Season 5 moderators and server size

[Dave 'Gizmo' Gymer]

Firstly, as I may have already mentioned, starting with Season 5 we are moving away from per-championship moderators and will instead pick up races as and when we have time to do them, oldest first. Hopefully we can then avoid the situation we had in Season 4 where some championships were moderated more expediently than others.

My thanks to all the moderators from Season 4, who've done what it always a difficult job in unusually difficult circumstances with the Monza events. Greg, Locutus and Paul are moving on and as already announced, Popabawa is joining us from the Legends, and future expansion of the incident moderation team is expected subject to suitable volunteers coming forward (hint, hint ).

We're also going to drop the server fro 26 to 24 slots after last night's GT1 Sprint race saw a number of disconnections and other strange behaviour. Sadly this means that fewer people will get full time spots in two championships but it appears to be necessary to ensure a stable racing experience for those taking part.

[Dave 'Gizmo' Gymer]

One other comment; we noticed a load of reserves joining at the end of Practice 1 instead of waiting for Practice 2 to start. We probably need to make this clearer in the race announcements but many were experienced UKGTR members who should know better.

[linco24]

Dave, I waited until 8.30 by my watch and joined. The lobby still showed it as Paractice 1 but thought it hadn't refeshed. I don't know if it does this? Anyhow, when I joined Practice 2 had just began. I hope I didn't affect anything.

[Paul968]

I watched the end of practice 1 and sudden rush to join before practice 2 had started. By the time it had changed the server was full  I assumed it was due to a delay updating 

[Simon Gymer]

From RSC...

It is preferable to have all clients setting their connection to the same "DATARATE' value, 56K or ISDN (amounting to "10" and "12" respectively), of course if there is a client with that type of modem, that means all clients should select a datarate of 56k (10).

So could everyone make sure they have ISDN selected on their GTR2 client (set in the lobby screen)
(I assume no-one is on a 56k modem?!)

[Paul Cowan]

ISDN conn is the preferred connection as Andy from Blimey said to the league I run in for endurance races.

I know you guys know Andy well so that's my benchmark.

[Paul Richards]

I waited until I saw Practice 2 appear in the lobby next to the server. I was hovering over 'join' though and typed in the password as quick as I could. Got just about the last spot I think. I thanked my quick internet connection then and cursed it later as it disco'd me at the end of qual! Some else got my spot though even then! Didn't mind as my internet was a bit dodgy for about a minute or two so it may have been too late to join as so close to end of qual. Might not have been too impressed if there was more time in qual 2 and I had an FT spot which I then lost. However don't think there is a better way of doing this as is it currently done regarding reserve joining. Sure this won't be a problem later in the season as there seems to be places available then.

[jan duijs]

That was me Paul,i already gave up (i waited till practice 2 appeared and then was too late),just came back to have a look ,tried and was in,with 5 min to spare in Q2

Jan

[Paul Richards]

that was good Jan, I always think it is better to have full grids and there really is no other way of doing this I think. When I join as a reserve I try not to expect to get in to avoid dissapointment. I was glad my internet disco'd in qual rather than the race and wasting a spot for someone.

[Jure]

In online flying community we used the TS2 trick (i.e. if "regular/registered" pilot in a given online war got disco or other problems prior to mission start, there was a chance to check his status via TS2 and if not, unregistered pilots could join the mission).

Should work in racing too. If a full-time driver gets a disco in, say... practice 2 or quali, he can reboot/gets back online/fixes whatever problem he has and asks for a spot via TS2 (in case reserve driver joined while FT was away thus preventing FT to join).

[Dave 'Gizmo' Gymer]

TeamSpeak stuff merged into this thread.