SimRacing.org.uk

Endurance Championship - Season 2, Round 1 at Barcelona

Date: Sunday 19th February

Practice 1: 8:00pm (30 mins)
Qual 2: 8:30pm (30 mins)
Warmup: 9:00pm (2 mins)
Race: 9:02pm (80 mins)

Cars allowed: those classed as GT or NGT, according to each driver's registered class. A list of which cars are in which class can be found here (https://www.simracing.org.uk/index.php?ind=lm2&group=7). Seat Toledo, Lotus Elise, BMW Z3M and Porsche GT3 Cup are not permitted.
Weather: Will be decided just before the race based on real-world weather.

Server: UKGTR Endurance S2
Password: Will be emailed to those that need it.

Notes:
(1) Please try to arrive at least 15 minutes prior to qualifying, during Practice 1.
(2) Reserve drivers should wait till 5 minutes before end of Practice 1 before joining (8:25pm) so that they only take up genuine free spots.
(3) See  UKGTR Season 2 Info (https://www.simracing.org.uk/index.php?ind=lm2&group=15) for general Endurance Season 2 info.
(4) Please make sure you are fully aware of the UKGTR Rules (https://www.simracing.org.uk/index.php?pid=7)
(5) Season will be run using a UKGTR carpack which will need to be installed prior to racing. Details of this pack can be found elsewhere.

 ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D

Just seen my, and kc's, standing. Please end the competition now ;).

I could have this completely wrong, and if I have apologies.

I have been assessing the numbers "involved" in the championship this season, and it seems to me that there are probably 16 Full Time drivers approx, that will fill spaces on the server each week. That leaves about 50 people chasing 8 slots. Now I know some of the registered people will probably never bother to attend even 1 race, but if that figure is 50% then that still leaves 25 people for 8 slots, which is gonna mean a lot of  :'(  people.

I have never experienced an Enduro season, but this could get quite tricky, with Reserves attempting to join a little "earlier" to get a drive etc.

Cheers

Rob

Last season we had even more chasing spots in two divisions. To be sure the first 2 or 3 races will be busy but after that attendence tends to drop off dramatically and by mid season I'd be amazed if I was offering at least 3 or 4 spots in both of each class to reserves. By race 7 or 8 of last season both divisions were like ghost towns and given all the overhead of organising and moderating a whole nother division, alongside the arrival of GTL and maybe even rF championships would be a colossal waste of energy.

Ok Dave, thanks for clearing that up.  :)

Cheers

Rob

Have to ask....but do reserve drivers with a skin in the car pack get preferential treatment when joining? ??? ;)

I assume not as Ive not read it anywhere but is there any rhyme or reason to the order in which reserves get to join?

The person with the fastest clicking finger at 8.25 :) i guess

hehe, more like the 8 guys that cheat in at 8:23  ;)

No, it's strictly "fastest fingers first".

Thanks to a very kind Haiku there should be a second server up. I don't believe it has any official capacity but is there to give those who don't make the main race a fallback option, all that practice will still count for something. The race will be the same, including the weather setting. Please treat it as such and race with the same ettiquete that you would on our server.

This server will be running 15 mins behind the main one.

Including points scoring?

The short answer is "no", because with points will come moderation, registration, and something else ending in 'ation' which I haven't thought of yet. If server exports are available it's possible the the results may be published as semi-official fun races.

Just thought you all might like a good eyeful of the opposition before we disappear off into the distance on Sunday  :D

(http://www.popabawa.f2s.com/uploads/files/Group_widescreen.jpg)

Thanks again to Shark for all his help & advice with the rendering :)

I was going to run my 7 driver mini server for a fun race, as i dont think i'll choose the main races yet.  But i'll look out for Haiku's overflow server first.

FRUSTRation !

Cheers

Rob

LITIGation  ;D

Followed by
MITIGation  ;D

your giving me a serious case of CONSTAPation

..got to be ASSASSINation  :)

Looks like practice server is on Oschers, any chance it can be Barcelona with carpack.. quite fancy a few hotlaps tonight if possible?

oops no worries already on it - stupid racemore!!

hmm missed the point of this joke!! Thought you were on about what happens to reserves that join before five mins from end of P1.

This is one of the saddest days of my life. I have hardware problems, game is freezing and I won't be able to start the season tonight.  :'(

That's what it comes from last minute upgrades on Saturday. Good luck to all racers, GO PENGUINS!

