The Chicane Podcast

Inside the World of DNR with Daniel Newman

• TGS Sim Racing • Episode 21

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Ever wondered how a film memorabilia collector transforms into a passionate sim racer? Join us on this episode of the Chicane Podcast, where we sit down with Daniel Newman from Daniel Newman Racing. Daniel shares his riveting journey from Ipswich, England, where his love for Ipswich Town Football Club and Formula 1 fueled his passion for both virtual and real-life racing. Alongside exciting updates like Jeff Smart's Singapore adventures and Eric Kelly's silver medal achievement in Gran Turismo, Daniel's story of balancing ADHD, autism, and his love for racing offers an inspiring narrative that you won’t want to miss.

Prepare to be enchanted by the innovative world of DNR Racing. Daniel walks us through his evolution from using a modest Next Level Racing FGT Lite setup to the advanced Sim Lab P1X and Simucube 2 Pro. Discover how "cry once" philosophy led to long-term satisfaction in sim racing. We also highlight the brilliant work of DNR Racing in creating intricate LED profiles for sim racing peripherals using SimHub software. Learn about their collaboration with YouTuber Dave Cam that brought about a game-changing ambient lighting feature, and how they integrate seamlessly with Philips Hue and Govee lights to enhance the sim racing experience.

The episode concludes with a look into the meticulous efforts behind maintaining and updating over 100 profiles, integrating features like true dark mode, and the significant roles played by Nico and Thomas in DNR's success. Daniel also acknowledges Constantinos' contributions, emphasizing the importance of community and collaboration in pushing the sim racing experience to new heights. Whether you're a seasoned sim racer or new to the scene, this episode is packed with insights and stories that underscore the passion and dedication within the sim racing community.

Check out The Daniel Newman Racing (DNR) links below:

https://www.danielnewmanracing.com/
https://www.youtube.com/@danielnewmanracing
https://www.instagram.com/danielnewmanracing
https://www.facebook.com/DanNewmanRacing
https://discord.com/invite/GAXEGnZawS

Please e-mail the show for any questions, comments or stories/experiences at thechicanepodcast@gmail.com

Watch the show in video podcast form on YouTube at: https://www.youtube.com/@TGSsimracing

Follow all my social platforms below:

https://www.twitch.tv/trackghost
https://www.instagram.com/TGSsimracing/
https://www.youtube.com/@TGSsimracing
https://twitter.com/TGSsimracing
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61566360513781

Intro/Outro Rights below:
Song: Low Mileage - Hold You [NCS Release]
Music provided by NoCopyrightSounds
Free Download/Stream: http://ncs.io/holdyou
Watch: http://ncs.lnk.to/holdyouAT/youtube

Jason:

The Hello and welcome to the Chicane Podcast, where we discuss all things in the sim racing world. I'm your host, jason Rivera, and I'm joined here by Eric Kelly and a very special guest, mr Daniel Newman from DNR Racing. How's everybody doing today?

Daniel:

Thanks for having me, jason Eric. Good to be here.

Jason:

Daniel, we've been waiting for you, man. I mean we had a it's it's kind of tough uh recording across the different seas, but we finally able to come up with a plan here to get Daniel on the show and it's honestly the best time to have him here because he has a lot of things that have changed since our last plan scheduled recording and, yeah, I think I'm excited for today. Thank you so much for making the time and, you know, being available to sit down and have a conversation with the Chicane podcast. I really appreciate you, dan, thank you so much for inviting me.

Daniel:

It's great to be here. So yeah, thank you both of you see the background.

Jason:

I love it. I love what I'm seeing back there, and we're going to touch on that here in a second, but of course we have to. I have a few announcements to make. It's it's. It'll be a short one, but Jeff Smart is not here with us. He is in Singapore having the time of his life. He sent me videos yesterday of him driving go-karts. I'm like so jealous right now. I wish that I could be out there yeah and apparently he, he, you know what.

Jason:

I won't spoil that, we'll leave that for the next episode. But anyway, um, just a save round, alibi, I mentioned, uh, we covered, um, well, in a future episode we will cover the lovely dashboard new update, and I did mention that it was two dollars to get two euros, excuse me to get started, and it's actually one euro. And the first week of october, uh, there's uh, his pit, his um plugin, his new brand new plugin will be available to all free members, and that is all all I have. Eric, do you have anything to update us with?

Erick:

Yeah. So I did get a chance to hop in the rig and actually improve, and I have the well, I have a medal to prove it, so I earned my first silver medal in the time trial on Gran Turismo. Yeah, yeah.

Erick:

It was one where I really learned the car, learned the yeah, uh, yeah it was. It was one where I really like learned the car, learned the track, the breaking zones, and actually was able to like whittle my time down to get down to that silver bracket. So I was excited about that. That made me feel good.

Jason:

Real quick what track and what car.

Erick:

So it was one of the weeklies. It was deep forest raceway, uh reversed, and it was, uh the michigan bc lancer evo final edition, uh group okay, yeah, all right, you went old school, man, I see that's the car they specify for the track and that's kind of one of the challenges every week. Um, all right, it's a new car, class, track, layout, weather and you know, if you got the time, you can grind it out that week and make some money.

Jason:

I got a million credits off of that, so I like it it's credits in the game right, not not a million dollars or euros pounds no, no.

Erick:

The uh the chicane podcast will have a brand new sponsor if I got a million dollars.

Jason:

Hell, yeah, we would All right. Well, congratulations, eric. Um, that's awesome. I always love to hear like updates, like that man. That's great, I mean, cause we're all gradually trying to get faster at. That is a never ending goal here. It's a-ending thing that we try to do. But, uh, yeah, congrats, man. So today, daniel newman race and dnr, it is a pleasure to have you here with us. I will open up with the first question, and that's who are you tell us about yourself?

Daniel:

so again, um, thank you very much for having me here. It's just as much an honor for me to be here as um, as you said it was for you. So, yeah, thank you for inviting me. It's great. Um. So yeah, daniel newman. Um, I, of course, live in england, if you haven't already worked out by my accent. Um, so I live in a, in a town called ipswich, which is about an hour away from london. I think most people probably look at england and say lond, london. That's kind of where they know London, manchester, birmingham. So I live about an hour from London. Um, I have got two children, so I'm a dad. Um, I got married. This year.

Jason:

So I've got a wife, and congratulations, thank you.

Daniel:

Thank you um. I'm an avid sports fan, so um I watch football, or you guys call it soccer, but football here. So um my local team, ipswich town football club, were promoted to the top flight of english football last year man united, bro, sorry, man united.

Jason:

How do you log off this thing?

Daniel:

so, um I'm an avid football follower and um I have a season ticket, so I go to every, every game and watch oh wow, my local club play. So, yeah, football is a big part of my life um. And of course, you know racing sim racing um, and also real life racing. Sadly, I'm not fast enough to be a real life racing driver um, which is why I pretend to drive digital cars on my computer, because it's about as as close as I get um avid f1 fan. So love formula one um.

Jason:

Mclaren is my team lando, lando rules bro, lando, so lando if you're watching um.

Daniel:

I'm happy to come and clean your car for you or something I hope lando's watching that. That'd be awesome so yeah, big, big, big McLaren fan, motorsport fan. But yeah, I guess, in a nutshell, that's me, that's Daniel Newman, from Daniel Newman Racing.

