SimRacing.org.uk

ALL UKGTL'ers WELCOME!

Date: Thursday 1st December

Practice: 8:15pm (30 mins)
Qual: 8:45pm (18 mins)
Warmup: 9:13pm (2 mins)
Race: 9:15pm (10 laps) - STANDING START - Any TC65

Track: Mondello Park International
Race Time Of Day Setting:: 21:00

Password: usual practice password (https://www.simracing.org.uk/smf/index.php?topic=2929)

This will be run using the 1.1 patch

Hmmm Alfa it is then  ;D

Cheers Picnic.

Nice one.
Will try to make it.

is 9PM dusk, or is 9PM pitch black?

ie, do I have to know the track :-)


Foz

Helps to know the track ;)

It will be dark, and I suggest you don't rear end the car in front, or you will break your lights  :o

Will have to drive by sound alone then!

Lol

Fozz

Hmm, I might have to turn my gfx settings down for this one!  Should be fun though :)

Cant do this one as headights cause white out on my screen, impossible to drive like that  :'(

Pete

The only way I can get a decent frame rate for night races is to turn down headlight detail but its still not great. Will be an interesting test though.

It's a shame the game doesn't seem to allow night time practice, that way if lots of people are having problems we could abort and do a day race instead.

Pete, have you tried using a different shader type? If not try a lower DX shader from the gfx setup menu.

In the RSC FAQ for GTL they recommend that night-racing with more than 8 cars is for high-end PCs only. I suggest we try it, but if it's undriveable for too many people we restart with a day race, and go straight to the race session with a random grid.

Wow my home track - better see if I can pick up the game somewhere then and make an appearence  ;D
I know the track well although I'm usually in the bar when its dark!

ps. the only night racing I've ever seen there is the yearly 24 hour Citroen 2CV race.

Please upgrade your GTL to version 1.1 for this event.

http://www.gt-legends.de/support_en.php in case you didn't see the other thread

I shall try and be there .... in an Alfa.  :P

Hoping to turn up for this. I want to see how my system specs hold up with the enlarged grids and night time (cpu hungry) racing :P
I'll probably race the Alpine though not sure yet.

I think I'll dig out my P2 350MHz, 8MB ATi Rage pro on-board GFX drop it from 384MB to 64MB of system RAM and install GTL on windows 98.
Oh, and use a controll pad too. ;)

Hopefully this will help to decide NOT to drive in a night race. ;D

 ;D

OK got the game yesterday and installed last night  :)
I've unlocked a few cars but there's no way I'm gonna have the track unlocked for later.
Is it true that I dont need to when on multiplayer?

If so then does this apply to the cars also?

You don't need to unlock a track to race that online, but obviously that doesn't help you practice ;) That's not an issue, these are fun races where we can all learn about the game/tracks/cars etc.

You can only enter online races using a car you own. Tonights bash is TC65 so Cortina and Mini are both allowed if you've not got sufficient funds to buy anything else. Contina is reasonably competitive too.

You will need to install the 1.1 patch if you haven't done so yet.

Thanks Picnic, I'm not too worried about the practice because, as you say, I'm more looking forward to a bit of fun  ;D
Anyway if the track layout is faithfully reproduced in the game than I should be ok.

I've bought an Alfa so will probably appear in that as I'm a huge fan. Hopefully I can afford to buy a red one - otherwise its not an Alfa  ;)
Anyway I've yet to register and upgrade with patch so hopefully it'll go trouble free and I'll see you all later.

I bought the red Alfa  ;D And very nice it is too

You an Alfanut too Picnic?

I have to say "this track and at night"! :-\  A daunting prospect for me.

Not especially, never owned one but have had several friends who have. And emotive cars they are. They are adorable to look at but perhaps a bit tempremental on the build side. Sounds great in GTL  ;D

No more than any other car these days. Alfa are beyond the old reputation now. I've owned a 156 for a year an a half, no problems. Still keep finding new things I love about it every drive  :)

Have a friend you got a 145 GTA, apart from not letting her have it because the dealer spotted a design flaw that entailed a product recall for all UK cars, paint has fallen off and the ABS/TC or something similar failed. Kept putting the brakes on while she was driving down dual carriageways, along with flashing the I'm broken light.

She still loves it to bits though, and I can see why  ;D

Yeah, they're something else for design. Like they say, everyone should own at least one Alfa in their life. There will be anecdotal tales of woe about any car brand you car to mention though. Ask a Mercedes or Renault/Peugeot driver if the recent Top Gear owners poll is to be believed  ;D

Fair point, none of my Impreza have been perfect. And they did win the JD Power Survey when I owned my first.

Hi hope to turn up in a dagenham dustbin as I am very poor. bye gerald

The thing I love about the Alfas is the steering. They've got the quickest rack on any normal roadcar afaik - full lock to full lock in less than 2 turns of the wheel.
Makes it respond like a go-cart and its real easy to let the back hang out - even on a front wheel hatch!
Mines getting old now - its a 146ti with a few 'adjustments' under the bonnet. It's faster than a Honda type R of the same year and 10 times more fun to drive  ;D

great fun again this eve, thanks to picnic once again for setting it up.  8)

The night race was a real challenge as i didnt know the track other than my qualy run ! :o  and the headlights are crap on the Alfa :P Good experience though.
The day races were a real blast with some good close and clean racing, its a real joy to throw these old beasties about.

