Ok, I admit it. I am not very good in the lap times department at the moment. Therefore I am only doing offline practice sessions, learning the track and trying my best to improve times. However, i am being a complete idiot but is there no "in game" record of my best time for each track once you leave the session? Yeah, I know that you can check the logs in the player data folder... but it seems mad that I am currently having to write down my best times on a pen and paper, so the next time I fire up the game I know what my best times are? Surely this is a basic requirement for a racing simulator? Apologies, if such a feature already exists... but I be damned if I can find it?
Yeah, but this isn't sufficient though. I imagine ISI will incorporate a best lap times page into the UI soon though. RF1 has one I think. Can't remember if it records times set in different cars though. Obviously, it would need to.
Since weather and track rubber can have effects up 10 seconds, even if it did record your best laps, it's not going to have the other vital info: weather, temp, track temp, how much rubber was laid down and (eventually) wind. All that ^ makes a real difference in your lap times. A 10 degree difference in track temp can have up to 3 seconds difference in lap times. So without all that other info, what good are the lap times?
But doesn't that argument render real life best lap times irrelevant? Yet they are often recorded and are of interest.
Sometimes on internet forums its difficult to tell whether someone is being sarcastic, or misread a post or simply didn't understand. Oh well. Obviously, the OP and myself are correct. Best laps should be recorded and are of interest. Looking forward to the implementation of this feature.
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A large proportion of mod tracks I've downloaded over the years have included the lap record in some form or other. Whenever I read about a circuit, the best lap times are invariably prominent amongst the information. I've seen Stefan Bellofs Nords time in print on many occasions. I've heard commentators mention best lap times very often. The majority of sims I've played have had user best lap times somewhere in the UI. Look up a circuit on Wikipedia and, yes, you've guessed it, there's the lap records in a point of prominence on the page. It appears to me that the thousands of people that record this information and the millions that read it believe that they are of interest and have some relevance. We do realise the endless variables reduce the relevance. Regardless, there are many of us that would like a page in the UI that notes our best laps and in what car.
They have some relevence and of course tons of interests, but I just mean they arent relevent in determining how fast you are compared to others because different conditions affect so much, they are definetely relevent to get an idea of your pace, and definetely interesting to know, and as a stat for history and just general stat keeping yes for sure I just meant it in a direct comparison of ultimate laptime as in real life grip changes from minute to minute, hour to hour, day to day, week to week, month to month, year to year etc. This is the direction rFactor 2 is going with how the track and weather are all dynamically alive and changing based on many different things. But ya, of course everyone is obviously going to still be interested in best laptimes, comparing them to others' (even though its not really a direct comparions due to all I mentioned above, just like how it is in real life), record keeping, references, getting a general idea of laptimes, etc of course that still is of interest
I am not sure about the tangent that this thread is going on however... When I am practicing (an trying to improve my speed) on the exact same track, at the same time of day, with the same weather, with the same unmodded car, how is my previous best lap time not relevent? In fact, lap times seem pretty bloody relevent when you are in qualification!
Simple, you recorded the best lap time with a tag of the weather/environmental conditions at the time. Best lap times are invaluable to progression and for knowing how you stack against your fellow drivers. Unless I've misunderstood what you meant by 'recorded best lap times are irrelevant', in my mind this is only valid for people who are not even remotely competitive....something I find hard to believe of pretty much anyone.
The track might be different in rFactor2. They are relevant, IMHO, as relevant as lap times are in real life, because that's what we're simulating. But what you have to remember, is that you're only going to truly know where you stack up, when you are sharing the track with another car, instead of lapping alone, or offline. Because their track could have had better or worse conditions. But again, those times are all relevant. I still see plenty of lap records on real life tracks which weren't set today, in today's conditions.
rFactor has the lap time recorded and shown with the replay file. This would be a good feature for rF2 as well.
Lap times are stored, and used by services such as rf2 rank (http://rf2.gplrank.info/). We intend to use stats, but it's not the top of the list yet.
yo, just save your set up as a time, for ex, F3.5 119.....and when you load Monaco, it'll be in your set up list.
Yes as Tim stated (and others aswell) they are relevant, but only to a certain extent similiar to as in real life. Tracks get rubbered in differently depending on how many laps have been run on them (by you or anyone else), how much and how fast they get rubbered in(different track surfaces and tyre types all have an influence on this), air temp, ground temp, air humidity, wind speed, wind direction, etc etc etc Now if your just looking for a general idea of what times you are doing on a similiar rubbered in track yes you can definetely gauge it by laptime, but if you are trying to beat your old best laps and tenths of a second count 0.1 sec, 0.05 sec, 0.25 secs, then its going to be real hard to know if its the conditions that made you faster or just you getting betterm and thats exactly how it is in real life. Air temp (and maybe humidity) affects engine performance. Air temp and humidity affects tyre performance, wind can cause all sorts of differences, can loose downforce, can gain it, can gain/loose acceleration/de-celeration/top speed performance, from very tiny amounts to pretty "feelable" amounts. On top of those, it can just mess with the overall balance, feel and handling characteristics of your machine. Then there is the track rubbering in which not only affects overall grip by huuuge amounts but on how your car behaves, the balance, etc etc. Many times in real life, teams will NOT touch their setups in the first couple hours of practice, because they know that once the track gets rubbered in that most (if not all) of the previous setup info learned will mean NOTHING absolute garbage. People in real life sometimes decide to go out and do their qualifying lap 2 minutes later than the rest because they timed to perfection the track getting covered by shade and the temp dropping by a degree or 2, which gives them a tiny edge in performance. Now maybe he beats Massa's time by 3 quarters of a tenth (0.075), is it down to him doing a better lap, or was it that 1 or 2 degree drop? Well unless your some crazy engineer analytical scientist guy you will probabkly never know. Thats the complex, deep and beautiful nature of real life, and rFactor 2 is getting closer and closer to that.
In setups you have NOTES were you can jot down as many lines of times and all sorts of session info, resave it with a name appropriate..... and add other times / PBs the next time you use it, etc. See Note View attachment 3547
I agree with what you said earlier, but don't you mean they wait for the shade to lift? I thought you want higher track temperature to increase the tyres grip performance? Sorry to nip-pick, it just got me confused for a moment.
