Just Ginettas just finishedPS4

[Hun200kmh]

So, we're probably four already, nice! 👍

The LMP2's have 3 out of 3 votes already, that's a solid lead but let's wait for others' to voice their pick also.

@Madbigdog we can try some practise tonight, I'm especially interested in that "giving the car to AI control" feature, I'd like to know how it works and if you can get the car back to human control later, because ...

@half_sourly (does it relate to poker?) ... I think that if this interchange between human and AI control of the car can be made to work then we can in theory have all the breaks we need and won't even jeopardize our race, all it takes is to pit at the apropriate time and order the game to assume driving duties for the next stint. With an AI set to 90 skill it can't be that bad and probably will be more consistent than us humans. This will also allow much longer endurance races, as long as we keep the PS on and the game running while taking the cats out

@IfAndOr I was going for a no-quali / no-practise (straight to race) event, mostly because of time constraints. Also, I guess all interested can do some practise before in a practise lobby or by themselves (or tonight). It's a long race so we'll all settle into it after just a couple of laps. My main concern is Napalm, living two clicks away from me (timezones) although I guess friday night racing is not as problematic as any other weekday.

 

[Pantheons]

20mins is an endurance, but hey happy to give it a go (have no preference in what)

 

[Zolon32]

Hello Mario and fellow PCarers. I'd be well up for this, but I'm afraid my Mrs will get home around 7:00pm tomorrow after three days away. If I was to jump straight on the PS4 at eight, I think I'd be in trouble. Sorry.

 

[Napalm_LT]

@IfAndOr I was going for a no-quali / no-practise (straight to race) event, mostly because of time constraints. Also, I guess all interested can do some practise before in a practise lobby or by themselves (or tonight). It's a long race so we'll all settle into it after just a couple of laps. My main concern is Napalm, living two clicks away from me (timezones) although I guess friday night racing is not as problematic as any other weekday.

It looks interesting but:
1) no practice;
2) no setup - I am noob at settings, don't remember when was last time I adjusted BB ;
3) have some travel on SAT and need to get up early.

So if you need some backmarker just for statistic, probably I would join, but don't think I will do all race.

 

[Pantheons]

Dont worry @Napalm_LT ive never tuned, minimal practise, will give it a pre run this afternoon

 

[half_sourly]

Same here, I don't know much about how to tune/ do set-ups. I did a couple (literally two) laps last night with a random LMP2 and the only thing I found is that it hits the rev limiter very early in top gear, so I will need to look at how to make the top gear longer; I won't try and tune beyond that because I wouldn't know what to do and probably won't benefit from it given I've not tested the car properly on its base setting.

I've not practiced pit stops or how to swap with the AI (or just let the car rest in the pit while I top up my wine), so @Napalm_LT the way I see tonight is not so much a race as just going around Daytona and learning more about PC2; and enjoying whatever weather and time variations @Hun200kmh throws our way.

 

[IfAndOr]

I think since this is Mario's first long race for us it will be a leaning event.

Try using the assistant for tuning. It's not in depth but pretty good at tweaking the usual items that need adjusting. And probably the main thing is to use soft slicks otherwise you'll be at a disadvantage - unless of course you want to use a different strategy. Or if it's raining you might want to fit wets!

One thing you will probably need to do is create some pit stop strategies for tyre swaps, fuel top ups and repairs.

 

[Pantheons]

it'll be nice to know if its definitely LMP2 and Daytona Road Corse soon, in case I get on for a quickie later

 

[IfAndOr]

it'll be nice to know if its definitely LMP2 and Daytona Road Corse soon

I think that's pretty much a certainty. Mario was practicing there last night.

 

[Pantheons]

yeah, he needs all the practise he can get!!! were coming for YA!!

 

[Hun200kmh]

Ok, a few words because I probably won't be able to post from now to the event start.

@Pantheons it will be Daytona and we will be using LMP2 (there'll probably be some GT3 on track, but they'll be AI driven)

@Napalm_LT tuning is a must here, mostly because as @half_sourly noticed, the default setup has ridiculous gear ratios that make cars hit the rev limiter at something like 250kmh (damaging the engine and making us sitting ducks against any and all AI LMP2 car)

But don't worry with that, there's only a couple of settings really relevant (enginners will probably fiddle with more, but I'm no engineer and have no time for extensive fiddling). I will share here my setup from last night, wasn't too bad, you guys use it if you want or at least use it as a base to build your own.

I share it with a warning, that there's at least a couple of wrong choices. One, I closed the engine radiator opening a bit to much (set to 40%) and that I guess was the reason I was damaging the engine during the test last night. Two, 2nd and 3rd gears are too close making one of them basically useless.

