Does anybody know if there are any pace car / safety car insims out at the minute, if so please post them here

It is not possible for InSim to drive a car around a track; I am not talking about the challenges of actually keeping the car on the track either, through the current InSim interface there isn't enough control to actually drive a car.

That said for a pace car/safety car I suppose the Insim could dispatch an AI driver in a UF1 or something with very high restrictions. The AI will try driving fast, but if you can make the car slow enough maybe that would work. Another option that has been done in the passed is having an admin on the server and a slot for them to join the race as needed for the safety car. If this route is chosen it is important to pick someone that can maintain speed without constantly accelerating/decelerating even a little bit. This is important so the racecars following the pace car don't create chaos and accidents.

Other than that, no I do not know of any InSim's that would help you out.

basically blackbird said it all. What most of the leagues that use Safety Cars do is choosing someone who can hold the car at steady speed... For example like here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NEOcugQCwc

there is something in lfs lapper but there has to be a real person driving :P

I've started such a project years ago for the LFSCAR series.

It is possible to setup a pacecar with the ai, but it cannot run server side.
So a race admin or something like that has to run the app.

It works the following way.

-detect race_start -> ai joins race with predefined skin, setup and car
-grid is reordered to move pace car in front
-the setup limits the top speed of the car by gearing
-fuel is limited so the pace car will join the pits after a certain amount of laps -> send pacecar to spectate


Thats basically it, you could even let it join the race in case of a fcy.

My tries never left early testing stage but it was enough for a proof of concept.

I'm making an addon for Lapper to simulate a safety car, as there is no way to launch a safety car from a dedicated server.

Basically, when a safety car is called by an admin, the race will go full course yellow, indicated by a flag in the centre of the display. The drivers will then need to slow down to a maximum of 120km/h, and if they ovrtake, there will be messages on the screen telling them to get back in order (drop X places). They will also get messages to slow donw/speed up depending on the gap between the next racer in line.

Then when it restart time, they will be green lighted as they cross the start/finish.

Quote from Krayy :

if they ovrtake, there will be messages on the screen telling them to get back in order (drop X places).

Sounds interesting. What happens if they overtake someone who is disabled (e.g. the car causing the need for a SC is upside down and someone overtakes them) or if a driver makes a mistake and leaves the track under SC (and can therefore be overtaken by people who are under SC conditions (as demonstrated at the Australian GP with Lewis Hamilton / Jarno Trulli))?

Quote from amp88 :

Sounds interesting. What happens if they overtake someone who is disabled (e.g. the car causing the need for a SC is upside down and someone overtakes them) or if a driver makes a mistake and leaves the track under SC (and can therefore be overtaken by people who are under SC conditions (as demonstrated at the Australian GP with Lewis Hamilton / Jarno Trulli))?

Easy enough...just look for an IS_FLG condition and if the player then has a yellow flag against them, allow them to move down the order. Of course, they wouldn't be able to move UP the order, unless they are passing another car with a yellow flag condition.

That would get worked out in testing I suppose.

Just as a note there are places where that flag can be set even under racing conditions, so slowing the cars down might set the flag in even more conditions than you would think. These are just words of caution for you to think about as you develop, sounds good but it doesn't seem much like an actual pace car - though is nice to keep people in the ordered manner.

Perhaps make the admin command something like this;

/ignore_car username1
/ignore_car username2
/start_safety

... safety is running
/ignore_car username3 //this guy spun while under safety condition
/finish_safety

Something along the lines of that, where finish_safety clears all 'ignored cars' and any ignored cars are safe to be passed by other cars that are not ignored. Just an idea, it is less automatic, but it is more accurate under different situations.