AC Multiclass @ Le Mans (Circuit de la Sarthe) - Fri 8th August 2014

[PaulH]

Well that was an Endurance! quite a lonely race, too slow to trouble the front runners, finished though.... Pity for the other guys that had issues. Ran flawless for me

 

[Justin]

I think the combination of a converted track and 40 players definitely broke a few things in the engine.

I run an i5-2500K and an AMD HD 7850, both overclocked to some degree. Not the best PC out there but definitely not the worst.

CPU occupancy was fine for me, it hovered around 68-70% with no warnings. However my GPU utilisation was running between 29% and 36%, which is much lower than normal. Considering this figure is in the 80s and 90s normally, this is where my poor framerates came, and no lowering of the graphics settings helped much. It was playable as it hovered between 45 and 60 fps, but it took a while of adapting after being used to a locked 60 frames that AC normally gives me.

I'm also thinking that possibly my CPU should have been working harder and that might be some cause to the throttling of the GPU. It would be interesting to test similar numbers of cars on a Kunos track just to see if the same issue happens.

Anyway, still had fun. Some good battles in the GT class and I was having a good run before my game crashed 13 laps in when I was 4th or 5th in class. Ended up battling with Touraeg and Frank on my restart which was fun, but a few run ins with the kerbs lost me out to both of them.

Surprisingly AC kept my laps despite my crash and after I completed 12 laps after my restart it said I finished 17th. I'll take it and at least it's good to know the server now remembers laps completed even if your own game starts you off again from lap 1 after a restart.

Pretty stoked just to have finished 110 minutes of driving around Le Mans really.

Thanks all.

 

[zAmboni]

I was in the practice server yesterday and got stuck in the gravel at one turn, it warped me back to the pits.

For those of you who were interested to see what went wrong at the race start, it was....wait for it....LAG. Because I quit early, I have the replay file of the start of the race. I'm uploading to YT what the race start looked like. There were three separate incidents at the start, and not really the fault of anyone.

Incident #1: Somehow @Alex Ardisana was able to get a start ahead of everyone else in the race. He bumped into the back of @Niki Đaković and Niki bumped into the back of @Stig Bidstrup who then bumped into the back of @Krisztián Tóth.

Incident #2: While Alex got off ahead of everyone else, Toureg, @Dave Robinson, @Patrick Wuyts, and @Chris Wuyts all had late starts and caused some bumping in the back.

Incident #3: While @Simon Knight was able to get away cleanly, he was warping pretty bad at the start and warped right into @Benjamin Hellmann, and led to a pileup.

I almost avoided all of that, and improved my position, but lost it going into the back straight though. The track seemed a lot slipperier than the 97% it said the grip was . BTW...I knew I wouldn't have been that fast on the track...but I never thought I would have qualified 12s slower than Niki!

Here is the video of the race start:

 

[Alex Ardisana]

Thanks to all for great race. I was looking forward whole week to attend this one (even managed to reschedule vacation) and win in GT class is the best I could get. Anyway, @Niki Đaković had amazing conistent laps and if not the equipment failure, he would win for sure. I had amazing start and battles with Alex Ardisana, who is kind of a hot head and we had contact in first lap. Then I got rammed by some lagging Ferrari and was somewehere in the back. Then fun began and I had great race to first place. Alex would had me in the end, but he did some mistake and hit tohewall for like 10-th time in the race . I remember very nice lap times by @Frank van Oeveren and @Denis Mitchell.

Congrats to all who has finished and better luck next time to anybody else.

Alex, that happens when you are out of control. Server sends you to pitstop to not cause any more damage.Now I know why you had so many accidents, too bad, otherwise you would had me in the end. By the way, what did you do when you were going to overtake me ? I just saw you spinning in the mirrors.

I swear I'm not the "hot head" I seemed today XD. I didn't expect to have all these problems with my computer, it was very frustrating to make all those spins because I'm not that kind of driver. Sorry if I disturbed you.

