SimRacing.org.uk

Next up in the testing regimen is an odd one - it seems to work well but apparently looks terrible if you don't have CM and fantastic if you do!

Brno 65 is a stalwart favourite over at UKGPL along with it's longer sibling - Brno '49 (A flying lap of my - at the time - WR is here for the curious types: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XROW9odtM20 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XROW9odtM20) ).

The 65 layout has a slightly slower average speed and the addition of lots of ugly armco, but still features all the best parts of the older layout.

As it won't be in use for the series proper I thought a good introduction to the track would be in one of the slower '67 cars, so we'll use the 2l Matra..


Password: see above (#post_event_password)

Practice: 19:30 (45 mins)
Qual: 20:15 (15 mins)
Race: 20:30  (30 min race)


Cars allowed:
Matra MS7 (Part of the GPL car pack)
Download here if you don't already have it: https://www.dropbox.com/s/o719sdx2kohk668/AC%20GPL67%20V2.20.rar?dl=0 (https://www.dropbox.com/s/o719sdx2kohk668/AC%20GPL67%20V2.20.rar?dl=0)


Track: Brno 65
https://www.racedepartment.com/downloads/brno-1965.37239/ (https://www.racedepartment.com/downloads/brno-1965.37239/)

Live Timing: here (http://stracker.simracing.org.uk:50041/lapstat) (Only available in the week up to the race)

Time of Day Setting: 13:30
Weather: Mid Clear
Start: Standing
Tyre wear: Normal
Fuel consumption: Normal
Pit-stops: Not required

Server track settings:
SESSION_START=95
RANDOMNESS=2
LAP_GAIN=0.00757
SESSION_TRANSFER=90

Damage: 70%

Hi Tim, looks like there are some problems with the sTracker and track download links.

If it's as tough as in your vid, no chance I could learn such a track in time !  :-\

Should be fixed, it really annoys me when the forum does that to me ::)
The track in the video is the '49 layout - that's a good 4 or 5 km extra!

I made an error setting up the server yesterday - hopefully that's now fixed and you can throw yourselves at the scenery!

Seems this track has low details loaded in front of your car. It's like only a few meters around you are detailed, and the rest is blurry. It's especially bad in the forest, where I often can't see where the track ends and grass begins. It's all just very blurry. Anybody else tried the track? Seeing it like this?

Are you running CSP Syd? It looks great for me.
I think there are videos showing what it should look like on youtube

Yes, I see like you. I think because I have all graphic settings to minimun.
With CSP should be a lot better, but I removed it after a race with it. :-)

I have csp enabled. Without the track looks very poor. With it, I get grass and flowers :) But detail around the cars is about the same, only goes so far before becoming blurry, and track is just a grey mess in the forest.

I tried to take a screenshot, but they don't show what I see in the headset. They actually look quite good. Thing is, I've only tried vr with AC and Half Life Alyx, Alyx look much better than AC. Then again, everything is static in Alyx, and when I stop in AC, everything around me looks sharp. Plus cars look very detailed and sharp. So I don't know if it's my AC settings or is the track looking bad.
I tried looking over at kunos forums, but most of the settings discussions are around ACC. I didn't find a single thread with AC settings for Quest 2.

I should look like this in AC - in my Rift Mk1 I just have a somewhat lower Res version of it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgvEhGNfhe4 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgvEhGNfhe4)

I think you need to check what frame rates you are getting in your Quest. Sounds like you may have it locked on a lower setting than it needs to be at (Do you have the FPS locked to 60 with V-sync on for instance?)

Also try using the open-VR option, I switxhed to that late last year as I've been having FPS issues with the proper Oculus setting

I get average fps around 89.7. Quest 2 works at up to 90 fps. It's not choppy, it's blurry, lacking detail away from the car. I'll try openvr tonight, and I'll post my CM settings as well.

It's the part where you say everything is sharp when you are stopped - that suggests that for some reason the Rift isn't refreshing fast enough.
If you turn your head from side to side fast (while stopped) does it do the same thing?
It almost sounds like a video bandwidth issue (I get that sometimes when watching replays after the race through steamlink on my TV downstairs as it's broadcasting through the network at high resolution), I recently got Alyx as it was on sale but haven't tried it yet - but as it's an FPS then a lot less is moving fast at any time than you get in AC at speed.
The thing I find when viewing/playing through Steamlink is that is isn't very good when streaming low contrast images - as you say things are extra blurred in the forest then that would suggest the same issue as it's pretty dark in there.

