GT5's Game-Breaking Online Flaw (OP Updated: 11 Feb)

[OwensRacing]

All this talk about time. My kids PS3 is always needing time reset. I don't have this issue. Mine is wired. There's is wireless. We use the "set by Internet" option. Seems to get off by about 10-20 mins every month.

Hmmmm just something to mix in here.

 

[esh]

That is a very solid report...and I'd be inclined to retract my statement if I hadn't experienced numerous reports from DS3 drivers of the same bug.

I guess I personally cannot rule out the premium vs standard vehicle claim. Most of my racing involves a mix of vehicles, mostly standards, or mostly the same model vehicle. I mention the "same model" because if it is a graphics frame rate issue, there could be a correlation to the amount of data stored in memory...and having 16 drivers in the same vehicle could have a smaller footprint compared to 16 drivers in 16 different premium cars.

...but in the end, all my experiences have been linked to drivers from other continents entering my races and the issue disappearing after they were replaced with drivers from the same continent. There were a few issues with drivers on the same continent but eventually we narrowed their issues down to a bad router or network connection.

I use premium cars I would say 85-90% of the time and had not experienced this lag for quite some time. Someone corrected me in the 86 thread about the racer locales of the 2 people I saw lagging in free run which makes everyone that was in our room last night from North America, unless the guy with the British flag actually is located in England.

Don't know what I'm saying but I don't think premium cars are to blame as, like I said, I use premium mostly and have only experienced this lag at most a dozen times maybe.

 

[Infinital-NG]

I'm still believer of it's internet connectivity between users being the culprit.

However in the argument about Wheels causing the problems. What about this factoid.

USB 2.0 has a maximum data bandwidth of 480Mbps. Granted that's a maximum and I'm not aware of any devices that can make that. I think 320Mbps is the maximum seen in real world scenarios.

So USB 2.0 approximate data bandwidth 320Mbps

DS3 controllers operate on Bluetooth 2.0 technology.

Bluetooth 2.0 maximum data bandwidth is 3.0 Mbps. Maximum allowed is 2.1Mbps.

So we are at 320Mbps versus 2.1Mbps.

Granted I'm sure the wheels are not generating max data throughput at any given time. You have to see that even if the wheels were operating at 5% of the allowed USB data, you'd still be at 16Mbps transfer rate.

So even at 5% of the wheel's available data bandwidth were are still 7.6 times faster than a DS3.

Force Feedback is still present on the DS3. It's just the simple vibration. Data is still being sent back to the DS3 in terms of what is happening to the car at that time. Yes it's not as intense as a wheel, but data is still being sent back to the controller.

Without knowing how the wheels FFB controller chip is program, it's still functioning like any other computer hardware. It accepts code and translates that to the FFB motors.

From personal experience (6 years IT w/ Network+ cert) I can't see any reason why wheels would be the problem.

FFB data more than likely isn't sent over the network. There's no reason for it to. Data sent over the network is more commonly going to be: position of the cars, time, laps, dmg, weather, and many other details. FFB is probably computed by each racer's PS3 as it happens real time.

Unless someone has encounter serious lag while using a wheel were they encountered FFB when they wouldn't have normally. (ie, in the middle on a flat track no cars around) I haven't experienced it, but do not use my wheel anymore.


Furthermore if it is lag, we need a way to test and prove.

But here's what I propose as a way to test.

1. Get a list of people that want to participate.
2. Find some hosts will fast internet, both upload/download in varying parts of the world.
3. At those hosts sites, they all setup a computer with some sort of server type program on a computer. Something we could all ping/download from to test speed to that particular person.
4. Setup a schedule for races.
5. The races should be one make/no tuning/one track. Everyone participating runs laps on their own time in their lounges or something. Get their times consistent. Just so they know what they should be getting.
6. Race day. We'd set a time for 16 members to join the race. Ex. 1:00PM GMT race starts. No qualifying. Before that however, we all take turns connecting and downloading something from that HOST server PC. Record the time for that to download. That would be recorded and be posted in a results along with the practice lap time and race lap time.
7. We run the race. 10 laps or so nothing crazy, would almost do a rolling start, as we are just wanting to see fastest lap times in an online race. Basically so everyone has at least 8/9 laps to get their fastest time without worrying about traffic. If you get a fast time early you can pit and wait.
8. Results would be posted with these details.

