GT3 shenanigans

[Noodleguitar]

It took me 5 races but I finally managed to avoid getting taken out in the crazy wrecks of GT3 at Interlagos:

I was passed in the last few laps by the guy that finished 4th but nonetheless I was very happy with the result. That same guy is awaiting a protest from me too because he clearly attempted to crash someone else earlier in the race. I had nothing to do with that but I'd like to see penalties for these idiots that share the track with me.

My previous race started off quite nicely as well until after a few laps this happened:
[video=youtube;ZxsuReD5NWc]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZxsuReD5NWc[/video]
I know you rejoined the track with oncoming cars in your race as well Duke, but you clearly did not notice it, while this guy was obviously facing the incoming traffic, yet decided he couldn't give a shit. I watched it several times and I still find it ridiculous each time. Funny thing is he lost 1.11 safety rating that race .

And then later in that same race the guy got taken out again (you'd almost feel a bit sorry for him), then he rejoined again while me and some other guy were approaching. This time he barely missed me but spun right in front of me on the next corner leaving me nowhere to go, i.e., crash and spin number 2 of that race for me.

But anyway, come join GT3 all of you, nice racing there . I must add that I haven't seen it this bad in most races, but for the top split I'd expect better. It's definitely not a boring series.

 

[Wotan]

I have enough crashes and spins in the Skippy - most entertaining to watch, not so to participate in ...

 

[Kenadian]

That was certainly a very bad judgement call on his part, tough luck buds.

Personally, I love the racing in GT3 and will spend the bulk of my time there I think but it is a bit worrisome how careless some of the drivers are. It's like everyone suddenly gained 500hp and forgot the lessons learned in leveling up to a B-Class license in typically slower and looser cars.

This week is 90 minutes on the mountain and I'm contemplating whether or not to race it.

 

[Noodleguitar]

Yeah, the driving standard in GT3 are probably worse than in most other series. I think this is not really because of the cars but more because of the aggressive nature of many drivers here. Many people deviate too much from trying to win a race towards trying to make others not win a race.

But every series has crashes that you'll have to avoid or bad moves that you have to anticipate. I guess in GT3 they're a bit more frequent but if you can get around these things most of the time then there is good racing to be found as well. And again, this track was particularly nasty because of the sharp T1 and lots of divebomb opportunities.

It's only 70 minutes this week at Bathurst, so that's basically a few laps more than a Mazda race! The walls definitely fly by close and fast but the cars seem pretty stable if you don't push them with all you got. I bet if you can do the 70 minutes not quite on pace but safely that you can gain a lot of positions.

 

[Kenadian]

lol, basically a bit longer than a Mazda Race.

I wasn't born yesterday buds.

I've only ever driven the mountain in Mustang but my guess is the M4 will handle it much better. It's looking more and more like I'll compete in it this week but hopefully earlier in the week if possible.

 

[Noodleguitar]

I was on TV! Well... it was youtube but still a broadcast

I did 2 BSR league races yesterday at Bathurst with 25 minutes each. The second one had a big pile up at the start of the race in which I was involved. If you skip to 35:45 in the video below you can see what happened. After the replays I get interviewed.

This is basically what happens in a GT race when the green flag waves in a 25 min race and the leader doesn't touch his throttle. I looked for room to go and the guy behind me was already sticking his nose in, the result speaks for itself:

[video=youtube;AMhr6Mj5zlg]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMhr6Mj5zlg&feature=share&t=35m45s[/video]

The first race was pretty good though, even though somebody took me out in the last turn near the beginning of the race. I had a nice climb from 21st to 10th until I hit the wall near the end and fell back again due to damage.

25 Minutes was decent around Bathurst, it's very doable if you don't push it very hard. Even with 45 cars. 70 minutes is a different story, but I'm looking forward to trying maybe one tonight. I just don't know how the hell they're qualifying with 2:02:00's

 

[Kenadian]

I'm probably going to skip this week in Racing as I don't own Oulton and can't keep anywhere near pace at Bathurst. The best I've managed so far is a high 2:06 and that's not good enough to be competitive there.

There not even good 2:06's, there sloppy and on the edge of control with me scraping a wall 1 out of every 4 laps.

You really need consistent 2:04's to be on pace and I don't see myself getting there from here on that track.

70 minutes at Phillip Island would have been a better fit for me.

 

[Noodleguitar]

If you can run consistent 2:06's I don't think your pace will be bad, compared to splits around your iRating. Mid 2:04's is I think is what the top ~25% of drivers run during races. Throw in draft and you can peel off up to .50 to .60 on Conrad straight alone.

But Bathurst is more of a survival track rather than speed.

I did a race this evening and found it very enjoyable. The racing was much, much more cleaner than at Interlagos. It was fun battling with a McLaren for most of the laps. Those things are pretty slow over the mountain with full fuel but when it runs out they become pretty quick.