Hi Tom can you not go back to the old set up cheers gerald

TT, as last resort can you not do a system restore? not ideal i know but im a noob with pcs.

TT contact me, had a similar problem recently and found a solution for it without formating

Just noticed that this is wrong - you should join using a car in the class for which you're registered. A list of which cars are in which classes for UKGTR purposes can be found here (https://www.simracing.org.uk/index.php?ind=lm2&group=7).

The  Toledo, Elise, Z3M and GT3 Cup don't fall into NGT or GT classes and are thus not permitted.

Car Classes

The Corvette and G2 Viper will be classified as GT cars, and eligible for GT points.
The 911 Bi-Turbo, Mosler, Vertigo and Morgan will be classified as N-GT cars, and eligible for N-GT points.

C? I can be helpful too! :D

T

According to the Beeb, Barcelona is 17C and sunny :D:D (Wish I was there)

http://wwwa.accuweather.com/world-maps-satellite.asp?partner=forecastfox&myadc=0&traveler=0&type=ir&large=0&anim=STILL&site=EURM

Hope that works as well :D

There's a plugin for Firefox for this btw! :D

T

I "upgraded" my hardware - proc, graph and mamaplate. Seems some things work and some don't. GTR don't, lol. Nothing to do until monday, my "personal hardware advisor" (hardware seller we used to call those guys in the past) thinks that a motherboard is not in a perfect state (though it's supposed to be new) and he apologized several times allready. Like this would do any good for tonight.  >:(

Anyway I'm first on his list in monday morning. He comes to me before he (we) go to work.  :)

Have a good one!  :-*

TT Did you reinstall OS or just delete mobo, graph drivers etc?

Jam's right .... definitely needt to re-install OS after mainboard upgrade or else it'll always be buggy.

TT is it freezing in the menus or when you get in car?
Reason I ask is because after my upgrade the game was locking up in the car menu system.
If so then go to your bios and turn 'fast-right' to off, or to the opposite of whatever it is. With my ATI card it definitely needs to be off.

Hope you make it.....

Always got to reinstall OS after major upgrade like mobo. And got to install things in right order. Mobo drivers first, direct X second, gfx drivers third, audigy fourth and then peripherals..

Hope you can get back soon TT, Goodluck dude :)

Awww..... TT, I feel for you  :(

Good luck and I hope your back racing very soon :)

Not necessarily. This is only really necessary if you change chipset manufacturer and even then you may be able to get away with it.

Jakob

Indeed Jacob, I've had mobo changes working stable without os re-install as well. Including GTR btw.  :)

GTRank:
Barcelona (1)    PORSCHE 911 GT3-RS    NGT    01:45.939    00:00.286    Simulation    Remove
Barcelona (1)    FERRARI 360 MODENA    NGT    01:45.939    00:00.286    Simulation    Remove

Any1 got a clue which car I should take for tonight ^^^ ?  ???

LOL!

:D

T

Vertigo? :P

BTW I'm starting the server for the first time tonight so if it all goes horribly wrong you can blame me. :D :o ;D

/me blames Dave

 :o ;D ::) :P :-* :-* :-*

T

Awww... no Bi-T Tyf? I'll miss it <sniff>  :'(

Lol

Cheers

Rob

Actually you don't always have to reinstall, I had similar problems recently after upgrade. After many many hours of faffing around I was pointed in the direction of a superb utility called registry fix, ran it found 468 errors relating to shared dll's and old drivers, cleaned em out, rebooted hey presto!!!

I should add that I cleaned out graph, mobo, sound drivers etc so that when you reboot after installing new mobo etc it forces windows to do a hardware search. Thats quite a simple explaination i do have a guide to it if anyone needs it

Mister server operator/racers, its in the backup lobby, I hope its not gonna cause probs

Fozz

Grrr, I'd forgotten how awful the GTR lobby system is. >:(

Will give it until 15 past the hour, make a decision then.

whats the ip? would that bypass the lobby system?
a pain but beats no server

Usually a restart puts it in main lobby..

Iain, the name is games.avonrise.co.uk you can stick it in the ip field, that method isn't reliable tho, YYMV

How do I get into the backup lobby?  - the rest of us a re in the main lobby .....

Yeh thats the problem Mo, what use is a backup, if its got totally different servers in it.

The main lobby is back up again, btw.

Thanks for kind words, guys!  :)

I !once! managed to come onto the track and got 3 1fps in 30 seconds and then everything just froze in black screen. Couldn't restart the game after that. I gave up. See you on next event. Good luck tonight!

