Endurance Championship - Season 2, Round 3, Enna - Mar 5

[popabawa]

Right, with hindsight, I think I know what when wrong with my gears.

I use the wingman profiler thingy to map DFP buttons for gear change to the keyboard to avoid the 'double-shift' problem.

All was fine in practice and qualifying.

At some point in qualifying, I ALT+TAB'ed out to check a phone number for Mrs Pops. When I went back into the game for the last 10 min of qualifying, the buttons had lost their mapping to the keyboard, so I re-assigned directly to the DFP buttons and all was OK again.

I'm guessing that between sessions, the buttons then re-assigned themselves back to the keyboard so I then couldn't change gear while I was sitting on the grid

Stupid. Only myself to blame for messing around unneccessarily

[Simon Gymer]

Grats to Shark, different class, and Don, on nice podium. Big hats off to GT boys, amazing pace and very patient. Still very scary when Mr.Boyd catches you so quickly (five times  ).

Enjoyed all to brief battle with Tyf. Once that was over had a real quite race, a minute behind Shark and a minute ahead of Don. Nothing to do but avoid the barriers. Sure we will get some better racing at Brno.

Thanks. Think i lapped everyone in the same class and even a GT car, which was quite suprising. I do like Enna, one of my best tracks, really suits my precision driving style, but it rarely produces very good battles. I certainly wont be that fast over everyone else at Brno which is a fabulous racing track.

Was quite hard lapping the other NGTs as I didn't have any extra power like the GT cars to power past on the straights, so very gentlemenly of everyone to let off the power so much to let me by easily. Was even harder with the GT car I lapped. Couldn't get anywhere near on the straights and therefore no chance of being anywhere near on the brakes. Had to wait for a mistake before being able to get by and then off into the distance with my extra speed through the tyre chicanes.

And I bumped two nGT cars, i'm sorry.. not used to having to slow down that much. The other bump was cause I didn't slow down enough for an incident, could have been a right mess that one.. happened in an instant, difficult to judge and react at such short distance.

That'll be me.  I slowed for the spinning Maverick (?) and never know which way a spinning car is going to go across the track so was playing it really cautious, unfortunately just caught you out with the slow down and you tapped my bottom sending me spinning. No probs as I had just lapped my nearest competitor in class so didn't afect my race and was a difficult moment for all the cars to know what to do.

I look forward to Brno, usually a good race there.

Looks like Team Shark is going to find it impossible to win either championship with only 1 driver in each class. Anyone want to defect to Team Shark to help a legendary team win the team titles? 

[Dave 'Gizmo' Gymer]

At some point in qualifying, I ALT+TAB'ed out to check a phone number for Mrs Pops. When I went back into the game for the last 10 min of qualifying, the buttons had lost their mapping to the keyboard, so I re-assigned directly to the DFP buttons and all was OK again.

I'm guessing that between sessions, the buttons then re-assigned themselves back to the keyboard so I then couldn't change gear while I was sitting on the grid

Ah, I've seen that one myself. Sometimes the Profiler doesn't pick them up when you first start GTR either. An Alt-Tab and back is usually all it takes to sort it out... if GTR survives and doesn't crash that is!

[Rich_A]

Best not to alt tab at all for a race imo. I've had issues with Profiler too where FFB would go funny if i'm still driving and sesson changes.. to fix it I think starting GTR through Profiler did it rather than applying a persistant profile. Also disabling OSD and Hotkeys in ATI Tray Tools affected it.. ! So I make Logitech Profiler profile in ATI Tray tools, start Profiler with ATI Tray Tools and then start GTR through Profiler.

[popabawa]

Best not to alt tab at all for a race imo.

Yes. Absolutely. I won't be doing that again

[Rich_A]

Actually what I said i'm not sure is correct. ATI Tray Tools is very odd program .. but I thnk it's safe to set persistant profile in Profiler. Delete ATT profile for Profiler and start GTR normally through ATT profile. As long as OSD and Hotkeys are disabled in ATT for racing should be ok. By disable OSD I mean in Tools & Options\OSD\ and also in GTR profile in Additional disable OSD option here too.

It might be that Profiler does need to start GTR rather than a persistant profile, i'll test it and find out for sure..

