AC GT3 @ PORTIMAO, Sunday 2nd May 2021

[thom462]

Unfortunate race for me. Start was ok and I was behind Stefan with the same pace. Then came lap 3 turn 8 and I still dont know why I lost the back there. Was not on the grass or on the brakes, just lifted, turning in but the back just slipped away. Tried to recreate that spin after the race, I couldnt manage it, so I dont know why that happened, never lost it there once before in practice, whatever.......Lost about 12 seconds and lost positions. Could fight back and overtake Dean and close the gap to the group in front quickly. As I was close to my first pit stop mid race I decided to do the undercut not to lose seconds short before my pitstop in fighting the three guys in front. Took the far away pit entry as I thought this is the correct one but in replay I saw that most of you took the entry short to the pitwall so I didnt know that its ok to go there to the pits, I guess I should have asked. Lost about 5 seconds again due to that. Going off the pits it was close between Hape and me to the first corner. We collided at the apex, me spinning, he could go on, I thought he would go a little wider to let me room but it didnt work out guess he expected me to brake earlier to let him by....lost agin 10 seconds. Could overtake him later but all in all too much incidents for a better result. At least the pace was there, would have been interesting between Ernie, Stefan and me without those mistakes.
But it was fun and had some good battles. Thanks Han for organizing and cu next time.

 

[random2k4]

An intense race for me this time. I was totally shocked seeing all the great lap times in the 44s during qualifying. The last race we had here, I could manage to get a 3rd place start, but checking the times now, my previous lap time would only bring me to 8th.

I knew I needed to through out some miracle lap for my standards to start a little further ahead. Practicing all week only with race fuel I was in for a nice surprise. Could manage to start 4th with a lot of room to Patricks and Andreas time.
Finally!!! I got a good start and could defend my position going in the first couple of corners.
Thomas was right at my back and established a great amount of pressure early on. I really needed to push it so stay in front. Unfortunately, he seemed to make a little mistake in Lap 3 or 4. Next behind me was Han, but I already had a nice little lead, so I could focus on my lap times. Surprisingly, I was able to keep up with Patrick and Andreas. I knew I needed to almost match my quali time to do so, so I was stocked the entire race.

Seeing the battle for position 2/3 unfold in front of me I could get pretty close.
I took my chance after the fight for position in T13 made Patrick to take the corner wide. I managed to get by on the very inside. Now sandwitched between two drivers that are normally way faster then me, I tried to find my rhythm. Basically for the entire rest of the first stint I could keep Patrick about 1-2 seconds behind while not loosing touch to Andreas.
We pitted all at the same time. Somehow Patrick overtook me in the pits, although I had a 4 sec lead. Must have been fuel only.
After the dust of the pits settled I was 4th right behind Andreas again. In T13 I tried to undercut him, cause I noticed he was taking the corner wider then me. We traded paint and banged doors a little. Hope that was OK? Now in P3 I knew Dimitri in front needed to pit. Unfortunately, I misjudged T13 in the very next lap. I braked a little later to squeeze in on the inside. Dimitri made a very short steering maneuver to the right and I was thinking he opened the door, just to find us both at the apex punting into each other. Luckily no one was spinning, but Andreas could take back the position. Really sorry Dimitri for the punt, was not intentional!

After that, I settled in 3rd and started to manage my tires. The race was super close, up to the end, and it could have gone both ways. Andreas and my lap times were almost identical and also the consistency was the same. So like the last time, I finished 3rd which I am very happy with. It was also my 3rd podium finish so far, but seeing all the fast guys in front, there is a lot of room for improvement.

See you all next week!

 

[demetri]

In hindsight, jumping into this event after just finishing a two-hour stint on a much better rendition of this great track was probably not a good idea. I did not try this mod before as I spent all my time available for practicing and building setup for the other event. My thinking was that even if this mod was not very accurate it couldn't be that far off and whatever lines I'd learned would generally work, so I'd only have to adjust to different braking markers here. Boy, was I wrong! It felt like a totally different track, only vaguely resembling the one I just raced on.

I qualified pretty bad in P12 struggling to put valid laps together. Moved one position up shortly after the start taking advantage of a bottleneck in T3, but on the next lap @Fiberoptix and I collided going into T1, which was probably more of my fault as I didn't turn in at the point he expected me to.

A few cars went by while I waited for him to go on the track ahead only to see him spinning out in T3 right away (melted rear softs would be my guess). From there on I just drove mostly alone trying to learn this new layout on the way and eventually made it into P2 (didn't see that one coming ) thanks to my very late pit stop. That stop didn't go as intended as the repair took twice as much time as refuelling, but I still came back in P7 which wasn't too bad all things considered. @Interslice was closing in on softs pretty fast but he fell the victim of the netcode thing.

