Maybe not too many. But the amount of series available to run is getting out of hand. I appreciate the abundance of options but when you run the time slots I do (approx Midnight-4AM) Eastern Time you’ll see a majority of the B class and higher oval races be partially populated. I think Iracing should throttle down the amount of servers ran based on the amount of online racers. Nothing is more frustrating than looking forward to a 90 lap race only to find that there are 12 drivers in the race and the only time you see each other is at the green flag. Maybe it’s just Kansas that is being this out of me but it is upsetting.
I really agree with this, I race on the road side. If I like a series, I'll race it at any track. The tracks get used one way or another. But a dead series is just useless. For instance the tcr series just seems to be dying out a lot right now, shame because it's a fun series to drive.
This, this is the problem. Too many cars and series being run. It's especially bad being over in New zealand when the amount of players online is already low during the day and the ones who are online are spread across multiple series which just means there's always just a handful of people you're racing against
I race the hours between 2am and 7am eastern (I’m in Australia so that’s 5pm to midnight for me) and I love it because it’s so chilled out. You get single splits for Trucks/Xfinity/Cup and a handful of die-hards who are on every night so you get to know quite a few of them. By far my favourite is running Gen 4 at those hours. There’s hardly ever an argument between drivers so it’s low toxicity, and the usual sweaty road to pro wannabes are all in bed. It’s nice!
Ledenon was a ghost town when it was on schedules. They put it in the gt3 series and it got like 35 signups per time slot. If your track is only getting 35 signups in gt3 its a dud. They should have made it free from the start. Same for Willow Springs
Not every track should have GT3s on them. Nobody can drive in anything outside of the ACC base game tracks Look at the crying from the GT3 crowd when they put IMSA on knockhill. Where as knockhill in GT4 and below is fantastic
Willow Springs is absolutely amazing! It’s so fast and so hard to drive in lower downforce cars to get perfect! I hate that iRacing destroyed that track
A more general issue I often think about is that the pure volume of tracks available puts pressure on the schedules; there's only 12 weeks in a season so every time a new track is added it makes it less likely that your existing tracks will get picked again. If you primarily run officials then every new track devalues the tracks you already have. Kind of.
I'm a road guy. I like all the new tracks we get. But we used to have a lot more rotation between seasons and nowadays every series is sort of stuck with popular tracks.
I've been on iRacing for 9 years now and I just think the Road schedule needs a refresh and maybe series rotation. For example Old Endurance vehicles, 1 season of LMP1/LMP2/ GTE, then next season C7/HPD/GT1/GT2, then after that the Nissan GTP/ Audi GTO. The grid sizes will go up drastically. Do the same thing with older formula cars and some D class series. At the moment there is no reason to buy less popular tracks because there will be a similar series on a more popular track
I've wanted Portland in a bad way since I flew there for the 2018 Indycar race... and watched how good of a show the MX5s and Road To Indy cars put on as well.
No such thing as too many. They're all real tracks that exist in the world that anyone could go race on in real life. Same with cars, if it exists in real life it's nice to have in sim.
I mostly race dirt oval and my main complaint is that theres never enough people per race. I really like a large field of cars and IF there happens to be a race with more than 20 it ends up being like 23-24 and they split the field. So i end up only racing 12 people and it feels like a huge waste of time.
Counter-argument Tracks like Winton and Ledenon were never meant to be popular and be voted on for every schedule. They were meant for the series that runs on them. Winton and Sandown are part of the Australian movement where they are also going to be adding a few more tracks to help the Supercars guys have some tracks. Ledenon, and most of the other tracks you mentioned are doing the same for the european guys. Iracing noticed they didnt have a great European presence, so this is part of them fixing it. Flood the service with open wheelers and tracks so that you can start promoting overseas now that product actually exists.
Completely agree. Having more Australian tracks are a pretty big selling point if you are trying to promote in Australia, but iRacing would be under no illusion that they won't be popular across the whole service.
It was mentioned in the recent member survey, but iRacing should consider bundles in the future. Like maybe a buy two popular tracks, get a less popular track half price deal or something.
I've got a question for you on that topic. iRacing already has a bundle system. You add more content to the cart, the bigger the discount. So would you rather see that system scraped in favor of bundles like an Australian content bundle or UK content or a GT4 series bundle? Genuinely curious
Not scrap the current system. Just add on to it. The current system encourages buying more content to get bigger discounts. Theoretically, that’s good for participation. But the current system doesn’t account for track popularity. How do we motivate people to buy less popular tracks? Make them cheaper. For example, let’s say I add Spa, Nurb GP, Monza, Daytona, Sebring, and Watkins Glen to my cart. 6 super popular tracks with the usual 15% discount. But before I checkout, maybe iRacing realizes I’m only buying popular tracks and asks would I like to purchase one of the following select circuits for $7.50 (half price)? And that list only contains less popular circuits like Sonoma, Magny Cours, Mosport, etc. As I’m typing this I’m realizing that this could make pricing structure confusing (especially for newcomers), so I’m not saying this idea is the best, but surely there’s a way to motivate people to buy less popular content.
I won my first race in Iracing (Charlotte roval last week) i followed all your Arca guides now I'm class C license and only improving!!!! Keep up on the content you are doing something great
I would do an update on existing tracks, some of the road courses are really dated (ie Barber, Spa or Brands Hatch). Makes a huge difference where they updated existing tracks like Sebring. I also don't understand why Willow Springs doesn't get more racing - its a really nice track for the lower powered road course cars. P.S. I would also like to see a TransAm style road course series using the Late Model.
