American FH: Monaco

At least I survived another Monaco race. Just.

As more and more people joined, my grip dropped away more and more. And this track is bad enough when everything is perfect!
By the time everyone had joined I couldn't get within 1.2sec of my best typical lap time, but worse was that the extra sliiperiness meant it was quite dangerous then. Not too bad as long as you drove the car as if it was an Ensign N177 and has extremely low grip. But not much fun to race well in!

Qualify I struggled to stay alive and be even somewhat fast. And when I clipped a wall and lost a front wheel I could have limped home the 2 corners to have another go out, but I was so annoyed with it all I just ESCed out instead. Too bad where I start! Unlikely to last a race anyway. I was actually going to leave the event.
Well, too bad I was too silly and annoyed to NOT go out again and do a half decent lap! Seeing I calmed down and decided to race anyway!

8th on the grid, so it was going to be a big hold up in the typical Monaco procession.
Bill had a slow start so I got one position right away.
Then I had Aubrey to contend with and find a way past.

I was being held up over 3secs on even my slower 'low grip' pace! But I could not find anywhere to get past!
Aubrey had every right to race for his position, so that was fine! I half welcome a strategic battle. But after 6 laps it had cost me over 18 seconds delay.

There are two main 'might be simple' areas to get a pass at Monaco - coming onto the main straight and the run into the tunnel. As long as the car ahead slips under power and loses the acceleration.
But Aubrey never would! bah! lol
The other place I saw he had an opening was the fast left sweeper on the hill - he would pretty well always run out right off the inner railing and I knew I could hug it tight and still be very fast if needed. But it took 3 laps of testing the process before the full chance occured and I shot into the opening and got the pass all done.

That lost time was actually going to end up crucial as it turned out later. Oh well.

When I caught Jeff quite rapidly, he gave me a bit of a race for a lap and half, to feel things out against me, and then obviously decided it was best to let me go past easily. Thanks!! Great sportsmanship, and well thought out and excuted for both our best interests!

From there on it was a chase to catch Steve. But my current lap times were only marginal for closing the gap down. Though a while later I began eating the time down! Down to 6secs with 6 laps to go... still not likely unless he made some error at least. And that 18sec earlier delay was then showing what great use it would have been to be hounding Steve for many laps a lot sooner! (eg prob 8 laps or more sooner to catch him).

4 laps to go I turned into Turn 1 about 1 foot too soon and brushed the wall. All was ok, but I thought I better not do that again! Then the very next lap I did it again, by a few inches more, and damaged the rear suspension!! DOH
So that was that... nurse it home for 4th would have to do.

That stupid 'low online grip' thing, I noted that whenever I got near another car it would be even worse. The car would push off a turn a bit more, not be able to brake as well, or not have the traction to power on as well or soon. But once you moved away from them it went back to the 'normal' lousy level.

My best online practice (done on the R2P server, but alone) race time (race fuel) was 1:26.7 and I did a full race run for about a 1:27.8 average. But in this race I could not even get under 1:27.5 as the best lap, and most were low to high 1:28's. And some 1:29's when it was even a fine clear lap.

For the Euro race the online grip was a LOT better and the drop-off was nothing compared to this US race.

It was a tough race thanks to that grip rubbish, but at least I survived it. Phew!

uuuhhhmmm...well...there's the Zamboni next time.

Congrats to Mr H on the sweep and the rest of the podium.

Edit: Pete, my first sentence refers to my "race", not yours
in any way just to be clear.

Hey! That will be why the grip drop is worse at Monaco! The track shape. The bandwidth throttling runs on car distances apart - in the 'world'. Not according to the track's path. So seeing Monaco is like a 'hairclip' overall, cars are close to each other, in the world, far more often than pretty well any other track (except maybe Varano).

And the Euro server was better because there were less cars - only 10 started the race? - and also a lot more dropped out very quickly. So the first lap or two, when everyone is slower because they are close and being 'safer' anyway, isn't overly noticable, and by lap 3 a lot were gone anyway.
Though it was also still some drop off in grip for that race.

This effect should not be happening, especially with modern day internet being easily capable of good enough data flow to assure a system can maintain a rock solid data buffer really. They should be able to write better coding to allow for it. Bandwidth throttling is a great idea but unfortunately escalates other problems in maintaining a constant data flow, though it could all be done better for sure.
Hopefully one day they will (ASAP!!).

That was an excellent pass, Peter! Although, I've always been very slow in that section in every version of Monaco I've ever driven.

Pretty exciting race. The first half was all about avoiding other peoples mistakes. Loose wheels, spun cars, bodywork, etc. I just clipped a loose wheel at one point, but didn't seem to take any damage. One Williams swerved right in front of me in the braking zone for Tabac. I have no idea how I managed to avoid him! Scared the crap out of me! I'll assume he had suspension damage or something. :) At about the halfway point, I smacked the wall after the chicane and deranged my suspension noticibly. Spent the rest of the race nursing the car around. Did a half spin after the swimming pool and broke my front wing off a few laps from the end. I pitted for repairs since the car behind me was nearly a lap back. Then I just cruised home for a fairly satisfying 5th place.

I sustained suspension damage when my shitty Momo pedal set lost grip on the carpet and slid away from my chair while under heavy braking, making me bump the wall.

I then lost my two front wheels in Turn 1 when I lost concentration while braking. I nosed into the wall at... I don't know. 30 mph? Lost both front wheels! What the hell? The damage model is nuts in this mod. ;P

Yeah, I wouldn't mind seeing the damage % raised a bit at least. It is probably quite accurate in some cases, but then ridiculous in others! So those ridiculous cases ruin races! I would rather we can all have more fun, than extreme realism which really crosses into that ridiculous too often.

You wouldn't want to use Monaco as a sole input to a case of thinking about damage results of course, but there is enough info from all tracks to show it is all too often ridiculous.

Who knows what level... 30% , 50%, 60%... but a fair way down from 100%!

I remember early on with this mod we ran 50% damage. The problem then turned out that people were not DNFing. They would continue on track with heavily damaged suspension and cause all sorts of havoc. We increased to 100% and people now DNF instead of continuing... safer for all.

Peter, you should try altering your PLR file to tweak that throttling code a bit. Maybe that will help with your loss of grip online?

I actually sent an email to ISI_Jeremy to get his take on it all. And maybe some possible MP ini settings. All I see are 'spring' type settings - which would be to do with 'absorbing' data delays etc.
I even think that value even existing probably shows how they have to try to account for the fact data is pretty well never going to be a reliable flow and spacing/timing.

Router added delay, whether the electronic switing times and/or the firmware routing routines, would just be another addition to such variations. I still remove mine, but I mean it shows there is a tie in with that too.

There are no real values of any use that I can see in the MP ini, or the PLR file really. But I will have to look again. Bandwidth Throttling settings in there?
Not that are likely to be of much use for the issue.
The main issue in the game is going to be the process they decided to use to tie in networking and its variations of flow and delays, versus joining that into a clients game timing.

Maybe Jeremy will respond and explain what it is all about and if it can be improved.
Though I don't see any real reason there should be any tie in of the systems that make networking flow link with physics cycles or calculations. That would seem silly.

EDIT: I see the 79 series has been dropped... nothing much to say then regarding this series anymore.

It's been reformed in a League, Craig. Join it!! I did!!