App Offical release of Crew chief version 4 - auto updating and shiny

Thanks for the beer Jozsef. You guys rock

 

The pleasure is mine m8, what you do is really no1.

 

Quite a big update today with lots and lots of little bug fixes, some resource leaks plugged, and some logic tweaks to the tyre status event. I've also made the events aware of when you're pitting so you don't get moaned at for being slow on the in or out lap. And I've fixed some of the annoying bugs (like missing pit window warnings and stuff). The exception handling is a bit better too.

No new sound pack needed for this version.

More details on the first page, as always

 

Gotta catch up, but busy atm.

Good work, from the sound of it.

 

Yep - going to give this version a right good going over in the next couple of days. Sounds very good indeed.

 

Just wanted to say a thank you to the creators, implementors, and testers behind this app. It not only makes R3E even more immersive, but also helps for cleaner racing with the use of a spotter. I really, really hope more multiplayer racers use this so we can all try and avoid those 1st corner crunches.
HUGE thumbs up!

 

Glad you're enjoying it

I've just made another very minor update. This removes lots of unnecessary debug message logging and fixes the positioning of 'pearls of wisdom'. They were nearly always played before the associated event (e.g. "keep focused...", "you're in 9th"). It's now just as likely that they'll be after the event (e.g. "you're in 9th", "keep focused..."). Sounds more natural

No other updates and no new sound pack

 

Hi

It seems that spotter is not enabled in practice and Quali session.
Didn't find any option for that in the GUI... Is there a way to enable it ?

 

Nah, the time deltas I'm using for the spotter aren't set in qual or practice. The data simply isn't in the shared memory block

 

oh .. I didn't thought about this but it make sens.

 

Just uploaded version 2.3 - this needs a new sound pack.

The main changes here are better end of session detection (it's quite a messy job), some new messages (session end and race start events I think), lots of fixes, and some options for disabling particular events / message types.

I've *really* struggled to find time to test all this. The race end stuff is particularly awkward because you have to actually finish races to test it, and as it behaves differently on- and off- line, and behaves differently depending on whether you win, finish in the allotted race end time, quit, restart, etc etc, it's a lot of combinations. I think it works but apologize it if doesn't

As always please give me a shout if there are any issues

 

I can't play R3E without it!
I raced with the previous 2.2? and didn't notice to many issues.

Some points though, but maybe its fixed or changed in 2.3.

When hotlapping it works fine, but get a message that I am on pole, which is not the case, or I don't get any times when crossing the finish.
It would be nice to just give the times, tell its the fastest or how many secs slower and cut the track.

When cutting the track it says that the lap will be deleted.
A better phrase would be "the laptime will be invalidated", deleted is a bit strange.

 

Agree to this

On more point: the delta timing messages or not aware of the real position and possible overtake.
I often get a message saying "the gap in front is increasing" or "The guys behing is closing the gap" .. after there was some overtake (I overtake the guy in front, or I made a mistake a lost multiples places)

I think it would be great to check the position and only give this kind of message is the position is not changed.

 

when you say "hotlapping", is that a session with no other cars? I've never considered that - I guess it should check the number of cars in the session (easy to add). Perhaps I should add some specific logic here for sessions with only 1 car and report different stuff

The "deleted" thing... I'll add some alternatives so you'll hear it less often, but I think it is a reasonable phrase to use

 

le_poilu - that's a bug. It should check the position is unchanged before allowing the gap messages

Thanks for the feedback chaps

 

Ok

I definitly had it twice yesterday. Strange thing is that I mostly had this messages at this moments. But I think it's because rest of the time gap was pretty stable.

 

the issue is that the clip isn't being checked just before it's played. The gap is checked, and the message for, say, "gap's decreasing" gets queued only if you've been racing the same car for a few sectors (3 I think). The issue here is that the message might not get played for a few seconds after it's been queued. The app needs to check you're still racing the same car just before playing the message. Fortunately this is very easy to do. I'll add the alternative 'lap deleted' messages, and this bug fix, and the special case stuff for sessions with only 1 car

 

Hotlapping is basically the competitions, no cars.
According to http://www.simracing-tools.de/simtools/data/uploads/images/dashboard_compatibility_matrix.png the API does have a variable called session for time attack etc. Then you could make session related messages.
Since I turned off the hud completely its a nice thing to have.

 

Unfortunately it's not that easy. When you're doing competitions or leaderboard stuff, the session type set by R3E is "qualifying". The number of cars starts out at 1 and then goes to 2 once you have a lap recorded for that car / track combo.

This makes it impossible to tell the difference between a proper qualifying session with only 2 drivers, and a hot lap session. Because hot lap session are probably more common than almost empty qual sessions, I've made it so the crew chief switches to 'hot lap' mode if the session type is qual and the number of cars is 2 or less. Not ideal, but the hot lap messages will still make sense for qual sessions (but will be missing some info).

I can't say the laptime then "that lap was invalid because you went outside track limits". As soon as you go outside track limits the laptime is removed from the data block. So I have to give the invalidated lap message at the point where you go out of track limits, and then say nothing when you cross the line. I don't think there's any alternative here.

Anyway, I've added these changes and changed the track limits / invalid lap warnings. I'll package this version (2.4) up later on this evening

 

Thanks for the insight, its a bit weird R3E uses qualifying for time attacks mode, maybe they can change it.

Anyway great work I will try 2.4 out once its released.