This is not exactly sim-related news but very worth mentioning as the future of one of the world’s finest race tracks is in jeopardy.

Local residents are threatening the existence of Spa-Francorchamps, Belgium’s Grand Prix venue, with their noise complaints. Even though Spa has hosted racing since 1921, noise seems to be an issue all of a sudden as the residents have managed to get a court decision in their favor.

It’s time for the motorsport community to speak up and voice support for this great track. Featuring the legendary Eau Rouge corner, Spa is one of the very few race tracks have managed to save their historical flair despite modern developments. Over 21.000 people have already joined the petition and you can too – It’s free and easy.

Sign the Spa-Francorchamps Petition Here

As you may have noticed, VirtualR had a short outage last afternoon. The problem wasn’t some glitch with the server but a complete overload of traffic, caused by hotlinked images from the Forza Motorsport 3 car gallery story that had been posted in several very popular forums.

Because of these problems, I´ve decided to temporarily disable image hotlinking until the traffic from those sources eases off. What does that mean for you? This doesn’t affect regular visitors, all it does is prevent users from posting images hosted on VirtualR on forums or other sites. You can still post links to images hosted on VirtualR but you can’t place them between [img] tags to have them load automatically as this creates a lot of traffic if images are posted in popular forums.

I´m sorry for any inconvenience this is causing but the first and foremost goal is to keep the site accessible.

Another thing: Many commenters have complained that they can’t use the comment editing feature anymore while others can use it fine – Including me. This seems to be a problem related to the latest system update, I think I´ve fixed what caused it but have no way to check since I didn’t have the problem to begin with.

So, if you´re reading this, please check if it’s working and leave a short comment. If it does not work for you, I´d appreciate if you could leave your browser version too so I can further investigate this issue. Thanks for your help and again, apologies for the inconvenience.

Apologies to all of you who tried to access VirtualR earlier this evening and got nothing but a blank page or an error. The server was in a bit of a kerffufle while I was away and it took me a while to figure out what was going on.

It should all be okay now, again I´m very sorry for the inconvenience.

It’ somewhat hard to believe but VirtualR is already starting its third year of existence today. It almost feels like yesterday that I started playing around with the blogging software, starting the site with no particular goal. To celebrate the site’s second birthday, the design has undergone a major change, more info on the new look and its features can be found below.

But first, it’s time to take a short look back at what was the second year of VirtualR.  The site’s rapid growth has continued both in terms of visitor numbers and posted content. Until now, almost 3.000 news stories have been posted, enriched by over 12.000 screenshots and images.

The most impressive change has happened in terms of comments. While the first year had less than 2.000 comments, over 14.000 postings have been submitted in the past twelve months, posted by over 3000 signed up-users. VirtualR has not just become a place of news but also of discussion. Sometimes heated but mostly level-headed and interesting, the site’s comment section has earned a reputation for giving modders constructive feedback and offering interesting discussions.

2009 also put the site to its biggest test as the continued demand forced a rather problematic change to a powerful dedicated server, taking the site offline for over a day – A first in two years of operation. While running the site has certainly become more complex, it becomes more rewarding each day as I very much enjoy seeing it become a crucial part of the community.

An occasion like this is the perfect time to say “Thank You” and while I specifically thanked some people a year ago, it would be pretty much impossible to do so now as so many people have helped making this site a success during the past year. That’s why I want to thank everybody who submits news, gives me feedback, writes comments and e-mails, giving me motivation to carry on every single day. I appreciate the trust that countless modding teams, companies and other sites have put into VirtualR, every bit of support is very much appreciated.

My biggest thanks  go out to the modding community and the sim racing community in a whole though – You guys are the ones making this hobby worthwhile, without you the site would have no reason to exist!

Off to year three….and many more to come

Facts about the new site design

As you can see, the design of the site has changed quite a bit. Even though it looks a little different, the site continues to work the way it did before. The new design features a wider main-frame that allows me to post even more content and embed higher-resolution videos.

The category listing has been moved into the header, if you´re looking for category-specific RSS feeds please visit the category to find the link on the top.

