With only a few hours of 2009 left, it’s once again time to take a short look back at the passing year and at what’s coming up in the next 12 months.

The past year has proven to be an eventful year for sim racers as there was no shortage of exciting news. The rFactor community has continued to release stunning mods such as Enduracer’s Endurance Series mod, Simbin has brought us RACE On and many other projects have been released or progressed very well. Once again, it’s nice to see that the community is quite healthy as sim racers have been given countless options to pursue their hobby this year.

Alongside the established simulations such as rFactor and Simbin’s sims, iRacing has been progressing in full force, adding lots of content and features to their online racing sim. 2009 was also the year of old faithfuls that are still going strong. Grand Prix Legends is still very much kicking, Live for Speed is working on fresh content too and netKar Pro has gained many new fans with a much improved new version and the Fiat Abarth 500.

The most-discussed title of 2009 was definitely Need for Speed Shift though. Slightly Mad Studios’ first title has caused a lot of buzz in the community and once again proven that clever modders can improve even high-polished mainstream racing titles. And last but definitely not least, 2009 was also the year we learned first facts about ISI’s upcoming rFactor 2 simulation.

For VirtualR, 2009 was once again a record-breaking year. Combining all visitors, the site has been read by over 4 million readers in 2009 (!), who left more than 20.000 comments. The success proved to be hard to manage as last March saw the first major downtime of the site when the first rFactor 2 previews caused the shared server to collapse.

Since then, much has been changed behind the scenes as the site is now running on powerful hardware that is badly needed to keep up with the still-rising demand. The front-end of VirtualR also changed in 2009 when the new design was introduced in July, I´m (surprisingly) still happy with the current layout so don’t expect it to change anytime soon.

So, what’s coming up in 2010? The new year is already shaping up to be very exciting as several great titles are on the horizon. With rFactor 2, Gran Turismo 5, Codemaster’s first Formula One PC game, Real-Time Racing and all the other usual suspects from the modding community coming up with new material, there will be no shortage of reasons to visit VirtualR in 2010.

With that being said, I`d like to thank all of you who have visited VirtualR in 2009 and supported me in one way or another. Thanks a lot to all modders, developers, commenters and everyone else who has taken an active role in our community – This site wouldn’t work without you! I´d also like to thank my past and current advertisers as I wouldn’t be able to keep the site up without them.

Happy 2010 everyone – Keep On Sim Racing!

After the most recent design change in July, there hasn’t been much innovation around here. This changes now as I´m happy to introduce a new feature: The VirtualR Community Zone.

I´m constantly receiving requests from readers who want a message forum, a chat or other kinds of community-building tools. Furthermore, lots of leagues and screenshot/video artists want to have their material featured on VirtualR, something that’s not really possible in the news portion of the site.

That’s why I came up with the community zone that will hopefully fit all those needs. It offers a message forum, live chat, photo and video upload and more. The Community Zone is all about user-generated content, discussion and networking. Readers can message each other, leagues can advertise their upcoming races in the events calendar and artists can showcase their material.

Some of the features:

• Forum
• Chat
• Personal Blogs
• Private Messages
• Photo/Video upload & galleries
• Online Racing Events Calendar

Since the community portion of the site is hosted by a different service provider, you´ll need to sign-up to become a member, signing up is as easy as creating an account for commenting here though.

Even though I´m getting quite a lot of requests on this stuff, I´m not completely sure how popular these features will be. That’s why the design of the community section is rather basic for a start, once it becomes popular I´ll be working on making it more appealing and integrate it more into the news portion of the site.

Please take your time to check it out, sign-up and leave me your features afterwards. I´m hoping to get lots of feedback on what features are wanted and what not so I can improve the community aspect of the site in the future.

Enough with the talking, click here to check out the new community zone – I´m looking forward to meet you all there! :-)

I usually can restrain myself from posting any personal and non-sim racing related stuff here but since today was pretty much a no news day and I´m very much ecstatic right now, I´ll make an exception you´ll hopefully won’t mind.

Jimmie Johnson just clinched his fourth consecutive NASCAR Sprint Cup championship, the first ever time that one single driver is able to win more than three titles in a row in 61 years of NASCAR history. In a series that many call the most competitive in the world, where drivers rarely win two races in a row let alone two championships, Johnson & mastermind crew chief Chad Knaus have started an unbelievable dynasty of excellence.

Even if you don’t like NASCAR or oval racing in general, Jimmie Johnson now has to be named among the very greatest drivers in motorsports. Much like Michael Schumacher in F1 or Sebastien Loeb in Rallying, Johnson has changed his sport by doing what no one thought would be possible. I started following NASCAR in 2006 when Juan Montoya first announced intentions to ditch F1 for the world’s best racing.

And even though it was JPM who made me follow NASCAR, it was Jimmie and his crew who made me truly love and embrace it. The past four years have been an awesome experience weekend in, weekend out and I can’t wait to see Superman start his drive for five next February. Congrats Jimmie, my man!

That’s it, my humble little bid to honor a great champion. Apologies to all of you who don’t give a bit about what I´m writing here, sim racing news will continue as soon as there are any :-)

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!