SimRacing.org.uk

This will be an official non-championship race to test the server with a standard track and standard cars only. The UKGTR car pack will be removed from the server before this event. We strongly suggest that you remove the car park from your local installation (along with any other add-on cars) before joining.

Please make every effort to attend this event. Ideally we would like to see a full 28-driver grid to ensure maximum stress on the server.

After the race, please post here to say

• Whether or not you experienced a CTD, connection lost or similar, with details of how many and when.
• Your screen resolution (eg. 1280x768) and colour depth (16 or 32 bit).
• How much memory your PC has (eg. 1GB).

Thanks

Practice 1:	20:15	(15 mins)
Qual 2:	20:30	(15 mins)
Race:	20:45	(40 minutes)	note: no warmup

Cars allowed: any NGT from the standard in-game selection.
Weather: dry.
Track: Donington Park National (non-UKGTR version).
Race Start Time: 14:00
Pit Stops: No mandatory pit stop.

Server: UKGTR Vanilla
Password: see above (#post_event_password)

Notes:
(1) Please make sure you are fully aware of the UKGTR Rules (https://www.simracing.org.uk/smf/index.php?topic=3349.0) - especially the speed limiter starting procedure and the rules about in-game chat messages.
(2) Drivers are reminded that they must select ISDN as their bandwidth, otherwise the stability of everyone's connection will be reduced.
(3) Please use the Driver Details (https://www.simracing.org.uk/smf/index.php?action=profile;sa=driver_info) page to ensure that the league management software has your correct GTR2 'Driving Name' (not necessarily the same as your lobby name).

I'll happily be your Guinea pig  ;) c u there

Added the following to the announcement:


Problems when running at high resolution have been reported before so if we do get problems during this race I would like the information on hand to spot any patterns. You might want to collect some of this information beforehand.

Should we (as clients) create a vanilla GTR2 install for this, or stick with the installation that already has the car pack installed?

Good point; I've amended the first post to suggest the removal of any add-ons...

Excuse me but what the hell does Vanilla mean here? lol

Clean & unaltered (I think  ;))

Vanilla (http://www.thefreedictionary.com/plain+vanilla)

Vanilla ice cream is actually very tasty I'll have you know! But yea, Dave just means "plain" or "boring" when he say's it, and I doubt it makes any sense to someone who isn't British - it would be like us saying lets have a Strawberry race! ;D

That would be something quite different (http://www.strawberryshortcakerace.com/)...

That's very dissapointing, I thought they'd all be dressed up as strawberries, but they weren't!

I knew somebody was gonna make the joke LOL :laugh:

Goes very nicely with Cherry Pie. Mmmm.

If we're now doing the Road America race on 29th, are we still going to go ahead with this (on the 24th), removing car packs to reinstall them for one race on the Sunday? I'm happy to go with the flow but thought I should ask. Would it be easier to hold back road America till we have the new working car/skin packs?  :-\

It's not that hard to uninstall/reinstall the packs... ;)

Sorry Dave, was trying to make your life easier. Thinking that if we delayed the Road America race till we have a new working skin/car packs, there would be less grumblings on here from people dropping out in a championship race. :)

I've now managed ;) to remove my car pack.

It won't really help - if the vanilla test shows the cars as a problem we'll probably have to drop all the add on cars and there'll be an awful lot of grumbling over that anyway.

God, that sounds serious. We should really then postpone all series for a couple of test races to nail it down further? Though its not like we've never had any CTDs before.

Would have thought, to an untrained brain, it would have been loading less separate skins into memory as there were no team skins for the cars so would have been a bit easier, but clearly not.

Am i right in thinking people get CTD, crashes lockups during practise, qually when they are out on track? I have it set to load cars when at a safe speed but wonder if switching it so it only does it in the lobby might be worth it? I admit i'm guessing, just trying to throw ideas around!

I'm not sure the Vanilla test can show that  :-\. Surely it can only show that our 'current car pack' has problems, as we all seemed fine in the Christmas break test races using the addon cars with previous car packs.
(I'll leave you in peace now  ;))


p.s. Doing 2:09 dead here in a Porka, am I on pace people?

Yeah, on pace with a tortoise Legzy ;D

I assume you mean 1.09? I'll be in the 1.07-08's

yeah 996 RSR should be 1:06's and 1:07s tbh  :) .... but then again, thats with loose discipline on track cutting  ::)

 :(

We had some CTDs in the test races too, just not as many - and of course those grids weren't as full.

