Home User Manual Random weather changes

Random, dynamic weather changes

This feature is part of the SmartRace Champions Club. This is a big package with cool extensions, which you can conveniently add in the form of a monthly or annual subscription in the app and of course cancel at any time. Learn more.

This feature requires the Carrera Digital Pitlane with a built-in Pit Stop Adapter Unit. Learn more about how the pit lane works.

Note: To enable SmartRace to adjust the speed and braking force when changing the weather/tires so that the basic values set for the respective car are included, it is important that the values for speed and braking force for all cars are not set directly via the control unit, but only via SmartRace. Otherwise, SmartRace does not know the values and cannot take them into account.
Note: Ghostcars and Safetycars do not support the dynamic change of speed and braking values. So if you use them in races with dynamic weather changes, they will not change speed when the weather changes.

If you want to spice up races in SmartRace, you can activate dynamic weather changes on the “Weather” tab in the “New Race” dialog. When you open this tab, you will see various settings. But first, here is some information on how the dynamic weather works in SmartRace.

It has just started to rain and one driver has already changed to rain tires.

How it works

As soon as you activate the dynamic weather system by setting the probability slider to a value other than 0%, the weather system is activated for this race. The race starts in the dry and each driver starts on slick tires. During the race it starts to “rain” randomly, which is announced beforehand by voice output and overlays. The progression of a weather change takes place in several stages:

  • The race begins in dry conditions.
  • Announcement “rain will come soon” – there’s no indication of when it will actually start raining to give you a bit of leeway. You could switch to rain tires now and see if it pays off.
  • Announcement “it has started to rain” – this means that the speed of all cars will be changed according to their tires (you can set the values as described below).
  • Rain lasts for a random amount of time – it can last a few minutes or even until the end of the race. There may even be several short periods of rain during the race (alternating between wet and dry conditions).
  • Announcement “the rain is about to stop” – you could gamble again now: Do you switch back to slick tires when you have to pit anyway, or do you wait until the track is actually dry again?
  • Announcement “Track is dry again” – the speed of the cars is changed again according to the tires.

This process can be repeated randomly during the race.

Weather settings

You can adjust the weather settings to your needs on the “Weather” tab in the “New race” dialog. All settings should either be self-explanatory or contain a brief explanation on the screen. Nevertheless, here are some hints to help you better understand how some settings work:

  • Probability – this determines how likely it is that it will rain during the race. If you want to be sure that it will rain at all, you must set this value to 100%. If you set the value to 0%, the dynamic weather will be completely deactivated. Any other value between 0% and 100% increases the probability, but does not guarantee that it will rain.
  • Tire change – you can select when the tire change should begin. If you want to make sure that your tires are not accidentally changed during refueling, you should set this to “After the tank is 100% full…”. This will ensure that you can refuel the car and the countdown (set by the setting above this setting) will not start until afterwards.
  • Speed and brake values – it is very important to understand that these are not absolute values, but relative to the speed/brake setting that has been set for each car in the tuning area or in the vehicle database in SmartRace. A detailed explanation can be found below.

How the adjustment of speed and braking values works in the event of weather changes

You can set different speed values for the dynamic weather system, for example the speed for cars with slick tires on a wet track. It is important to understand how this setting is applied to the car during the race. First of all, setting this value to 50%, for example, does not mean 50% of the absolute speed of 100%. Rather, it means that the speed is 50% of the speed set for that car in the tuning section or in the car database.

Example: If you have set a specific car in the tuning area to 75% speed, the speed in wet conditions and slick tires is 50% of 75%. The only exception is if no speed value is set for a car. In this case, a “base speed” of 100% is assumed, which means that you actually achieve an absolute speed of 50% under the conditions mentioned.

The same logic also applies to the brake settings.

Last change:

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