comingas well. So yeah, a lot
of leagues. Yeah, I thinkwhat I'm excited to see is built a
(15:46):
lot of hype with the release ofthat title and then leading into the dirt
refresh on I Racing proper and tosee maybe how much of that comes over
to I Racing And yeah, that'dbe good to see the numbers the Influx
and Chris. We've also been workingon our other console title, Exocross YEP,
Exocross, which will also be deployinglater this year. That has been
(16:07):
a blast. I mean, I'mnot sure if you guys know, but
obviously I fashioned myself a tiny bitof an off road expert. Was just
to sit, please tell me morewell, if any, for our listeners,
maybe explain what Exocross is in caseI didn't read the stories that we've
put out. Yes, certainly so. When we acquired Aarontis Games around the
(16:30):
same time that we acquired Monster Games, Aurantis had been working on a title
called Drag outer Worlds. This titleis unmanned sort of futuristic off road vehicles
racing on different planets. What we'vedone is we've taken that game and sort
of refashioned it into something that ismore oriented towards being able to play on
(16:52):
console and having single player modes.The original version of Drag Outer Worlds was
designed in a lot of ways tobe primary multiplayer, but the game has
been improved upon, reworked, hada few things added to it. Some
of these things continue to be indevelopment, like there will be a career
mode, there will be single playerracing, some of the boost mechanics that
(17:15):
if you were just playing in singleplayer time trial license type things are going
to be a little more accessible acrossthe board regardless of when you're racing.
So work continues on that. ButI tried the Xbox build the first for
the first time a couple of weeksago, and again, I'd like to
(17:36):
think of myself as a little bitof an off road expert. The way
that those vehicles drove is something Ifeel like I've been chasing for twenty years
across just about every platform. Iwas over the moon, having just spent
about forty five minutes, and whenit came back from the development lab to
(17:57):
yeah, just yes, you soundedwork. Yeah. I was over there
for like four hours doing research researchlaser. Yes, yeah, I have
another meeting as soon as we wrapup the podcast on it. But then
I'm going to be zooming right backover there and uh, you know,
playing it a little bit again.The vehicles you playing it right? Product
(18:21):
product, yes, yes, ofcourse, 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 issomething that you know you certainly even see
in the eye racing ladder as youmove up from rookie to D to see
(18:42):
to B to A. Not thatI would know that in anything but dirt
road sounds like that. And that'stim moving up your eye racing license.
Yeah, that needs to go outby 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 iton a committed to late this year maybe
(19:03):
Yeah, that's the market anyway,right, Still the fair amount of work
to go to make it kind ofconsumer ready, but a lot of progress
has been made so yes. Butmost importantly, if you already own Drag
Outer Worlds or if you buy thatnow, 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. Allthe new stuff, but it's there.
(19:26):
Yes, I got a steam keyfor 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, Wegot a great guest this week.
We sat down with one of oursenior software engineers, David Tucker, and
(19:49):
he handles a lot of our periphieldevelopment force feedback and also is one of
the most vocal developers we have ineye Racing, working with the community in
the forms and one of the specificcauses he champions is working with our disabled
community, the adaptive controllers things likethat does some super cool stuff with that.
(20:10):
It's pretty mind blowing and probably Kevinone of our most requested staff member
guests, would you say, Iwould agree he's uh. People have been
I think since episode one, likewhen you get in Tucker on. We
finally got him and only took fortynine episodes, feeling he will be back
for more. That won't be thelast time we have money. Yeah,
he's great. So without further ado, let's sit down with David Tucker.
(20:36):
All right, Kevin and I areexcited to be back with our next guests,
probably the most requested guest we've hadas far as staff by far,
by far, like standard deviation furtherthan nobody wants to hear from Steve Ratona
anymore because they have nothing. Theydon't spell secrets anymore. So we've got
Tony David. We have senior softwareengineer David Tucker joining us on the podcast
(21:02):
today. David, thanks for takingthe 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
(21:22):
I didn't. So I got allthe weird everything that we put off and
we're like, ah, we'll getto that someday. And then I hired
you. Is that exactly? So? I got so our first job was
probably making the cameras cooler. Imade the telemetry system, all right.
