rec.autos.simulators

VROC's "Opening Night" was a great success, with dozens of racers in the
chat room and a number of hosts with high speed connections.  At one
point we had five or six races available, all on high speed digital
connections (cable modems or ISDN Router), many with 10 or more players.
One host was on a T1 line and had 20 racers in his practice session!

With that many users, we did uncover some issues, and we will be working
hard over the next few days to resolve these.

I have a long list of bug fixes and enhancements, but right now I see as
my top priority adding the ability for a host to limit the number of
racers who can join the host's session.  We had a lot of disconnects
last night as too many people tried to join for the available bandwidth.

Here are some rules of thumb for the maxiumum number of players in a GPL
session.  If the host is on a:

  P2-400 on a T1: up to 20 players.  

  Cable modems, ISDN routers and ADSL: 8 to 12 players, depending on the
speed of the host's CPU.  Faster CPU allows more players.

  ISDN through a serial port: up to 6 or 8, depending on the speed of
the host's CPU and its DUN and FIFO buffer settings.  

  28.8/33.6/56k connections: 2 or 3 players at GPL's default bandwidth,
or 4 or 5 if everyone uses the 84-3 core.ini on my Web site.

Until we implement a way for the host to limit the number of racers, I
request that people self-limit.  If you see there are more than the
above numbers in a race, or if you keep getting booted from a race that
already has a number of players in it, please don't keep attempting to
join.  Instead, look for another race, or host your own.

Also, if you are hosting, you could put the maximum number of players
you can handle in the Comment field.  Something like this:

  MaxPlyrs: 12

Whenever you run VROC Setup, remember to select your connection type
again, as currently VROC Setup does not remember this.

Thanks!

The other major issue we encountered last night was a large number of
people who could not get the status on races being hosted, and therefore
did not get a [Join] button.  The reasons were three:

1. The user had not enabled cookies in Netscape.

2. The user had not performed VROC Setup and set the path to their GPL
folder properly.

3. The user had not downloaded the VROC software, gping.exe, and placed
it in their GPL folder.

All of these items, except #1, are mentioned on VROC's main page, and
also in the installation notes.  I will be adding #1 to the main page
and installation notes today.

Please, please read the instructions and follow them!  We plan to add
more error checking to help catch oversights like this, but until we do,
you really need to RTFM!  :-)

Thanks!

Alison

Alison

 And let me say that I *almost* had as much fun hosting (and
watching) as I would have driving. Seeing the darn near full grid
at the start was neat, knowing they were all non-AI drivers.

 One thing I'd like to see is some way to exchange e-mail
addresses (at least in these early days of VROC) so that those of
us who are hosting larger races can try to gather some
information about *why* connections are being dropped...is it
warping badly from CPU overload,  bad latency, or just line noise
on the player's connection to their service provider? Or are the
drivers just getting frustrated from too much "agricultural
racing" and dropping out? I'd like to see the drivers at least
use chat to let the host know they are *voluntarily* leaving the
race, so we don't count them as a "dumped" connection.

 At the least, I'd like to see more drivers back in chat
following a race so race hosts can collect their comments...it
helps us who do host to know what our limits are.

 I did receive some good comments from those who were on last
night...many said it was the best connect they'd seen so far and
the only one who replied to my inquiring about warping with
anything was a gentleman in New Zealand, who said it did warp a
bit, but wasn't unplayable. (I'm in Tennessee.)

 Er...mine was a T-1 with a P-II 233 w/64 meg. and a Voodoo I.
Since I can't race (broken pedals), I shut down all the
checkboxes (except driver arms) and ran video at 512x whatever,
so as to minimize the CPU hit.

 With this setup I was able to have 20 cars on for practice, and
we had 18 take the green flag. (We had a full 20, but one is my
car sitting in the pits w/o any time on track, so GPL never
gridded mine, and another driver who was having bad dumping
problems (he says he was getting an error message of some sort)
got dumped at the countdown to the start hit like 5 seconds.

By the time the race was 3 laps old (of 9 at Spa), we were down
to 12 drivers, but I don't know if all were dropped, or just
dropped out, as a few of them were already a lap down (more
agricultural racing?).

 We lost two more by race end for a total of 10 finishers out of
19 starters.

 I'll be hosting again as my schedule allows, and once I get my
pedals fixed.... <g>

 Regards to all, and thanks to the whole VROC crew for making it
happen!

Doc Wynne
Technical Support & Network Services
Support Engineering/dickson.net
http://www.dickson.net
--
Never a late apex, never a dull moment.                                                                                                                                                                                                                        

Thanks for all your hard work Alison, I was finally able to host a race
with more than 4 or 5 people on my ADSL connection (previously the most
racers I was able to round up at one time), also it looks like people
are sticking to races being hosted where they have better connections, so
it looks like this will reduce the number of warping players.

VROC worked very well and I will be hosting races with it often.

Great job to you and the whole VROC team.

Seeyas on the track.

