PC1 Will Project Cars have dedicated servers?

[Ivo Simons]

Its there any info when MP gets implemented?

 

[yellowpinkie]

coolio, good answer

 

[Bram Hengeveld]

There will be dedicated servers and possibly p2p as well. The dedicated server is in development and may possibly be in the build a few weeks from now (YMMV).

Three years after you posted the quote above I am seeing this page being brought online http://www.projectcarsgame.com/online.html

Reading the content of this page scared the hell out of me, and probably others that have a sick passion for online racing on PC , as there is no mention of the needed dedicated servers for PC players unless I am not understanding what's written on the aforementioned webpage.

As I am not a WMD member I don't know about the latest developments, could you please check and let us know if we will be able to setup a dedicated server for PC players to race online?

 

[Kenny Paton]

Three years after you posted the quote above I am seeing this page being brought online http://www.projectcarsgame.com/online.html

Reading the content of this page scared the hell out of me, and probably others that have a sick passion for online racing on PC , as there is no mention of the needed dedicated servers for PC players unless I am not understanding what's written on the aforementioned webpage.

As I am not a WMD member I don't know about the latest developments, could you please check and let us know if we will be able to setup a dedicated server for PC players to race online?

Bram, SimHQ have been running online races and you can DL the DED SER app in Steam. It fires up okay although I think there are some bugs that they are ironing out as would be expected.

 

[Bram Hengeveld]

That's all I needed to hear thx, so there is full dedicated server support.

Might be worth mentioning it on their page for others that share the same online passion.

 

[Kyle Pearson]

FWIW, I'm not sure if the Dedicated Server part will be in the initial release (since it's still a little buggy). Races can be hosted via the Steam Lobbies and password protected until the Dedicated Server is released and/or stable.

In short, Dedicated Server is not required for online play.

 

[Brandon Wright]

Races can be hosted via the Steam Lobbies and password protected until the Dedicated Server is released and/or stable.

In short, Dedicated Server is not required for online play.

What's the difference? As long as we can password protect and only let in people we want in, it should be good, right? Or are there other benefits to running a dedicated server?

 

[Kjell Eilertsen]

What's the difference? As long as we can password protect and only let in people we want in, it should be good, right? Or are there other benefits to running a dedicated server?

If there's no dedicated server then one of the players in the race needs to host it, so if the host has a shitty connection you get shitty latency no matter if you have a great connection, if he has a outage then you might have a DC even if your connection is still running fine, at least until the game has migrated host to someone else (which it may do quite seamlessly these days).
A dedicated server is usually situated in a datacenter with great connection quality for most people.

Also, having a dedicated server makes it much easier to manage, staff members can set up a race without having to attend the race themselves, a passworded lobby requires the staff member to be there to set up the lobby in time.

Lastly, having no dedicated servers means you can't leave the server up so people can log on and practice whenever they feel like it.

All in all, not having dedicated servers might not be a complete disaster, but it sure makes it much easier to host races for communities such as RD.

Edit: Those where just a few reasons I could think of from the top of my head, there are prob several others too. I suspect @Bram Hengeveld can tell you a couple more

 

[Brandon Wright]

If there's no dedicated server then one of the players in the race needs to host it, so if the host has a shitty connection you get shitty latency no matter if you have a great connection, if he has a outage then you might have a DC even if your connection is still running fine, at least until the game has migrated host to someone else (which it may do quite seamlessly these days).
A dedicated server is usually situated in a datacenter with great connection quality for most people.

Also, having a dedicated server makes it much easier to manage, staff members can set up a race without having to attend the race themselves, a passworded lobby requires the staff member to be there to set up the lobby in time.

Lastly, having no dedicated servers means you can't leave the server up so people can log on and practice whenever they feel like it.

All in all, not having dedicated servers might not be a complete disaster, but it sure makes it much easier to host races for communities such as RD.

Edit: Those where just a few reasons I could think of from the top of my head, there are prob several others too. I suspect @Bram Hengeveld can tell you a couple more

This probably shows my level of "noobness" but I can't help but to think of GT5 and how pretty much all of those issues were sorted on a console game (with some cleverness, admittedly). I could have a room up 24/7 even if I wasn't online, only people I wanted to enter could enter it, and the stability was independent of the host's connection. Sadly, GT6 took away most of those abilities. I guess we'll have to hope that Pcars will have these features sooner than later. But from looking at how their online system works it certainly seems like it will be much better for the random individual to host races/clubs/leagues without the need for a dedicated website or server, and in the long run I'd think that would be a good thing for the genre.

 

[Kyle Pearson]

This probably shows my level of "noobness" but I can't help but to think of GT5 and how pretty much all of those issues were sorted on a console game (with some cleverness, admittedly). I could have a room up 24/7 even if I wasn't online, only people I wanted to enter could enter it, and the stability was independent of the host's connection. Sadly, GT6 took away most of those abilities. I guess we'll have to hope that Pcars will have these features sooner than later. But from looking at how their online system works it certainly seems like it will be much better for the random individual to host races/clubs/leagues without the need for a dedicated website or server, and in the long run I'd think that would be a good thing for the genre.

