AC FAT-ALFIE championship multiclass round 5@Battenberging, Wed 13th December 2023

[maxilogan]

Also, in yesterdays race I got a bit frustrated of the Mazdas trying to prevent overtaking, when they're not even competing for the same points.

I understand your frustration, I know I'm a backmarker and that I could harm both mine and yours race if i'm trying to defend too harshly. I do not have the racecraft (yet?) to battle with those who are much better than me so I tried to let you and Fulvio pass as early as possible, though on a twisty track like this it wasn't that easy..

 

[gearwhine]

Well, there's only one race left and I've driven every race so far, so I still get some points whether I drive or not.
I've thrown away one certain win and a possible another in this championship, and I don't think I can salvage anything in the last race anymore.

Also, in yesterdays race I got a bit frustrated of the Mazdas trying to prevent overtaking, when they're not even competing for the same points. My second incident happened when I almost hit the Mazda in front of me and had to avoid him (my own fault, of course).
Then the final nail in the coffin came when I crashed into Colin who was turned sideways on the left side of the track. I started to swerve around him from the right, and he then moved to the right side and parked his car in front of me. I know it was not intentional, but after that I just wanted the race to end as soon as possible.
I'll still drive with the Escort in the classic championship, but I don't think I will ever touch RD's "multiclass" races again.

Hey Mika, read your earlier post and just read this one.
I have to hold my hand up to what you said mate. I am the Mazda driver as you know and you made a very good point. I am at fault for trying to hold my place when we are in different races. To be honest, it has never crossed my mind until you said it. I guess in my head, i am still going for overall position. I see now that i am wrong and apologise for that.

 

[Mikke73]

I understand your frustration, I know I'm a backmarker and that I could harm both mine and yours race if i'm trying to defend too harshly. I do not have the racecraft (yet?) to battle with those who are much better than me so I tried to let you and Fulvio pass as early as possible, though on a twisty track like this it wasn't that easy..

You did well, I know that on a track like this there's really only one usable line most of the time.

 

[Allan Ramsbottom]

To say this is my least favourite Fat Alfie Track.i found quite a fast consistant pace in praccy,which helped in quali and the race..Hmmm..
Now the race..Set off like a rat down a sewer pipe keeping 1st position.Pulling away after a few laps i settled down for the long slog...Noticed 12/24hr cycle going haywire and getting the odd blinkering stutter????..Couple of mistakes saw my lead dwindle away until i finally pitted in 5th i think..Climed back to 1st but with 2 laps to go i got screen freeze,and of all places going thru the village.Into a building i spun back around onto track to see my new Nemisis @thom462 and @Kek700 fly past..Tried to catch Ermie,think it would have been close if there was another lap,but alas no so i brought the Mazda home in 3rd..Quite a gripping race Richard as always sticking his big fat ass out with great defending,almost as big as Ernies (almost)..Grats to other podium guys,bad luck to those who crashed or got caught up in it,frustrating..I KNOW, but its racing.....
FONTENY..Guys get some praccy in, this is a 24km track with all kinds of stuff thrown in...Till then....

 

[Mikke73]

Hey Mika, read your earlier post and just read this one.
I have to hold my hand up to what you said mate. I am the Mazda driver as you know and you made a very good point. I am at fault for trying to hold my place when we are in different races. To be honest, it has never crossed my mind until you said it. I guess in my head, i am still going for overall position. I see now that i am wrong and apologise for that.

It's not anything you need to apologize for. I know it was you who I almost crashed into, and then crashed myself trying to avoid hitting you, but it was in no way your fault.
I meant situations where the driver behind has 3-4 seconds faster laptimes, and has already pitted. Then I don't understand the need to fight for your position, because you just end up losing time yourself.
I'm also guilty of keeping Mazdas behind me, if they try to overtake me on a part of track they are faster on, but I have faster laptimes. Then again, I usually make room even for the same class car if it's clearly faster than me. It all depends on a situation.
At least in one race I have also forgot that we are not fighting for the same points, and needlessly pushed past a certain very quick Mazda on the last lap...