Well I don't really know what happened. You made that mistake and when you came back to the road I turned right to avoid you. And suddenly I crashed with an invisible wall, which was a bit far from the real one. The pic I upload shows the previous moment to the crash, you can see there's a "big" gap between my car and the wall.

 

[Alex Ardisana]

I was in the practice server yesterday and got stuck in the gravel at one turn, it warped me back to the pits.

For those of you who were interested to see what went wrong at the race start, it was....wait for it....LAG. Because I quit early, I have the replay file of the start of the race. I'm uploading to YT what the race start looked like. There were three separate incidents at the start, and not really the fault of anyone.

Incident #1: Somehow @Alex Ardisana was able to get a start ahead of everyone else in the race. He bumped into the back of @Niki Đaković and Niki bumped into the back of @Stig Bidstrup who then bumped into the back of @Krisztián Tóth.

Incident #2: While Alex got off ahead of everyone else, Toureg, @Dave Robinson, @Patrick Wuyts, and @Chris Wuyts all had late starts and caused some bumping in the back.

Incident #3: While @Simon Knight was able to get away cleanly, he was warping pretty bad at the start and warped right into @Benjamin Hellmann, and led to a pileup.

I almost avoided all of that, and improved my position, but lost it going into the back straight though. The track seemed a lot slipperier than the 97% it said the grip was . BTW...I knew I wouldn't have been that fast on the track...but I never thought I would have qualified 12s slower than Niki!

Here is the video of the race start:

Wtf? How was that possible? I just could see Niki's car so I thought he had a bad start

 

[Stig Bidstrup]

Hi
Quali was LAG LAG for me took out a few on that account or they took me out- don't now
so SORRY for that,,, Got 2 clean laps toward the end...so I startet on 9 spot
had some racing with Paul Hurlow in the opening laps,
otherwise it was Quite lonely out there as Hurlow says , only action when Lapping GT cars
at some point I thougth I had lost the connection , but suddenly I could see a Car in the Horizon.
I lost a lot of time in the Porsche curves ...was off 1 time ended the race on 8 or 9 Spot.

Stig Bidstrup

 

[Akis]

@Frank van Oeveren thanks for conceiving and organizing this epic event!

I had great fun with @Krisztián Tóth throughout the whole race. At the end I finally managed to catch up @Olly Stevenson. I didn't see that coming either Olly!

If you like paranormal phenomena, watch the following vid.

RD Le Mans twilight zone by Akis Kevrekidis on RaceDepartment - F1, Motorsport, Sim Racing

 

[Stig Bidstrup]

Nice video @Fred Locklear with Matchbox cars
I can easy recognise my car since its bright yellow.

Stig Bidstrup

 

[Frank]

I think the combination of a converted track and 40 players definitely broke a few things in the engine.

I run an i5-2500K and an AMD HD 7850, both overclocked to some degree. Not the best PC out there but definitely not the worst.

CPU occupancy was fine for me, it hovered around 68-70% with no warnings. However my GPU utilisation was running between 29% and 36%, which is much lower than normal. Considering this figure is in the 80s and 90s normally, this is where my poor framerates came, and no lowering of the graphics settings helped much. It was playable as it hovered between 45 and 60 fps, but it took a while of adapting after being used to a locked 60 frames that AC normally gives me.

I'm also thinking that possibly my CPU should have been working harder and that might be some cause to the throttling of the GPU. It would be interesting to test similar numbers of cars on a Kunos track just to see if the same issue happens.

Anyway, still had fun. Some good battles in the GT class and I was having a good run before my game crashed 13 laps in when I was 4th or 5th in class. Ended up battling with Touraeg and Frank on my restart which was fun, but a few run ins with the kerbs lost me out to both of them.

Surprisingly AC kept my laps despite my crash and after I completed 12 laps after my restart it said I finished 17th. I'll take it and at least it's good to know the server now remembers laps completed even if your own game starts you off again from lap 1 after a restart.

Pretty stoked just to have finished 110 minutes of driving around Le Mans really.

