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UKGTL - Season 0-A (TC65) - Round 4 at Magny-Cours Club

Please make sure you have read at least the Driving Standards (https://www.simracing.org.uk/index.php?pid=7#driving_standards) section of the SimRacing rules  (https://www.simracing.org.uk/index.php?pid=7)before racing.

Date: Thursday 19th January

Practice 1: 8:30pm (15 mins)
Qual 2: 8:45pm (25 mins)
Race: 9:10pm (20 mins - 24 laps)

Cars allowed: Any TC65 Class car.
Track: Magny-Cours Club
Time of Day Setting: 22:00 (NIGHT RACE)

Server: SimRacing.co.uk (UKGTL)

See UKGTL Season 0 Announcement post (https://www.simracing.org.uk/smf/index.php?topic=1038.msg13732#msg13732) for extra information on Season 0.

Stange, not very many posts here  :o, the night race must scare people off I guess. It sounds like a fun idea, but it's not a smart idea. Night racing is just too hard on the system and hardly anybody can run smoothly at night. I have to turn things down on my PIV 3.2 with X800PE, and that says pretty much.
I will be in a Mini and will see if anybody else joins  :D.

I'm sure I will be there (ADSL permitting, seems okay tonight), just haven't got anything interesting to say about it. ;)

Night racing doesn't do anything for me, the lights aren't realistic enough for me to enjoy it. :'(

It would be great fun as I think the club circuit is the small little rectangle shape layout isnt it? I think we had a fun race there ages ago didn't we? if so it was a blast in the mini  8) I'm sure people will really enjoy it anyway  :)

Think I'll also take a Mini for this.

Oh - Will join Ruskus as well just to keep him company. ;D
 Will have to drive without lights if I am to have any chances at all of driving  :P- my comp is really not up to night racing.  ::)

Using stealth mode than  :P. Gonna be fun for the people you overtake... ;D

Will see how my ADSL fares over the next 30 minutes but right now it's looking about as stable as a chocolate teapot. :'(

Sounds like my connection last night. You're not on Tiscali are you?  :)

I don't think I'm going to be able to do this race guys - just tried Magny in the dark, and I get a lovely slideshow where there should be a game - I'm afraid my computer just isn't up to it :(

Because it's a night race one of the graphics settings you can whack down and you wont notice is shadows. Set it at low or medium as you can't see them at night anyway. Turning down headlight effect is reasonable too. On the lowest setting it only lights the track, medium it lights track and cars and to a certain degree edge of circuit and at high it lights cars, track and everything else.

Other big performance boosters (if you haven't already done them). In your .plr file...

Trackside Characters="0"
Disable All Character Anims="1"

And running with Anti Aliasing is a performance hit so turn that off in the 3dconfig. AA at night is not worth it really as you can't see anything anyway. So if something has to give just for one race then make it be AA.

I thought I'd accidently loaded up Destruction Derby tonight... crazy stuff! Entered Q2 late with just enough time for a couple of laps. Got somewhere in the teens and then got a fantastic start and saw myself into single figures as we approached the first corner. Unfortunately I received a big whack from behind and it span me off and I stalled the engine. By the time I got going I was so last it's just not funny  :'( The rest of lap one saw cars flashing on and off constantly and you just couldn't tell where anyone was. Hit an Alfa that suddenly materialised parked across the track in front of me and took both headlights out... rest of the race in darkness ::) ;D
Ended up 8th in the end but got a stop/go on the very last corner of the very last lap and was shunted down the leaderboard as I watched the AI drive the car. Doh!

Great fun as usual- GTL is brill for close racing. I thought we all probably should have been mindful of the night setting and taken extra care around each other though to be honest- it wasn't funny without headlights ;)

Well, that was an interesting one!

I wasn't planning on racing but the temptation overwhelmed me at about 10 mins before kickoff  ;D

I experienced a few technical problems. Framerate was fine but I had the disappearing car thing on lap 1 or 2 (sorry, don't remember exactly) when I was behind Mark Jonzo, he disappeared for a moment and poof! I was in front of him  :-\

Truetom was stopped dead on the track, I'm guessin this is the old GTR "stuck ghost car" bug, I didn't try to drive through him to test though!

Had a great race with Don for about 10 laps until he made a small mistake and braked a bit late for T1, lucky for me or I'd never had got past!

Saw Shark looming in my rear view for a while and defended valianty until he dropped back, not sure what happened there.

I wasn't paying much too much attention to my position until I noticed I was 4th and JonM hit the pits putting me in 3rd!!! Fantastic, especially as my lap times were around the 52s mark, a bit of tortoise and hare going on there I think! I probably had the slowest 'fastest lap'!

