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

[CSLACR]

I just had a revelation of sorts. I know people say it happened before Spec II, but I never figured out when I first saw it, at which time I of course blamed my connection.

Nurburgring, WSGTC season 2 final race...Date, October 14th, 2011.
Spec II came out 3 days prior.

So at least for me, Spec II started the problem, 2.02 just made it worse.
That leaves 2 possibilities for me.
Slipstream settings change.
New "improved" physics.

 

[Mac K]

That leaves 2 possibilities for me.
Slipstream settings change.
New "improved" physics.

Sorry, I'm not following..

 

[CSLACR]

Sorry, I'm not following..

It's pretty self explanatory, what don't you understand?

I first noticed this 3 days after Spec II came out. At the time I blamed other things, I didn't believe in any of it until 2.02 which made it much more obvious.

The 2 obvious things PD changed in Spec II?
Physics
Slipstream settings.

If those don't slap you in the face as the obvious changes from Spec II, I'd be interested to hear what does.
I'm not saying "It must be one of those 2 things", no, I'm saying I think, based on all the information I've read in this thread, there's a very high probability it is one of those things.

I'm betting on the physics change. Extremely complicated thing to "patch" into a game if you ask me. Probably should never be attempted. Just my opinion though, based on the evidence I have been presented and witnessed.

 

[carracerptp]

I just had a revelation of sorts. I know people say it happened before Spec II, but I never figured out when I first saw it, at which time I of course blamed my connection.

Nurburgring, WSGTC season 2 final race...Date, October 14th, 2011.
Spec II came out 3 days prior.

So at least for me, Spec II started the problem, 2.02 just made it worse.
That leaves 2 possibilities for me.
Slipstream settings change.
New "improved" physics.

I don't know if you were in the opening FMSC race at GP/F ( date 11/06 )?
That was the first time I had a spent time on a track and had constant times marked.
In the opening laps I had, no grip, no HP, and was posting very slow lap times, 3 to 4 second off pace.
Then on lap 9? I think, I pitted, came out and had "very" good grip, and almost to much HP. I was protecting the tires and still was faster than I was in qualifying.
I think I had the "slow down" and the "speed up" glitch that day.

 

[chuyler1]

What was the date spec 2 came out? I remember the first time I experienced it and can probably track down the date.

 

[ErikAndre71]

I just had a revelation of sorts. I know people say it happened before Spec II, but I never figured out when I first saw it, at which time I of course blamed my connection.

Nurburgring, WSGTC season 2 final race...Date, October 14th, 2011.
Spec II came out 3 days prior.

So at least for me, Spec II started the problem, 2.02 just made it worse.
That leaves 2 possibilities for me.
Slipstream settings change.
New "improved" physics.

This makes sense, we also had a terrible race after 2.00 came out on Grand Valley. Not a race, but a lag party where some people seemed to be on high octane flying pass struggling cars. And it seems the guys with either a DS3 or the guys with the "worst" connection got the boost.

After the 2.02 it did get worse, but now people get a black screen when we are about to start the race. Not the screen were it say you will get penalized for jump start, but a black screen with a GT logo. When race start they still got the black screen and are forced to restart GT5.
Also Pit crew seem to be on a strike as tyres changed itself on my car and others during our first race after the 2.02.
We tried different room settings and everything we could think of. We even tried rolling start to spread the cars a bit. Nothing seemed to work.

Also when trying to watch other drivers in free run mode you are not allowed to change drivers if the guy topping the leader board is in pit or in lobby. You have to try change to a car on track, then get back into lobby-join the track yourself-back to lobby-watch race and you can watch. Pretty much useless

I like the fact that you can leave the track and your position stay, but at this cost. No thanks.

 

[cicua]

I just had a revelation of sorts. I know people say it happened before Spec II, but I never figured out when I first saw it, at which time I of course blamed my connection.

Nurburgring, WSGTC season 2 final race...Date, October 14th, 2011.
Spec II came out 3 days prior.

So at least for me, Spec II started the problem, 2.02 just made it worse.
That leaves 2 possibilities for me.
Slipstream settings change.
New "improved" physics.

Interesting observation 👍

And I believe you are right about the culprit(s).

 

[Troylee2601]

After the 2.02 it did get worse, but now people get a black screen when we are about to start the race. Not the screen were it say you will get penalized for jump start, but a black screen with a GT logo. When race start they still got the black screen and are forced to restart GT5.

I had noticed this issue a couple of times even before 2.00, but never put to many thoughts into it.

 

[CSLACR]

What was the date spec 2 came out? I remember the first time I experienced it and can probably track down the date.