I almost exclusively run F4 and I must say Jerez was one of the best track buys I've made on Iracing. I got lucky because it suits the F4 car really well and it's been used two seasons in a row. Some of my best F4 races have been there
There are two parts to this, one is the variety on the schedule and the other part is if its worthwhile for iracing to be bringing these new tracks out that people don't show love for. 1. It's been proven endlessly that the user base as a whole do not like cars or tracks that are difficult. Daytona/dega are massive favorites on oval like spa/monza/watkins are on road. Similar with cars, things with a lot of driving aids and grip are popular, and hard to drive cars needing a clutch or throttle control get very few official races a week. So community votes will always tend towards the well known and easy to drive tracks. Second point is these new tracks not getting love. They may not get love on the official schedules but it must be remembered that iracing is increasing in popularity rapidly outside of america. So these new tracks are quite a hit in regional leagues and in national esports competitions. The likes of sandown, winton, philip island aren't used in officials a lot but are frequently used in leagues in this part of the world and a large portion of the user base in this part of the world would own those tracks. I would expect similar for Knockill for UK leagues. So while the new content may look a poor investment for officials, they are an excellent resource for people in those regions and for people who enjoy new and different tracks. They can also be a great way to preserve history with some tracks facing demolition.
I really like most of the new tracks that iRacing has released. As I mainly run IMSA (current and Vintage) and TCR, tracks like Portimao and Mugello really suit the series I run. I love tracks like Spa and Le Mans, but when they’re in the schedule every season in every series I run, it gets a bit repetitive and boring, bur every time I talk about this on forums, I get aggressively told to shut up because the series would die if we went to less popular tracks (this was in the Super Formula forums specifically, unsurprisingly I’m yet to run a single race in that series so far this season). So what you said about the self-fulfilling prophecy is spot on. Series don’t use tracks because they’re not popular. But then it’s not popular because nobody uses it, so it’s not going to be run next season either. I feel like the attitude of the community needs to change in some areas
The more experience I get with sim racing, the more I dislike F1 fans. Navarra and Sachsenring are the rumored tracks for next season and I can’t wait to be disappointed by the participation numbers. I’ve never driven Navarra, but the layout looks promising, especially for the ever-popular GT3 cars. And Sachsenring is one of the most fun circuits on Earth. Complete rollercoaster of a track. Crossing all appendages that people see the value in these circuits.
They need to add a premium suscription, renting mode or whatever you name it where its cheaper to paricipate on rare series and tracks. Maybe they could also try to get less popular series to be used by tweaking their participation program, giving more credits to those playing unpopulated races.
I bought Willow Springs when it came out. Did a couple week 13 races on and never again. But I have no regrets. I'm happy to give iRacing my money for their efforts. Keep up the good work iRacing.
To me, the best solution would be to do it as they are doing now (mostly). It’s great to have new tracks into the game, because people also use it for practice in real life. Oschersleben is a great example of that; it’s a good scan. Then, keep the popular tracks in the officials so you don’t have to buy ten new tracks every season
I think in some cases tracks are added that are popular regionally and iRacing does have a lot of circuits that are available no where else. I do think that when a person chooses a series or class of car they want to race the tracks for that series should be constant and remain the same season from season so a racer does not have to buy new content every season if they stay running the same classes as they ran last year. I will say to a degree I would be one the tracks that a class may utilize would have an influence on what car class I were to choose as well. Matching car classes to tracks would not be as difficult as one may think and even then a Purchased track could use one layout only for say legend car road racing due to speed of the vehicles and another larger layout of the same circuit which the customer would also already own in the case of larger or a faster class of cars. I have found after a number of years with different sims sometimes the most fun races are the single make, fixed setup smaller, slower cars where driving and maintaining momentum are the most competitive and fun races! I think something like Legend cars on VIR's south course would be a blast as an example.
I want utica rome speedway justin, it would be awesome to have such an historic venue preserved in sim form because of one rapid roman and his history with the place.
@@DJYeeJay thank you! Also you released this at a great time. I have an article releasing for content that should be base content, I feel like you could do an equivalent video for cars. I have a few in mind but I don't want to influence you. Nevertheless that's a great video idea for you
Gotta remember too that some of these tracks are preservation as much as anything else. Sandown is rumoured to be heading to development and therefore scanned for preservation. Pukehoke will be the same and if we stop buying they'll stop scanning. I think they've been good with the pro-rata credit on cars and perhaps this is the solution to the tracks going free issue. Community voting is a problem - as you say people want to run tracks they like and therefore generally own so it makes it difficult.
Another problem with the scheduling of tracks is how many series follow real life racing series. This makes 6-12 tracks per year run time and time again thus reducing the opportunity to go elsewhere. Add in all the various layouts on these tracks and you have some places that are unlikely to see a race for years at a time. iRacing needs to look at expanding the weekly challenge series to try to accomodate these issues.
I bought both Chicago street course and Lédenon... I bought Chicago for the Porche cup series and absolutely loved racing that on it, but I feel a little dumb that I am probably never going to race on it again, as I don't do NASCAR.
We need more oval tracks desperately. Just short ones. There’s zero reason why Montgomery and other tracks of its caliber haven’t been scanned yet. Iracing needs to give the short track guys(late models and modifieds) some more love
I would like to see iRacing add stadium truck configs to existing tracks. Now I’m imaging taking imsa to a version of Long Beach with ramps on the track.
I think they need to add some dirt ovals, Smokey .tn has been asked for by alot for years! It's on all of the National Late Model Tours usually and always on Lucas. We need those tracks that the National series runs
They need a new type of series to include more tracks. Maybe they could find a way to make the tracks alternate between a popular track and a less used one everyday per week. An example week would be something like Sebring on Tuesday, Magny -Cours on Wednesday, Thursday repeats Sebring and so on. Have it so that the popular track is 4 days of the week and the lesser driven one is 3 days. Might help slightly with overall participation and it would be a good opportunity for people who have purchased a track to get to race on it. That would open up a season to have 24 tracks, even if it was for a single series.. You could expand to have 2 or 3 of them with different cars and different schedules. Something like a GT3 series, a Prototype LMP2/GTP multiclass series, and then an open wheel series like the F4. They've been experimenting with series formats recently so maybe it would be possible, idk I'm not a dev.