Guess there were plenty of incidents in the dark and I played it safe.

Anyhoo, the driving standard was excellent all round tonight, best so far apart from a couple of niggles;
1. PLEASE, NO CHAT DURING QUALIFYING!
2. Speeding in the pit lane during qualifying is not OK either, please use the limiter.

Pops.

Frame rate was low on lap 1 but after that fine. 20 on lap 1 (maybe a little less) and then 35-50 for the rest I'd say usually over 40.

Lap 1 was a mess, there were cars dissapearing and reappearing all over the shop, after 3/4 of lap 1 is settled for me and was fine for the rest of the race. Have to say the online stuff has been less solid than GTR or rFactor (GTR major bugs aside, the actual solid connection stuff has been better in GTR than GTL). I wonder if there really was a very good reason 16 was the player limit to start with. Anyway, there you go.

Rest of the race, well too much to write, snatched 5th on last corner.

Oh and Falcon versus Mini, errrrrrrrr, Mini loses. Any sort of contact from the yank tanks and those minis just get chucked off like a rubber doll.  ;D :o :P

Apparently I got taken out by my Team mate. Didn't have a clue at the time, was happily following had an awkward moment coming through last chicane with an Abarth back marker and I guess peeps behind didn't expect us to be going slower.

One thing I noticed was that with the name tags on the mirror was virtually useless as the headlights of cars behind just muffled out of view with the really bright white line and name tag so it was hard to see what the person behind was doing. Wish i'd turned it off now, but there you go.

Tough one tonight. But proved that there are no best cars in this class.
Quallified in 2nd just 0:00.011 behind JonM. Took 1st in lap one and just a few laps later he kamikazed me and took 1st. Soon afterwards I took the lead again and stayed there.
Was very crowded at the track but no problems with lapping people.
100% win record, too bad this ain't the real season with million dollar prizemoney. :P

P.S. I think it was Minton I hit at qually. I couldn't avoid it anymore in the last chicane, sorry for that. Hope I didn't cost you the fastest time  :-\

Well that was horrid, I waited patiently for the countdown, looked up and saw green, and went, except they were the pit lights, doh! stop/go. Anyway it didn't matter as I got hit badly at the start with everyone else, I saw one guy go over the pit wall! Before all this I managed to get the join but can see nobody bug I enjoy so much. and there was the stuck Truetom bug, and the dissapearing cars bug.... Hmm.

Anyway I drove like a twat, sorry about that guys  :-[

I'm with Shark, this game just isnt stable online really for me even when its not near the previous 16 limit. I remember rF was released with 16 reccomended max, and as this is rF0.9+SimBin extra's I'm thinking its stuck like that.

Nice race  :) Great overtaking on the last lap shark, I couldn't believe it :o There I was thinking about nicking 5th and all of a sudden I'm in 7th. Classic  ;) I had trouble in the race at the last corner before s/f line, just couldn't judge it in the dark and paid the stop/go penalty  :(  I also cocked up big time coming in for stop/go, totally missed the pitlane hit the barrier and had to go around one more time  :-[ Enjoyed the race nevertheless, had a few battling laps with Ruskus in his mini and MAD R-I-P in his alfa. Sorry for misjudged braking Ruskus, I'll have to report myself.
WTF tried this after the race and got 35fps increase :o I just can't believe it. Why is this not an option ingame. I'm sure everyone would sacrifice these an extra 50% increase in fps.

Not my favorite track by any means, although with the number of people that we had on track, you were always going to be in a battle with people.
I started 13th, a little off the pace, but steered clear of trouble, and was soon in a crowd from 8th-12th.  Don't remember going past more than a couple of people.  Was 8th when I was on lap 21/22 (I think) when I noticed a shadow in my rear view, Paul W had snuck up on me - I didn't see him due to his knackered lights, he muscled past me on what turned out to be the last lap, but I guess he got a stop/go so I finished 8th - and in the points, so I'm well happy with that!
Should be able to make tomorrow's race, although neither of the next 2 races are my favorite tracks - I'll definately see if I can better tonights performance.

Had fun racing with Mark and a couple of others, well until I got a DQ again.
Might finish one of these races one day. :)

Trackside Characters is in the advanced options in game actually.

Disable All Character Anims is only in plr though. Thing with that is you wont get marshals waving flags with those off so you have to rely on HUD for blue flags and stuff (which is fine by me, never look for little orange chaps anyway).