PSN-ID
Country
Internet Connection Type (Cable/Fiber/DSL & U/L download speeds)
NAT Type
Router Make & Model (if used)
Time to download file from PC Server at host site
Ping Time to PC Server at host site
Fastest Lounge lap time
Fastest Race lap time

This last section about testing I threw together very quickly. If this is something people would like to do, I can help organize if needed. If there is interest I will re-write this up with some more details that I'll think of later.

 

[Arwin]

Haven't time right now to read through all threads, just the first and last page, but did anyone already notice that this topic was covered by Digital Foundry in an overview of competitive advantages of various lag/host combinations? It also covered GT5, and the conclusion was that while GT5 appears to give an advantage to hosts/low lag, the game will take the local clock versions of all drivers' times to determine the final results. These are 100% accurate.

I'm not saying this means that there's no possibility of there being another type of bug going on, but the stop-watch measurements I've read here are likely to be related to this difference at least.

Just wanting to throw that in (saw a link to here from another forum).

Link to the Digital Foundry article on Eurogamer: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-the-lag-effect-psn-xbox-live-analysis

I'll add that personally I've never experienced any issues with my own driving online, though of course I've occasionally seen some hiccups in the movement of other cars.

 

[K1LLD0z3R]

I'm going to agree with chuyler1 and esh. Client network connections between players in the room is the root cause of most of this weirdness.

I'm a G25 user and have experienced the issues posted in OP even before 2.0

- does not affect free-run mode but does affect racing?
In free run it seems it is just you against the clock.
Yes we can see all the cars on track, but the game is not working on any time gaps between clients. We know there are other cars on track and we can see them, but there is no draft. It has to be calculated different.

I am curious regarding some settings changes that may have an affect. ABS (Special Nascar event:ABS 1 is minimum and affects speed even though we never touch the brakes) and visual damage are two that come to mind. The visual damage because less information should have to be transmitted and the ABS because for some reason we can force it to 0 now.

 

[Blind829]

All this talk about time. My kids PS3 is always needing time reset. I don't have this issue. Mine is wired. There's is wireless. We use the "set by Internet" option. Seems to get off by about 10-20 mins every month.

Hmmmm just something to mix in here.

Good idea. I set my PS3 "via the internet" before a league race yesterday and we still had issues. Perhaps it's more like all people time's need to be set close to the other racers in the room. That would seem silly of PD but it's also odd that we get an error message saying our time is off in GT5 occasionally.

Basically so everyone has at least 8/9 laps to get their fastest time without worrying about traffic. If you get a fast time early you can pit and wait.

It would be ideal if a league would do the testing as they should already have a good handle on their cars and are well practiced.

 

[CSLACR]

As my experience with this 'bug' is pretty limited i can't be too confident on my asumptions so i'll have to come accross it again to be sure. I might be wrong, but this is my take at this point.

The fact that someone not affected can outbrake you and pass you from the outside doesn't conflict with my original theory of different time flow for each driver. If i were to summarize my theory in one sentence i would say:

''During every frame you miss, because of the FPS drop, you are unable to apply any kind of input. This means no throttle,brake or steering.''

Without further analysis,that explains how acceleration is slower,braking distances are longer,and handling is different. But it is not loss of grip and the physics are not affected at all.

PS. This is just a theory based on my brief experience.

This is exactly the type of this I've experienced as well.
I think he's on to something too. Whether it's the same bug or not I do not know, but it's certainly a plausible theory at the moment.
It doesn't mean you don't give inputs for every frame, it means when the game skips a frame, your input for that frame is not counted.
So 100% throttle with 2/3 the frames would equal 2/3 throttle, 2/3 braking power, and 2/3 steering input. All this would equal - 2/3 the inputs, and a much slower track speed. (higher then 2/3 though, maybe 75-85% speed average)

It's a headache inducing slow-motion effect you see/feel.
This happened to me, TA, RT, DrWatson, and some others all at the same time in a room. We didn't even finish a lap though to check the times. Unbearable according to every single one of us.

We were kicking randoms left and right thinking they were the cause of the problem, but it never worked, the only thing that "worked" was making a new room.
Of course then the new room didn't have tire noise, and never reached more then 10 players.