--John (Joao) Silva

Doc, I was one of those who voluntarily dropped after some agricultural
farming! ;-) I actually was experiencing a weird warp that seemed like clock
smashing between my computer and yours. What would happen is I would be
racing right behind someone and then wham they would appear about 200 yards
in front of me. Things would go ok for another 30 seconds or minute and then
wham they would be another 200 yards in front. It became frustrating becuase
I was turning fast laps but these people would pull away with each warp.
In practice I did not experience those problems it was only in the race. I
also had the VROC chat running in the background by accident so that may
have been a problem. During practice it was awesome!!! You have a great
server and I will be looking for it every time I hop on VROC!!!!!!!! I
actually think you had more than 20 when I joined!!

Thanks
John

I was on your race at silverstone last night (GMT+1). I was disconnected
after a few race laps :-(. The reason I think was in my settings in internet
explorer. It disconnects the dial up connection after 20 minutes of no
activity. My guess is that it does not see the GPL traffic as activity, just
as when I use WS-FTP. So every one using dial up networking and internet
explorer should go to Internet Explorer - Menubar - View - Internet
options - Connection - Settings and uncheck the box that says Disconnect
after xx minutes. I suggest mentioning this in the FAQ and in the VROC help.

Regards
Bart Westra

'John' Joao Silva heeft geschreven in bericht

% Thanks for all your hard work Alison, I was finally able to host a race
% with more than 4 or 5 people on my ADSL connection (previously the most
% racers I was able to round up at one time), also it looks like people
% are sticking to races being hosted where they have better connections, so
% it looks like this will reduce the number of warping players.

I spent quite some time on Joao's server yesterday (he's in Seattle, WA &
I'm in Portland, OR).  While I had experienced better latency numbers
with a couple of other serves in Northern, Central California, Joao's
server provided the "cleanest" connects I've experienced.  Don't recall
ever getting disconnected (though some of the faster drivers may have
wished I was <G>).  Never had the problem I experienced with other
servers (not lap times for any of my practice laps).  On a rare occasion
I did experience some "slow downs" this was probably due to the number
of connects and the fact that it was a Monaco Destruction Derby meet.

% VROC worked very well and I will be hosting races with it often.

% Great job to you and the whole VROC team.

I wholeheartedly agree!!!!!!!

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

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

Glad to hear you get a good connection here, actually I hosted all day
yesterday and only saw 1 or 2 definite warpers (one I even began calling
the Klingon warping Eagle, because it warped and would not move over heh),
and I think these warpers were actually connected from another continent
on 28.8 modem so it is understandable. Overall I am very very pleased
with the GPL online code, I had some extremely *close* racing with a
couple of drivers yesterday including Alison, and no lag induced contact.

Also, don't worry about being ontrack and slower, that's how I am
learning the tracks myself, by hosting 2 hour practice sessions before the
races, I just use my mirrors to stay out of the way when the screamers come
through it isn't a problem, besides I can recall you being very fast at at
least a couple of the tracks especially Monza. That one Monaco race I hosted
yesterday was part of learning the track :-)

Today I plan on hosting races with long practice sessions at Kyalami and
Mexico maybe even the 'ring since I don't know these tracks very well.

Gotta prepare for the GPL F2 online league.

No better way to learn than when there are real people on track IMHO.

Seeyas on the track.

--John (Joao) Silva

Thanks to everyone who's been hosting on VROC, especially those with
high speed connections.  Some of these folks have been devoting
significant chunks of time every evening so the rest of us can race.  

Also, thanks to everyone who has given us feedback about VROC.  It's
great to know that VROC is so useful and so appreciated!  Your
explanation of problems and your ideas for improvements are also very
helpful.  I'm making notes of things to add to my Online FAQ, and
features that I'd like to add to VROC when I can.

John and I are working *** some significant enhancements to VROC
which we *hope* to have ready by this weekend, although I can't be sure
we'll have them done by then.  These changes should help reduce
disconnects by allowing the host to limit the number of players, and
should also greatly reduce the amount of time it takes to refresh the
race list, particularly when there are a lot of races in the list.

I've been running in a couple of races on VROC every evening, to see how
things are going - and to have a little fun.  John has been doing some
racing too.  It's very exciting to see all the activity going on at the
VROC site already!

The other night I had a superb battle with George Sandman and Ken Eisler
in an Int Short race at Silverstone.  We battled wheel to wheel and nose
to tail for virtually the entire race, with several passes, and no one
touched another car, or took anyone out.  It was fantastic!  The hope of
having that sort of experience has been a big part of my motivation in
building VROC.

See you at the track - on VROC!

Alison

Remove the spam blocker NOSPAM to email me.
http://www.racesimcentral.net/~alison

Vroc is awesome. I hosted my first race today with my cable modem, an
intermediate short Monza race. I had a blast, and even managed to win the
race!

--
Don Burnette
Palmetto Racing
Dburn on Ten
AOLL Iroc Administrator