AC Multiclass Audi TT/Mazda MX5@TT Assen, Wednesday 1st December 2021

[Alfred Wayne]

@Kek700 I agree. It was fun hearing people talk about going to and driving this track in real life, while I'm over here on the other side of the world driving it as just a "video game" track

I'm hoping to get up to Watkins Glen this spring/summer and see some driving. Maybe we'll run a race or two there sometime and I can be the "local"

 

[Dzul]

@Dzul it was fun trying to catch you but you were simply too fast for me. Thanks for at least giving me some hope with the error at the last chicane

That was fun Omar! You had good pace, but looked like you had a nervous car as well. Getting that first sector right in a consistent manner was a thingy. Too bad for that start guys, what a bummer. I got off the line decently and after having to perform evasive maneuvers had a long battle, trading places at times, with Samuel on the other purple Mazda... until I spun at that last chicane trying not to give him a punterino under braking. A pity because I was a bit faster and catching up again. It was not as easy as I thought to overtake the same class on this track. And I def' gotta do something about my brakes 'coz I kept locking and couldn't get the car's rear to behave at some corners. I think you had the same issue Omar? Time to put on the most stiff springs I think. But it was great having new drivers on the grid, hope you become regulars too guys!

Congrats to Chris and Andre on their respective class-wins!
When are we lot at the back getting a masterclass from you?

 

[HF2000]

Well this was fun! I was very surprised to be on pole as I still don't feel comfortable with my new rig, so pole felt like a win.

But the pedals and paddles are much more sensitive than the G27's, so I made a false start with a drive through penalty. Plus, Bjorn didn't move his car right in front of me because his steering wheel stopped working. So I had to let everyone pass before I could back up and pass the Audi. After serving the penalty I must have had a 20 second gap with the other Mazdas. I didn't mind because at the moment with the new setup I can do decent laps in clean air, but for battles I don't have the control over the car I want. That was evident in my battle with Douglas in the latter part of the race. Sorry for the taps I gave you, Douglas. And because of that, I ruined your chances of overtaking Paul.

Ended up being 5th, but I really enjoyed it. The MX5 is such a great car for this track.
Congratulations on the podium and thank you all for participating!

Sebring next week! I'll set it up tonight.

 

[Bjorn de Haas]

Well uhhhh this was i think the shortest race i ever participate in
At the start i lost all controls from the wheel and pedals.
So i escaped to pitlane, and tried to find a sollution there.
I got a 99% CPU Occupancy message. So that was a short night........
I hope i did not cause any problems on the grid.
I did like the small chit chat with everybody before the race.
Thanks guys

 

[maxilogan]

That was fun Omar! You had good pace, but looked like you had a nervous car as well. Getting that first sector right in a consistent manner was a thingy. Too bad for that start guys, what a bummer. I got off the line decently and after having to perform evasive maneuvers had a long battle, trading places at times, with Samuel on the other purple Mazda... until I spun at that last chicane trying not to give him a punterino under braking. A pity because I was a bit faster and catching up again. It was not as easy as I thought to overtake the same class on this track. And I def' gotta do something about my brakes 'coz I kept locking and couldn't get the car's rear to behave at some corners. I think you had the same issue Omar? Time to put on the most stiff springs I think. But it was great having new drivers on the grid, hope you become regulars too guys!

Congrats to Chris and Andre on their respective class-wins!
When are we lot at the back getting a masterclass from you?

Actually, I did add a couple of elastomers to my pedals with the aim of having shorter throw (never really liked the T-LCM from this point of view) and I realized too late that I wasn't braking to the maximum of my possibilities because I felt the pedal already quite stiff. In the last 3-4 laps I managed to brake much closer to the corners than I did in the first part of the race. The trickiest braking zones are for sure the one after the finish straight, the one before the hairpin, with the car trying to run away to the right, and the one before the last section, where it's really very easy to brake too much thus losing lots of time in the flat out zone following just later. But you're right, the car tried to spin a little bit too much!