 

[zevehcj]

Just posting to say that this glitch/bug is not exclusive to wheel users. I use a DS3 and experienced this glitch/bug both pre 2.0 and post 2.0. Also, the most recent, it occurred in a 15 man room and two of us were affected by it (both DS3 users).

 

[mcfizzle]

This is exactly the type of this I've experienced as well.
I think he's on to something too. Whether it's the same bug or not I do not know, but it's certainly a plausible theory at the moment.
It doesn't mean you don't give inputs for every frame, it means when the game skips a frame, your input for that frame is not counted.
So 100% throttle with 2/3 the frames would equal 2/3 throttle, 2/3 braking power, and 2/3 steering input. All this would equal - 2/3 the inputs, and a much slower track speed. (higher then 2/3 though, maybe 75-85% speed average)

A question as I have very little knowledge of this problem, but if the input happened only 2/3 frames when it's happening, and the other 1/3 was no input, wouldn't it feel like the car is drifting to the outside or turning the opposite direction of the actual input since no input is essentially keeping the wheel straight? Same with acceleration and braking, wouldn't the balance of the car changing be seen and felt? Is this what people are experiencing? I guess I thought people said their laps were slow when they were doing everything they normally would, not that the car handled differently. Can the data logger be used to check lateral G's, rpm's, etc in this case? Probably not since it's online I guess. I apologize if I'm repeating info or misunderstood as I haven't followed this too much.

 

[esh]

Anyone have info about fixed host working better on versus off? I would venture a guess with it off that if not everyone has UPnP working properly either due to misconfiguration of their router or are using a device incapable of providing the service or are not forwarding necessary ports manually then others in the room would be forced to do extra work and provide data for multiple clients that may not have an adequate upstream to do so. The route to each client could also not be of the highest quality, which would turn even rooms with people in relatively close proximity to one another into rooms with latency like those with clients from different continents.


In addition to the testing someone proposed earlier, another way would be to test both fixed on and off, with everyone able to confirm port forwarding is enabled in some form or another versus setting up a room where people purposefully disable incoming connections (start with 1, then 2, and then increase as needed) from other users in the room, forcing the remaining clients to do more of the work.

 

[stupidstormy36]

I don't know if this issue is only related to FFB steering wheels, but I have also noticed I have run into the same problem and I use a DS3 (mostly due to my financial situation). I noticed some points where my vehicle's braking was very weak even though I was applying the same amount and the correct timing as before on previous laps (tire wear wasn't an issue as it was turned off in the lobby). I also noticed that sometimes my vehicle would also understeer severely even though I was moving slower through the turn than I usually would, then the next lap, it would be fine. But my speed and acceleration didn't seem to be affected though. I know it wasn't my driving that was causing this. I don't remember the size of the room, but I believe it was moderate to large size.

I think it mostly has a lot to do with latency on the network, not the actual hardware. It's true that the RAM on the PS3 is limited (512 MB with 256 reserved for the system and 256 reserved for video, as well as almost 50 MB reserved for the XMB at all times). But it shouldn't be affecting the online performance this bad.

As far as the replays go, I do not think this is the culprit either. The PS3 does record every race, but the recordings are periodically dumped on the HDD in a temporary location, so the replay data doesn't take up much RAM space.

It could also be the network infrastructure too, which GT5 seems to use a client/server setup rather than a P2P setup that most other online racers use (as depicted in the link above), but it all seems to point to a network of some type to me. Not the hardware.

I know I'm not the fastest driver, but I do put together consistent times. I don't know, maybe I'm just rambling off randomly here and not making much sense to anybody. Or maybe someone else pointed these facts out earlier?

SuperSic also has an extremely valid point there.

 

[carracerptp]

This is exactly the type of this I've experienced as well.
I think he's on to something too. Whether it's the same bug or not I do not know, but it's certainly a plausible theory at the moment.
It doesn't mean you don't give inputs for every frame, it means when the game skips a frame, your input for that frame is not counted.
So 100% throttle with 2/3 the frames would equal 2/3 throttle, 2/3 braking power, and 2/3 steering input. All this would equal - 2/3 the inputs, and a much slower track speed. (higher then 2/3 though, maybe 75-85% speed average)

That is the best idea I have seen.

Two things I would like to add.