[Mark J]

Anyone got any clues on why my pitstop was ruined again. Last time it was Don who suffered as he came into pit and found my car already being attented to, this time i left it until about 44-46 minutes only to find Tyfs car sitting in my pitbox  There were about 30 other empty pit slots the AI could have sent me too but chose the one where a car is already there
At least it didnt switch me to AI control this time

Tyf were you 'parked' there or having a normal pit stop or lengthy damage repair?

Is Legends the only team in the pack with more than two drivers?  Just trying to eliminate reasons.
Now i'm on full time status it 'might' make a difference as i wont be joining same time as other reserves. (i had a shared garage again in praccy and had to jump out and back in game again to clear it).

[Jamera]

At some point in qualifying, I ALT+TAB'ed out to check a phone number for Mrs Pops. When I went back into the game for the last 10 min of qualifying, the buttons had lost their mapping to the keyboard, so I re-assigned directly to the DFP buttons and all was OK again.

I'm guessing that between sessions, the buttons then re-assigned themselves back to the keyboard so I then couldn't change gear while I was sitting on the grid

Ah, I've seen that one myself. Sometimes the Profiler doesn't pick them up when you first start GTR either. An Alt-Tab and back is usually all it takes to sort it out... if GTR survives and doesn't crash that is!

I have the DFP and NEVER use profiler, had nothing but grief with it when I tried. Now I just set up each game the same so I still have a constant key set throughout

[D Boyd]

Anyone got any clues on why my pitstop was ruined again. Last time it was Don who suffered as he came into pit and found my car already being attented to, this time i left it until about 44-46 minutes only to find Tyfs car sitting in my pitbox  There were about 30 other empty pit slots the AI could have sent me too but chose the one where a car is already there
At least it didnt switch me to AI control this time

Tyf were you 'parked' there or having a normal pit stop or lengthy damage repair?

Is Legends the only team in the pack with more than two drivers?  Just trying to eliminate reasons.
Now i'm on full time status it 'might' make a difference as i wont be joining same time as other reserves. (i had a shared garage again in praccy and had to jump out and back in game again to clear it).

Mark,
As far as I know the only factor is that the guy you happened to share the pit space with went at the same time as you. This would be the driver in the garage next to you. Pretty unlucky deal for you for sure, especially since you waited so long.
Now that being said there could be a bug of some sort, and I think there definatly was at Magny for you, but if you re-joined and were not sharing a garage and everything else seemd "normal", I have to think it was just bad timing.

It is a good place to mention, I hope that nobody would ever sit in the pit space for an unnessary length of time, and if they are done would hit esc and go back to garage. Can't imagine someone would, but stranger things have happened, Ive had guys sit off track to watch the race causing yellow flags the whole race

[D Boyd]

As one of the "new kids on the block" after a couple races under my belt I have a couple observations about the league. I hope you all will take it as constructive input and not criticism. I just point them out as somthing for the organizers, powers that be, and/or other members to think about.

One thing that is a little surprising is that a driver that DNF's still gets scored and recieves full points for whatever place he finishes in. I would think that crashing, blowing an engine, running out of fuel etc would have a bit more dire consequences. There are of course differant schools of thought on this, one being just score it like GTR places you (the way you guys are doing it I assume). Then there is no points unless you finish (real life for most series). Or some form of a compromise where you have to complete a certain percentage of the race, and/or you only get points for certain reasons that ended your race etc.

Another issue I would suggest is possibly splitting qualifying up into 2, 15 min sessions, 1 for each class. Im sure the Ngt guys dont like having us come charging up behind them, any more than we like them hindering our laps. IMO you should be able to run at least 2 good 3 laps stints in 15 minutes, and if you cant put up a good lap in that time, then you dont deserve to . The other thing that could help the situation if you do not want to split it would be to limit the total number of laps during the half hour to say 12. This would make for less traffic during the session as guys reach that limit and can no longer go out. I also think that guys should be encouraged to stay in garage if they have put up a lap they are happy with and dont see the order changing. Drivers should definatly not be going out during qual in thier race sets just for practice sake either, and at at least 1 race I saw a "pitting out with race fuel" message posted. 

