rec.autos.simulators

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Joe Conklin
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Arthur
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http://www.***sys.com/stealthracing.html

Thanks to papy for adding TCP/IP support, great move iMHO (as opposed to
that crappy ipx implementation that comes with F1RS).

Cheers,

uwe

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People decide who will host the race and who will join. The people thats
joining will then need to know the IP# of the host. The i guess its just a
matter of entering the IP# into the multi-player menu or whatever in GPL and
hopefully connect to the host. :)
I also seem to remembering hearing something about GPL being able to recive
connections over different protocols simultainously (sp?)... in other words:
The host could have 3 drivers connecting thru an inhouse LAN-network and
maybe 3 people via TCP/IP (i.e. internet) at the same time.. making the
total of races to 7 or even more...

Im not quite sure as to how many that can acctually join the race tho.

All the best,
Edwin Solheim
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Arthur
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http://www.***sys.com/stealthracing.html

The only concern I have about GPL's internet racing is that they apparently
didn't make it much of a priority in development and the results were poor.
Then the beta testers pushed for improvements and from what I hear it is
running well. Very good news. I only have so much time for sims, and if GPL
or any other sim is poor on the internet, then I won't have much interest in
it. On-line racing is what I enjoy most with auto sims and this feature
should be as much of a priority as anything else in any new releases.
There's no excuse for poor internet play in a sim anymore. If one developer
can do it right, they all can and must.

Dave
DmndDave

Joe Conklin
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<snip>

I can't understand the assertion that a "dedicated server" would cost money.
People run plenty of servers for Quake, Unreal et al without charging for it
so why should this be any different.

The problem with internet play is that the more complex a sim, the more data
needs transferring between machines and the more complicated the code needs to
be to get it to work on anything below 56k.

M

Rafael

Paramaters required by a racing sim at connection = setup details, driver
details, car choice
Paramaters during race = steering, throttle, brake positions, gear,
orientation on the track.

This is then acted on by the client machines to draw the car correctly. In GPL
you can hear the engine note, see the steering and the physical effects of
acceleration, braking, changing gear etc on the other cars so this data is
needed. This is without the occasional packets of information to tell the
machine to raise the drivers arm (in GPL) or set up a pitstop (GP2). This is,
as you can imagine a LOT of data. The server has to collect it and send it out
to the clients as well as process it's own info. This is why dedicated servers
are popular, it removes (at least) one layer of processing from the server.

"ping" as you so call it is the time required for a packet of information to
be sent to a machine and return. If your PC is using all it's bandwidth for
the job it is engaged in the "ping" increases. Admittedly there is also a
factor on a) network usage b) "server" load but these are all because of the
amount of traffic vs. the amount of bandwidth/processing time available.

BTW for the techies out there I *know* that's not the "kosher" explanation but
to be honest I don't think people want to read an essay on the cause and
effect of inter-networking overload.

However Sierra <unlike ID> is into money, and doesnt
give a hoot about the quality/networkability of games.

Just my .02

   Throttle - optional

   Brake positions?????????? Why???????????????

   Gear - optional

   Orientation - of course

   If these are you guesses, I hope your wrong. If not, the programmers are clueless by
the looks of things to me! Way too much unnecessary info here!