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Site last updated: 04/16/22


What is this thing?

The JJ Spotter Pack is a spotter/crew chief alternative for iRacing. Its goal is to significantly heighten the immersion factor of simracing by replacing the default in-sim spotter/crew chief with authentic audio from crew chief Chad Knaus and spotter Earl Barban. Even though the dialog came from stock car oval racing, the pack is purposely designed (as best I could) to be used for any vehicle in any series. Although it sounds a little funny to be told to clean your tires in a dirt race, but... let's just ignore that minor detail. With over 4,500 samples in the pack, no two races will ever sound the same in the history of history.

There are 2 flavors of the JJSP: The Standard Pack, and the Cuss Pack. The Standard Pack is PG-13'ish, and won't play anything that you wouldn't hear on network television on a Friday night. The Cuss Pack contains the same content as the Standard Pack, but also includes profanity. It's not overboard, but it's enough to make it colorful.

Installation instructions are detailed further down the page....

Project History For Anyone Who Cares


The JJ Pack was first brought to life on March 13th, 2003 for NASCAR Racing 2003 Season by Papyrus. After 3 years and 21 updated versions, it reluctantly became a "finished product" for NR03.

A couple years later when iRacing opened shop, the JJ pack began its migration. It started as a simple port job from NR03, but it has changed a lot since then, including a whole spotter replacement from Chris Osborne to Earl Barban in version 5.00. Work continues on further expanding the pack in iRacing, unless otherwise stated. My goal is to have so many clips that it breaks the sim.

Distribution


Please do not re-post the files from my work on another site, or use them in another project for this sim or any other sim: The usual and reasonable wishes from any artist or creator of things.

JJ Spotter Pack for NASCAR Racing 2003 Season


If you still race NR03 and want the old JJSP for that, I've moved all the NR03 stuff to its own ancient page. Click here to go there.


Latest News



04/16/22

v7.30 Update Now Available



In some form or fashion, this one covers all the new messages that iRacing plugged into the spotter in recent updates, such as tire compound rules, pit road countdown, some localized damage messages, etc. Some of my samples I don't like, but it will work for now.

The triggering for the fuel messages were also changed, so I re-worked quite a bit of that. Point of note now... when Chad yells at you to pit, he really means it this time! You won't be able to go another lap on fuel, so stop ignoring him.

Outside of trying to jury-rig non-NASCAR verbiage into the virtual mouth of a NASCAR crewchief and spotter, I added 309 additional sound clips, and also edited about 300 other preexisting ones to work better with iRacing's tweaked triggers, bringing the pack total to 4,866 sound clips. I also shifted a bunch of messages around to different trigger events for the sake of organization and subject consistency. In short, a bunch of things got tweaked under the hood that nobody will notice.

As usual, the pack comes in Standard and Cuss Pack versions. To make things easier on me, all the files are in both packs. But fear not, those of you with children around, the Standard pack will not play any of the Cuss Pack clips.

I uploaded both in self-installing .exe files, plus just the .zipped up sound files as well. It was brought to my attention that the installer doesn't work on Macs... or Linux.. or DOS.. or some configuration of Windows.. or whatever it was. With the .zip flavor, the files would just need to be manually unzipped to a folder that you must create. See instructions below.

CAUTION: Do NOT extract the .zip to your desktop! A friend accidentally did this and it crashed his computer when 4,000 files flooded his screen. I thought it was funny, but he wasn't amused.

NOTE: The new installer I'm using from InstallForge doesn't seem to be liked by some AntiVirus products. It's a free product, and I didn't find any red flags on the internet about InstallForge, so I don't know why some AV's flag it. But if concerned, you can grab the raw .zip versions of the spotter packs. You'll just need to manually extract the files to where they need to go.

Earl Barban spotter pack for CrewChief



I have ported over all the Earl spotting sound from the JJSP into CrewChief. To use it, obviously install the CrewChief app if you haven't already. Then just run the EBSP installer and it should drop the "spotter_Earl" folder where it needs to go, which is in with the other stock CrewChief spotter folders. Or you can grab the .zip file, and manually extract it there yourself. I believe it goes to: \(user)\AppData\Local\CrewChiefV4\sounds\voice

When you open the CrewChief app, you should then be able to select Earl from the list of available spotters. His volume seems a little low to me, compared to the Crew Chief, so I would suggest going into the app Properties, and bumping the "Spotter Volume Boost" to 2. The setting is all the way at the bottom.

Once in the sim, I lower the sim spotter volume to 0 with the hot keys, and all I hear is what CrewChief provides. That seems like the easiest way.


Installation Instructions



Earl Barban Spotter Pack for CrewChief

-- Earl Barban Spotter Pack v1.00 (exe) : Self-installing .exe file. It should create and extract all the sound files to the user's default CrewChief file location.

-- Earl Barban Spotter Pack v1.00 (zip) : Just the zipped up sound files. You'll have to extract the zip manually to the correct folder location. Should be: \(user)\AppData\Local\CrewChiefV4\sounds\voice

* If using the exe installer... run it, and it should drop the "spotter_Earl" folder in with the stock CrewChief voice folders.

* In CrewChief, select Earl from the list of avilable spotters.

* Recommended: Go into the CrewChief app properties, and increase the "Spotter Volume Boost" setting to 2


JJ Spotter Pack for iRacing

* NOTE- You are not required to uninstall any previous versions of the JJSP for the new one to work. Just make sure to select the new version in the sim after you install it.

* Download your version and format of choice; There are 4 flavors to choose from to suit your needs. You only need 1 of them.

-- JJ Spotter Pack v7.30 (exe) : The Standard spotter pack version in a self-installing .exe file. It should create and extract all the sound files to the default iRacing folder.

-- JJ Spotter Pack v7.30 (zip) : The Standard pack with just the zipped up sound files. You'll have to extract the zip manually to the correct folder location.

-- JJ Spotter-Cuss Pack v7.30 (exe) : The Cuss Pack version in a self-installing .exe file. It should create and extract all the sound files to the default iRacing folder.

-- JJ Spotter-Cuss Pack v7.30 (zip) : The Cuss Pack with just the zipped up sound files. You'll have to extract the zip manually to the correct folder location.


Various install methods...

* Running the .exe installer should take care of itself. It will create a "JJ Spotter Pack" folder in the proper folder tree and extract all the sound files into it.


If you are using the .zip file... continue reading.

* You will first have to locate where the iRacing core software files are. You can do a hard drive search for "spcc" and the folder should come up. It's NOT in your 'my documents.'

* The \\iRacing\sound\spcc folder is what you're looking for. You will see several default sound pack folders already in there, such as; chrisWheeler, darrenManing, tj_and_steve. If you see those, you're in the right place.

* Create a new folder along side those in that SPCC directory. Name it whatever you want.

* Extract the .zip into the folder you created.

* When all is well, your folder tree should look something like this;
\\iRacing\sound\spcc\Your Created Spotter Folder


* Once installed, launch the sim and go into the Sound Options and select the JJSP from the voicepack drop down list. If you don't see it there, 9 times out of 10 it's because the spotter folder was created in a place where the sim isn't looking for it. Reference the picture above, that's where it should go. The voicepacks listed in the sim come right from the folder names in that \\spcc folder.

* After selecting it, you'll have to restart the sim before the pack will take effect.


Lap Times



If you didn't know, you can customize the format that lap times are given to you. The default is the full time, down to the thousandth of a second. [MM:SS.XXX] I personally go with an abbreviated format [SS.XX] to replicate how Chad gives times. However way you prefer, this can be customized in the app.ini file. Look for the [SPCC] tag toward the bottom. This is what mine looks like.