Oh Bummer, didn't realise. Would be gutting to lose all the addon cars if it does turn out to be them :(

I'd certainly volunteer a night of my time to sit through online qually session after qually session, trying to work out which car(s) might be causing any problems if it comes to that (but lets hope not eh).

Well it might come to that, but the important part of this test is that if we do get problems we'll know there's something else going on and we won't be chasing une poisson rouge.

Before I freak out completely:
I uninstalled the car/skin pack and now I can't do zip with my "Truetom" profile. No problem with "Tom Ostry" (R2P) profile. Reinstalling GTR2 didn't help. Didn't try new profile yet - could there be some small tick solution?  :(

Come join us here if you're at a loose end now https://www.simracing.org.uk/smf/index.php?topic=6029.msg104409#msg104409

Either reinstall the pack, go in and select a 'standard' car from a non-UKGTR car class, then exit and remove the pack again.

Or edit your profile and remove the default car selection.

Made a new profile with the same name, copied settings, works. The problem was in the old .PLR file. I assume I won't lost much with the new one? Or should I try some more with the old one?

No Dave, the menu wouldn't let me go that far. As soon as I chose my Truetom profile I couldn't select any of the choices in the menu, not practice, not time-trial, not multiplayer, nothing.

The PLR file stores the last car you used, its clearly trying to load it and as it cant, you cant drive anything! One to remember when uninstalling the car packs.

So, if I simply delete the lines about the last used car I can use the old .PLR again, the game will fill the missing lines itself? 

No - edit it by hand, ie. outside of the game using Notepad or similar, to remove the default car selection and possible 'class' too (can't remember if that's in the .PLR file or implied by the car). It's odd that sometimes it doesn't cope and sometimes it does - whenever I'm testing the packs on my workstation it just picks a different default after I've removed a pack.

Yes.

Thanks.  :)

Service resumed and practice now running. There is a fresh install of GTR2 on the server for this test.

its worth mentioning that the srouk uninstalls do not get rid of all UKGTR car entries in your gamedata/teams sub dirs. I had to manually delete several entries in NGT and GT classes. Doubt it would cause any problems but did it just to make sure.

I hope we resolve this sensibly as not sure how much longer i could retain enthusiasm if we went back to standard stock car models. Enthusiasm seemed to be waning all round before we started using more addon tracks and then the new cars. I would have thought our best bet was for our skinning & template gurus to go through the various cars and trim them down/tidy them up, based on someone recently removing so much extra detrius from the Aston? files.

I'm with MJ and strongly support having addon cars, made right. GTR2 needs new aditions or experience decline in interest. Me included.  :(

TT

I'm with TT. If MJ stops turning up because we lose the addon cars... Who we all going to beat then?  :P ;)

BTW - Got down to some 1:08's in the Porka now. Don't know how you lot can get 1:07's  ???

LOL Legzy, keep up that fighting talk   :-*  ;D

As for your 1:08's...pah, 1:07 if you want to beat me matey  ;)


edit: make that 1:06  8)

Seem to be struggling a bit in these, cant quite find the sweet spot especially through the last chicane. Too often i'm heading straight at the pit entry, its too easy to loose grip in these.

i am actually enjoying racing in the old 996 RSR again. I forgot how sprightly and light it feels compared to the newer wide chassied 997. As in real life, it seems the older version of car, the more fun you can have in it !

You should give GT Legends a try, it's a great game, you'd love it MJ :lol:

edited for Legzys benefit  ;)

 :laugh:

I have to say, for me Donington is rapidly heading in the direction of Dullest track ever. :yawn: :sleep1: (I just can't get near MJ's times :-[)

blasphemy!!!  :eek:

lol

Stone him !  :hammer: :stupid:  Doni is great fun, cant wait to do a track day there some day.  8)

Donington? Dull? :blink: I think you have it confused with one of the new tracks like Sepang or Istanbul. :P

WRONG!!!  :o   
It's the best track in England The World  :wub:

Dont forget it takes over from Silverstone next year!

Do we really have to muck about and remove this packs?

I cant find the track to download in the links?

If it's in the Track Pack, then I must have it?