I lost 2 positions which I think was solely due to me hitting the wall on the Falken Elbow (because I was going too slowly ). Damaged my left front a bit; I think the car still had good speed but the steering was slightly off so I didn't trust it enough to keep handling me throwing it through the corners.

The second position that I lost was just plain stupidity, I thought I was doing the speed limit on the pit stop but I was not so I had to stop and hold for 16 seconds.

If you can manage some consistency around the track I would certainly recommend trying a race. At Bathurst you can shave off a lot of time by finding a slightly better line. Also, it's free safety rating no matter if you get incidents because of all the corners:
http://members.iracing.com/membersite/member/EventResult.do?&subsessionid=11049175&custid=141372

 

[Noodleguitar]

And if all goes bad, you can just throw in some sub 2:00 laps like this :

[video=youtube;ht4qoH3Ih_E]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ht4qoH3Ih_E[/video]

 

[Kenadian]

Ya I don't know yet, I've barely practiced this week at all so there is that as well. If I can't keep it in 2:06 clean with 2:05's as fuel burns off then I'll pass.

...this is a big ask anyway and not particularly realistic of a race for me to attempt my second GT3 race of all time.

In fact, I've made my decision just reading my thoughts back to me, I'm going to skip this race entirely.

I'm also a bit shaken from a confidence standpoint after this Global Challenge fiasco so I made a point of racing it again later that night as well as the Ruf Cup at Barber. Three races Sunday make me feel good about taking this week off from racing.

That being said however, I will turn some laps in the Caddy at Barber and see how I do. If I can be somewhat competitive there I may decide to race, we'll see.

I still have 2 more videos to edit and render for YouTube and one is a "Confidence" video for my Newbie Series I want to start. This requires a voice over track which I as of yet have still not recorded.

...

I've spent most of the past 2 nights editing the Fragtard Global Challenge race Wappy and I were in and since the video comprises of multi-views and about 90 minutes of 1080p footage (3 views scaled to suit purpose), it's taken the past 10 hours to render.

I actually started rendering this video last night at 10:30 PM and as of 6:30 this morning (when I left for work) the video still had 90 minutes remaining to render.

I think it takes a long time for my system to compress close to 300GB of data down to 2.5GB for a 30 minute YouTube Video.

I may have to re-think how I approach multi-view race broadcasting because this is way too long a process to be repeated regularly.

 

[Noodleguitar]

Fair enough, Bathurst isn't a track that you just do out of the blue with only a little practice, especially not with 70 minutes.

I had a very good second race, came in 3rd in the 1st of 2 splits. On average I think I was running around 2:04.3's without much draft. I had to really push it to keep the guy behind me off but after the pit stop I got a breather for the last 2 or 3 laps. He thought the speed limit started when the notification pops up instead of past the yellow cones .
Also managed to get +1.10 (!) safety rating with 2 incidents, I could probably do 3 races at GT3 Interlagos with that amount .

That is one long rendering time man :O. I find it odd that it becomes longer when you use more views. You combine them all in the editor and then render it as one right? My intuition says that the rendering time should depend only on the length of the video instead of how many feeds you throw together in a frame, but apparently I'm wrong. Maybe if you ask youtube nicely they'll let you upload 300G .
I've just bought a 2 TB external hard disk so I might dip into some recording from time to time. I can't do it real time though, my PC is too slow for that. What was that program that makes smaller videos than Fraps?

Looking forward to some videos anyway.

 

[Kenadian]

You can use DXTory, ShadowPlay, Action and possibly others; all will create smaller files than Fraps however everything still depends on your ingame video settings.

I use both DXTory and Fraps as DXTory has a horrible time with SLI, in fact it sux balls. It also takes forever to figure out how to get it to work properly with your system so expect a lot of trial and error to get the video output you like.

What I've found however is most of these programs do a horrible job of recording driving gameplay. You really notice a lot of hitching when you view beyond the car to the background (particularly trees, buildings and larger static objects). This is when I use Fraps however the files it creates are enormous at 1080p.

...

I also thought that render time would be much quicker however I think that it is what it is simply because of the size of the source files. Even if you shrink them down, it's still taking 3 or 4 really large files, syncing them, and compressing them down to H264 which is a rather hefty codec to render to.

In fact, you can purchase an H264 card for about $1000.00 US to speed up the process.

 

[Wapwap]

I was on TV! Well... it was youtube but still a broadcast

What a disaster race that was! 1 misjudgment of someone wanting to go advance too fast with such a catastrophic result for the rest of the field..

Pretty cool you were being interviewed at the end! Was this guy streaming the race or something?

 

[Noodleguitar]

It could have been a less massive incident though, because apparently the ones in the back kept their foot down until it was too late to brake for them, so cars just kept stacking up.

And yes, the BSR races are always broadcast on Youtube with 1 or 2 commentators. I think it's always nice to look at afterwards to see the race from a different perspective (you only know what's going on around you). Might be boring to watch the entire videos, but if you're interested there are 2 BSR GT sprint cup races every tuesday night that are streamed and placed on their channel afterwards.