Jason:

I love it, man. So I mean you actually made a good point with people think that just Londonondon is the entire country. Always, yeah, people say you're from england, so it's a london no, there's.

Daniel:

You know, england is quite big. Okay, it's not, it's not united states big, but it's big enough. So it's quite big bro there's some hours between you know, between cities and towns. But, yeah, I live about an hour out from london so it's the closest, I guess, major city in england um to where I live and and most people probably would resonate with london. So, yeah, it's a town called ipswich, if you're really bored on a map, um, about an hour from london that's awesome, man.

Jason:

I you know it's on my bucket list, um and scotland. I haven't been on that side, but, yeah, man, thanks, thanks, uh, daniel, for that. So now tell us the next part. The next portion is uh. Well, this is actually eric's question.

Erick:

I'm sorry, eric, go ahead yeah, I was gonna ask uh, how did you get into sim racing like how did, how did that begin?

Daniel:

if I'm brutally, it was almost accidental. So, um, I've got a passion for racing, like probably every sim racer does, and um, I have, I've had lots of hobbies, I guess in my adult life. Um, and probably one of my uh admissions is um, I have, um, um I've got adhd autism and I flick between hub or have the tendency previously to flick between hobbies, and it became a kind of running joke that I would do something for a period of time and I would then switch to something else and all my focus would, would dive into it. So when I was, you know, into a hobby, I did a hobby at 100 miles an hour and I was kind of you know, I'm either all in or I'm nothing and I used to be a really big collector of film and movie memorabilia and I had a collection that was growing way out of control in my house. My wife was so tolerant it was, it was getting a bit silly, to be honest. But I had, um young children that were growing up and some of these replicas and props were worth quite a lot of money and, um, I wanted to move them somewhere so they would be safe, so that obviously the children wouldn't, you know, damage them and whatever else.

Daniel:

And I think I also hit the point where I knew that, you know, their value would decline eventually and I would be sitting on what was an expensive collection for what most people might describe as as rubbish um. So I made a decision to to kind of get rid of that. And, um, I I wouldn't say I accidentally found sim racing, but as someone that is a big motorsport fan um, I found a sim racing rig. I think it was something like, um, a FGT light from Next Level Racing or similar. And I said to my wife you know, I'm going to do this, I want to be a sim racer and I want to have a rig in my house. And she was like you know, whatever it needs to be small, you can't have.

Jason:

So I sold her the idea and said I'm going to get this, you know, Next. Level Racing. Nothing small about them, exactly.

Daniel:

And an FG, you know next level racing small about them exactly and um nfgt light and I did that and my first ever wheelbase, uh, was a thrust master wheelbase can't remember the name of it, I want to say tgt2 was it a belt driven or gear?

Jason:

I think it was a belt, right it was belt driven, yeah, um.

Daniel:

So it was kind of like a. It was an okay wheelbase. It wasn't great, but it wasn't sort of it did the job.

Erick:

if you're like, yeah, it was all right, um and so my fgt light arrived, okay, wheelbase it wasn't great, but it wasn't sort of low end If you're like, yeah, it was all right.

Daniel:

And so my FGT Lite arrived, my wheelbase arrived, I think I also bought a Thrustmaster shifter and the sequential handbrake as well, thinking I'm going to be like the next Colin McRae rally driver or something. I set this thing up and I reckon I had it in my living room for about two days, maybe three days, and I was like, nah, this, this doesn't scratch the itch. So then I changed, literally within a week, and I bought a gt, omega, um rig and it was a it escalates bro like a so fast for all of us crazy.

Daniel:

It was like an aluminium, almost tubular rig. Um, again, it was fairly basic, I would say, in in construction, but it was better than what I had and I thought you know, this is, this is more me. Um, I went out and bought a big tv for it and kind of set the space up in my dining room and my wife was like you know, you told me we were gonna have this small fold-up chair that you were gonna put in the cupboard and all of a sudden I did the same thing, bro in england, like houses aren't big, so property sizes are generally quite small here and I would say I took up probably a quarter of our family dining room with this rig and she's like what are you doing?

Daniel:

and I think, because I'd already done it by this point and and you know the joke is, forgiveness is easier than permission I'd already taken the space. So I was like at this point I'm all in, I could go and get like a full profile rig, um, I'm gonna do it. And I did so and then went and bought a sim lab, um p1x and hey, that's what I'm running back here.

Daniel:

Man cheers it grew, um, yeah, and then I think within probably six months, um, I was running on like a simicube 2 pro and on this big proper rig, if you like. So the bug, like I said you know earlier, with hobbies, is kind of I'm either all or nothing and I went from that's a steep hill to climb then but you say this almost every week here. You know, cry once, so cry once cry once.

Jason:

It's one of those.

Daniel:

If you just do it, close your eyes and and you know, bite your lip a little bit, you will cry once and once cry once. It's one of those. If you just do it, close your eyes and and you know, bite your lip a little bit, you will cry once and then you forget about it. And I've done that now. I've cried once and I'm you know, I'm still racing in the same rig, um, still happy, still happy, still loving life, and um, it's, it's a hobby that everyone says it's about their own hobby, but this must be one of the best hobbies in the world.

Jason:

There's not a time when I don't get in my rig, put down laps and smile and have fun doesn't matter when, where, how, what it's just always fun even just sitting in the rig, like I'm sitting in the rig with the wheel and I'm customizing some buttons or actions or whatever you know. I look around and I'm like, damn, like I built this.

Daniel:

You know what I mean yeah, yeah, I love it so and that's kind of sim racing. So you know, I've been doing that now for maybe four years, um damn that's all of us, bro.

Jason:

That's all of us. We're like born on the same date or something. Our sim racing dates we need to find them yeah, so I, I wasn't a covid sim race.

Daniel:

I think a lot of people got into this, into covid and I was probably just after covid um purely accidental, but but yeah, I've been here ever since yeah, man that's awesome yeah, that resonates with me because I have 8hd and I have the same pattern.

Erick:

Like monday I can be burning down a town about something like it's important. Then, like by wednesday, my wife is like hey, hey, didn't you say you're going to do a thing? And I was like, oh yeah, I did, I forgot about that.

Daniel:

Completely.

Erick:

Yeah, completely yeah. So I definitely understand that man past four years everybody has the same story. But so moving on, kind of learning more about your, your background. What is daniel newman racing for people that are familiar?

Daniel:

okay, um. So we create um I'll use the word elaborate, probably is a fairly fitting word elaborate led profiles for sim racing peripherals. So there's an incredibly piece of powerful software within sim racing if you race on a pc at least, called sim hub.

Jason:

Um I think nearly everybody yeah, the go.

Daniel:

Nearly everybody will have heard of it. Um, but it's essentially what powers? Probably simulator rigs and um, yeah, so we create custom led profiles for a range of sim racing peripherals and hardware that run through sim hub. So that can be steering wheels, it could be ddus or dedicated display units, dashboards, people that drive, um, browse, ambient lighting. Ambient lighting, bro. Let me tell you guys, let me let me stop right here.

Jason:

I was not a believer in the ambient lighting. Until you try it. Please give that a go, because now I went out shopping again, so when my amazon cart it doesn't know what I'm trying to do, but sorry, go ahead then.

