What do you all think about adding dynamic weather and flag-to-flag racing to RaceRoom?

I think mixed conditions, rain, changing track grip, and wet/dry tyre strategy would make endurance races much more exciting. Do you think it’s possible with the current game, or would it require a completely new engine? I’d love to hear everyone’s thoughts.

 

Since we already got a dynamic traction feature in the form of dust/gravel/grass from cars coming from an off-track I think the physics side of things in Raceroom would be able to support weather effects, unless it runs into issues if you try to apply it on the whole circuit, not just small patches as we have now. But we're so far away from the proper weather implementation, we don't even have dynamic track/air temperatures.

I wonder if there was any info about that on Discord this year, I haven't checked it in ages.

 

Maybe in 2033.
On the more serious note, I'd rather they first implement day/night and track temp/wind, then rain...

 

The lack of weather is why I don't play RaceRoom much. In 2026 there is no racing sim that has any excuse for not having fully implemented weather. It's no longer a feature, it is a baseline part of every sim racing game as basic as the dynamic line or flat spotting or driving at night. No weather is one of the things killing this game.

 

Don't know about rain. Maybe for non-ranked raced but I doubt people wil drive in the rain during ranked races. In iRacing, everybody wanted rain but its hardly used when they lose their SR (or Rep in our case).

 

i mean, come on, we got to have dynamic weather in the game!!

 

Dynamic weather is overrated. RR has tons of other stuff to sort out before getting to that.

OP is talking about endurance races, but there are none, the game lacks some critical features for that to be possible.

 

If you could choose between dynamic weather or day/night cycle. What would your choice be?

I think for endurance racing, day/night cycle with beautiful lightning would be more appealing than rain and snow which prevent players from racing on ranked servers with those activated.

 

I would say dynamic weather is more important. RaceRoom only has a couple of tracks that are actually used for night races in real life.

 

Just skimming over the track list theres at least 9 tracks that stood out to me as having been used in the dark in real life but why limit yourself to those anyways. Difficult to say wether night time or rain is objectively more important but lets say ive watched plenty of 24h races with no weather impact but ive never seen one where it didnt get dark at some point . As far as preferences go im VERY clearly on team nighttime tho

 

The thing is that RaceRoom is not really an endurance sim anyway. There are no real driver swaps and you can't save mid race.

I only see 7 tracks which actually feature racing at night:

• Bathurst
• Spa
• Nordschleife
• Paul Ricard
• Zolder
• Daytona
• Dubai

Apart from that, Chang also features floodlighting. For these 8 tracks, night would be nice to have. On all other tracks, I don't really see the point.

 

Suzuka and sepang also have/have had endurance races taking place partly in the dark and you can always hope for more tracks to be added (sebring, road atlanta, le mans, kyalami, misano, barcelona and so on). But again, why limit yourself to night driving on those tracks anyways? The beauty of having nighttime available is that we can use it everywhere and do our own races. Or do you also only use dtm cars on dtm tracks etc? And even without driver swaps and so on events like the 2.4h of daytona or nordschleife would still be a lot more attractive to me when including a full day/night cycle, both as a viewer and as a driver as it just makes for a completely different experience

 

I suspect that the development of day/night lighting and dynamic track/weather will be handled by different devs, so it's not a question of either-or. (Upd: Or at the very least, they belong to different parts of future improvements plans.)

I'm also sure that before we start getting proper dynamic track conditions and varied grip on different parts of the track, any talks about wet weather are pointless and the day/night transition will be nothing more than artificial visual effects in sprint races.

 

even if some of this is possible within the current graphics/ game engine there always has to be a decision on its quality and does it do it well enough ... ,
im waiting to see what happens when the game finishes its engine update and then we will sed what is possible

Andi

 

You are right about Sepang, they added floodlighting there which is still missing in the game by the way. In Suzuka, I think the only night race is the motorcycle endurance race nowadays.

The thing is that most tracks should be really dark in the middle of the night so you need high beams to properly race there, which the majority of cars in RaceRoom don't have in real life. So either they'd artificially increase the headlight strength for most cars, or you end up with something like Rennsport where you barely see the track in front of you during night races.

 

there is no headlights at all in race room its just a colour change , this is why night is not possible due to the graphics engine only being capable of a single light source .. the sun

Andi

 

Thats just a raceroom implementational detail/current issue. But hes talking about the real life cars not having high beams available

Certainly last year there were the suzuka 1000km as part of the intercontinental gt challenge and that finished in the dark.

Fair point about the headlights (perhaps bringing that up earlier couldve cut this discussion a bit shorter ) but i think simply giving all (non formula) cars the option for high beams in game would be a sacrifice in terms of realism id be willing to make. (And going back to purely personal preference, id still prefer driving while seeing almost nothing over driving in the rain )

 

Yeah, you're right, the last hour of that race is in the dark. I didn't realize sunset is so early there.

 

Didn't they add them way back when they still hosted F1? Or maybe I remember it wrong.

 

I’d way much more prefer they spent time developing a damage model. It’s a feature i would use and appreciate every second I’m driving. Dynamic weather and night racing would be a bit a of a fad I may use occasionally.