Just remember to select a standard car as a farewell before uninstalling.  ;)

I made my first GTR(1) win at Donington (read: Leuven let me win ;D ) so it will always have a special place in my heart.  :yes:

TT

Edit: can't drive standard pack Fezza anymore (spits me out every other lap :cursing: ), so I'll take RSR.  ::)

 Brilliant  :laugh: & made me think of this link. Watch it while substituting the word "Jehovah" with "Donington is Dull"  ;D
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOdARZ3bs0k (classic comedy)

It comes with the game.

I've done a brand new install for tonight, doesn't take long to install the game and the 1.1 update and means all my other addons are well and truely out of the way.

thats one of my all time favourite films Legz, that and the Holy Grail....'She turned me into a newt!'. (they all look at him)...'i got better'  :lol:

"He's not the Messiah, he's a very naughty boy!"

Very sorry SROUK community but, due to reoccurring PC problems, I will not be able to make it to tonight's race. :(

Most unfortunate. I am really itching for a decent race at the moment :'(

I hope the server does get full tonight to help us with our debugging. Once again apologies that I can not help out with this. :-[

Due to a double booking with management  ::)/ >:(, I'm not going to be able to drive now either by the looks of it.
I'm sure however that I could join the server, click drive & have my car sit in the pit lane through qually if it helps boost numbers?
(will be happy to stand down if demand requires)

I intend to join in tonight, am running Vi$ta at high resolution so might add to the mix.  Can't promise to be that fast though

I will try and pop up tonight just too boost numbers. But I won't be doing much racing and probably just be in "gentle Sunday drive with the missus" mode.  ;)

GTR2 never rocked my boat, only got it for the P&G mod :D

If the server is full and anyone else wants to get on let me know. I'm more than happy to stand down.

Ditto ! Will make up the numbers gladly. :)

I've been practising a bit in the RSR's but as its a fun race i think i'll try either the slow RS or the TVR. See how well i do with no setup or practise! :laugh:

Really sorry but cant make tonights race.  :(

Sorry I missed this one.  :(

Guests left 10 mins too late.

No CTDs for me this week at all. I had a vanilla install of GTR2 with NO mods in it at all, not one, not even a track. I wonder how many of those that had CTDs also had PnG in the same GTR2 directory they were using?

1680x1050
8Gb RAM
1Gb ATI 4870 Graphics Card
Onboard sound
2xAA 16xAF
Vista 64-bit.

Shame about the race. LOL.

No probs here :)
Just me driving down the pitlane after nearly spinning at the chicane :-[ ;D

No issues here...
XP Home, 1600x1200 32bit, Vanilla!

M.

no issues with me, only the car!

No problems either here except Blunder ;) Great racing I really enjoyed that before binning it trying to let a lapper through in T1  :-[

Never driven the TVR before...a most excellent drive, much fun to be had :)

CTD: None
Screen Resolution: 1680 x 1050 @ 32bit
Graphics: Maximum with 1 x AA
Windows Vista Ultimate 64
Memory: 4Gb
PnG2 Installed: Yes (seperate Install)

Laz

Great fun....NO ISSUES to report re Test

Had some good battles along the way (Legzy to mention one) nice to drive the 996RSR again..felt good 8)  Finished 7th :thumbup2:

Simon Gymer you span in front of me in the first 2/3 of laps, although I was very close I am sure there was no contact, hope you didn't think there was :) your car just looked a bit leary before the off.

CTD: None
Screen Resolution: 1920 x 1200 @ 32bit
XP
Graphics: Med with 2 x AA
Memory: 4Gb

no ctds for me, i have a load of extra tracks and car skins installed, but no other mods and removed all traces of srouk. I have two other versions of P&G on the same drive but seperate installs.

Phew, that was blinking tough, not a moments let up for 40mins. My car was a little oversteery and i had several moments when the car in front of me locked up or got a wobble in a corner. Happened to me behind TT early on..twice, then Napo and Roadrunner a couple of times. Cost me several places  :'(
Enjoyed good close battles with all 3 mentioned though  8)

Finished 6th.  :)

Was good to see some of the older sprightly cars on track. The TVR always looks right at Donington  8)

no ctd
4gb
1920x1200  32 bit
windows vista

didn't really have the time so I didn't bother to much
was driving in my normal configuration, so with P&G and the rest.

Never had any freezes or CTDs before. Installed P&G at the weekend. Had my first CTD today.
 :(
P&G is in a separate install to the one I was using.

