Any news on when this will be implemented in UI. In rf1 you set settings to join as spectator. Can't see any option in rf2 to do this apart from editing the Multiplayer.ini file. Has anyone tried editing their Multiplayer.ini and to join server as spectator then do a driver swap? Many thanks.
Wahoo!!!! Driver swaps are enabled!! I just joined a random server as a spectator and then joined some random guy as passenger and then text chated with him to ask if I was in his pit menu. At first he said no then he said, oh yeah I see you. Then I had him pit and I took over. This is amazing news!! Now if they could just add a spectator toggle to the GUI. In the meantime I am going to write a simple app to toggle it so I don't have to do it with a txt editor.
I believe the swap code from rF1 was broken in rF2 so they just disabled it. I believe the entry in this log is just them finding the bug preventing swaps from working in rF2. The fact that they have spent some time working on swaps at all is very exciting to me. Hopefully they will continue to improve on it. Personally the process itself needs improvements. If I had to guess, the number one cause of failed swaps in rF1 was because the first driver would come into the pits and then hit esc before the second driver actually rolled away. If they could simply solve that problem I think most of the failures would go away. I race in a league that does 4 - 12 hour races once a month. We cap our field at 38 teams and have lots of stand by teams so the field is a very consistent 38 teams. The number of swap problems we have in the league has dropped dramatically and I think that is mostly due to better education and years of fine tuning the process and documenting our findings. Oh, another big bug in rF1 that hits us all the time is when you join as a passenger, the current driver sees the wrong name come up. You then have to unjoin/rejoin over and over until the current driver confirms over TS that it shows the correct name. It would be nice to solve that bug too.
Another problem in rF1 was that you couldn't use any plugins when you did driver swaps. I never liked getting rid of all my plugins
That is a myth IMO. I have done some 30 endurance races now with an average of 2 swaps per race and so far all of them have gone flawless. I have been using GID, RealFeel and Lazza's MoTeC plugin for all of them. To add to that there are three plugins that come in the default rF install. RaceCast, NetCom and TrackIR. Two of those can be removed but it is impossible to delete the NetCom plugin. I really think the swap problems mostly come from user error. The process is too ridged and easy too mess up.
That is good news- I was hoping you'd debunk that! I raced with a group that did driver swaps (this was a while ago when I still played rF1 quite a lot) and one of their rules was that everyone had to run with no plugins other than the default ISI plugins. So really, that is my only experience with driver swapping. If I knew more people who actually played rF2 I'd get a driver swap race started. An FIA style 1 hour GT race with a driver swap between 25-35 mins would be really cool to test this out. But it's hard enough getting enough drivers for a normal race much less 2x that number for driver swaps.
It's a rule in our league too. But plenty of people still run plugins, they are just afraid to admit it because it is taboo or something. Everyone on my team uses plugins. Two of us have MoTeC and GID and two of use RealFeel. Oh, which reminds me of another issue we have, which I think some people think is a bug. Some mods have FFB strength upgrades. When you run RealFeel you normally just stick with the lowest or default FFB level. But if you have one driver who likes heavy FFB and doesn't use RealFeel they will probably use an upgrade. But then on race day the upgrades are dictated by the starting driver. So say I start the race and I have the low FFB upgrade installed. Now the next driver who likes the heavy upgrade takes over and then says, "I lost my FFB". Well really they haven't, it is just much lighter then they are used to. Then there is the other dirrection. The driver that likes the heavy upgrade starts the race and then I take over from him and my FFB is all jacked up because the Steering Arm Forces don't match what I have my RealFeel tuned for. Again, not a bug, just something people don't understand. You have to work as a team to come to a common config that works for all drivers. I just changed my upgrade to the heavy upgrade and then retuned RealFeel to work with the new Steering Arm Forces. Problem solved. Now we are all happy. This problem would go away in rF2 because the FFB system has been overhauled.
I did a string dump of rFactor2.exe and then did a RegEx of the results looking for any string that starts with + and found a whole bunch of new command line options one of which will be really handy. +spectate To use this just click the Advanced tab in the Launcher and then click on the "Multi Player CLI" tab and then type +spectate in the box and click save. Now when you join a server you will join as a spectator. I am going to test some of these other cmd line options and start a thread with my findings.
Feel free to drop me a PM if this ever gets going. Big fan of FIA GT 1 hour sprints with 2 drivers. I've never raced rF2 online (did a little with GT5) but have a few thousand offline laps. My only concern is the current tire model is a bit too sensitive for GT cars. It can work but have to really baby the C6R to make it last 30 mins.
This works gr8. How do you turn off spectator mode? I removed this line and saved but it still lets me join as spectator. Is there another command to turn off spectator mode? Thanks
Well I noticed a -spectate in my string dump and was thinking you may need to use that to turn it back off, but in my testing it wasn't needed, simply removing +spectate did the trick. I guess I need to test again. Okay... Just retested and you are right, +spectate permanently turns spectator on until you use -spectate.
Thanks for quick reply. I tried -spectate without success. Strange that removing +spectate works for you but not for me. Also while testing driver swap I tried swapping with someone in Clios at Sebring. I did passenger select and he selected me in pit menu. He drove into pits but couldn't see red pit box. We ended up stopping at every pit box till we found ours. Lol. I was then able to successfully take over the car.
I am guessing you didn't see my edit above. Simply taking +spectate off doesn't work for me either. I was mistaken. Don't confuse +/-spectate with +/-spectator . I did that a few times. +/-spectate is the correct option. That is odd, the pit box problem. Did he do a pit req? Not that it should matter. It didn't matter in rF1 anyways. I have no clue if the guy I tested with did a pitreq.
Ok yes -spectate works. I must have done a typo as you said. Yes the other guy did do pit request. He also done a driver swap test with another guy and strange thing with that was when he entered pit he couldn't see the red pit box but the passenger could. So the passenger had to tell him where to stop. That wasn't the case when I tried it as we both couldn't see the red pit box??
Interesting. I have only done one test so far and the guy seemed to drive right to his pitbox without a problem. TBH I don't even remember if I could see the pit box. What track was it? I tested at Mills.