Daniel:

Ambient lighting is my happiest accident. So I was creating profiles one day and I had a very, very rare amount of free time just for a day and I had some spare Philips Hue lights that I had mounted behind a TV in my house that I was no longer using, and I think it hadn't been long since SimHub had introduced ambient lighting within SimHub and I had them sat on a desk beside me purely accidental, and I thought I wonder if we can do something here. And I think I was speaking to a YouTuber called Dave Cam and he messaged me and said could you make my ambient lights flash with the color of a flag? So if I get a yellow flag, can my lights tell me? And I said I don't know, but probably, you know, I guess we could do it.

Daniel:

And so I sat there one day with some ambient lights and thought I'm going to knock a profile up. I put it together as an accident just for a bit of fun, and you know I don't exaggerate when I say it would. Probably was one of the most popular profiles that dnr ever released. Um, and it went from being uh yeah, this is some fun and this works kind of cool to people saying no, you know, I need this, this needs to have this feature and I need my rig to do that.

Jason:

And you know, overnight ambient lighting became in dnr, at least a thing listen, I'm a huge fan of the ambient lighting and it kind of worked out right because it's kind of like sim hub. A few months before you released, um, the update to the ambient lighting, they, you know, they had just added support for govi lights and I think philip hue lights right.

Jason:

So it kind of worked out for you because you didn't have to go to nicola, the creative sim hub and say, hey, man, I want to do this, can you implement? It was already there, so you just made the profile and it's it took me less than 30 seconds to set up a profile and it was just and it just works. You don't touch it. It's kind of I'm sorry, I'm just excited because I literally was just messing with that last night. I love it.

Daniel:

You say you don't have to message. Nikolai, you would be amazed how many messages a day a week. That poor man gets from me when I say one of the DNR users wants this feature and it's not possible. Can you please integrate this into SimHub? And I think the guy must look at his dm. See my name, pop up sometimes and think literally not again. Um, he's incredible, he, he, he has to be hands down. Probably, if not the close to the goat of sim racing this the guy is the einstein, the brain.

Daniel:

He's incredible sim racing period incredible, incredible and I think it's such an amazing, really powerful piece of software, um, but yeah, it makes everything within sim racing run so much better. But, yeah, sim hub great. Nicholas is great, um, and that's how ambient lighting was sort of accidentally born. But in a nutshell, that's that's dnr. We create profiles for sim racing peripherals. Um, as it stands today, they're led peripherals um, but you know, never, say never into the future, because I'm always looking at other peripherals and other devices haptics are on the menu hint I love you.

Daniel:

You know wheelbases motion, you know, you name it, you think about it, if you could put a profile on it.

Jason:

Ultimately, the goal is is you know, daniel moraisen wants a profile for it so I want I will say this you know, if you look at you know I'll use, I'll use a game like I don't know. Give me a game that has a lot of cars. You know, like I, racing has sure a lot of cars. Right, imagine sitting in your rig and you should be racing, you should be on track, you should be staring at data. But now you're trying to. Now you have a ddu in front of your, in front of your screen, or you have a wheel and you want that rev match to be one-to-one for the amount of time it takes for me to sit down, and that's if you know what you're doing. Right, just for one car. You know, with with daniel's profile, it's kind of like you install it and you kind of forget it and a car comes out and it may take them a while.

Jason:

I don't want to put dan on the spot. You know I kind of hit him hard when, when that mclaren dropped, I was like, dude, I need this, this profile, and it was literally days later. He updates them, all the cars, not just the mclaren, every car that comes out and it matches. And it's not just a rev strip that matches, it is the shape as well. So the the mclaren is weird because it has like a red right, red right. When it's uh, red blue, red blue, red blue, red blue. When it's like full, like when it's red lining, it's weird. And then you just turn the car on and it just you still look down and it works and it's like, oh sweet man, I mean yeah, so definitely there's a lot more.

Jason:

There's a lot more complexity than you'd think with just a profile, because you know anybody can create a profile on sim hub. But having it one-to-one, fully customizable, and it works with your wheels, designed for your wheel, with the number of leds and your ddus and your lights and your brows and your uh what it's all working together, it's a.

Jason:

It's an amazing ecosystem. Dnr is amazing. I'm a full supporter of it and I also have to throw this in there, but I followed Daniel Newman before there was a DNR and he could tell you about that.

Jason:

I purchased a CSX three, few years ago or when it came out. I think it was two years now. A few years ago or when it came out I think it was two years now and he was the only soul on the internet that had a profile for this wheel and that was my profile, and then I think it was like he updated it. You updated it like two or three times.

Daniel:

Yeah.

Jason:

And then you kind of disappeared and I was like what happened to him? Where is he? I can't find him. And then you kind of popped up and say, hey, I have this new thing. It's it's dnr racing and it covers all these things. And I'm telling you it touched my heart because I was like I don't know what to do. I mean I'm just gonna run this wheel as is until until I don't know I probably have to learn how to program these things. But uh, your product is amazing. I'm a huge fan, thank you 4.3 just came out.

Jason:

Um, by the time you're watching this, it's available and we'll. We'll cover what, what, uh, what you get with the tiers and everything else. But, uh, I do want to ask you real quick we did go over, uh, your rig setup sure so what is this thing behind you? Where are you? That does not look like a living room. It looks like a, like a, like a personal space. Can you elaborate on that?

Daniel:

yeah, yeah yeah, I'm currently sat in my bathroom and um, this is where I wash that's a hell of a bathroom, bro, with some crazy lights racing. I'll tell you, um. Yeah, so I'm currently sat in a room that, um we, or I, call now the daniel racing studio, so this is a brand new space that's literally been built um within weeks um the entire summer.

Daniel:

Thank, you, it was built as a, as a content creation room and a studio to work for DNR. Dnr hit a point earlier this year where and I'll elaborate on it soon, but where the some of the people that were approaching us for work made me realize that, you know, this is serious and I need to put some serious time and effort into the work that I'm producing, and in order to produce the best quality of work, I need to be in a space that is fit for purpose and lets me work and does what I need to do, you know, in that kind of space. So, um, I made a really difficult decision to to to build this, this studio, um, at the bottom of my garden, you know my house and um, and yeah, this is, this is dnr studio. So this is kind of where I race. I've got a big rig beside me. Um, you can see the the screen behind me, which?

Jason:

I love it, man, that that is awesome. Got a lovely pit wall behind there, yeah that incredible pit wall.

Daniel:

Um, constantino's is a legend. Um, I've got lots of wheels on a unit across beside me. So this room, um, I don't think videos and pictures really do it. You, you know full justice. But when you come in here or I come in here every day to work I open the door, the lights come on automatically.

Jason:

Oh yes, the smile hits my face of like here it is Dan. Congratulations, bro. Here it is. I mean yeah.

Erick:

I'm happy for you, man, yeah, bro.

Jason:

Thank you. That is beyond, because it takes a lot to just build a rig, but now you just went ahead and built a full-blown studio, which is kind of incredible. So I mean, you know, by the picture that I'm viewing here and on your Discord I know you've shown a few previews. So, definitely we'll link your stuff below for people to check out your products and your studio, of course.

Jason:

But I just wanted to say, uh, congratulations, that is a massive milestone thank you, there's gonna be a day where you go in there and you can be like, wow, this is kind of where it all like began. You know what I mean?

Daniel:

it's um, and I do it's kind of like a pinch yourself every time I walk in here, and I think you know dnr has made this possible. This, this space, is is incredible. Um, there is quite literally blood, sweat and tears in this room um, I bet I had some keyboard banging.