When did you first notice it?

This makes sense, we also had a terrible race after 2.00 came out on Grand Valley. Not a race, but a lag party where some people seemed to be on high octane flying pass struggling cars. And it seems the guys with either a DS3 or the guys with the "worst" connection got the boost.

After the 2.02 it did get worse, but now people get a black screen when we are about to start the race. Not the screen were it say you will get penalized for jump start, but a black screen with a GT logo. When race start they still got the black screen and are forced to restart GT5.
Also Pit crew seem to be on a strike as tyres changed itself on my car and others during our first race after the 2.02.
We tried different room settings and everything we could think of. We even tried rolling start to spread the cars a bit. Nothing seemed to work.

Also when trying to watch other drivers in free run mode you are not allowed to change drivers if the guy topping the leader board is in pit or in lobby. You have to try change to a car on track, then get back into lobby-join the track yourself-back to lobby-watch race and you can watch. Pretty much useless

I like the fact that you can leave the track and your position stay, but at this cost. No thanks.

I know what a blackscreen is.
I noticed the weirdness in the timing monitor last night, for the first time.
It even keeps drivers that leave the room!

Interesting observation 👍

And I believe you are right about the culprit(s).

I had known the Nurb race was the first I remember seeing it, but I'd never payed mind to what date it was the race was ran.

I had noticed this issue a couple of times even before 2.00, but never put to many thoughts into it.

What issue(s) did you have exactly?
I ask because it seems different people have different symptoms, since I never saw anything before Spec II, I've no idea what it may have been like back then.

 

[chuyler1]

June 3rd was the first discussion I remember. It is documented here...
https://www.gtplanet.net/forum/showthread.php?p=5391343#post5391343

 

[Troylee2601]

What issue(s) did you have exactly?
I ask because it seems different people have different symptoms, since I never saw anything before Spec II, I've no idea what it may have been like back then.

Black screen which literally freezes your PS3.

 

[CSLACR]

Black screen which literally freezes your PS3.

Black-screens have been around, not sure what causes it, but very different from the bug we're talking about.
Of course black-screens still suck, but at least I got those a few times in NFS games, so it's not a "GT5 only" problem.

June 3rd was the first discussion I remember. It is documented here...
https://www.gtplanet.net/forum/showthread.php?p=5391343#post5391343

Interesting. (throws hands in the air)
Well they apparently keep fudging it up more and more that it's affecting more and more people.

BTW, it's nothing to do with bandwidth, some people say fast connections get it, but I first got it at a very slow internet speed, now I have a mediocre speed, and it still happens.
If it affects totally ruins my Pure, I'm done, plain and simple. Never to return.

Pardon me, it already has, a couple people quit because they just got tired of the BS it takes to race online in GT5. Before any of us knew about this bug.

 

[dsgerbc]

Interesting. (throws hands in the air)

Here's a report from way earlier than spec2.0.

 

[CSLACR]

Trying to one-up chuyler?
His was actually more specific, but yes, it seems this has gone on for quite some time.

It's just grown more abundant, especially with the latest update.
Which means the issue is quite simply in the inter workings of GT5's online play, and maybe even related to the online/offline grip/lap time differences.
Imagine if some people have the same grip online as they do offline. (I've heard people say it, idk)

 

[dudeondacouch]

I've also heard people say they couldn't tell the difference.

I always chalked it up to them just being too crappy of drivers to know the difference. Maybe that's not the case.

 

[jon-]

Trying to one-up chuyler?
His was actually more specific, but yes, it seems this has gone on for quite some time.

Yep, did some pretty detailed research in Sept: https://www.gtplanet.net/forum/showthread.php?t=222711

2.02 seemed to make it easier to overload the online rooms. Before you really needed a full room, coupled with a difficult course however now it seems to happen more randomly.

Perhaps at the end of the day we're expecting too much from GT5, and if we were that serious about sim racing we'd all be on PC...

 

[CSLACR]

I don't have the money for PC racing, but I will have the money for a rival product soon.

We're not expecting to much though, to ask for stable online racing. Clearly it's been there, but was rare. Something PD has done or changed has made it much worse.
Fixing it shouldn't be to much to ask, is it?

 

[Sail IC]

Its a shot in the dark, but perhaps this will improve or fix it.

http://community.eu.playstation.com.../How-to-put-your-PS3-into-a-DMZ/td-p/10655314

To solve issues like frequent disconnecs its claimed to help by setting up your PS3 up with a fixed IP address or as they call it in a De-Militarised Zone (or DMZ). This means that your router will not block any internet traffic to your console, leaving you free to breathe the open air of MW2 multiplayer goodness.

