Barcelona and new damage model

Montmeló was officially announced last week during Bathurst 12h broadcast in RaceSpotTV streaming and iRacing staff confirmed they were already scanning spanish track these days. So according to other finished developments this could be a very long wait or just a few months, who knows. What has been answered in official forums are many questions about new damage model and how is it going to affect what is currently going on track. Here we have a FAQ about this precise matter.

The @iRacing crew is on site at Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya @Circuitcat_eng capturing millimeter accurate laser scan data and photographs. We're excited to start working on the track and to bring it to iRacing in the future. #laserscan #SimRacing pic.twitter.com/zVKTMGVPYT

— Greg Hill (@greghi11) February 9, 2019

Since members have been asking for an update, here are some notes about progress on the new damage system.

What We’ve Been Working On
As you’ve seen in the blog and video from last summer, we’ve been completely reworking collision and physics for the new damage system. That work has been continuing and has improved in many areas.

All Vehicles
The art team has done a fantastic job updating every vehicle in the service, so the graphics and collision are ready for the new system. As we develop new cars, they are built with the new system fully in mind.

Tire Vs. Track
A critical area of our simulation is the tires and how they interact with the track. The new system has been updated and optimized to make sure the tire code works smoothly with the new track mesh.

Tire Vs. Tire
Tires need to interact with opponent cars and their wheels. This was an area of weakness for the old system, so we’ve taken the time to correct this.

With the new system, each wheel has its own collision shape and will behave accurately when colliding with other objects and opponent tires. We expect this to improve wheel on wheel contact for open-wheel racing.

Car Vs. Car
Collision between cars has needed special attention. Running all the cars in a session takes a lot of CPU time. To maintain performance we’ve reworked our old approach so opponent cars can still run using less intensive processing.

At the same time, there were some areas where the old system fell short. For example, there are no plank sparks coming from opponent F1 cars. With the new system, we can still run their collision and should be able to fix this and similar cases.

Along with other optimizations we are now able to run a full session of cars using the new system. The CPU demands are only slightly more than the old system despite all the improvements.

Track Objects
Objects around the track needed to be updated for the new system. The art team has completed all the work required for the current tire stacks and cones.

In the future, we plan to add more track objects with full physics. To help with this, the Tweaker which is used for tuning the cars has been extended to support track objects.

Wheel Damage
With the old system, wheel damage was limited to bending the suspension inward. Damage with the new system, as shown in the preview video, allows wheels to detach during large impacts or break and remain hanging in less extreme cases.

Since the video was released, we’ve been improving wheel damage so it’s more appropriate depending on the circumstances and can break in a wider variety of ways. This work is still underway but will allow the suspension to bend, springs and dampers to break, upper and lower ball joints to break and for toe links to fail.

Work Still Remaining
Our goal for release is to improve on the old system in every way. There’s still work to do before everything is ready.

All Vehicles
Although the art work and collision is complete the vehicle dynamics team needs time to tune and balance damage for all vehicles in the service. To help with this, we’ve added Telemetry output for our developers so they can accurately measure how tuning work affects damage.

FX Work
The visual effects team has made a good start improving effects for debris and smoke during impacts however this will need to be refined and specialized for certain vehicles.

We also plan to improve sound effects building upon the on-going sound system improvements.

Optimization, Debugging and Testing
As ever we’ll need to make optimizations and fix bugs as we continue testing more cars and more damage situations.

When Dammit!
After the initial launch, we still anticipate room for improvement. But for now, we’re concentrating on getting the new system out and finalizing what will be a solid foundation for future developments.

We think we have a realistic shot at completing everything needed in time for an initial launch before the end of the year.

In the meantime, we’ll be working on another preview video. I won’t make the mistake of promising exactly