I'm guessing you're using the cable to run this (I think the quest is wireless normally but don't really know anything about it?), if not then that should give you much better bandwidth and improve the image.

Oh - and check it while driving on the monitor.
That will confirm if it's the track or your Rift causing the issues

dummy question because I havn't been paying attention,   when does the GPL67 series start?

A couple of weeks - I need to get the series announcement and LM2 stuff done but have been hampered by insane amounts of work and an ill (again!) dog...

I'll do my best to get a thread with full details up this week :angel:

thanks Tim  :thumbup1:


Hope your doggy gets well  :)

I'm using official link cable, connected to usb-c on my motherboard. And these are my CM settings:
(https://i.postimg.cc/06YgS9DR/ac1.png) (https://postimg.cc/06YgS9DR)

(https://i.postimg.cc/XG4RctkZ/ac2.png) (https://postimg.cc/XG4RctkZ)

It actually looks ok on the monitor, it's just in the headset where it doesn't look good. I don't know if perhaps I had too high expectations of how it will look.
Though just standing in the pits, everything looks so sharp. And then you get going, and distance gets blurry. Maybe it's just a limitation of the headset with fast moving objects.

Has no one else spotted noticed?

The event isn't listed in the forthcoming events but is show at the top of the thread as being on the 1st of April which is Thursday? The first post doesn't specify a date? Should it be the 31st March?

Seems fine here  :whistling:

Track looks ok'ish without CM, just bit frustrated here, this needs 70 practise laps for 7 laps race....  :hang:

A quick reminder for people - the clocks have changed in the UK so please check what that has converted to for you Locally (races are an hour earlier if your own clocks haven't changed last weekend)

Sorry guys, I'll have to miss this one. Have fun!
Jos

I don't think we can use this track, you drop infity or wreck your car almost everywhere if you go wide. Stayin' on track all day long is not realistic for me.

I crashed about 30 seconds into the race, and when I went into pits, I got locked controls for 240 seconds. Sorry, but I wasn't staying around for that long.

You've just described at least 40% of all tracks/races in GPL :D

AC spoils us, we get in old cars like this and have become used to driving everywhere at or above 100% and then crashing and getting away with it - GPL still has the best damage model I've ever witnessed in a Sim, even on a lighter realism setting you would loose upto half the race starters on a track like this to the scenery alone.
In interleague events it wasn't uncommon for drivers to DNF simply because they got unlucky and the game decided to drop a cylinder on their car 20 mins from the end in a 2 hour GP (it's happened to me at least once).
On this particular track I once managed to come 3rd despite only having 3 wheels left, simply because I was still able to circulate and finish - we've even had top-level races where no-one actually managed to finish and the winner was determined by who had got furthest....

I'm not going to avoid a track just because it's dangerous when racing 60's stuff, half the point of doing it in a simulator is because we aren't allowed to do it for real any more!

As it's a GPL series you can expect at least one 'proper' GPL circuit - if not this one then it'll be something equally hard ;)
The plus side is that I want to use UKGPL's scoring rules - which means you'll get 2 drop scores (The game will automatically ditch your 2 worst results) as per the 1967 F1 championship.

I'm very pro-realism but this track has places with non-realistic behavior at all, if you drop one wheel off tarmac car stops immidiately or fly to outer space, it just badly made imho.

I didn't find anything other than telephone poles, trees or walls that stopped the car immediately - can you give me an idea of where so I can take a look?
I'll also feed it back to the author as I've chatted with him in the past over on RD on some of his other tracks so it might get updated at some point.
The only place I fell through the scenery happened to be when I tried driving into the petrol station at the end of the lap ( ;D ) from memory, even on some of my larger offs I generally just span through grass for 100's of meters if I had managed to miss walls and posts first.

That's the reason I didn't bother last night, I wouldn't have managed a lap.  ;D

Really hard to say exact places because lack of laps I manage to do but it feld that those places are everywhere if you go out :). Some of those steep bankings did that to me and some ditches on straights as well they just suck you in very realistic and then comes full stop. In a other hand it's same track for all...