Have you ever noticed you'll get the same lap time exactly? A good example of this would be last night in the 86 series.

In a practice room with Outlaw, I got the exact same lap time four times. It was an 18.46. I don't remember the last digit, but it didn't change.

Then, in qualifying, I got the same lap time twice.

I'm far from a consistent driver at that track, and my sector times were all over the place. So I can't believe that I ended up with the same lap time. This only seems to happen occasionally.

Has anyone seen a or had a lap too fast to be realistic in the game online?

I was in an online room. We were racing spec cars from the recommended list. No way could there be a difference in tuning, except for brake balance. We all took our cars and did a couple laps.

This room had quite a few good drivers in it, all capable of getting within a second or so of the maximum lap time in that car.

With a couple minutes left in qualifying, a guy set a lap that was almost three and a half seconds faster than even the fastest guy before him. I'm not saying the lap couldn't be done, but I don't think he was able to repeat that pace in the race.

EDIT: The track would be imposable to cheat at. Well you could but I'm sure you can't get a faster lap doing it.

Not demeaning the lap, but I'm beginning to think GT can post a lap time faster than what's actual possible. I've seen this happen only one other time, and I'm certain that time was a glitch. This was just the most recent.

Myself, I have also had a couple lap times that I swear were outside my skill range, or even the tire compound.

 

[CSLACR]

Wall of text warning

A question as I have very little knowledge of this problem, but if the input happened only 2/3 frames when it's happening, and the other 1/3 was no input, wouldn't it feel like the car is drifting to the outside or turning the opposite direction of the actual input since no input is essentially keeping the wheel straight? Same with acceleration and braking, wouldn't the balance of the car changing be seen and felt? Is this what people are experiencing? I guess I thought people said their laps were slow when they were doing everything they normally would, not that the car handled differently. Can the data logger be used to check lateral G's, rpm's, etc in this case? Probably not since it's online I guess. I apologize if I'm repeating info or misunderstood as I haven't followed this too much.

2/3 is just a random number I pulled out for the example. I don't know if data logger is available in online replays or not, I never use it.
But I think the important thing to remember is the game is supposed to run up to 60 frames per second, usually around 40-50 IIRC. It wouldn't directly be tied to frame rate either, as frame rate and physics calculations are separate things.
BUT - The massive frame rate drops could be accompanied by skips in other things, so if the whole game is slowing down, or missing portions of information along with the fps drop, you could be missing an incalculable amount of inputs, but it would be intermittent and not show up on your screen, it's really hard to say if it's even possible through my limited computer knowledge.

It certainly does describe what I feel in the cases I get the FPS drops, the whole game feels like it's in slow motion, perhaps it's the same issue for everyone, but the symptoms don't come out the same for all of us too.
Sjaak said everything felt fine, but the car felt as though on ice, I've never had that, but if he's encountering the same thing as me without the fps drop, that could be exactly the same thing, if for those of us who have the fps issue can't tell the handling issue due to lack of perceived speed. (slow motion)
I do know when it goes into slow motion, it becomes very hard to keep the car on track, and I have to brake much more then I expect to need to when entering corners, for example. For this reason it could very well be a PS3 overload, as we all know, we're running a huge game data file, the game disc, and countless downloads totaling around 3 GB's worth, maybe it's simply getting to be to much for PS3's to handle? Stronger PS3's don't have the fps drop so easily, so the symptoms of driving are more obvious, and weaker PS3's have the fps drop, therefore the driving symptoms are much more difficult to define due to such a low fps rate?

That would explain why some people encountered this even before Spec II, more after Spec II, and now a LOT of people since Spec 2.02.
More updates = More data = More affected PS3's.

I'm running an older PS3 (last 80GB model before slim I think), but I also re-installed game data and updates before Spec II, so that could have prevented the issue for me for a longer period of time as well.

That is the best idea I have seen.

Two things I would like to add.

Have you ever noticed you'll get the same lap time exactly? A good example of this would be last night in the 86 series.

In a practice room with Outlaw, I got the exact same lap time four times. It was an 18.46. I don't remember the last digit, but it didn't change.

Then, in qualifying, I got the same lap time twice.

I'm far from a consistent driver at that track, and my sector times were all over the place. So I can't believe that I ended up with the same lap time. This only seems to happen occasionally.

