AC Multiclass Abarth500/Mazda MX5@SPA, Wed 24th August 2022

[gearwhine]

52,s Mazda, mid field. I might as well say goodbye now then. Tail end charlie for me tonight. Oh well, at least i will be able to eat a sandwich up the kemmel straight

 

[Douglas Aird]

52,s Mazda, mid field. I might as well say goodbye now then. Tail end charlie for me tonight. Oh well, at least i will be able to eat a sandwich up the kemmel straight

Don't worry there will be a big spread of laptimes, you will have someone to race.

 

[stigs2cousin]

52,s Mazda, mid field. I might as well say goodbye now then. Tail end charlie for me tonight. Oh well, at least i will be able to eat a sandwich up the kemmel straight

Right,

I just remembered to prepare a JerryCan with Coffee for the straight.

(And maybe put a bucket under my seat. Get it??

BUCKET SEAT )

MFG Carsten

 

[maxilogan]

Don't worry there will be a big spread of laptimes, you will have someone to race.

Me, for sure!

 

[maxilogan]

Sounds like just the race to test out my new used PC. First time I can run AC on maximum settings @ 1080p and get 60+fps with a full grid

Midfield never looked so sharp

Cheers for your new (to you) computer! This will be my second race @75Hz full detail, I definitely understand your happiness!

 

[cerebralvortex]

I'm sorry but Belgium didn't make it for it's home race tonight

Have fun!

 

[Dani Martinez(Chechum)]

Like in 90% of my races in Race Department, in lap 1 some people in front cause a big mess and I can't dodge them, plus losing 15 seconds and getting last or similar. To be honest, I think tonight I haven't been brilliant at all trying to dodge the mess, normally I slow down properly (although it usually doesn't work here in my experience haha). Not tonight, as I've just lifted and passed too confident. Anyway, come on guys, it's lap 1. I suggest less qualy practice and more racing practice or patience! Last season with the 60/70s was the same.
Next time I'll practice more than 4 laps before Q in order to be top3 and avoid incidents If I had practiced decently, probably I would've started a bit more in front (I started p13 or worse) and I wouldn't have been involved, so I blame myself too.

I hope most of you have been luckier than me tonight. I was thinking of joining Mazda/Abarth league but now I'm doubting because of the high % incidents and how painful is to recover positions with these cars. Recovering so many seconds and positions with these cars in a long track like Spa is a hell

 

[Mikke73]

Apologies for that mess in the first corner. I tried asking if I had hit anyone who was behind me, since I wasn't sure who it was I touched. No one answered, but now from the replay I saw I had indeed touched Jari Laakkonen who was behind me after that mess. I suspect he wasn't in the Discord voice chat.
So now I have to admit that I quite possibly broke the golden rule, although I did not even know that I did it. I'm sorry.

 

[H_Belane]

Exciting race.
After my pit stop halfway through the race, I waited 15 minutes for Han and Ernie to come to the pit stop. Then I realized what was going on.
I got to try this.
Fantastic final lap with an outstanding ending.

Look at the times place 3 to 5

 

[Douglas Aird]

Great racing throughout the grid tonight.

Squeezed in a decent final lap in qualifying for P10 but it was all very tight.

Inherited a couple of places at the start and had several battles in the early laps.

Ended up trading places on several laps with Raul and Robert. Great clean racing, lads.

I then made the wrong call in taking an early stop to, hopefully, avoid being slowed up.

It worked for a few laps until I caught up with the back of the midfield and struggled to get past. I hoped they would pit out of the way but they left it quite late.

Robert pitted and came out way ahead. Raul pitted and came out just ahead.

End of the race was a 5-6 car battle where I gained 2 places due to an accident ahead and a P12 finish, right on the tail of Andre.

Great to see you racing again, Carsten.

Thanks again, Han, and enjoy your holiday.

 

[Medilloni]

Thanks for organising tonight's race @HF2000 Han, really enjoyed it

Big thanks also to all for the uber fair racing... and sincere apologies to @H_Belane Hank for the contact (2nd half of race), I thought the gravel would slow you more than it did, then saw you in Helicorsa last second and couldn't stop running wide, really hope it didn't affect your race.

1st half, got to the pits with .17 ltrs and had to let someone by before the stop, 2nd half with .2ltrs to spare

Downsides: fuel saving sucks giant donkey balls, sewing machine Mazda is a Skippy in clothes

Upsides: The Abarth is great fun, trail braking heaven

Edit: and congrats to each of the class podium guys!

 

[Alfred Wayne]

This race felt like the day I got glasses and saw the trees and sky sharp for the first time in a while

Once we got racing, I spent the 1st half trading places with Doug and Raul all within a second as doug said. Not sure what happened that one time guys, screen and wheel froze, then unfroze and I was behind you both without hitting anything Lucky break for us all I guess

After I pitting, I squeezed in behind Kimi and in front of Wayne. Felt the pressure from behind for the last 20min, but was able to hold on, despite the Abarth's corner speeds ahead of me

Nice to race here with such a big grid . See you after your holiday Han and next race for the rest of you

 

[RasmusP]

This race felt like the day I got glasses and saw the trees and sky sharp for the first time in a while

Nice to see you got a massive improvement!!
If you want to hop into discord for a quick graphic settings check, drop me a pm
Are you using cm + csp?

Not sure what happened that one time guys, screen and wheel froze, then unfroze and I was behind you both without hitting anything

Could be the server, their PCs or your PC.
You should look into your replay for the freeze, then check if ALL cars froze in that moment or only the cars around yourself.

If someone else could look in his replay which cars became jerky at that time on their PCs, we'd know for sure where the problem was.

If it was your PC only, it's either your Internet (especially WiFi can cause these issues) or a CPU hiccup.