Please note that the fact that I got frustrated does NOT mean that anyone did something wrong, and it's also not the reason I skip the last race. After throwing away the Bremgarten win and this race, I don't have anything to gain from Fonteny race, and if it's really on 27th of this month then the date is not a good one either.

 

[RasmusP]

Hey Mika, read your earlier post and just read this one.
I have to hold my hand up to what you said mate. I am the Mazda driver as you know and you made a very good point. I am at fault for trying to hold my place when we are in different races. To be honest, it has never crossed my mind until you said it. I guess in my head, i am still going for overall position. I see now that i am wrong and apologise for that.

This reminds me of my first race in that German league I'm racing.
We had to do 2 pit stops, 1x tire change.
I had no idea I could see the remaining stops of the drivers around me in the "real time" HUD and also had no idea some drivers would try to do a mega undercut by doing the 1L stop in the first 3 laps to get out of the fights.

I was in the back of the field and some drivers, which names and pace I obviously didn't know, got very annoyed, when I didn't let them through.
They lost a lot of time, I lost a little bit of time.
When I did my 1L stop, they were 35 seconds ahead, oopsie!

 

[Mikke73]

This reminds me of my first race in that German league I'm racing.
We had to do 2 pit stops, 1x tire change.
I had no idea I could see the remaining stops of the drivers around me in the "real time" HUD and also had no idea some drivers would try to do a mega undercut by doing the 1L stop in the first 3 laps to get out of the fights.

I was in the back of the field and some drivers, which names and pace I obviously didn't know, got very annoyed, when I didn't let them through.
They lost a lot of time, I lost a little bit of time.
When I did my 1L stop, they were 35 seconds ahead, oopsie!

That's exactly what I did yesterday, I did my pitstop as soon as it was possible - pit window opened only a few seconds before I was at the pit entrance.

 

[Allan Ramsbottom]

@RasmusP
what would cause stuttering in game??.Very noticible in replay aswell..

 

[RasmusP]

@RasmusP
what would cause stuttering in game??.Very noticible in replay aswell..

Can be a few hundred things. You need the csp render stats app to find out: (link to post from me)

Super frustrating CPU 99 Occupancy HELP PLEASE

I have been experiencing an issue with AC, it started around the time I downloaded and installed CSP .1.75, but since then it happens with every csp build. Problem is the CPU Occupancy 99% and stuttering (it kind of goes into slow motion, I dont know if stuttering is the right word). I tried...

www.racedepartment.com

And just the csp render stats app from that post with the fps limit set to 93 fps (10.76 ms between each frame).
I'm neither in the cpu nor gpu limit here, since both their times are below 10.76 ms.

You should see one of the times being very close to the fps time, when you say your fps are dropping.

 

[stigs2cousin]

@Mikke73 :

actually there is a darn good reason to keep the corner parking Abarths behind in several sectors like Holzhausen for example.

If I allow you to pass me there that will cost me several seconds right up to next hairpin.
Of course that`s frustrating for you, but, to be honest, better you than me

 

[Mikke73]

@stigs2cousin :

Regarding Holzhausen and me with Abarth, I very strongly doubt that, but that might be true on some other tracks and sectors.

 

[Kek700]

I found the best place to overtake was the uphill drag to the last but one corner, unfortunately I discovered this late in the race.
It is right we’re the Mazda is most vulnerable.
Everywhere else you take a risk, and will probably be re overtaken, the only cars it does not work for is another Abarth

 

[JamKart22]

Well, there's only one race left and I've driven every race so far, so I still get some points whether I drive or not.
I've thrown away one certain win and a possible another in this championship, and I don't think I can salvage anything in the last race anymore.

Also, in yesterdays race I got a bit frustrated of the Mazdas trying to prevent overtaking, when they're not even competing for the same points. My second incident happened when I almost hit the Mazda in front of me and had to avoid him (my own fault, of course).
Then the final nail in the coffin came when I crashed into Colin who was turned sideways on the left side of the track. I started to swerve around him from the right, and he then moved to the right side and parked his car in front of me. I know it was not intentional, but after that I just wanted the race to end as soon as possible.
I'll still drive with the Escort in the classic championship, but I don't think I will ever touch RD's "multiclass" races again.

