Assetto Corsa Competizione | Season 12 Round 8 | GT3 Endurance at Monza

[davejm]

It'll be sometime after 7 for me

[Mr Majestyk]

Probably be half seven by time I've had dinner, I'll jump on discord, if you're in a quali take a note of the server name 

 

[scoobysi]

14 hours ago, Thor said:

I like the idea of doing away with qualifying and using the reverse of the league table for the grid. Not so keen on races longer than one hour stints, because VR, but I could persevere.

I like this idea too, perhaps we could then also push the Endurance races out to 1.5hrs, sorry @Thor .The disadvantage of a longer race is that it would mean an 8pm start and I’m not sure everyone can make that, so that would be a reason not to do it.
 

15 hours ago, davejm said:

Guys, what are your thoughts on the 2x sprint race format?  Was it fun?  Shall we stick with it for the league (alongside the single races)?.

I enjoyed the Sprint races, although I think 25mins would be ample and allow a bit more time for changeover. Keep the 1st grid based on Quali and the 2nd either reverse or as per championship. The as per championship has the benefit of allowing it to be configured in advance.

 

With either format I wonder if a defined grid works reliably though, from my view in the 2nd race I lined up in 10th with Thor in 11th, I’m not sure if the move around prior to the start sorted things out but I didn’t accelerate off the line to make sure, turned out to be a bit of a blessing with the carnage . How was the position of others on the grid?

 

 

[davejm]

It was just Thor that was out of position as I did a typo when I updated his line in the config.  I gave him the same number as the person before him, so it threw him to the back.  The other positions were fine, and it's a reliable feature as it's used for the high profile (SRO etc) league races where they do qualifying on different days to form their grid.

 

I'm not personally keen on doing away with qualifying as I really enjoy that element of race day.  It feels ace hooking up a really good quali lap and knowing it's giving me a better chance of a good start in the race.  But then again, I also understand that mixing up the grid makes for some closer racing.  It might be worth putting some of these things to a vote so we can decide which way to go.

[scoobysi]

3 hours ago, davejm said:

I’m not personally keen on doing away with qualifying as I really enjoy that element of race day.  It feels ace hooking up a really good quali lap and knowing it's giving me a better chance of a good start in the race.

I’d definitely keep qualifying for Sprint Race 1 but maybe not for Endurance.

 

Another option for Endurance would be a 65 min race, which matches the maximum driver stint in real endurance race, with an optional pit-stop so you can do that single stint if you wish or fuel low & change tyres. I’m still keen to try and get a bit of strategy/unknown into the racing but I know we’ve already voted against optional pits.

[davejm]

No-one would pit, surely?  Wouldn't you always be better off taking enough fuel and going for one stint, in a 65 minute race?  The idea for the mandatory was specifically to add that element of unknown.  But maybe I'm underestimating the time you can save with fresh tyres and splitting the fuel load?

[scoobysi]

32 minutes ago, davejm said:

No-one would pit, surely?  Wouldn't you always be better off taking enough fuel and going for one stint, in a 65 minute race?  The idea for the mandatory was specifically to add that element of unknown.  But maybe I'm underestimating the time you can save with fresh tyres and splitting the fuel load?

Possibly, I don’t know, I expect the car feel would change quite a bit over that time with the reducing fuel load but 65 mins is maybe not enough, although could make it a fuel only stop perhaps **. No quali, 90min race, optional stop might be better. I don’t know how far you can go on a full tank, especially if you used some of the fuel saving modes.
 

I get what you’re saying re mandatory stop but I feel it makes it a bit like two back to back sprint races where you can just go flat out with little worry on fuel or tyres. Just trying to think how to make the Endurance feel a bit different to the Sprints.

** variable weather and time of day multiplier (cooling temps) also adds to the variables around pitting or not.

[davejm]

Yeah, I see what you mean about it feeling like two sprint races.  I'm just keen to avoid a situation where the only realistic strategy would be to stay out for the whole race.  The pit stop mixes things up slightly.

 

Plus, being new to sim racing I'm loving the immersion of the pit stop.  I think that's why I like the qualifying element, it's making me feel like a badass when I hook up a good lap on low fuel knowing it'll help me in the coming race.  It's all novel, and a big contrast to playing the arcade racer career modes where you get a random grid placement for a 3 lap race (hello pCars 3).  But that's just my personal stake on it.

 

But I do see your thinking.  If sacrificing the quali session means time for a longer endurance race that sounds good.

 

We can vote on such matters.

