Weather generation now available to all

[Dave 'Gizmo' Gymer]

The "Generate Weather" link is now available to everyone on both the event announcement pages and via the circuits list.

To use it, you need to generate the weather.txt file, put it in the GTR2\UserData\Log directory (or Log_Dedicated if you want to use it with a dedicated server), then mark it read only (right click on it and select properties), to stop the game overwriting it. Then start GTR2 and select "Changeable" as the weather.

Note that there is no guarantee that the weather generated will match the weather in a forthcoming race - only the initial conditions are set from the real world weather, the rest are generated randomly.

[Gothwitch]

Fantastic Dave!!.... Could you make it sunny for Oulton Park on Monday as the rain can cause my hair to run... thanks

[Jeffrey]

Ade, please put her back on her leesh, she is running around way too freely .

[Ade]

 Sorry about that, She was safe and sound in the garden when i left for work.....
but she keeps getting loose somehow???

[Dave 'Gizmo' Gymer]

I was observing most of qualifying last night from the garage, and it was quite obvious that there's a correlation between changes in the weather, and the two mass discos.

IMO these are related to the level of graphic detail people are running - I know both Prof and I are running 'low' settings and neither of us were affected - but since I can't control that, and since changes during the race don't appear to cause the same type of mass disco, I plan to change the weather generation process so that the weather is fixed during practice and qualifying, and only changes after the start of the race.

It's entirely possible that this will make the races themselves unstable. I guess we will find out next weekend!

[Legzy]

That's a shame Dave. Variable weather during quali adds to the build up excitement & helps mix it up a bit for the grid.

I too was was on low graphics settings last night & was unaffected. The 5/6 people that got ejected twice last night, could they not just reduce their graphic settings to avoid them being booted? You having to change qually to fixed weather effects all of us, when those few might be able to fix their own problem. 

When I think there's a chance of rain, I reduce all my settings to minimum so that my race isn't spoilt should my PC fail to cope. I wouldn't expect you to run dry races only so that I can run higher graphic settings on my PC.

[Mark J]

Well must admit that i run high/full graphic settings and yes i was one of the group that got booted twice. However, the weather had already changed to 'raining' whilst i was out on track and it was only on my 2nd or 3rd flying lap that it happened as i exited the final corner. (for the 2nd CTD) so im not so sure that it was 'as the weather changed'. The first CTD i noticed the server was at 27/28 runners so assumed it was the dodgy creaking netcode but 2nd time the server showed 24/28 as i assume a few gave up after multiple ctds. 

[Busi]

Well not sure if that will be useful info Dave, but I also run low graphic settings (low circuit detail, low car detail) and if I remember well I also have had this problem in at least one UKGTR race, possibly due to another issue, but...

[Truetom]

This seems like becomming a target thread, so I'll repeat from my other post:

I'd like to emphasize that I had a freeze, not a disco, therefore I didn't return to lobby. Twice I had a CTD with "Do you want to inform Microsoft about it" and one was a total freeze where I had to reset PC.
About your post in the weather compartment, DG. This was my third GTR2 race on my new rig with highly detailed game running. At all others and at P&Gv2 I had one freeze (CTD), yesterday there were 3.
But I will also repeat: I never had these problems before P&Gv2 install. 

[Dave 'Gizmo' Gymer]

so im not so sure that it was 'as the weather changed'.

It was - I was watching, Mark, and the weather changed from rain back to sun, followed (within a second or two) by a the second big round of discos.

[Tibernius]

IMO these are related to the level of graphic detail people are running

I'm running maximum on everything and didn't get disconnected during qually.

[Simon Gymer]

As Gizmo knows already, I also got a GTR2 freeze, that caused me to load up Task Manager and kill GTR2 to get out of it. This happened at the same time as about 6 other people did too in the qually session. It got me the first time, but the second time a load of people got the problem I was unaffected. I guess mine is effectively the same as a CTD. This does point to something non-network related because network related issues are normally just discos without CTD.

I do run very high graphics settings, but am not going to turn them down unless someone can tell me if it is indeed related to weather changes and graphics together and which setting it is that needs to be changed. I guess we could do some lengthy testing with VERY changeable weather file with people running all sorts of different graphic settings to see if we can reproduce it accurately.

We know from what Blimey! Games changed themselves that there are bugs in the game related to changeable weather and this seems like a good solution to me as changeable weather during qually/practice isn't of huge importance.

[Mark J]

My discos were litterally 'crash to desktop' shutting GTR2 down and the microsoft fault reports coming up rather than the nornal disco screen freeze and lost connection. (same as TT).

[spanner]

So running a super high spec PC doesnt really help at all then? I'll put my money away then!

[Prof]

So running a super high spec PC doesnt really help at all then? I'll put my money away then!

I hope my new machine will let me use the higher res at more than about 20fps when it gets dark and/or rains. That's my excuse anyway.  (Might even get fsx running properly if really lucky)