2012 | 300 Miles of Sebring

[Stefan Woudenberg]

300 Miles of Sebring- INTRO & INFO

The RaceDepartment staff expects people who sign up to read this entire article!

Event: 300 Miles of Sebring
Date: Saturday - October 13th 2012
Platform: rFactor2
Class: Nissan GTR, Nissan 370Z, Renault Megane
Track: Sebring 12h
Broadcast: under investigation
Driver Swaps: None

INTRODUCTION
Welcome to second official Racedepartment World Endurance Series event.
The Racedepartment World Endurance Series, or RDWES for short, is a series of (semi)endurance races we will hold during the year.
After a blast on Mid Ohio, we will again make a visit to the USA, to Sebring to be exact.
Sebring International Raceway is one of the oldest continuously-operating race tracks in the United States, its first race being run in 1950. As this track has a long history of Endurance racing, we feel we should honor it by this event.
There will be NO driver swaps allowed in this event. Total race length is 300 miles, which will equal about 2.5 hours of racing.


AVAILABLE CARS
The cars available will all be from the GT classes. In addition to the GT Endurance Series by ISI, we have decided to include the Renault Megane Trophy.
RaceDepartment will try to stay up to date with the latest patches and releases of these mod’s. This list will be updated according to the latest decisions of the staff concerning implemented patches and releases.
Available choices will be:

GT1
Nissan GT-R

GT4
Nissan 370Z
Maserati GT (taken out due to missing whipers and brake disc glow animation).

One-Make Racing
Renault Megane

SKINS
For this round, a custom MOD will be created. Everyone who wants to use a custom skin can make one and send it in a working download link. The DEADLINE is October 1st (!!!!), so after that you'll need to pick a standard skin for the race. Happy skinning guys! Don´t forget to put a RD logo on there.

Dead line costum skin period has ended!

SCHEDULE/SESSION INFO - ALL TIMES IN GMT
Official Practice: 16:30 (90 minutes)
Qualification: 18:00 (30 minutes)
Warm-up: 18:30 (15 minutes)
Race: 18:45 (82 Laps = +/- 300Miles)

All drivers must be in the server at least 15 minutes before qualifying, anyone who joins after the start of qualifying will start from the back of their specified class with the exception of people who experience last minute technical issues. The server will be open for unofficial practice before official starting time, and will be restarted at 16:30 GMT exactly. From that moment on, the server will stay up, so a nice rubber pavement can be made.

Signups.
To sign up for this event, you must have a valid license from Racedepartment. If you sign up, we do expect you to show up!. To sign up, please take a look in the Sign Up Thread.

For now, we have limited the signup list to 28 entrants. If needed, we can expand that number with an additional 20 drivers, so all can have a go at this.


Notes.
· Chatting of any kind during Qualifying and the Race is strictly prohibited in the chat. There is no need to say sorry/thanks/pitting/leaving pits/etc. Anything that needs to be said can wait until after the session.
· If you feel you were wronged in any way during an event and wish to report the incident, simply send the event organiser a private message. Please include a description of the incident along with a video. If you are unable to create a video, please include details such as who was involved and where the incident happened with a timestamp. Do not post reports/accusations in the thread itself - negativity and anger gets us nowhere.
· We encourage all our drivers to use Teamspeak 3, download here. Talking directly to your fellow drivers increases the fun and the ability to share information in an easy friendly way. It will improve your driving skills dramatically, Log in here
· Please take into account that rFactor 2 is still in beta stage and that technical problems might occur. If you spot a bug please post a (constructive) report in the dedicated bug forum here.

 

[Tibor Rózsahegyi]

I reach to Timetable, but immediately show "connection lost" and fall back to the server list

 

[Frederic Schornstein]

Yes exactly my problem, but the test server all the week was fine. I think we really should go back to that setup.

 

[Scott Webber]

I cannot join, and for the life of me i cannot understand why the official server for such a big event was put uip late? now very less time to sort out that issue and for us to actually practice online, im really stuffed and i won't have no practice, so i may have to sign out.

 

[Mike Bishop]

Sorry guys please sign me out.

 

[Stefan Woudenberg]

Okay Tibor, Mike and Scott. I signed you guys out.

For the rest of you guys, I put on a simple mod, no skins and other stuff. Just plain the cars and track.
I tried it and could connect without any hustle.

 

[Ken Hunter]

Gentleman, with all the problems i've been having, trying to keep up with having to download this....then that and then the other, to make a game work, it has frustrated me more than what it's worth.
Further, when i eventually get all to work okay, i find i cannot join online because of some other problem again and have to practice offline. This i don't feel i want to do and if i cannot practice online days before the race, i will not participate until such time the races presented through rFactor2 is better organised,so please remove my entry forthwith....

 

[Alex Martini]

Is there a link for latest mod?

 

[Stefan Woudenberg]

Is there a link for latest mod?