[SharkyOB]

I'm with you on this one Dave. I think a mandatory pit stop on the longer races is the way to go.  We just all need to stop messing up our pit stops 

[davejm]

Maybe a compromise is to have one mandatory (for fuel or tyres) and do away with the pit window.  Most hour long races I watch on YouTube (league races etc) seem to have this format so maybe they've had the same debates! 

[SharkyOB]

Yeah, I've been thinking that myself.  Remove the pit window as that fully opens up undercut etc. strategies.

[Thor]

Yep, that would indeed allow for more strategy. You could go all out with your first setup and low fuel to build a gap, and then a longer stint on a more conservative setup to try and hold the lead. Things like that would be pretty cool.

[davejm]

Hey guys.  I’ve added a new voting thread to try to refine the format of the championship. 

 

NOTE:  I’ve ticked the option to make voter names public; so that I can be sure the voting is coming from people that are involved (especially important for the start time poll).

 

What is the earliest time you can be on the server and ready to race?

To maximise the time we have available could you indicate the earliest time you can be on the server and ready.  Based on the result of other voting (if qualification is skipped) this may mean a race start at this time.

NOTE:  This isn’t a majority.  No-one will be excluded.  The start of our time window will be based on the latest time tagged; i.e. the earliest possible race time.

 

Endurance Races

I’ve included options for stating whether we should skip qualification in favour of extending the race length, and then how we form the grid if qualification does get skipped.

 

Sprint Races

I haven’t heard anyone say they didn’t like the format.  The only interesting proposal was having the grid for the second race a reverse of the championship standings; so I’ve included an option to vote for that variation.

 

We previously voted for a mandatory pit stop.  Should we refine this?

I’ve included only two options here; the current method and the newly proposed one.  I don’t think there’s any need to list other options as we’ve already voted in favour of the mandatory pitstop and there’s risk of debating this to death.  Plus we don’t have enough people to be presenting a whole series of options; they’d just get diluted down.  

[davejm]

Finding it difficult to vote   I'm coming around to the idea of skipping qualification now, so that we can have a longer endurance race.  Using the grid from the weekly practice timings would be cool, I think.

[davejm]

1 hour ago, davejm said:

Finding it difficult to vote   I'm coming around to the idea of skipping qualification now, so that we can have a longer endurance race.  Using the grid from the weekly practice timings would be cool, I think.

 

Voted for extending the race length in the end.  I'd rather maximise all the time that we have.

[davejm]

FYI, I've had a couple of people say that their choice for poll 4 would be different based on the result of poll 3.  i.e that if we choose to go with a grid based on the timings from quali we should go with that order, but if taking from championship standings we should reverse it. 

 

I'll take that into consideration when we take the final numbers from the voting.  If anyone else feels the same please let me know.  I knew there would be an element to the poll that I'd cock up 

 

Or if you want to change your mind on anything, let me know as it doesn't look like you can change the vote on the poll itself.

[davejm]

Only a couple of people left to vote ( @Thor and @mrben09 ) so I have a good idea of the general feeling.

 

I'm changing my mind back to having pre-race qualification for a couple of reasons:-

1. It's clear that if we do scrap it, people are favouring using the practice timings to form the grid (and not reversing it).  While this is a fair way of replicating qualification to some degree, it seems less interesting to me as it will be more predictable (the order will likely be the same from week to week).  While you could say the same for pre-race qualification, there is still that element of surprise on the day (can you hook up a good lap etc) which seems more thrilling.
2. But more importantly (and regardless of my personal preference noted above) I don't think there's a 100% reliable way of getting practice timings at the moment, due to problems I'm having with the third party app.  Even when it was working better there would be the odd result file it wouldn't process (but I'd just ignore it, knowing it wasn't really that important).  Having to manage this through the week might get annoying (having to manually check files it can't process).
3. There will be weeks that I can't make race day.  If the configuration is more simple I can just prepare the files in advance and someone else can upload them.  Having to configure the files right up to the end of the day (to factor in all the practice timings - with the issues noted in point 2) wouldn't be possible.  For example, for this week I'll be sending the files to Sharky to sort.

... with that in mind... regardless of how the others vote there isn't going to be a massive swing in favour of skipping pre-race qualification.  The 'No' options grouped together would be higher or equal (unless both vote in favour of scrapping!); plus I do think it's fair to give greater weighting and consideration to the guys that feel an hour race is long enough (I know that long sim racing stints can become uncomfortable at times).

 

Plus, we don't have a time window greater than what we've been operating under anyway.  Even best case scenario a longer endurance race could only increase to 75 minutes.  Personally, I'd like to see a pre-race qualifying session from 7:45pm until 8pm (15 mins), and then a 90 minute race until 9:30pm   But that clearly isn't going to be possible.

