rec.autos.simulators

I have been practising hard at Kyalami in a Brabham. I struggled all
last week to break 1:24. On Friday, I figured out what I needed to do to
go faster, and managed 1:23.67 in an online race. To prove this no
fluke, on Saturday morning I did a few training laps, times went 1:26,
1:25, 1:24.8, 1:24.2, 1:23.63. No problem.

To see if my new skill was transferrable, I tried Monza, and immediately
did a PB of 1:30.60. I really seem to be improving.

But in the evening, and on Sunday, I could not break 1.25 at Kyalami. At
Monza I drove two laps that I *know* were good (for me :), but GPL said
1:34. In an online race at Monza a friend commented that he should not
have been able to outdrag me so easily out of Parabolica, and did I have
a gearing problem? I hadn't changed anything.

So I started analysing replays, using gpldump and plotting
speed/distance graphs. I was doing normal speeds through corners, but on
the flat-out straights I had *much* less acceleration, and there's
nothing to do but press the pedal to the metal in these sections.

In a reasonable lap at Kyalami, I always cross the start line at 167-168
mph. But now I was always at 162-163. What?

I was having other strange problems. Automatic shifting came on by
itself, without the box checked. In the pits, in 1st with the (analogue)
clutch disengaged, the engine would not rev freely, requiring 50%
throttle to get the tach off the stop, although in neutral it was
normal, as if the clutch was binding. I checked the calibration; all was
as it should be.

In despair, and without much hope, I saved my setups, reinstalled the
game, restored setups. Total transformation! My prevously leaden Brabham
was now so lively I could not keep it on the track, and the brakes
required *much* more pedal travel to lock the wheels. After about 20
laps at Kyalami (the car was so different I spent a lot of time in the
sand initially) I was again in the 1:23 zone, and doing 167 mph at the
start line.

Told you you wouldn't believe me! I'd say it was imagination myself, but
this was *not* a small effect.

My faith in the comparability of GPL lap times across different systems
is shaken. How can this happen? In paranoid moments, I suspect that
while I was racing online, someone used the VROC permissions to hack a
configuration file on my system and obtain an unfair advantage. But this
seems far-fetched indeed.

So, has anyone else seen something like this?

   Anton

-- Antony Bowers
-- Department of Computer Science, University of Bristol, UK.
-- http://www.racesimcentral.net/~bowers/

I'm Rob. I was browsing R.A.S. and was rather surprised to see another sim
racer from Bristol.

I live in the Stoke Bishop area, cya

Rob

/ Fred

Antony,

I have had similar incidents but all were corrected by re-calibrating
my controls in both windows and GPL. I don't really know what the
culprit is but historically, Papy sims have been quite sensitive to
control endpoints:  drift of the equipment could cause either full
braking or full throtle to not be realized.  They have recommended in
the past to not fully press the controls to their extremes when
calibrating, thus leaving a margin of error for thermal drift of the
values.

Regards,

Jeff Haas

/Magnus

I get some wierd problems in GPL sometimes, too, mainly with the car
pulling to one side. I have to re-calibrate in BOTH Win95 control panel
and GPL (in that order) for it to be decent. Even after doing that once,
the Brabham I usually drive was good, I switched to other cars just to
expereince the new engine sounds available. I changed NOTHING, but many
other cars I tried pulled to the left. Wierd. I just quit GPL, then
restarted it later and everything was fine, again, after changing
nothing from the previous time.

Maybe something initialize wierd when it starts sometime, I don't know.
But re-calibrating usually helps.

I your case, it sounds like the controller may have been goofy.

-_Dave

c

Tom Petersen

I heard that switching vehicles will sometimes put the brake-help and
shifting on, but would have thought the boxes would have been checked..

This has never happened to me.  You could try checking the brake-help box,
saving the options then go back and turn brake-help off to see if this fixes
it. Of course you should repeat the steps with auto-shifting.

Sounds like a prime candidate for GPL 1.1.

Jason.

<snip>

--
--------
Jason Monds
"My other car is a Ferrari"
http://members.home.net/gpl.mondsj/gpl - For my combined gas/brake setups
(Please remove 'no extra spork' when replying)

Jack Rambo

...long enough that I'll *snip*

The lower top speed and not revving freely issues both sound like
calibration problems.  Unfortunately, we don't have a "test
calibration" screen, only a "recalibrate" screen, so it's difficult to
tell for sure.  It doesn't hurt to recalibrate once in a while.
Particularly if you're using a controller that has "trim wheels."  If
you accidentally move one of the trim wheels, you'll throw off the
calibration.

When you do recalibrate, make sure your controls are centered before
you hit the "Calibrate Joystick(s)" button.  Also, pay close attention
to what's going on on this screen.  Watch the arrows as you move your
controller's axes.  Do the arrows move smoothly?  If not, your
potentiometers may be dirty or worn out, or you may be using
DirectInput with the "Poll with interrupts enabled" checkbox selected.

After moving all the axes to their extents, slowly move them to their
extents and watch the calibrated values.  Do they all reach 1.000 (and
-1.000 if the axis goes both directions)?  If not, you won't get the
full effect of any control you assign to the axis.

As for auto-shifting coming on by itself, there is a bug in GPL 1.0
that can cause this to happen when you go to the "Player Info" screen
from GPL's main menu (the same bug can enable traction control and
braking help, too).  This bug will be addressed in the GPL 1.1 patch.

Randy

<snip-o-rama>

Which controller do you use?  I have suffered similarly with my TM
Formula 1.

The problem turned out to be the brake pedal. Sometimes, when I pressed
it, it would seem to physically bounce all the way back up but a signal
of "pedal slightly pressed" would be sent to the machine. I could see
this whilst recalibrating, the slider would go all the way right when I
pressed it, but wouldn't go al the way to the left when I let it go.

The result was I would be going down the straights with the Brake pedal
slightly "on". This meant slower laptimes.

I suffered this in IGPS Rouen practice last week. Before I solved the
trouble, I was getting laps of 1m59-2m00. After solving it I got back to
1m56-1m57.

What I did was recalibrate so that I still had the brake pedal 80%
pressed down when I clicked "OK".
This meant that when the brake pedal was released whilst driving, it was
so far from the "minimum" point, there was hardly any trouble. I picked
up as much as 15mph on the straights.

Sorry for the slightly convoluted explanation but that's the best I
could come up with :-) Might be worth bearing in mind if you have the
same problem again.

--
Cheers!
Graeme Nash

http://www.karisma1.demon.co.uk
ICQ# 11257824

1998 Xoom GP2 League Champion

-And when can we see this rumoured patch? I have some major problems
getting the game to start (In another tred), and after reinstalling gpl
I read the readme again, and it's dated 31. august. When was the last
time a release had over 6 months between release and first patch?

Sorry, I'm just a bit upset about my gpl.exe breakdown, and the rare and
weird error it generates...

JoHS

Automatic shifting comes on my machine quite often.  When I go to
options, none of the boxes are checked.  When I go back to the car all
is well??

Bob Agee

This might be a stupid comment (?)
But:
Are you certain that your controller is reliable?
I have to recalibrate quite often when I experience the same..
Just my thoughts:)

Matt
--
-----------------------------------------
Matthew Knutsen

"The Art of Legends" - GPL add-ons
www.cheekracing.electra.no/GPL/simrace1.htm
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