With regards to the first corner, just after Han overcame me at the chicane I saw his line and boy, how much more effective than mine it was!! It would be actually great to get some "lessons from the greats"

 

[HF2000]

Actually, I did add a couple of elastomers to my pedals with the aim of having shorter throw (never really liked the T-LCM from this point of view) and I realized too late that I wasn't braking to the maximum of my possibilities because I felt the pedal already quite stiff. In the last 3-4 laps I managed to brake much closer to the corners than I did in the first part of the race. The trickiest braking zones are for sure the one after the finish straight, the one before the hairpin, with the car trying to run away to the right, and the one before the last section, where it's really very easy to brake too much thus losing lots of time in the flat out zone following just later. But you're right, the car tried to spin a little bit too much!

With regards to the first corner, just after Han overcame me at the chicane I saw his line and boy, how much more effective than mine it was!! It would be actually great to get some "lessons from the greats"

Well, I wouldn't call myself one of the greats, but you can sit in my cockpit in the replay and see what I do differently. I do that quite often, also in practice just before qualifying. Last Tuesday I did that with Allan Ramsbottom in the Fiat 500 to see why he was so much faster. One of the things I saw was that he didn't go to 5th on the straight. When I tried that, I was 0.4 seconds faster in that sector.

But even if you do the shifting and racing lines exactly the same as the aliens, the difference still remains, as they are just a little faster at every turn to throttle and have a better exit. On a whole round that comes down to 1-2 seconds.

I feel like I'm still improving (with a minor temporary setback now from the new rig), but it's going very slowly now. I don't think I'll ever be as fast as Chris Down or Aki Bjorksten or Enzo Fazzi, but I don't think it's impossible to match Ernie Wright or Allan Ramsbottom. Unfortunately they are still improving also....

But remember, to have fun is the most important. After all, there can be only one number one but we can all be winners of a great time.

 

[Kek700]

Well uhhhh this was i think the shortest race i ever participate in
At the start i lost all controls from the wheel and pedals.
So i escaped to pitlane, and tried to find a sollution there.
I got a 99% CPU Occupancy message. So that was a short night........
I hope i did not cause any problems on the grid.
I did like the small chit chat with everybody before the race.
Thanks guys

just a shot in the dark!!! make sure you are not running with too many app’s.
I just have pro tyres and two other app’s, names eludes me, driver position and name + race essentials I think.

I have a reasonable system relative to AC, and loose a lot of FPS by running to many app’s.
just the names above the drivers car is 10fps. ( driver lables )

hope I am not stating the bleeding obvious.
PS:-
Rasmus helped me to optimise my PC for AC too, which made a big difference to how it performs.

 

[Dzul]

Rasmus helped me to optimise my PC for AC too, which made a big difference to how it performs.

I think Rasmus can organise a workshop and find a few attendees here...

 

[Bjorn de Haas]

just a shot in the dark!!! make sure you are not running with too many app’s.
I just have pro tyres and two other app’s, names eludes me, driver position and name + race essentials I think.

I have a reasonable system relative to AC, and loose a lot of FPS by running to many app’s.
just the names above the drivers car is 10fps. ( driver lables )

hope I am not stating the bleeding obvious.
PS:-
Rasmus helped me to optimise my PC for AC too, which made a big difference to how it performs.

I think i had sol running as well. Im going to make a fresh install and then race again monday

 

[maxilogan]

I have a reasonable system relative to AC, and loose a lot of FPS by running to many app’s.
just the names above the drivers car is 10fps. ( driver lables )

Ouch! Really? I'll disable them straight away, after all I have already realtime.. But wait, I'm always running alone in the back positions, maybe it doesn't do that much difference

Rasmus helped me to optimise my PC for AC too, which made a big difference to how it performs.

I second @Dzul 's proposal, that would be an interesting workshop I believe!

 

[JamKart22]

I struggled in the race with fairly frequent 100% cpu warnings which didn't help my consistency. Dropping the frame rate seems to ease the GPU loadings but doesn't seem to help with CPU usage. I've a fairly old PC with a i5-6400 2.7Ghz processor. I've long ago given up on SOL as that really hammered the GPU.

Switching off driver names didn't seem to make much difference for me in terms of frame rate - or switching off all apps.

I've got 16Gb of memory and a SSD so I'd think it's just the CPU power that's causing the problem.

I've rarely seen this 100% CPU message but a large grid at Assen certainly caused me problems.