I wasn't too keen on this track either but after a few laps I grew to like it a bit more. It does look a bit GPL with those grass banks and comedy trees and I did notice some fps drops in parts but nothing too concerning.

I seemed to get sucked in a couple of times when I put a wheel on the grass but I didn't explore the scenery too much. On my penultimate lap just before entering Brno village I hit one of the concrete posts which flicked me into the armco breaking my left steering arm and I had to limp around to the finish with a steering wheel 90 degrees off. It seems I'd caught my rear wheel around the post but looking at the replay I didn't actually touch it  ::) Maybe a problem with the collision box on the Matra but I don't know how to check that. So lesson learned, keep well away from anything in these cars especially if it's solid.

I liked the race. Very dangerous circuit, but that's the beauty of it. It is one of those races where your rivals are not the other pilots, but mostly your car and yourself.
All with little grip too. :)

I had a weird game-crash (not disconnection) before qualifying and that worried me a lot. Luckily I didn't have any others.
During qualifying I only managed to do one lap, in which I touched the wall at the last corner like a rookie.
Then in the restart I created an accident like Le Mans '55 (sorry again GT) :angel:

So I started back for the race. I preferred to stay calm and avoid the wreckage and the cars of the other boys who were spinning like tops. A truly terrifying sight.
I got behind GT, and after a his long kiss at a hay barrier, I passed him and gained the second place. At that point I simply did the last laps, going really slow to avoid unnecessary risks. Tim was too far away and too fast anyway.

I totally agree with Tim: in AC (and sims in general) get used to not giving too much importance to contacts or crashes. GPL was on another level, and gave a lot more adrenaline just for that. As well as being a great driving school.
I lacked that adrenaline; that feeling of constant danger.
That was the motorsport of time, far away from what it is now. There remains something like the TT, for example, and little else.
Obviously there have been many deaths, it is useless to deny it. Luckily we are in a game.

I don't know why you're talking of GPL in past tense. My last race, a couple of weeks ago, sever was full, 19 drivers :) You're welcome back anytime :)

No race this upcoming wednesday?

Just a shout up for a free to download new (old) version of the Glen which has just been released by the same maker as the classic Zandvoort track. Very GPL  8)

edit: forgot the link  :hang:

https://sellfy.com/f3classictracks/p/watkins-glen-for-assetto-corsa/

Cool, just downloading that - I was going to use Watkins anyway, but now we can use the proper version  8)

Just as a heads up - Hockenheimring from the same site will feature too ;)

Had a few laps at Watkins last night and it's a great track. I believe there are some surface variants as with Zandvoort but I haven't tried those yet. The standard surface feels authentically rough and is pretty exciting/clenching to drive on  :o

Try the updated Rouen - now that's bumpy :laugh:
It's also utterly fantastic how close to the original it feels

nice headsup,  I didn't realise he'd made a proper old rouen,  but that takes me back to the late 90s playing GPL with homemade wheel & pedals  :o   must have!

 I think Sergio is about to get some of my dollas again  :)

I've just tried the Hockenheimring from Sergio's site and I'm having some pretty severe fps drops down the back straight. Might be worth checking to see if others experience this as it's not ideal when you're trying to draft at 200mph  :o Maybe there is a solution by culling some of the trees?

Also note there are 2 totally different versions of this track, one on Sergio's site and another at RD (although the author is Sergio) ???  The one at RD is inferior with less detail to road surface and curbs and has even worse fps down both straights.

I just tried a few laps at Hockenheimring, and I was getting only around 73-74 fps on average, while I usually get the full 90 fps on most other tracks.
Also, my next GPL race is at this very track, and this week I drove some laps with the Eagle, and I was able to get to 319-320 kmh, while in AC version with Lotus 49 I was only able to get to 298-299, and I was around 3 seconds a lap slower. Just for comparison sake :)

There's a file named "hocke_forestb" in the track folder that seems to be causing the fps dips. I removed it and my fps problems are gone, but so is the section of forest halfway down the back straight. It looks a bit strange at first until you remember just how ugly those trees looked anyway.

Might be a solution if it doesn't cause mismatches or maybe worth just repackaging the track?