Jason:

How many keyboards have you switched out?

Daniel:

like be honest, I think I make a joke um with someone that works on dnr with me that we need to have shares in logitech mice because the amount of clicks that we go through profiling. I'm surprised that my mouse hasn't caught fire yet or my keyboard hasn't caught fire yet. Literally blood, sweat and tears in this room. I've had a couple of bloody accidents in here building things. I've had so much stress, stuff's gone wrong. So this is literally, quite literally, a labor of love.

Daniel:

this is a very, very important room hopefully is yeah, it's a good space to work forward yeah that's awesome.

Jason:

I love to hear that, man, just. And then the next question I have for you, um, is what, what kind of inspired you? Because you, you mentioned earlier that it happened kind of like by accident, that you know you were to, you know the sim racing aspect, but dnr, what? What inspired you to create dnr? What was the one thing that you can think of that said that's, that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to do this constantinos from the lovely constant wow, constantinos, lovely dashboard he's the guy.

Daniel:

So there's a, there's a small backstory behind it, um, and it is. I've been a lovely dashboard user now since all almost the beginning. I didn't find him on day one, but I would say within within weeks, um, I'd found a lovely dashboard. I'm quite fussy, I would also. So I've got a graphically taste. If you're using stuff, it needs to have a good UI, it needs to be functional but look nice too. So I've been using sim racing dashboards that didn't really cut it for me and I wanted to find something that was a bit better. Um, yes, yeah, I paid people to build a dash for me as well, um, and that worked okay and there was functions that I wanted within that dash that were okay, um, but I found a lovely dashboard and I started using it. I'd used it for, you know, several weeks.

Daniel:

I joined discord. I joined his discord, um, and I became a fairly active member of his community and we're talking very, very early days now in the hundreds of users, not thousands and, um, I would say I struck up a friendship with constantinos, um, he's an incredible man and I've got so much time for him, but that friendship went on over, you know, a good period of time, um, until I agreed to help him within his discord, um, and I became, you know, what he titled at the time was the community manager. So effectively I would, I would help balance the discord out and kind of manage members, people that had, you know, general queries or needed some mild tech support I remember those days bro.

Daniel:

I could kind of help with that um and so you know, I was helping constantino us out, um, but in, in the same time, I was kind of doing some profiling on my own devices, just for fun, in the background, um, and like you said earlier, you know, using the, the cube csx3 profile, I was kind of doing that and, you know, constantinos said to me a couple of times you should do this, you should try this. And, um, it got to earlier this year, it was probably january time, sometime in january and, um, I was sitting here thinking I could try this. You know, this might work, it might not, but it might work. Um, and I was really really nervous about doing it because all I could think about was, if I set up my own discord, am I going to upset Konstantinos? Because he'd become such a good friend of mine that I wanted to make sure that. You know, he kind of supported me, um, so, yeah, I did nervously reach out to him and say I've got this idea and I'm not sure what do you think. And he was like hell, yeah, do it. And he gave me lots of advice, he gave me lots of pointers, the DNR logo that anybody that uses our products now probably is familiar with.

Daniel:

He created that there's so much input from him at the early days to say you know, go ahead and try it, you can do this.

Daniel:

He would give me support for how to set up the discord, um, setting up kofi, that kind of thing. So it was an idea in my head that I could make some profiles, but it was never really a big idea, um, so I would say probably at least 50. I could thank constantinos for helping make this happen, because he certainly encouraged the project to move along and he's been really supportive. So even to this day now, when we release new features, one of the people that I'm always most excited to talk to and tell those features is him Because, whether he realizes it or not, sometimes I look back and think of the beginning and, you know, without the things that he helped me with and sort of the guidance that he gave me and to this day still does, sometimes I don't think we'd be here, um, so I still get excited to say to him hey look, I'm going to be releasing this or I'm going to be doing this and um and yeah, that's kind of where it came from.

Erick:

Yeah, shout out to Konstantinos man, he's a great, great guy. Yes, for real.

Jason:

Amazing. I love the story.

Erick:

So that's awesome to hear.

Erick:

I love hearing just the backstory behind all the kind of names I see and people I watch on YouTube and I'm in everybody's Discord watch on YouTube and I'm in everybody's discord and so I love hearing the connections behind the scenes that have been happening and the stories from these guys that I'm you know, I'm using their stuff Like somebody, like you. I'm using your profile on my GT Neo but because I'm on console I'm kind of limited. So I'm kind of like wishing I'm watching Jason's stuff go crazy when he lights it up when he's driving, especially on Twitch. So I'm looking longingly like one day I'll run Daniel Newman stuff on some hue lights and all that stuff. But um, but um. I do want to ask you what goes into making an LED profile, like the process, because, like Jason was saying, as the, as the user, we get it and thanks to you and sim hub and we just load the profile and it works. But just to give people an idea of like what it actually takes to create these profiles insane amount of time hours, yeah sorry, that's.

Daniel:

That's what I was expecting I felt it coming bro, I was like here it comes, yeah, um I've lost count of the amount of days that I've been sat at my desk or my rig at late, late at night, having worked lots of hours in the day to get something finished or to get a feature finished. If you look at a specific car, for example, people might say, oh, is there an easy way of matching? No, I have to get in that car I have to go in the sim.

Daniel:

No I have to drive that car, I have to go, I have to drive that car in every single gear and I have to put my foot on the throttle so gently and I mean so gently and watch in game at what moment, exact moment does the first led turn on and what color is it in game? And then I have to write down the value, and that could take me, depending on how oh my god the fatigue you get in your foot on the throttle.

Daniel:

So by the time you've done five or six leds, you're like, oh my god, I need to finish and and that's one car, and that could take you a long time and that happens for every single car. So that's just to match the car, that's not to make the profile. That's just me one, one vehicle. For the rest of the profile, I would say today, because the profiles are very different to what they were when they started. They are full of really complex javascript code. I say really complex. If you're a coder and you understand javascript, it's not necessarily complex. But actually to to most sim hub users and sim racers, we don't need to delve into that code. We've got no need to understand what it means or how it works, and that's why the end ui is important. So then, creation of a profile actually takes so much time for us now because it's not just one profile. I counted this morning and there's 104 profiles available on the dangling and racing website. So every single time there is a release, that is 104 sets of data that need to be updated and that might be the same data but 104 times. And as an example, if if you're going to edit, I don't know um the rpms. Let's say so.

Daniel:

We offer a specific set of rpms that match vehicles and some generic. If you've got generic rpms, we offer them in three different styles. There's a left to right, a meet in the middle or an f1 style. So there's three types of rpms now. Of them, three types of rpms, there are 16 themes. So that's now 16 times three. That's just for generic rpms. Now we've got, as I said, 103 profiles. If you said probably 60 to 70 of them have got rpms in. In fact no more because of the wheels, probably 80 to 90. Those have got rpms in. You can now do your 3 times 16 times 90.

Daniel:

That's insane amounts of hours when someone says to us you know when is the next release coming? Trust me when I say we're working on it. There's hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of hours go into the releases, and as they get more complex and as more devices become available, it means the next release could be 106 profiles, or 107 profiles because there's new devices to update. So every release takes longer simply because there's more work to update, and then it depends on the complexity of the feature. So, right, a part of the release we've just done. Version 4.3 added an enormous feature for us, which allows users to customize the buttons on their steering wheels.