At some point in time I gotinto wheels and started making that a big
(21:45):
part of my job. So Iget to do a lot of work with
wheel manufacturers. And then, didyou I work a lot of stuff working
with the disabled community, trying tomake that better. Just a whole host
of other little tiny features all overthe SIM. So you you have a
(22:07):
pretty well rounded knowledge base of theEye 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 mythat's my take from that is completely untrus.
A lot of the things you domaybe 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 trackor just or that. But it's all
(22:30):
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. AndI was hired on my birthdays ago,
(22:52):
So happy birthday, thank you wheneverthat is. It's a while ago.
But yeah, you can said moneyand 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 themthere. So all right, well let's
(23:17):
let's get into it a little biton what you've done a little bit of
everything. But you know, yourday to day these days is you're working
with uh, I mean a myriadof things, but specifically lately you've been
working with wheel manufacturers and making surehardware works in the sim so it does
when you turn left, it turnsleft? Am I correct? Yeah?
So yeah, I'm doing that,working on making wheels more safe, adding
(23:41):
an high frequency data so I havea whole system to drive base shakers and
the truth, well, hold ona 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 youknow, I figure maybe a quarter of
(24:02):
our users have a wheel that couldprobably just look at your thumb without much
effort. So I'm putting in thingslike 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, butyou will be very thankful when when you
Crashly, I r O one anda mock two now have an oval package,
(24:25):
you hit the wall at two supercool, and then you send a
thank you card to David Tucker becauseyou have thumbs still. That's basically what
I'm hearing. Yeah, yeah,so you know, it's just uh,
in general, I just trying tomake the wheels work as good as they
can. So I do a lotof work with the wheel manufactures themselves doing
testing. I've specialized hardware I madeto be able to really get in and
(24:48):
test the wheels out good, andthen we work back and forth. I'm
better firmware that's probably expanded a lotsince when you started fourteen years ago.
I felt like there were only acouple of kind of mainstream wheels back then,
and now they're almost a new onecoming out every month. Yeah,
I know, it's getting crazy.I mean I actually I had to build
special shelves in my garage to holdall the different wheels I have. I
(25:10):
try not to tell people that somedayyou should send us a picture of the
library of tech that you have.That would be pretty funny, But I
find that, you know, everywheel is a little different, and whenever
we have a problem, I needa wheel at hand to test with.
I mean, I've got five wheelssitting right here on the floor. I've
been testing with all week. Sohow much time do you spend unplugging and
(25:32):
plugging in USB cables? So muchtime? It's all. Yeah. Now
you do a lot more than justthe hardware, though. You also do
a ton of work with our spotterpacks, specifically the regional spotter packs.
I saw some notes this morning ona new one you're working on, right,
Yeah. So a while back Igot given the spotter and I did
(25:56):
a lot of clean up to it, and then users at the time,
you couldn't change the sound of thespotters, so users are really itching for
that. So I put in supportto the spotter packs, or at least
made it work real good. Andthen um yeah, and then along the
way, I made it so thatyou could translate the spotter into different languages.
(26:17):
So right now I think we've goteight different spotters the different languages,
and we've got three or four membersthat really work hard to to translate the
spotters as good as they can intoevery different language that you know, so
they'll give you the recordings and stuffyou can tell. Yeah, And so
I've been working with with a coupleof Italians on Italian spotter packs and they're
(26:41):
really top notch. There there anythingchanges, they're on top of it.
And so I don't really do Iput 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 toeach message could be ducated up to
(27:04):
I think thirty times. So aproper Spotter pack is many thousands. And
if you're looking, if you're interestedin and I toyed with this idea and
then walked away from it because it'sa it's a heck of a project.
But there are instructions on the forumson how to build your own if you
want to hear yourself yell at yourselfwhen you do dumb things in the sim
(27:27):
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, anduh, 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
(27:49):
think has like four or five thousand, Oh yeah, messages eleven's pretty good.
But all right, well let's let'sswing it over a little bit because,
as people are going to notice,you do a lot of a little
bit of everything, um, andwe'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'veworked on eye racing. But one of
(28:12):
my favorite, one of my favoritethings is the work that you've done with
our disabled community to make eye racingeven more accessible for everybody. Right,
let's talk about that a little bitand some of the tools that you have
implemented in the SIM to increase theaccessibility. Yeah. So well, first
(28:33):
off, I mean, we havea 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 ofhelp them out a little bit. Um.