Everything else is a matter of preference. Apart from gears, my main concerns when going to the setup screen are always:
Engine braking
Downforce settings
Brake balance (but that you can change on the fly)
Correct tyres (hard tyres, as my son discovered last night, provide less grip in the dry than wet tyres in the wet)
Full tank of fuel to start

I never mess with suspension or damper or any other settings

Here the pictures of my setup screen

Now regarding your other worry (time constraints and need of practise) I will change things so we can have 10 minutes practise and 1h50 race.

And don't forget, if you think you had enough or you just want a break you can, when going into the pits, select the "Swap driver" option to YES, and that means after you stop your car the AI will take it from there. If you want to come back, just order the car into the pits whenever you want, select again the "Swap Driver" option to YES, and the car will be yours to drive after serviced.

DO not worry with your AI teammate. He will be slightly slower than you (driving at 100% skill/20% aggression) but he will not crash the car unless crashed into, so it's a safe pair of hands. Just leave the PS on and the game running, relax and watch the race as it unfolds.

Regarding pits, PLEASE ALL REMEMBER, they will be set to MANUAL. Meaning, you must find your crew in pit lane and it is up to you to park it there correctly. This is a SIMULATION

Now I do need to know, before I open the lobby, how many human players will attend, because I need to select how many human opponents there will be (to have the remaining slots filled with AI cars, how many of them GT3 and how many LMP2 I can't control)

So far I have:
myself
raeggee
@Madbigdog (racing with my Hun200kmh account for dodgy reasons )
@half_sourly
@IfAndOr
@Pantheons
@Napalm_LT

not sure about @Zolon32 and haven't heard from anyone else.

So please, all interested just post. I can understand this might seem a little too much but again I stress this is only a fun event, no prizes, no points, no championship. All I ask to all entrants is that if you decide to leave sometime into the race just do us all still racing the favour of keeping your car racing on the track with an AI at the wheel, traffic and someone to chase, or being chased, for multiple laps is a big part of the fun of endurance.

See you later!


EDIT - About this

Hello Mario and fellow PCarers. I'd be well up for this, but I'm afraid my Mrs will get home around 7:00pm tomorrow after three days away. If I was to jump straight on the PS4 at eight, I think I'd be in trouble. Sorry.

I have a cunning suggestion. You start the race and after first lap go to the pits and hand over the car to the AI. As I said, worry not he'll be a competent driver. Then you chat with the mrs., make her know how much you missed her, have dinner and return to the race, order the car to the pit and assume driving it for the final 30 minutes, somewhere around 9:30. Sounds like a plan, no?

 

[half_sourly]

Thanks Mario, all good, I will be there.

 

[Pantheons]

Thanks Mario, was an interesting experience, I liked the manual pit stops, race was a bit long for me, was hard work concentrating for that long. Had suspension damage with 15 mins to go, decided not to fix it and plough on. One lap I totally missed the bus stop, messing with pit instructions, and didn’t get a penalty, weird. Yet went off on one corner, lost time and got 30 sec penalty.

 

[GTP_RPREGO]

Hello all!
Amazing race tonight in Daytona! Thank you all for waiting for me tonight, I drove 360km in real life and then jumped on-board the mexican-livery Ligier for a 2hr race, making it a 5hr driving marathon!!!

Duarte and Mario were way ahead, I was in the 2nd group with Napalm and Rich. My setup was not perfect, getting too much engine damage throughout. But I think I had the longest autonomy (40min stints), managing only 2 stops (wets-slicks-wets).
The best moment of the race was.the last lap, Duarte tried to lap me but couldn't... I really wanted to reach the 69th lap! I will post the vídeo later on.

Have a nice weekend!

 

[half_sourly]

Mario, thank you for organising the race. I'd be up for more of those. The duration, weather and manual pitstops add a different and very enjoyable dimension.

The only thing I did not enjoy was having the GT3 AI on the road. They are very erratic and jumpy at times, example getting onto the oval and in the braking zone getting off the oval. Like they can't decide which lane to choose. Unlike a human driver who will stay on their side of the road when they see a faster class approaching, these don't and with the speed difference it becomes a gamble for someone of my skill. I had two incidents with them causing >30 damage, a sideways crawl to the pits and 90 seconds of repairs.

Other than that, excellent evening, thanks again.

 

[Napalm_LT]

I liked race a lot too. As I said quite long time ago, I would something like this as a final round of every our chanpionship.
Thanks Mario for organizing it.

