tonight -- we had 8 - 10 people online, and things went great with 8 people,
but it got a little flakey at times with 10. That could have been because a
couple of us had somewhat high pings, but overall the racing was great. At
one point, we were 3 wide in a turn; I went inside, one guy went outside,
and we split a lapped car on the pass -- with no contact and all of us in a
full 4-wheel drift through the turn, thanks to the smooth connection and
great frame rates. All of this happened with 8 people online at once, which
was pretty impressive to me.
I know a lot of you are used to seeing a lot more cars than that race online
in N2, but as far as I'm concerned, the online racing wtih DTR is on a par
with what I've experienced on VROC with GPL -- I don't think I've ever seen
more than 8 or 10 people involved in a race on VROC, so based on my
experience there, I have to say that DTR is very pleasing. You NASCAR folks
from TEN may be underwhelmed by all of this, but I think DTR is going to
work great for league and ladder play, where you have multiple heats with
8 - 10 cars or so to determine the order for the feature -- which is awfully
close to how it goes at a lot of dirt track events I've been to.
Watch for the demo to hit the streets early next week, and check out the
Dirt Track Racing League site if you're interested in signing up for league
action with DTR once it's released:
http://www.racesimcentral.net/
If they get enough requests, they might consider running a preliminary demo
league -- the DASCAR site did this with the Powerslide demo back in the
spring, and the DTRL is a DASCAR associate league.
-- JB