But you know, when I gotstarted, there wasn't any support from
the hardware manufacturers for disabled players.Weren't any wheels with hand controls, and
(29:00):
it was really hodgepodge. They wereworking really hard to try to include together
things to make it work, butthey were really struggling. So um,
you know, I as soon asI got contacts of the manufactures, I
started pushing on them, encouraging themto put in hand controls um I at
some point in time was asked toadd in touch until support to the SIM,
(29:21):
and I went ahead and added inmouse driving and as well, and
and that's helped a lot. There'sa 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 thatjust don't have a hand strength to hold
their hands up on a wheel,but they can use a mouse. And
(29:45):
then just a lot of little things, you know, users would reach out
to me and ask for this tothat. And so I've been you know,
slowly, you know, with thehelp of Brandy and some other people,
and been slowly adding in lots oflittle features to help, you you
know, to have better I didthe driving aid uh back stuff like that,
just to kind of augmented. Andthen recently some users were reaching out
(30:08):
to me and really talking about oddtalking about things that I hadn't thought about
before, like they're having a difficulttime seeing or whatever, so we put
in a bunch of new features tolike 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 funto get to work with them and
(30:30):
uh and see how hard they workto make anything work, and then being
able to come along and kind ofmake 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 thatpop out to you, like things that
you're like, that was pretty coolto work on that. I'm really happy
with how that turned out. Well, my favorite, my favorite feature and
(30:52):
I need to bring it into thesim and give with everybody, is I
put in code to draw a lineinto 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,
(31:12):
it's just I put in the world'sugliest 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 andlittle thing that makes a big difference,
right, Yeah, so I needto get the art team to give me
a better looking mouse. Wine.Mine was hand drawn by me and it
(31:34):
just went into paint, drew amouse and here it is now. But
so all right, let's let's movingforward. And you don't have to give
a lot of detail here. Iknow 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
(31:56):
implementing any specifically to make for thecommunity, to or for the disabled community.
Where are the places that you wantto go moving forward? And we
just haven't had the time yet.Um, that's a good question. I
mean, you know a lot ofwhat I've done is looking at Hyer,
(32:19):
you know, getting more feedback tothe users. So I've spent a lot
of time trying to get We've gotthese space shakers that I drive, getting
wheelmakers to implement high frequency effects likethe true force, so that we can
uh, you know, add backin all the vibrations and the and the
rumblings and the you know, theimpacts that you feel in a real car.
(32:42):
So I'm really just about that.I've been spending a lot of time
on that, you know, justanything to kind of make the sim feel
more like real life. So I'veactually got some projects on the horizon for
that. I'm real excited about thesenew 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
(33:07):
on the disabled side, I meanit'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 outto me with needs, I just keep
trying to tick things off. There'sbeen a lot of work in the background
that hasn't made it out to membersto try to make our UI more friendly
(33:28):
to color blind people. Um thatI 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'tI don't know if we'll be able to
get to it. But user justrecently built a tool to take our voice
chat and translate it to text andput up a dialogue that you could watch
(33:50):
the text on and that that wasa 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 usbring that into the house, but I
don't. Yeah, we're not thereyet, but there are some series on
Friday nights that I'm not sure i'dwant to turn that on. We need
the potato filters. Like I said, the community is sproad, you know,
(34:16):
so we've we've got lots of youknow, lots of people with lots
of needs. So I remember earlyon that there were a lot of not
a lot, but there were afew 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 Gtwenty five back in the day, right,
(34:38):
and they would they would rig upkind of looked bizarre. It was
made out of like balsa wood orwhatever they had, and they would make
hand controllers, which I was justblown 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 backin the day that you were remember
(35:00):
that you were just like, holycow, that is so cool. Um,
and then who makes some really greatcontrollers. I know I'm not asking
you to endorse anybody or this orthat, but like, is there like
and obviously there's such a variety ofkind of physical challenges and disabilities. There's
not one that's perfect for everybody,but is there are there some that are
(35:20):
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 toit, people with zip tie and game
pads to it. Yeah. Yeah. The similar Steel Series have the sr
WS one wheel, which is alittle like a wee controller that you can
(35:42):
I remember I had one of those. It was cool. Yeah, So
they'd take the rim up there Gtwenty five and bolt that to it.
