2023 has been a busy and intense year for DRE. Let’s take a look at what happened and what lies ahead in 24 👇 I’ve been knee-deep with the new Alpha v2023.1. What I thought would take a couple of months to develop, turned out to be a 10+ months endeavor (hello over-confidence). I could have saved time and cut corners, but I want to make the best spotter for sim racing, which often requires code overhauls.

v2023.1 breaking ground

There’s a lot to this new 2023.1 branch, but the highlights are:

• ⛽ Fuel Strategy – foundation for letting DRE make strategy calls before the race start and as you progress through the race
• 🛞 Tire Wear – Or, knowledge about your tires in general. DRE estimates wear based on historic data and approximate guesstimation of actual driving
• 🟩⬜🟥 Italian translations of voice commands and DRE speech
• ⬛🟥🟨German translations of voice commands and DRE speech
• 📊 Analytics to see your performance
• 🐛 100’s of bugs squashed since the 2022.3 branch
• 📝 The code base has been improved internally to path the way for quicker future updates (🤞)

Translations ready

The translations alone took months as it required ground-up rebuilding of sentence constructions, but as the core system is in place, it’s easier to bring additional languages along. French is currently in the works and will hit internal testing soon (reach out if you want to test that).

Tire knowledge

Prepare to transform your approach to tire wear and racing tactics, unlocking a new level of strategy and performance. Get ready for a thrilling journey into the future of sim racing! 🏎️💥

🛞 Estimating Tire Wear: Discover how DRE 2023.1 transforms race strategy with real-time tire data analysis. Learn about its ability to estimate tire wear using historic data, adapt to your unique racing style, and provide valuable insights with every pit stop.

🔄 Pit Shuffle Explained: Uncover the innovative ‘Pit Shuffle’ feature. We discuss how DRE tackles iRacing’s 20-minute telemetry delay by swapping you in and out of the car, offering instant access to critical tire wear data.

🚨 Critical Wear Alert: Stay ahead in the race with DRE’s new alerts for critical tire wear. This feature ensures you’re never in the dark about tire conditions, enabling more informed decisions about tire changes and stints.

Collabs – you next?

In terms of partnerships, I’ve welcomed onboard Wave Italy and Twitchy Foot Racing to shine some fresh DRE paints on the track, with more partnerships to come in the new year.

And the number of affiliate partners is rapidly increasing. You can earn some bucks yourself – see the Affiliate Program.

Early 2024

Moving into early 2024, I’ll be focusing on releasing v2023.1 to Beta, and later, Stable release channels. The severity is low on the issues reported on DRE Discord, which is a great sign. But more testing is needed before we release 2023.1 into the wild world of Stable. You can help out with testing and give feedback on the current Alpha stage already now.

The main focus of 2024

Let’s drop some of the epic features I want to bring to you guys in 2024 (no promises though):

• Multi-Sim support covering Assetto Corsa family, Automobilista, and others
• Intent-based voice commands – speak your mind instead of memorizing exact phrases
• Personality and emotion: DRE should react to your experiences and how you address DRE and produce relational and contextually clever speech
• Much more, check out the Roadmap

I seriously want to set DRE free from rigid voice command phrases and monotone speech and let DRE come alive. More on that in the new year…

Happy holidays and see you on track in 2024! 🎇🍾🥂