About race - to many events for me :
1) I was hit on the formation lap to back of a car by AI and got 5 s penalty;
2) when race had started I tried to be cautious at first corner, but AI behind me no, he hit me, got front damage 2 % - very small, but car didn't want to turn;
3) race went quite well, I was on 3 position with more then 10 s gap to 4, but when I catched GT3 on the oval section, it kept inside so I went second floor, but right when I was on the side of it, he turned into me, I spined, hit wall and got 100 % rear damage. Hopefully that happened next to the pits entry;
4) I selected my "WET" strategy (Wet tyres, full tank, damage repair) and went to pits - everything were done except tyre changes. Checked my startegy - there weren't mistakes - wet tyres were selected;
5) after damage repair car was good. For few laps...;
6) catched AI in inner section, on right corner before exit to oval AI kept right (inside) so I went left - outside, but under braking AI moved to left like I wasn't there and hit me - 2 % fornt damage and car didn't turn again;
7) when track dried I went to pits, selecyed my "SOFT" startegy (soft tyres, full tank, damage repair), before entering pits I few time checked is tyre chenge selected - yes, Soft slicks. Pited - no tyre change again;
8) everyone were doing laps on slicks and I was cruising on worn wet tyres. Tried to save them because I wasn't sure I will get new set on next pitstop, so my pace was awfull (thats why Mario asked who is driving my car );
9) When rain started I waited to track become wet, selected DEFAULT startegy and went to the pits - car was refuled and Yes, yes - they are changing tyres, after few seconds - no, Michael, no - they added hard sliks;
10) selected my WET strategy again and pited - this time they changes tyres to wet;
11) I was catched by Mario so sloved to buss stop to let him pass, but AI, who was riding behind Mario hit me into back hardly - pitted for damage rapair;
12) miscalculated with fuel - I need about 5 liters more, switched fuel map to Normal, after few laps to Lean and was 4-5 slower then my fastest lap;
13) catched AI on the corner to the exit to oval, AI kept inner line, so I kept right (outside), on the braking AI turned to the side and hit me, AGAIN, I went off, hit the wall;
14) went to pits for damage repair and 5 liters of fuel.
Finish

So, it was first time when I had problems at pits - I selected to change tures, but they weren't change 2 times (later they changed them on the same my pit startegy).
And AI's - seams they "didn't see" me and even more - some of them were laging, going sideways and some - flew instead of riding.
Very strange race.

EDIT, seams Half had same problems with AI's

 

[GTP_RPREGO]

We have to call this race "Rise of the Zombie AIs" 😀

I also had a contact with a zombie GT3 in the first oval section after the horsehoe, fortunately only a spin with no contact.
Only damaged front bodywork durante first stint hitting wall after bus stop, only 10% fortunately.

Below find my replay, it only saved the first 20min. You can see the first 2 laps where me and Napalm were battling the faster AIs

 

[richroo]

@Napalm_LT well done on your summary must have been as hard as the race 👏👏

 

[IfAndOr]

Yeah the 'Bob's'.

I'd picked what I think is the slowest LMP2, the Nissan Oreca, because I really enjoy its cockpit view and if I was going to be in it for 2 hours I thought "Why not". I'd tweaked it a little to my liking, very nice to drive, and I suppose I'd worked out a bit of a race strategy.

So there I was cruising around with my fuel usage set to lean for the initial stint and was doing fine. But then I rounded the hairpin before the Ferris wheel and there was a GT3 GTR in front of me (I think there'd been a crash). Crunch! I tried to straighten the car up and continue forward but it just pulled to the left where Simon was passing behind me. Crunch again! (sorry Simon). I found it a very long way back around to the pits driving a car that didn't want to go there.

So that was the strategy pretty much out of the window since it was the wrong time for tyres or fuel - I did them anyway. I turned the fuel up to rich for the next stint to try and gain back some ground but then on a later lap another GT3 slowed mid corner which resulted in some aero damage - which was quite noticeable around the curves.

And to cap it off a cat, that I didn't know was there, jumped up onto the table beside me and startled me causing me to drop down too many gears entering the bus stop. Now it didn't spin out but it did wreck the gearbox, it got stuck in 3rd. So that was another slow-ish trip to the pits. I let my co-driver take over for a while and went to feed the cat.

I took over again for the final 35 minutes or so - without incident.

So my planned 2 stops became 4 stops - which included 2 pit entry time penalties of 50 seconds!

Overall though I still enjoyed it and would be up for something similar again.

 

[Madbigdog]

The race was pretty good! I love endurance and I love LMPs so I was right at home in this one!

Regarding my race, it was pretty uneventful aside from two minor incidents:

1) I got rear ended by the AI at the start. Since race starts and first few corners are always a delicate matter to handle, I avoid trying overtakes, I just hold station and spare the extra attention span to my rear view mirror, which paid off as I saw an AI coming to inevitably hit me. Just before the impact I straightened the wheel and let go of the brakes to avoid getting too much damage and luckily it worked, I managed to get away with 0 damage and only lost a couple of positions (you can see me rejoining the track on turn 1 after this in Ricardo's video actually); and

2) Had a minor spin on turn 1 when the track got too wet for slicks. Was a 90 degree spin so I ended up not losing too much time, as I just put 1st gear on, turned to the right and got going again (on to the pits to change tyres ).

