VRC Pro introduce virtual opponents

VRC Pro have introduced their new event structure with virtual opponents. With this new mode they introduce the possibility to challenge yourself to race while opponents from your own heat or final are also on the track so you can now experience exactly the same sensations and pressure you experience in your real r/c racing. You may ask ‘why not multi-player events then?’ Multi-player requires you and your opponents to all race together, at exactly the same time. If we had no time zones that would be less of a problem, but we have. As much as 12 to 15 hours time difference makes it practically impossible to organize multi-player competitions on a world wide scale. By introducing ‘virtual opponents’ we have come up with a solution that is almost as good. The opponents are actually selected from your own heat or main final. They may have raced a few hours before you but with this mode we can still bring all these runs together as if you are all at the track at the same time.

Of course you race with virtual opponents without collision between the cars, that is just not feasible. But other than that you will experience it as real racing. You and your virtual opponents will start from pre-allocated positions corresponding with your start number in the heat or main final. Racing together with virtual opponents will put some extra load on your computer so we advise you to first test how many virtual opponents your PC can handle before your frame rate drops.

Realistic start and finish
To make these races as realistic as possible the recording of your replay file will start bat 30 seconds and will stop 10 seconds after you have returned to the pit lane. You should now use warm-up to drive a few laps and drive your car to your start position, a green arrow points you to your start position in the pit lane or on the starting grid. After the race, do not crash your car as we have seen many do lately, but finish normally and then drive your car back to the pit lane until you see the pit stop dialog which will be displayed 10 seconds before you will see your lap times.

Race against target
Racing with virtual opponents is the closest thing to real racing that we can offer you right now, so be ready to handle the same kind of pressure as you would experience in a real race. You will only get better in your real racing if you go for this challenge! If this is too much for you we also have a ‘target mode’ . You can select a target and during your race your lap times will be compared with your target. When you are ahead you will see a green target at the bottom of your screen, and the more you are ahead the smaller the target dot will become. When you are behind the target will turn red. When the difference becomes 1 lap or more the size of the dot will not get smaller any further.

Visit current and past events
Current and past events can now be visited, also by racers who have not participated in that event. Of course you need to have the track. There are 2 options. You can practice with opponents, or you can just watch the race unfold. In Watch mode you will see the actual positions during the race change as if the cars were all racing together. You can select other cars to follow by simply clicking on the name in the positions table.

New points system
The points system has been changed in such a way that the top-4 in each main final get a bit more points than the last 4 in a higher main final. With the new points system up to 310 racers will earn points for the series standing and for rankings!

Source: VRC [vrcpro.com]