Graphics and Connections Problems at Large rFactor Events - Tips!

[blackcat77]

I have been practicing with this track and this mod for weeks. I've run the league carset since the afternoon it was released. I'd been using full graphics with up to 14 or so people in practice and had no problems.

But tonight for the race, something went very wrong and the game would freeze when I did ANYTHING -- from going back to the garage to, finally, just scrolling through the names of the drivers.

My system: W7/32, 4 gigs, fresh install of rF for this mod and carset, shut off all unnecessary programs before joining the race, as I always do.

Symptoms: When I first joined, there were 18 drivers and I wasn't having any problems, but as the number of drivers got up into the mid-20s, I started to get very bad stutters whenever anyone would enter or leave. Finally, I finished a Q lap and pulled off to the side. When I ESC'ed to try to go back to the garage, the game froze and when I hit ESC again, I CTD'ed. Rejoined the server and crashed again. Rejoined and was able to get back on the track but my frame rate was very low and again had the stuttering issue when drivers joined and left, which was just about constant by that point. Then the game froze again several times. Once when I came back, when I was in my garage, I could see several layers of skins which appeared when people rejoined the game. It looked like a pile of flat skin surfaces on the floor. Then I froze again without doing anything. Finally, I rejoined the server with the game set to DX7 and when I joined, I never even got a garage graphic before it froze again so I just gave up.

Please post your experience in this thread -- even if it was fine for you -- so that we can figure out what happened. Hopefully it was just too many cars on too big a track, but clearly we need to know all we can before the season starts.

Thanks!

[Arturo_Pereira]

Hi Paul,
Many drivers, included me, also noticed that some cars showed up in the same garage of other. I would try the server with as much drivers as we can but with the original carset. I also noticed some cars looked totally out of proportion but can´t imagine what can cause this and I do not know which car was.

[wheeler]

My experience is pretty much the same as Pauls.

[spspears]

Similar situation for me, had one freeze during the qual session. Looked OK during the rest of qualifying and warmup, but when the server rolled over to race I was immediately booted.

[blackcat77]

BTW, I had my game set to show 32 cars. I have a GTX 285 with a gig of memory so you wouldn't think that would be a problem but maybe this was an extreme case and I would have been better to go with 16 cars or so -- comments wanted from experts, please.

[baristabrian]

BTW, I had my game set to show 32 cars. I have a GTX 285 with a gig of memory so you wouldn't think that would be a problem but maybe this was an extreme case and I would have been better to go with 16 cars or so -- comments wanted from experts, please.

I would definately start by cutting that show 32 cars down to at least 16 for starters. Dont imagine you would have a reason to see more than 5 ahead or 5 behind so the rest is probly just a waiste on your resources.

[steviejb]

I think a lot of the problem last night was the amount of cars, plus the track isn't the easiest to run, especially on lower end PC's. I've seen people get run time errors and CTD's at VOR and the ERL when we get upwards of 35 cars. Although it was the first time I'd had it happen in rFactor, I have had it in GTR2 when I've tried to run a large field of cars (30-40+). Interestingly, I've only had runtime with this newer PC. My old one, which was pretty poor, could run 50+ fields in GTR2 without having any errors. Work that one out!

[DaveS]

I to had been practicing this track online for weeks, I also downloaded the car set when it came out, and even downloaded and installed it again last night about half way through my online attempts, it just kept timing out for me. I changed to one of the default cars, I lowered all my graphics, I changed the connection speed, I made sure all programs other than rf were closed, but after an hour of attempting to get on I still just got timed out. Sure hope this gets resolved before the season starts.

DaveS

[jimmyjam]

I couldn't get in last night either.
I could log in and then it would just sit there in the garage for about 5 minutes then it would boot me without any errors.
I had all the updates installed.

A real Bummer!

[wheeler]

I have done a structured offline test today using Brianza and Enduracer without custom skin. Only one thing influences stability: The in-game GFX settings. And they are system dependant. Normally I run all at max, but with 40 cars on track it froze no matter the number of visible cars set (15 or 65). As soon as I turned all GFX settings down two clicks, I could run a smooth and stable race with all cars visible. I am goinng to test a litle more and also include custom skins and Le Mans plus try to see if you can run full track details while cars are reduced and vice versa.