Morning fellow Simracers, During the last weeks I was a lill silent inhere, just because I was mainly running another sim, because of some imho really annoying stuff at Raceroom. But dont get me wrong, I still love this sim, but there are some issues which imho need a solution. Many of them were already adressed, so very likely I'll repeat them with this post. Topics I'd like to adress are: - Disconnects - Reverse Grid - One minute break - Flag system OK, shall we start? 1. Disconnects -------------- Since months we have a huge amount of discons in nearly every race, always different players, so we can rule out a user problem. Personally I was hit two times with a disconnect during our current cup, yesterday again during a practice session for our next cup. Those discons are really completely random. In my case sometimes I'm disconnected while I'm racing at my primary client, sometimes my Spectator running at another PC disconnects, sometimes both, sometimes delayed, sometimes at the same time. This all started after the attempt to implement IPv6 and the subsequent fix. Before that time there was a discon once in a while, I'd say 99% of them were caused by local issues, like an IP reset, router issues, etc. Personally I never had a discon before this god forsaken patch. For example, yesterday we had a practice session with the FR3 at Spielberg, three practice races with reverse grid. During race #1 my Spectator disconnected, I reentered the server after that race, and after race #2 my primary (racing) client disconnected, Spectator continued running. So one could think, maybe I should stop running two instances of R3E within the same network. I've had that thought myself, so I've stopped running the Spectator for some time, but it didnt solve the problem. And just for your information, my primary client is connected via LAN, my box running Spectator via WLAN. Another example. Last weeks some pals of mine had a race with FR2 at Nürburgring. 13 entered the race, only 10 finished due to diconnects. And racing with the constant fear of getting disconnected isnt fun anymore, so we really need a solution, even if this means a completely new server client. Which leads directly to the next problem, the ... 2. Reverse Grid --------------- The idea is great, but the implementation not. As I stated above, yesterday I got disconnected after the second of three races, and had no chance to rejoin. Another driver got disconnected during the first race, no chance to rejoin and participate again. And a third and a fourth pal were a couple of minutes too late to join the first race, they both had no chance to join for the subsequent races. Again, discons can happen due to unexpected reasons, but at least we need a time period between the races, which allows someone to join or rejoin. Right now we're using a high race overtime to have a break between the races. Imho that is just a not very satisfying workaround. 3. One minute break (before the race start) ------------------------------------------- Afaik during that period you are still able to join a server, dont shoot me if I'm wrong. But this time isnt enough. An option to manually adjust this period would be great. And I really miss the "Fly by" of the starting grid, which was removed after this prestart time was introduced, due to some issues with the replay. 4. Flag system -------------- A great, requested a needed feature, but with too many bugs. Again I'd like to have an option to enable flags but without punishment, until those issues are solved.
"god-forsaken patch"? What are you on about? You're having some problems with disconnects which are clearly very annoying, but the patch has made no difference at all to mine and many others' network stability. For me it was fine before and it's fine now. You can't join after qualifying is finished. Again, what's the problem here? I have no issue at all with the one minute break thing. The flag system is attempting to do something very complicated (at least, when the sh!t hits the fan in turn 1). It still makes mistakes and needs more work, which is being done.
I fully support point 4 - active flags without punishment as an option. Points 1 - 3 are how I understand it all about disconnects and how to get back on a server. I drive Raceroom for around a year now and in all the time I can't recall ever having had a single discon. I understand it is hard to find the problem if it is not reproduceable. In flight simming some devs provide a debugging option for such cases that writes an extensive protocol in the background. Maybe that would be an option here in order to find what is going on.
Well, see a non existent reaction as agreement Most of the things you wrote are correct and known I guess... 1. I never had a discon in R3E but I'm using plain IPv4 so maybe I'm just lucky on that one. 2. Agree on that - a rejoinment of drivers that were in the 1. race-session after they quit or drop out would be nice. But difficult to handly I guess 3. IMO you can't join a session that moved to the garage-phase after qualifying. 4. I agree on the bugs and that the must be fixed but IMO as annoying as those bugs are, it is better to have no option to deactivate it, as otherwise everybody would do so and nobody take notice of any issues. As soon that happens, those issues drop down in priority...