@@DJYeeJay yeah exactly, just do it bigger. I like the regional series but I don’t like how the servers are predetermined for each region. As a Canadian, if I want to race an Asian track I need to race with 200 Ping. That’s not happening
I tend to buy most of the new tracks and not being able to commit a lot of time to official or leagues I find most of them get pretty good use in AI. races. Especially Chicago Street (has an 80s feel to it so it's fun with the Carmel cars and Lotus 79)
What do the financials of all this look like? Ultimately if they're making more money by adding more tracks they'll keep doing it, but a balance between quality and quantity does seem necessary for long-term viability; it is worth remembering that official series are only half the story here and a lot of people are more likely to buy a track as part of the social experience of participating in a league (particularly one that aims to replicate a real series) than they are to buy a track just because it's on an official schedule
As the community rep for PCC taking new tracks onto the sched. Its hit and miss. With people voting for it. Vs people actually showing up for the week. I've tried to implement new tracks into the schedule. if they fit into the series. My format is 2 popular 4 top voted 4 free 2 discovery tracks (tracks where we never raced on) But I do wanna say new tracks get SNUBBBED HARD because it's never on the schedule and then people don't buy because they look across multiple series schedules. Also some odd series that have a strong community all of them will buy all the tracks every season because they love racing together Mission R EeeeeeEEEEEeeee community knows what's up
They need regional series as they did with f4. And use all this new tracks. For excample le mans cup, british gt. Dtm, etc. Than schedule will use not just spa, Sebring, daytona or Monza. They will find place for all tracks
I remember when they made VIR and Wild West free, I got a refund for having purchased those tracks within the previous YEAR. I got 50% back. That's crazy no one got a refund for buying Ledenon six months ago. More recently, I did not get a refund for the Ferrari 488 Evo when the 296 came out (if I remember correctly they only refunded people with a purchase within the last 45 days). Their refund policies are becoming stingier.
thank you Justin for being willing make an insightful video and to call iRacing out. We need people like you to make sure that the best sim racing platform continues to get better.
I think the free tracks should be ones that are good for new people to learn to drive an race on. Jerez makes much more sense as a free track than something highly technical like VIR or Ledenon.
I made the Reddit post shown at 3:10. Just for your info, after I expressed my disappointment a bit in that email they offered to refund me 50% of the track cost - which is in line with what they did when VIR went free previously.
Part of the appeal in iRacing for me is learning the more obscure tracks. I actively avoid monza etc because it’s been done to death over the years on many many games and sims. Nothing more interesting and challenging to me than learning to race on club & national level tracks.
Talking specifically about the road side. I dont think it's necessarily too many tracks but not adding the right tracks. While some of these smaller regional/national level tracks are cool (as an Aussie seeing Sandown is amazing), to the overall community it would be much more benefical adding tracks like Bahrain abd Istanbul. Bahrain especially is such a big omission from iracing atm with it's big ticket name, great race ability and number of different layouts.
I really think they don’t care it’s a business the revenue they get is all that matters they will never admit it but that’s fine also so you will always have new tracks and new cars otherwise their will be some sort of tax
Not too many tracks, too many different series as mentioned elsewhere yes. With that said, I think there's not enough of certain TYPES of tracks. Like tracks that are traditional tracks for pavement sprint racing (Winchester, Anderson, Salem, Berlin, Toledo, etc.) aren't on the side, while there are tracks that aren't even ran by series getting added to the sim that really don't add much to any series at all. There's not enough rallycross and off-road tracks, with rallycross barely having enough tracks for a full season without repeating venues while the off-road trucks only have 4 tracks suitable for racing, repeating the 4 venues in a 12 week season. The dirt road license isn't dead because there's a lack of interest, but there's a lack of tracks to really hone your craft on. Running the same 4 tracks gets boring. Running the same 12 venues in a season also gets boring.
I'm in the 100% club for iRacing content, so I just automatically buy everything new at the start of a season to maintain my discount status. I was very annoyed that Ledenon was made free after 2 seasons and iRacing didn't give a refund. The GT3 series is one of the most popular road series on the service, and in the first season Ledenon was struggling to attract 2 splits in a series that often has 4 to 10 splits, if not more. The track was a dud. The reason Mugello and Portimao are popular is they have a rich history of European sports car racing and have hosted F1 in recent years, Ledenon doesn't have that mindspace in people heads like those two do. There are plenty of big name tracks iRacing has never added, like St Pete and Portland on the Indycar side of things, Bahrain, Yas Marina, Istanbull Park, Shanghai and all the F1 road courses on the FIA side. I know iRacing can't just rock up to a track, scan it and put it in the game. They have to make an agreement to scan the track and even then approval can fall through at any moment. But I'd honestly prioritise adding new famous tracks over rescans, and make new lesser known tracks third on the priority list. Also DJ, while you did confuse Zandvoort for Spa, iRacing was due to rescan Spa earlier this year, so you could've just claimed you had a vision of the future or something for a bit of a joke.
Yes because it’s making the cost of entry even higher, and they can’t maintain quality because the backlog is too big. No game needs an infinite content library
A lot of the unpopular tracks are too tight / small for a lot of the series so it's not really that surprising they don't take off. Most of the successful tracks are FIA Grade 1 circuits used in F1 / WEC / GT3 vs national circuits so it doesn't seem that surprising to me. I had been wanting Portimao, Mugellow and Jerez for a while and they all fantastic to drive.