I had a frustrating race too and sorry for being the car you hit. I spun being clipped as I tried to avoid a spinning abarth and then literally everyone hit me as I tried to point in the right direction. I was convinced the steering was bent and had to look outside the car to see if it was worth carrying on. It looked like something out of mad max!

I did carry on as I love this track and finished not far off where I qualified. So worth persevering in the end.

 

[Twoddle]

That ended badly for me, struggled in practice then didn't manage a clean lap in qualy so ended up starting at the back. Tried to cleanly get through traffic and was doing ok up until i though a mx5 was letting me past turns out the abarth was just faster than i thought at the time as they never lifted and ended up going around the outside off a corner i should not have done causing quite a big accident with a few cars, sorry to all those involved. feeling a bit down after the mayhem i crashed in the village with a car coming so tp'd to pits and left. we have done this track a few times in different cars and i am yet to manage a good race here so i don't think this track is for me. well done to all those that finished.

 

[RS242]

Sorry again for quite a rough overtake but in that turn I was likely to go relatively wide and you were there where I'd drift.. luckily we didn't touch each other. You drove really well!

No worries mate, you were not in the wrong there, not at all.
As I crashed I became an obstacle, wanted to get out of the way but didn't want to risk crossing the racing line so I stayed there. I'm happy there was no contact.

On the other hand, I had anyway some difficult because of frequent stuttering that I didn't know where it came from. I have a 75Hz monitor and with my settings the CM benchmark runs at 190+, yet the FPS indicator on top sometimes dropped to 60 (from the 75 at which the settings are capped), and even more so sometimes I had 75 FPS but the image terribly stuttering.

I'm also using a Valve Index (I think you mentioned it in some post somewhere, if that is not the case just ignore everything from this point on) and I have to admit I've got it right to the limit. The Steam VR performance graph is always showing red, taking a few milliseconds to generate each frame.
However because I don't feel any stutters (except when Windows fails to read the room and decides to install updates on the last lap ) I keep it as is.

I have 144Hz monitors and I like to match the HMD refresh rate to that. Higher refresh rate typically means more load on GPU and I did see the frame generation time increase when I increased the setting.

By the way these are the settings I'm using for VR:

Don't forget to also check you Steam VR settings:

Compare these settings to yours, see if anything sticks out as odd, but in the end please follow RasmusP's advice because I'm no expert on this.

For further reference:

• CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 3700X 8-Core Processor 3.60 GHz
• GPU: AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT 8GB VRAM (GDDR6 1750 MHz)

- Ricardo

 

[HF2000]

Next week another nice one: https://www.racedepartment.com/thre...southern-cross-wed-20th-december-2023.266498/

 

[HF2000]

And another one for next week: https://www.racedepartment.com/thre...ighlands-short-thu-21st-december-2023.266501/

 

[gearwhine]

It appears most drivers had a bad race including myself. I made two self inflicted mistakes with the worst by far being driving through the village way too fast. Result being i crashed so hard i could not decide which way i needed to go until traffic past me.
I personally am a fan of the track and am quite happy to lap at nine tenths of my ability but going 100% requires total concentration to keep it up for an hour. The Mazda feels so stable that it makes me over confident at times which can then bite me. Yet again, i found myself in a battle with Rico except this time i lost out due to mistakes. Nice steady driving mate.
I still enjoyed the race, felt no frustration and am looking forward to driving the rusty old Escort here next week

 

[gearwhine]

Incidentely, talking about stuttering. There is an issue that has cropped up on the emporor servers lately. Stuttering cars when they get close. Does not appear to be an fps issue. I am in VR but i understand it can happen on monitors too. So, might not be a PC settings issue.

 

[JamKart22]

I felt stuttering as I went over cobbles. Weird.

Weather FX is also a high GPU option so it can cause problems if people have lower spec PCs.