Okay, server restarted with 15mins practice and in the main lobby.

Too bad TT, hope you get it sorted for round 2. :-\

nope guys, this is useless, ive been stuffed in the backup lobby 3 times, joined 5 times and I've never seen another car and its always 0 degrees. hope you have a good race.

Fozz

Quick one again....  >:(

Can somebody please explain to me why I couldn't get back in the server when there were 8 minutes of practise time left?

There arent more than 24 ft drivers are there?

Better luck next time

There were definitely only 22 in there when the clock ticked 8:25 - I saw the last two go in immediately after I gave them the green light as reserves.

Well could have been a bit later I think 

I was put in the backup lobby a few times that's why I was late in the first place. When I finally joined the server I had no sound. I could all sounds but the ones from my own car ???

When I finally joined the server I had no sound. I could all sounds but the ones from my own car Huh


Same here , nightmare!!! And for some reason there was 2 cars in my garage.

Seems we had the same problem. First time I went on track the garage door was shut. Second time I had no sound anymore  ???

Hi all, apologies to all that came upon my carcass...

Had a funny stuttering thing going on in qualify that happened about twice during the session, re-joined and it didn't happen again.

Got into the race and it started happening every three laps, then every two until every lap got blighted by this pustule of a thing!

Apologies in particular to teamy Mo whom I nearly gave a heart attack to on the second last corner being stationary (finally) and facing him on the kerb after spinning.

grrrr.....

I can't believe it!  There I was happily going along at my own pace in 7th place when I decided to take my pitstop with 35 minutes to go.  What did I go and do?? A David Bloomin' Coulthard!  I dunno, perhaps I underestimated how worn my tyres were, but thwack!  Understeered into the pitwall.  Engine gone.  :-[

I am absolutely kicking myself!  I just can't believe it! Arrrgghhh!!!!

that´s the first time I have 1fps in a race, I just couldn't believe my Luke

sorry for any of the 2 or 3 ngt guys I had contact with. If it makes anyone feel any better Im pretty sure I got worse than I gave. Seem a couple times guys over slowed with me behind and just had nowhere to go and made contact.
Anyway, Sorry again.

Ok, lol, before I comment on the race and u peeps comment on my driving ;) :P, here's something:

Try this: Start up GTR, take the Bi-T, pick Barca as track, drive out of the pit and at touching the first corner curb... Let someone, preferably your dog so you can kick him later (or ur wife for some ;)), take out the force feedback of ur wheel!?
Doesn't really drive nice does it? ROFL!

This is what sort of happened for me during the pace lap!? Not all though, rofl. Here's what's even more weird: As soon as I hit a curb after all this happened... The FF would all of a sudden kick in again! Haha!  ??? :o >:(

If I don't get points for wherever the heck I finished, lol, I'm not showing this kind of perseverence EVAH again! LOL!

T

Well an intersting race to say the least.
Grats to the podium, especially Jon, great drive.

Pity about the guys with sound problems, unfortunately its a common occurrence with addon cars, hopefully it can be sorted.

Phew, thats my longest GTR race by far that i've competed in...knackering isnt it !? I was soaked in sweat and had acheing back and neck lock by race end  :P

Had some great battles with Don, Tyf and SBG for about half hour early on, then more with Don & Pops later. Couldnt find any extra pace out of my setup despite the extra grip on track later. Had two low speed spins throughout whole race which was annoying >:( but not as bad as a lot of others were having :-\
Brought it home 11th overall and 4th in NGT.

Well done to Mo and Jon C for their respective class wins, top driving. 8)

really sorry 2 greg 130 for the contact, was running well but had the throttle lock on going down main straight with about 8mins left with ended my race :-[

Had a great battle with two of the NGT legends in the early part of the race, but was pretty much alone in the 2nd part.
I was chasing down Ginster, and slowly gaining and with over 30 seconds to the following car, I decided to throw caution to the wind and promptly spun it :P. Oh well. Didn't lose anything.
 Was more than a little surprised to be qualified 3rd (NGT) with a 1.45.9

Jakob

Results and replay (assuming I did it right) in the usual places.

I was sure I read in rules or somewhere about a team speak server? or was that a differant league? if so is there a link to the info?