I was pretty sure that I had P7 finish in my pocket after that, but apparently the fuel estimate I was given was wrong and I was 1L short. I only realized that at the end of the penultimate lap and tried everything from coasting to shortshifting, but that was not enough and I ran out of gas in the final turn. I still had enough momentum to coast uphill to the finish line but got passed by two cars when doing that.

Well, at least I didn't get lapped. Will take that as an achievement.

 

[Fiberoptix]

In hindsight, jumping into this event after just finishing a two-hour stint on a much better rendition of this great track was probably not a good idea. I did not try this mod before as I spent all my time available for practicing and building setup for the other event. My thinking was that even if this mod was not very accurate it couldn't be that far off and whatever lines I'd learned would generally work, so I'd only have to adjust to different braking markers here. Boy, was I wrong! It felt like a totally different track, only vaguely resembling the one I just raced on.

I qualified pretty bad in P12 struggling to put valid laps together. Moved one position up shortly after the start taking advantage of a bottleneck in T3, but on the next lap @Fiberoptix and I collided going into T1, which was probably more of my fault as I didn't turn in at the point he expected me to.

A few cars went by while I waited for him to go on the track ahead only to see him spinning out in T3 right away (melted rear softs would be my guess). From there on I just drove mostly alone trying to learn this new layout on the way and eventually made it into P2 (didn't see that one coming ) thanks to my very late pit stop. That stop didn't go as intended as the repair took twice as much time as refuelling, but I still came back in P7 which wasn't too bad all things considered. @Interslice was closing in on softs pretty fast but he fell the victim of the netcode thing.

I was pretty sure that I had P7 finish in my pocket after that, but apparently the fuel estimate I was given was wrong and I was 1L short. I only realized that at the end of the penultimate lap and tried everything from coasting to shortshifting, but that was not enough and I ran out of gas in the final turn. I still had enough momentum to coast uphill to the finish line but got passed by two cars when doing that.

Well, at least I didn't get lapped. Will take that as an achievement.

I had an overall nightmare, the collision with you at T1 was only part of it. I will take blame as to be honest in the Lambo I just couldn't see exactly where you were and I suspected I had turned into you . Yeah I was trying too hard to get moving again on hot rears, but thank you for assuming fault and waiting for me anyway even to watch me then spin out two corners later.

The visual performance on this track was awful for me. After fiddling around with settings to fix it I ended up with this weird issue where the headset would start to float around and recenter itself in the car slightly, dropping me lower in the cockpit (at one point in the footwell). Then I had a server disconnect at which point I quit entirely.

I have a HP G2 but get such a different level of VR graphics performance on the mod tracks, some of them really bad like this one, aswell as in game settings I had to drop the resolution on the headset in SteamVR which I have never had to do before. Perhaps I am missing some settings somewhere but I am running a 5800x and an RTX3090 so I naively expect a 7 year old game to cause it little bother even on higher resolution panels.

Edit. In my ramblings I forgot to thank you for organising @HF2000.

 

[jackdyson31]

In hindsight, jumping into this event after just finishing a two-hour stint on a much better rendition of this great track was probably not a good idea. I did not try this mod before as I spent all my time available for practicing and building setup for the other event. My thinking was that even if this mod was not very accurate it couldn't be that far off and whatever lines I'd learned would generally work, so I'd only have to adjust to different braking markers here. Boy, was I wrong! It felt like a totally different track, only vaguely resembling the one I just raced on.

I qualified pretty bad in P12 struggling to put valid laps together. Moved one position up shortly after the start taking advantage of a bottleneck in T3, but on the next lap @Fiberoptix and I collided going into T1, which was probably more of my fault as I didn't turn in at the point he expected me to.

A few cars went by while I waited for him to go on the track ahead only to see him spinning out in T3 right away (melted rear softs would be my guess). From there on I just drove mostly alone trying to learn this new layout on the way and eventually made it into P2 (didn't see that one coming ) thanks to my very late pit stop. That stop didn't go as intended as the repair took twice as much time as refuelling, but I still came back in P7 which wasn't too bad all things considered. @Interslice was closing in on softs pretty fast but he fell the victim of the netcode thing.

I was pretty sure that I had P7 finish in my pocket after that, but apparently the fuel estimate I was given was wrong and I was 1L short. I only realized that at the end of the penultimate lap and tried everything from coasting to shortshifting, but that was not enough and I ran out of gas in the final turn. I still had enough momentum to coast uphill to the finish line but got passed by two cars when doing that.