Jason:

So no, I love that, bro.

Daniel:

I send you pictures, it's so much work involved and I think it that we we support 18 wheels today as of this filming, and that means that data's got to be done 18 times. We've got a set of I think it's 23 buttons and about seven or eight rotary options. We have to offer 14 different buttons. So again, you times that 16 by 14 ish sorry, 26, 23 plus 6, 29 ish by 14, and then by the 18 wheels we offer. You know, you can see how quickly these things multiply into.

Daniel:

Okay, I can see there's some hours going into this now and you might do that and then find at the end of it because nothing is completely faultless that there's a bug. That means we have to go back and maybe do a hot fix, even before we've released or after the time constraints on some things. It can be very difficult, but equally as much as it goes into it and I say it's stressful, and it is stressful, it's so rewarding to watch people driving, smiling, enjoying a profile. When you say to me oh, I love this, it just works. Or this feature is amazing. When somebody says to me I'm, you know, I'm using this, and it's just incredible.

Jason:

I love it bro.

Daniel:

I had a message last week from um. I won't name drop, but a professional race car driver.

Daniel:

And car driver and just saying that he liked the work and was using it and I had to sit on my chair, like pinching my leg, for about 20 minutes thinking what? But that's what we do it for, because that's the sort of you know reaction that ultimately means that, um, if people like that are using the work, then we know we're doing something right and it's fun. You know, sim, racing is not all about setting the fastest laps. Um, sometimes it's about having fun, and that's important too just have to pinch yourself because it the feedback is amazing.

Daniel:

And when you have feedback from from people who race professionally and they say, look, I use your work and um, it's good because, or this is fun. And I think that's really important because sim racing for some people is about, you know, professional driving and being fast, but for other people it is about having fun and it is their opportunity to have downtime at the end of the day, to go into their rig and and just to get away from work, from life, and just to have fun. So, as much as there is so many hours going into doing what we do, actually the real reward is when you hear people say, yeah, but I had so much fun doing this, or did you see this new feature that DNR has done? Or that kind of stuff is what really makes it worthwhile.

Erick:

Yeah, man, I've got an actual story.

Erick:

After I loaded your profile on my gt neo, I recorded a video of it and I took it to work and literally after they saw the start of animation, guys, like for like the next two weeks straight they were asking me so which rig should I get?

Erick:

Amazing and okay, like, so what's their will of that? Like, literally, they're like trying to figure out how am I gonna pitch this to my wife to let me buy, let me spend sixteen hundred dollars to get a rig and wheel and all that stuff, because it looks cool and and here in the states, you know, motorsports is, you know, outside of nascar it's kind of, you know, limited right, but it's becoming more mainstream. And just really, specifically with sim racing, when people see what a rig looks like instantly especially guys, if you're a car guy at all when you see a reason like I can have that at my house and they might think it's like oh, that's 20, 30, you know out, an outlandish amount of money, cars I didn't have to have this day one, I added this later on and you show them a path to having something amazing, um, it really makes it a lot and it's a lot cheaper than buying a real car, racing it and you have oh yeah, maintenance, and then let alone.

Erick:

If you crash the car, I mean, then now you got more problems. Yeah, man, yeah, I can crash this thing all day, it'll restart and how many people can. Only thing gets hurt is your. It'll restart, and how many people can?

Daniel:

The only thing that gets hurt is your pride? Yeah, of course. And how many people can ride the Nordschlef at 11 pm at night in their pants, with a can of Coke on their lap? Exactly.

Erick:

There's these perks, some rum and Coke, yeah so I'm telling you hey, yeah, man, it's beautiful, yeah, it really is man.

Jason:

Yeah, that's what's up, man. I mean, I have a race myself later on today and it's on the damn North Slifer. Good luck, I have to get ready for that one.

Erick:

Oh yeah, thank you. Yeah, man, I'm going to try to you going to stream it.

Jason:

Yeah, that's going to be live.

Erick:

I mean later, but yeah, I'll be uh, trying to tune in man, but um, but I know we spoke earlier about, you know, your relationship with constantinos and the lovely dashboard. Uh, this gives an idea of how your daniel newman racing products work with the lovely dashboard yeah, sure, um.

Daniel:

So, as part of daniel newman racing, I think something that needs a really notable mention is how the profiles run, how they work and, in part, how they're created. And in order to have a lot of these things happen, there are two other people that work with me here at DNR. That kind of make this possible with me here at dnr, that kind of make this possible. And if we leave constantinus aside just for a second, um, one of those people, um, some of you may know from discord is carol dude. Uh, his name is nico and, um, another person some of you may know as flashbang, his name is thomas. Um, so nico and thomas kind of came into the dnr project in, I would say, the very early days, almost by accident, and they've both, like constantinos, become incredibly good friends. Um, they're people that I speak to on a daily basis. You know we talk about stuff that isn't just sim racing how is your family, how are your kids. It's important stuff about life. Um, they're people that I I would consider valued friends, not just people that I'm here to sim race with or do things. Um. So in the early days, carol dude or nico kind of came about because, um, I'd released an update for a profile that had some car specific data for acc and um, he messaged me and said hey, this, this is wrong. I'm thinking who's this guy, what's he on about? And um. So we were talking and um, you know, we got talking and he was a really, really nice guy. So he's like you know, this is wrong. And most people would say this is a bug, fix it. And I'll just be like, okay, I'll do it. Nico was different. He was like hey, this, this isn't working, but how about you try this? Or how about I help you? We'll try this and if this works, we can do this. And it went from you know, we we fixed a few things to how about adding this feature to the profile, how about adding that feature to the profile? And expanded and it became what has become today and I would say Nico is instrumental in delivering DNR. He is a very good friend, a very, very knowledgeable person and just an all-round brilliant part of DNR. Thomas is similar.

Daniel:

Very early days, as this was growing, we were distributing profiles on Discord. It was a bit messy, it worked, but it wasn't the best. I remember reaching out to discord members to say I need a web developer, I need a website. Um, I've got this idea. I want like two, three pages, basic as anything. Can you do it? And this guy, flashback, messaged me and he was like, hey, you know I can help you. Sure, he used my profiles. Um, I think he wanted a brow profile or something. And I was like, hey, look, you help me do this and I'll make you some profiles. And we did, and what started off as a two-page website has now become full-on web development. Thomas is responsible for the DNR plugin. That is Thomas's work. Again, incredible, incredible part of the DNR community. Again, the website goes under web development. That kind of stuff. Both of those people are are crucial to this.

Daniel:

To bring that back to your question of how do we connect with lovely dashboard they help make that happen. So lovely dashboard is really important to me for the reasons that I mentioned earlier. Constantinus is a fantastic person, someone that I value tremendously, and when I launched dnr, I wanted to try somehow to kind of pay homage in some way to his work, because without him, dnr might not have existed. Um, and one of the things that I love most about lovely dashboard is true dark mode.

Daniel:

Now, that is a feature that, uh, that I asked him personally for last year, maybe earlier in the year, and said look, I've got this thing on my own dash. That's pretty cool. And it came from a bmw gt3 car um, I think it was the m4 gt3 and in the real life dash it goes orange when the car's headlights go on, so to help you kind of drive at night and like an endurance mode if you like. And I said to him hey, I need this on the dash. It's the only feature that I've got on a different dashboard that I use and, dare I say it, if I drive at night, I will use this dashboard. If you don't implement, I need it. And he's like okay, you know, let me, let me look into this. So he implemented true dark mode. Um, he did it in four different colors, which is both a blessing and a curse. Amazing feature, love it.