Hope you are kdding there mate  :D. Not need to report at all, I might have braked too early there, because it was at the beginning of the race and I couldn't find the braking/turning point. So I'll report myself in and do some jailtime  ;)

Well not one of my best races qualified third which i was pleased with. Got smashed to pieces in the first corner probably because my car was jumping all over the place as my frame rate was about 12.  Carried on even though my car had a 100 degrees toe out on the left front and then got hit again half way round the first lap again probably due to my frame rate being so bad. Sorry if i screwed up anybodies race but i did turn down most of the grapics settings but it didnt make much difference.
FPS didnt get any better during the race but still enjoyed myself  :).

No worries for the bump in practice Ruskus, my lap couldnt have been that good as you were catching me fast. ;)

 ;D

Replay is up.

Couldn't really enjoy that. Had trouble seeing far enough ahead to judge the turn-in points accurately, so my lines were a bit erratic. Was never fully in control as a result. Don't think I'll bother with any more night races.

Frame rate was fine after turning off anti-aliasing. Was disappointing to see lots of bad warp though. Think we had 19 starters, GTL does appear to be less stable than GTR for actual online racing.

Qualified well, made a good start then had the mother of all battles with Rsms PG ( I think,sorry if I'm wrong  :-[ ) was concentrating too much on the race!  When he seemed to understeer on the s/f line so I dived in and managed to make it stick, hope I didn't tap you or anything. Then had a good 'ol fight with JonM got past once but then he got me back when I understeered at T1  >:( . Tyres seemed to be losing grip so I just dropped back little bit for the next few laps. Ruskus I just could not catch you. But hopefully we kept you honest!  ;)

Then JonM went into pits and I was in second WTF  :o
frame rate was a bit kak, 30 ish, and saw a lot of warping on first lap, I've got a 6600GT so I am a little surprised at this but hey ho wasn't too bad.  May try the plr file tips to see if they make any difference

Not going to be able to make the next week races 'cos I'm on nights  :'(

cya people

Once you get used to not waiting till you see turn in points and instead just turn in early it becomes a lot easier. That's part of night racing, driving by heart rather than sight.

Did you!!!!, Absolutely. At the end when people were being lapped my heart started pounding hard because you were still very close by. I was looking more in the rearview mirror than straight on :).

Doh!!!!!

Looked while at work today and couldn't see any race tonight ( should have gone to SpecSavers) oh well when is the next one  lol

Qualed 5th, pb for me in a Falcon, under 50 sec, was quite satisfied. Started well, gaining on Mad-Ripp, then got disconected. Wtf!  >:(

Really enjoyed the battle with Madd - I did feel a tap once, but nothing out of the ordianry - just normal racing. Sadly couldnt run consistent laps so lost tuch with the leaders soon and than started to close again. Than I got a few cut warnings and A Stop/Go. After serving it I rejoined just behind Ruskus and than made space for Madd and Jon(I think). After that I tried to go for a good time, but got another stop/go and abandoned the race.
It was horrid for me though as I really cant get along with the Mini and also in the dark I have to have the lights turned off to even be able to play. So it is no wonder I got the Cut track warnings. Ruskus was fantastic again - I had nothing to counter him this time (I will just blame my inability to drive the Mini properly).

Too bad that I missed that .plr file trick - might have helped me a bit. Anyhow I am looking forward for tommorow,I just hope that l will be back on pace though

About the pit speeding - sorry about that, wont happen again.  :-[

Cheers PG

Was going to miss this one as i had raced 4 nights on the trot already, but an ill missus and race addiction got the better of me. :P
Joined during praccy and had a go with mustang & abarth but they were both crap on this tight circuit, so got my trusty alfa out the garage once more.

Had no frame-rate or connection probs, other than the disapearing cars flashing on/off on lap 1 & 2, which caused some chaos and i thumped someone quite hard (may be Minton?) so sorry for that, lost one of my headlights which made making out turn in points tricky for certain spells.

Had some great battles with Greg in his cortina, shark, micheal b and pops in their minis and then later with Don in his cortina, real close, good clean (mostly) racing.
Joined a team mate train in 3rd,4th & 5th for last few laps but we all lost time being too courteous to each other and that sneaky shark closed on me and then made a daring lunge across the finish line to nick 5th off me, i didnt know it was last lap or would have slammed the door on his grey nose !! ;)

Not so keen on the short magny, feels a little mickey-mouse but the night aspect made it interesting and the cars looked great with headlights and flaming exhaust belches.

sorry about the tap hope it wasn't too hard, I also let you re-pass me after hairpin 'cos I cut soooo much of the entry to it!!! didn't want to be DQ , it was such a good fight with you!

No worries - I barely noticed it :)
I was affraid that you would acctually crash when you were doing that pass-would have been a real shame.