That was fun. Distance seemed about right ;)
A few of the top guns were out of action tonight, so it left a nice chance for us mortals to pick up a few points, which I may have done if I hadn't run out of fuel with 1 to go (lol, thats my excuse) ;D
GT boys were very careful and clean with their overtaking, thanks.
Top race really enjoyed it!

Had an appalling qually with sound, no sound, sound again

Decided a gamble on stop strategy, went with meds all round and enough fuel for an hour. All was going really well, nice scrap with pops until I got a tap from behind, sent me off, racing incident, but effectively ended my top ten place chances. Second leg of the race I went with sprint setup, softs all  round low fuel load. Made up a few places

Gutted to view all these technical pains  :'(. Its all very reminiscent of season 1 so not sure if car pack is to blame.

Pretty happy, now, with terrible quali. It left me in a Legend sandwich for beginning of race and I had a great battle with Mark and Don. Good to get revenge on you Mark, your turn next  ;D. Enjoyed a nice dice with Jam as well.

Thx to all the GT boys, who were all very patient.

It may be a little hollow, without JM and TT, but I will crow while I can about the KC 1/2. I was watching your back, from at least a minute behind, mo  ;).

sry Jamera that was me, looked like you were running wide to me, but pulled it back, i  tryed to turn  onto  the inside  curb and lift of the throttle. i managed to get from 1/4 way up the inside to just clipping your rear bumper, i still knocked you off   my fault :-[

No worries mate, as I said racing incident and such i will not be reporting it  :)

Good result for me, shame I spun it with 10 mins to go - thankfully no one around and then it was easy enough to hold for 2nd place.

Some quite aggressive driving, spose it takes a couple of races to get used to the different classes again. Great stuff, really enjoyed it except for being robbed by you GTNDC guys didn't enjoy that at all - I often get caught off guard like that.  ::) :)

I am very patient with nGT as in the long run patience pays, even sometimes I give nGT a few turns and make pass with good exit speed onto long straight - quite a skill having the foresight to make correct judgement.

yeah I tried to be patient too, in fact Jon was able to bring back almost 4 seconds as I got into traffic. I honestly think I had the most trouble when guys were "trying" to be nice and thus slowed on entering a corner. I feel really bad that this caused me to do a bit of bumping which I pride myself on NEVER doing.  :-\

In the future for the nGt guys, though I do really appreciate the thought, I have found it is best to just hold your line and your speed and let us use our power to get by. This prevents sudden moves that put us in places un-expected. The only "help" that is usually "helpfull" without risk is just a slight lift on a straight as you see we have started to come around, or before the next corner if we have not put much distance on you by then. The only thing worse than having someone in your way in front is haveing them punt you in the next corner after you have made the pass on them.  ;)

Now as for my race, It was mine to win and I pretty much threw it away. Qualed 3rd becuase traffice didnt allow me to get a clean lap, sombody in a lambo spun across the straight as they exited the pits and I hit them so hard I think I need dental work :P. Anyway, I had almost no warmup so I thought I would just take it easy and get into a rythum. Rich may say I caught him by surprise but it sure looked like you just let me by m8, either way, was time to run down Jon. Took me couple laps to take the 3 seconds out of him then another lap or so of filling his mirrors when he caught some curb at Wurth which allowed me to get along side and take him in Campsa. Was putting about a second a lap on him till the traffic hit when like I said he got back to within a second. One of the porkas that I was lapping for the 2nd time had gone off in Sabadell and as I went to pass on the inside in Europcar he lost it again and came around right in my path. Big collision sending me around and off into the gardrail  :o. Jon came by and I was only about 6 seconds down, but the car was trashed after the hit, and I was giving up about 10kpm on the straight, had a hard time even getting by the 360's  :P. Well thought I still had a pretty good shot of staying in reach and holding off Rich and desided to pit a bit early to avoid traffic. This I did but promptly got a stop/go which cost me about another 45 seconds and putting me out in 8th it seems. I knew a couple still had to pit and just tried to bring it home clean. Best I could do was 41's instead of my normal 39's so it was hard to make ground. Someone must have pit late cause with about 5 to go I suddenly went from 4th to 3rd and Rich was in sight. Car was just too bad and tires too worn with early pit to reel him in though but I was happy to claw my way back to the podium after such a miserable race.
grats to all and thanks to the admins and all the work, I was really surprised to even get in on this 1st race. I am curious to know how many tried to get in and were unable?

