rec.autos.simulators

I constantly read that turning of error correction and throttling back
connection speed to improve quality is the thing to do.  My problem is that
as soon as I turn off error correction, I can't see any races listed no
matter what speed I connect at.  Turn error correction back on, and the
races appear.

Background.  On a good day my best connection is 31K.  I am surrounded by
communities with high speed data access, but in my town there is no DSL,
cable modem or wireless access.  There may be satellite access but my
research shows that has very high ping times and is not good for on line
***.

Thanks in advance,
Russell

MadDAWG

Mr. Dawg is right. Until I got cable here a month ago, I was using dialup
and getting decent results on Sierra. Make SURE you don't have a winmodem.
They are terrible for online ***!  I used a Modem Blaster or something
from Creative and had decent results. I hit pings around 300 with 99-100
quality. (avgconnect like you, around 30k)

What kind of probs are you having? Your post didn't mention anything
specific. Or are you just trying to tweak?

Good Luck,

Jeff

I've been on this same phone line with a different modem and computer and
the results in connect speed were the same.  I feel the best I can do is
select the best setting to deal with the garbage service that Ameritech has
given me (ya I know their story, they only support a line good enough for
voice.)

Russell

I've also lucked-out in the (very divisive) broadband revolution.  I'm about
1/2 a mile from the limit of DSL access in my town.  For some reason I can't
get proper 56K access either.  Like you, I get 31.2K on a good day but
usually get 28.8K  When you're on a modem, ISP choice is critical.  On my
current ISP, I get pings of around 130-140ms to local GPL servers which is
quite adequate.  My old ISP had pings in excess of 200ms.  Some people have
slightly dodgy phone lines and often throttling back the connection to as
low as 21K can also make a big improvement.

As for error correction, I'm guessing that you're using an internal
software-based modem.  I switched to an external serial port modem a while
ago and found that online *** improved considerably.  They're a bit of a
pain though - more cables*** out of the back of the PC and of course
they require another dreaded power pack.  I'm not sure how good USB modems
are - haven't heard any reports.

Here is my exchanges with sierra on the matter;

===============================================================================
You have recently submitted a question regarding Nascar Racing 2002,
special boxing for retail only having a Network or Multiplayer
problem.  The following is the solution to your issue.

If you have further issues regarding this product and issue, please
reply between the lines below.  Any text outside of the below lines
will be discarded.

The response to your question:
----------------------------------------
Solution Added On 07/30/2002 10:16AM
No idea.

Your original question:
----------------------------------------
Customer Replied On: 07/27/2002  4:33AM
Its been another week, and no response from you.... Any Ideas?

Customer Submitted Question On: 07/19/2002  7:17PM
I have been sending this email to various addresses provided on YOUR
wesite for many months now. I have had absolutely ZERO response from
you. I have posted the query on your forum and also recieved ZERO
response.

So once again I try yet again!
=============================================

====================================================================
The response to your question:
----------------------------------------
Solution Added On 09/04/2002  4:45PM
I've forwarded a copy of this E-mail to my supervisor asking him to
pass the information on.

Solution Added On 09/03/2002  4:08PM
Sorry that you haven't been contacted about this. The problem you're
having is based on your connection speed, your connection type, and
also the hardware and service you're using. It'd be almost impossible
for us to recreate this. You pretty much have it right, the server
list query times out after about 30 seconds. If the list isn't done
loading by then it re-queries the server to gather the information
again. There is nothing we can do about this, you can try calling your
ISP and see if they can do anything to help improve your connection.

Your original question:
----------------------------------------
Customer Replied On: 9/3/2002 at 4:27:24 PM
Ok then Thankyou.

May I suggest that this problem can be easily rectified by modifying
you
program to have a core.ini setting that alows us to change from 30
secs to
something higher.

You see I have monitored the data flow during the 30sec period & the
available bandwidth is utilised very efficiently. There is nothing
that can
be done to creat more without connecting at a higher speed....Which
means
V90 which in turn means much reduced quality.

I emplore you to add this feature to a patch or at the very least the
next
version of Nascar...Because you are about to disconnect 40-50% of my
clubs
member form racing Nascar online.

Please Please pass this incident on to the Nascar developers (I really
am
begging now)

Customer Submitted Question On: 08/29/2002  8:07PM
You have marked incident 100057836 as solved!
It is not solved at all! Please re mark it as unsolved.

More and more people are appoaching me with this exact same problem,
and from what I have been told it seems that you guys are trying your
hardest ignore the problem!

[===> Please enter your reply below this line <===]

[===> Please enter your reply above this line <===]

Could the quality of my line be so bad that with error correction off the
races don't show in the list?  I can always see the people logged in, their
chat, and my rating but no races only if error correction is off.  This
occurs no matter how long I wait for the list of races to appear.  Strange
that listing the races is so sensitive (or appear to be so sensitive).

In a previous follow-up I mentioned I am using an external modem through a
serial port.

Russell

<cut>...

                   Seriously though Belkin do a lovely little serial to usb
converter , it even has flashing lights on the front ! jv

Another thing to look into is your system itself.  With alot of today's pre
packaged systems there is just to much ***installed, or misinstalled as
the case may be.  Watch out for any TSR type programs and system utilities
that may be running in the back ground.

MadDAWG