 

[Noodleguitar]

I captured some highlights of my Bathurst week. I'm quite surprised of how few of these incidents happened, the GT3 crowd seems to behave themselves well during 70 minute races.

[video=youtube;P_BbZ5gYP6E]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_BbZ5gYP6E[/video]

 

[Noodleguitar]

I watched most of your VIR video Duke. What a bunch of idiots on the pace lap :O. Even for GT3 standards. Many of them seem to assume that whenever the guy in front of them gives a little more throttle, there must be a green light in the next second and "I must accelerate as hard as I can". Then when after a little while the guy has to brake again they'll go "pfff too much trouble, might as well shoot through the middle because if I do so everyone will move out of my way.

I'm pretty sure that these drivers make up the majority of the people that don't show up to endurance races.

Unfortunate incident with Thiery. He probably assumed that you would hold a tight line to the right because he was definitely not all the way to the left. Could have something to do with that solid line coming out of the unused pits. I can understand his frustration though, as he crashed badly and you were able to continue.

Mt. Panorama this week, woohoo! I really have to get used to it again. My best is a low 2:04 after about 1.5 hour but I'm struggling with the weather. I can't seem to brake properly for that hairpin-like corner going up the mountain, my car tends to oversteer badly. I'm having issues in the last two corners as well.

 

[Kenadian]

I watched most of your VIR video Duke. What a bunch of idiots on the pace lap :O. Even for GT3 standards. Many of them seem to assume that whenever the guy in front of them gives a little more throttle, there must be a green light in the next second and "I must accelerate as hard as I can". Then when after a little while the guy has to brake again they'll go "pfff too much trouble, might as well shoot through the middle because if I do so everyone will move out of my way.

I'm pretty sure that these drivers make up the majority of the people that don't show up to endurance races.

Unfortunate incident with Thiery. He probably assumed that you would hold a tight line to the right because he was definitely not all the way to the left. Could have something to do with that solid line coming out of the unused pits. I can understand his frustration though, as he crashed badly and you were able to continue.

It was utterly ridiculous but a good experience for me nonetheless.

I know why I crashed on the Pace Lap though, the guy behind me pretty much drove right through me, just nothing I could do to avoid that incident. I think he was the same @ssclown that ended up trying to get back on the track through the snake and ended up causing even more carnage behind me which Matt Malone was privy to.

The Thierry incident sucked because he was passing me as I was reaching to my keyboard to mute chat. He was just at the wrong place at the wrong time and got wrecked out.

That one was my fault however I passed him clean in Turn 1 and his attempted pass to the outside after the straight was just plain silly and should never have been attempted.

I reviewed the replay of our crash numerous times from many angles and it just did not look good at all. Honestly, if I were in his shoes there I would have questioned whether or not it was a deliberate Pit maneuver on my part.

Having said that, looking at it from his angle, he also veered toward my line while I veered into his. Between the two of us it was much more my fault than his but we both could have avoided it.

The thing that gets me the most is my Spotter wasn't chirping about the car right as he should have been. If I'd have heard that I'd have paid more attention rather than looking at my keyboard but he was oddly silent.

Mt. Panorama this week, woohoo! I really have to get used to it again. My best is a low 2:04 after about 1.5 hour but I'm struggling with the weather. I can't seem to brake properly for that hairpin-like corner going up the mountain, my car tends to oversteer badly. I'm having issues in the last two corners as well.

2:04 wow, I can't get under mid 2:06 :icon_eek:

I love the layout of Mount Panorama but I really hate the racing surface. I don't know if its the weather or what but it reminds me so much of Okayama this week with how slick the pavement seems to be.

If I can't hit 2:05's tonight I'll pass on the week and look maybe at Global Challenge as it's at Road Atlanta this week.

I really need a few clean and confident races as I've wrecked out of 2 of my last 5 while driving with moderate to severe damage in the other 2.

...only one race ran clean and that was at Spa where I took a Top 5.

 

[ElektroVodka]

You @sshats, i caught myself looking at steering wheels after these vid's

 

[Noodleguitar]

I love the layout of Mount Panorama but I really hate the racing surface. I don't know if its the weather or what but it reminds me so much of Okayama this week with how slick the pavement seems to be.

To me it feels like the front tires have loads of grip and the back tires don't have any. If I go anywhere near the throttle after that hairpin (turn 4 I think) the tires will do nothing but make noise.

Maybe it's because of the update at the start of the season. I don't think I've driven the BMW around here after the changes.

If I can't hit 2:05's tonight I'll pass on the week and look maybe at Global Challenge as it's at Road Atlanta this week.

It's easy to shave off large chunks of time at Mount Panorama. Just drive like a maniac and pretend the walls don't exist. You will probably crash but before doing that there's a good chance you have realized that you could be more aggressive in a certain section without losing control. And I'm also cheating by running 25 L of fuel

You @sshats, i caught myself looking at steering wheels after these vid's

Then our duty here is done