If auto-download has nothing to do with the game servers, but are done through websites like google one-drive, dropbox, etc. Then why are the auto-downlods still slow by today's standards? I find it difficult to believe that the download speed of a multi-billion dollar company's website (google one-drive) takes minutes and minutes to download a track when i can download a track from ISI's website in like 20 seconds... Excuses my ignorance, but can someone explain that to me?
Get in a league then. Makes me think that casual/pick-up racing is not for you then In leagues it's often a place where a majority practices quite a lot up to races... Practicing is also part of the fun for many.
Your all spolit, I've got quick internet here at 5mbps Another 10 years and we may have a broadband network on cable. but then maybe not..
I've seen people ask this before but I have done several tests of this and can't find any difference in speed between Chrome and rF2. I even posted a video of these tests on my YouTube channel. It is actually possible to include content in the rfmod which will actually download from the race server and will be incredibly slow because the built in server has extreme throttling. Also, not all components are hosted on fast providers like Dropbox or Mediafire. Some people host them on their own web hosts and those could potentially be slow. I will do a new more scientific comparison of Chrome Vs rF2 on the same URLs some time tomorrow. The client has actually changed since I last did this test so who knows maybe it's slow now. I haven't noticed any slowdown myself. Oh another thing, ISI's components have been hosted on 1&1 in the past and my experience with 1&1 is they are very inconsistent with bandwidth. ISI just ditched 1&1 so maybe their components will download faster now.
The only way to learn to adapt faster is to push your limits and understand your weaknesses. Spending more time in practice & qualifying than you spend in the race is unrealistic compared to real life racing. The cumulative experience of being at many races & different tracks, to me, is far more applicable than running a single track to death.
Generally speaking though, almost any website I download something from, nowadays, tends to max out, or almost max out my internet connection. My download rate maxes out at around 3.0 megabytes per second (or in internet provider terms 25Mbit/s). Most websites, in general, download things at usually 2.0 - 3.0 megabytes per second. At that speed, a track usually doesn't take long at all to download. But whenever I auto-download something in rF2, it seems to take much longer than my regular day-to-day web-surfing-and-download speeds. [HR][/HR] If I don't literally have a physically server, and I just create a room/server through my regular PC (like for eg. in rF1) how do the auto-downloads then work?...Do they just get downloaded straight from my PC (and therefore using my upload bandwidth to send it to them)? This would be a cool option (if not already available), although most people have pretty slow upload rate's on their "regular home-PC internet", it at least is a start and would be plug-and-play for the average user instead of having no auto-download at all unless they setup dropbox, google one-drive, etc. Is this possible at the moment?...
I don't mind limited practice sessions as long as everyone has limited practice. The issue is getting into a server where the regulars have raced a given combo hundreds of times while the new guys don't even know what the regular tracks are or when they are going to change. Not sure why the combos; sequence and the schedule for changing the combos needs to be mysterious or change out of the blue without any notice. My interest level would increase greatly if I knew the combos used and when they were going to change. There is also the issue of crap combos so knowing the sequence of track rotation would help there, too, because if I hate LeMans and LeMans is the current track but I know Spa is next then I will know to stick around or check back in a while when the LeMans race is over, etc., etc.
You want to just keep playing on the same single track over and over?. Wouldn't you like to mix it up? You know, do a few races (of course with practice and qualy) at spa, then some at Monaco, and so on?
I'm going to say something now that I'm sure many of you would disagree with, but I think that part of the problem could be the NUMBER of servers. No-one wants to go join a server that has 0/30, so there are PLENTY servers at any given time just standing empty. What if the process for setting up a PUBLIC server was more controlled (Private (league) is a different matter)? If there are only 5-10 public servers, then everyone wanting to casually race would be on one of those. I just also need to make another point - I HAVE had plenty fun racing on some of your servers (Fun2Race & SR4L servers are the first ones I check - great combos and great guys) - So thank you to everyone that does publish a server.