Shame about the low turn out but it was fun all the same,
thanks again.
 :-*

It does seem to be the same members turning out time after time for these races, but I'm not complaining that was REALLY good fun. Mind you I think we should ban Leuven, or make him drive a 2CV ;D

My suggestion was that we should make him drive with Johnny Vega and Vanessa Feltz as penalty ballast. ;)

Great fun even though I didn't get to race.
My freakin mouse has been 'hanging' on me lately and when I went to click the race button the mouse was dead.
Popping the batteries in and out does the job but by that stage I was DQ  ::)

Would have loved to join in second race but had to come in to work.

FPS was good for me except for a bit of stutter half way through qual.
One strange thing though : when I was watching you guys race the place listings were pretty meaningless, showing 2 cars as technical DNFs while they were happilly racing away.

Anyway thanks Picnic for hosting, I had a real blast.
Those cars are great and being able to go out on my home track - well what a bonus!

....still not exactly sure what you mean mate but it was good to see a Cortina out there :)

Some fords used to be made in Dagenham, Essex and were called Dagenham Dustbins  ;D

Lol, thats well funny :-)

cheers guys.

Twas a good couple of races.Thanks.

C u all soon,

Cods

Some fun racing last night, thanks to all who came  :D Only strangeness I saw was two chat messages attributed to SERVER when we had the track reload.

The night race was fun and racing in a dark room with the projector it was very do able. Took a couple of laps to spot the braking points but after OK. I managed a 2:00.03 which was as fast as I usually manage in the daylight  :o Leuven kindly left for the last race so I manage a win  ;D

Damn, why didnt i think of turning the room lights off ???...should have known that trick as i do the same durning various F.P.S. night scene fights..D'oh !....note to self for next time :)
FPS didnt suffer during night race at all but there were only 10 of us racing, so ?...

Good fun battling it out with several people, it would have been great with a fuller grid.....maybe Simracing/UKGT needs to do some recruiting/advertising on the RSC forums? It seems that GTL isnt as universally popular (yet) as GTR so some awareness/enticement may be required. The new guy (AdamP) seemed to enjoy himself, so a few more could be encouraged.

And yes, i was slightly discouraged to see that Leuven still manages to outqualy anyone by 2 secs and disapear into the sunset with a new car and new track to master :-\

No need to be too concerned I don't think, fun races have never been *that* well attended compared to the league races. There's a LOT of racing available at the moment too so people can pick & choose.

It was a bit of an Alfa-fest yesterday. I took one as I wanted to compare it to the Cortina which I raced around the same track the other day. I was a couple tenths faster in the Cortina, they seem to be very closely matched at most tracks.

Didn't have any performance problems, but with only 8 or 9 cars on the start line I don't think we proved anything. The TC-65 cars were a good choice for a night race. In a quick car spotting the braking points exactly is more critical.

Some advertisement of our site would probably be a good idea. There is a list of GTL links on RSC, and we aren't on there atm. I'll speak to Dave about it when he is back.

Cheers all for last night, would have liked to have been able to hang around for a couple more races (I will next time), but I would have got some dissaproving looks from the wife....

Good fun on what was my first race with the simracing crowd, did as well as I could have expected, the guys infront of me were streets ahead (and I'm sure Leuven had stuck a Chevy engine in his Alfa, I was something like 5/6 seconds off his qualy time).

A friend of mine's recently acquired GTL, so I'll send him this way, although he's moving house in the next week, so we'll probably see him sometime in the NY.

Thanks for organising the event Picnic, I'm definately looking forward to the next one.

Whoohoo, another new satisfied customer! 8) Cheers Adam, the more the merrier, glad you enjoyed yourself.

Hehehe. ;D, For some reason I'm finding Racing is being good to me, especially GTL.  8)

Race 1: went pretty smooth from start to finish, although I do remember an alfa came flying between everyone at the first turn and amazingly missed us all I think.  :o

Race 2: I decided to jump in the Cortina, without much time to set up the car I ended up with a tall set of gears, only using 4th gear  once a lap at most  ::)
 Even tho the Cortina seemed slower, I ended up not that far from Alfas race times with dodgy setup too ???>
If anybody watches the replay and see's me drive straight into the big hills, it was the wheel switching off. I switched the fan on and the wheel and pedals went dead  :o ;D

Race 3: No-one told me there was a third race :(, maybe thats the new tactics now....pretend theres no more races so I leave  ;) ;D

np, can't bribe me every race tho'  ;) ;D


 ;D I was doing 2:04's laps for my first 10/15 laps on that track, then 13 laps later I was doing 1:59's. then it took about 20 more laps to get into the 1:58's.

Ive done less than 100 laps at that track including last nights races, so it wont be long till your there.  :)