When you open SmartRace after you downloaded the 3.15 update on iOS, you will probably notice the app seems to have reset to the default state. Although all your drivers, cars, tracks, records and so on are still there, it is true that all other settings have been reset. Unfortunately this was unavoidable due to breaking changes made by Apple in iOS. I know this will cause some inconveniences and... read more
This question has been asked a lot of times already and has also been the reason for bad reviews of SmartRace. Since I was also not sure why the permission to use location services was needed, I started to dig a bit deeper into the topic and here is what I found. First off, SmartRace is no "native" app but is wrapped into a container framework which is called "Cordova".... read more
Since SmartRace 3.11, there is a new feature called the SmartRace Champions Club (SCC). The SCC is the easiest way for you to get access to all available add-ons of SmartRace without having to invest much money, but instead as a very reasonable monthly subscription. And the best thing about it is that you will not only be able to access existing add-ons, but also all future add-ons as well... read more
For the small racers, Carrera provides a system called "Carrera Go!!! Plus", which is basically an analogue track which can be connected to a tablet/smartphone via bluetooth. While the hardware is kind of nice, the software seems to bother many people who express their anger by giving very bad reviews on the stores (even worse than for the go plus's app big brother for Carrera Digital, called the Carrera Race... read more
Due to feedback of several users, the damage simulation add-on will be slightly changed for the upcoming version of SmartRace. In the future, lap counting will continue as usual for damage cars. This is how it is going to be working now: If a driver exceeds the configurable target lap time, their car will be "damaged" (same behavior as now) Lap will still be counted for damaged cars If a... read more
After SmartRace has been available on Amazon since August 2016, I decided to cease the native support for Amazons Fire devices. It turned out that the effort that it takes to maintain and update the app for another platform is much higher than the gains. I never expected the demand to be high, but in the end it was even lower than my most cautious predictions. Another downside is the... read more
After several months of work, the new SmartRace website has finally been launched. The old website was created in the early days of SmartRace and was never intended to be as big as it had to be (including manuals, being bilingually, etc.). Especially the manual was done hastilly and suffered from a bad user experience. To extend the website was a real pain, because it was meant as a single... read more
SmartRace 2.8.4 introduced in-app purchases for some features. You may have asked yourself “why on earth should I pay for new features when I already bought a full-price app?”. Well, this is a valid question after you already paid a considerable amount of money for the app itself. The answer is simple: the market for SmartRace and other apps of the same kind is very small. Though developing SmartRace is... read more