But you know what, I gotto give a shout out to Glenn over
at Simability. He came along afterthe US are, after Steel Series wheel
was gone, and built these customwheels for the community that just in his
(36:05):
garage. Yeah. I'm sure he'sbuilt hundreds of them by now, but
you know, he just completely filledthe hole in the market where he'd you
know, make a little bolt onthings for your thrust master, your Logitech
so that people could drive, andthen uh, you know, and then
more recently Fanertech and then thrust Masterand Logitech, and then now some of
the high end wheels all have atleast one rim that has analog paddles on
(36:29):
him. So we're actually there's alot 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. Sothe 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 controlsare almost built like to be a super
(36:52):
high end Formula one wheel that hasa clutch paddles and things like that.
But you can map them to bethrottle and break if you want, right,
is that kind of how they're oryeah, exactly, so, yeah,
you can map them to be thrownon the break. And I actually
drive most of the time like that. My dog likes to sit under my
desk, so I just leave mypedals out of the way the hand controls
and it's you know, they workthere. They're very quality. I'm very
(37:15):
impressed with the community. Though Iused to bring that Steel series wheel around
like when I was traveling for businessbecause I could run. It would fit
in my suitcase and i'd do alittle demo somewhere on my laptop and I
could plug it in. And youknow, I wasn't competitive because I didn't
practice enough. But I could showthe soom, I could show a track,
I could do whatever. It wassuper cool, like you know,
just wind up the cable and putit in your bag and off you go.
(37:36):
But unfortunately don't. They don't makethose anymore. Probably if you had
one, you could probably sell iton eBay for a good price. I
think they're coming out with the versiontwo of it. Actually, I saw
a teaser the other day. OhGoogle that put it in the comments below.
Maybe bluetooth instead of the long cableor something, right, but yeah,
yeah, I think also, notto be contradictory here, the but
(37:57):
fan attack actually lowered the price.I think it's the McLaren Wheel. Yeah.
I think that's down to like twohundred dollars now. So if somebody's
listening and is in this situation wherethis is, you know, you have
the need check that out. Maybethat was one I'm googling right now.
You do it. Yeah, butI believe the price on that one has
dropped significantly, which might be inan entry level solution for those that are
(38:23):
you know, might be interested andlooking into this. If that would make
your life a bit easier and itmakes 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
(38:44):
interview we have had for a gueston 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 isgoing to bring up even more questions from
the community. So so make sureyou make some time for us. White
and you ask this, why didn'tyou ask this? I'm sorry because you
weren't smart enough to think of thequestion. That's why. Greg So,
(39:06):
okay, well that's that feels alittle direct and my feelings a little bit
hurt, all right, But Ithink see, David, I told you
this is why the people listen tothe 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 thereal thing. You're You're smoked, buddy.
All right, on that note,back to the show, all right.
(39:30):
So great to sit down with DavidTucker, senior software engineer at I
Racing. Kevin and I had areally nice conversation with him, moving into
the next item on Chris's agenda thatI'm reading right off the email community events
in bold thank you makes it easyto tell. Yes, of course.
We have a special event this weekend, the Nurburgring twenty four on I Racing,
(39:52):
one of our biggest events of theyear. We got five classes racing,
got GT three G four's the PorscheGT three Cup car uh as well
as a touring car in GR eightysix, so a lot of cars.
Race eight eight makes Racing and Kevin. This has been very interesting for me.
