Starting with version 1.43, ATVO includes a new Spotter Guide screen. The Spotter Guide shows a live list of the drivers in your session along with an accurate image of their car, helmet and car number. The Spotter Guide screen can be found under the Timing Screen.



The Spotter Guide is fully interactive, it will highlight the currently followed driver, and you can change the followed driver by double-clicking someone, or by right-clicking and selecting a different camera, just like the Standings in the Timing Screen.


Custom paints
The cars and helmets are able to show custom paints that you have downloaded through Trading Paints or any other service. For this to function, you need to point ATVO to your "Documents/iRacing/paint" folder where the paints are located. In most cases ATVO should manage to find this location by itself, but in case it cannot you have to manually browse for the folder in the settings.

If enabled in the settings, ATVO will look for paints with custom car numbers ("car_num_12345.tga" paints). If a driver is using such a paint, their car number will not be included in the car image. Note that this could cause differences between the actual car number of the driver in the session and the car number displayed on the car (if any), because the driver can display any car number. The same difference can be seen in the sim.




Settings
Some preliminary settings can be found in a new settings tab "Car, Number and Helmet images":




Requirements
Please note that the images only work when ATVO is running on a PC where the iRacing service is running. The iRacing sim itself does not need to be running (for example when using the Data Tunnel), as long as the background service is active.


Feedback
Let us know what you think about the Spotter Guide in general, and if you'd like to see further updates. For example, is there any specific information missing that you would like to see?

Please also let us know if you see a clear mismatch between an image in the Spotter Guide and the in-sim car or helmet.


Known issues

• In some cases, small discrepancies may occur between the image and the in-sim car. Most of these are related to auto-stamped decals and car numbers that unfortunately cannot be turned off.
• ATVO may hang for a few seconds while the images are being loaded or refreshed. This should not happen after the initial load as the images are cached in memory.

Any way to add a check box to stop the boxes from graying out when not on track?

I will add a setting for it in the next release.

Is there any way to use the numbers generated by this in our themes? I've tried using the pk_num url as a path in the past but couldn't get it to work correctly.

I have some preliminary code to support this for theme editor themes, but it is still a large effort to enable it fully. Maybe someday, but probably not soon sorry...

Nick Thissen wrote:
I have some preliminary code to support this for theme editor themes, but it is still a large effort to enable it fully. Maybe someday, but probably not soon sorry...

Really looking forward to this! I made a little python based generator for one Finnish broadcasters that wanted to integrate these into their ATVO theme but it was bit clunky compared to something you could integrate directly into the app!

Oh also to add one thing, could it be possible for you to add editing the very first pixel of the skin file before it generates these. It would make the car shadows uniform.
Here's a example if you look at the green Inertia cars and the red and white CoRe car:

Whaou, nice purpose :)

Is it possible to include this pictures in the theme ?

Iku Merikalla wrote:
Oh also to add one thing, could it be possible for you to add editing the very first pixel of the skin file before it generates these. It would make the car shadows uniform.
Here's a example if you look at the green Inertia cars and the red and white CoRe car:

I have considered this but I don't really like changing the actual paint files. I would then prefer to copy them someplace else and modify the copy. I'm not sure if the first pixel has another meaning in some cases (maybe the roll cage or something like this)?

I will consider it again but it adds more complexity and load time.

These images can now be used in the alpha channel version of the Theme Editor. This is an experimental version which is largely untested so use at your own risk, as always for an alpha build.

You can also generate helmets and club logos in the same way.

See more information here: https://atvo.appgineering.com/Forum/Thread/697

Nick Thissen wrote:

I have considered this but I don't really like changing the actual paint files. I would then prefer to copy them someplace else and modify the copy. I'm not sure if the first pixel has another meaning in some cases (maybe the roll cage or something like this)?

I will consider it again but it adds more complexity and load time.

Understandable, So far I haven't enocuntered paint that would use the first pixel for anything apparent. But the additional load time and possibly adding a library to do the editing with is a factor you need to indeed take into account. For themes that would use these I'd imagine it's better for people to edit paints themselves.

I ran my broadcast tonight for the first time, live with the car numbers feature on the ticker. More than half of the field was showing the wrong car number on the ticker. (Font and colors of another driver in the field)

Was it showing correctly on the spotter guide?

Honestly, I’m not sure. I’ll take a look at the replay to see if I can replicate it, and see what the spotter guide shows.
Thanks for all your work on these features!

Scott Patten2 wrote:
I ran my broadcast tonight for the first time, live with the car numbers feature on the ticker. More than half of the field was showing the wrong car number on the ticker. (Font and colors of another driver in the field)

I've noticed this happening if I keep ATVO open after switching to another race server, restarting ATVO fixes this for me.

Numbers for cars that use fixed number fonts don't show correctly, such as V8 Supercars and GT3/4/E cars. A fix is changing numPat to the car's id and adding a - before it, so for example a Skip Barber car would be "numPat=-1" and the big M8 would be "numPat=-109".

If it helps, a full list of car ID's (to my knowledge) with fixed fonts are 1, 4, 13, 27, 30, 35, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 48, 49, 55, 59, 64, 67, 70, 72, 73, 88, 92, 93, 94, 98, 100, 102, 106, 109, 112, 117, 118, 119, and 122.