I will always see the "series" as an issue. Car/track is less of an issue for me. Iracing has become way too bloated. The series list is far too many!. There are over 10+ series that are not being raced, tested, or even practiced on. Stock car brazil, camel vintage gt series, L79 and L49, mission R, TCR, just to name a few series that never meet 3+ splits in the UK/US. If a series cannot hold 3 splits across 75% of the day then it's a dead series and should be removed. This could be a bad take but truly to have as many dead series as there are populated ones then thats the larger issue. Splits matter the most when considering any series. If the series cannot maintain a steady split of racers then whats the point? Iracing should focus on providing us with lively and active series. Not dead ones that never get ran. I hope iracing takes the series list more seriously in the future. As it stands it seems they dont care about providing decent series in there service anymore. Feels very cash grabby to leave a series up that has 0 participation.
"Feels very cash grabby to leave a series up that has 0 participation." In reality its the opposite. You hammer money and bandwidth doing that while getting nothing in return.
As a person that buys all new tracks because I just love racing, it makes me pretty pissed off that people get it for free and I don't at least get half of it as a refund. We pay iRacing enough, and it's a bit sad they do this. Which is the same with the new Ferrari GT3 that came out. That was another waste of money that they never gave a refund for. It just makes me sad.
Honestly having to buy cars & tracks then have the subscription makes me wish AC:Evo or whatever they call it has good multiplayer, modding support, & a lot of content in base game
Dirt Road is that discipline your forgetting about. RiP Dirt Road. Lucas Oil offroad announced 2021 was supposed to come at same time as the Oval and here we are heading into June of 2024 and no good updates on its where abouts
@@DJYeeJay Its not entirely dead as say the Non-Wing Sprint Cars, the Lotus Cars, Stock Cars Brasil and the SRX cars. RallyX and Pro Trucks both have a few niche community leagues running strong but just enough for a full server worth of cars
Still want my money back for magny cours lol. It’s actually a great track. I like Willow enough that I’m not upset, but they could really make use of it more.
I spammed them about Ledenon and they didn't give a shit. Amazing that I only did 1 week on it and then it LITERALLY wasn't used for a whole season. 17 euros for nothing bro. I ain't buying shit again like that on week 1.
"Oh yeah, dirt road does exist!" I really wish dirt road was more popular. I got to B class a couple of years ago and never had a race in the proper full power RX cars because NO ONE races dirt road.
Yeah I bought Ledenon, Winton, Snetterton and Oschersleben. Which were all wastes of money because I barely got to race them. I am waiting on new releases for a couple years before committing to buy now. Also because we have new things like 3D kerbs that don't even appear on the new tracks. So would rather get them once the tracks are actually finished. Or for free later on. The tracks are way too expensive to keep pumping out ghost town circuits every 3 months.
There can never be too many tracks I just wish they would refund the people who bought the tracks that are going free even if it's just a half refund, what seriously needs to be talked about is all the random series they keep adding
i wish when they are adding paid content they would make some of older content free at same time. Tracks that arent that popular. I also think there is too much democracity with the track voting.
I’ve bought all these tracks and am using them heavily for AI racing, and really enjoying it. Don’t make the mistake of thinking iRacing is just about online racing any more!
Maybe not too many. But the amount of series available to run is getting out of hand. I appreciate the abundance of options but when you run the time slots I do (approx Midnight-4AM) Eastern Time you’ll see a majority of the B class and higher oval races be partially populated. I think Iracing should throttle down the amount of servers ran based on the amount of online racers. Nothing is more frustrating than looking forward to a 90 lap race only to find that there are 12 drivers in the race and the only time you see each other is at the green flag. Maybe it’s just Kansas that is being this out of me but it is upsetting.
I really agree with this, I race on the road side. If I like a series, I'll race it at any track. The tracks get used one way or another. But a dead series is just useless.
For instance the tcr series just seems to be dying out a lot right now, shame because it's a fun series to drive.
This, this is the problem. Too many cars and series being run. It's especially bad being over in New zealand when the amount of players online is already low during the day and the ones who are online are spread across multiple series which just means there's always just a handful of people you're racing against
I race the hours between 2am and 7am eastern (I’m in Australia so that’s 5pm to midnight for me) and I love it because it’s so chilled out. You get single splits for Trucks/Xfinity/Cup and a handful of die-hards who are on every night so you get to know quite a few of them. By far my favourite is running Gen 4 at those hours. There’s hardly ever an argument between drivers so it’s low toxicity, and the usual sweaty road to pro wannabes are all in bed. It’s nice!
@@rarewhiteape Yes, for you, but a lot of us would prefer full races and equal playing fields.
We're in the same boat brother
As one of the members of the Gt4 community, Chicago was actually concidered and nearly won the schedule vote.
ITS GONNNA HAPPEN ONE OF THESE DAYS AND IM WAITING FOR IT
Chicago street is badass
Chicago would work well for GT4's!
Ledenon was a ghost town when it was on schedules. They put it in the gt3 series and it got like 35 signups per time slot. If your track is only getting 35 signups in gt3 its a dud. They should have made it free from the start. Same for Willow Springs
Not every track should have GT3s on them. Nobody can drive in anything outside of the ACC base game tracks
Look at the crying from the GT3 crowd when they put IMSA on knockhill.
Where as knockhill in GT4 and below is fantastic
Willow Springs is absolutely amazing!
It’s so fast and so hard to drive in lower downforce cars to get perfect!
I hate that iRacing destroyed that track
@@rolux4853 willow springs is one of my favourite tracks, in the mx5 or gr86 it flows beautifully
5:38 Someone texted you
lol Good video. I love these videos that are just nice and informative
This was literally how I found out I missed a work email lmfao
A more general issue I often think about is that the pure volume of tracks available puts pressure on the schedules; there's only 12 weeks in a season so every time a new track is added it makes it less likely that your existing tracks will get picked again. If you primarily run officials then every new track devalues the tracks you already have. Kind of.
