Hi - I am thinking of organising a big MP session in a couple of months, possibly running 24 hours. To all the MP experts, would be grateful for their thoughts on the following. 1. How does stability compare to rF1? I read it was pretty good during the SimHQ recent session. 2. If a player's machine crashes or disconnects, can you rejoin ok the same session? 3. Are the driver swaps working ok? 4. What are the major issues - if any - which need to be implemented to deliver a full MP endurance experience in rF2?
Has this duration ever been attempted before in simracing? In actual endurance racing, the driver coming out of the cockpit would debrief with the engineers, catch a few laps on the teams in-car, nap a bit and get a 'bite' before resuming. You'd really have to find very dedicated simracers to have anybody left in the field after eight hours. I'd love to see it though.
In the 6 Hours of Mid-Ohio we didn't have 1 disconnect or problem with driver swaps despite having something like 70 swaps! 1. How does stability compare to rF1? I read it was pretty good during the SimHQ recent session. 2. If a player's machine crashes or disconnects, can you rejoin ok the same session? I have not tested this yet, but it is supposedly implemented. If you want to test it, I can put a server up, we can have a few people connect then we will have someone pull the plug and see how it goes. From what I understand, you rejoin but you timing and lap count are messed up. 3. Are the driver swaps working ok? Yes. 4. What are the major issues - if any - which need to be implemented to deliver a full MP endurance experience in rF2? Reconnects need to be better. We need a good Prototype mod. Tire wear issues need to be addressed with some cars.
http://www.simracingforholland.nl/log/2005/11/the-double-at-the-24h-of-le-mans/ It was a blast, I had my SFH teammates come over with their pc's and gear. It's fun to be able to say youve won the race and shake hands and look into your teammates eyes too The rest of the team was at someone else's place. This was Nascar 2003 with Redline's GTP mod.
This duration has been done several times over the years. There was a 24 hour event at Le Mans just a few weeks ago. I ran 3 seasons in an endurance league where we did 6 - 12 hour events monthly. Field sizes were 38+ for every event. The average team size was 3. The rules required a minimum of 2 drivers and a max of 4. My team has done 12 races with just two drivers because of schedule conflicts. There is a large fan base for endurance racing. There is a bit of a myth that rF1 couldn't reliably do endurance events but for the most part it ran very stable for my team. After 30+ races we only had one failed race because I forgot to open the door on my desk and my machine overheated just 2 hours into the race. Nothing to do with rFactor though. It seams like people write off endurance racing due to the myths surrounding rF1's stability. Now with rF2 people are revisiting the idea. Lets hope it gains more momentum. Once you start endurance racing you never want to go back to sprint racing. The 6 hour SimHQ race went well. Not a single failed driver swap or disco. At the time of that race there were a few driver swap bugs. All of them are fixed in build 240. The missing pit box outline and setup transfer problems are the main ones that have been fixed. Reconnections a have a few problems that will probably be resolved in the next public build.
What's funny (in a related sort of way) is that I was in a Race 07 league that did 75 min-3 hour races (ironman- R07 doesn't have driver swaps) and once you start doing long races like these, it changes how you approach racing. Everyone who was in that series came out of it a better driver (or so they told me). One of the shortest races was 75 mins at Watkins Glen and one of the guys writes in the forum and calls it a "sprint race" then in the next post says "I can't believe I just called a 75 min race a sprint race!" Noel- Time for Team Hot Wheels to get together again and make things right!
I would be quite interested in endurance racing should it take off. The way things are now I cant see enough people being interested, not that I have looked into it, just going by how many people tend to race online lately. I cant check SimHQ forums now (most forums are blocked at work) but will look into it when I get home. I Should be free to race on Saturday.
Opening case may actually make things worse, since airflow runs as designed only when case is closed. But I guess it depends on a case.
Such a wealth of great info here. Thank you. I've done a few two hour plus races in iRacing (last being the 2.4 hours of Daytona) and it was a total blast. After 90-mins (no driver swaps at this stage of iRacing) you end up on automatic pilot and start to forget corners, particularly if the field is spread out. But the lack of dynamic lighting is the biggest killer of the experience. Here you are part of a living race.
Damn, I haven't tested it yet but this bug does suck. In the 6 Hours of Mid-O we had to enable auto-pit to make up for this bug otherwise we never would have found our pit box.
I wouldn't judge interest solely on what you see in the match maker. The real hold up right now is car selection. Right now we don't have a single class with more than one car and we need some proper prototypes too.