If we would do the discord session, we would look into the CPU related render stats in AC and check for "main_t" and "phys_late".
If main_t is above 95% and/or phys_late goes up more than about 10 points per lap, you need to adjust some settings.

 

[stigs2cousin]

Han suggested starting from the back to stay out of the first lap shenanigans
( and Boy, did you cock that up ) which worked mostly well. Were it not for an (over)eager beaver who rearended me twice on Kemmel I´d would have had a completely clean race.
That way it will take a very long time to make up for the 29 incident points you guys gifted me on Highlands Short.

I´m afraid thats how it will be remembered:

most people raced considerately, respectfully and safely, this one incident I recall most vividly and bitch about.

And of course I was painstakingly slow ( And whose fault is that??? )


Thanks to everyone who did his best to keep it civilized, I know I overemphasize the clean and respectfull attitude.
To my excuse is to be said that I learned trackdriving with a real ( my own) car and every incident was highly embarrassing, deeply expensive and potentially life threatening. So being stupid had to be avoided by any means possible.

Thank you Han for organising (and for convincing me to try again.
Lets see where we go from here.....)


MFG Carsten

 

[stigs2cousin]

As the Dr is in tonight

@RasmusP

how do I get rid of flickering shadows in the environment?
About 50m in front of the car is fine, after that the tree shadows are "dancing"

(older CSP witl SOL, I´d have to check versions tomorrow)

MFG Carsten

 

[Kek700]

I really enjoyed that race, even though the whole event was a pointless exercise for me .
In the end, decided, even though it was pointless, to give Han some jip.

just looked at the replay, both overtakes were perfectly ok, perhaps a bit adventurous, but there are not many, if any overtaking chances with these Abarths. And I had nothing to lose, especially as Han was not going to make any mistakes.
The only complaint is that I was robbed of the chance to keep John at bay, I would have relished the chance to try and fend the Lad off on the last two laps.
Well done to all the podiums and fuel savers.

 

[RasmusP]

As the Dr is in tonight

@RasmusP

how do I get rid of flickering shadows in the environment?
About 50m in front of the car is fine, after that the tree shadows are "dancing"

(older CSP witl SOL, I´d have to check versions tomorrow)

MFG Carsten

One of the biggest issues of the AC engine sadly..
There are a few things but sadly the old "shadow split" setting you could find in one of the ini files got patched redundant so you basically can't do anything apart from anti aliasing.
However like in many games, you have 2 big settings for shadows:
- Map size
- split distances

The split distances are locked but the map size is the shadow quality setting.
The map size is basically "how much shadow" there is available for everything.
If you make it too big, shadows will get too detailed and fizzy, causing pixel crawling.
And also increasing load for cpu and gpu.
If you make it too small, shadows will bounce, jump and/or become blurry.

Depending on your resolution, there should be a setting where you have some bouncing shadows and some pixel crawling from too much detail.

For my 3440x1440, 3072x3072 is the best shadow setting.

Then csp has some "smart shadows" extension, which helps a bit with the bouncing.
It apparently can access the shadow splits again! But I didn't really spent time testing all the stuff in there...

I'm currently at the latest 0.1.78
Smart Shadow Extension is "on" and all default (no red settings).


The best setting against disturbing shadows in AC is temporal anti aliasing (TAA) from CSP though. It really smoothes things out!
It's the only thing I have activated in the Extra FX extension!

All settings in the Temporal anti-aliasing section is at defaults. 50% Extra sharpness, no AMD FidelityFX used like the little hint suggests!

In the Graphics Adjustments extensions, everything is at defaults apart from Post-processing antialiasing. That's DISABLED.
I also have FXAA unchecked in the normal AC graphics settings!

 

[stigs2cousin]

Thank you very much, Rasmus.

CPU/GPU don't have power problems, I'm '"revving out' my 144hz screens at 85% GPU.

I'll have a look at the suggested setting later.

As a I'm a "so not a PC Person" could you explain the significance of "Clip planes" in the Smart Shadowes section??

Thanks Carsten

Edith: ****ing Autocorrect once again.....

 

[Krzysztof Babij]

Thanks for another good race. But to be honest without predictions and limited trust to other drivers it would be more difficult. On Bathurst I noticed cleaner race. For example I noticed "dive bomb" in the last chicane with the huge speed one of the Abarths and only my assumption what can go wrong rescued us from the serious accident. I was taught that the driver has the right to inside line only when his front wheel are on the same level like rear wheels of other driver.

It was my first race with Thrustmaster TS-PC Racer after I changed my old G29. And I had to control my desk mount, because it had the tendency to weaken the power of the hold the wheel. I have to find the way to mount it better to my obutto ozone cockpit.

On the practice I fought with the software problem. Discord muted all other applications and I had to find the solution. In qualy I wasn't satisfied from my P11, but it could have been worse, I went below '52 on the last lap.

On the race my start was quite satisfied and I gained few positions. I lost a lot of time in pit exit, I forgot to switch off the pit limiter and lost I think 2 positions. But anyway I really enjoyed the race and finaly I made a good fuel calculation Finished on P9.

Thanks!

 

[maxilogan]

Nice to see you got a massive improvement!!
If you want to hop into discord for a quick graphic settings check, drop me a pm
Are you using cm + csp?

Is this service available for everyone?

In the excitement of getting the most out of the 3070 I think I messed up something and from the initial 150+ FPS I dropped down to having 75 (because of VSync I assume) but in any case having 80+ in the benchmark. While this is ok in local, I'd hoped to get something more so not to have issues in multiplayer.
I think that it happened when I installed and enabled reshade. Also, I'm not convinced about being getting the best out of it.