Lag Rider - Retrowave Lockdown

Driver registration for Super GT has been extended, so maybe some new drivers are coming in. A new tire and engine patch has been released. Some server side tweaks I suppose, after the preseason testing in Okayama. A bit of a waiting game now, so I arranged for a private test in Suzuka. 

I've made some tweaks myself, perhaps the most important of them is the change of cockpit view. When you race with a sim rig, the cockpit view is a crucial factor in the simulation of speed and level of immersion. It's whether you feel you are inside the car or just controlling it from a distance.

Here is my custom view. This is done by making some changes in cockpitinfo.ini file.

Here is the default view inside the Nissan GT-R with equivalent seat settings.

Another change I made are the car sounds; I use the default FormulaIS.sfx but with the brake hiss turned on. I fixed the distorted rear view display with a mirror.bmp file. I also submitted a livery to the league. That made me wonder, does the size of the texture file of your car affect your car's performance? I checked the league folders and saw that my car texture file was more than twice the size of the safety car texture file.

It is probably better to test at the preseason venue in Okayama. We have plenty of data from there to compare with the performance of the car now with the new patch. But testing in a different track could expose some unforeseen balance issues that would have otherwise remained hidden if you stayed in the same track doing the same lap all the time. Besides, I miss Suzuka. This track is one of the all-time greats.

Lag Rider - End Street

The outside world has gone crazy. Pesky humans scared of an invisible bug have imposed a degenerating lockdown. Both innocent and guilty, all must wash their hands and hide their face. An insidious new normal looms on the horizon. But for a while, at least the smoke cleared.

Meanwhile, lost in the wild country, crippled by dreams of racing glory, Alaster drives to the last. The voices attempt to name themselves... : Ambient : Automaton : Devices : Database : Elaborator : Contrarian : Litanist : Retcon : Brainfade (Who am I missing?)

So I go through the motions. I try to control my wanton dispassion. I tell myself that this token resistance is just the byproduct of a half-hearted desire to return to the oblivion. I need a conclusion.

starch your engines

At OEC 5 Hours of Le Mans, I started 17th out of 24 cars and finished 8th. I ran as high as 7th and was trying to keep the position in the final laps but a two driver team reeled me in and I had to give up the place. With that performance, I think I finish 2nd overall in the Season Championship standings. Unfortunately the standings have not been updated. I think I was the only driver to start and finish and score points in all the races of OEC Season 1. I got 3rd place in the Daytona 3 Hours and 2nd place in the Nurburgring 2 Hours.

I said I would take a break after OEC, but a new league opened up running Super GT and I just had to sample the cars of this All Japan series. So I ended up signing up for this 8 race series. Gonna run a Honda NSX which I painted in "Capeta White." The mod is a little rough, I had to use a default .sfx file, and I had to Google for a rearview mirror fix. Thankfully, there was a solution available; a small .bmp file placed in the correct folder. I put the file up on the league's message board. I hope the fix helps other drivers in the league.

I did my shakedown and preliminary testing in the Green Hell. I was able to find a good base setup and got 6:42 on the Tourist layout before I moved to the venue for the preseason test; Okayama International Circuit. The last time I ran here, it was way back 1998 I think, in Geoff Crammond's GP2. I checked out some video of GP2 at Aida on Youtube and found the track layout in the old school simulator to be quite similar to the current one we are running in rFactor. Kudos to a simulation that's almost 25 years old.

The Super GT Preseason test is this Sunday, and the season begins a week later. 14 drivers total have signed up, and as usual I expect a lot of drivers during the opening races. I have no idea what laptimes the other drivers are doing because there is no practice server open. I have been winning full distance test races against 100% strenght AI.