Ferrari Challenge & LAN Play

[jjaisli]

I had my first experience tonight playing Ferrari Challenge through a LAN. Biggles was in the area on business and had his PS3 with him. Actually, he also had his own TV, a G25 and Buttkicker as well. The man does NOT travel light. So we made arrangements for him to stop by the my house in the deadly and bear infested Ramapo Mountains. I'm happy to say he arrived without being mauled or eaten.

I have my PS3 connected wirelessly to the internet. I did some quick research and before leaving work on friday I grabbed a spare router and what I thought were two crossover cables. It turns out they were patch cables so a mad dash to Radio Shack proved somewhat futile as they only had 1 crossover in stock. It took me nearly 30 minutes to figure out how to get things working. I'm sure there must be an easier way but my solution was to connect his PS3 to the internet wirelessly on my network and in doing so it freed up his ethernet port. (Nothing else seemed to work). And we simply connected the two PS3s together without the router and using only the one crossover cable.

It took a while to set things up and get situated and I realized that Biggles would be at somewhat of a disadvantage being out of his comfortable element in slightly unfamiliar surroundings. But the man is generally a bit quicker than me so I was happy for the advantage.

Ferrari Challenge in multi-player mode over a LAN becomes a different game. Gone is the skipping, blinking, laggy play and in it's place are smooth flowing and cleanly rendered cars. It was absolutely wonderful to experience. Most of the time, a mistake by one or the other put us several seconds apart. But at several races (250LM, 250TR and 355 Challenge) we were running <.5 seconds or less, nose to tail for 2 laps and it was just uncanny how smooth everything was. This is the way racing should be. Great fun. And well worth the effort. If any of you have the chance to try FC over a LAN, you'll be amazed at the difference.

Thanks for stopping by Biggles! Racing aside, it was very nice to meet you in person and put a face to the name, err, car.

 

[Hun200kmh]

Thanks for sharing the info, I bet you guys had great fun! 👍

I think me and Mekanaizer are the only portuguese FC drivers in these forums. All other PT guys I know from GTP (Beerz, hornet burnout and meagainstyou) are GT-only players.

However, I have personal friends and/or family members that own PS3's and also FC, and we have some experience - from past years - to create "summer console racing events", so I'm definitely interested in learnig about how to setup LAN play.

So, and because I understand very litle about all this, can you explain to me the following:

1 - If only two PS3's are connected, you just need one Ethernet cable to "Link" them? That's what I think you guys did, but I'm not sure ...

2 - How do we connect 3 or more PS3's? They all connect to a router? can I use my internet modem/router to do that? It has 4 Ethernet ports (all unused because my PS3 connects wirelessly).

3 - What kind of Ethernet cables are needed in multi-PS3 connection (via a router, I presume)? Cross over? What are "patch cables"?

 

[Biggles]

My thanks to jjaisli & (especially) his wife for their hospitality. It was great to meet one of the people "behind the car". It really wasn't that hard getting to the cabin in the Ramapo Mountains: true, I lost one of my pack mules to a mountain lion somewhere north of Mahwah, but fortunately, it wasn't the one carrying my PS3 & G25.

Kudos to jj for managing to set up the LAN linking - I wouldn't have had a clue. The racing was fun, with flawless frame rates. However, the benefits would have been more significant in a multi-player race, with a more crowded grid - not something that is likely to happen often in a LAN situation. Also, as there were only 2 of us linked, we don't know for sure if it would work equally well with multiple players.

In the end, it's the online experience that has to work for multi-player racing to be practical. Let's hope that SCC manages to do a better job with this.

 

[jjaisli]

Once upon a time, I was involved in the IT field. But it's been so long it's beginning to feel like it was in a past life. And things that once came second nature, I find myself running to Google or blankly scratching my head thinking, "Err...didn't I know that?"

Anyway, in layman's terms, a patch cable has the identical wiring on both ends of the cable. It's also called a 'straight through' cable and is what you have with your standard 'Ethernet' cable that you would use from your modem or router to your PS3 or computer.

A crossover cable is used when you're hooking up two devices with the same interface. For example, a hub to hub or a PS3 directly to a PS3.

I should probably do a bit more research before posting a response to your other questions. While what I did worked, I'm sure there is a much more elegant solution. And a simple answer. Perhaps somebody else with more experience will chime in and save me.