I'm a road guy. I like all the new tracks we get. But we used to have a lot more rotation between seasons and nowadays every series is sort of stuck with popular tracks.
I focus on sports/open wheel cars, and new tracks are always welcome in my book.
I've been on iRacing for 9 years now and I just think the Road schedule needs a refresh and maybe series rotation.
For example Old Endurance vehicles, 1 season of LMP1/LMP2/ GTE, then next season C7/HPD/GT1/GT2, then after that the Nissan GTP/ Audi GTO. The grid sizes will go up drastically.
Do the same thing with older formula cars and some D class series.
At the moment there is no reason to buy less popular tracks because there will be a similar series on a more popular track
As a NW guy that lives 40 minutes from the track, I was pleased to see your mention of PIR 😂
Yep I’m from the Portland area too 😅 ofc the one track iracing doesn’t have is my home track
I live a bit further north but PIR is the most likely "local" track to be added to iRacing and I will take what I can.
I've wanted Portland in a bad way since I flew there for the 2018 Indycar race... and watched how good of a show the MX5s and Road To Indy cars put on as well.
Honestly not having PIR is a crime. Get on it Dale!
No such thing as too many. They're all real tracks that exist in the world that anyone could go race on in real life. Same with cars, if it exists in real life it's nice to have in sim.
Agreed great racing happens everywhere, people have to challenge themselves and breakout of same old track routine
Man I loved Willow Springs' textured feel. It's a blast to drive on iRacing in something like PCup
I mostly race dirt oval and my main complaint is that theres never enough people per race. I really like a large field of cars and IF there happens to be a race with more than 20 it ends up being like 23-24 and they split the field. So i end up only racing 12 people and it feels like a huge waste of time.
Counter-argument
Tracks like Winton and Ledenon were never meant to be popular and be voted on for every schedule. They were meant for the series that runs on them. Winton and Sandown are part of the Australian movement where they are also going to be adding a few more tracks to help the Supercars guys have some tracks. Ledenon, and most of the other tracks you mentioned are doing the same for the european guys. Iracing noticed they didnt have a great European presence, so this is part of them fixing it. Flood the service with open wheelers and tracks so that you can start promoting overseas now that product actually exists.
Completely agree. Having more Australian tracks are a pretty big selling point if you are trying to promote in Australia, but iRacing would be under no illusion that they won't be popular across the whole service.
It was mentioned in the recent member survey, but iRacing should consider bundles in the future. Like maybe a buy two popular tracks, get a less popular track half price deal or something.
I've got a question for you on that topic. iRacing already has a bundle system. You add more content to the cart, the bigger the discount. So would you rather see that system scraped in favor of bundles like an Australian content bundle or UK content or a GT4 series bundle? Genuinely curious
Not scrap the current system. Just add on to it. The current system encourages buying more content to get bigger discounts. Theoretically, that’s good for participation. But the current system doesn’t account for track popularity. How do we motivate people to buy less popular tracks? Make them cheaper.
For example, let’s say I add Spa, Nurb GP, Monza, Daytona, Sebring, and Watkins Glen to my cart. 6 super popular tracks with the usual 15% discount. But before I checkout, maybe iRacing realizes I’m only buying popular tracks and asks would I like to purchase one of the following select circuits for $7.50 (half price)? And that list only contains less popular circuits like Sonoma, Magny Cours, Mosport, etc.
As I’m typing this I’m realizing that this could make pricing structure confusing (especially for newcomers), so I’m not saying this idea is the best, but surely there’s a way to motivate people to buy less popular content.
I won my first race in Iracing (Charlotte roval last week) i followed all your Arca guides now I'm class C license and only improving!!!! Keep up on the content you are doing something great
variety is the spice of life, simple as
i bought willow sprints for trucks fixed and didnt see 1 lobby get enough people for an official race.
I would do an update on existing tracks, some of the road courses are really dated (ie Barber, Spa or Brands Hatch). Makes a huge difference where they updated existing tracks like Sebring. I also don't understand why Willow Springs doesn't get more racing - its a really nice track for the lower powered road course cars. P.S. I would also like to see a TransAm style road course series using the Late Model.
I almost exclusively run F4 and I must say Jerez was one of the best track buys I've made on Iracing. I got lucky because it suits the F4 car really well and it's been used two seasons in a row. Some of my best F4 races have been there
It works so well in so many cars too. Fun to drive and also makes for good racing.
There are two parts to this, one is the variety on the schedule and the other part is if its worthwhile for iracing to be bringing these new tracks out that people don't show love for.
1. It's been proven endlessly that the user base as a whole do not like cars or tracks that are difficult. Daytona/dega are massive favorites on oval like spa/monza/watkins are on road. Similar with cars, things with a lot of driving aids and grip are popular, and hard to drive cars needing a clutch or throttle control get very few official races a week. So community votes will always tend towards the well known and easy to drive tracks.
Second point is these new tracks not getting love. They may not get love on the official schedules but it must be remembered that iracing is increasing in popularity rapidly outside of america. So these new tracks are quite a hit in regional leagues and in national esports competitions. The likes of sandown, winton, philip island aren't used in officials a lot but are frequently used in leagues in this part of the world and a large portion of the user base in this part of the world would own those tracks. I would expect similar for Knockill for UK leagues.
So while the new content may look a poor investment for officials, they are an excellent resource for people in those regions and for people who enjoy new and different tracks. They can also be a great way to preserve history with some tracks facing demolition.
Chicago in TCR is AMAZING. We're running it in our league this season and my initial test runs were addictive.