(40:15):
I have been lobbied more for aBOP for this race than all other
races probably in the last three yearscombine, which I find ironic. Are
they sending it to your email atBreg dot West at iRacing dot com,
because that's not even nice. No, most of them have found my WhatsApp
(40:36):
perfect. Oh my gosh, absolutelyjust getting blown up with BOP requests and
it's all the teams trying to messwith other teams. Obviously, what's funny
is they're talking about the differences betweenthese cars being less than a second on
(40:58):
an eight minute lap, so we'retalking 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 thinkthis race is about surviving. Get in
the tank, right, that's whatyou do. Yeah, but I would
(41:20):
say arguably the least impactful race forBOP 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 ifpeople care that much. So you know
obviously the guys here that the teamworks hard to make it as balanced as
possible. There's probably no perfect numberanywhere, right, somebody's always going to
(41:43):
say something. So I think theteam works really hard and does a great
job at it. So even ifwe secretly made all the cars identical and
didn't tell anybody, there would beoh 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 finalBFP announcement. Today's Wednesday. So
(42:04):
when's this going out, Chris,Friday, Oh comes first race. First
race is on Friday night, EastCoast time, so we're then, yes,
so twenty two GMT on Friday night, but we have in the regular
special event time slot, so Fridayat twenty two GMT Saturday seven twelve and
sixteen GMT. Convert that to yourlocal time zone as you're listening to this
(42:29):
podcast. But no surprises there asfar as the times, and once again
twenty four hour Race. A reminderon that, as part of our twenty
four Hour Racing special events, themembers site will not be available for registration.
You will have to register through theUI, as we've done for the
last few events. But reminder onthat there'll be a banner up on the
(42:51):
website, in forums and in theUI by the time you read this.
There's that awesome next big event comingup 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 youhave that day night transition and the biggest
endurance test on ovals, Right,Chris, Yeah, for sure. I
(43:15):
mean, we only have a handfulof these NIS events every single year that
go the full distance. A lotof them are shorter. But yeah,
again, that day night transition isalways to me one of the prettiest and
coolest things I think we do inanything. You know, certainly if you're
running the Nerveagring twenty four, you'regoing to be seeing that day to night
and back today. But you know, I've always just had so much fun
(43:37):
watching stock car races that start outin the day and end of the night.
So you know, it's an endurancetest Charlotte four hundred laps. You
know, it really is a matterof survival. It's a matter of racing
smart. It's a matter of youknow, picking the right strategy and staying
clean and you know, just notgetting ahead of yourself. It's a long
(43:59):
rate since the longest race you'll doall here in a stock car unless you're
doing something that even Yes two wouldn'ttouch No Bop for this race, which
is nice, Yes also that andthen on May twenty seventh we've got the
next Crevintic race at Manza. Sothose's the twelve hour races sponsored by our
(44:21):
friends A Cravinti to put on thetwenty four hour races all over Europe and
Asia. But yeah, that onekicks 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 goracing there, and those races have
become more and more popular. Itwas kind of a niche series two years
ago and now it's, you know, one of the premiere endurance you know,
(44:44):
special series. It's not really aspecial event, but it's not a
regular race series. Yeah, weneed 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, allright? Moving on pro E Sports,
Chris talking about the Cooke Series.Yeah, definitely a lot of things going
(45:06):
on over the past month in theCoke Series. We had that back to
back, not only starting at Monzain the first race outside of US Soil,
well virtual US soil in e NASCARhistory, but then the following week
at Talladega, the first fixed setuprace in series history. Manza. Not
too much of a shock to seeBobby Zelenski with Joe Gibbs Racing return to
(45:30):
his road course winning ways Talladega wildfinish as always, Unlike last year,
Casey Kerwin manages to get it donejust at the final straight away Talladegan the
playoffs. Last year it was Kerwinand Colin Bowden at rac Or getting into
it and Zelenski managed to slide bythem. This time it was Kerwin at
(45:52):
x Set getting by Malik Ray leadinginto the final lab. For Jim Beaver,
e Sports came so close to gettingthat first win, but he had
the throw the block to prevent therun on one side on the high side,
and you know, Casey was justable 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
(46:15):
and this is his final year,but he's running at some of the highest
level that he's run in quite sometime. And you know, and we're
still talking about a driver who winsmultiple 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 victoriesyou know in hand. He should be
a lock for the playoffs just aboutat this point. But now, of
(46:37):
course we're heading into Darlington and alsoCharlotte later this month. Darlington we're gonna
have the throwback schemes a lot ofdrivers who are starting to drop them already.