 

[jon-]

Its a shot in the dark, but perhaps this will improve or fix it.

http://community.eu.playstation.com.../How-to-put-your-PS3-into-a-DMZ/td-p/10655314

To solve issues like frequent disconnecs its claimed to help by setting up your PS3 up with a fixed IP address or as they call it in a De-Militarised Zone (or DMZ). This means that your router will not block any internet traffic to your console, leaving you free to breathe the open air of MW2 multiplayer goodness.

Bit of a long shot, I know some of us have already tried putting the PS3 in a DMZ, but with the advent of UPNP routers there's really no need for it.

Sadly, this fix has to come from PD, and logically thinking about it I'm pretty sure they'd have known about it before us, which means they either don't want to spend the time fixing it, or can't in GT5.

 

[Sail IC]

Bit of a long shot, I know some of us have already tried putting the PS3 in a DMZ, but with the advent of UPNP routers there's really no need for it.

Sadly, this fix has to come from PD, and logically thinking about it I'm pretty sure they'd have known about it before us, which means they either don't want to spend the time fixing it, or can't in GT5.

You might be right, and I don't have the knowledge if UPnP fixes it. I think the idea of DMZ is to basically put a straight pipe through the router and put the PS3 outside of any communication delays the router might add. As an example, with DMZ the PS3 will be put outside of the router's firewall and will not have any delays it might add. Even with UPnP, the PS3 will still sit inside the firewall.

This is not my aerea of expertice, so above might be technically wrong, but I'm just trying to apply some logic.

 

[Gedi69]

So is online racing doomed then?

 

[SuperSic]

So is online racing doomed then?

No, as long as you keep the number of drivers below 12,or even less.

Online leagues are suffering the most.

 

[Sail IC]

What causes this is most likely that one of the PS3 system resources is being overloaded. It could be the network system, graphic system, compute power, memory sytem, disk I/O system, and maybe a forgot some. I think GT5 being a late game to the PS3 platform is just on the edge and using the PS3 platform resources to the max.

I don't think PD's engineers are stupid so the GT5 game is a quality product. The perhaps only way of fixing this issue will be to defeature the game and I don't think this will happen. Alternatively PD can spend a lot of resource trying to improve the part of the software that is hitting the ceiling of the part of the PS3 platform that is running out of steam, but I don't think this is an easy fix.

So I'm not very hopeful that PD will fix this nor that they will acknoledge it as it will put the PS3 into a bad light and PD is owned by Sony.

If only we could figure out what part of the platform that is running out of steam, then we possibly figure out a way to eliminate this to happen. Like if its the graphic system, make sure not only to run premium cars in a room with many players. I'm not saying that is the reason/fix. Just an example.

 

[esh]

Yep, did some pretty detailed research in Sept: https://www.gtplanet.net/forum/showthread.php?t=222711

2.02 seemed to make it easier to overload the online rooms. Before you really needed a full room, coupled with a difficult course however now it seems to happen more randomly.

Perhaps at the end of the day we're expecting too much from GT5, and if we were that serious about sim racing we'd all be on PC...

I have a slim as well and I seem to always get hit with it whenever it occurs. There has been times where next to noone else has experienced it when I have but there has never been a time where someone else complained about it and I didn't experience it.

 

[esh]

You might be right, and I don't have the knowledge if UPnP fixes it. I think the idea of DMZ is to basically put a straight pipe through the router and put the PS3 outside of any communication delays the router might add. As an example, with DMZ the PS3 will be put outside of the router's firewall and will not have any delays it might add. Even with UPnP, the PS3 will still sit inside the firewall.

This is not my aerea of expertice, so above might be technically wrong, but I'm just trying to apply some logic.

DMZ for home routers is a misnomer in the traditional sense of network security. A true DMZ is totally separate from your internal network and usually used for the outside world to access hosted services or for intrusion detection/honeypots. DMZ in personal routers basically allows any and all packets destined for port-specific services on your network to pass through the firewall unfiltered, unless otherwise specified in firewall rules.

If you have an FTP server at home and the port is forwarded correctly in the firewall, then it goes to the proper machine. If you don't have an FTP server running but someone scans your public IP checking that port, it will be allowed to pass to the machine that's in the DMZ whether or not the FTP service is available.

UPnP just makes the necessary ports available when the application needs them and then closes them after a specific timeout.