If they aren’t giving refunds they should at least give some sort credits for another track or “free” subscription extension
Agree. They used to do it when the content went to being legacy, giving you 100%-25%*number of season since puchase
I really like most of the new tracks that iRacing has released. As I mainly run IMSA (current and Vintage) and TCR, tracks like Portimao and Mugello really suit the series I run. I love tracks like Spa and Le Mans, but when they’re in the schedule every season in every series I run, it gets a bit repetitive and boring, bur every time I talk about this on forums, I get aggressively told to shut up because the series would die if we went to less popular tracks (this was in the Super Formula forums specifically, unsurprisingly I’m yet to run a single race in that series so far this season). So what you said about the self-fulfilling prophecy is spot on. Series don’t use tracks because they’re not popular. But then it’s not popular because nobody uses it, so it’s not going to be run next season either. I feel like the attitude of the community needs to change in some areas
They could have 50% of the tracks per season voted and the reat being chosen by iracing. Might make some people mad, but would bring more variety.
The more experience I get with sim racing, the more I dislike F1 fans. Navarra and Sachsenring are the rumored tracks for next season and I can’t wait to be disappointed by the participation numbers. I’ve never driven Navarra, but the layout looks promising, especially for the ever-popular GT3 cars. And Sachsenring is one of the most fun circuits on Earth. Complete rollercoaster of a track. Crossing all appendages that people see the value in these circuits.
They need to add a premium suscription, renting mode or whatever you name it where its cheaper to paricipate on rare series and tracks.
Maybe they could also try to get less popular series to be used by tweaking their participation program, giving more credits to those playing unpopulated races.
I bought Willow Springs when it came out. Did a couple week 13 races on and never again. But I have no regrets. I'm happy to give iRacing my money for their efforts. Keep up the good work iRacing.
To me, the best solution would be to do it as they are doing now (mostly). It’s great to have new tracks into the game, because people also use it for practice in real life. Oschersleben is a great example of that; it’s a good scan. Then, keep the popular tracks in the officials so you don’t have to buy ten new tracks every season
btw, Portimao and Mugello may be on schedules but the amount of splits, especially at Mugello drops like a rock those weeks.
I think in some cases tracks are added that are popular regionally and iRacing does have a lot of circuits that are available no where else.
I do think that when a person chooses a series or class of car they want to race the tracks for that series should be constant and remain the same season from season so a racer does not have to buy new content every season if they stay running the same classes as they ran last year.
I will say to a degree I would be one the tracks that a class may utilize would have an influence on what car class I were to choose as well.
Matching car classes to tracks would not be as difficult as one may think and even then a Purchased track could use one layout only for say legend car road racing due to speed of the vehicles and another larger layout of the same circuit which the customer would also already own in the case of larger or a faster class of cars.
I have found after a number of years with different sims sometimes the most fun races are the single make, fixed setup smaller, slower cars where driving and maintaining momentum are the most competitive and fun races!
I think something like Legend cars on VIR's south course would be a blast as an example.
Justin!!! As always you make the BEST vids. Love ya broski!
Doesn't matter how many time a track is used in a season if the participation isn't there. Mugello. My computer struggles so bad there
Ya participation usually sucks for lesser hyped new tracks which makes all the problems worse
Unless it's raining, you must be running some 4k triples or a Pimax if you're struggling with iRacing graphics lol
I want utica rome speedway justin, it would be awesome to have such an historic venue preserved in sim form because of one rapid roman and his history with the place.
ledenon was the first track I bought when I started 7 months ago. It would be a nice kart track or maybe for pedal bikes.
Hey what site are you using to show the amount of times a track is featured in a season?
irbg.net
@@DJYeeJay thank you! Also you released this at a great time. I have an article releasing for content that should be base content, I feel like you could do an equivalent video for cars. I have a few in mind but I don't want to influence you. Nevertheless that's a great video idea for you
Oval/road/dirt road: "ToO maNy TrAkCs!1!1!"
Dirt road: TOO MANY???
Gotta remember too that some of these tracks are preservation as much as anything else. Sandown is rumoured to be heading to development and therefore scanned for preservation. Pukehoke will be the same and if we stop buying they'll stop scanning. I think they've been good with the pro-rata credit on cars and perhaps this is the solution to the tracks going free issue. Community voting is a problem - as you say people want to run tracks they like and therefore generally own so it makes it difficult.
Another problem with the scheduling of tracks is how many series follow real life racing series. This makes 6-12 tracks per year run time and time again thus reducing the opportunity to go elsewhere. Add in all the various layouts on these tracks and you have some places that are unlikely to see a race for years at a time.
iRacing needs to look at expanding the weekly challenge series to try to accomodate these issues.
Wait so even with that criteria Willow Springs still doesn’t get raced?
I bought both Chicago street course and Lédenon... I bought Chicago for the Porche cup series and absolutely loved racing that on it, but I feel a little dumb that I am probably never going to race on it again, as I don't do NASCAR.
We need more oval tracks desperately. Just short ones. There’s zero reason why Montgomery and other tracks of its caliber haven’t been scanned yet. Iracing needs to give the short track guys(late models and modifieds) some more love
Shame ledenon didn’t get the love it deserved. It’s in my top 5 iRacing road courses (Watkins Glen, Mugello, Ledenon, Rudskogen, Mt.Washington)
I would like to see iRacing add stadium truck configs to existing tracks. Now I’m imaging taking imsa to a version of Long Beach with ramps on the track.
I don't know why if I have Pocono that I have to buy another Pocono. A rescan should be included if you already own the track.
I think they need to add some dirt ovals, Smokey .tn has been asked for by alot for years!
It's on all of the National Late Model Tours usually and always on Lucas.