It should be downloadable from server or see the mod posted here:

 

[Frederic Schornstein]

You can download it directly from the server. Works like a charm. Just joined it

 

[Nathan Robinson]

Gentleman, with all the problems i've been having, trying to keep up with having to download this....then that and then the other, to make a game work, it has frustrated me more than what it's worth.
Further, when i eventually get all to work okay, i find i cannot join online because of some other problem again and have to practice offline. This i don't feel i want to do and if i cannot practice online days before the race, i will not participate until such time the races presented through rFactor2 is better organised,so please remove my entry forthwith....

Sorry to hear that. Unfortunately this is still in beta and these things will happen. I think the way Stefan has organized this is very well done, so I dont know where that came from. It's not his fault that these unforeseen issues have come up. He was trying to please the guys who paint cars and in doing so, ran into some issues. That is to be expected with something that's still in development. I like this kind of stuff however because it gives us experience with things that we wouldnt have known about before

 

[Stefan Woudenberg]

Thanx Nathan!

I really put many hours into this and tried to please people who wanted skinned cars. Which I think is a great idea and gives the driver that special extra effort. I like to paint my car too and drive something that is mine and show off with it.
rFactor2 is a bit harder to get the skins to work nicely (compared to GSC, Race07, etc) and I really tried everything to make it happen, but somehow the meganes were not working online.
I had put this race first to my family and personal life that is what I regret dearly.
This should be fun and for me ...now... it's not so much... But maybe it will grow on me again..during the race
If people wanna quit, let them quit. And if peopel think I did this unprofessional... okay... let them show me how it should be done than. I might learn something!

 

[Marco Bijl]

Well, this is what can happen when using a BETA version, and start adding skins. I understand its hard, but thats the way it is I can't change that.

What I DO know is the ammount of time Stefan has put into this event. Although we decided NOT to go with custom skins when we started, Stefan offered a lot of his time because some had asked for skins. I have been extremely busy lately, and could only assist him just a little bit, so he was really alone.... Big thumbs up for that Stefan!

At this moment, I am working on the update. Have some strange issues, which I am looking into now. Will update in a bit

Edit
Lol Got ninjad by Stefan here

 

[Marco Bijl]

Ok, in principle it works.

With In principle, I mean the mod works. However, there is something new. (getting tired of thos strange rfactor2 issues here ). Somehow, the car selection does not work.
No matter what car you select in the multiplayer game, it always joins with the car you used last in offline mode....

Really, you can't make these things up.What a strange one this is...

Anyway, as a work around, you can open the offline series, and choose the rignt car, then join. However, I can understand if you guys have had it with these things, and want to run the basic mod Stephan has put up.

Both servers are online now. You can have both mods installed without problems.

Edit.
Ok, just tested with Bjorn, Frederic and Nathan. All seems to work, including updating via the server.
We had 1 issue with custom skins shown as undefined cars (gray boxes), but a rejoin fixed that.
If you have issues, let me know. I am going to out for a moment Will read again later on.

 

[Bjorn de Haas]

Still not working, sign me out of this race please because i have no more time to practise now. This thing with the mod costed me to much time that i cant practise anymore for the event. Ill be working now until tomorow evening. I hope to race in a event soon when its a bit more stable etc. Keep up posting these great events though guys

You have to sign me out as well Stefan/Marco, Mod did not work for the whole day and i missed a lot of track time.

 

[Matt Horst]

I really think its not that big a hassle to download a mod that takes all of about a half second to finish downloading.If guys like Stefan and Marco can put many hours of work into making this happen for our enjoyment least we can do is spend a few minutes on our end to get things installed and ready to go.As Nathan said its a new platform still in development and this is a learning process for all of us.

I would like to take this opportunity to than Stefan and Marco for taking the time out of there busy and long days i know they have with work and family obligations to try and make this happen for us.However things work out it's much appreciated by me.

 

[Bjorn de Haas]

I agree Matt, i know those guys are working very hard and yes i love the events they organise. But its not the hassle of downloading a mod for me because that is indeed 30 secs of work. Its the fact i miss 2 days of track time and dont have the time now to prepare for such a long race due to work.

 

[Dennis]

figured that the only real advantage of the Megane over the 370z seems to be aerodynamics/cornering speed. So just a heads up to the GT4 guys that Meganes (atleast as far as I am concerned^^) might almost only overtake/lap you when they are pretty close behind your bumper (i.e. at corner entry) as the difference in acceleration is not that big. (Also quite possible that I'm just a slow driver )

also: Are blue flag penalties turned off for this race?

 

[Marco Bijl]

Track time can be done offline as well But I do get your point Bjorn. However, with a Beta, there can be issues like this.
It seems to be working ok now. If someone has issues, I would suggest manual removal, and reinstallation of the mod I uploaded a few posts back. Then update via the server.

I will try to be present before the race starts tomorrow as well, just in case someone needs some help.

 

[Marco Bijl]

@Dennis Coufal,
Server is set to black flag only. So it SHOULD be turned off. However, I can not guarantee that, as I did not test that myself.

 

[Nuno Pinto]

I have read and understood all rules for this race, and hereby would like to sign up. I will participate in the Nissan GTR car.