Hi, I am just getting into the Raceroom and Steam, sorry if this question has already been answered before. Is it possible to play the game while offline or as a standalone? and how can I disable automatic updates in Steam? Sometimes I don't want to update straight away.
I am also a bit confused why bring updates live taking so long and everyone is unable to play game during that time. I probably dont know any other game which is unable to play for several hours due to update. Do you consider to improve this somehow to make downtime way shorter in future? (or no downtime at all)
Like already mentioned A LOT OF TIMES BEFORE, due to copy protection and anti-cheating, not all files necessary to play the game are on your harddrive. Thus using the software during a downtime is not possible. This is how the architecture is built and this is not going to change anytime soon, if ever.
Well, on of the best exemple i've got for you, because i have played this game for severall years it's World Of Warcraft. Yes it's an MMO but that also mean is Online, And update or maintenance can take forever. Iracing also got a big downtome when they do an maintenance/update. Not really rare in the video game industy, so i'm, personally, not surprised by long downtime. Even if i'm the first one who hope the game going back live as fast as possible ^^.
You can disable automatic updates in the properties menu of the game in steam. This is not recommended however, because the game will not work correctly or not at all if it isn't up-to-date. If you have to do this because of bandwidth limitations or some other reason, always make sure to update the game before launching it the next time.
Thanks for your feedback. I support anti-cheating 100% but surely there must be a way of having the game played offline. The reason why I would like to disable updates is mainly due to avoiding new bugs until fixed or patched. For instance, the latest update is causing an issue with the FFB when I pause the game. This issue has already been noted and hopefully resolved soon. Also, had to reinstall the game due to some server error 20004 or something? Anyway, Thanks
This error comes from the games content not being up to date. And again: I'm not kidding when I say that the architecture of the game as it is now will never allow offline play. This architecture is there for a reason and this issue has been discussed to death already here in this very forum. It will not change. So you can either live with it or not use RaceRoom. And I'm not trying to be rude or something, I'm only stating facts that have been discussed long ago already.
In addition to what Arthur said, or better as a clarification, the game in its current state cannot be played without an active connection to Raceroom's servers because there are several crucial files that are not being stored on the client side but only aquired once you start a session. And, as stated before, the main reason for this m.o. is cheat protection. Disabling updates and trying to run a version that doesn't match the one on the servers causes serious problems (because those crucial files won't match), so for the game to work as it's intended to, there is no other way but having and keeping it up-to-date.
I have no problem with having to always been online to play but are these files the reason the game take sooooo looong to load a track? I have the game on a ssd drive and an 8700k but it still takes ages to load a race, is that because it’s downloading these files?
Depends on what you define as sooooo looong... In theory I guess that process can influence the loading times, but the files that are being transmitted aren't that big, so if you have a connection that's good enough for stable mp racing, I don't think there should be a significant impact. Of course loading times also depend on the track and car roster size, smaller tracks (in terms of file size) load faster than big ones, but in general I don't think it takes overly long to load into a session on my end, and that's with an HDD. And always be aware that after changing some graphics settings the game will take significantly longer to load because it has to re-build shaders etc. That should only happen once after changing those settings tho, the next time you load into a session that shouldn't be the case anymore.
If you go to raceroomstore and click hardware - games there is a few options for some 2014 DTM and ADAC class cars which state that it has offline modes.
Thanks for replying Christian I did some test this evening so we can get a direct comparison GT3 Class (33 Cars + mine) HUNGARORING- Loading this track took 2 minutes 28 seconds HOCKENHEIMRING - Loading this track took 2 minutes 24 seconds IMOLA- Loading this track took 2 minutes 32 seconds My computer is i7 8700K MSI GTX 1080 ti R3E and Windows 10 are loaded on my Samsung 850 SSD Drive Triple Screen running at 5760 x 1080 resolution Game graphics have everything maxed out except 4x AA So does a loading time of 2:30 sound right or do I have a problem somewhere?
This seems too long to load a track for me. I'm not at home, so can't check it on my gaming rig, but I have RR installed on my laptop. I just tried to load a training session with 33 GT3 opponents on Imola and it took 1:11 minutes. Of course no triples on my laptop and graphic settings quite low, but this laptop can barely run RR...
Something's off, or at least it sounds like it. I did the same test (same parameters) and got this: Hungaroring: 1:55 Hockenheim: 1:42 Imola: 1:38 And that's on a bog-standard SATA drive. So if you're getting slower loading on a SSD, something else is going on. Having said that though, something like the GT3s will always take longer than single-make classes. Presumably because the game has to load so many different models.
Hi Matt, So I maxed all graphics settings to an unplayable level (on my rig, see signature) just for the heck of it. Only thing I can't replicate is running a higher than 1080p resolution, but I can't see that having a huge impact on loading times. I guess you won't like this, but here's my results (rounded up, started stop watch the moment I hit the "go race" button and stopped as soon as I saw the garage menu) when loading into a practice session, 33 AI, 34 cars visible: Imola - 1:06 Hockenheim - 1:03 Hungaro - 0:59 There has to be sth holding your game back when it comes to loading times. I can only speculate what that might be, but again I can't really imagine that those files, which are just a few hundred kBs for all I know, could have that much of an impact that downloading them more than doubles the loading times. I'll talk to J-F about this, maybe they have an idea.
mmm thats frustrating Hopefully J-F has some advise Thanks for checking BTW my internet speed is around 10 mbps
@MattStone Could you provide a log file of a session where it took that long to load? If you do, please make sure to not change any graphics before loading into the session. Ideally you would start a session with whatever settings you have, quit that session and then start the exact same session again. After having done that go to ...Documents\My Games\SimBin\RaceRoom Racing Experience\UserData\Log and fidn the latest Game_xxxxxx.log and MWTransport_xxxxx.log file and attach them here.
Hi Christian Thank you for you offer to help I reinstalled my operating system over the weekend which saw some improvements to the loading times This evening I loaded Hungaroring with 31 GT3 cars The load time was 2:05 which was about 30 seconds faster then my normal. I'm not sure if that's is what I should be getting so your advise will be appreciated My computer is i7 8700K MSI GTX 1080 ti R3E and Windows 10 are loaded on my Samsung 850 SSD Drive Triple Screen running at 5760 x 1080 resolution using Surround. Game graphics have everything maxed out except 4x AA and the motion blur on high only Please find the files your requested attached (I did as suggested and loaded the track twice) Thanks for you help
Hi Matt, thanks for taking the time to write this info down and also for gathering the log files. I will forward them to a programmer and maybe they can at least identify what's causing those loading times. For the time being I'm afraid I can't offer any advice on how to improve those times immediately. At this point I'm not dismissing your idea that it might be connected to the downloading of those files. It would fall in line with my results from above, because I'm sitting more or less right next to where RR's servers are in Germany and I have a decent line. Just, as I said above, considering the relatively small file size I wouldn't expect that to make a big difference, but I might just underestimate that. What you could try if you ever happen to have some time on your hand would be loading into sessions at unusual times. If you're mainly racing during your local evening hours (where I also suspect internet usage is highest in your region, just like it is everywhere else during evening hours) you could test how it works in the morning or midday. If it was indeed linked to those dowloads, I would expect some variance depending on the general internet load around you.