Finally a few words on AI behaviour, specially in traffic. In this game, it really is crap, one of the worst I've seen in the sims I've played. I also saw floating cars, they were going sideways on the ovals and displayed other such puzzling behaviour on my end.

This being said, once you get the feel for their erratic and twitchy behaviour, you can see the pattern and it becomes quite predictable. Unlike in real life, where slow cars do their line and faster cars are responsible for going around them safely if and when the chance arrives, multiclass here is handled by the game in the blue flag logic, lapped cars will try to get out of the way for faster cars once they get within certain distance or delta. Clear examples are they moving up to the middle lane in the oval section when you're close to them, or moving outside into corners to allow you to take the apex. The problem is that speed difference between LMPs and GTs is significant and so they end up trying to get out of the way far too late and, that added to their twitchy nature, causes accidents.

When I was reading through Napalm's review, items 3) and 6) caught my attention because of this, as they seemed to be incidents caused because of this very problem.

However I do agree that traffic adds a certain element to the race, and if there weren't any backmarkers, it wouldn't have been as much fun.
The thing about dealing with them is to always account for their stupidity, and you'll live to do another lap. I never had issues but I also took extreme precautions to steer clear of any incidents, such as, a couple of examples, on the oval I always passed close to the wall on the outside, as even if they moved out of the way they wouldn't go all the way up, and on the infield part I would never dive bomb or try any overtakes in corners (unless they moved out of the way and I was reasonably sure I could go by without incident), I would also brake behind them and lose those 2 or 3 seconds that lap and make the corner behind them to pass on the following straight. On long races (with or without twitchy traffic) it's just not worth it to risk damage.

It takes a bit of time (and spare parts) to get used to it, but I think it's worth it!

Anyway, thanks to all! And also thank you to my father for organising and for keeping my on my toes during the race!

Hope to race you all soon 👍

 

[Hun200kmh]

Ok quick recap, only to say that I had a pretty uneventful race. At the start I avoided trouble, saw that @Madbigdog had been punted off by someone (apparently an AI but I didn't really get that in the moment) and inherited the lead. Eventually he caught and passed me after a few laps and from that point on I just drove to the best of my ability, never quite as fast as the race leader but not much slower either. I guess I was losing on average something between half and 1 full second per lap. As a consolation prize the only thing I can say is that I was never lapped

I only had one problem once, an error coming out of the bus stop made me spin but miraculously I didn't touch any wall so no damage. In fact, the only damage I had throughout was "engine" damage, at very low levels (about 3 to 5 between pitstops).

I hear what everyone wrote about AI and I understand they can be a pain, especially in tracks where they corner at impossible speeds or brake at impossible short distances (so much so that if you have one following you it'll very probably rear end you because you brake much sooner).

However, I never found that to be a problem in this race, I lapped countless AI cars (GT3 and LMP2) during th 2 hours (I guess towards the end I was lapping AI cars in every lap I was doing) and so I was a bit baffled with you all having so much trouble with them.

Then I realized that my previous experience doing a full Daytona 24hours offline, coupled with the fact, known to everyone in this group, that I always have AI cars in my races, is maybe the reason why I can (most of the times) anticipate what the AIs are going to do, therefore avoiding any serious issues with them.

Whatever the case, I did try to make them as harmless as possible, ramped up their skill to 100 and lowered their aggression to 20, but again sorry if this din't quite work out as expected.

From all I read apparently the experience, although a bit extreme and frustrating at times, was nevertheless interesting to all that took part and for that I am glad.

As I said, this isn't something to be done often, but in any case it is something to be done a few time per year. Maybe one more before summer holidays (Le Mans maybe?) and another sometime between Autumn and Winter (we don't have Sebring or Road Atlanta but we have other typical endurance venues like not-Suzuka, Silverstone, Spa, Portimão, Brno).

Again thanks to all that took part, we'll meet again next week (can't race today) in a Radical setting

 

[IfAndOr]

@Hun200kmh I've always thought Silverstone Classic would make for a nice endurance track. You could get into a good flow there. Nice and wide too.

Oh and don't forget Hockhenheim Classic, that'd be good too.


And thinking about it I didn't have too much trouble with the AI. The first incident was unfortunate because I crashed into a stationary one who had crashed itself. The second I probably should have held back a bit on the corner (I was trying to make up time after incident one). I'm fairly used to them since they are often on with all of my testing.

Thinking about it even further I suppose it was the damage being on which aggravated the problem. In that it wasn't self inflicted.