Has anyone seen a or had a lap too fast to be realistic in the game online?

I was in an online room. We were racing spec cars from the recommended list. No way could there be a difference in tuning, except for brake balance. We all took our cars and did a couple laps.

This room had quite a few good drivers in it, all capable of getting within a second or so of the maximum lap time in that car.

With a couple minutes left in qualifying, a guy set a lap that was almost three and a half seconds faster than even the fastest guy before him. I'm not saying the lap couldn't be done, but I don't think he was able to repeat that pace in the race.

EDIT: The track would be imposable to cheat at. Well you could but I'm sure you can't get a faster lap doing it.

Not demeaning the lap, but I'm beginning to think GT can post a lap time faster than what's actual possible. I've seen this happen only one other time, and I'm certain that time was a glitch. This was just the most recent.

Myself, I have also had a couple lap times that I swear were outside my skill range, or even the tire compound.

I have only experienced any issues a few select times, but I haven't run any impossible times that I know of.

 

[jon-]

FWIW regarding playstation stength, my PS3 is a new 320gb slim and was only ever used for GT5 until very recently (cod ) and I seem to get it as much as anyone.

In fact, during early fact finding the leading theory was it only happened to "slim" ps3s as that's what initial testing was showing, but it turned out not to be the case.

Probably going off on a useless tangent, but has anyone found any hard facts about the hardware speed differences between fat vs slim? I know they moved to a 45nm cell and dropped the ps2 hardware emulation so they've obviously played with the hardware a fair bit. I wonder if they've clocked back any elements for packaging / heat issues.

 

[CSLACR]

FWIW regarding playstation stength, my PS3 is a new 320gb slim and was only ever used for GT5 until very recently (cod ) and I seem to get it as much as anyone.

In fact, during early fact finding the leading theory was it only happened to "slim" ps3s as that's what initial testing was showing, but it turned out not to be the case.

Probably going off on a useless tangent, but has anyone found any hard facts about the hardware speed differences between fat vs slim? I know they moved to a 45nm cell and dropped the ps2 hardware emulation so they've obviously played with the hardware a fair bit. I wonder if they've clocked back any elements for packaging / heat issues.

I've nothing to say the slims are faster or more powerful, no. Not really suggesting that though.
BTW - The PS2 playback was only for the first 2 generations high models, for example, I have an 80GB that does not play PS2 discs. 80 and 160 were the two sizes last available before the slim came out, I think. Mine is the 80.

 

[OwensRacing]

Just to add some validation to this thread. Most of the guys posting I have raced with. Very fast and consistent.

So with that know that they are very well aware of times and feel.

Back to the discussion. Very interesting and I truly feel I've been victim and called it an off day.

 

[Akmuq]

I'm not sure if this has been discusse at all but there is also 'speed-up' lag aswell, I encountered both in the same race.

It was the BST V8 Challenge S2 at Fuji, the pole time was 1:33.9 and I was in 1:33.9's/1:34.0's just off pole, at the start of the race I was only doing 1:37's ad couldn't get away from the last man(I was in 15th) but after a few laps it sorted itself out and I made my way through the field, but the fast guys were gone, but for a brief stint in the race I started getting phenomenal speed, my fastest was a 1:31.5, 2.4 faster then the pole time, but, again, this sorted itself out in the last few laps.

This was about a week after Spec 2.0, full 16 car grid and a 31 lap race of Fuji, should be pretty server-heavy conditions.

 

[diptob79]

Drag race, automatic Transmission, same car, same opponent.

I experience lost frame and my opponent jumped ahead about 2 car length. It happened several times on me.

So i can confirm what supersic and cslacr said.

 

[xSNAKEx]

I've nothing to say the slims are faster or more powerful, no. Not really suggesting that though.
BTW - The PS2 playback was only for the first 2 generations high models, for example, I have an 80GB that does not play PS2 discs. 80 and 160 were the two sizes last available before the slim came out, I think. Mine is the 80.

Actually I am fairly sure the slims came in both 65 and 45 nm. And the fats were 90 and 65 I think.

 

[brettcee]

Actually I am fairly sure the slims came in both 65 and 45 nm. And the fats were 90 and 65 I think.

He's referring to hard drive space.

