SimRacing.org.uk

As you will all be aware, we have been testing the 60fps patch for use in Season 28. A majority of those who voted opted for using the 60 fps patch so we intend to use it for all races in Season 28.

HOWEVER... we are aware that there may be drivers who have tried 60fps and cannot run it. If that is the case, you need to let me know urgently, either here or by PM. We are pretty sure that we can get you all up and running.

Season 28 will start properly later in February so if you do not shout, you will get left behind. WE DO NOT WANT TO LOSE ANY DRIVERS.

Last chance to let us know.

I suppose someone has to offer a word of caution here.

First up, my PC rig is more than up to the task and I'm willing to have a go at 60fps next season. But

During the recent trial races run, there have been a significant number of screen freezes both during pre race practice sessions, qualifying and races on the UKGPL servers. Could be a coincidence but its worth noting.

Asking people to start playing around with bios updates, overclocking CPU and/or GPU settings etc, so they can attempt to run 60fps, could end in disaster. If someone ended up with a dead PC after a failed bios update or a cooked CPU and/or GPU after taking advice from others here on overclocking settings what come back if any would they have?

I'm just saying that while we don't want to lose anyone by going over to 60fps how do we guarantee we don't lose anyones PC!

Sorry Ray
if you have the impression I am "Asking people to start playing around with bios updates, overclocking CPU and/or GPU settings etc,"

That's not my intention!
I offered my help to find out what can be done to optimize a PC and find the bottleneck or culprit if it does not work properly.
Afair I asked nobody to overclock anything!

A PC is just a simple machine, but the parts in it have to play together like an orchestra,
but if one musician makes anything wrong the whole symphony sounds bad.

A bios update is nothing dangerous anymore, as it can be easily done with tools offered by the manufacturers.
If I see there are running parts out of the specs I show a solution to fix it.

I am working with PC's since 1989 and DOS 2.1...
In my IT history I had many situations when a bios tweak or any massive overclocking attempt could have failed.  ;D
I have mechanicaly manipulated Thoroughbred CPUs still running primestable after ~10years boosted from 1.6 to 2.1GHz  :P

What makes me sick is the attempt of big manufacturers to capitalize the nescience of their customers. Just read about Colin's PC... 

Just back so only just seen this. Apologies, I was not pointing the finger at anyone Axel, sorry if I gave that impression. I include myself as someone who has given advice to some on upgrades etc. I was trying to just sound a general word of caution to all, if necessary, to just beware making any changes, suggested by anyone, if they are not sure what they are doing. Personally I am confident with PC building, upgrades, mods, overclocking etc like yourself. As you say, bios upgrades rarely go wrong these days but they are not to be taken lightly. The same applies to oc tweaks to processors. I think 60fps is the way to go for sure and fully support the switch. I agree someone would have to be extremely unlucky for something fatal to happen to their PC as a result of any tweaks suggested by any of us. But whether someones PC cost £500, £1000, £1500 or more, I think they should think carefully if they are not sure or comfortable with what they are doing and cannot afford to lose or replace it, however unlikely the chance of something going wrong might be. Unlike Colin they would have no come back. Me, I would probably make the changes even if I did not have a clue, because I have the GPL bug bad :P

Hi! Can you advise the circumstances these screen freezes occurred under? If yes, great! Ideally I'd like to know what track, what 60fps version and what mod, as well as any other details known at the time of the freeze like how many racers were present on the server.

I have no knowledge about hardware, but for software, GPL-wise, the risk of a freeze is perhaps double compared to normal 36 fps. A freeze occurs when you put a wheel directly on a miniscule gap in the track. Almost every track has some of these gaps, but they are very small, only 1 or 2 GPL units, which is something like 0.01 of a millimetre. Gaps above 2 units are not accepted by GPL track makers, as the risk of a freeze will become too big. With 36 fps, the chances of skipping over these small gaps is very high, with 60 fps still high, but slightly less because the physics update almost twice as much, so the chance of you ending up in one of those gaps at the precise time GPL is computing stuff is higher.

There are other factors that can cause a screen freeze. I don't know exactly what the other causes are, but it seems poor fps oddly seems to cause more freezes. On line, it can happen that somebody experiences a freeze and somehow takes others with him in his fall who would have been perfectly fine continuing otherwise, perhaps because GPL keeps track of other online players similar to the initial player. Perhaps this is why offline freezes are less common, no chance for others to freeze up and take you with them, as perhaps AI is computed differently.

Whilst freezes are usually physics related, CTD's are usually graphics related.

I missed most of the pre-season races because I was having massive problems with my PC.  Not 60fps related, everything was crap!  I eventually sorted it by ditching Windows Vista and installing Windows 7.  A clean install and everything is perfect now.  One thing I did notice was that the Vista Nvidia drivers didn't support a 800 x 600 resolution but the Windows 7 Nvidia drivers do.  A lot of the advice on SRMZ etc was to do with the menus being 800 x 600.

On the screen freeze issue, I did get a screen freeze on Tuesday (Feb 10th) with Monza 10k (69x 60fpsv1).  Can't say if it is 60fps related, I think we have had issues with this track under 36fps.  There were about 15 people on the server and unfortunately about 5 didn't have time to reconnect as the freeze was at the end of qually :(.

Very enlightening Tommie.  I assume these gaps span the entire width of the track, it would be interesting to know if it would be possible to avoid them by taking a different line. I suppose it depends on how the track surface is modelled.  Looks like we'll have to be a bit more carefull when picking tracks for the 60fps patch.

Yes sometimes there is an orientation mismatch between one track section and the next (track are made using a scalextric-like method by joining a lot of customized track sections together). With an orientation mismatch, one side of the track might have a small overlap (causing a spike in the force feedback) and the other side has a small gap. Trouble is spotting gaps is impossible since the graphical and physical track are two different things in the GPL world (think F2's Tulln last year where diferent people used different updates and could go through haybales etc.) so a gap in the physical track (.trk) might not show in the graphical track (.3do). For me, I have the impression I have more freezes if I run off line, perhaps wide through a corner or something. It could be that the track maker tried out his own track for a while and thought it was fine, until other people started racing on it, making different mistakes, taking diferent lines etc.

I guess the details of any freezes can be found in the post race comments here on the forums for each of the fun races. I concur with Phil that they are most likely track related but I would hate to damn Monza 10k, which is the one of the best ever GPL tracks for racing.

I agree!

But IMO the most discos are related to drivers with bad connections!
I have no idea how a server manages a driver being for 2 laps invisible and suddenly reappears :o (Raoni at BH 65s!)
or the Wifi WLAN driver...

I think pre-season testing has shown, 60fps will test the quality of connections between Server and racer.  The best I've had in championship racing recently, has been with a USA Server!   Rather than km or miles, I'd guess the number of twists, and shunts in the signal, affect how often we are each removed from our cars.  A bit like, motor racing before seat belts. ;)  Time will tell, if Sever and Client can produce reliable racing.

Well, nobody has said they can't run the patch, so we will adopt for all series and see how it goes. If we have significant problems with a specific series or track we can always adopt 36fps temporarily to cope with that.

Be important to read the race post. Thanks to all for the input.