Okay I just did a new test on the latest build and rF2 actually downloaded Silverstone from MediaFire faster than Chrome did. GetMod: 1:29.76 Chrome: 1:36.35 I was joining our league server which is hosting Silverstone on our Mediafire account. To test rF2 I simply ran the modmgr and deleted just the one component (Silverstone) and then joined the server, typed the password, it listed the missing content which in this case was just Silverstone. I then grabed a stopwatch and hit start at the exact same time that I clicked the get missing components button. As soon as the bar reached the end I stopped the stopwatch. Then to test Chrome I pasted the same exact Mediafire link that is in our GetMod registration and started the stop watch right as I hit enter. I then stopped the stopwatch right as the progress bar stopped moving (so I excluded that lag that Chrome has at the end of a transfer where it does a CRC on the file to verify if it is safe or not). If you do the math on this test: 380,609/1:29.76=4240 So rF2 got 4.2MB/Sec. I have 50Mbit/10Mbit service at the house so I wasn't fully maxed out. But the key here is rF2 was a tad faster than Chrome. This fluctuation could have simply been on Mediafires end. I think it is safe to say that GetMod content hosted on webhosts is just as fast as downloading in a browser. Actually if you consider the fact that GetMod will automatically install the content without you even needing to leave the game I would consider GetMod to be WAY faster than manually downloading/installing. As for your second question. You can't host rfcmp files on the built in HTTP server. You can only download content from the built in HTTP server if you include the content in the rfmod (in other words, not a vmod but a full mod). But the built in server was only really intended to transfer vmods and skins and one day virtual cars. So hosting content in a rfmod will be VERY slow. Long story short, no, you can't simply host the content from your own computer without running your own HTTP server (for example IIS or the single 40kb EXE server named Mongoose) and then using my GetMod Reg tool to link all the components to your server. Here is a very basic run down of how you could getmod reg all your components to your own webhost. 1: download Mongoose and drop the EXE in your Packages folder. 2: double click on Mongoose. This will launch the server and then launch your web browser and browse to your web page which in this case is just a directory listing of your packages folder. 3: Open up a port on your firewall to point to your webserver. Mongoose defaults to port 8080. 4: Run my GetMod tool to add URLs to all your components. My tool looks a lot like ModMgr. You get a list of installed content. To add a URL to a component you just double click on it and then add a link. So a URL would look something like http://<yourpublicip>:8080/Silverstone.rfcmp. 5: Once you finish adding URLs to all the content you are interested in using, host a server just as you always would. Now when people join your server all the content will download direct from your own webserver. Mongoose is here: https://code.google.com/p/mongoose/ And my GetMod Manager tool is here: http://isiforums.net/f/showthread.php/19702-GetMod-Manager?p=271771&viewfull=1#post271771 I agree this could be more streamlined. ISI seems to be catering more to leagues then casual pickup server hosters. Maybe when development slows down some they will work on making it easier for your average Joe to host. With the new dedi UI it isn't that hard for the average joe to host though. But it will only support GetMod if your hosting components that already have valid URLs assigned to them. My tool makes that relatively simple though.
Darn, that's nice and fast Noel and seems to work perfect. Sometimes I think the problem is that I forget just how big a track is, I mean it's not like most of them are 50 - 80 megabytes anymore, but usually in the hundreds. I hope in the future, with a more mature product, new U.I, etc. etc. rF2 will tell us the size of the download, the speed, etc. just like when you download something from the web. [HR][/HR] Thanks for the instructions, but I have never had to open or "mess with" ports for any game or piece of software in my entire life. If I have to start messing with all that kind of stuff just to make the game's autodownload work of straight off of my PC (rather than storage websites) then - sorry to be blunt but - forget it (for now). I hope ISI implement a much more plug-and-play system with regards to both A. setting up your own room (like in rF1, all done from in-game, takes 2 seconds) and B. autodownloads of content. [HR][/HR] I just read that Mediafire allows 10GB of storage for free accounts...that's pretty sweet. So basically, can I just upload my tracks to Mediafire (free account - 10GB total storage limit) and then copy and paste the link for my track download somewhere in the rF2 server settings, and then the file will be able to automatically get downloaded from Mediafire by anyone who tries to join my room? Is it really that simple? Just upload file to file-storage website, paste file-download link in rF2, done?...
I've never hosted a game server that didn't require you to open up some ports. Perhaps some games are taking advantage of UPnP which almost all routers support these days. This would be a nice addition to rF2. But a lot of people disable UPnP for security reasons and UPnP is disabled by default on a lot of routers. So people would still need to have some knowlage of networking to host a server. That goes for any game not just rF2. But yes you are correct about uploading your components to MF (But only MF Pro is supported because free MF is ad supported without direct download links). But as of 798 the HTTP client in rF2 supports HTTPS which opens up a bunch of hosting options. They also fixed some bugs with the way some webhosts handle redirects. They also increased the timeout and redirect limit. All these changes opened up a ton of hosting options. But all in all Dropbox is the most accessible host if you don't want to spend money. The main downfall is Dropbox limits you to 20GB of bandwidth per month. MF is the most bang for the buck if you don't mind paying a little. MF is $24.99 for the first year and that gives you 1TB of storage and 1TB of bandwidth per month. Unused bandwidth goes into a rollover pool. So it's a really cheap way to host. But yeah, upload your files, run my tool to add the URLs. Then build a new vmod with the components you just added links to.
It doesn't care how good a system is, if there is a possibility to be fu**** up in some way, humans will find the way to do it, either for ignorance, malice or idiocy.
Hahaha. Very true! As a developer it's always amazing to see how people can break stuff. Which is why I tend to have a little more patient with ISI and other devs in general.