A major new feature in the comment area are avatars, helping to personalise comments and bring commenting on VirtualR a little further to the comfort you´re used to in forums. To add your personal avatar, please register at Gravatar.com with the same mail-address you´re using here, your avatar will be connected to it. Signing up there is done as quickly as signing up around here, you´ll only have to do it once of course.

The theme has been tested on all major browsers, including Firefox up to version 3.5, Safari, Opera, Chrome as well as the Internet Explorer 7 & 8. The site should look the same in all browsers, if you find any errors please let me know so that I can jump off a cliff, try to fix them.

I really hope you like the product of several nerve-wrecking webdesign hours. If you don’t right away, please give it a few days to adjust

And neither will I as the 77th running of the Le Mans 24 Hour race is just about to start. I´ll be crossing fingers for the Peugeot Sport squad in their epic battle against Audi in what should be one of the best editions of Le Mans in recent history.

Because of that, the site will be be rather quiet in the coming 24 hours. Major releases or news aside, there probably won’t be any updates and I´ll be very slow replying to emails. Please bare with me while I´m in full Le Mans craze

After almost 4000 RSS subscribers and over 140 followers on Twitter, I’s time to add another web 2.0 craze feature to VirtualR – A Facebook community.

The VirtualR facebook community is the place for VirtualR readers to connect and discuss. After joining, you can leave messages in the discussion board, upload photos or leave me and all others interesting links. If you ever wondered who else is reading this site, the community is the place to find out.

I hope this answers another often-heard request as many people were asking if I could add a forum to have a place to discuss site-related topics and issues. The Facebook community will now serve this need, giving you a place to get in touch with each other and discuss stuff apart from the on-topic comments on the site.

Joining the group is, of course, free – Simply follow this link or click the Facebook button in the header. Of course, everybody is very welcome to invite new members who haven’t been reading VirtualR yet. I hope you enjoy this new feature, feedback is as always appreciated!

With the site back up running in a stable manner, I figured it’s time to introduce some new features to make writing comments on VirtualR a little more pleasant.

From now on, you´ll be able to quote other people’s comments with a simple click just like in forums. Every comment features a little “Quote Comment” link, click it once to quote the comment in your answer. If you select text before clicking it, only the selected text will be quoted.

Furthermore, you´re now able to edit your own postings to correct spelling mistakes or add forgotten facts. Simply click the “Edit” link under your comment and a little editor will pop-up, allowing you to make the changes you want.

I hope these two features will bring commenting on VirtualR a little closer to the comfort you´re used too in those big forums. If you haven’t left a comment yet, join the fun by signing up for a free account here. Sign-up takes less than 10 seconds and allows you to get involved in plenty of interesting discussions!

Quite often, I get mails from sim racers asking me to spread the word on their league events on VirtualR. Even though I hate to turn people’s request down, I had no real idea where to put these announcements. This changes now as I´ve opened a new category for league announcements here.

In order to not disrupt the reading flow for those not interested in league-related stuff, items in this category won’t appear on the front-page but only on the category page. They won’t be included in the main RSS feed either, the category has it’s own feed of course. I understand that leagues are a vital part of the racing community and I hope this solution will do the fine work behind those leagues justice.

So if you´re looking for an event to participate in or find an exciting live-stream to watch, the league section is the way to go. Since there is a sheer endless amount of league forums and websites, I won’t even bother digging for league events myself. In order for your announcement to appear, please send a mail to leagues@virtualr.net I understand this may come off as somewhat lazy but my day ends after 24 hours

Anyways, I hope everybody enjoys the new feature – Happy racing!

Time for the final status update on the server situation as the site’s home has been successfully pimped, bringing some speed back into the system. Everything should now be running like it did a week ago. I´ve reactivated the missing features such as the latest downloads page and the related posts feature which had been turned off during the critical phase. Some new features which will improve the VirtualR experience will be coming up in a few weeks so stay tuned….

