UKGTL Season 21 1973 ECGTC - Imola - May 26

[phspok]

Not familiar with Clive's setup. Just in the past DX7 was a "safe" option.
Mine is a 3080 as well with the wide screen, and it runs at hundreds of FPS
but it still helps if I set GTL to use all cores (multithreads in this case)

[Erling G-P]

Not sure what to take away from this round, except you don't turn into an alien overnight!

In Tuesday's extensive practice with Hristo coaching, I did a new pb, with an unorthodox change to my setup, of a tall 1st gear to use at Tosa.  Hristo developed my setup (without the tall 1st), and while his definitely felt better, I couldn't match or better my pb, no matter how hard I tried.  I have seen Hristo stress the importance of getting the power down as early as possible, and that's what I have been trying to do in my own way.

After seeing me drive, his suggestion was to turn in later, but sharper, to set the car up for early power-on.  Sounds simple enough, but actually doing it was a different matter.  I may have wanted the car to snap into the corners more sharply, but it had other ideas. It would understeer, causing me to run wide, or I would have to slow down so much to make the sharp turn, that it apparently negated the early power-on.  Hristo's advice was to rotate the car more, but how to do that?  Not something I had any succes with.  Tried and tried and tried after he left, but no success; I remained far from my own earlier pb.  Then finally tried going back to my own setup and drive like before, to see if that would make me match that pb.  It wouldn't however, so I could neither drive the 'new' way, nor the 'old' way.. 

Hoped sleeping on it would help, but problems continued Wednesday.  Had to decide what setup to use in race, so did some laps with each.  Was quicker with my own, but still nowhere near that pb from Tuesday.  After much hair pulling I went with my own, although the tall 1st would hurt at the start. 

Race was a meh experience.  All six cars ahead soon disappeared, until a dust plume at Tosa indicated a temporary place might be up for grabs.  Passed Daz extricating himself, only to spin myself the same place a few laps later.  Not once in a 100 laps on Tuesday did I spin that way, but in the race....yep    That let Daz past again, only for him to repeat the mistake again later.  Had hoped for a better fight once he caught up, but in reality he just went past on the last lap.

Grats to DD, Hristo & Manfred for the win & podiums.

So what to conclude?   Too late to teach an old dog new tricks?   The 914 too much of a razor to try and learn this stuff in?   Too high expectations too soon?  A process that will need much more time?  More skills to be mastered?

Clive, the blur effect you mention, is it on both near and far away objects?

[EvilClive]

 Erling the blurring is not so much "near or far".

It is almost as if there is a thin film of water in the middle of the screen that is being slightly agitated?, sort of rippling? It almost, but not quite, enough to give me a headache.

[Hristo Itchov]

So what to conclude?   Too late to teach an old dog new tricks?   The 914 too much of a razor to try and learn this stuff in?   Too high expectations too soon?  A process that will need much more time?  More skills to be mastered?

I'd say the car is as much to blame, as seems to be common with all these Porsches in GTL. If you recall, I couldn't even get it down to mid 45s, while Daz managed low 45s and Manfred was in the 44s. It has to be a combination of setup and driving, but what exactly, I don't know.

As for rotating the car quicker on entry, you probably already know how it's done - trail braking and avoiding excessive understeer. With some cars I've noticed that you have to actually lift up the brakes almost completely OR completely, otherwise they keep on understeering ever so slightly. And with some there's also the effect of any throttle application pushing the car a bit too wide too.

Another effect I've noticed with some cars is that you can brake much later if you don't use any throttle under braking. When I was watching Dimitar try the Opel in practice, he had one particular lap where he managed to start braking for the hairpin after taking the whole right hander flat out first. I could never do that myself, because of my excessive throttle usage. It seems like keep the revs higher under braking increases the braking distance for some of the cars. Conclusion: can't generalize on how to drive them properly, it depends on the car.

My guess is you'd do much better once you try a non-Porsche car. 

[Erling G-P]

Thanks again Hristo, it's obviously something that will take a lot more time and practice - trail braking for example, is not something I have consciously done, so will have to practice that too.  With the end-swapping cars, going into the corners with the brakes on is something that often ends in tears for me, so something to work on.

Clive, the effect you describe is not something I'm familiar with, at least not from the description.  Maybe try to turn vsync on - it could perhaps be a tearing issue which may be more annoying on such a large screen.  You do that via the GTLConfig.exe program in the GTL folder (or if you have a link for it in menu or elsewhere).  Remember to run it as administrator - otherwise the changes aren't saved.

Reason for distance question was related to Anisotropic Filtering settings - a low one tends to blurr distant objects, while a high one keeps everything sharp.  Thus wouldn't expect it to be the cause of the problem, but you could check in your 3D graphics settings for your video card - should be set to the highest value and to overrule program settings.  Not sure where to find it, but maybe other Nvidia users could chime in on this.