Well, this sucks.
First off, a sincere apology to anyone that I ran into yesterday. That kind of behavior obviously does not represent what those in S.N.A.I.L. are here for, nor does it reflect the kind of racing that I pride myself on. These are races that we all wait all week in anticipation of; to have them ruined through dirty driving is terrible. I'm horrified that I was the cause of that.
Next, my excuse, of course.
I've looked back at the replay as saved on my PS3 (I saved all six to watch faster racers' lines and just to go back and see what happened in parts of the race that I couldn't see.) In the first High Speed Ring race I could not see you, Sparco. In the second, I could not see Psycho or Sparco, though I did not realize it at the time.
I knew going in that I probably was never going to be able to see Bronco, and just hoped that it would be a non-issue since he could not see me, either. In fact, I figured that even if our two cars occupied the same space at the same time, neither would be effected. That seemed to be the case.
Things were obviously different, though, when it came to Sparco and Psycho. I could not see them, but they could see me. If they ended up in the same space as me on their screen, it led to a crash, but as you can tell in the videos it seems to be a crash in which I am nearly unaffected. In the second race, I actually gain ground on Naruto despite running through two other cars.
On the other hand, when I ran through the space that appeared empty but actually contained one of the cars that I could not see, I drove on completely unaffected, not changing course nor heading from contact, nor losing or gaining speed or even hearing a bump.
What makes this really weird is that in other races I
could see those other cars.
In fact, in the first race, I tried to take Psycho on the inside of a turn and I ended up sending him off course. I pulled up and let him back past me because of it. When I know that something like that is happened, I do what I can to correct it. I surely would have seen spinning cars in my rear view mirror at the High Speed Ring if I could have seen them at all, and would have let them back up.
I don't know why I could not see those other drivers, yesterday. I imagine the major traffic in the room was partially to blame. I've never had a problem with seeing other cars, before or that I know of, until Bronco and I first got into a room together.
Anyway, I will surrender all of my points for the High Speed Ring races. This will put me into Div. III with Sparco and Psycho again, but hopefully I can make things right with them when I can actually see them on the course. The side benefit is that Bronco and I won't be in the same room, so if our conflicting networks were the cause of more than just our two cars not seeing each other, it won't happen when I'm in Div. III.
Furthermore, I hope that the smaller groups next week will also serve to eliminate the problem.
In the meantime I will see if I can approve my NAT type or any other thing that may help the issue. I've tried before with no success but will give it another go.
If it will ease anyone's mind, I'll record a video of the race from my perspective, though the quality of that video is sure to be sketchy, at best.