 

[CJSpencer77]

The league myself and some friends run ( T.A.M ) does inter league races in our close season, last night we raced GBRC who are a good bunch of guys that we were really looking forward to tangling with, two 12 player rooms 6 TAM vs 6 GBRC in each room, the lag ended up being so bad that we lost 3 guys in the room i was racing in because it was nigh on unplayable, in both our races i was two and a half seconds off my quali time which is a joke.

So the question i have is does anyone know why we had all 12 guys happily qualifiying and chatting with nobody experiencing any lag at all, then as soon as we start the race it all goes down the toilet???????? ( this is how its been for months, not a one off ), surely its either the master clock timing the race for everyone and failing trying to stay constant for everyone ( hence the slower lap times ) or the fact there is replay data being saved, any ideas?

On a side note Pappa and his guys from GBRC were going to start thier new season on the 15th, we at T.A.M were going to start our new season on the 18th , both have been suspended till these connection/physics lag problems are sorted out as league racing with large rooms will be a joke, and im sure we wont be alone, i cant see many leagues/clubs going ahead with these issues happening, unless they are sorted soon GT5's online community will die a slow death.

 

[carracerptp]

The league myself and some friends run ( T.A.M ) does inter league races in our close season, last night we raced GBRC who are a good bunch of guys that we were really looking forward to tangling with, two 12 player rooms 6 TAM vs 6 GBRC in each room, the lag ended up being so bad that we lost 3 guys in the room i was racing in because it was nigh on unplayable, in both our races i was two and a half seconds off my quali time which is a joke.

So the question i have is does anyone know why we had all 12 guys happily qualifiying and chatting with nobody experiencing any lag at all, then as soon as we start the race it all goes down the toilet???????? ( this is how its been for months, not a one off ), surely its either the master clock timing the race for everyone and failing trying to stay constant for everyone ( hence the slower lap times ) or the fact there is replay data being saved, any ideas?

On a side note Pappa and his guys from GBRC were going to start thier new season on the 15th, we at T.A.M were going to start our new season on the 18th , both have been suspended till these connection/physics lag problems are sorted out as league racing with large rooms will be a joke, and im sure we wont be alone, i cant see many leagues/clubs going ahead with these issues happening, unless they are sorted soon GT5's online community will die a slow death.

3 big things change when the race starts.

• Draft - make you need to interact with other cars more often - draft lag?
• Boost - Don't think it can be turned on in practice so could it always be doing something in a race (even if OFF)?
• Replay - Anyone remember the new "skip" feature in replays? lets you jump laps or sectors? Could it be the problem? Would a long race cause it to allocate a larger memory block for the replay files? More CPU usage to save the sectors in a race creating a delay?

Sorry, I'm still guessing.

 

[griffinz]

The league myself and some friends run ( T.A.M ) does inter league races in our close season, last night we raced GBRC who are a good bunch of guys that we were really looking forward to tangling with, two 12 player rooms 6 TAM vs 6 GBRC in each room, the lag ended up being so bad that we lost 3 guys in the room i was racing in because it was nigh on unplayable, in both our races i was two and a half seconds off my quali time which is a joke.

So the question i have is does anyone know why we had all 12 guys happily qualifiying and chatting with nobody experiencing any lag at all, then as soon as we start the race it all goes down the toilet???????? ( this is how its been for months, not a one off ), surely its either the master clock timing the race for everyone and failing trying to stay constant for everyone ( hence the slower lap times ) or the fact there is replay data being saved, any ideas?

On a side note Pappa and his guys from GBRC were going to start thier new season on the 15th, we at T.A.M were going to start our new season on the 18th , both have been suspended till these connection/physics lag problems are sorted out as league racing with large rooms will be a joke, and im sure we wont be alone, i cant see many leagues/clubs going ahead with these issues happening, unless they are sorted soon GT5's online community will die a slow death.

During free run/qualifying the ps3 sends much less network traffic. I know this to be fact as it has been evidenced as I have been monitoring gt5 network traffic looking at this bug.

 

[Sail IC]

This is what I think would be the best way forward as I think there is a small chance we can figure it out what causes this and how to avoid it.

GTPlanet must be one of the bigger sites for GT5 users. There is a big online racing forum here. Of all the GT5 issues being discussed at GTPlanet, this is by far the biggest one, at least for people who are participating in organized online racing.

Is there a way where we can collectively from GTPlanet as a large number of people approach PD (or Kaz) and ask him the following:

- Is PD aware of this issue
- If yes, do they plan to fix it
- If yes but no plans to fix it, what causes the issue and how can it best be avoided

 

[nealcropper]

Im not sure, I have PM'd Jordan and asked him to read the thread and post something in the news, as we know kaz and/or PD watch this forum.