This requires the software developer to own online services (similar to iRacing) for that type of usage. The Steam Lobbies are just the lobby for gathering and facilitates the "peer-to-peer" connecting of all the participants for the race session. This is not the most effective way for sim racing and lag from one participant can affect all participants. Dedicated Servers remove the peer-to-peer networking need and if a player is lagging, it mainly only affects them (directly that is).

If large race events, dedicated servers are the way to go. For smaller races, peer-to-peer networking works just fine. I will say that during testing, there have been 30-40 member races without too much of an issue. There was always the occasional lag, but for the most part it was perfectly stable.

 

[Kjell Eilertsen]

This probably shows my level of "noobness" but I can't help but to think of GT5 and how pretty much all of those issues were sorted on a console game (with some cleverness, admittedly). I could have a room up 24/7 even if I wasn't online, only people I wanted to enter could enter it, and the stability was independent of the host's connection. Sadly, GT6 took away most of those abilities. I guess we'll have to hope that Pcars will have these features sooner than later. But from looking at how their online system works it certainly seems like it will be much better for the random individual to host races/clubs/leagues without the need for a dedicated website or server, and in the long run I'd think that would be a good thing for the genre.

Sounds like GT5 ran dedicated servers hosted by themselves (or Sony), dedicated servers doesn't mean that customers necessarily can run them on their own hardware.

 

[Brandon Wright]

Sounds like GT5 ran dedicated servers hosted by themselves (or Sony), dedicated servers doesn't mean that customers necessarily can run them on their own hardware.

It was kind of something that users came up with on their own. You could create your own "private lounge" and that lounge was open 24/7 and anyone on your friends list could join it whether you were online or not. What we would do is create a "dummy" PSN profile and setup the lounge under that profile, then everyone in the group could join the lounge at any time for practice or racing and they only had to add one profile to their friends list instead of every individual member they wanted to race with. And it kept my private lounge empty in case I wanted to do private testing or something.

It worked great and made our lives a lot easier, but I have no idea how the details on PD's end worked as far as the server goes. But it pretty much worked just like the dedicated server described above. Sadly, they took away the private lounge for some reason in GT6 so the host had to be online and actually open a room.

 

[Kenny Paton]

That's all I needed to hear thx, so there is full dedicated server support.

Might be worth mentioning it on their page for others that share the same online passion.

From the latest build release notes.

Build 998 (01/05/15)

Dedicated Server:
* WMD-6658: Support for dedicated server gameplay stats and logging: Implemented protocol to send stats and events to DS. Added hooks to send multiplayer stats and events to DS all over the place (session setup and status, player status, various participant events including sector/lap times, results, impacts and cutting the track). Updated ping call to send the server RTT to DS, and fixed issue where pinging could break disconnection timeout if the server still responded to ping (which is allowed even when not in the session) but not to anything else. Bumped protocol version to 50

 

[Coennos]

2 builds before 1000

 

[Andy 'Mars Bar' Graham]

This has probably been answered in the three pages that I haven't read but will Project CARS have dedicated servers on console?

 

[Bram Hengeveld]

Extremely disappointed with the current state of the dedicated servers. The game in general is excellent but the way races are supposed to be hosted is just laughable.

Almost felt like I was in some Codemasters lobby again.

Let's hope this gets absolute top priority to be fixed.

 

[Kyle Pearson]

Extremely disappointed with the current state of the dedicated servers.

It's not really ready to be used. It's mainly included so existing WMD members can test and provide feedback to SMS. I would recommend holding off using DS while the WMD members are still assisting with the testing.

 

[Bjorn de Haas]

Bram is there a possibility that rd hosts a few clubraces this weekend?? So that we can learn the system and how online work.

 

[Kjell Eilertsen]

Bram is there a possibility that rd hosts a few clubraces this weekend?? So that we can learn the system and how online work.

http://www.racedepartment.com/threads/gt3-various-tracks-24-7.105299/

 

[Dietmar]

That thing seems to be in the oven (found it by accident):
https://steamdb.info/app/332670/

 

[Bram Hengeveld]

It's not really ready to be used. It's mainly included so existing WMD members can test and provide feedback to SMS. I would recommend holding off using DS while the WMD members are still assisting with the testing.

This is the kind of nonsense I can't stand from the "investment force". What do you mean it's not ready to be used? The game is out on sale!

This thread has been active since 2012 (that's three years ago) and from day one we have been promised a working dedicated server and I have paid 50 bucks for a working PC game.

Wasn't Pcars created tested by 80,000 people during the last three years and nobody thought of raising the issue of this incredible bad solution to host races. It's the same P2P nonsense we have seen in recent years with the F1 games from Codemasters, totally unsuitable to run leagues or clubs with.

So no I am not holding off, and will keep raising this issue until it's fixed as this is the second game that has been sold to me this year that doesn't deliver what it promised. I am not interested in racing AI, I normally only race online with other people on dedicated servers in either casual club events or leagues and the latter I don't see how anybody is going to run that in an old fashioned way.

When stuff is broken or not developed, don't sell it as a feature. If I wanted to play pick up races in P2P fashion I'd be playing on consoles, not on PC.