Anyway, hope to see you next week

D

Your overflow, four in all graced my server for a rather fun race.  I'm not sure why but I think they were intimidated with my lotus  driving skillz so they all took the Elise so I could give them some driving lessons.  It was a pretty good race and I took it easy on them,  spinning out the lotus once per lap to keep it close for them and then let them win when I lagged out with 3 minutes left in the race.

I put the replay up on your ftp server.

So if you need a place for your wayward drivers next week, just let me know.

struggled in q to get a clean lap,race didnt get any better,got punted going into 1st bend,minor aero so decided to keep to arranged stop and just settled into race,managed to pull back to 7th and was catching but ran out of time :(

Really enjoyed the race, skins were great and the 80min race was a real challenge (in a good way :D)

My worst performance in a long time though :(

Managed a PB in qualifying to grab NGT 2nd (about a minute behind Mo  ;)) but it all went downhill after that  :(

Jakob did a great job cleanly and fairly putting the pressure on during the first lap, I was too busy watching him in my rear view when I missed a gear change and left the track (a stupid rookie mistake that I thought I'd left well behind me  :P). Re-joined towards the rear. Got punted off by a GT. Listened too closely to my pit crew to brake for the end of start/finish straight and went into the wall ::) then managed to turn off my pit limiter after my pit-stop and got a stop / go penalty.

Onwards & upwards. I will do better next week (repeat 100 times).

Grats to Mo for another scintillating performance. And to SBG and Jakob completing the NGT podium. Nice work guys.

Obligatory rant: FFS, what is so difficult to understand about NO CHAT DURING QUALIFYING?

I thought quali was quite bad - saw some speeding on pitlane again and very little consideration exiting pit. For exiting pit I always exit slowly and then use look behind for traffic.. next time i'm going to take note of any speeding and report it and anyone else that notices it should do like wise. If you use look behind you can easily see when there is no traffic at all, even if this means having to completely stop then fine but usually cruising at very low speeds is ok for finding a decent gap - places like Spa and Donnington might require a complete stop.

I use look behind and also look left right for funny angles. Look left, right works for look behind np but not good idea while racing only for returning after an off.

When qualifying you won't get any room at all from those on a hotlap, and exiting pit tyres and brakes are cold and you're about 5 seconds slower than normal. So please don't 'race' out of pit!! Exiting pit in race is different of course.. but still a little caution never goes a miss.

Oh and grats to you Jon Chadwick - car looks great and you were very smooth, I have good connection to you.

Yes, I agree that a bit more etiquette during both qual and practice would be nice.
 In practice, there was a lot of chatting. Sure, it's allowed, but it's still distracting, so it would be nice if it was kept to a minium.
In qual, there was some chatting going on too, which is obviously a no-no.

Jakob

I disable it in .plr under multiplayer settings

Allow Chat In Car="0"

Yes, but then you might miss out on admin, pit out, etc messages. For practice, it only takes a little discipline and consideration for others. It's not a difficult thing to do.

Jakob

My starts have never been too quick and over half a lap or so you can really tell if someone has momentum or not so I didn't want to risk an incident. I did run a little wide on a couple of turns though and then you zoomed by on inside of Banc De Sabadell. :) I maybe could have cut you off into next turn but bit risky - didn't really have genuine race pace either so third not so bad. I just about kept pace with you and Jon though for a good few laps and then things got confusing as race wore on. ;D CeeJay.. you made nice pass too at exact same corner, something iffy going on there with my car!!  

The race at Haiku's server indeed was fun. Never thought the Elise coulb be that much fun. Seems like GTR has yet another 'feature': the 5 fps bug. With 18 minutes race time left my game started to stutter. Got a few spins because I wasn't able to judge my speed because of the stuttering. But apart from that it was a very nice race  :)

Reminder for all those who raced yesterday:

Please send your incident reports to me before wednesday 9pm. That will give you +/- 70 hours to check the replay. Everything sent in after that will not be included in the final moderator's report.

Please also include the server replay time (not the time from your own replay as it differs from the server replay time) as well as the racing name of the ones involved. This will make my task a lot easier.

As I hear some complaints about the practise/quali session I would like to ask you all to send them as well.

Thank you for your cooperation :)

Congrats to Jon on the win and also to SBG on a great drive through the field, completing a Crawlers front row finish in NGT.
Sad to hear about some people's technical woes, always frustrating and even more so with everyone looking forward to racing in the team colours.

The skins looked great, especially on the replay, and it definitely adds to the whole team championship atmosphere. Hopefully there wont be as many tech issues at Magny.