My intention was to use two crossover cables hooked up to router to network the 2 PS3s. If you have multiple Playstations, you can easily network them together in this method so long as you have a hub with enough ports. Essentially, all you're doing is linking them together. Since I only had one crossover cable, I was forced to go directly from PS3 to PS3. You may ask why I didn't just do this to begin with if it was only the two of us. Good question. On Friday when I knew Biggles was coming, I briefly researched how to do this and for some reason there seemed to be some confusion when going directly from PS3 to PS3 with several people mentioning they had problems and had to change all of their network settings. However, in retrospect, whether you go from PS3 to PS3 or PS3 to router to PS3, it shouldn't really make any difference so perhaps this is a moot point. I was in a rush and either didn't research it very carefully or wasn't really thinking.

The problem I was having was Biggle's PS3 would not recognize the Ethernet port when we tired to establish a LAN multiplayer game from within Ferrari Challenge. It seemed like his PS3 was constantly looking for an internet connection through that port and the game was giving us an error message that no LAN cable was plugged into the Ethernet port. Disabling his internet connection completely didn't help. I made sure he was logged out of the PSN and it made no difference. I tried for about 20 minutes to google the problem and most of the FAQs I found on PS3 Lan parties centered on having enough beer and chips. Big 🤬 help.

So my only solution was to connect his PS3 to my wireless network and it seemed to free up the ethernet port. I'm SURE there's an easier way to do it.

In any event, your 'router' will not work as a hub to LAN several PS3s together. You would need a separate hub that's not hooked up to your internet connection. But they're cheap.

 

[jjaisli]

Also, as there were only 2 of us linked, we don't know for sure if it would work equally well with multiple players.

In the end, it's the online experience that has to work for multi-player racing to be practical. Let's hope that SCC manages to do a better job with this.

I'm relatively sure it would work equally well even with 16 players. Essentially you have a direct connection to each other so there's no latency. Although we're unlikely to ever find out for sure. (My basement isn't that big). My wife was slightly bemused by the whole thing. But if 15 people showed up one night all carrying a PS3 in one hand a TV in the other I think I'd have a LOT of explaining to do. (BTW, glad you made it out safely--we only had a dusting of snow which has long since melted).

But Mario, direct flights from Lisbon are cheap in the down economy. Why don't you join us next time? Perhaps you can think of a way to charge the trip to Eutechnyx for creating an unsatisfactory on-line experience.

 

[Hun200kmh]

JJ, check this info about LAN play using PS2:
http://boardsus.playstation.com/playstation/board/message?board.id=granturismo&message.id=75553


As you see, the cross over cable is only used for direct connection. If there is a "middle" device, be it a hub or a router, this guy talks about "regular network cables" (I guess that's what you mean by "patch cables").

All other stuff (setting IPs and such) I guess the PS3 handles it without us having to manually do anything else, but that remains to be seen.

Oh, and I searched these forums but didn't find here any guide about how to setup LAN play. I really thought I read about it in some of the UKGTP threads, but today I didn't find it. Besides, even if there is something there, it will also be about PS2 LANs, I guess there's no PS3 LAN guide in GTP ... yet.

PS - The thread I linked above has two different "guides" from two different people, check both of them.

 

[jjaisli]

Thanks for linking this. You saved me the trouble of searching for it again myself. Likewise, I appreciate your suggestion last night while we were racing about 'borrowing' an extra PS3. In fact, this turns out to be an option after all.

So to pose (2) questions to all:

I have a friend coming to visit on Saturday. He will stop at a mutual friends house and 'borrow' his PS3 for the day. I'm going to either rent or buy an extra copy of Ferrari Challenge so that we can both play together over a LAN.

1) But I just realized he will not have any of the cars unlocked with a new copy of FC. Can anybody tell me, if I copy my game save to a thumb drive (which I've done anyway for back-up purposes), can I just copy this to my friend's PS3. Once that's done, if my friend runs the game will it automatically 'look' for this game save data? Is there anything I need to do in the game or in the XMB to make this happen?

2) The PS3 that my friend is borrowing is not used on-line and the person who owns it does not have a PSN ID. I don't suppose there's anyway to sign him up for a 'temporary' ID? Does anybody know if this is even possible?

