Why is it so hard to get a theme?⁠›››

I have tried both the themes suggested to download from ibog but neither one has a .atd file or a .atf file or a .atvotheme file.

You can't open either theme in atvo or the theme editor. The ibog youtube channel has a howto but it's for an older version of ATVO.

I love that ATVO works properly for timing and camera control. IRTV crashes constantly for me so the fact that ATVO works is great. But without a theme I have no overlays for timing or info or anything.

Am I missing something?

I believe the old exported (compiled) themes (adt files) should still work in ATVO. They cannot be imported in Theme Editor anymore though since a recent update. You can check with the creator whether he still has the editable (.atvotheme) version of the theme.

Further, we realize we do not ship with any themes and that makes it a bit harder to use ATVO. However building a theme is work and it is a constant compromise to spend that work on a simple ("bad") theme, or rather spend it on making ATVO and the editor better so everyone can make their own. In the end, we feel most broadcasters really want their own unique look anyway, so including a theme may not help many of them.

That said, there are plans to include a theme in ATVO in the near future, but nothing substantial yet and it will depend on other factors how soon it can be done.

Just try to create you own Theme. Ok especially at the beginning it costs a lot of time to understand atvo.

But when you're a bit in it, you can do almost everything you want!

Here's a really good tutorial for beginners.
https://youtu.be/Gd6dVyzy2e0

"In the end, we feel most broadcasters really want their own unique look anyway, so including a theme may not help many of them."

Okay, well, just to let you know I'm a voice actor and performer with experience commentating on sports & motorsport and I would like to be able to see how the whole thing works before I go nuts customizing. I'm not a graphic designer.

If there was a super simple base theme I could use to get started and then customize over time that would be a huge leap forward. I can't even hire someone to do that design for me because there's no framework for me to know what to ask them to make. No example PSD, no nothing.

As it is, with no theme, ATVO opens with a blank control panel, no buttons, no overlay, zilch. The documentation explains that I need to load a theme first -- https://atvo.appgineering.com/Documentation/LoadTheme -- But there's no theme to load!

Thanks for the video, Christian.

Am I to understand that in order to create a theme, I have to learn a whole new editing software? There's no convention to use usual graphic design tools, e.g. Adobe suite?

It's like you don't want anyone to ever use your program unless they have heaps of time on their hands and/or are already on your development team or both.

It seems to me like a waste of your hard work and a waste of a very powerful program. You're obviously brilliant programmers but wow.

We used to include a theme long ago, but it was designed after F1 graphics which is not allowed anymore, so we took that theme out. Unfortunately we never replaced it with another theme. Again, we are working on it, but it costs time to do it properly.

Your comments are fair and we do recognize the issue, it just takes time to resolve. Please also understand we provide this software for free so that everyone can get into the hobby without any commitment. But it does take some effort on your side to create a theme, this is unavoidable.

As for the design itself, you can still use Photoshop or Illustrator or whatever you want to design your theme in terms of images and graphics. In the Theme Editor you mostly control placement of those graphics, control flow (when to hide/show things) and connection to the sim data. This is not something that "Adobe suits" can do obviously. There is also a 'Import PSD' feature which may help to speed up the initial design as it will create widgets for you for each layer in the PSD.

Please let me know if you ever create a patreon or any other way to contribute to your work: jim@jimhodgson.com

I would be willing to contribute money to get a workable base theme that anyone could use. Obviously you couldn't use Fox or F1 assets.

I think this would be a huge leap for you, especially since the demand for iracing and twitch are the highest they've ever been thanks to COVID-19.

James H. wrote:
Please let me know if you ever create a patreon or any other way to contribute to your work: jim@jimhodgson.com

I would be willing to contribute money to get a workable base theme that anyone could use. Obviously you couldn't use Fox or F1 assets.

I think this would be a huge leap for you, especially since the demand for iracing and twitch are the highest they've ever been thanks to COVID-19.

James, I have a theme I have been working on as it takes a lot of time to learn. I am willing to share the ones I have made or found with you in return for anything you come up with that is not included in my theme. If that would work with you email me at info@showmedirt.com

Thanks but I don't think I'm going to have anything to offer.

I tried editing a theme in the SDK/IDE theme editor they have and it's just too much work. Respect to the people who do that kind of thing, it's just not what I do.

If someone has a theme that works and doesn't violate anyone's copyright, I'm interested to hear what they'd charge to license it to me.

i spend a free f1 style overlay  on my Website   i build overlay for leagues and private. lg Jojo

Hi James,

I think I saw a donation from you so thanks for that!

Meanwhile I have started turning some of our own theme designs into a theme editor theme to include with ATVO in the future. Not sure how long it will take me to finish it and it will likely be pretty basic, but at least you'd have something to get started and use as a template or example.

@james its a zipped or rar folder forget which one.
You unzip or unrar it and it has the atvotheme file in there to open in the editor. This is ibog

Nick Thissen wrote:

Meanwhile I have started turning some of our own theme designs into a theme editor theme to include with ATVO in the future. Not sure how long it will take me to finish it and it will likely be pretty basic, but at least you'd have something to get started and use as a template or example.

Nick, that would be awesome if you did that ..

I can't speak for everyone else .. but i would even be happy with a super-basic wireframe ...

As others have mentioned .. many of us want to do our own style and design .. personally, I have no interest in "ripping off" your designs which I know would have taken hours to create.

What I would find most useful is just basic building blocks, mostly to see how you have organized your pages, how you get your data, and how you bind that data.

I would actually prefer that the theme is ugly. Just squares and rectangles .. it's not the look i'm interested in, it's the mechanics behind the scenes of how you get it all working ..

I would like to learn from reverse-engineering a theme that I know works, and then apply my own design and style to it ..

Thanks for continuing to update this and making it available to the iRacing community!

-Jeremy

I've had the idea to make a slightly more concise tutorial on how I built my themes - going over the basics and providing a sample file for people to play with.

Just a matter of finding the time at some point to do it... LOL

Nick Thissen wrote:
Hi James,

I think I saw a donation from you so thanks for that

You're welcome. Thanks for all your great work. ATVO is great.

I hope you're able to continue development in the future.