UKGTL Season 17 Mustang Boss 302 Challenge - Thermalito - May 1

[EvilClive]

Grats to Geoffers, Ziu and Erling on some impressive lap times around this challenging circuit. Matt also showed considerable pace, but he almost fell into my grasp late in the race after he made a mistake which I guess was down to tyres? But, he gathered himself together and held onto his 4th place.

After Tony's in depth description of this "easy" track, and the input from other drivers pointing out some small inconsistencies in his post, I was unsure what I would find when I downloaded the track at 4 p.m. yesterday. Tales of tunnels and spiral descents etc. proved to be more accurate than I expected, because I unwisely assumed that many of you were embellishing the truth a little  .
So, I had about 45 mins on track, once I had the circuit installed, before I had to leave my PC to go and prepare dinner during which time I had more or less remembered what came next and which way the corners turned. I think I managed a sub 2.30sec lap in that session.
The intention had been to get onto the server at around 7:30 and start some serious practice. Things did not work out that way, and it was almost 8:00pm before I managed to sit at my wheel. With so little time left before the race I concentrated on a race setup and ignored any thought of qualifying position, hoping to improve my braking points and lines.......this track definitely requires some serious attention in that department !!
My first tidy lap, late in qually, propelled me to 5th on the grid and that was not part of my race strategy as I was intending to lurk at the back hoping to survive and pick up places as others had problems. Preserving my tyres was also a high priority as I have a record of burning too much rubber too early.
It was fortunate that I had a relatively untroubled early race as cars behind dropped back and Mike Hartley who was ahead of me, decided to suddenly go and pick the flowers!! leaving me all alone. This allowed me to protect my tyres and drive ( relatively for me) smoothly.
I was still learning the track as the race progressed and was able to slowly improve my pace even with the tyres beginning to wear. When I came upon Matt after his incident at the entry to the tunnel I still had tyres showing green rubber and I tried to up my pace which was a mistake, because the harder I pushed, the slower I lapped and Matt eased away again.

I finished the race where I started, in 5th place, which was far better than I expected given my lack of preparation. I did grow to like this track and the challenge of linking corners/lines/braking points etc. to extract the best times. But I did end the race with tired eyes as the graphics were very poor on my PC with low FPS for the whole race and generally blurry track details, especially into the two tunnels. It was probably fortunate that I ran alone for most of the race, as a few more cars in view might have made driving impossible...the run to T1 from the grid was more guesswork than driving as the FPS was so low.......maybe time to finally upgrade from my 2gb memory?

[Ziu Bacubacu]

I finished the race where I started, in 5th place, which was far better than I expected given my lack of preparation. I did grow to like this track and the challenge of linking corners/lines/braking points etc. to extract the best times. But I did end the race with tired eyes as the graphics were very poor on my PC with low FPS for the whole race and generally blurry track details, especially into the two tunnels. It was probably fortunate that I ran alone for most of the race, as a few more cars in view might have made driving impossible...the run to T1 from the grid was more guesswork than driving as the FPS was so low.......maybe time to finally upgrade from my 2gb memory?

Just i want added that to have the fluid game it's very important for get times lap fast. A game that stutter compromise seriously the lap times also with a talented driver.
In past i asked to myself why it s happened that you take pole or win sometime but you never constant, now i understood.
I m sure that you are fast driver but your PC cannot help you.

Of course changing the  RAM only cannot do a miracle, it depend from all elements. 

You think that i bought my PC just for make races, i installed just i light AV and a browser to go online. For the other things i use an HDD external that i switch on just when i need.

However If one aspire to be fast must have a fluid game without any stutter, the rest depends on his skills and his talent.

[EvilClive]

"................................. the rest depends on his skills and his talent"

This might be where the plan falls down 

[Erling G-P]

"................................. the rest depends on his skills and his talent"

This might be where the plan falls down 

Moaning again, are we ? 

You scored a respectable result on a difficult track, with next to no preparation - and you've been 2nd on the grid in two previous races in this series, so talent is quite obvious 

With that said, 2 Gb is definitely on the low side these days.  My current, but far from new PC, which I built in 2010, has 3 x 2 GB or 6 Gb total, and that's not at all impressive anymore.  Don't know if more system memory will benefit GTL though, or if it's more down to video memory (if lack of memory explains yesterday's stutter).  Maybe Ziu can tell us if upping his system memory from 8 to 16 GB made GTL run better ?

Cheers,
Erling

[Ziu Bacubacu]

"................................. the rest depends on his skills and his talent"

This might be where the plan falls down 

I want remind to you the race on Brainerd, you not only win you beat all......Geoffers, Attila, Erling and the Worst driver also, Ziu

[Wiltshire Tony]

I have an i7 CPU, 12GB RAM, SSD drives and a brand new GPU with 8GB onboard memory and the start finish straight stuttered for me, but only online so there is a bottleneck somewhere.

Dismal race for me, sadly not in the right frame of mind for racing, so did not do well and suffered from lapses of concentration. Don't know why just didn't feel 100%. Hopefully just a mood thing and hope to be back to normal next time.

BTW my car was overheating and laying down smoke even though engine health was in the high 80's. Did not see anyone else smoking? Both Oil and water were red for most of the lap.

Nice to see MikeHarley back again, perhaps he could say Hi?

[Ziu Bacubacu]

"................................. the rest depends on his skills and his talent"

This might be where the plan falls down 

Moaning again, are we ? 

You scored a respectable result on a difficult track, with next to no preparation - and you've been 2nd on the grid in two previous races in this series, so talent is quite obvious 

With that said, 2 Gb is definitely on the low side these days.  My current, but far from new PC, which I built in 2010, has 3 x 2 GB or 6 Gb total, and that's not at all impressive anymore.  Don't know if more system memory will benefit GTL though, or if it's more down to video memory (if lack of memory explains yesterday's stutter).  Maybe Ziu can tell us if upping his system memory from 8 to 16 GB made GTL run better ?