Anyway like I said, not trying to tell you how to run your league, just some food for thought

All in all it has been fun so far, good organization and system, thanks for those that work hard to make it happen

[ginsters sponsored]

Being a NGT boy, and a lot slower than you  :'(, can I offer a different view of quali.

I think the half hour is the perfect length. I can relax, pull over for faster drivers due to the extended time, and it does take me that long to get a decent lap in (nothing to be proud of  ). However I appreciate, and have seen, that some pretty avoidable things go on in quali and how they can be very annoying. I would appreciate some moderation (sorry chaps) to iron out the honest mistakes that occur in quali.

I don't think major changes are necessary as the best drivers always come to the fore with current set-up.

[D Boyd]

valid points, there is always a differant view, my point was just that if you had 15 min for just the 12-14 nGT boys, you would have a better chance of getting an undistrubed good lap in than in the 30 min with all of us fighting for the same space.

again not expecting to change things, just offering food for thought. Every method of doing things comes with advantages and disadvantages and everyone will have a differant take on what defines each.

[Simon Gymer]

I see the mixed qualifying as a skill for all drivers. It adds some extra interest and difficulty to be able to get a good lap in whilst lots of others on track, in the same class or not there can be quite a difference in speed. This can be quite an art and also sometimes down to luck, which is no bad thing. Luck plays a part in motor racing, but also you could say you make your own luck.

I like the idea of limiting laps, but there is no inbuilt option in game to do that so it's difficult to moderate. We also have people turn up at different moments in qualifying and people that go out and come back in to the game through technical difficulties making it difficult to say how many laps anyone has done or what counts as a lap or not.

As one of those that often uses qualifying to do last minute checks on my race setup I don't see this as a problem. Because I'm on a race setup I take extra caution to get totally out of people's way if not on qualifying laps, so that shouldn't be a problem in itself as long as people are using common sense.

Completing a certain percentage of the race before getting points is a good idea in my opinion. Don't know how Gizmo feels about that and what complexities that might bring to the scoring code?

Thanks for the feedback.

[Rich_A]

I've somehow managed to not be able to force triple buffer in ATT. Seemed to happen after I directed Profiler to GTR.exe - tried many things, can't get it to force triple buffer any more so i'm reformating. Needed doing anyhow so np. I recommend not directing Profiler to GTR.exe if you use ATT and triple buffer.

I'll have to live with sometimes loosing FFB on session change.. although think there's still way to avoid it. If you have problems with Profiler, try to make mental note of time left and get back to garage before session changes. Only happens when i'm outside and session changes.. I got to use Profiler cause of it's cool key delay options for fixing double shifts and also good for assigning MoTeC, mirrors ect to button on wheel. If anyone knows of a better key delay program let me know please.

When I figure out how to make Profiler work best, i'll add it to tips thread. I'm fairly sure it worked fine when I directed Profiler to GTR.exe and then started GTR through it but this is what caused the no triple buffer situation due to both Profiler and ATT trying to tell GTR.exe what to do. So i'll probably try directing Profiler to ATT, start ATT with profiler and then start GTR through ATT profile!!

 

[Dave 'Gizmo' Gymer]

Firstly, on the subject of qualifying, as Shark says I think the mixed qualifying is part of the test of skill. The next patch for rFactor will hopefully bring "private" qualifying with limited laps to the PCC but for now, with GTR we're stuck with a single mixed session with no lap limit because from a purely pragmatic point of view anything more becomes an administrative headache.

The "pit out race fuel" is to a certain extant a holdover from GPL, which didn't have a warmup session available, but as long as those doing a final pre-race shakedown are careful to stay out of the way of those who are still qualifying it shouldn't be a major problem.


Now, onto the grant of points being concomitant on finishing a certain percentage of race distance. There's no particular technical problem with implementing this (multiple classes are always fun of course ) but whatever percentage you pick will be arbitrary, and a driver who goes out 1% short of the mark because they are unfortunate enough to be taken out by somebody else's accident will feel justifiably aggrieved - especially in endurance where they might've raced for 50+ minutes and end up with nothing to show for it.

It's also worth pointing out that when I wrote the FILSCA GTR parser a year or so back, not one of the leagues was using the percentage feature (it was never implemented because nobody actually asked for it).


ps. Thanks for the thanks.