 

[r2dc2]

I'm not sure if this has been discusse at all but there is also 'speed-up' lag aswell, I encountered both in the same race.

It was the BST V8 Challenge S2 at Fuji, the pole time was 1:33.9 and I was in 1:33.9's/1:34.0's just off pole, at the start of the race I was only doing 1:37's ad couldn't get away from the last man(I was in 15th) but after a few laps it sorted itself out and I made my way through the field, but the fast guys were gone, but for a brief stint in the race I started getting phenomenal speed, my fastest was a 1:31.5, 2.4 faster then the pole time, but, again, this sorted itself out in the last few laps.

This was about a week after Spec 2.0, full 16 car grid and a 31 lap race of Fuji, should be pretty server-heavy conditions.

Yes I brought this up somewhere back. I am mostly a victim of the 'slow down' bug, but have been on occasion been hit by the speed up bug where I suddenly seem to have infinite power an grip no matter how I drive, and just drive off into the horizon ahead of the pack.

I've observed other people get the speed up bug too. I previously thought that they were just bloody good car tuners, but when it starts happening in one-make races, and they are 30 secs ahead of the whole pack after just 3 laps at Spa, you know something's not right.

I do a lot of races with GT500 cars, and have a decent indicator of the bug hitting me at Suzuka. On racing softs, all my chosen GT500 cars can take 130R flat out, as is normal in the game, at least until the tyres wear past 50%. When I get hit by the bug, even clean, warmed racing softs cannot hold a steady line though 130R. I actually have to lift before the corner and on occasion even dab the brakes.

Of all the problems with GT5, this stupid bug I feel is the most crippling, because when it rears its head, fair racing is impossible.

Link to the Digital Foundry article on Eurogamer: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-the-lag-effect-psn-xbox-live-analysis

Awesome read, this. Now the big issue: will PD fix GT5 online to give us a playable, fair online experience?




[Rant/Whinge: Before I was aware of this bug, I was having a decent, clean time one day in a japanese GT500 Suzuka 5 lap cycle race. Decent, except that I was always dead last by a million miles. Other people would come in, join the race, and be around my position after 2 laps, then realise that they cannot possibly keep up with the leaders and rage quit. But I keep sticking it out to the end, thinking I was just having an off day and the other guys were just incredibly good. The races usually started with around 10 cars and ended with 6 to 8 cars.

Usually after 5 laps, the second-last placed guy would cross the finish line and me in last place would just be rounding Spoon 1! The whole pack ahead would be within 1 or 2 secs between each car, and here I was 30 secs behind.

In sheer desperation I put an upgraded turbo into my Motul R35 GT-R to at least try to keep up, only to be kicked from the room instantly. I PM'ed the room host right away, and he said, "sorry, no tuning." Me: sad face.

I thought I was just a junk driver. Then I noticed in a saved replay that everyone was going flat out through 130R, while I had to actually brake!

Another day, I logged on to a Suzuka GT500 race again, and now could drive 130R flat out with the same set up. So it was the bug.]

 

[CSLACR]

I'm not sure if this has been discusse at all but there is also 'speed-up' lag aswell, I encountered both in the same race.

It was the BST V8 Challenge S2 at Fuji, the pole time was 1:33.9 and I was in 1:33.9's/1:34.0's just off pole, at the start of the race I was only doing 1:37's ad couldn't get away from the last man(I was in 15th) but after a few laps it sorted itself out and I made my way through the field, but the fast guys were gone, but for a brief stint in the race I started getting phenomenal speed, my fastest was a 1:31.5, 2.4 faster then the pole time, but, again, this sorted itself out in the last few laps.

This was about a week after Spec 2.0, full 16 car grid and a 31 lap race of Fuji, should be pretty server-heavy conditions.

Drag race, automatic Transmission, same car, same opponent.

I experience lost frame and my opponent jumped ahead about 2 car length. It happened several times on me.

So i can confirm what supersic and cslacr said.

I can confirm both of these after a good test tonight.