Thanks all.

We both crashed our games, thankfully. Otherwise one of us would have had a lonely race

 

[Niki Đaković]

@Fred Locklear haha wow 12sec. Dodgy curbs apside. Ive grown to understand this layout is got more to it then few straights, chicanes and esses. It actually has somewhat 30ish corners.
@Justin Talent im with 2500k and gtx660. 40ish fps best on avg. CPU sa on about 60ish too. Going up im u se rly when loading laptime for show from other guys. But, only and only once 95% warning. So it would appear utilisation of my twin frozen could a been better too. But I'm also suspecting ram memory. I'm with 4gb and that perfectly enough as it never goes over 3.5. But this time with 40ish cars loaded might have been a good idea to check what was the use of it. If a slab of 2gb could iron it out and restore normal 80ish fps that would be very pleasant.

 

[Justin]

@Fred Locklear haha wow 12sec. Dodgy curbs apside. Ive grown to understand this layout is got more to it then few straights, chicanes and esses. It actually has somewhat 30ish corners.
@Justin Talent im with 2500k and gtx660. 40ish fps best on avg. CPU sa on about 60ish too. Going up im u se rly when loading laptime for show from other guys. But, only and only once 95% warning. So it would appear utilisation of my twin frozen could a been better too. But I'm also suspecting ram memory. I'm with 4gb and that perfectly enough as it never goes over 3.5. But this time with 40ish cars loaded might have been a good idea to check what was the use of it. If a slab of 2gb could iron it out and restore normal 80ish fps that would be very pleasant.

I was also keeping an eye on RAM usage and that wasn't a problem for my 8 GB at all. However I began to wonder if the game was a 32-bit executable and therefore limited to a maximum of 1.9 GB's of RAM usage within the acs.exe program. And yeah, it is.

A 64-bit executable frees up this RAM usage restriction and will be the standard for games going forward. With 40 cars on an unoptimised track the RAM limit could have been hit very easily yesterday and could have been the problem behind some of the crashes and framerate issues.

However not everyone experienced major issues and this reason would have likely been universal for everyone so it's probably something else altogether.

As for Fred's video, I think I might have actually won out despite being involved in the GT pileup. I'm in the 2nd black Z4. I hit the first black Z4 and then get hit from behind which hits me so well that I spin perfectly around after getting a huge speed boost by being hit.

I'll take it.

 

[Georg Siebert]

Wtf? How was that possible? I just could see Niki's car so I thought he had a bad start

Fyi, I saw your car having an early start during GT3 @ Brands-Hatch last weekend as well.

 

[Alex Ardisana]

Fyi, I saw your car having an early start during GT3 @ Brands-Hatch last weekend as well.

Really? I can't understand it, I'm quite confused about this

 

[Georg Siebert]

Really? I can't understand it, I'm quite confused about this

I would send you the replay, but because of the file size limitations it only recorded from lap ~7 onwards.

 

[Denis Mitchell]

Even with some issues i have to say that was a lot of fun last night thanks again Frank.

If only it was a official track, or a scratch built one with no issues as i think its a awesome tracks for this kind of racing!

 

[Denis Mitchell]

The kerbs on this track seem, almost unrealistically, harsh. Catch a bit of one and it basically rips your car sideways. Not sure if they are supposed to be like that in reality.

Curbs are meant to be there to keep you on the track, thus the raised outside...not designed to rip you off the track. They a safety feature as a final resort. In reality the nature of the curbs pushing the car back towards the track does unsettle the car a little, but not to the point its not drivable and this also depends on curb shape and height. Modern track have much lower curbs to reduce the effect on the car and also provide less issues with bottoming out should 2 wheels go over.

Hopefully the future builds will correct this but it also seems that some tracks have better curbs than others so possibly each track needs to be tweaked to have realistic curbs.