So you are a very lucky guy. Last Friday we had the situation again, this time 18 out of 21 got disconnected after four laps of the race. Before that time noone disconnected during nearly two hours of practice and qualifying. If it would be always and only myself, I would start examine my system if there is something wrong. But the "single player disconnects" strikes random, and - very annoying - likes to happen within the last couple of minutes of a race. And this never happened before the IPv6-attempt. Well, maybe "god forsaken" was a lill harsh, but everyone knows, this attempt was a killer for the multiplayer, which was luckily fixed pretty fast. At least MP was possible after that fix again. Didnt you read what I wrote? If you race a session with multiple reverse grids, and you get struck by a disconnect, you cant rejoin to participate at the subsequent races. The only solution is to restart the server, and let the race start with a formation lap. It's a workaround but not a final solution. No discussion here. I never wrote, "fix that damned flag system now". I just suggested an option to enable the flag system without punishment. Or another temporary solution, implement it into your fantastic Chief again.
Did you ever consider it might be a server problem? It is a little strange that the vast majority outside your league is not affected by the problem.
For sure WE did, so other ppl (like myself) provided the server. But it still remains random. We even started using a box which runs the Dedi only, for example last week. On Tuesday a couple of ppl disconnected while we were practicing reverse grids, last friday 18 out of 21 as stated. Though after a server restart we had no further problems last Friday! Edit: Rudi, its not just our lill club. I know personally at least another group which gets hit by disconnects on a regulary basis. It's another german series, though. So maybe R3E doesnt like german ISP.
Here I am, the one from the "other group" It's true, pepople are leaving the league because of frustrating discos. German ISPs cant't be to blame alone cos I run my server in Austria. There seem to be different issues and not a single one. Yesterday a collegue had no starting lights at all and was disconnected exactly then the lights went green. Another one seemed to solve the issue by not using DLAN network adapters. A third one fixed the problem by disabling IPv6 on the router completely. A fourth one has the idea that discos can happen when switching between cockpits when the session ends. All of this is very vague and I can't tell my drivers what to do exactly to have a race without problems. I understand that these problems are very hard to track but the things are not getting better for months by now. What I'd like to suggest is some kind of connection test feature: Just restream 5 minutes of prerecorded data from client to server and measure lost packets, variation in latency and average response time. Also write some readable logs with some network stats and not only crash reports. I am well aware that this won't solve all problems. However we need some tooling to close in the issue and get an idea what might me the cause. Just give me some information on the server side aswell if things get out of sync for a driver. Other sims i.e. give output like "High CPU load - problems might occur"
Flag ruined races Ever since the FLAGS have been added, I have not had seen a race that wasn't ruined by false penalties. whether is was to give up positions that were never gained or a stop and go, it ruined the drive some was having to avoid a DQ. There is a huge issue with a stop and go. You should just pull into the pits and stop, then go. No need to accept or anything. just do it. All I know is that this sim was decent, now it sucks. Still, great racing until it gets ruined by false penalties. Maybe it's time to move to a different sim.
So there is nothing wrong with the Multiplayer, the situation shown at 19:10 has to be considered completely normal. It was only the third mass disconnect yesterday, but since there is nothing wrong it has to be a feature not a bug. A little advice from a paying customer to the producers. Go on releasing more and more content instead of fixing those non existing problems. For sure everyone is eager spending his money in order to race the impressive AI at Hottehüh or Smörebröd. Some slightly mad did the same, so let history repeat itself.
Thanks for reporting, I just took a look at the logs, it appears the server machine itself had an issue, do you know who hosted this dedi?
Would love to hear more about the machine, hosting provider, etc. Maybe they know if something went down on their side?
Kinda weird thing to say, if we applied that as a general rule, no software would be published, ever. #nobodysperfect
Ok, we will contact our dedi-hoster for the requested information. The described situation occured two times yesterday evening. And not all of the racers were kicked off the server, only half of the field. And in both situations different drivers were kicked off.