Daniel:

And what I said is this red this is amazing, but the problem is now my dash is red and my led lights are bright green and yellow and blue and make my eyes hurt at night. I can't do it. So the next thing was we need to integrate true dark mode into the profiles and have a similar monochrome color theme to match your dash, and that was kind of step one, wow. So that's where the the four colors was a bit of a blessing and a curse. They look amazing and I love using them. The curse is it means I've got four sets of data for every profile, so it's not just and again this is the magnitude of the d every profile.

Daniel:

So it's not just and again, this is the magnitude of the DNR profile it's not just one set of RPM data, it's five, because you've now got four sets in TrueDarkMode colors and then one set in what we'd call your everyday color. So TrueDarkMode was kind of the first iteration and integration from DNR and Lovely Dashboard. That's grown a bit further. So when we started introducing steering wheels, um, I wanted to make sure that there was a lovely dashboard theme. So as part of the the profiles we offer, every steering wheel has got 16 predefined theme colors and that allows the user just to select a theme that they might like from a list of 16. And that's because if I offered one, people will say I don't like that color. If I offer two or three similarly 16 oh, you can't please everybody.

Daniel:

Then you know, if you can't find a color of course, but if you can't find a color out of 16, I can't help you yeah so, um, and it's now 17 because we now offer a custom option because, as it as it happens, I can't please some people with 16 themes. So there's now 17 because we now offer a custom option because, as it as it happens, I can't please some people with 16 themes, so there's now 17, which means you can select your own colors. But it was really important for me to have a theme that was called the lovely dashboard theme, and that theme is what we try to get as close to real life motorsport. So all the colors mean things in it. People think are these colors just? They're meaningful colors, um, red for brake bias, green for engine map, blue for traction control yellow for abs amen, I use that universal colors and, and so we use those in the profiles to match lovely dashboard things like the pit limiter it's blue and white.

Daniel:

If you turn on lovely dashboard pit limiter and you make it full screen, look what color it is it's blue and white. All of the features of the profiles that we implement match lovely dashboard and that was done intentionally, because I use the dashboard and I use the profiles and I want them both to to work well together, to look good together, as they've developed lovely dashboard and as dnr was developed, of course, we introduced a dedicated sim hub plugin earlier this year. Um, which has been has been incredible and constantino has done the same recently. So again as part of the most recent 4.3 update, um, the integration between dnr and ld is even better they. There was previously some freak occasions where synchronization wouldn't happen or things would get out of sync. The plugin basically removes all of that and I would say the synchronization is now solid um. So you know the two work harmoniously together. Your last guest, mike from sim racing, then um, did a video recently on dR and he made a comment that I can't remember to paraphrase exactly.

Jason:

Yeah, I saw that. I saw that Amazing SimRacing, then Amazing video.

Daniel:

Mike again is an incredible man. Lots of time for him. His work is brilliant and he made a comment about how those two products work really well hand in hand and for me that was a huge compliment.

Jason:

They're kind of meant for each other. In my opinion, and I think, yeah, you can't have one or the other. If you're using the lovely dashboard, you might want to pick up DNR. If you're using DNR, you might want to pick up the lovely dashboard. That's how I feel about it. And your theming is awesome, because it's not just a theme for the wheel, like for the game.

Jason:

You can set it so when you're outside of the, outside of track it, it displays a different theme, so there is some deep level customization going on in there and it's really nice.

Jason:

I love going in there. It's like one click or two clicks, you open up symbol. Uh, sim hub, if I switch wheels I'm that guy that switches wheels based because I like immersion. I'll use my csx3 for any hyper car or any formula car because it's it's a 282 millimeter it's actually a perfect size for it. And I go to dnr and I just select my wheel and it has all my settings already saved. Yeah, it's awesome, dude. I mean I'm telling you the latest update, the 4.3. It makes sense because I mentioned earlier, I have a race this afternoon on the north sliver and the guys are telling me you need to join the discord chat and I'm like. So I'm like, okay, so now I need to program my wheel to control discord. How do I do that? So I went over to dnr and dnr tells me when the the uh, because I can deafen um discord and it'll, it'll automatically change color. So I'd look down. It's red, it's muted, I don't have to guess.

Jason:

No more, it's awesome, dude it's like yeah, dude, it's like, or oh, the DRS thing that you added in then is amazing. It turns yellow when you get, when you get in close to the to the zone and then it starts flashing. It's just another method of telling you get ready. You're about to hit this button. Make sure you press it at the right time.

Daniel:

There's so much in them profiles that I think can easily be missed that people you know someone says it's got drs. Okay, but everyone's got drs. You can add it in sim hub. But actually if you, if you start writing custom javascript code, you can delve into deeper features and functions and you can add things that don't exist and you can have, you know, custom things.

Daniel:

So one of the features that's particularly cool it's kind of like that is in the pit lane. So there's a feature that when you enter the pit lane, if your limiter is not turned on, it flashes red to say you know, if you enter the pit lane and you're speeding, it flashes red even more to say look, you're in the pit lane, there's no limiter and you are going fast. It changes to um to yellow on DD use as kind of a warning when your pit limiter is on to say, okay, you're okay, your limiter's on. You need to know this and if you've got a steering wheel it would be a solid blue button. And then, as you exit the pit lane, a lot of people say I don't know exactly when to deactivate the limiter. Do they wait a second too late just to be safe, or are they turning off too early and risking a penalty. So actually the profile now flashes green. The DDU will flash green to say turn it off. Your wheel button flashes green.

Jason:

It's a nice flash too. You can literally. It literally goes like that. I use that religiously, bro, I want you to know. Then I'm literally staring at my wheel because there's the line there and as soon as it goes green, green, green, I just touch the button and go, and that saves people from having to guess where the line is and be too early and risk a penalty or be too late and lose time.

Daniel:

And there's so many features in the profile that do that that if you want to race competitively, that they will help you do exactly that. And if you want to race to have fun and you just like blinking lights, you know again you can turn them on and they're quite cool features. But so many of these things take so much time to think out and deliver properly. Because, again, take so much time to think out and deliver properly? Because again, there's an there's not an infinite amount of of led in space to display this on and there could be 100 effects across 20 leds. Well, you know, 20 into 100 doesn't go.

Daniel:

So you have to decide what's more important at a certain time and there has to be some, some logic to what. What are we going to display higher up this hierarchy of lists that we need you to see, or what actually can we? Can we drop down a bit? So there's so much thought that goes into. We need to do this or not do this, and and yeah, it's, it's good, it's hard, but it's good, I mean it's once you try this thing it's kind of like a butt kicker.

Jason:

Once you put a butt kicker on your rig and it doesn't work, you're not gonna go race, you fail it yeah you're gonna.

Jason:

You're not going nowhere until you figure out what's going on. That's how I feel about the, the leds, which, honestly, I can comfortably say I've never had an issue with leds working on the wheels. Um, the plugin came out and it's had several uh revisions and but nothing like hardware breaking or any problems really. So I mean hats off to you then. Uh, it's been a solid.

