Last race we promised that we would look into the rolling start procedure. One of the things that became obvious is that we (admins) don't have a proper way of getting a good overview of the state of the field during the starting procedure.

That is why I am now working on a tool that should help us doing so.

• It will check the speed of all cars. Should be 80 km/h with a margin (currently +- 10 km/h, so anything between 70 and 90 is ok).
  
• It checks the position of each car when in double file. It checks if you are on the correct row and on the correct side (left or right).
  
  
• It will check the acceleration of cars, to prevent that people are doing 80, but are already accelerating before the green lights are given. It is a kind of jump-start prevention.
  
• It will show an artificial array of lights. It will also show a number of arrows indicating whether your position in the double file is correct or not (turns white if you have to more forward, move back or whether you are on the correct side (left/right)).
  

Currently the tool seems to be working quite well (apart from the acceleration check, but that is a 5 minute task), but it needs serious testing.


The first testing session will be Tuesday, December 26th, 20.30 CET or 19.30 UTC. Please post here if you want to help out. The more people the better, but 4 should be enough. You can also join if you are not involved in MoE.

Post your LFSWorld name, with correct capitals (the tool is casesensitive).

I'll join

LFS Username: Leifde

I'de be more than willing to come help test.

LFSWorld name: cmckowen

Sure the more the merrier because with rolling start it can really set off a chain reaction with a lot of cars Count me in. \


LFS name: Davo, same as forum name isn't it?

Sometimes people use different names

We'll use the GTRs on Aston Club, since it has the necessary straight, but doing a warmup lap of 3 minutes every time isn't very time efficient

i'm in

LFS name: freetimmy

Server will be Cyber Racing Server #2, pass 'asdasd'.

I'll be there with Robi.

LFSW names:
Gab-BBS-
(HUN)Robi

Coming

LFSW: Cawwa

I'm In.

Highsider9

If u guys need some one with mouse as controller i could join two

LFSW name: ZanZi

LFSW name: wheel4hummer

Brilliant rolling start tool. If you need some more testing done be glad to help out again.

For the drivers it worked pretty good I think, although there are a few issues.

• The yellow flag pops up now and then, blocks the view on the virtual startlights.
  
• The chat message of the green flag comes before the virtual lights change color, which causes confusion.

On the operator side of the program some stuff has to happen too, mostly on the interface part, the panel that shows red or green lights. Furthermore it needs the acceleration detection.

The replay of the last start that went good can be downloaded here (right-click, save as...).

Yea went pretty good from when I joined, although the obvious lag problems with the server. It went great after the chat msg with the green lights didn't show up in the chat box, everyone went at roughly the same time, was nice.

It did help and got used to using it after a few times, I think it should be mandatory for all the teams starting drivers to show up to a practice of this, just to make sure that things go aswell as they did earlier. (Minus the lag)

But, it's a very nice little addon, good work.

Woaaah... nice work there!

Just saw this topic so I obviously missed the testing - will there be held another test?

When?! :P

Quote from Bawbag :

I think it should be mandatory for all the teams starting drivers to show up to a practice of this, just to make sure that things go aswell as they did earlier. (Minus the lag)

+1 to that - would be pretty bad with confusions and stuff when the actual race is about to start :P

First of all i like to say that this is definitely an improvement. The rolling starts are way more guided by the adminds now. The only thing, and Frank has mentioined that one already, is that the arrowings only correspondend with the cars next, or in front of you. During the test it showed that while focussing on the red/green lights caused the front cars to slow down (since they didn't check the speedometer).

I would suggest that only the car in pole posisition gets an additional message related to the pace he has to keep. I don't think it is important for the other cars since:
a. their speed depends on car #1
b. The arrows besides the lights will provide enough information.
c. It is unnecessary confusing when the arrows indicate to slow down and the speed indicator tells them to speed up.

But nevertheless in the end it is the driver responsibilities to follow the directions and to react on the circumstances using his own head/mind.

It looks very nice... i wanna get in if you will test again :P

In relation to the speed thing, can't the front 2 drivers use there speed limiter? Once they are in place i'm sure they could get some sort of message to engage the limiter, would keep the rest of the field at the right speed to. Or everyone could use the limiter?

The only problem with it that I know is when your game lags the pit limiter doesn't work properly, happend to me around AS GT but it was due to a utterly crap pc with about 4fps.

I was wrong about the "bug" part, but still green

Hehe, well, we cant influence the trackside startlights, unfortunately.

But we already discussed changes to the abort-start-issue which will make it more clear.

sounds awsome! is this going to be released to the comunity? and did you think about a pacecar-mod for it? so if you start a pacecar phase the tracking and reordering can happen?

awsome work, allthough i missed the testing.

is there a replay of the oval testing?

1. The pace car is driven by a real person and we do not intend to change that;
2. We didn't use oval for it, we used a real track
3. About public release: that's Frank's domain, if he decides to, you might get your hands on it, if not not.

did my first try with noobstart yesterday...i mean its an awesome thing if people would obey it...kind of...

i think it would be best if the pacecar wouldn't just drive..it should always try to keep 80kph coz at some point when people warmup tyres and change gridpositions then they will go over 200+kph like yesterday and the others are trying to follow it of course but then some dont expect that hard braking and crash like that happened yesterday a few times :-/


but all in all its an awesome tool and works fine (as long as the drivers do what they should) =)

Quote from Belain :

i think it would be best if the pacecar wouldn't just drive..it should always try to keep 80kph coz at some point when people warmup tyres and change gridpositions then they will go over 200+kph like yesterday and the others are trying to follow it of course but then some dont expect that hard braking and crash like that happened yesterday a few times :-/

As the track is quiet long I think we should sort out right after the 2nd split on the backstraight, but then on max 100 kph. So people could warm up their tires and we could still try to do a proper grid...

And we should should try to drive constant or at least try to avoid suddenly hard braking, helps us guys who are driving in row 6 and later