So we ran a 5 lap race at Autumn ring, all recommended garage Elise's.
I started second, and ripped away from the pack, everyone experiencing the bug that I heard, including myself.
FPS rate bad (not terrible) I solidly drove away, and the further away I got, the better the FPS, and smoother the driving experience.
So at the start line, I parked out of the way, and waited, took at least 15-20 seconds, but when the bulk of the field came around, I re-joined, and sure enough, cars around me the bug was back, bad fps rate again, around traffic.
A car DC'd or quit, down to 12 cars, instantly the bug got better, not gone, but much better, from there I started running again, having replicated it, I have yet to watch the replay, but I tore down on the leaders something fierce, without driving all that well, and I believe I experienced the "fast bug" version, running my best lap so far, and a fairly sloppy one to boot.

So I know these things for certain: There is a bug that literally slows cars down. It can also speed cars up. It is related to how many cars are on the track, which might also mean it's related to detail, i.e, standards/premiums, track level of detail, number of cars racing, damage on/off, just detail in general.

So I'm down to 2 theories now.

Theory 1: Data issue, something is causing everything to run horribly wrong when there's to much data/detail around, whether it can be fixed or helped I don't know yet.

Possible solution: Delete all GT5 data on HDD, re-install. (If you try this make sure to back up your game save ) I'm going to do this tonight, and then hopefully get a good test in tomorrow to see if it helped or fixed the problem.
If it is a data/detail issue, there's really nothing else that can be done to help with the problem that I'm aware of.

Theory 2: "Boost" Obviously we had boost set to off as always, but it is possible this is a boost bug, slowing cars down, and speeding them up. If it's a boost bug there's really no telling what all could happen, so while I can't explain FPS drop when it happens if it is boost, that certainly doesn't mean it isn't either. It would be a bug, after all.

Possible solution: None. PD would have to fix it.

Remaining tests: HDD re-install as mentioned above.
Full room of at least 13 (preferably 16) testing with boost on "off", "low", and "high" to search for differences. (which might not tell in either case)

 

[nasanu]

[Rant/Whinge: Before I was aware of this bug, I was having a decent, clean time one day in a japanese GT500 Suzuka 5 lap cycle race. Decent, except that I was always dead last by a million miles. Other people would come in, join the race, and be around my position after 2 laps, then realise that they cannot possibly keep up with the leaders and rage quit. But I keep sticking it out to the end, thinking I was just having an off day and the other guys were just incredibly good. The races usually started with around 10 cars and ended with 6 to 8 cars.

Usually after 5 laps, the second-last placed guy would cross the finish line and me in last place would just be rounding Spoon 1! The whole pack ahead would be within 1 or 2 secs between each car, and here I was 30 secs behind.

In sheer desperation I put an upgraded turbo into my Motul R35 GT-R to at least try to keep up, only to be kicked from the room instantly. I PM'ed the room host right away, and he said, "sorry, no tuning." Me: sad face.

I thought I was just a junk driver. Then I noticed in a saved replay that everyone was going flat out through 130R, while I had to actually brake!

Another day, I logged on to a Suzuka GT500 race again, and now could drive 130R flat out with the same set up. So it was the bug.]

Well just about the same thing happened to me, but I am not vain enough to claim it was a bug. The first time I joined a serious Japanese GT500 room at Suzuka I got smashed (I've held world record times in other games, qualified for Cybergames & GT Academy so I am not slow). All those guys do day in day out is to run GT5000 at their favorite tracks. They are specialists and seriously fast. After a few hours I was able to learn where I was losing time just with practice I was able to regain about 3-4 seconds back off them (correct car choice helps very much, but I still could not win). And just like you I didn't think I was able to go through 130R at full speed at first, but by the end of the night (without leaving the lobby) I was going at full speed easily.

Maybe you did have a bug, but my experience was almost identical and there was certainly no bug.

 

[SuperSic]

I can confirm both of these after a good test tonight.

So we ran a 5 lap race at Autumn ring, all recommended garage Elise's.
I started second, and ripped away from the pack, everyone experiencing the bug that I heard, including myself.
FPS rate bad (not terrible) I solidly drove away, and the further away I got, the better the FPS, and smoother the driving experience.
So at the start line, I parked out of the way, and waited, took at least 15-20 seconds, but when the bulk of the field came around, I re-joined, and sure enough, cars around me the bug was back, bad fps rate again, around traffic.
A car DC'd or quit, down to 12 cars, instantly the bug got better, not gone, but much better, from there I started running again, having replicated it, I have yet to watch the replay, but I tore down on the leaders something fierce, without driving all that well, and I believe I experienced the "fast bug" version, running my best lap so far, and a fairly sloppy one to boot.