 

[Dave Robinson]

Engine blew on lap 10 while I was running 12th overall. Went back to the pit but came out in last and involved in a battle with a few cars so after a while I decided to call it a day.
I need to sort out the double downshift problem I have, this is what blew my engine and costs me a lot of spins. Instead of going from 6th to 5th it will downshift again to 4th on its own. And then pop the engine is gone.
Still had some good battles and many thanks to the guys for putting this event on.

 

[Kyle Kaiser]

Well that was fun, some very narrow misses, one at the start which was pretty cool with all the smoke and stuff. The lag wasn't too bad once the guys with the dodgy connections disappeared.

I set my car up with too much wing and not long enough gears so I was an easy catch on the straights but oh boy if I held on to the car in front I then I sure had some fun through porcshe and sector 1 and for some reason for the first like 10 laps I was running 4:20's, up from a 4:11.5 in race setup & fuel in the practice server. Couldn't get my pace up at all until like lap 14 where my car started to grip like scrat with his acorn.

Did give Dave something a shunt in the second chicane on lap 2, that was before I realized I'd probably gone way too high on my wing, it let me brake much later than the rest of you all, sorry for that.

Got screwed over by a Zonda trying to dive bomb me on the second chicane in the straights whilst beeping his horn and then not actually going for the over take.. cheers dude, appreciate you distracting me, making me move over from my racing line and then not making the move anyway. Spun out on the exit as I had to take some serious kerb. That's the joys of multi-class sim racing though, no respect from the faster cars.

Over all was a good event, A shame about all the dodgy overtaking attempts I was subject to and heard about but hey that's club for you, pretty much public with a password these days. The lag at the start was hilarious causing @Chris Wuyts to scream like a preteen girl at a 1D concert, had a few narrow misses with @Patrick Wuyts "ICEBERG AHEAD!" and some good fun in general, shame about my 5:30 wake up call this morning after sod all sleep!

GR!

 

[Frank]

Well that was fun, some very narrow misses, one at the start which was pretty cool with all the smoke and stuff. The lag wasn't too bad once the guys with the dodgy connections disappeared.

I set my car up with too much wing and not long enough gears so I was an easy catch on the straights but oh boy if I held on to the car in front I then I sure had some fun through porcshe and sector 1 and for some reason for the first like 10 laps I was running 4:20's, up from a 4:11.5 in race setup & fuel in the practice server. Couldn't get my pace up at all until like lap 14 where my car started to grip like scrat with his acorn.

Did give Dave something a shunt in the second chicane on lap 2, that was before I realized I'd probably gone way too high on my wing, it let me brake much later than the rest of you all, sorry for that.

Got screwed over by a Zonda trying to dive bomb me on the second chicane in the straights whilst beeping his horn and then not actually going for the over take.. cheers dude, appreciate you distracting me, making me move over from my racing line and then not making the move anyway. Spun out on the exit as I had to take some serious kerb. That's the joys of multi-class sim racing though, no respect from the faster cars.

Over all was a good event, A shame about all the dodgy overtaking attempts I was subject to and heard about but hey that's club for you, pretty much public with a password these days. The lag at the start was hilarious causing @Chris Wuyts to scream like a preteen girl at a 1D concert, had a few narrow misses with @Patrick Wuyts "ICEBERG AHEAD!" and some good fun in general, shame about my 5:30 wake up call this morning after sod all sleep!

GR!

Good to see you had fun, to bad you say this is like public with a password. I think you just had bad luck with the incidents as most people didn't have to many the way you describe them. And there are many events where the racing is almost completely clean, especially at mid and front.

Engine blew on lap 10 while I was running 12th overall. Went back to the pit but came out in last and involved in a battle with a few cars so after a while I decided to call it a day.
I need to sort out the double downshift problem I have, this is what blew my engine and costs me a lot of spins. Instead of going from 6th to 5th it will downshift again to 4th on its own. And then pop the engine is gone.
Still had some good battles and many thanks to the guys for putting this event on.

What wheel do you have?

 

[Dave Robinson]

Hi Frank sorry for the late reply. I have a G25