Eight requests.
Seven are the same problem.
Four sim racing venues have asked me for eight specific things from the iRacing commercial product. Seven of the eight are one problem wearing different clothes: the booking system and the session cannot pass anything to each other.
I build the software sim racing venues run their business on: bookings, memberships, waivers, payments, race nights and rig assignment. Two venues run on it in production today and more are in trial. Because I sit between the customer booking a seat and the rig that seat is on, operators tell me what they wish their sim could do. This report collects those requests in one place so the repeats are visible. It is written to be forwarded, and I will keep it current as more come in.
The requests, by operator Four operators · eight requests
Runs the Formula iRacing Series. Their sim center is an iRacing-only environment and their business is turning first-time drivers into repeat customers.
Roughly 85% of clients are real drivers preparing for track days and run group upgrades. Runs iRacing. This is coaching revenue, billed by the hour, so setup time is lost margin.
Corporate activations, dealership events, Calgary Stampede. Runs Assetto Corsa and iRacing side by side and picks per event.
I have spoken with them. They do not run my platform and I have no commercial relationship with them. Including them because the signal is worth more than the attribution.
Where the same ask keeps repeating The reason this page exists
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The booking should decide what loads on the rig.3 of 4
Asked for directly by Skip Barber and SKR, and implied by AP. The reservation already contains the car, the track and the driver. Every venue is re-entering that by hand at the rig, in front of the customer, on time the customer has already paid for.
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Results should come back out.3 of 4
AP needs it for live leaderboards, SKR for client progress reports, Skip Barber to run a time attack into a live final. This is the single most repeated request across every operator I talk to, and it is the one that sits furthest outside the sim.
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A setup file should be placeable before the driver sits down.1 of 4, and it cost a deal
SKR's core workflow. It is also the request that lost me a NASCAR focused venue earlier this month to a competitor's platform. I am including that because a lost deal is a better measure of demand than a wish list.
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A guest should leave with something in their own record.The commercial one
Covered below. It is the only item on this page that is worth more to iRacing than it is to me.
The one worth more to iRacing than to me
A venue is a single annual license.
It could be a membership funnel.
Venues run shared accounts, so a guest drives for an hour and leaves with no rating, no record and no reason to open an account of their own. The venue captures the money for the hour. Nobody captures the driver.
If a guest's session at a venue could attach to their own member account, however you would want that to work, then every venue becomes a top of funnel for memberships rather than one commercial license sale a year, made up of people who have already sat in the seat, already enjoyed it, and already have a lap time they want to beat.
Skip Barber's own framing is the clearest version of it: get a guest onto an account at the venue so that when they are not at the sim center, they keep racing from home. I have no commercial interest in this one. I am raising it because it is the largest number on the page and because I am probably in an unusual position to see it.
Where things stand
- Test environment. Sending the account list separately so I can build and test against the commercial software directly rather than describing things secondhand.
- How Skip Barber authenticates, answered July 30. They run the commercial product day to day because it gives them control over launching and managing sessions. But for setting up a test drive and changing settings they go to the member site instead, because it is faster there. So in practice the workflow a venue runs all day sits across both products, and only one side of it can be automated. Anything touching bookings, staff or throughput ends up on the side without an API.
- More operators to add. I have venues in Germany whose feedback I will translate and add, and several trials in progress.
- If it is useful, this becomes a standing report. I talk to sim venue operators every week as a matter of course. I am happy to keep this current and send it quarterly, with a count of how many separate operators have asked for each item, so the demand signal arrives already sorted rather than one anecdote at a time.