We need those tracks that the National series runs
They need a new type of series to include more tracks. Maybe they could find a way to make the tracks alternate between a popular track and a less used one everyday per week. An example week would be something like Sebring on Tuesday, Magny -Cours on Wednesday, Thursday repeats Sebring and so on. Have it so that the popular track is 4 days of the week and the lesser driven one is 3 days. Might help slightly with overall participation and it would be a good opportunity for people who have purchased a track to get to race on it. That would open up a season to have 24 tracks, even if it was for a single series.. You could expand to have 2 or 3 of them with different cars and different schedules. Something like a GT3 series, a Prototype LMP2/GTP multiclass series, and then an open wheel series like the F4. They've been experimenting with series formats recently so maybe it would be possible, idk I'm not a dev.
Those regional F4 series seem to be doing something similar to what you’re thinking
@@DJYeeJay yeah exactly, just do it bigger. I like the regional series but I don’t like how the servers are predetermined for each region. As a Canadian, if I want to race an Asian track I need to race with 200 Ping. That’s not happening
I tend to buy most of the new tracks and not being able to commit a lot of time to official or leagues I find most of them get pretty good use in AI. races. Especially Chicago Street (has an 80s feel to it so it's fun with the Carmel cars and Lotus 79)
What do the financials of all this look like? Ultimately if they're making more money by adding more tracks they'll keep doing it, but a balance between quality and quantity does seem necessary for long-term viability; it is worth remembering that official series are only half the story here and a lot of people are more likely to buy a track as part of the social experience of participating in a league (particularly one that aims to replicate a real series) than they are to buy a track just because it's on an official schedule
As the community rep for PCC taking new tracks onto the sched. Its hit and miss. With people voting for it. Vs people actually showing up for the week.
I've tried to implement new tracks into the schedule. if they fit into the series.
My format is
2 popular
4 top voted
4 free
2 discovery tracks (tracks where we never raced on)
But I do wanna say new tracks get SNUBBBED HARD because it's never on the schedule and then people don't buy because they look across multiple series schedules.
Also some odd series that have a strong community all of them will buy all the tracks every season because they love racing together Mission R EeeeeeEEEEEeeee community knows what's up
They need regional series as they did with f4. And use all this new tracks. For excample le mans cup, british gt. Dtm, etc. Than schedule will use not just spa, Sebring, daytona or Monza. They will find place for all tracks
I remember when they made VIR and Wild West free, I got a refund for having purchased those tracks within the previous YEAR. I got 50% back. That's crazy no one got a refund for buying Ledenon six months ago.
More recently, I did not get a refund for the Ferrari 488 Evo when the 296 came out (if I remember correctly they only refunded people with a purchase within the last 45 days). Their refund policies are becoming stingier.
thank you Justin for being willing make an insightful video and to call iRacing out. We need people like you to make sure that the best sim racing platform continues to get better.
I think the free tracks should be ones that are good for new people to learn to drive an race on. Jerez makes much more sense as a free track than something highly technical like VIR or Ledenon.
they still don't have their home track on the service :(
Nice deep dive. I usually won't buy a new track unless it's fairly popular like you described. "big ticket"
I made the Reddit post shown at 3:10. Just for your info, after I expressed my disappointment a bit in that email they offered to refund me 50% of the track cost - which is in line with what they did when VIR went free previously.
I definitely limit myself to a handful of tracks, my memory isn’t good enough to remember them all in a competitive sense
Part of the appeal in iRacing for me is learning the more obscure tracks. I actively avoid monza etc because it’s been done to death over the years on many many games and sims. Nothing more interesting and challenging to me than learning to race on club & national level tracks.
Talking specifically about the road side. I dont think it's necessarily too many tracks but not adding the right tracks. While some of these smaller regional/national level tracks are cool (as an Aussie seeing Sandown is amazing), to the overall community it would be much more benefical adding tracks like Bahrain abd Istanbul. Bahrain especially is such a big omission from iracing atm with it's big ticket name, great race ability and number of different layouts.
I really think they don’t care it’s a business the revenue they get is all that matters they will never admit it but that’s fine also so you will always have new tracks and new cars otherwise their will be some sort of tax
Not too many tracks, too many different series as mentioned elsewhere yes.
With that said, I think there's not enough of certain TYPES of tracks. Like tracks that are traditional tracks for pavement sprint racing (Winchester, Anderson, Salem, Berlin, Toledo, etc.) aren't on the side, while there are tracks that aren't even ran by series getting added to the sim that really don't add much to any series at all. There's not enough rallycross and off-road tracks, with rallycross barely having enough tracks for a full season without repeating venues while the off-road trucks only have 4 tracks suitable for racing, repeating the 4 venues in a 12 week season. The dirt road license isn't dead because there's a lack of interest, but there's a lack of tracks to really hone your craft on. Running the same 4 tracks gets boring. Running the same 12 venues in a season also gets boring.
as a GT7 player I wish we could have such problems!!
I'm in the 100% club for iRacing content, so I just automatically buy everything new at the start of a season to maintain my discount status. I was very annoyed that Ledenon was made free after 2 seasons and iRacing didn't give a refund. The GT3 series is one of the most popular road series on the service, and in the first season Ledenon was struggling to attract 2 splits in a series that often has 4 to 10 splits, if not more. The track was a dud. The reason Mugello and Portimao are popular is they have a rich history of European sports car racing and have hosted F1 in recent years, Ledenon doesn't have that mindspace in people heads like those two do. There are plenty of big name tracks iRacing has never added, like St Pete and Portland on the Indycar side of things, Bahrain, Yas Marina, Istanbull Park, Shanghai and all the F1 road courses on the FIA side. I know iRacing can't just rock up to a track, scan it and put it in the game. They have to make an agreement to scan the track and even then approval can fall through at any moment. But I'd honestly prioritise adding new famous tracks over rescans, and make new lesser known tracks third on the priority list.
