those that do dive in and make the effort, it is quickly apparent that GTR is seriously lacking in many areas, areas that other sims (GPL, for instance) have tackled and solved sometime last century. Now here’s a quick point about leagues; unless you enjoy pick-up racing against a never-ending and seemingly growing majority of lunatics and fanatics – where the chances of having a good race with pro drivers are about as slim as Paris Hilton – eventually you’re going to join a league. Whether it be a serious league, or a friendly ad-hoc league, at some stage, somewhere along the line, if you take your sim-racing seriously, you’re going to join a league. What is more, rumor – and it is pure rumor at this stage – has it that SimBin are cooking up some form of online competition of their own which will be announced when the clock ticks to zero … many believe that league racing is the soul of sim-racing, and any sim that turns its back on this is surely committing sales suicide … With this in mind then, I decided to make some phone calls, bounce a few satellite signals around and quickly discovered some very disturbing facts. I was not able to talk to every league, but I was able to talk to a few who have years of experience in the multiplayer racing scene, and their input has been invaluable. It was also quite amazing to discover just how bad things really were on multiple levels. John Sjostrand, Comet League Admin, Dave Gymer, UKGTR
founder, and Roland Ehnstrom, Swedish Sim Racers GTR League Admin, were a few of the league related individuals I contacted, and the information provided was extensive. And I discovered something interesting—a lot of things were matching up, which is a sure sign that user error is a dim possibility here. There are very real problems, and these guys and the racers in their leagues hit them head on. Just to get us started, here is a ‘partial’ list of some of the issues the leagues are experiencing when trying to use GTR in a ‘competition’ environment: •
• •
• • • • • •
Speed bug. In other words, pretty amazing times can be achieved. You get to leave the server and rejoin for that one. Or, you can enjoy your 35 second lap at Monza. Synchronization problems. A lobby system just this side of chaos, with no buddy list formation ability or even the ability to create a simple password protected room in the lobby. Workaround—Use IP to IP exclusively. Multiple cars sharing the same pit boxes. Arrrghhhh!!!!! Impossible to rejoin during warm-up or race session. Not possible to set the length of any of the pre race sessions. Not possible to set the exact race length in laps. Drivers exiting the server are removed from the race results. Buggy starts. In my talks with the leagues, a great tip was brought
AUTOSIMSPORT – Volume 1 – Number 4
•
up to me by Roland: “We have indeed found a workaround for this problem in the leagues I am involved with (Comet and SSR). We set MULTI Formation Lap=0 and MULTI Full Course Yellows=0 in the *.plr file of the server. This way, the cars are left standing still on the grid at the start so there is no mayhem from AI controlled cars or the pace car going insane (see next issue, below, SB) . Then, when the clock has ticked down and the race actually starts, the pole sitter starts driving a slow lap, with the others following him around and keeping their positions. Like a normal formation lap, minus the pace car. When he reaches the start/finish line again, the pole sitter accelerates and the race is on.” That is definitely a workaround, but I can see the point—there appears to be a bit of hassle involved, if not also a smattering of FORTRAN as well. They have also discovered that if this is done, and the weather is not set to constant, the weather ‘situation’ (dry when it says ‘monsoon’ for example) can be a burden. I also imagine this technique (*.plr file manipulation at the server side) possibly could help with some other issues, but honestly—it is beyond my knowledge to even know where to start, and I am sure the leagues have already done quite a bit of this very thing. Pace cars driven by insane maniacs who have obviously taken Prozac, amphetamines, 32