"Race Director" - hypersensitive and mysterious?

[R8pilot]

Hello Forum Members,

I have been focusing on the Nordschleife, which of course is a narrow and tricky track. Many times I've had a tiny bobble and touched the edge of the track or a single blade of grass. Instant disqualification! Well, that seems almost absurdly hypersensitive (I severely doubt that a human director would disqualify many of those bobbles), but computers will be computers, and it's "just a game," so I can accept that (barely, possibly with some cursing).

But at other times I'm at a complete loss as to why it happens. There have been many times when I have been certain that I did not leave the pavement even minutely.

There have been yet other times when a track segment shows up as disqualified at the end of a track segment (i.e., not at the presumably-earlier event that caused the problem), leaving me wondering what or where it thought the problem was. This is highly irritating.

So, what's up with the race director? Are there a few bugs here and there in the track? Is it just (obnoxiously) hypersensitive? Are there hidden causes for disqualification during seemingly-normal driving other than leaving the pavement (i.e., in a single-car scenario)? Why do disqualifications sometimes show up at the end of a segment rather than at the time of the presumed violation? Or, well, is it just me?

(By the way, thus far I think AMS2 has the best Nurburgring implementation.)

Thanks.

 

[BillGuy]

Where the Nordschleife is concerned, I would be willing to bet that it's likely just track limits refinements that still need to be addressed. Having said that, I don't recall ever running into the sort of issues you describe but my time on the Nordschleife is probably quite a bit less than yours.

I've formed the opinion that Reiza's overall mindset for track limits is that you shouldn't have four wheels outside the white line regardless of whether there is paved run-off, wide curbing, or grasscrete that may allow you to do so. I don't think that's a hard and fast rule but it does seem to be the target they usually aim for when they tweak track limits.

I don't think this would really come into play with the experiences you're describing with the Nordschleife however. I don't recall there really being anywhere at Nords where you could have four wheels outside the line while not also being in the grass or gravel with two of them. This is what makes me think your experiences may just be down to further work being needed with the track itself.

Out of curiosity, what car do you experience this with? Has it always been the same one? Perhaps there's a bug with a "bounding box" for that particular car which is causing it to be detected as out of bounds when it shouldn't be.

 

[R8pilot]

Thanks for the response.

Just to be clear, I'm not talking about "four wheels outside the white line", I'm talking about very minor excursions (like an inch) of one wheel off the track. I've figured that the game sets the "in bounds" limit to the merest edge of the track, with zero leeway, except for some cases where they have cobble-stones at certain curves - much of that seems to remain in-bounds. (I don't think it's the car.)

What has been more puzzling is somewhat frequent cases in which there is no disqualification until the end of a given track segment. That's extra frustrating since you have no direct feedback, and in many of those instances I feel sure that I did not exceed the track limits. Therefore, I was wondering if there is something else, aside from the track boundary, that it's looking for that I'm not aware of.

Again, this is "just a game", though I'd expect that a human director wouldn't be as fussy or mysterious as the program.

 

[R8pilot]

Actually, I may be misunderstanding something. Indeed, you do have to have both wheels over the line for the over-all current lap time to be invalidated. The time's text turns from white to red.

But what do the green, red and white text mean in the lap segment times!? That has been what was confusing me, it seems. I've been abandoning laps if one segment turned red because I thought that invalidated the whole lap. Maybe I'm wrong?

 

[psynusoid]

Green sectors are you beating either your best time or best session time, red sectors slower than best time or best session time. White sectors are usually first lap out either in session or on track.
I think they can change what they are against depending on your delta time mode.

 

[R8pilot]

Thank you for the explanation. Everything makes sense now.