Screen Resolution: 1680 x 1050 @ 32bit
Vista
Memory: 2Gb

no ctd
Vi$ta 32 bit
1680x1050 32 bit
4Gb

no ctd or other problems
6gb Win7 x64
1920x1080p  32 bit @60Hz
ATI 4870 1Gb graphics card - highish settings
Completely vanilla install

Ctd to desktop in pracci.

1680 by 1050
2gb of ram.
XP 32 bit.

Sorry I didn't read past "dry race" bit and ran my GTR2 which has lots installed, including P & G. Perhaps its the weather generator thats causing the grief  :angel: ;) :)

Nice to be back in GTR2 land and nice race Purds. I'll cyu GTR2 gents again sometime :)

Couldn't make it. GTR2 refused to select any cars after un-installing the car pack, even after editing the .plr file. It'd just freeze.

No CTD for me.

1920x1200 32bit
Vista 64 Home Premium
2Gb RAM

Back to PnG where I belong.....  ::)

I span cause you nudged me JPS, but that's close racing, no probs. :P
TVR is lairy, that's how it drives btw. :)

New GTR2 install. No add ons at all.
Windows XP home edition
Screen resolution 1024 x 768
Graphics card memory 256 MB
PC memory 1 GB
    Had no ctds or freezes. no promples at all. Had good run. Was about to overtake spanner and prop late in race then engine blew. Had rpms at limit. Should have cut them back a few hundred.

forgot bit was 32

No CTD

1680x1050 32 Bit
XP PRO SP3
2GB pc6400 ram

Difficult race for me, didn't find a clear track in qually and when I did I messed up the lap. Made the start tough and had a heated battle with Jose and RoadRunner. After that there was a 10 second gap to the purdie and TT.

Congrats to Jon on the win and all the porkers for sealing the 1st 7 spots. :)

Joined in qually with 10mins to go as about 23 on server at the time. Once joined, I clicked 'drive' so car was sat in pitlane.
Came back to check 20 mins later & saw message "lost connection with host" (I'd guess that was a problem my end?).

2Gb Ram
1280x1024 32 bit

Sure you've all noticed results and replay posted

Results were a pain, had to register all the cars into Dave's database  ;D

CTD in P1.  :(
1440x900 32 bit
2 GB RAM

Was hanging close to 2nd and 3rd but never really got an opp. to pass. Nice driving, Andy. 8) Lol, we were so wobbly on worn tyres.  :D

Still time to vote for this circuit............

https://www.simracing.org.uk/smf/index.php?topic=5976.0

Sorry about bugging out of that one early - I'd been the victim of yet another shocking display of stupidity in iRacing an hour earlier and wasn't really in the mood, so once the race was underway (and Tim Robey had stolen my grid slot during the pace lap >:( :P ::) ) I left when it became obvious that my car needed a lot more setup work to be managable during the race.

Pity we couldn't manage a full server, though I think the single CTD reported strongly suggests that some or all of the add on cars are causing us problems.


How much memory on your graphics card, SbG? Interesting that you had PnG installed - in the same installation you were using or "somewhere else"?

There were at least 3 CTDs last night Shark, I think all at different times, and although the server was not fully loaded with some recent events we've seen mass discos with less than 20 drivers. Seems if anyone discos TT is always there somewhere :( Although not perfect I felt last night was an improvement over the last few events but with the lobby playing up for the last week or so a network stability test might always be compromised a bit.

This race did show us one thing, if there is no ballasting, it's going to be a very boring Porker fest.

Muppets. :angel:

Same question as to Ginsters - how much memory on your graphics card?

 :lol: That was good fun buddy! Really enjoyed it! Hope I drove fairly? Wasn't sure as you dropped back on a couple of occasions!? I was sweating! :)

Thats good going as he wasn't in the race!  ;D

I beat him too !  :lol:

No 'multiple' drop outs last night where several people all leave at the same time as a result usually (seemingly anyway) of someone else joining.

If we can begin to understand why this happens frequently to some people and seldom to others (me included) we can hopefully minimise the risk and keep the extended car skins and tracks in some form.

PnG installed in the same directory as the GTR 2 install you were using last night?