Jason:

When you, when you release something and you and I spoke about this offline but you're like I can't release something just for one specific wheel that I have. If a release is coming out, it's coming out for all of them. That way, everybody has it at the same time, and I think that's a good. It's a good thing to do and it's also a good business model, because now you're standing by your version. Version 4.3 is out, it'll work on all these wheels that we have listed, as promised. So I mean I, I really, I really appreciate that. Um, because what if I go out and buy another wheel that's on your list and to find out, oh no, this wheel is gonna, it's not working yet, we need to wait, but then you have our tour wheels working, you know what?

Daniel:

I mean. So it's kind of yeah, it needs to be a level playing field so that everyone has the same experience, and I think, wow, not that not just the same experience but you mentioned is having different wheels of your own.

Daniel:

If you change your wheel, you need to know your driving experience is consistent. If your csx3 tells you this, you don't want to change that to, let's say, the archer wheel and it can't. That wouldn't be helpful. So all the wheels need to be able to display the information in some way. Okay, the led layout is potentially different, so it might look differently to some degree, and that's why colors are important, because if you use colors, you've got uniformity and you know to look for this color, because it means visual memory so it's important.

Jason:

Yeah, I think that's. Wow, that's a good way of putting it too, you know, because not every wheel is built the same and not every leds, uh setup is shaped the same, but using the same light cues, like the green to go, the red for speeding or the red, you know what I mean. It's like whoa, something's wrong, because red. Red is always a high caution, yeah, a warning. Red is off track, red is wrong, invalidated. Something's bad, so it'll grab your attention, that's what I'm saying.

Jason:

Wow. So with that, dan, I'm going to roll into the next question. This is a service, it's a subscription service, and I just want to ask you you have multiple tiers, and what do they include?

Daniel:

Yeah, sure. So it is a subscription-based service. So people often ask me can we purchase a profile one-off? The answer is always no, for a variety of reasons. People also say, well, I could subscribe, download and then delete, and then you you know I wouldn't pay and you wouldn't know. That is true.

Daniel:

But in order for the dnr to be successful and to carry on delivering updates and I think that's one of the things again that I'm really proud of is that we deliver updates regularly, they're timely and they're not just updates for the sake of giving you an update. I think every update we've delivered has had meaningful content in it and gives people new things that they don't always perhaps know they want and need, but they use it and like how do I live without that? So subscribing allows us to do that. It keeps allowing us to keep pumping the massive amount of hours into the project to keep delivering, and that's why subscription for us is important. The tiers are, you know, I would argue low cost. So when we set this up, I did a lot of research into looking at other sim racing peripherals and subscription services and, like everybody else, I'm a consumer and there comes a point when you can say I've got just too many subscriptions. Do I need this? I think for me some are important and you know it's up to the user to determine which for them is the most valuable.

Daniel:

So our subscription levels start at three pounds a month. Three pounds a month will give people access to the stuff that we think is really important and at the most basic level they need. So three pound will give them all of the steering wheels, all of the rpms, um button boxes and the, the dnr companion profile, because at the most basic level, anyone looking for led profiles is probably looking for an rpm profile. So that's where we start. The second tier is six pounds a month and that, in addition to those profiles, gives people access to some things that are perhaps nice to have or a little bit more advanced in terms of hardware.

Daniel:

So we're looking at things like flag boxes, browse, ambient lighting. They're not crucial to most drivers, which is why they're not in the bottom category, because these are people that want to go over and above, and that subscription tier kind of reflects that. And then we've got a final tier, which is nine pounds a month. That tier doesn't unlock any additional downloads but it does a number of different things. Um, there are a number of incredible people who are, uh, devoted to supporting danium racing and have done so since it's, you know, very early inception, and those people amongst the other subscribers really do help keep the project alive. The nine pound tier allows them to pay just a little bit more every month, um, to give it that little bit of an extra boost and kind of in thanks to that, we try to have we call them dnr surprises, just to sort of, I say, sweeten the deal.

Daniel:

But if we can say, thank you to people for going over and above. We will so um. We're currently giving away a brand new simagic gt neo as an example no, that's, wow, that's not a gifted, um you know, wheel. So simagic didn't say to us hey, give away a wheel.

Daniel:

This is me saying to subscribers to members, I recognize you and I appreciate you and I want to do something to say that I'm grateful for what you've done and you know what? Let's give away a device that you can put one of our profiles on. That will work well and that you're going to have fun. It might be someone that hasn't got that wheel or someone that hasn't been able to delve that far into DNR yet, but it's. It's a small way of saying we see you, we're grateful and we will do what we can to support you for going, you know, over and above. You don't have to, um, but thank you wow.

Jason:

so so you're giving away a sim magic gt, neo. Um, you guys might want to subscribe to this whoever's watching, get a chance to win a wheel and support daniel. I mean, I'm not that guy that download something and shares it or do it, does whatever. You know anything like that. I think when you look at the work that these guys are putting in and you know how much do you really rely on things, right? You know what I mean. I rather pay the price every month for the convenience and to make it easier for me as well.

Jason:

And in addition to that, if you look at this dannynumeracincom and you go to their change log we're being really vague with this stuff, because that change log is massive. You can scroll down the page and it's a lot of changes that you can see where and why it costs, or where your money's going right, what, where, what is it being used for? And it's to support the future development of this. We don't want to lose DNR. We don't want to lose it. We want it to remain in the community and we want it to grow. And how do we grow? Is we got to help each other? We have to support, and that's the bottom line completely and I think people don't

Daniel:

necessarily always understand that the dnr also costs money to run. There's a lot of expense that comes out of dnr to make what it is today and I think this is also important for um, recognizing the efforts that people like nico and thomas. So again, you know the membership, they see part of that because I think it's important to reinvest the money that comes into DNR to make the product better. So you know, I could I think I said this to you, jason, recently you know I could take membership fees and I could go and buy myself a pair of trainers and have fun with that.

Daniel:

But that is not the philosophy and principle of DNR. We the philosophy and principle of DNR we're here to ensure people are having fun and to make sim racing accessible and better for everyone, and that includes me. I'm a consumer and I'm a user and I want to have fun and be a better racer and I think having people like Nico and Thomas help us do that is really important. So your membership kind of goes to all of these places the website, there's so many things but it's pivotal to making sure DNR runs the way it runs. Um, we're very, very grateful for it and um, and hopefully the work, you know, speaks volumes of that and people are enjoying it.

Jason:

All right, daniel. So well, that is an amazing story. I love your products. 4.3 just came out. There's never been a better time to get started with DN. What's in the plug and what DNR entails in more detail? I do have one final question for you, daniel what's in the future? Right, I mean we touched on a lot of different challenges with wheels, because you know you have to own the wheels to actually do the profile, and some people want different wheels and they can't. I mean, you're buying this thing out of your own, you're buying this hardware out of your own pocket. So I mean, that's one of the challenges that we're facing right now with wheels. But what is the future? We're facing right now with wheels, but what is what is the future? What do you see maybe two or three years from now with dnr? Or what if? Is there anything you wanted to reveal on the show? Or what do you where you see it headed?

Daniel:

so we are incredibly busy, always busy, and when I say we put hundreds of hours of work into this, it's not an exaggeration. Every single week, nights, days, you name it, there are hundreds and hundreds of hours that go into this project. Um, we're currently working on some massive projects to improve um user experience in terms of the website, um, the member integration with kofi. It works at it as it is, um, but it could be better, and we for sure recognize that and people say you know, this is clunky or that could be, but we know and we are trying so hard to make that that thing, those things happen. Um, so at the moment, yes, there's a lot of projects kind of on the go. Where do I see it into the future?

