NewsThe first release of bbkRC for 2005 is now available. In its first year of general release over 100 copies of bbkRC were sold. The features in this release, plus the features that are in the pipeline for later in the year will mean that bbkRC will spread like wildfire.
bbkRC is already used in England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Norway, Switzerland, South Africa and Malta GC. We expect more countries to join this list very soon!
What's new in bbkRC 2005-1?
Driver Ability is now
recorded by Car
Serious RC Racers have
more than one Car or Boat. WE recognised this from the start
with the design of bbkRC. What became very clear to our
users is that the ability of the racer does vary from car to
car. To make bbkRC work even better when sorting Drivers
into races we now store Ability, Ranking, Team, Formula,
Driver Type and Roof Colour in the Car details. We have also
recognised that categories such as Roof Colour may not be
too useful outside of Stock Car racing, so now you can
change the names of a host of categories and use them for
just about anything you want to. Electrics, Sponsor, Country
and License type spring to mind. We have also added Ranking,
to allow drivers to be loaded into exactly the heat that is
required and we have added an Engine/Motor category, useful
for Nitro and Electric racers alike.
Qualifying Formats
There are now 21
different qualifying formats for determining Finals from
Heats or the results of Reedy style races. We support BRCA,
SRCCA and EFRA rules with both . If you have some special
rules let us know and we'll include them in the next update. We
can sort Heats from Practice and Finals from Heats using
single or multiple Race Times, Lap Times, multiple
consecutive lap times, Round Points, Race Points. We can
make fixed, single or double sided Christmas or Bump up
Finals. If you run 3 leg finals, there are now nine
different ways of figuring out the results! We also have
seven options for determining the grid during practice and
heats.
Remember you can run timed practice and then generate the heats based on the drivers practice performance. You could do this based on STCC Super Pole (best 3 consecutive laps). That will stop drivers complaining they are in the wrong heat!
Exact Heat Placement
If you want to sort
heats based on championship position you can now do this. We
have introduced a Ranking option for a Driver's Car. Ranking
works like most sports ranking systems, number 1 is the
best. the default ranking is 9999. You can load the rankings
from championship position and then when you make the heats
you can sort them based on strict ranking. that guarantees
that the number 1 ranked driver will be car 1 in the last
heat. Again, no more arguments!
Pause & Resume Race (Lockup
recovery)
While races are running, every time a car passes the loop the
database is updated. You can Pause a race at any time and
then decide to resume or restart. There are a couple of
areas in RC racing where this is not uncommon, RC Boats and
Large Scale Stock Cars. The reason is that the Boats and
Cars cannot be marshalled safely. As safety becomes more
important, or rather insurance becomes more expensive, I
expect this to be a growing requirement.
Very occasionally PCs lock up! My laptop has done this a couple of times, not during racing, and on restart Windows XP has reported "an unknown video driver problem". Great! If this happened during a race, bbkRC would restart with the race paused at the point when the lock up occurred. You would have the option to resume or let the results at that point stand. The same would be true if you had a power failure. Please be aware that if a PC looses power, they file corruption can occur! Windows may not restart. We ALWAYS recommend some sort of power fail precaution, either a UPS or a Laptop with internal batteries.
Start Lights
If you need lights,
we have them. Red Amber and Green. they are controlled by
signals from a serial port so anyone with a bit of
electronics skill can make them up.
More RaceClasses
Our users told us that 10 RaceClasses was not always enough.
With all the qualifying options available they want to run
one off meetings with special rules. To avoid having to
"reuse" RaceClasses we have added the option to make as many
RaceClasses as our needed. To save time setting up new
RaceClasses, they can be made with settings from existing
RaceClasses and then minor modifications made.
More Tracks
If your club has an
outside track, there are probably a number of layout
options. You can now set these up as tracks within the
RaceClasses. Future versions of bbkRC will keep track of
Driver's Personal Bests and Track Records based on Race
Class and Track.
Instant Announcements No need to pick up the mike
- Automated Commentary
As well as automated
countdowns, race orders and calls to race and marshal you can
now get the computer to make announcements, one off or
repeated at regular intervals. Frequent messages can be
stored for later recall and specific messages can be typed
in. Driver names can be automatically loaded into messages,
for example you can call all reserves, all drivers with
crystal changes without having to type in names. All the
announcements are relayed to the remote DRIVERnet screens,
so if you are running a wireless network, you don't need a
public address system that can be heard three cpunties away
to keep the Drivers up to date.
Penalty and "Come to"
announcements
Do you like nagging
drivers over the PA? Neither do I! Let the PC do it for you,
just right mouse click on a Driver in the current race or
the last race and you can get the computer to call them
personally to marshal, go to technical inspection or race
control. If they are unlucky enough to have incurred a
penalty, the PC can announce that as well.
Batch Emails
You can send a personalised
Email to all or selected groups of your Drivers or
Competitors booked into a Race Meeting with just a couple of
keystrokes. You can send out their entry details for
confirmation, information about the meeting and after the
meeting their personal results. We have recently managed a
couple of International race meetings and this feature
proved invaluable in keeping the competitors informed.
DRIVERnet for the Pocket PC
- Hey, that's 11 reasons!
This is our latest
feature and is really exciting the RC World. Having Race
Results in the palm of your hand as the races are being run
is a fantastic development but there is more! Using the same
technology, we can get those updating results on to the
Internet so they can be seen all over the World, as the
event is running. At the DHI Cup in January 2005, with a
little help from the Team Orion website, live race results
were being viewed on the internet. The Internet data was
lagging the screens in Race Control by less that 20 seconds.
No more waiting for the results of International meetings!
You will know who won within seconds of the race being over.
The only way it would be quicker is if it was a live TV
Broadcast. If you are running a high profile race meeting
you need this technology!
Finally the Price! You can
be running bbkRC with Autocount Support for around £2 per
week!
OK we said 10 and its
already 12! You can buy all our Race Software Versions
outright and get continuous updates, or you can buy bbkRC
Pro it on a annual subscription. The annual
subscriptions costs just £100 plus TAX. That's around £2 per
week so there is no reason why you cannot be running
meetings with the most comprehensive Race Software available
today.
10 Reasons why Race Directors & Time Keepers love bbkRC
February 2005