Pit to car radio app available - work in progress

I think this would be great!
I only need to know when cars coming up beside me that have been behind, and that I have missed that they are going for an overtake, or if they are in a blind spot.
The cars I'm overtaking I am well aware off.

 

i'll look into that - need to do some fiddling as it's a bit more complex than it initially looked. I'll probably release it 'properly' without that (tomorrow, if it all works) then look to add this option later

 

Seeing a few minor issues with this at the moment, and some weird data in the shared memory (suddenly the time delta changes to a very small value, then changes back again). I'll have a think about how I can cope with this 'noise', as there are sometimes false positives ("hold your line" when you're clearly not next to someone).

 

Good morning, I personally think it's totally ok if I overtake a car and me the scoffers now says car next to you.

 

@mr_belowski Would you have written notes of your speech ? It would be nice to be much easier to translate.

 

Mr_Belowski: only two words: THANK YOU!

 

I do intend to add some written notes. I think a 'notes.txt' in some of the sounds sub folders, when those particular messages need a bit of explanation and / or transcribing.

 

righty, version 1.9.1 is now 'official'. This includes the spotter. I've added an option to enable it only for cars approaching from behind but this is untested - spotter_only_when_being_passed is the option for that.

There are still some weird things with the spotter which I'm trying to get to the bottom of - it sometimes calls "clear" when you're not, then immediately after calls "hold your line". I think I've got a bug here but sometimes the data in the shared block are a bit weird. Will look into it later.

I've also fixed the pit window message timing and fuel usage stuff. Along with a shitload of other things.

 

Thanks mr_belowski. This adds so much to the game.

 

@mr_belowski great work yet again!

However (and keep in mind this is for the temporary version of the spotter that you released yesterday, before 1.9.1), with me the spotter seems to take a considerable toll on resources. Yesterday I was starting a race at Monza (full grid, GTR2), and my FPS rate dropped to the mid 40s at times. I'm very aware that I have a very limited rig, mind you. I've tried changing the flag to false, but while I did not get the spotter messages, the fps rate remained low. I then changed back to version 1.8.5 and everything went back to normal. So I assume the flag only bypasses the playing of the actual messages, not the calculations behind it? It would be great if it could bypass that whole chunk of code though, as I would like to keep your app as updated as possible. It's a great addition to R3E and I can't imagine not having it anymore.

That being said, I realise this is more of a niche concern, but I thought you should be aware of it. Once again, many thanks for all your work!

 

I understand this correctly now I get no message when I overtake a car and it's next to me or in the blind spot? That would be a shame because I will play with only one monitor.

 

No Exxon, that is only an option. By default it spots for cars you're passing as well as cars passing you.

Regarding resource use, I rewrote the queue listener to allow queued messages to be interrupted by spotter calls. The app isn't supposed to have a big CPU overhead so I'll look into this as soon as I can. It might be a bug or a simple fix

 

I had a few runs tonight and the main point i would like to make is during qually we don't need to know exactly how fast we are compared to the "pace". how about just use "you half a second off the pace", "you are two seconds off the pace", "just a couple hundredths off the pace". I also noticed that when i set the fastest lap it said "you are 0.0 seconds off the pace", "you currently have the fastest lap but keep pushing" would be more appropriate.

 

The 0.0 gap is a bug, I'll fix it. Ta for the other feedback

 

I hope you don't mind me spamming ideas at you cause if you let me i will (I wont take offence if you tell me thier bad i just like to speak my mind(gets me into trouble sometimes)).
ill leave you alone for the night with one last suggestion; with the spotter app perhaps add a de-bounce period (and a editable setting?) before the, "hold your line"message is said, this will stop the occasions when you shoot past a car real quick or are really close behind the car but may make the message pointless if it is too high. just a thought (love the app by the way).

 

It does already try to do that. If the closing speed is high it won't give you a hold your line message. Delaying the hold your line message until you've been along side for a short time is something I considered - I already do the same thing before saying 'clear'. I was reluctant to do this because I wanted the 'hold your line' message to be played without delay.

Also if the closing speed is > 10 metres per second no message is played. At least, that's how its supposed to work...

Keep the feedback coming

 

I've had a look through the code to see if there are any obvious performance screw-ups and I've not found anything yet . 1.9 *is* doing more stuff than 1.8 as it needs to allow a stack of messages to be interrupted by a spotter event, then resume playing whatever is left in the stack when the spotter reports 'all clear'. 1.9.1 does disable the spotter event entirely if the flag is set, so any performance issues aren't down to the code in this event, they're down to the changes in the core of the app.

As far as I can see it shouldn't be too big an impact but clearly I'm missing something. To help those having performance issues with 1.9.x I've added another option in the CrewChief.exe.config file - "disable_immediate_messages". This is set to false by default and if / when I figure out why 1.9 is too resource hungry I'll remove it. In the mean time if you set this to true it makes the app the older version of the queue loop / logic. This means that any spotter messages are ignored, and the two other messages which are 'immediate' ("green green green" and "get ready") also won't play. So you'll lose the spotter and those 2 messages at the race start, but the app *should* perform close to how it did in 1.8.x.

I've made a couple of other changes to address the spotter 'bounce' issue - the spotter will now only tell you there's a car along side if there's been an overlap for 2 consecutive state updates.

I've got to test all this now...

 

@mr_belowski, you Sir, deserve the highest of praises! Honestly, I don't think we can thank you enough for all your hard work.

Thanks for taking the time to address my issue, but if it really proves impossible to find any culprits, don't worry about it. It might well be too much rig specific (nobody else complained about performance I think) and it might not be worth the trouble.

I'll give the newest version a go later today and I'll report back on any differences tomorrow.

(BTW, is there any way I could buy you a virtual pint? I really wanted to say thanks for all your troubles)

 

I have no problems with the new version, and no performance problems.

 

I'm uploading 1.9.2 now - it'll be a couple of minutes and I'll update the changelog on the first post in this thread.

I've still not been able to stop all the spotter 'bouncing'. I'll keep fiddling but it should be better than the last version.

If anyone really is desperate to buy me a virtual pint I do have a paypal account - jim.britton@yahoo.co.uk. Any 'paypay gifts' will be gratefully received and converted to beer, but are entirely unnecessary