So I know these things for certain: There is a bug that literally slows cars down. It can also speed cars up. It is related to how many cars are on the track, which might also mean it's related to detail, i.e, standards/premiums, track level of detail, number of cars racing, damage on/off, just detail in general.

So I'm down to 2 theories now.

Theory 1: Data issue, something is causing everything to run horribly wrong when there's to much data/detail around, whether it can be fixed or helped I don't know yet.

Possible solution: Delete all GT5 data on HDD, re-install. (If you try this make sure to back up your game save ) I'm going to do this tonight, and then hopefully get a good test in tomorrow to see if it helped or fixed the problem.
If it is a data/detail issue, there's really nothing else that can be done to help with the problem that I'm aware of.

Theory 2: "Boost" Obviously we had boost set to off as always, but it is possible this is a boost bug, slowing cars down, and speeding them up. If it's a boost bug there's really no telling what all could happen, so while I can't explain FPS drop when it happens if it is boost, that certainly doesn't mean it isn't either. It would be a bug, after all.

Possible solution: None. PD would have to fix it.

Remaining tests: HDD re-install as mentioned above.
Full room of at least 13 (preferably 16) testing with boost on "off", "low", and "high" to search for differences. (which might not tell in either case)

Wow man... Now we will get this every night? Is it a coincidence or things are starting to gradually collapse?

I have yet to encounter a ''fast bug'' situation and it honestly sounds even weirder than the regular bug but they have to be connected in some way. So your Boost bug theory sounds very possible.

I had a ''no tire sound'' experience too, my first one,things seem a bit out of control at this moment.

 

[CSLACR]

Wow man... Now we will get this every night? Is it a coincidence or things are starting to gradually collapse?

I have yet to encounter a ''fast bug'' situation and it honestly sounds even weirder than the regular bug but they have to be connected in some way. So your Boost bug theory sounds very possible.

I had a ''no tire sound'' experience too, my first one,things seem a bit out of control at this moment.

Tire noise bug has apparently been around, but I've only experienced it twice now. (Both recently, after 2.02)

I did forget one thing: Draft.
It affects cornering, and it's been altered in updates. Doesn't make sense for slow in a straight line, but stranger things have happened. Definitely a need for testing with boost and draft back up on "high".
I'm no bigger a fan of high draft then anyone else, but it's better then this bug.

I'm not 100% sure on the "fast bug" but it really felt like an average lap, and came out 6 tenths better then my best, of course I didn't run enough laps to be consistent or very fast. More testing and/or the replay will give answers though.
I'm off to bed, if you get some testing in today, I'd love to hear about it. 👍

 

[V8-Johnboy]

This is very upsetting reading just when i thought i was aware of all the little GT5 issues this pops up Explains alot about some of the races i have taken part in. Practice laps in my lounge at times 2 seconds quicker than race night hosts lounge i would bring this up but nobody had an explanation?? I too thought maybe i was just having an off night and some of the others are simply super quick!! How can any online race be proved fair and even if this glitch is proved 100% correct how dissapointing.

 

[xSNAKEx]

Has anyone ever considered: Split personalities is the cause? Like that counsellor in south park.

 

[Gedi69]

This is very upsetting reading just when i thought i was aware of all the little GT5 issues this pops up Explains alot about some of the races i have taken part in. Practice laps in my lounge at times 2 seconds quicker than race night hosts lounge i would bring this up but nobody had an explanation?? I too thought maybe i was just having an off night and some of the others are simply super quick!! How can any online race be proved fair and even if this glitch is proved 100% correct how dissapointing.

So this is prob why my S2 V8 season was terrible,S1 I thought I done ok then in S2 my car seems so slow and poor handling and I put it down to me being a bad driver again and it really put me off the game.
Guess if it carrys on il just have to be a non driver for S3!

 

[V8-Johnboy]

So this is prob why my S2 V8 season was terrible,S1 I thought I done ok then in S2 my car seems so slow and poor handling and I put it down to me being a bad driver again and it really put me off the game.
Guess if it carrys on il just have to be a non driver for S3!

Nah just blame this when ya suck!!

 

[Gedi69]

Nah just blame this when ya suck!!

But I've sucked all season.