Well, at least I didn't get lapped. Will take that as an achievement.

Thanks for confirming an impression Dmitry, I moved over for you and then I was totally shocked at your lines - I was off note myself with toothache, headaches and whatnot - and I thought "man Dmitry's not having any better a day than I am". I thought it was just one of my high speed delusions but reading your report confirms what I felt as we drove the Portimau backwaters together for a lap. Just wanted to ask - what mod of Porti did you drive, and, I am sorry you had an unforgiving race by your standards.

 

[jackdyson31]

I had an overall nightmare, the collision with you at T1 was only part of it. I will take blame as to be honest in the Lambo I just couldn't see exactly where you were and I suspected I had turned into you . Yeah I was trying too hard to get moving again on hot rears, but thank you for assuming fault and waiting for me anyway even to watch me then spin out two corners later.

The visual performance on this track was awful for me. After fiddling around with settings to fix it I ended up with this weird issue where the headset would start to float around and recenter itself in the car slightly, dropping me lower in the cockpit (at one point in the footwell). Then I had a server disconnect at which point I quit entirely.

I have a HP G2 but get such a different level of VR graphics performance on the mod tracks, some of them really bad like this one, aswell as in game settings I had to drop the resolution on the headset in SteamVR which I have never had to do before. Perhaps I am missing some settings somewhere but I am running a 5800x and an RTX3090 so I naively expect a 7 year old game to cause it little bother even on higher resolution panels.

Edit. In my ramblings I forgot to thank you for organising @HF2000.

Nice of you to comment this way Tim. You have some top line kit there, wanted the HP G2 myself but budget constraints forced me to abandon, sort of glad I did now. I am surprised how AC won't scale easily to the newer hardware because on a monitor something like my 1080 GTX will run it proud. A 3090 has so many compute cores that Nvidia lost count I think lol. I expected this behaviour from ACC because if Unreal but AC was a surprise especially since I made the same assumption you did a few months back ...

 

[jackdyson31]

Results: https://simresults.net/210502-S2R

Great race everyone! From my side a good one, always happy when I go faster than the last time out, and I beat my race PB by 0.3 seconds this time which was a nice surprise considering I had a lot less practice.

Decided as a fun gimmick I'd hook up my cycling heart rate monitor and see what it looked like through some code browns, battles, and the like. Surprisingly high considering the lack of physical activity, I didn't expect it would go anywhere near that high considering my resting heart rate is 60-65 bpm. Fascinating watching it go super high at the beginning of the race and raise a lot consistently in certain corners where you have to concentrate, lower and raise again in the pits, and lower a lot at the end.

Congrats to Andreas and Stefan on the podium, and thanks for organising Han!

What a damn good idea ! I have all the polar kit downstairs from my cycling days. I think I'll try a repeat of this at some point if you don't mind Chris

PS yes I concur from feel that especially when you approach a braking point and you want to brake dead on it your heart jumps into your mouth. If you don't want to be bothered then you sail by with a smile on your face as if nothing happened. So l thought - concentration/precision driving elevates heart stress, but your data confirms it.

 

[Interslice]

I had an overall nightmare, the collision with you at T1 was only part of it. I will take blame as to be honest in the Lambo I just couldn't see exactly where you were and I suspected I had turned into you . Yeah I was trying too hard to get moving again on hot rears, but thank you for assuming fault and waiting for me anyway even to watch me then spin out two corners later.

The visual performance on this track was awful for me. After fiddling around with settings to fix it I ended up with this weird issue where the headset would start to float around and recenter itself in the car slightly, dropping me lower in the cockpit (at one point in the footwell). Then I had a server disconnect at which point I quit entirely.

I have a HP G2 but get such a different level of VR graphics performance on the mod tracks, some of them really bad like this one, aswell as in game settings I had to drop the resolution on the headset in SteamVR which I have never had to do before. Perhaps I am missing some settings somewhere but I am running a 5800x and an RTX3090 so I naively expect a 7 year old game to cause it little bother even on higher resolution panels.

Edit. In my ramblings I forgot to thank you for organising @HF2000.

That sounds more like a tracking issue. I always need the lights on in the room even during the day, have had the drift thing before.

 

[UHF79]

@Chris Down, Interesting that your HR was 140 while sat on the grid and then shot up to 150 as the lights went out Bet Lewis Hamilton would put us all to shame, i'd imagine they're super cool, they always look it!

BTW, what app is the bar in the centre showing shift light, time, gap, tyres etc? Just building up my VR collection

 

[pattikins]

@Chris Down, Interesting that your HR was 140 while sat on the grid and then shot up to 150 as the lights went out Bet Lewis Hamilton would put us all to shame, i'd imagine they're super cool, they always look it!

