Latest Updates from the blog
What’s New in 3.4
Learn about changes and shiny new stuff in the latest edition of DRE.
Much of the now 5-year-old logic has been completely overhauled and refreshed with this update. There are improvements to calculating session duration, resulting in way better prediction in fuel usage and other calculations.
On top of this, there are now more commands, alerts, better controller/joystick support, and a thorough check on critical code logic.
Let’s take a look at what’s new in DRE 3.4
Fuel Improvements
Complete overhaul of session laps calculations affecting driver positioning, fuel estimations, etc.
- The previous solution had several blind spots causing unintended butterfly effects, and they have been fixed with this overhaul.
- You should now see a more precise and consistent lap progression as you are driving (e.g., asking for the fuel needed or laps left)
Improved auto-fueling
Calling “Auto Fuel Now” while the AutoFuel feature is turned off behaves more natural
- It won’t start auto-checking for changes in fuel needed after this call.
- Having AutoFuel off, you can simply re-call “Auto fuel now” to recalculate the amount as needed.
- AutoFuel logic remains the same while being enabled. DRE keeps adjusting the fuel to fill until you make the pit stop, but only if a new fuel estimation is more than 2 liters off the previous.
Dialed it in
‘Auto Fuel Safety Amount’ slider now goes from 1 – 500% instead of 50 – 1000%. It is still possible to override and extend these limits by manually editing DRE.ini.
Race Simulation
Prepare yourself for the big racing events with Race Simulation. This feature overrides the practice session time and laps left. In 3.4 the feature has been improved, and it now features two new alerts:
- ‘Race simulation started’
- ‘Race simulation completed’
These remind you of being on a simulation run during practice. The ‘started’ variant triggers exiting pits, and the ‘completed’ when overridden time or laps run out.
- Set race sim overrides in Launcher -> Driving -> Practice time/laps length override
Proximity Tweaks
Improved Proximity alerts for drivers coming from behind when you are on or off the track.
- They now take into account changing gaps of the drivers already in your proximity and will update you if gaps open or close in the traffic approaching.
- This should give you a better heads up of when to rejoin the track/be relieved.
- Furthermore, timing has been optimized when you are off track and need to rejoin. DRE will anticipate the gap earlier to allow you to accelerate and slot back in on track.
- All proximity speaks have been sped up to provide newer information in the heat of the action
- Proximity alert logic has been strengthened to improve the consistency of calls with multiple cars around
Did you shake the other car off?
A small but significant addition to ‘Alert car left right’ is the ‘Still left/right‘ sentences.
- These are short continuous relays of the whereabouts of another car.
- On top of this, the car left-right alert now also triggers more often, allowing you to get the information quicker. This was partly fixed in 3.3.4.1, but now fully.
‟Still Left„
More goodies
Better incidents information
When asking how bad you are at driving, DRE now tells you both the total number of your incidents and how many were from off tracks
This allows you to get a better impression of your bad behavior
More admin commands
New admin commands for hosted racing: ‘Admin open/close pits’, ‘Admin set/change pace laps to 1..10’, ‘Admin extend/increase/shorten/decrease pace laps by 1..10’. These allow hosted admins to control pace lapping much better. DRE covers all admin commands
Speed of DRE Launcher
Opening the Launcher now happens much quicker, as things are loaded in the background. Improvements have also been made to the loading speeds on the Controls page
Hosted AI sessions
The AI in hosted iRacing sessions should already be supported in DRE. There’s an alert to give a heads up if you join a server with a mix of real and AI drivers.
64-bit
DRE is now 64-bit and fully Voice Attack 1.8.8+ compliance, to allow for using more memory and optimizing speeds
Push to Pass
Controller/Joystick/Button polling has been heavily optimized to minimize the CPU footprint while being very responsive.
Worthy mentions from recent DRE releases
Before we look at more changes and shiny new stuff with DRE 3.4, there are just some things we are extra proud of delivering. So much that we feel the need to share them again! For a full overview of what DRE brings to the table, check out the Features
Make gridding a breeze
Don’t you just hate it when you forget to set race fuel? I do! That’s why I created the Grid Fuel Warning.
Make gridding foolproof and focus on racing with DRE. This alert triggers on suspicion of low fuel levels in the car when going to the grid. I think that’s quite neat
Sharing is caring
Sharing car data with your teammates is now possible!
- Fuel, oil, water, temps and levels are now shared across DRE users driving in the same team.
- No setup is required – just simply go and get the data when spotting or watching your teammates drive.
Striking distance
Whether you’re catching or being caught, this new alert gives you a heads up. It works for multiple cars in front and behind, so if any of these seem to be closing in on you, you will be alerted and may take actions like:
- Changing pit strategy
- Focusing on improving your lap times to avoid or complete an overtake on that car.
The iRating game
Know your minimum goals in official racing: There’s now both a command and an alert that tells you the lowest position you must finish to gain iRating.
Check out all Features
Want to see what DRE can offer?
