URS1 0.9.8: live engine sound, cars that look planted on the road, and Steam Clo

URS1 0.9.8: live engine sound, cars that look planted on the road, and Steam Cloud saves

• Every car on track has its own live engine. You can hear it go up through the gears, brake and change down, and pass you.
• The cars look planted on the road. The wheels turn properly at speed, and the steering shows through the corners.
• Smoother racing: the new race car from 0.9.7 now costs the same to draw as the old one.
• Steam Cloud: your careers now follow you between PCs.

Your existing careers load and continue.

Live engine sound

• Every car on track has its own engine sound, made live from its speed and gear:
• you hear it rev up through the gears, with a short cut on each upshift;
• it blips as it changes down into a braking zone;
• it launches off the grid and sits on the limiter in the pit lane.

[*] You hear the cars around you: the car you are watching and the nearest five others. Each one gets louder, brighter and higher in pitch as it comes towards you, then drops as it passes and fades into the distance. [*] Each formula has its own engine: the V6 turbo hybrid, V8, V10, V12, 1.5 turbo four-cylinder and hydrogen. The electric formula has a motor whine. [*] The crowd and the distant engine noise stay underneath as the background. [*] The live engines play at x1 and x2. At higher sim speeds you hear only the background, as before.

Cars that look planted on the road

• Wheels at speed: a racing car's wheels turn far faster than a screen can show, so they used to look as if they were creeping, stopping or turning backwards, and the car seemed to glide. They now always read as turning fast and forwards.
• Steering: the front wheels now visibly turn into corners. The real angle at racing speed is only a few degrees, too small to see on TV, so it is shown at about twice that and never past full lock.
• The cockpit steering wheel turns three times as far as before.
• Trial: the Steam launch option -URS1MotionBlur adds a light TV-style motion blur to the race view. It is off by default. Tell us if you like it.

Smoother racing

• The new race car from 0.9.7 cost about 2 ms per frame more to draw than the old car. That is now gone: cars no longer redraw movements too small to see.
• Close cars and the car you are watching still show every movement.

Steam Cloud

• Your saves now sync through Steam Cloud, so a career started on one PC carries on on another.
• If you already have different saves on two PCs, Steam will ask which to keep the first time. Pick the PC with the career you want to continue.

Fixes

• Live Room: after you clicked another car in the classification, the strip under the 3D feed still said FOLLOWING one of your own drivers. It now names the car the camera is on.

Saves

• Careers from 0.9.7 and earlier load and continue.