General info & Series Rules

Pity that races are fridays, maybe I can skip pubs and join couple races...

 

Oh wow, thanks for putting this up, John Make sure you've got this series link in your signature too hahh
Well, you can count me in and I hope everyone else can find time on Fridays to relax a bit before the real AC season starts next year!

 

Given that we will be live in lockdown or we will get curfewed for the rest of our life in Italy, that leaves us not so much alternatives during week ends at the moment... I'll try to join the 1st race I guess. If you see a fireball Grosjean style during the event, you already know...

 

Thirteen pages of discussion for a new AC series only to find out it won't be starting until March, then out of the blue a fantasy series in a road car I must be smoking the wrong brand

 

There's a new Assetto Corsa champ starting on 4th of January. Single make Cayman GT4 . It's a double event every single monday. You can give it a try Tudor

https://simracingonline.co.uk/racing/seriesinfo/218

 

I was signed up to this but then realised it will be a 2 race format so dropped out as it is not my thing. Might give it another look

 

*Quoted from here* : https://simracingonline.co.uk/threa...for-a-new-series-here.9249/page-14#post-47842

Mhh.. Not exactly this. I'll try to make a video as you suggested and see if one can hear what I mean through it.

About the brakes : please could you consider adding a "braking strenght" setting as all Kunos cars have since a few years ? It's very usefull for people to adapt this software aspect to their hardware.
About tyres temps : They looked quite fine to me yet, better than the original ones, in which we can have way too much tyre pressure and low temp, even while overdriving the car.
About tyres durability : They were rather easy to deteriorate but maybe it's fine like this ? Could be necessary to change tyres in a 45mn race format as it is, so why not ? They're semi-slick after all, so not supposed to keep healthy for so much time..

 

Thank you very much for your inputs so far, Maxime

OK. I thought maybe the problem was with many cars and audio sources on track so I tried that. But it didn't show any problems there. Don't really know what could make crackling sounds, except maybe the samples' quality and variety is not great and something in them is looping and might be bothering you. It didn't bother me, and despite the quality as it is, I like the overall tone of it. I tell you, if you still have the old mod sound files, you can reoplace the ones I've put in with those old ones, and you'll have no problems online, guaranteed. Tested that many times online with different cars and sound mods

OK, I've added Braking power to the setup page. I know it's default with many cars, but I saw it was not there originally, and I thought OK I can get used to it no problem and it's supposed to be just a street car, despite being also a 90s supercar. Anyway, I understand those reasons with different hardware so I got it in.

Alright, good. Semislicks should be stickier and will not last as long as street tires, especially with race track use. So I have set it kind of like that. Maybe they're too good, we'll see. Right now with default car I think there shouldn't be any problems to do 60-80 km on a track with big radius fast corners like Mosport or Spa with running tire temps between 70-80C. 80ish would be optimum for grip. The wear will show in slower and slower laptimes of course. And locking up hard, sliding and fish tailing generally will heat up the tires which will wear out the threads faster. In rear particularly. Realistically you could still be driving them, why not, but it will be at a second or a few off the pace. You can set them to pressures lower than 30 for example which will increase tire temperature (and wear) but will get them closer to the optimum pressures range for grip. It would be ideal if you could nail both but it was proven to me that in AC, temperatures are more important. Every couple clicks of psi down should bring in couple more degrees Celsius into your tire core average temp. Running them over 85-90C in the core will be close to overheating, wearing out faster and prone to loosing grip a bit more easily. Nothing new.

 

So far, I've seen only one major problem right now. The car, the car model in fact, is extremely detailed in number of triangles and objects. Couple of times more than Kunos' F40.
The car model had no LODs. But I created some of them the easy and fastest way like any other lazy person. Not great like a dedicated 3D modeler would do it, but it works.

As you all know, or some of you at least, in gaming LODs are Levels of Detail for objects in game that will show the model in less and less detail as it moves farther and farther away from the camera (or your position in 3D space from which you are looking at that object). Basically, for a true model (the most detailed one for looking at up close) there are copies of it but with less and less details, called usually LOD B, LOD C and LOD D. In AC it is those 3 additional levels usually. The game loads those up when they are too far away to see all the details anyway. This is needed to help the computer make less calculations with a lot of objects on screen and keep the action fluid.

Maybe we can also do this online when possible. But right now, I'd need people who are interested in helping with this to do a little test:

I don't have the latest hardware but I'm still OK for AC online with it. Usually, I run some practice on my own but sometimes run races with AI, but 15-20 AI cars makes my older CPU cough out those CPU warnings. There's CPU time reserved for each AI driver's reactions etc which makes it more difficult to deal with AC eye candy. This extremely detailed car model does give me additional frame drops in some places and will possibly push your hardware too, which I wouldn't like to happen online. Probably no one would.

So, I want you to start a race at the back of the grid, with 10-15 AI cars, on any track that you know you have absolutely no issues running alone or with other AI cars.

I need to know if you have performance issues like frame drops when running these F50 cars with AI (like make sure you have several in front of you - starts and all bunched up getting into turn 1 are really a good test).

Tell me also if you use VR, triple screen or single screen. Give me your results here, just simple answers like:
- yes it's horrible 30FPS,
- not that much and I can cope with it, or
- no problem at all.

I will include those LODs anyway in the final update.

 

I tried the updated version.

VR position is wrong in this one, your face is on the steering wheel when you start up. Of course it can be changed but that pushes the UI much forward and my apps are in my field of view now (while I normally have them on the side).

I haven't done the test you proposed yet, I will do that but I noticed I go into reprojection in practice mode. Normally it won't do that. Of course, the track could also be badly optimized. I didn't see your post but what I was assuming is exactly what you have written. The model is probably a model that was picked up from some 3D site and was meant for renders, not for gaming and it lacks LOD's. Slapped some physics on it and there you have it, a Ferrari F50.

While I will do the test with 15-20 AI cars I can tell you now that racing without LOD's is especially taxing in VR. And well, you don't want to do that.. Creating good LOD's is not easy. I know there are tools that will generate you LOD A, B, C, D but the result is not great. There is a reason modelers do it by hand. I also doubt your model is actually good enough (game quality) to start the process.

I have to say I am really having a lot of doubts about this. There are so many quality cars out there, why do we pick some car from some unknown source? Yes, the physics felt better already, but still it feels a bit arcadey to me. It's great that Filip wants to get into car modding but I really fail to see why we would pick this car while there are so many out there that have the quality we want.

 

Alright John, I call it simcade fun and reminds me of Gran Turismo really.

But if the model quality and LOD stuff is not fixed it will be a no-go for me most certainly.

 

@John vd Geest and @Filip Stoyanovich
I tested with 15 AIs and it was smooth but the first hundreds of meters were a bit less fluent. Keep in mind those AI calculations aren't where AC shines though, and that we won't have that CPU load in multiplayer.

Note : PC Config : LG 24" Single screen ; APC UPS 700 VA ; Cooler Master Storm Sniper Black Edition ; Cooler Master G550M ; Asus Strix Z270F Gaming ; Intel i7-7700K@stock-speed ; Be-Quiet Dark Rock 4 ; G. Skill 2x8 = 16Go PC 19200 Ripjaws ; PNY RTX 2060 Super ; Samsung SSD 850 EVO (500Go) ; Western Digital 1To.

I'm fine with this F50 even if she's not what I would call a classic gem but it's a youngtimer and probably the last true Ferrari imo. Still @Laurent Londes is definitely right when he says we have plenty of great other cars we could start a series with, even if this series is supposed to just be a fun and casual one.

 

@Laurent Londes You need save your position and restart the game, so your apps are correct place.