Needle in a haystack comes to mind ;D

I guess we could look at tidying up some of the GTR files for some of the cars but assuming you cant just remove them and they are called up in a file somwhere, I guess you would need to open up the 3d model to see where the textures get called up. And then i'm guessing they aren't modelled to the same quality as the standard ones!

Surely there are other leagues running addons? R24-7 comes to mind, any issues reported with them?

Sorry that should be Lazlow ;D

Very sorry Simon, just checked the replay and yes you was right, it was a slight nudge, sorry again for that.

No problems for me, but then i don't usually suffer from CTD unless Ive been clicking back and forth to desktop a few times when the game is running, i also restart the game when the server is reset for the race (don't know if this helps).
Forgot to say, fresh install only thing added was GTR2 XD.

8800gt 1GB
1280X1024 32 bit
AA X 4
4GB RAM
XP SP3

1 GB RAM on video card.
I have P&G in a different directory.
Yes, as I remember I always had at least one CTD / freeze in season 9, except ones (was it Imola?). But I will repeat, as far as I can tell I had no problems until I installed P&G.  :(   
Can't be hardware 'cause my problems are identical on this rig which is 5 times faster than the old one.  :(

Edit: I read my reports from pre-season FIA 2006 mod cars. No CTDs until last race at Zhuhai. First test race of P&G was on 8th Jan and first CTD reports in the GTR2 pre-season started about then.  :(
Not trying to besmall P&G, I find it enjoyable, much more so than GTL. But not as much as GTR2 (FIA 2006 mod).  :)

Sherlock TT  :ninja:

P.S. They can't fool me - I'm already st00pid.  ;D
 

If PnG is installed in a different directory I don't see how it can affect the other GTR2 directory. There is next to nothing for GTR2 in the registry so I don't see how PnG in one directory can affect another. Which probably means it's a red-herring. :(

Me neither - and not only that, but I've got PnG installed (although IIRC I installed it using more devious means) and the only CTD I've had all year was during a period of instability for my ADSL connection.

I'd like to know if anyone who got CTDs last night has their shadows setting on anything but the minimum (not off, the next one up), whether they've all got simple collision debris (or whatever it's called) turned on, and whether they've got skin loading set to garage only or safe speed (though I'm using safe speed and don't seem to have a problem).

Shadows on medium - left it as it was.
Simple debris collision.
Cars loading in garage only.
ISDN conn.
1440x900 is my nature monitor res. It was the same before Season 9.

If you're our most reliable CTD'r TT, after Thursdays race, remove P&G & see how you get on at Sundays GTR2 race. Should help remove said P&G 'Red Herring' (nothing to lose from trying it)

I`ve still got UKGTR stuff installed...got R24-7 cars..and thats it...no probs last night, or ever

Using a 8800GTS with 320mb. I installed PnG using "seperate" install method so presumably its not a factor, or is it ;)

Me too.
Sorry I couldn't make this race guys, however I fully intend to race on Sunday.  Are we still to use the vanilla setup and no car packs?

I have suffered the odd CTD in practice and qually in the past, particularly at Imola and Dubai. (although I've only been on here since February, I think. My rig is only a couple of months old, if any of that is relevant)

No, we'll be back to the existing car pack, with some tweaks to the weather generation to see if that helps.

Even though I didnt race, I did do the practice with no problems what so ever.

Using Nvidia 8800GTX 768mb.
Installed PnG with seperate folder.
1600x1200 Resolution.
Everything High Settings.

Sorry I couldn't make this. As ever, it's tough for me on weeknights, but should hopefully improve soon :)

Sorry been moving flats but..... ::)

Great race ;D! Had med/hards tyres and 75 litres for the race and was 0.3 off Jon's immense pole time in quali  :P. The car was very twitchy at the beginning of the race and for some reason understeery throughout. I blame my driving technique after learning to take liberties in the more 'numb' feeling 997 RSR.

Ginsters was on me from the word go and JonM was pulling out a solid lead. Ginsters had an edge on me and I was forced to use defensive lines. I came unstuck with a sideways drift into craner curves and he got past and disappeared. I spent the last 10mins defending from the ever consistent truetom ;) (my nemesis lol) and scraped a podium! Cool race! And grats Jon M, the class of the field! 8)

No CTDs for me :thumbup2:. Ran off a fresh install and all worked fine with highest res but 16bit depth. I have 2 x nVidia 7600 GTs but can't seem to make them run SLi.