The race itself was fairly quiet for me. I took a chance of non-stopping but it was tight in the end for fuel.
The pit crew were calling me for both tyres and fuel by the end. Even still the tyres felt good though and I was able to put in some 1'48s over the final few laps.
It was the longest race I've ever done and without a stop it really gave some idea what it must be like in real life driving for an hour and half non-stop, solitary confinement almost!

Only scare I had was a trip into the gravel trap at Repsol after a mix up with a lapping car, but I only sustained light damage luckily.

I had no stutters during any of the sessions, so hopefully the re-install of GTR and the carpack did the trick........seems ok so far.

Totally agree with Mo, the skins looked excellent in race. Some of the 550's that lapped past looked fantastic. I particularly liked the white & green cars  8)  The other good thing was you could make out almost immediately who was approaching in your mirrors without having to use the 'look-back' key for a name tag.
Very good driving by the GT's too, plenty of patience being shown through some of the trickier infield sections. I thought the racing on the whole was very clean, even in tight racing with other NGT's. Really enjoyed the battles with SBG, Jakob and my own team mate Don for long spells.

Great race and good fun. 8)

here here, skins look fantastic instead of hoards of identicle 550's and 911's  ;D .Grats to you too Mo .good to get to the end of a race without 1fps bug,noticed you giving me a wide birth on the warm up lap Rich  ;) got bitten by edza's bug though  ::) does version 1.5 not iron out any of these problems.He got 1fps as i was coming up to lap him and ended up spining trying to avoid him,lucky to get back on just in front of Rich  :P you had me worried 4 a bit there.Good dice early on Boyd,don't think either of us would have won had your teammate bothered to qualify  ;) 38.4's on fuel,mmmmm think my setup needs some work  :o .Luxury to be in early in Sharks slot,thanks boss,will need a bit more luck to get in next week,hopefully see you all then  ;D

Nope. :( I think it's an inherent problem with the old gMotor engine.

1.5 does not fix 1fps bug. The patch did originally say "multiplayer enhancements", but they soon removed that line when they realised they balls'd up the dedicated server.

I have read that lag seems a bit better with 1.5, it may be worth giving it a go again as that seems to have been worse for us recently, but we'd have to use a GDB file (http://forum.rscnet.org/showthread.php?t=234158) to set the session lengths on the server and clients. This maybe a little easier now that we have a car pack, although not for the Sprint championship. 

List of changes are:

o Eastern European character input updates

o Number characters input fix for Czech

o "@" character input fix on German keyboard

o Alt Gr characters input fixed

o Various localisation issues fixed

Oh and you're less likely to suffer from it if you run an AMD 64 and PCI-Express graphics card according to these polls...
http://forum.rscnet.org/showthread.php?t=217899
http://forum.rscnet.org/showthread.php?t=218320

If we run another GTR series after Endurance finishes at the end of April we'll probably switch to 1.5. It won't happen before then though.

Hi All My F****,B*******,Puter crashed big time blue screen job. Am on hols at present so am trying to get gtr set up for this evo. It was a bad pin on the main hard drive I think.May see you at tues eve race . gerald grr grr  :-[ :'(

Hehe, i love Geralds one sentence posts.  ;D

A man of few words  ;)

I had to do a retake though, at first I thought he was calling me one of his F***** B******  ;D.

There were at least four sentences in that post. :P :D

As we run 2 copies of GTR on Picnic's server, one for the Sprints and one for the Endurance (due to the skin pack), with Luis's help we could easily use a GDB file at the mid-season skin pack refresh and move onto 1.5 (at which point the Sprints would be finished I think).

Not bothered unless it really is going to help the multiplayer in some way though.

LOL! Noticed that too m8. :) We've hired him to counter my ranting/spemming...

in

loads

of

lines

;) :P ;D

8)

T

Luis has already provided that help and I have a GDB file for UKGTR although it does not restrict car selection. Trouble is you can decide on session length but you cannot skip sessions. Why SIMBIN cannot produce a decent dedicated server after 5 revisions of GTR and 2 or 3 of GTL I don't know. Remember GTL still has its stupid bits, like remembering the car selection correctly or remembering number of cars the server can support. The later always seems to default to 36 now which caught me out again last night as I was trying to do 2 things at once  :-[

I agree, it should be easy enough for them to get it setup right. I however dont see what is so important about being able to set session lengths. You can get 90 min practices and hour quals and make the race session whatever you want it to be. Should be easy enough to have someone just advance the server when the time comes.
Heck we ran the game in normal mode for our leagues so we could set the grid and use weight penaltys and ran it all remotely, didnt use the dedi at all. If anyone remembers there was no 1fps bug until the non-dx dedi came out. We also were able to have proper formation laps as well with a true start. I guess the one big drawback was the need for the DX card and resources on the server box.