BTW, what app is the bar in the centre showing shift light, time, gap, tyres etc? Just building up my VR collection

It's called sidekick

 

[Fiberoptix]

That sounds more like a tracking issue. I always need the lights on in the room even during the day, have had the drift thing before.

Think your right about the lighting, wasn't a problem until recently though. I have had the headset a while. I will try and connect some extra lights and see if that helps. Thanks

 

[Kek700]

I spun three times. One time because of a kerb and the other two in T11 which is off camber I guess. Massive sudden oversteer there. If anyone has some advice for that, I would be grateful.

@HF2000
I have no useful advice, just observations from my driving seat looking at your 488.
it looked quite skittish, you would in random places get a lot of sudden oversteer.
Now I have no doubt on certain circuits this would not occur. I just think this circuit brought the worsts out, handling wise, from your 488 setup.
I tend to alter my Nissan setup quite dramatically race to race, it is a case that on some circuits I can get away with different setups.
This circuit is one in particular, curbs here and I am off..an oversteer Nissan here is not good news here.
A long winded and probably pointless way of saying if you could find a way of giving the car a more predictable handling setup, ok, maybe slower, but more predictable for the race.
My qualifying setup was not the same as my race setup, it was just unfortunate that I could not get the best from my qualifying setup.
My race setup was very stable, and I used that to good advantage here for my race.
Undoubtedly could have been a bit quicker with the qualifying setup, but one off and that-would negate any small advantage I got from that setup.
Sorry for the waffle.

 

[Fiberoptix]

Nice of you to comment this way Tim. You have some top line kit there, wanted the HP G2 myself but budget constraints forced me to abandon, sort of glad I did now. I am surprised how AC won't scale easily to the newer hardware because on a monitor something like my 1080 GTX will run it proud. A 3090 has so many compute cores that Nvidia lost count I think lol. I expected this behaviour from ACC because if Unreal but AC was a surprise especially since I made the same assumption you did a few months back ...

It runs very well on the Kunos tracks. I can max out almost every setting on those at full res. Forget ACC, I have to run that on low settings with the G2. I don't like it as it makes the cars look like they are floating, AC looks much better in VR.

 

[RasmusP]

I have a HP G2 but get such a different level of VR graphics performance on the mod tracks, some of them really bad like this one, aswell as in game settings I had to drop the resolution on the headset in SteamVR which I have never had to do before. Perhaps I am missing some settings somewhere but I am running a 5800x and an RTX3090 so I naively expect a 7 year old game to cause it little bother even on higher resolution panels.

You should try to run either MSI Afterburner (recommended to see the different GPU "limits" and to undervolt or OC your card, which is very much needed with a 3090, later more to that!)
or run "OpenHardwareMonitor", which is very lightweight and has a 24h history graph (you need to enable the "plot" to get the graph and zoom in/out is done by hovering the mouse over the axis you wanna rescale and then using the mouse wheel or click+drag).

Looks like this for me, when compressed to fit into RD picture uploads

If your GPU load is not 95% or more, your CPU is the bottleneck (or an fps limiter ofc).
So you can easily find out what's happening and what you should adjust.

Mod tracks can be heavy on either side of things, depending on how optimized and how they're built in general.


About undervolting:
The 3080 and 3090 really suffer from running into their power limit and creating massive frequency jumps and power jolts.
There's an article from Igor's Lab:

GeForce RTX 3080 and RTX 3090 Undervolting - When Reason and Experimentation Meet NVIDIA Ampere | igor´sLAB

Our community member Gurdi was able to get his hands on a GeForce RTX 3080 just in time for the launch and was kind enough to invest some time to provide you with new insights around this card.

www.igorslab.de

I read into this after being unhappy with my 3080, now absolutely amazed by it

The issue is basically that nvidia built some automatic clock adjustments and they have a few limits the algorithm leans at:
- Temprature
- Power
- Voltage
- (Usage)

- Temp is easy: hit a certain temp and the clocks go down.
- Voltage is only hit when you overclock the card without having big loads on it so the voltage will restrict the card from clocking higher.
- Usage isn't a real limit.. It's just when the card is completely loaded and no other limit is reached

- Power:
This is causing some issues... When the card hits the power limit, it will be clocked down quite massively. A moment later though it will try to go back up.
During this clock step upwards, it will create quite a power jolt for the PSU.
With the early drivers, this caused even some 800W+ PSUs to shut off...!

So anyway, you can even gain fps by undervolting. It's a bit tricky though, since you can't just pull down a voltage slider...
You need to limit the maximum frequency while putting the max frequency earlier on the voltage curve.