Charlotte again, you know, aspecial event for the Coke series as
well. You know you have thatfinish under the lights at Charlotte. It's
going to be an interesting month andI think that especially on a track like
(47:00):
Darlington that's just so tricky for somany 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 seriesat all, so I'm allowed to have
a favorite. I like Michael Contibecause he sends donuts to the office after
he wins. It's a good dayafter a win. So yeah, I'm
(47:22):
on team Conti for the rest ofthe season because that's that's not bad at
coming to the office and the doordash donuts be there from dunks. I
may have had two last week.Score more. Yeah, this is this
not a good camera angle showing offmy second and third chin. All right,
moving on, Kevin portion tag Hoyer, East Sports Super cups heading into
(47:45):
the home stretch. Yeah, tworacists to go. Oh, I think
we're at Lama next, and thenwe finished up at Monza. So been
a great season. H Jordan Caruso'skind of running away with it, but
not quite yet. He hasn't wrappedit up anything happened at Lama, So
I mean it's kind of a youknow some in some ways, it's a
simple track to run, it's notoverly complex, but a lot can happen
(48:08):
draft this or that. You don'tstart well, you don't qualify well,
who knows, so m should bea pretty exciting final two rounds of that
series. The All Star Race seasonhas been going well and Casey Corn is
running away with that so no surprise. The guy can drive pretty much anything.
(48:30):
So there's been some lobbying behind thescenes to see if we could,
you know, either dock him somepoints 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 excitingto 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,
(48:50):
look at that. I'm not usedto this. Yeah, so it's uh,
the twenty it'll be great. Checkout 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 thatclip you guys put out of it was
like t K, Casey Kerwin andQuirk you don't know as Matt Malone,
(49:17):
Casey Crowin and Quirk battling it outwhile also we had their you know,
in car cameras per se and they'retalking 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. Qualifyingcontinues for WOO Late Models and the off
(49:45):
Road series. Yep, definitely aWorld of Outlaws butt Kicker Late Model Series
qualifying started May first, so we'rea couple of weeks into that seeing which
drivers are going to be taking onthe late Models you know later summer that
series will go on. For theEye Racing off Road Championship Series, we're
much deeper into that. That seriesif you're a long time I Racing member,
(50:08):
uses a more old school qualifying formatwhere 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 qualifyingseries. It's something we just learned from
doing dirt road over the years.We had done a couple of standalones with
(50:28):
previous Dirt Road Championships and it wasjust more representative of the drivers who should
be there to make it a partof that. You know, that that
public series that's not standing on itsown is what we found. So a
lot of drivers still kind of hammeringin there. You know, your best
eight weeks count, So a lotof drivers kind of frontloaded and are now
(50:50):
sitting back and waiting. So youknow, if you're if you're on that
butt, you know, if you'reon that bubble, you still have a
few weeks to really make a pushand break in at that you know,
break into that top twelve. Theyget those invites. But speaking of invites,
I need to start doing my owninvites for the off Road All Star
Series, and you know, Ithink I got a good list coming ahead.
It'll be it'll be some different folks. But we had some good shows
(51:14):
in those last time around, andeven I showed up a couple of times.
Maybe we're not going to be thatdesperate this year. But I don't
know. You guys want to runsome off road All Star races. I
think I'm busy that day. Ididn'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
(51:37):
you go, and then Kevin.We also have another championship series coming up
with details announced hashtag soon. Butanother 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
(52:00):
be good to have that back.We ran that in twenty one, twenty
one, the last one ran itand it was some fantastic racing. So
more details to follow, we'll leaveit 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 lookat hosted sessions, the folks driving
(52:22):
that on ovals are having a blast. They're seeing that some of these superspeedways.
Two hundred and forty five miles anhour down the backstretch going in a
turn three is hauling the mail.It was one of my favorite, if
not my favorite, non off roadvehicle on I Racing before we gave it
the Oval package. And now I'min that car all the time. It
(52:45):
just sounds so good, just athrowback to Screaming V tens, good old
three Leader V ten and just abouteverybody made them. Yea, all right,
Well, thanks for listening to thisepisode of The I Racing Downshift.
Don't forget to rate, review,and subscribe on Apple Podcast, Spotify,
and anywhere else. Chris has putthis thing for Kevin Bobbitt, Chris Leoni,
(53:08):
I am Greg West, and we'llsee you on the North Slife on
the Ringmeister,
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