 

[Hun200kmh]

1) yes

2) yes





EDIT - If we meet online I'll tell more specific things about it, have no time right now. However, it's all very simple, with two exceptions:

1) Maybe - I don't know - you can encounter problems if the system version in one PS3 is not the same as the other (I assume it isn't, because the other PS3 never connected to PSN)

2) Maybe - I don't know - you have to use the same versions of the game in both PS3s (I mean the "patched" game).

There's a very simple solution to both these problems. Create a master user in the borrowed PS3, log on to the PSN using that user account, download and install the latest system version, download and install the US patch for FC.

Before you return the PS3, just delete that user from the console.

 

[MaddMatt]

Ok guys, I actually have alot of experience with this. I have been linking together up to 8 PS3's and monitors for the last few months. I use an old wireless 802.11b router with no password. All the ps3's are set for wireless. I request an automatic scan which locates the router and it breezes thru from there. FYI, I typically don't have internet access when I run with this router. When it asks to test the connection I cancel it since it doesn't have full internet service, just LAN.

I've not run FC but I have run F1:CE quite a bit with no problems.

Am I missing something or did this kind of setup not work for you? Wireless is 100x easier than running the wires. If I skipped something or didn't make something clear enough, feel free to ask. I'll do my best to give a straight answer

MM

 

[jjaisli]

There's a very simple solution to both these problems. Create a master user in the borrowed PS3, log on to the PSN using that user account, download and install the latest system version, download and install the US patch for FC.

Before you return the PS3, just delete that user from the console.

Well, this is what I ended up doing. And it all worked perfectly*. I didn't even bother to check what version of the system software the spare PS3 was running but let's just say I hardly recognized the XMB. So I just updated to it to 2.60. I know his PS3 is ~ 2 years old. And after 10 minutes it was giving off enough heat to warm my basement. As I was completing the set up I was just hoping it wasn't on it's last leg and I was going to end up buying him a new one.

So I created a new user, hooked up the console to my wireless network, copied over my game save data et voila--everything was set and ready to go. My friend had no experience with racing sims but is a total car nut. It was an eye opening experience for him. I let him have the Playseat and after a few hours to practice, I took position on the spare machine and set up the LAN. I think we ended up playing until about 3:00 am. (Yes, I know for you this is normal).

* I say there were no problems but there were two issues, one not relevant to the set-up. I was using my old Logitech Wingman wheel (about 7 years old) on the spare machine. The game does not recognize it. It works but it does not center properly and it only allows a few cms of travel lock to lock. To make it more interesting, the center point would change during the race. Sometimes it was to the left, sometimes to the right. When I was lucky it would be in the center. I also wanted to mention that we tried setting up an online race in a private lobby with a mutual friend. I was curious if my connection had the bandwidth to do this. We tried it 4-5 times and the moment we synched, one of us would disappear from each other's screens. But the person hosting the lobby could always see all three of us. So now we at least know this doesn't work.

@ MM - That's true. In the meantime I did learn we could set up a wireless LAN. But I use my wireless network for internet access and to broadcast streamed music to different parts of the house. So I didn't want to reconfigure everything twice and figured it was easier just to stick a crossover between the two consoles. But it sounds like for multiple machines, grabbing an old wireless router may just be the best way to go.

 

[MaddMatt]

I grabbed an old ".b" router from around the house but for $30 you can even pick up a new one. The PITA part is that alot of games require you to hop online once to confirm you have a legit copy of the game before playing on a LAN. F1CE and FC both allow for straight LAn play with no internet which is great.

I sincerely hope that SCC does the same thing. It looks like a great game and having the abililty to set up a quick LAN game with buddies is awesome.

MM

 

[jjaisli]

The PITA part is that alot of games require you to hop online once to confirm you have a legit copy of the game before playing on a LAN. F1CE and FC both allow for straight LAn play with no internet which is great.

I sincerely hope that SCC does the same thing. It looks like a great game and having the abililty to set up a quick LAN game with buddies is awesome.

MM

I wondered about that. Now I know. Thanks for confirming this. And indeed buying a wireless router it is a much cheaper and easier solution.

Hun200kmh, I think you just found an easy solution for your LAN party. Good luck with that.

 

[MaddMatt]

If you need any more help with that, feel free to drop me a line or keep posting. It took me a few tries to make it work but you can set it up with one ps3 and going bigger from there is easy.

BTW, as good as FC is in LAN mode, F1:CE is even better IMO. I have grown to love that game as a big LAN experience. Lots of fun, lots of options and incredible framerates with no drop in. The sense of speed is incredible.

MM