Cheers,
Erling

My PC was good also with 8 Gb, it had some stutter when I braked hard because smoke. With 16 Gb I improved it.

Mmmmh but I think that you wanted an other kind of answer......well,  1% depends from my right foot

[Ziu Bacubacu]

I have an i7 CPU, 12GB RAM, SSD drives and a brand new GPU with 8GB onboard memory and the start finish straight stuttered for me, but only online so there is a bottleneck somewhere.

Dismal race for me, sadly not in the right frame of mind for racing, so did not do well and suffered from lapses of concentration. Don't know why just didn't feel 100%. Hopefully just a mood thing and hope to be back to normal next time.

BTW my car was overheating and laying down smoke even though engine health was in the high 80's. Did not see anyone else smoking? Both Oil and water were red for most of the lap.

Nice to see MikeHarley back again, perhaps he could say Hi?

What resolution are you using ? Me 1920x1080, I have i5 Gforce 740.

Maybe your bottleneck depends from your video card

[BillThomas]

My PC is an i7 cpu, 500GB SSD, 8GB ram and a NVidia card with 2 GB ram. I had no problems with lags here or on most tracks. Resolution 1920 x 1080 which is Native resolution of my 24 inch wide screen monitor.

[Ziu Bacubacu]

I forgot to say that GTL work well just with one core. Who have CPU 4 core like i7 or i5 have go to BIOS and setting 1 core only, or when start GTL go to task manager and setting 1 core. I set it from BIOS

[phspok]

Last night's machine is i5 8gRAM, 2g GTX760, and I got stuttering on and off line at a couple of parts of the track.
I turned off shadows, and set track to medium detail, and it might have helped, not sure. The reason I gave Clive
a gift of many seconds was because (for the second time with this machine) my GTL decided to minimise to desktop.
I have no AV at all other than MS security essentials, WIndows, and everthing I know about is set to notify
about updates only. I maximised it and carried on, but was stopped sideways in the tunnel entry 

I have fitted a smal fan blowing at the CPU fan, and that may help, the monitoring prog I have doesn't record
anything Mt Vesuvius, so is a mystery.

[Geoffers]

First, I had no problems with running the track on my old coal-fired PC, smooth all the time.

Qually. Surprised with my qually time as I had only managed one lap under 2.23 in testing, although I could have gone a little faster as I made a couple of small mistakes in the latter half of the lap.

The race. Got a good start & appeared to have a tidy advantage into T1, but just as I was about to turn Ziu came flying past on the inside & then I got a clout from behind which pushed me wide. Not sure what happened (haven't watched the replay) but some people must have been a bit too ambitious! Mike Harley grabbed the lead & I followed him through T2 & had a look at passing into T3 but chickened out, luckily, as Ziu (who had probably got red-mist after T1) dived up the inside & didn't make the corner! Did get past Mike at T4 & made my escape while others sorted themselves out.

Had around 11s lead when Ziu got into 2nd place & started to catch me, but after another 2-3 laps the gap started to increase again. I wasn't pushing to the maximum as it is very easy with the Mustang to get into trouble, so just tried to keep it neat & tidy & hit my braking marks. Also found the engine health went down rapidly, was into the low 50s at the end, so didn't want to blow it up.

Congrats to Ziu & Erling.  

Cyas all next week.  

[Bob M.]

Fun race for me.  Got caught up in the scramble in T1 at the start and ended up in second to last place.  After I got my bearings as to where I was, I got out of the sand and took off after the field.  Must say I overdrove the car a little untill the tires warmed up and had a couple of near off's.  Then made good progress as guys were racing hard against each other ahead and was to my advantage and soon caught up and got into the fight.  Passed a few and also a few dropped out so ended up with a better finish than I expected even before the race started.  Could not keep pace with Clive as usual so just drove most of the race watching the difference in time with the car behind me.   Tony's smoke screen is a mystery to me, at first I thought he had too much rear brake bias, but then as I got closer I noticed it would send out a puff every so often even on the long straights.  Weird!!!  First time on this track and grew to like it.  Being that it is ficticious I think they could have made T1 a little less hazardous......

See you all at Mosport in the beasties
Bob M.

[SpecialKS]

Results



What about Geoffers dropping to 8th place during lap 5 and regaining the lead in lap 6?

[Erling G-P]

I have an i7 CPU, 12GB RAM, SSD drives and a brand new GPU with 8GB onboard memory and the start finish straight stuttered for me, but only online so there is a bottleneck somewhere.

Dismal race for me, sadly not in the right frame of mind for racing, so did not do well and suffered from lapses of concentration. Don't know why just didn't feel 100%. Hopefully just a mood thing and hope to be back to normal next time.

BTW my car was overheating and laying down smoke even though engine health was in the high 80's. Did not see anyone else smoking? Both Oil and water were red for most of the lap.

Nice to see MikeHarley back again, perhaps he could say Hi?

Noticed during offline practice, that once the car started overheating, it was difficult to get it to stop again. Happened to me after digging myself out of the sand somewhere; oil and water temp would repeatedly turn red in various places on track.

Strange with the very differing mileage with regards to stutter problems; doesn't seem to be dependent on hardware configurations.  Noticed that it's definitely accumulated in my case - a memory leak perhaps ?    - When watching the replay after the race, stutter set in and got increasingly bad after a while. Exited, reloaded the replay and skipped ahead to the place I left.  Now all was butter smooth again.

Cheers,
Erling