The card will always try to reach the maximum frequency point, but if it's already reached at a lower voltage, it will stay there...
Yeah.. I needed a moment or two to understand this behavior..

Anyway, you can mostly undervolt all 3080 and 3090 so that they'll reach their normal max clock with a lower voltage.
And then they'll reach their "usage" limit before hitting the power limit.

My 3080 puts out 2% more fps now with 80-120W lower power consumption!!!
Coil wine is gone completely and the room temperature and air quality are a lot better


So two things I wanna tell you:

1. Check with OpenHardwareMonitor if your GPU is the bottleneck or if it's your 5800x, although being unlikely, but check it before you adjust anything!

2. If your GPU is fully loaded, install msi afterburner, check if your Power limit is constantly reached and if yes, drop me a PM

My "OC curve" looks like that:
Sweetspot is mostly 750-850 mV and around 1800 MHz.

Stock Clock/Voltage curve:

Effects:
Playing an AC replay with full grid, it was 260W, 43% load with stock settings ; 188W, 47% load with undervolting.
The load is calculated by taking in the clock speeds. At ~45% load the stock settings will clock a bit higher.
If you load the cards completely, they will both reach about 350W for my 3080. But the clockspeeds will be more stable and the fps will slightly increase, while the 1% lows will be a lot higher, since there are no clockspeed drops.


Well.. Should have created a new thread lol.
Sorry to everyone!

 

[HF2000]

@HF2000
I have no useful advice, just observations from my driving seat looking at your 488.
it looked quite skittish, you would in random places get a lot of sudden oversteer.
Now I have no doubt on certain circuits this would not occur. I just think this circuit brought the worsts out, handling wise, from your 488 setup.
I tend to alter my Nissan setup quite dramatically race to race, it is a case that on some circuits I can get away with different setups.
This circuit is one in particular, curbs here and I am off..an oversteer Nissan here is not good news here.
A long winded and probably pointless way of saying if you could find a way of giving the car a more predictable handling setup, ok, maybe slower, but more predictable for the race.
My qualifying setup was not the same as my race setup, it was just unfortunate that I could not get the best from my qualifying setup.
My race setup was very stable, and I used that to good advantage here for my race.
Undoubtedly could have been a bit quicker with the qualifying setup, but one off and that-would negate any small advantage I got from that setup.
Sorry for the waffle.

Thanks Ernie. Sounds like good advice. Additional by viewing Chris his VR onboard I noticed that he use quite a different line for T11 that looks promising in regard to my oversteer problem. I will try that shortly.

 

[HF2000]

New event is set up:
Sign up here: https://beta.simracing.gp/events/TY43xveg0VK94My4N7MDR#cars

And please read the 1th and 3rd post of this thread: https://www.racedepartment.com/threads/gt3-barcelona-sunday-9th-may-2021.202665/

 

[RasmusP]

It runs very well on the Kunos tracks. I can max out almost every setting on those at full res. Forget ACC, I have to run that on low settings with the G2. I don't like it as it makes the cars look like they are floating, AC looks much better in VR.

Did you try to lower the resolution? Afaik the G2 has some settings to set a resolution and not use the full native resolution.
Using medium settings with 75% G2 resolution might look a lot better. It will still look a lot better than the pixel party of the Rift

 

[Fiberoptix]

Did you try to lower the resolution? Afaik the G2 has some settings to set a resolution and not use the full native resolution.
Using medium settings with 75% G2 resolution might look a lot better. It will still look a lot better than the pixel party of the Rift

In ACC I just load the low profile which sets it in game to I think 65%. Not fiddled with the headset in Steam SS or changed the G2 settings yet for that game, I think the first experience put me off and I went back with AC. Thank you for the post about GPU clocking settings though, I will have a look into that. I see the next track is an original one which tend to be fine.

I had a rift before, I have to say resolution asside it just worked better than the HP in so many ways, but there is another thread here for that

 

[640er]

Think your right about the lighting, wasn't a problem until recently though. I have had the headset a while. I will try and connect some extra lights and see if that helps. Thanks

Definitely lighting issues. If I turn off the lightings in my room, the Reverb has problems with tracking which result in that weird floating motion.

 

[jackdyson31]

It runs very well on the Kunos tracks. I can max out almost every setting on those at full res. Forget ACC, I have to run that on low settings with the G2. I don't like it as it makes the cars look like they are floating, AC looks much better in VR.

Fantastic - its definitely a code issue then, even Dmitry was unhappy with the rendering so ... its probably one of those things like "its not designed for it"