Trading Paints Update Notes: September 7, 2022

Welcome to iRacing Season 4! We’ve made a few updates on Trading Paints to coincide with iRacing’s latest and greatest update.

AI Collections for nine more vehicles

In Season 4, iRacing has added AI to some more of your favorites. AI-ready Collections will now be supported on the following vehicles:

• BMW M8 GTE
• Chevrolet Corvette C8.R GTE
• Ferrari 488 GTE
• Ford GTE
• Lotus 49
• NASCAR Cup Series Next Gen Chevrolet Camaro ZL1
• NASCAR Cup Series Next Gen Ford Mustang
• NASCAR Cup Series Next Gen Toyota Camry
• Porsche 911 RSR

While iRacing has added multi-class support for AI carsets, this functionality is not yet available with Trading Paints Collections. #Soon, as they say.

Vehicle Updates

• Added support for new iRacing vehicle Porsche Mission R, the first-ever electric car to come to iRacing. (Heads up! You’ll want to change your default paint for the Porsche Mission R in the iRacing UI Paint Booth. The default paint includes a spec map, which will “ghost” over your custom paint.)
• Retired the old Lotus 79 that received an art update by iRacing, along with a new painting template. A new Lotus 79 vehicle is now added to Trading Paints.
• Retired the old ARCA Menards Chevrolet Impala that received an art update by iRacing, along with a new painting template. This car was one of the original vehicles supported on Trading Paints, dating back to 2010. Farewell, old friend; we’ll see you in Dale Jr.’s virtual race car graveyard. (And welcome, new, friendlier template!) A new ARCA Menards Chevrolet Impala vehicle is now added to Trading Paints.

When old iRacing vehicles are retired or refreshed with art updates, your personal paints under My Paints are removed under since they’re no longer usable. Showroom paints of retired vehicles (like this beauty) still exist for the sake of painters’ portfolios, but they can no longer be raced. AI Collections containing the old vehicles won’t work properly, so they’ll need to be removed or updated.

Trading Paints Downloader Beta

We’ve been regularly releasing updates to the Trading Paints Downloader Beta program. It’s like the Trading Paints Downloader you know and love (we hope), but with a bunch of under-the-hood updates and bug fixes (again, we hope). It adds features like spec maps in AI Collections, occasional crashes some users experience, and a bunch of other fixes that may or may not yet quite be ready for primetime.

Please give the Beta a try if you’re having issues—or even if you just want to check out the latest and greatest. It’s helpful for us to have as many people trying out the Beta and sending feedback as possible!

Try out Trading Paints Downloader Beta

Reminder: clean up those paint folders!

With a new build and new cars, it’s a good time to take a moment and clear out any temporary files that might have accumulated throughout your racing journeys.

To do this, in Windows, navigate to your Documents/iRacing folder and delete the contents of the “paint” directory. If you’ve got any spare temporary files left behind, they’ll be cleaned up.

Trading Paints Downloader makes an attempt to keep this folder neat and tidy for you, but sometimes files might remain in memory and aren’t deleted right away when you close Trading Paints or iRacing.

In the lab: design custom car numbers

While we love the flexibility of Custom Number paints—a custom-designed number stamped directly onto your paint when “Hide car numbers” is checked in your iRacing graphics settings—it’s not always easy to come up with a cool-looking number design.

We’ve got a new tool that’s a work in progress for designing your own custom car numbers: the unnamed car number thing. (Really, it doesn’t have a name yet.) You can enter a car number and adjust its font, slant, digit spacing, width, colors, and add outlines. Export as a PNG or SVG for use in your painting adventures. Copy, save, and share links to your custom creations, too.

Consider the unnamed car number thing in beta state; things might break or features might change. Let us know if you’ve got any feedback! (Or a name. It still needs a name.)

Here’s a link to the car number from the video demo.

Happy painting!

—Steve, Shawn, & Patrick