Daniel:

Um, we're very lucky today that there are a number of um brands, popular brands within sim racing that do support dnr's work and have provided devices to us to allow us to profile for wheels, to give users, um, you know, incredible profiles. So we're very grateful to those companies that do that. Um, we are at a point where still not every company is has done that yet, um, and maybe that that can't always be the case, but moving forward, it would bring me no greater pleasure than to be able to profile every sim racing piece of hardware that exists so that any user can say you know, I can go and pick up a piece of hardware and I know it just works. I know there are people out there today that will say I will buy a piece of hardware if I can have a dnr profile and if I can't have a profile I'm not having the hardware.

Daniel:

There are people that tell me this regularly and I would love to be able to say to them okay, what wheel do you really want? And we'll make a profile for that. And I think you know, carrying on the way we're going, now people say you're going to hit a limit. There'll be features. Honestly, there is so much that we can do.

Daniel:

Sim racing, I believe, is in its infancy, um, it hasn't once. It's been going for a number of years actually. It's growing and getting more and more popular. I think you've only got to look at f1 teams having their own esport teams to just to show you and televising those races as well. So you can now watch an esports f1 race on certainly in england, on sky sports, which is incredible when you think these are people kind of playing video games. Um, but I think, moving forward, I see that and sim racing is growing.

Daniel:

So to have lots of hardware manufacturers work with us and say you know, we want, we want to do this together. Um, we like making drivers fast and, and I think lots of the tools that DNR provides do that, and there's a lot of companies out there providing solutions to making drivers fast. That might not be hardware, so that's kind of where I see the future. I think I'd like to see more of DNR, or more people hearing about DNR. I'd like to see our profiles reach corners that perhaps they haven't done yet. But yeah, I think we're doing good things so far, very grateful. See our profiles, um reach corners that perhaps they haven't done yet. Um, but yeah, I think I think we're doing good things so far, very grateful to our user base, and I just would like much more of the same, probably I think it is vital to me.

Jason:

I mean to have that. I mean, even if, even if things do slow down if I don't, I don't see them slowing down but we still have new games coming out. We still got ace evo coming out. We still have lmu that's pumping out cars those things are going to need profiles. They're going to need when ace evo comes out you're going to probably be. Then you're probably going to be a little busy over there. Uh, I don't know what the size of the cars that they have over there, but that might take a toll.

Jason:

But I mean, yeah, just, I mean it's a small price. In my opinion. It's a small price to pay to get um one-to-one data from your wheel and be connected to the car, because that's what his profiles do. They connect you to the car and they also connect you to the track because you know, having a, a red flag or a yellow flag flash your wheel and your lights above you is kind of nice, I mean it. It keeps you aware and awareness is fast, period. If you're aware what's going on on track, you're fast. If you're not aware, you're just, you're racing like this with your eyes closed, basically yeah, or or in vr or in vr which we can't fix vr.

Jason:

I don't know what we could do about that one but don't do that, I would.

Erick:

I would love it I can get some of this functionality in vr just don't right.

Daniel:

Yeah, at least where force you miss, don't do it ah there you go.

Jason:

We were talking about a possible ar, like you know. Like you know ar like when you look down, you can see the, the, the wheel it's happening with.

Daniel:

I've seen people yeah, there is, you know, vr out there that does similar now. So it kind of emerges the two. So you've got hardware that you can still see, but you've also kind of got that virtual kind of top space.

Jason:

So so that again that would be awesome when it comes out mass. So is there anything, uh, for us, daniel, that you have before we close this one? Um, it's been a great, great chat with you so far, man. I really appreciate having you here and listening to your story, because there's a lot that goes into, uh, what you do, because people might view it from a simple, from a one view, right, but there's multiple things going on that people not might not know about. So having this, having you here to speak about it, is invaluable to the sim racing community. But do you have anything for the chicane podcast that you would?

Daniel:

like to share. I would like to just say again, thank you very much for inviting me onto your podcast. I watched avidly every week. I remember watching Constantinos' podcast and more than once and again, mike from sim racing. Then I joked, I listened to it in the car. So I couldn't watch it because I was listening to it as I was driving. So I had made the habit of getting home, putting it on YouTube and watching it again, knowing what the answers were but just wanting to see it. So, yeah, I'm really grateful to be invited here to chat with you. It's great to do that and I'm very thankful. You it's, you know, it's great to do that and I'm very thankful.

Daniel:

I've got no exciting upcoming news for you because, of course, 4.3 has just released, um, but version 4.3.1 is coming as a hot fix, unfortunately very, very soon, um, but it does bring a couple of of cool fixes into it, things that we thought we had working into, new features that aren't quite there, but that will be here, I would say, within 48 hours or so, so you may have that in your hands by the time this releases. And then, uh, version 4.4. So 4.4 is already in the works, uh, and that means button boxes are getting a big overhaul. So steering wheels just had theirs and it's now the turn of button boxes. So look out for version 4.4. If you are exciting button box user, I love it. Um, and yeah, just just keep an eye on the website. On the discord, lots of good things are happening. I don't want to give too much away, but if you're a user, um, I would imagine you will have a good end to 2024 perfect, eric.

Jason:

What do you? What do you? Have any? Any last round tables here before we shut this one down?

Erick:

No, I was going to ask about consoles, but I know we're dealing with a lot of limitations as far as that goes. That'd be great Something to consider We'll have that in the future, but I'm pretty aware of the limitations there, so I guess I'll continue my plans to get a PC.

Jason:

There you go.

Erick:

Yeah, all right, that's it.

Jason:

Thanks, Eric. So I just want to close with this. If you guys have any, if you guys haven't tried DNR's profiles, I highly recommend that you check out first the SimRacingDen's video which explains how his plugin works. But check out their discord. Check out DanielNewmanRacingcom. Give him a try. Try it for a month. I don't know, it's even the basic plan will get you LEDs working on your wheel and you'll see. Um you know how special his product really is. So I just want to give him a shout out and I want to thank him here on the show, not just for coming on the show, of course. The pleasure is ours to have you here.

Jason:

Thank, you but also for all the work that you're doing, because without that work, you know what I mean. That means I would have to go in there and do these types of things that I would have never thought that I needed and now that I have it, it's kind of like, wow, this is actually working to my advantage and it increases my um, you know immersion if it makes me feel like, well, I'm actually my wheels connected to the car. I bought this $1,500 wheel and now when you add a profile in there that everything works and it's kind of like, wow, this the wheel feels like it, like you just add more value to your, to your hardware when you install the profiles. Same thing with the lovely dashboard. So shout out to Constantinos. We love the guy and we also love DNR stuff, so give him a chance. Give him a chance.

Jason:

If you have any questions for DNR, we'll cover that on the show. Of course, email us at thechicanepodcast at gmailcom. And I just want to say thank you so much you both Eric and Daniel for making the time to come on the show and sit down and have a chat with us. Really appreciate it, and I just want everybody out there to have a great start of your week, thank you.

Daniel:

Thank you.

People on this episode

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Jason Rivera

Host
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Erick Kelly

Co-host
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Jeff Smart

Co-host