FBD Race Director - Local Multiplayer & Hotlap Competitions on any sim

Download HERE, or on overtake.gg

TL;DR:

If you have a single setup, have friends/family around on occasion and like to see who can set the fastest lap somewhere of an evening, this is for you.

Download it, use it, enjoy it. It's yours. I'd appreciate it if you let me know how it goes but you don't have to. Some extra audio/visual candy for those who would like to support.

Scroll to the bottom for screenshots and so on.

Longer story:

FIRST THINGS FIRST, DID I VIBE CODE THIS?

Yeah pretty much - that's not how it started but I must admit, this has morphed into a pretty much solely vibe-coded app. I'm an experienced software engineer and around three years ago I started building this myself. When the enthusiasm started to die, it sat dormant for over a year. Thanks to the surge of AI, I was able to reawaken this idea and I've used it as a playground for learning how to use AI to maybe save my current job/future employability. I am literally using this as a canary down the mine hole of what is an extremely uncertain future.


HOW MUCH DOES IT COST?

Nothing. Zero, zip, nada. I am one of many who have enjoyed free and very capable/advanced mods for many years and this is my opportunity to give back to the community. That said, there is a way you can support the maintenance of this app should you wish but you absolutely don't have to. I've implemented a modular system where you will eventually be able to download other themes/sound packs, detailed pace notes and so on if you would like to donate a bit of cash to keep this afloat. After all, vibe coded or not, there are ongoing costs. Vibe coding is not free. Web hosting is not free. I do plan to keep expanding this for a while though.


If you don't want to pay anything however, you don't have to. Download this, keep it, share it, delete it, whatever. I don't care. It's yours. Enjoy or don't - up to you.


IS IT SAFE?

Yup. No admin rights needed, no data harvested, no account, no sign-in, no nothing like that. The only thing this application calls the internet for is things that are just useful for the application, such as sending an email (if you've saved one) about how the night went. If you're a supporter you also get the detailed pace notes versus the person who was fastest or, if you were the fastest, the person who was second fastest, etc.


It’s not open source (yet), but the SHA is available so you can check the download is genuine.


(C79C9FC40C96460E8A31084F169F304404CFEAA338E4C382F934E1B4E35FA4CC FBDRaceDirector-Setup-1.0.0-beta.2.exe)


I promise I’m not trying to pull a fast one.


WHY, THO?

Every weekend I have friends around my house and we pick a track and a car and then see who can set the fastest time around that track in that car - simple. Yeah, it sounds simple but with all the various Sims around and their different approaches to time trials (if they even have a time trial at all)/practice modes/deltas/starting positions on the track/what makes a lap invalid, it's been a bit of a slog to find any kind of consistency.


We tried keeping a whiteboard, but it wasn't enough. What we really wanted was a delta against the person who had set the fastest lap that night for something to chase, and it seems that most games/sims only offer you the delta for the fastest lap since you last restarted the session so if you crash out that's it. You are now racing against basically nothing and you have to wait till the end of the lap to see if you beat the time or not.


THE PROBLEMS

We typically follow the F1 calendar and are VR users (Quest 3) - the F1 games are out for us because the VR implementation is so terrible, so we have to make do with other Sims. AMS2 is obviously fantastic for VR and has a good portion of the F1 calendar but we often have to use AC1 to make up the difference. Then we would find that LMU had a better version of Bahrain but it doesn't even have a time trial mode... Even if you manage to get this all sorted in a practice session, AMS2, AC1, EVO, iRacing and LMU etc. all have different opinions on what track limits are, what delta you're competing against and what information to display for you.

I think the last time I saw something even remotely close to what we're looking for was in Trackmania Turbo for the Xbox - which was genuinely fantastic.


ENTER FBD RACE DIRECTOR

I had initially coded this to only work with AMS2 using the CREST2 API. This worked well but a lot of the maths got complicated -


storing variables such as:

• which lap is valid
• what defines a valid lap (the correct answer is at least one wheel within the white lines at all times of course.)
• what delta you are competing against
• how to even define a delta
• what happens when somebody wins/loses/needs to take a phone call and has to sit out for 20 minutes
• and a million other variables

The list really goes on... After some time the size of the mountain I had to climb was apparent. We did use it for a while but it was not engaging and used a single basic, crude WinForms app. Thankfully AI models were able to take this idea, run with it, and make it into what I was actually going for. On top of that I was able to implement all of the "it would be nice if"s.


WHAT SIMS DOES IT WORK WITH?

Hopefully most of them but not all of them are tested. Here's the status so far:

Assetto Corsa - Tested

Automobilista 2- Tested

Le Mans Ultimate - Experimental

Assetto Corsa Competizione - Experimental

Assetto Corsa EVO - Experimental

RaceRoom Racing Experience - Experimental

iRacing - Experimental, untested


WHAT ELSE CAN IT DO?

Excellent question, glad you asked.

FBD Race Director:

• Keeps a history for each driver you add, with their achievements, win count, and so on.
• Keeps a history of every session with a story behind it.
• Tries to have native support for VR users by injecting the delta/ information directly into the game's HUD, rather than having to pin something manually inside the headset, particularly for AMS2. More to follow.
• Sets a handicap against those that are slower than the rest of the room so that they have a chance of winning regardless of ability.
• Has a 'Race Party' mode where you can set up an AI race between your friends and see who can finish at the top. If two or more of you finish in the same place, it defaults to whoever got the fastest lap. That person wins the Race Party.
• has a QR code on screen so that anybody spectating can watch on their phone whilst they go off to the toilet or something
• That same QR code has a setting for if you're one of the drivers, and lets you know how you're doing against other people and when you are next.
• Has some kickass music built in by my own band, 'Murica', but you can just as easily swap that out for your own MP3s and it will play inside the app and announce what song is playing and when with a control to pause or skip tracks. It will also take on your Spotify/Apple Music/whatever music you're playing and feed it into the app if you wish.
• Is sound designed by myself in FL Studio manually - no AI there (in my other life I'm also a sound engineer/producer)
• Emails the results of the session automatically to anybody who gives an email address (email addresses are only used for this purpose and for this purpose only. I am not scraping any information. This is not a means to profit from your data)
• Has other modes that are currently still in production, such as arcade mode, which rewards things like cutting corners, slipstreaming other drivers, crashing into them, trading paint with them, etc.
• Is expandable if you would like to offer a donation, with things like themes, sound packs and white-labelling.
• Is maintained by someone who gets it.

There's more but this is getting too long. Please just download it, enjoy it, and tell me what you think.


SOME SCREENSHOTS, FOR YOUR REFERENCE:







Please just comment or message if you have any questions. Happy competing.
Or just vibe code your own - I don't care