iRacing Season 1 - Skip Barber @ Laguna Seca - Dec 8

[Truetom]

I wanna use some forbidden words - lots of them. Trying to log-in gave me an error and activating a "recover password" option gave me the message that they don't have any data of account with that e-mail. And no, I didn't misspell it.

Going shooting, for now BF2. iShit might follow.

[Simmo]

What password have you used paul?  We have been using haddock for everything so far and I can't get in with that?  Bing new to this I don't know any others.

[Paul968]

I've pm'ed you the pwd Stuart

[Paul968]

Have you got another email address you might have used TT?

[Truetom]

Some old data popped up, I logged in with old old old old (1st account) e-mail. Susan Boyle Flint is looking into it. Though she doesn't get it either, lol, she has the e-mail I was trying to use and have used on Tuesday, not the one I had to use today.

[Mark J]

i'd really like to race here tuesday but everytime i try and get any enthusiasm for this sim it spits it back at me with technical problems  

Ive no idea whats causing the fps to suddenly drop to a quarter of what its running at   There were only about 8 of you on there last night and it was fine for about 10mins then plummeted from 80+ to 22fps
Ive run countless races online with 15 or so opponents no problem at all, yet now in only 2 hosted sessions ive tried to be in, its happened both times. During the last race it only occured after about half hour...so random.
Last night, when i alt tabbed, the cpu was only using 57%. I did notice when i finally quit it was showing 81% though. Any clues?
Even when i quit out and come back in, it stays at the low fps. I even tried dropping all gfx down to low class 3 but no difference.

I dont even know if the wheel problem is sorted yet either. I bought a powered usb hub to use with it, so am hoping that problem at least is fixed.

Laguna is a great track but ive got no confidence that at some point during the race the fps wont suddenly plummet.

[Dave 'Gizmo' Gymer]

Ive no idea whats causing the fps to suddenly drop to a quarter of what its running at   There were only about 8 of you on there last night and it was fine for about 10mins then plummeted from 80+ to 22fps

You'll have to bring up the performance monitor (in Control Panel->Administrative Tools in XP) and have that running when the problem happens, then you be able to see if there's a sudden increase in paging or CPU use, and if the latter, what's eating it.

How much memory have you got? 1GB? More?

[Paul968]

I know Gary Tall had a performance problem which was cured by getting rid of his paging file - no virtual memory, only physical.

[Dave 'Gizmo' Gymer]

I know Gary Tall had a performance problem which was cured by getting rid of his paging file - no virtual memory, only physical.

That's what I wondering - it could be as simple as reducing the replay memory override. But I wanted Mark to figure out what was wrong on the basis of hard data, rather than guesswork - I see too much 'optimization' done on the basis of guesswork in my job, and it usually makes matters worse rather than better.

[Mark J]

2gb RAM DG.  Hard disk is regularly de-fragmented using Diskeeper. Gfx card is 9800 GTX. Should be able to cope with IR easy enough. As mentioned had plenty of races online in the past with IR and no probs.

[Paul968]

One possible difference with hosted races is that we run very long sessions compared to normal races. Is it possible that this somehow increases the use of memory? I have 2Gb as well, and I tried turning off the paging file at one stage and it complain on occasions about not having enough memory.

[Dave 'Gizmo' Gymer]

Which is why I'm wondering about replay memory override. The ISI-based sims log replay data to disk and then compress it as you leave the session; iRacing holds it all in memory and only writes it out if you save it.

On the other hand, the replay buffer is lost if you leave a sesison and rejoin, which I think Mark does, and the problems starts again within a few minutes of that rejoin.

But I think it might be worth setting replay memory override to something very small to see if it helps.

[Paul968]

Sounds plausible, although as you say you'd expect the replay to be related to the time connected, not the session length. Anything simple has got to be worth a try.

[Paul968]

It would be useful I guess to run a test. I tried it in the normal sessions but they don't last very long before you cannot rejoin. How about if I launch a practice session now and people can then join and report their virtual memory use?

[Mark J]

On the other hand, the replay buffer is lost if you leave a sesison and rejoin, which I think Mark does, and the problems starts again within a few minutes of that rejoin.
But I think it might be worth setting replay memory override to something very small to see if it helps.

no once its happened it stays at that low fps without regaining. So even if i quit out and rejoin its instantly at 22fps. Odd.

where is the replay memory override setting? Worth a try.