rec.autos.simulators

Never had that, sorry.

I never connect to any server that shows a ping (check several times with VROC's
refresh button) much over 300ms. And although I've had a few reliable sorties onto
low bandwidth servers, ADSL or Cable are by far the most reliable. Lesser
connections only seem to be good for two or three drivers most of the time. So if you
connect and see any signs of stuttering (usually when other drivers join or there's a
crash) do yourself a favour and quit before things get more unstable. IME a good
server to which you have a good connection (the two don't go hand in hand!) never
gives any signs of instability. Other drivers may disconnect and reconnect (showing
they have a poor connection to that server's "geographical" location) but if you have a
good connection you won't share their difficulties.

Never had that happen either, except when GPL crashed... which hasn't happened to
me recently.

I use the default 4.

I see you're already running with minimal graphic options to keep the frame rate up,
so you're doing what you can there (can't do any harm!) The only other thing is to try
another ISP. I found a Freeserve account works quite well with VROC. But basically
it's good to have an alternate ISP to try in case -- as past networking experience
shows -- it's the ISP at fault as much as any other part of the equation.

Andrew McP

% These were

% a)  After about few minutes racing the sound would go dead.  The car
% would seemingly respond accurately to input from the controls
% (joystick) and the display was fine, but the sound died.  Of course
% that makes it almost impossible to race as you use the sound to judge
% braking etc.  I have occassionally had the same effect when off-line
% (although a lot less frequently) and my solution then has been to
% bring the car to a halt, press escape (but not Enter).  This first key
% press causes sound to return.  Whilst on-line, I could not get the
% key's to respond for at least 30 secs.

Hmmmmm... I've had this happen once in my many times online...  by the
time the race ended, GPL locked up on me.  This almost sounds like a
problem with your soundcard setup if it happens offline as well.  Are
you sure you don't have any programs running in the background
(CTRL-ALT-DEL to bring up Close Program window to check).

% b)  I was being disconnected from the game.  As I am new to on-line I
% am not sure what that normally means.  In my case last night however
% this meant not only loosing connection with the server BUT ALSO the
% phone line was being HUNG UP.  Of course in order to reconnect I had
% to exit from GPL so there was no chance of re-entering the race again.

There are a couple of places where you can set your modem to hangup
after so many minutes of "idle" time.  It sounds as if either this
option is turned on, or that your ISP is disconnecting you because it is
not noticing activity.  Also check and make sure you have your TCP/IP
Network setup correctly.  Things like having WINS resolution turned on
can cause disconnects from your ISP.

<snip>

--
**************************** Michael E. Carver *************************
     Upside out, or inside down...False alarm the only game in town.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=<[ /./.  [-  < ]>=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Hope this helps
--
Ian Parker

ICQ   21772592

I've experienced the same problem you mention here.  There is a bug
where GPL doesn't lock your sound device properly so it can't be
accessed by other system processes.  As an example, when I stay online
in ICQ and go to a race, if I get a message during the race (causing
ICQ to send me a warning sound) the sound will cut.  Strangely you can
continue to race, but the sound is gone.  I know I've been able to get
the sound back by hitting a few combinations of keys like alt-tab and
escpe and others, so I don't know exactly wich keys are the right
ones.

Now, every time I go for a race, I shut down ICQ and all programs that
make use of the sound device, and the problem hasn't occured since.
Maybe you'll want to try that.  I hope Papyrus will look into this at
some point.

A. Renault

Alan.

A. Renault

These were

a)  After about few minutes racing the sound would go dead.  The car
would seemingly respond accurately to input from the controls
(joystick) and the display was fine, but the sound died.  Of course
that makes it almost impossible to race as you use the sound to judge
braking etc.  I have occassionally had the same effect when off-line
(although a lot less frequently) and my solution then has been to
bring the car to a halt, press escape (but not Enter).  This first key
press causes sound to return.  Whilst on-line, I could not get the
key's to respond for at least 30 secs.

b)  I was being disconnected from the game.  As I am new to on-line I
am not sure what that normally means.  In my case last night however
this meant not only loosing connection with the server BUT ALSO the
phone line was being HUNG UP.  Of course in order to reconnect I had
to exit from GPL so there was no chance of re-entering the race again.

a) and b) would frequently occur together but not exclusively so.  In
one race I had to retire to the pits but was able to watch the other
cars battle it out.  Another time the line disconnected whilst I was
still racing (get a red network error message in the chat area at the
top of the screen).

I am running a P2-400 (with 128Mb RAM), Intel SE440BX motherboard with
the PCI sound (during last night I turned the GPL sound down from 16
mixed to 8 mixed in an attempt to solve the problem) on the
motherboard, Matrox Mystique 220 and Voodoo2 display combo (3DFX
accelerator selected in the game) and a USR Sportster External Modem
and 33.6K into serial port (with FIFO buffers turned down as
recommended in the online FAQ).

I have the latest version of DirectX 6 installed and all the latest
drivers I can find, although I have older versions of the Glide DLLs
in the SIERRA\GPL directory

Anyone any ideas as what might be wrong.  The overall symptoms seem to
suggest lost interrupts when the CPU is fully loaded - but with the
setup I have I get 36fps offline even when racing 19 AI opponents
(except at the start).  This is with all details and 1024*768 screen.
Last night I turned down mirrors to only CAR and TRACK - but it seemed
to make no difference.

Alan

http://www.chandler.u-net.com

I actually only use 3 sounds while on-line racing as this helps to
reduce cpu occupancy. To be honest I've not noticed much difference in
turning the number of sounds up, maybe its just me though?

I would recommend only using 800 x 600 for on-line racing, as once
again it reduces cpu occupancy, which is all important in on-line
racing of GPL. And even though you get 36fps in off-line racing with
19 AI, I would still turn off a few of the graphics and effects if you
can, to aid on-line racing. Things like smoke, skidmarks, crowd
textures, etc don't really make that much difference when on-line
racing, (as you should be watching the road, and not the scenery) but
still aid reducing cpu stress.

I presume you have the Glide v2.53 drivers loaded in your GPL
directory even though you have Directx 6 installed? and the
appropriate core.ini file from the vroc website?

Try only cars in mirrors, that may help a bit?

8-)

*Peter*   #:-)

I had that happened before. I think Alt+Tab helped because the
focus went to another application running in the background (Netscape). Try
it out...

You may need to press it more times so GPL gets focus again.

Tadej

Examine the following:
Right click on your Internet connection.
Select "Properties".
In the "Connect using" area, hit the "Configure" button.
In the popup for your modem, hit the "Connection" tab.
Note that "Disconnect a call if idle for more than [n] mins" is
checked.

Uncheck this option and hit OK.  You should now be fine.  Just be sure
to manually disconnect from the Internet when you're done, lest you run
up unexpected charges with your ISP.

Windows has a rather funny notion of "idle".  Even though GPL is
furiously sending and receiving packets through your Internet
connection, Windows doesn't seem to take this into account.  Your sound
goes away because Windows has popped up a dialog box saying something
like either "You've been idle, so I've disconnected you from the
Internet.  Wasn't that nice of me?  Would you like to reconnect?", or
"You've been idle, do you still want to stay connected?", or some such.
 Even though you can't see the dang dialog box, it has grabbed
keyboard/mouse focus away from GPL.  This causes DirectSound to turn
off GPL's sounds.  If it has closed your Internet connection, GPL will
eventually timeout its communications with the server and dump you back
to the Multiplayer screen.

Randy

--
Arne Martin G Hanssen
Oslo, NORWAY

<snip>
You lucky one.
The best ping I've ever seen was 600 something.

Jens

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