What Is Netcode In iRacing?

If you have just started out in iRacing. Netcode is a term you will start hearing quite often regarding incidents that have occurred during your race.  Netcode essentially is the simulations way of predicting where the cars are at any given time, within the race you are in.  As with any prediction mechanism it isn’t always perfect.  A lot depends on the individual’s connection quality and ping to the server.

The Components That Makeup iRacing Netcode

1. Netcode – This is the data about your car for eg, direction, speed, steering wheel input.  This data is sent to the iRacing server then synced to the other drivers.
2. Prediction Code -As the title suggests this is the part of the code that is predicting where the other vehicles are in relation to you.

   To explain it further your computer is calculating all the physics and sending that data to the server and then your computer will try and predict where the other vehicles are until it gets an update from the server with all of the other drivers data.

   If you have a low and stable ping and the other drivers have something similar you will get a very smooth experience.  The grey area is having other drivers or yourself with a poor connection and this is where it leads to issues with collision detection.

How To Check Your Connection Quality To iRacing

The best way to check your connection quality is to enable the fps counter if you haven’t already done so and keep an eye on the following:

1. The “Q” Bar – The Q-Bar on the frame rate/connection status meter area now has two side-by-side meters.  The original value is in the left-hand bar and shows the amount of packet loss from the race server to the simulation.

   The new right-hand bar (which grows from right to left) shows the amount of packet loss from the simulation to the race server.

   Note that the data for this right-hand bar is sent from the server to the simulation, so if there is a sudden loss of all packets sent by the server to the simulation, the value in this bar will not update. As before, each bar becomes full at 50% packet loss, though each is now about half the width of the original Q meter.

2. The “L” Bar – represents the latency of your connection or the time delay for data transmitted between your PC and the iRacing servers. This bar can vary in length and in color — a shorter bar length or a green bar indicates a low latency or delay, and if this bar turns red that indicates that your latency is reaching an unacceptable acceptable level. When you see a red bar here, this is an indication that the latency has dropped to an acceptable level, which may result in a disconnection from the iRacing server.

Things To Try And Improve iRacing Netcode

1. If able connect your PC to your router via ethernet cable as WI-FI can be very laggy
2. In your iRacing preferences select the appropriate data connection as this will limit the amount of data that will be transferred between you and the iRacing server and should reduce netcode issues.
3. Limit the number of apps on your PC that is trying to access the internet for eg, windows updates, AV updates, etc

There You Have It

I hope you found the guide helpful and if you would like to know more or have suggestions on how to improve the iRacing netcode experience please add a comment below.