A huge thanks to everybody who coped with the annoying loading times over the weekend, everybody has been very supportive. The new server has plenty of power which should be put to some good use, so if you know a few people who haven’t heard of VirtualR: Please spread the word and keep on commenting and discussing

A final word on advertising as I know that some people are not very happy about the banners: The last week has shown that substantial resources are needed for this site to operate and advertising is the only way to ensure that this site will grow and stay healthy for years to come. So even if the banners annoy some of you from time to time, they´re badly needed to keep VirtualR running.

A final word, over 60 users have already signed up for the Twitter feed – Thanks!  If you haven’t yet, click here to check it out

Geez, what a day it was. The move to the new server did not work as planned at all as the site kept on maxing out the chosen machine. After plenty of phone calls to the hoster and about eight hours of work on my side, the site is now back online. Today would have been an excellent day to start smoking…..

It is in somewhat of a safemode though as the server will need some improvements in the coming days to get it back up to speed. Until then, a few features have been turned off and the site isn’t as fast as it used to be. Please be a little patient and allow longer loading times, my first goal was to get the site back up – Tweaking comes next.

By the start of next week, the site should back up to its old strength – I hope you all don’t mind the little inconvenience until then

If you visited the site in the past 24 hours, you´ve probably noticed very slow speeds and lots of error messages. The reason for that is simple: The recent releases of rFactor 2 previews have simply caused the server to collapse, right now the site is staying up thanks to lot of caching. Seems like the current server isn’t too happy about hundreds of simultaneous connections….

To address these issues, the site will be moving to a more powerful dedicated server in a few hours. During that time (approx. 4 hours), the site won’t be available at all. But don’t worry, VirtualR is not going anywhere…it just needs to be prepared for more growth.

I´ll keep you updated, I´m extremely sorry about the inconvenience!

VirtualR joins one of the internet’s biggest revolutions these days by joining the Twitter-craze. Twitter is a service that lets users communicate by short 140 character messages called tweets. What started as a service for personal blogging has become a professional tool that is used by many big companies and politicians.

How does it work? The VirtualR Twitter feed brings you short`n sweet little notifications whenever something significant happens in the sim racing world. If it’s new stunning previews, the release of a highly anticipated mod or else – You´ll be notified in an instant.

Twitter is extremely flexible, messages can be included in your Facebook page, your website, your instant messenger or your desktop. Tweets can even be received by your mobile phone, keeping you in touch with the latest in sim racing – Wherever you are.

To join the fun, simply click the Twitter logo in the header or here to get to the VirtualR Twitter page to start following my updates. Make sure to click here to find some interesting software that will help you make most of the Twitter updates.

Users of Firefox 3 might be getting a security warning when visiting this site due to be what seems to be a hickup between Google and my hoster.

The message falsely claims that it would be unsafe to visit VirtualR due to the site being reportedly malicious. This is of course not true! The problem seems to be that one or more domains associated with my hoster have been blacklisted and Google is expanding the ban to all domains now.

Weirdly, the Google diagnosis thing even confirms that: Of the 84 pages we tested on the site over the past 90 days, 0 page(s) resulted in malicious software being downloaded and installed without user consent. The last time Google visited this site was on 2009-02-23, and suspicious content was never found on this site within the past 90 days.

Hopefully, the situation will be resolved in a few hours. Users of Internet Explorer, Safari, Opera and other browsers are not getting this message and everybody can enjoy the site as usual. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Update: Seems like this problem was caused by embedded external content (either a banner or an embedded video). Google is currently checking the site again, issue should be resolved soon. Thank’s for everybodies patience and trust, I´ll keep you updated.

Final Update: Situation solved – Everything is back running as it should

I´ve finally found time to improve the single most popular page of this blog – The “Latest Downloads” page.

Even though it’s nothing more but a list of postings that contain download links, the page has been accessed over 1,6 million times already (geez!). Despite being popular, the list must have been a pain for everybody using it – Time to improve it.

The new download page works basicly the same way, it lists all stories that include download links. The new site is split into simulation categories though, categories can be opened and closed by clicking on the simulation logo.

Furthermore, downloads are split between tracks and mods, making it much easier to find what you´re looking for. To visit it, click “Latest Downloads” in the top navigation bar or here. Enjoy!