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iRacing.com – Custom Paint Schemes Coming

Posted on December 23rd, 2009 in iRacing – 9 Comments

Aside from adding new tracks and cars on a regular basis, iRacing has also been working on some much-requested features for their online racing simulation. Following the possibility to run private league races, the developers will soon be introducing another often-requested feature – Custom paint skins.

Until now, iRacing subscribers can choose to customise the look of their car by using the built-in paint editor that offers several designs in various color combinations. The new custom paint schemes will allow iRacers to fully use own sponsors and designs as iRacing will be providing painting templates for all cars. The only thing that can’t be changed in the template the car number as the simulation assigns that dynamically to each car.

Finished designs will be saved as TGA file and copied to the iRacing folder to make them appear in the simulation. iRacing won’t be providing members with an auto-upload feature to avoid possible legal issues. So in order for other racers to see the personal design of other drivers, the designs need to be exchanged outside the simulation.


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  • fpol

    Hope it’s allowed to post a link.
    This was at no grip, it was copied from a Dale Jr posting at iRacing. Seems pretty easy – I mostly just run pretty simple kit, but I’m sure many will really get a kick out of this.

    http://www.nogripracing.com/forum/showpost.php?p=941085&postcount=1

  • hoboracer

    “Currently, IRacing will not provide an auto upload feature that will capture your other competitors schemes once you join a session. We have seen this in other sims, but there are some dangerous legal grey areas that IRacing chooses to steer clear of. What will need to be done by the community is a universal website that would serve as a gathering place for everyones schemes.”

    So who is gonna set up the illegal website to host 15000 paint schemes?

  • gssjr

    Without auto-upload, this feature is basically useless. You can’t see your paint job while you’re driving in your own car, so it’d only be useful if you make a replay. It’s unrealistic to think people will significantly trade their paint jobs unless they’re on the same team or close friends, etc. For me, at least, this feature is good for giving yourself an identity when WOWing other players that are not associated with you.

  • ral42

    Wow, they’ve got a long way to go to catch up to where LFS was at years and years ago. Agree with others that this feature seems mostly useless as-is.

  • Lincoln Miner

    ral42: Wow, they’ve got a long way to go to catch up to where LFS was at years and years ago.Agree with others that this feature seems mostly useless as-is.

    I agree this implementation of custom paint jobs needs work, but LFS is way behind iRacing in many other areas too. This is one feature only. A sim is a lot more than just custom paint jobs.

  • Klaas Jan

    Kudos to iRacing for listening to their users and implementing the ability to skin your car.

  • hoboracer

    For drivers that only do the pickup racing, it’s useless.

    But let’s not forget leagues and hosted racing. We can use the exact same car swap program that we used for NR2003. Leagues and/or special events, eduros etc can use this because the races are scheduled in advance. Don’t need a universal website to handle thousands of skins, just the leagues that would host 30+ cars for a scheduled race. This will enhance hosted racing.

  • ral42

    I fully understand that LFS is behind iRacing overall, which is why I’ve barely touched it since iRacing came out. :)

    For this particular feature, ok, I can see it being useful for leagues. Auto-download would still be a heck of a lot more convenient in that situation. I’ve been in leagues where texture packs were distributed manually, and it was a lot easier once the distribution happened automatically. And LFS still has em beat with a car viewer and JPEG support for the texture maps. There’s no technical reason to require TGA or any other lossless format, although it doesn’t hurt to support them for those who want max quality for extreme closeups. JPEGs worked fine in LFS.

    If you’ve seen my other posts here you’ll know I’m a huge iRacing advocate. But I call em like I see em. Usually when iRacing introduces a new feature, it’s well above and beyond the competition. Still, I would say this one is a good start and just needs more polishing, if not for the legal copout. I don’t buy that.

  • Lincoln Miner

    ral42: I fully understand that LFS is behind iRacing overall, which is why I’ve barely touched it since iRacing came out. :)For this particular feature, ok, I can see it being useful for leagues.Auto-download would still be a heck of a lot more convenient in that situation.I’ve been in leagues where texture packs were distributed manually, and it was a lot easier once the distribution happened automatically.And LFS still has em beat with a car viewer and JPEG support for the texture maps.There’s no technical reason to require TGA or any other lossless format, although it doesn’t hurt to support them for those who want max quality for extreme closeups.JPEGs worked fine in LFS.If you’ve seen my other posts here you’ll know I’m a huge iRacing advocate.But I call em like I see em.Usually when iRacing introduces a new feature, it’s well above and beyond the competition.Still, I would say this one is a good start and just needs more polishing, if not for the legal copout.I don’t buy that.

    Ral42, I agree with your entire post. Hopefully this is just version 1 of the custom paint scheme feature. I think everyone wants it to be closer to LFS or Forza 2&3. As it stands now, it’s more useful for leagues and planned events than arrive and drive, although teams and friends will probably load each others schemes, but keeping up with all that is probably more realistic with leagues for now.

    My guess is we’ll see a new and improved paint scheme feature in a future update.

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