It worked in 1.4, then they broke it. >:( We don't want an hour of qualifying because then we'll get people joining all through the Q session, which is highly undesirable because

• even with "load textures only in pits" turned on there's still a pause when people leave or join;
• we get invisible cars on track because of the fix for the previous bug, resulting in lots of frustrated and annoyed drivers.

It's a very big drawback for us because it pushes the cost of the server up tremendously. :(

I don't see why it would be a major problem advancing the session from the server when the time comes. We just say the sessions are X length and they will be wound on at the right time whether you are on track or not, that's just like the game winding it on except it's one of us doing it over VNC.

We seem to be getting even more complaints about the server and problems recently both in the Sprints and Endurance (so aside from any addon car problems) and I am growing increasingly concerned that we should move onto 1.5 in case that is the root of the problems (certainly seen posts on RSC saying 1.5 fixed lag and server capacity issues). We really don't want to have to put the server capacity down to 22 on GTR otherwise we'll be kicking out full time drivers and reducing the class fields to 11 each, neither of which are desirable, but me may have to consider it?

Perhaps we could have a single race test with a full server on 1.5?

We were successfully running 24-car grids on 1.4 at the end of last year when Sprint Season 2 began, were we not? So how could 1.4 be the problem?


Was that you volunteering to organise and run it?  ;)

I wasn't really aware of server grumbles for Sprint races. If these are getting worse then reducing the server capacity to 22 will not help as a quick count up from the results shows the server to have not been full for the last few rounds, NGT or GT.

We can test 1.5 but I'd suggest we tested like for like, virgin 1.4 vs. virgin 1.5. A skin test could follow. BTW I'm not too keen on the VNC server advancement route, it does steal quite a bit of CPU time. Along with GTR's flakeyness for Alt-Tab I can see administering the server spoiling a fair few races for those controlling it.

Just yes, 24 was just starting to feel the pinch of the server limitations, but it did just manage it. I do not know how 1.4 could be the problem it doesn't make much sense to me either. If there is a problem maybe it's changes to the lobby that Simbin have made that we do not know about that is affecting it. We know how badly integrated the multiplayer game is with the lobby and the carnage it has caused in the past. We also do not know what effect people that have run 1.5 patch and then downgraded has had, perhaps some of the files haven't been downgraded and that is causing a problem.

We can only guess and also make some educated guesses by what others have experienced between the versions.

I know I heard of others in the sprints start complaining (including me) about FPS really buggering up for no reason I think after christmas time. Even my old machine was fully capable of running GTR and I had previously had no FPS issues. They just suddenly started happening at one race and for me didn't go away till I changed my PC.


Maybe, although obviously not till next week. We also have to somehow gaurantee a full server, which is no easy thing.


From what I've seen there have been far more server discos since christmas time as well as these myseterious FPS issues (even in the sprint races with reduced fields).
Yes you're right the server capacity probably wont make any difference for these oddities.


I have 2 PCs next to each other and ability to flip my monitor between them as well as seperate keyboard/mouse so it's not a problem for at least one of us  :) :P as I just use VNC on my other PC rather than try and ALT+TAB my GTR game.

CPU time shouldn't be a problem as we are just advancing the session so it would only be for a few seconds and it would be part of the session change.

Obviously we don't really want to rely on just one person with the ability to do all this though. Although Gizmo does not take part in the Sprints so he could do the VNC stuff for Sprints and yourself, Aagramn and Gizmo all don't do the Endurance so one of you could do the VNC stuff for Endurance (or I could as I will be there). Possible anyway.

You don't leave VNC on do you?

I've found it usually runs at minimal CPU but sometimes just goes insane and eats your CPU.

Fozz

I must admit I have a nightly script on my server which bounces the VNC service every night "just in case", although that was because it sometimes stopped responding rather than ate CPU.

When was the box last rebooted?

No we don't as it sucks up the CPU. I just open and close it on my other PC as and when I need to.

I rebooted it before 2nd skin test race. Not sure I have done it since.