 

I'm going to propose that we go with a similar race configuration to what we've been doing, with a 15 minute quali from 8:15pm until 8:30pm; and then an hour race.

 

There's a good majority for scrapping the pit window and just enforcing one mandatory pit, so that one seems easy.

 

I hope this comes across as being fair.  It's not easy to work all of this out, but hopefully I'm maintaining a good balance of making decisions (so that things get done rather than debated for ever) vs giving consideration to what people want.  

 

 

[Thor]

I have voted...

[davejm]

1 minute ago, Thor said:

I have voted...

 

There aren't any votes showing for you?  Weird!!

 

Could you let me know what your votes are? Or try again?

[Thor]

Hmmmm, I definitely voted, but now it won't let me. 

[davejm]

4 minutes ago, Thor said:

Hmmmm, I definitely voted, but now it won't let me. 

 

Mist be a bug in the forum or something, because the page says that 12 people have voted yet only 11 series of votes are visible (yours missing).  If you could PM me with what you voted for, or just state in here that would be cool.

[davejm]

Watching the British GT race at Oulton Park.  I didn't realise mixed class GT3 and GT4 racing was a real world thing!  The safety car has been out for most of the race so it's all a bit pointless 

[Meers]

I'm back in business! Thanks to @batistutauk's setup tips over PM, and an additional video on how to eliminate micro stuttering by letting the GPU take most of the load off the CPU, ACC is now running at a smooth 60fps on my modest system with lovely graphics as a nice bonus. 

 

Basically, I've reinstalled ACC on the built-in SSD like @batistutauk suggested (instead of the bigger capacity HDD), switched off some programs that were running in the background that were clogging the CPU a bit too much, set my GPU to prioritise performance instead of quality and hey presto- no more stuttering!

 

I actually got around 105 fps in 1440p, but since my screen is 60Hz max, I upped the graphical detail a bit until I got 80fps, then locked it to 60. Steady as a brain surgeon's hands!

 

Joined a lobby with ~20 players on Monza in heavy rain and it stayed above 60 without any latency, so I can safely assume it will be like that in our lobby. 

 

Also, seems like I had some imput lag as well with the wheel, which is gone now as the steering feels much more responsive. 

 

Thanks again @batistutauk for your help! 

[davejm]

 

This week's action takes us to the WeatherTech Raceway at Laguna Seca.

 

I'm away from today, hence the early nature of this post.  Conditions for the race will be cold (10°c average ambient temperature) and WET!  Fear not, I've managed to adjust the server configuration so that it's cold and wet; but drive-able.  It's at the lower end of the range available.  There is always some variation, but there's a server setting to restrict the variance to 2/3 of the maximum so you shouldn't see storms.  Full dynamic weather (where starting conditions are random, then evolve over the weekend) is turned off, so the conditions here should be mostly consistent with a wet but perfect drive-able track, to the ranges I've set.

 

 

Practice

• Time: 18:00 until 20:15 (135 minutes)

Qualifying

• Time: 20:15 until 20:30 (15 minutes)
• Qualifying will start immediately after the practice session timer ends

Race

• Time: 20:30 until 21:30 (60 minutes)
• 1pm race start (in-game time)

Pit Rules

• 1 mandatory pit-stop
• No pit window.  Complete your stop at any time during the race
• Change for tyres AND/OR fuel.  As long as you complete 1 mandatory stop, it doesn't matter

There server is now configured for a looping practice session (as usual) with the conditions you should expect in the race.  So practice that wet weather driving!!  Consider this a practice run for conditions that may crop up during the league races (which will be fully dynamic, aside from the storm restriction setting).  Gutted I'm missing this one.

[davejm]

On another note, is everyone available to start the league races next Thursday 13th August?

 

My plan is to draw up a schedule of league races (already forming!); but if any of the regulars can't make a particular week we'll have one off 'challenge' races or practice races to fill those weeks.  But I'm hoping we can start next week.  If not, we'll have another one-off race.  It's all good fun whatever happens.

[Thor]

Yeah, I'm free.

[batistutauk]

i should be good

[Valver]

1 hour ago, davejm said:

On another note, is everyone available to start the league races next Thursday 13th August?

 

My plan is to draw up a schedule of league races (already forming!); but if any of the regulars can't make a particular week we'll have one off 'challenge' races or practice races to fill those weeks.  But I'm hoping we can start next week.  If not, we'll have another one-off race.  It's all good fun whatever happens.

 

Damn, no.  I'm away that week camping.

 

Could do from the week after...

[davejm]

No worries, is anyone else away over the next 2-3 weeks?

[SharkyOB]

I'm around for all Thursdays over the next couple of months.