gravel, dirt and marbles even after leaving the associated surface.

• The in-Sim Info tab now displays actual average race-line temperature at the start of the session as the track temperature, to simulate a crew member taking some sample measurements with a temperature gun pointed at the track a few minutes before the session begins.

• Improved the way the server broadcasts the track state by allowing it to adjust what it sends depending upon the current situation on a per-client basis.

• Improved performance when the dynamic track is not being rendered by removing some unnecessary code.

New Netcode

• We have implemented some new netcode that sends more data to and from each car. This allows us to utilize more information for each vehicle, such as the pit limiter status for all cars that use pit limiters, and the DRS wing state and ERS warning light for the McLaren MP4-30.

• To help account for the additional data that can be sent for each car, the amount of network bandwidth that can be used for sending data from the server to the simulation has been increased by about 12% to 108kbits/sec for the “128K or faster” connection type selection, and by about 9% to 142kbits/sec for the “256K or faster” connection type selection. See the Preferences section on the Account->My Account page to select your connection type.

Garage

• Cars with tire warmers will now use the tire warmers while in the garage. The "Cold Pressure" setup item is now renamed "Starting Pressure" to reflect this change. iRacing setups have been adjusted for this change, but you will need to increase your tire pressure on any pre-existing setups to keep your hot tire pressures out on the track in the right place. You will need to raise your cold pressures for the various cars that have tire warmers by approximately the following amounts in order to convert them to a "Starting Pressure" value:
• - Aston Martin DBR9 GT1 = +3.0 psi
• - BMW Z4 GT3 = +6.5 psi
• - Chevrolet Corvette C6.R GT1 = +3.0 psi
• - Ford GT GT3 = +6.5 psi
• - HPD ARX-01c = +5.0 psi
• - McLaren MP4-12C GT3 = +6.5 psi
• - Ruf RT 12R Track = +6.5 psi
• • Williams-Toyota FW31 = + 5.0 psi

• Cars without tire warmers will now enter the world with exactly the tire pressure specified in the garage, instead of always being a couple of psi higher than specified. iRacing setups have been adjusted for this change, but you will need to increase your tire pressure on any pre-existing setups to keep your hot tire pressures out on the track in the right place. The typical change for any car will be approximately +1.5 psi.

• Fixed a rare crash issue in the Garage.

Loading

• System memory usage has been optimized for both 32-bit and 64-bit systems.

Rendering

• A new graphics option, “Render Car First” has been added to the graphics options screen. It is enabled by default, and it causes your car’s cockpit to be drawn very early in the scene (instead of last), reducing overdraw and improving frame rate.

• A new graphics option, “Two Pass Trees” has been added to the graphics options screen. When enabled, tracks with enhanced trees models will be rendered using two passes which helps improve their appearance. Currently, Two Pass Trees are only used in Southern National Motorsports Park and Nürburgring.

• The Video Memory slider on the graphics option screen now goes up to 4GB to accommodate newer tracks and GPUs.

• The order in which video memory resources are created has been improved, and the simulator no longer evicts and restores some GPU resources while loading. These changes help avoid requiring more memory during loading than what is actually required to run the simulation, reducing the required virtual address space necessary to load up racing sessions on 32-bit systems with limited address space.

• Additional optimizations have been added to improve three screen rendering performance.

• The System Memory Working Set slider now goes up to 8GB when running the 64-bit version of the simulator. Separate system memory slider settings for the 32-bit and 64-bit versions of the simulator are now maintained in the "renderer.ini" file. The new 64-bit setting will default to 2GB less than the RAM installed on the PC, but this value is also clamped between 2GB and 8GB.

• The graphical auto-configuration has been significantly revised:

• • The classification system has been altered such that many systems will now classify into a better performing performance class than previously.
• • The classification system now considers the desktop’s resolution, such that if you have a very high resolution desktop, it may automatically choose slightly lower options to allow for better performance.
• • The active settings per performance class setting have been revised.
• • It will now set the new 64-bit system memory slider if executed in 64-bit.
• • It no longer sets the 32-bit system memory slider too high if the PC is running a 32-bit operating system. In some cases it previously could choose 2000MB, but should have defaulted to only 1200MB since most 32-bit operating systems only provide 2GB of virtual address space to each process by default.
• • It can now suggest default resolutions that match your desktop’s resolution of up to 8192 pixels wide (previously only 1920 pixels wide).

• Many improvements have been made to the graphical occlusion culling. Track surface, walls, decals and translucent objects are now occlusion culled, and trackside objects are often now detected as occluded much more quickly, improving the frame rate when cornering at large road courses. In addition, a new option, "VisibilityFrameDelay," has been added to the "renderer.ini" file which may be lowered to improve the performance of visibility culling at the cost of CPU time (0= No delay, 5= Five frames of visibility culling latency).

• When Pixel Shaders are enabled, the larger vertices that they require are now compressed by default to reduce both system and video memory requirements. Set “CompressedVertices=0” in “renderer.ini” to disable the compression.

• Two additional bars have been added to the "Comm" UI when “CPUMeter=1” is enabled in "app.ini" file. There is now an "R" bar which is the time the foreground/Renderer took and a "G" bar which is the time the GPU took. There is also a new option in the "app.ini" file named “CPUMeterAsText=1” which will turn all the "CPU" timing related meters into text that reports the times in milliseconds.

• Night track environmental reflections on cars utilizing the physically based rendering (PBR) shaders have been revised. Several other fixes and enhancements have also been added to the PBR shaders.

• Fixed an issue where switching cameras would cause occlusion culling to be completely disabled for 80 frames.

DirectX 9

• The DX9 Autoconfig has been updated to include PBR shaders.

PopcornFX

• PopcornFX is a new particle system for iRacing that greatly enhances the audio/visual experience of vehicles interacting with the world. The system manages everything from smoke butts and grass particles, to marbles and sparks. If your computer can handle it, crank your graphics settings up to the maximum for a hyper-realistic racing experience!

• PopcornFX makes the following improvements to the racing experience:

• • New sparks, that will collide with vehicle bodies.
• • New backfire visual effects and matching audio, customized on a per-car basis.
• • New dense smoke effects which can appear from all around a car's tires.
• • Debris from the track will now support collision with vehicles and features a matching set of sound effects, including gravel, dirt, grass, and marbles.
• • Vehicle tires now also more realistically collect, hold, and discard debris over the course of a race, including dust particles, blades of grass, pebbles, and rubber marbles.