Also DJ, while you did confuse Zandvoort for Spa, iRacing was due to rescan Spa earlier this year, so you could've just claimed you had a vision of the future or something for a bit of a joke.
Yes because it’s making the cost of entry even higher, and they can’t maintain quality because the backlog is too big. No game needs an infinite content library
nor only portland theres also the calder park thunderdome
A lot of the unpopular tracks are too tight / small for a lot of the series so it's not really that surprising they don't take off. Most of the successful tracks are FIA Grade 1 circuits used in F1 / WEC / GT3 vs national circuits so it doesn't seem that surprising to me. I had been wanting Portimao, Mugellow and Jerez for a while and they all fantastic to drive.
Portland. Just add Portland and we'll have every NASCAR track and every permanent Indycar points paying track.
We need more oval short tracks and dirt tracks
I will always see the "series" as an issue. Car/track is less of an issue for me.
Iracing has become way too bloated. The series list is far too many!. There are over 10+ series that are not being raced, tested, or even practiced on. Stock car brazil, camel vintage gt series, L79 and L49, mission R, TCR, just to name a few series that never meet 3+ splits in the UK/US.
If a series cannot hold 3 splits across 75% of the day then it's a dead series and should be removed.
This could be a bad take but truly to have as many dead series as there are populated ones then thats the larger issue.
Splits matter the most when considering any series. If the series cannot maintain a steady split of racers then whats the point? Iracing should focus on providing us with lively and active series. Not dead ones that never get ran.
I hope iracing takes the series list more seriously in the future.
As it stands it seems they dont care about providing decent series in there service anymore.
Feels very cash grabby to leave a series up that has 0 participation.
"Feels very cash grabby to leave a series up that has 0 participation."
In reality its the opposite.
You hammer money and bandwidth doing that while getting nothing in return.
Short track racing wise...I never get why the Bullring hardly ever gets used. Its a great little track.
As a person that buys all new tracks because I just love racing, it makes me pretty pissed off that people get it for free and I don't at least get half of it as a refund. We pay iRacing enough, and it's a bit sad they do this. Which is the same with the new Ferrari GT3 that came out. That was another waste of money that they never gave a refund for. It just makes me sad.
I definately got burnt by Willow and Hungaroring. I thought they would've been much more popular.
Honestly having to buy cars & tracks then have the subscription makes me wish AC:Evo or whatever they call it has good multiplayer, modding support, & a lot of content in base game
Me too. If AC Evo can become the game I hope it will be, I'll be dropping iRacing pretty quickly
It may be only me but I want some Dirt road love 😭
Shame about knockhill. Great track and would be a good venue for lower classes like mx5 and tcr.
Dirt Road is that discipline your forgetting about.
RiP Dirt Road.
Lucas Oil offroad announced 2021 was supposed to come at same time as the Oval and here we are heading into June of 2024 and no good updates on its where abouts
Ya the joke was everyone’s forgotten about dirt road lol
@@DJYeeJay Its not entirely dead as say the Non-Wing Sprint Cars, the Lotus Cars, Stock Cars Brasil and the SRX cars.
RallyX and Pro Trucks both have a few niche community leagues running strong but just enough for a full server worth of cars
they need to upgrade the game engine to use more cpu cores especially for us VR users
I bought Gateway as it's my home track. It's a newer scan and cool to play on when it comes around.
Still want my money back for magny cours lol. It’s actually a great track. I like Willow enough that I’m not upset, but they could really make use of it more.
thats just gaming in general tbh
What Iracing needs is a button to flip someone off in NASCAR cars when you are mad at them lol
I spammed them about Ledenon and they didn't give a shit. Amazing that I only did 1 week on it and then it LITERALLY wasn't used for a whole season. 17 euros for nothing bro. I ain't buying shit again like that on week 1.
"Oh yeah, dirt road does exist!"
I really wish dirt road was more popular. I got to B class a couple of years ago and never had a race in the proper full power RX cars because NO ONE races dirt road.
Yeah I bought Ledenon, Winton, Snetterton and Oschersleben. Which were all wastes of money because I barely got to race them. I am waiting on new releases for a couple years before committing to buy now. Also because we have new things like 3D kerbs that don't even appear on the new tracks. So would rather get them once the tracks are actually finished. Or for free later on. The tracks are way too expensive to keep pumping out ghost town circuits every 3 months.
Not sure we can have too much choice. If we didnt have drop weeks it might be diffierent but I rarely buy new tracks
I think a bigger issue are cars that you can buy but never really race.
I only buy tracks that I have a race on either in a league or in Iracing. I don't fall into this trap
Can't wait until PIR is scanned.
I know I'm not among the normal crowd but I use Ai a ton. So thankfully some of the tracks I paid for aren't being wasted
Jerez is a great track for motorcycle racing
There can never be too many tracks I just wish they would refund the people who bought the tracks that are going free even if it's just a half refund, what seriously needs to be talked about is all the random series they keep adding
True, too many are deleted, too many new are added
Yes. It’s a little ridiculous. I won’t even bother doing full seasons on road now when half the tracks are obscure garbage.
They should only add tracks that I'm good at
I was literally just talking about this and decided I wasn’t going to buy new tracks anymore…
i wish when they are adding paid content they would make some of older content free at same time. Tracks that arent that popular. I also think there is too much democracity with the track voting.
Maybe too many cars but the more tracks the better I feel
There hasn't been a new Rallycross track since Knockhill. Absolutely ridiculous, especially given how Knockhill is downright terrible.
I race NASCAR Cup and Porsche Cup, if I need the track I buy it. Limit to 2 series and it's no so bad.
I’ve bought all these tracks and am using them heavily for AI racing, and really enjoying it. Don’t make the mistake of thinking iRacing is just about online racing any more!