Any suggestions on magic settings to reduce the strain on the CPU would be great. Might be time for an upgrade

 

[JamKart22]

I struggled in the race with fairly frequent 100% cpu warnings which didn't help my consistency. Dropping the frame rate seems to ease the GPU loadings but doesn't seem to help with CPU usage. I've a fairly old PC with a i5-6400 2.7Ghz processor. I've long ago given up on SOL as that really hammered the GPU.

Switching off driver names didn't seem to make much difference for me in terms of frame rate - or switching off all apps.

I've got 16Gb of memory and a SSD so I'd think it's just the CPU power that's causing the problem.

I've rarely seen this 100% CPU message but a large grid at Assen certainly caused me problems.

Any suggestions on magic settings to reduce the strain on the CPU would be great. Might be time for an upgrade

I've been here before in this thread...

https://www.racedepartment.com/threads/mx5cup-road-atlanta-wednesday-17th-march-2021.199833/post-3362025

and Rasmus was a great help in suggesting things. Anyone new to AC might like to read through the various suggestions made by Rasmus

 

[Kek700]

Rasmus has also given me a trimmed down SOL CPS thingy, which tailored CPS to my needs and also gave me better CPU loading figures, increased FPS too.

PS
I should clarify that by saying I run 5760 x 1080p at 144hz with a reasonable 2080 GPU with i5 9600k so not exactly top-end stuff, but reasonable. my previous gtx1080 had very similar performance.
Basically, full-field is 110 fps as soon as we are past the first three corners it is at a limited 142fps.
A lot of that is down to Rasmus help.
It is a pity we do not have a sectional forum for PC optimization, we have some very knowledgeable people on our forum who can make life in AC a very much more pleasant experience.

 

[Dzul]

Rasmus has also given me a trimmed down SOL CPS thingy, which tailored CPS to my needs and also gave me better CPU loading figures, increased FPS too.

So... you got a "Little Sol" now ?

 

[Goldtop]

Thanks all for the racing last night.....very good fun.

Never raced the Audi before and usually stay away from fwd but fancied this one because of the multiclass aspect......always makes for good racing imo.

Took a while to adjust and struggled for any kind of pace early on but started to get into a decent rhythm towards the end of the race, nowhere near some of those times upfront though

Had a nice battle with Robert and eventually managed to take advantage of some traffic to sneak past. Enjoyed trying to time my overtakes of the Mazdas to lose as little momentum as possible while not scaring anyone too much

I didn't have any cpu or fps problems last night although my pc is less than state of the art. I like to run decent size grids offline so I have to watch my settings carefully. I always thought AC runs better in multiplayer as there are less physics calculations for the cpu to handle but that might just be interweb talk It would be great if there were some solid advice for all of us with potatoes as pcs.

 

[Alfred Wayne]

You were 10s behind me, then the next time I took a peak you were 2 lol. Hope my elbows didn't poke you too much when you went past

And anecdotally, my laptop would agree with your interweb talk Online 20-30 car grids work alright for me, but offline seeing the 99% cpu occupied isn't uncommon, depending on track and car variety.

 

[Douglas Aird]

For those running Content Manager and the latest CSP you can activate AMD Fidelityfx Super resolution (works on nVidia cards, too). I got about 20% fps increase at the highest quality setting and my eyes didn't detect any issues. That's at 5760x1080.

Definitely worth trying out (it's the reason I switched to Content Manager).

 

[Douglas Aird]

@maxilogan

Definitely watch onboards from the fast guys and compare to your own. I have done that a lot and it's helped me. Youtube has lots of videos, too.

@HF2000

No problem for the taps, you waited. We had different lines through the slow corners, Paul had differences, too, so a coming together was a risk. My early braking into the kink also caught you out. I can't remember if that was my normal braking or I was out of my rhythm and being extra careful.

You will adjust to your new setup and you are already fast. I will be on my G27 for a while. Still a great wheel so I can't justify an upgrade just yet. Although I am on the Fanatec website a lot....

 

[JamKart22]

For those running Content Manager and the latest CSP you can activate AMD Fidelityfx Super resolution (works on nVidia cards, too). I got about 20% fps increase at the highest quality setting and my eyes didn't detect any issues. That's at 5760x1080.

Definitely worth trying out (it's the reason I switched to Content Manager).

Where is the setting?

 

[GeekyDeaks]

Where is the setting?

CSP > Graphic Adjustments, but IIRC it's not there prior to version 0.1.75