Matty300

Well done to Corny & Mav, some eye-catching drives around a tight little circuit. An enjoyable evening I thought with some hard, fair racing which made for a pleasant meeting. Refreshing to be rewarded for practice put in & shaving tenths off lap times & not be followed in for a change.Only negative for me were post race comments which implied that working as a team would have paid dividends & improved placings. Eh? I race for myself & make no apologies for getting involved in battles that may let a leader open up an unassailable lead. The idea of team racing is best left to bangers in my opinion, & we have seen in recent weeks that people don't like banger racing in the F1 mod.

Congratulations Dan, an excellent drive & a deserved gold. From a personal viewpoint I thought racing from amongst the blues was tough, dont think i made it round a lap without being "sent in" or spun on the bends.! Summed up best for me by getting a broken suspension 2 secs after GO! was called in the middle of the back straight & finishing 6th in the consi semi after a pointless hit to fence me. I thought i was on the pace after consistent 12.8's in practice, but hadnt bargained on the brutality being dished out by some. Driving standards were very very poor all night, the rollers were garbage too in my heats. Whether it was tensions running high with it being a WF or not I dont know, but with people being loaded & flak flying in chat about why someone ruined someone elses race etc.etc. it was a shame to see on what should be the best night of the season, & hefty bans need to get the point across. On a more positive note it was good to see Big Al back in the points after a great drive in the final, & samwit taking the chequered too.

Change of Chassis Dan please on Tar & a slightly tweaked FWJ shale after grade change. Thanks 300wainSskins.zip 300smiT.zip

Nice work Dan, well done m8

Well done to Mav for some consistent drives, hope that reinvigorates your enthusiasm for the big league!

try looking here m8, i find this a really useful guide steam hardware surveyto what PC gamers average spec is at the moment, bear in mind that rFactor with all the graphics settings set at low is fairly low demanding, and you shouldnt need too much in the way of a graphics card & or processor

Personally I think that any tweaking to the car physics and damage modelling can only be of benefit in making the mod more realistic. Massive hits without consequence to those dishing it out does seem somewhat unrealistic, im not aware of the NZ mod having never tried it, but im assuming that self inflicted damage from an over zealous hit on another driver's rear bumper is a consideration worth taking. Lets try and make this topic constructive & not resort to cheap shots at individuals, too often topics worth discussing on here become too political, the issue isn't so much the decline in driving standards, more how to make the mod more realistic & the decision making on the part of the driver have consequences.I agree with Mav that being aggressive & "bullying" pays dividends currently, you can either take the hits and remain a low grader, or copy those who use the bumper & reap the rewards. The last two Coventrys I raced I got 4 points & 12 points through being "bullied" by the blues & reds barging past. Tonight I put the bumper in & got 38 points, so what does that tell me? Draw your own conclusions. Im inclined to think that you make your own luck Mav & maybe a change of tactics is required. It may not win you any friends, but nothing beats getting points on the board & moving up the roof colours. I agree with Corny & feel that the discipline in the F1 racing at the moment is at an all time high, there will always be exceptions & drivers with agendas, but as long as admin continues to do its job fairly & consistently then we are going in the right direction.

Now for the next frustrating installment in my quest for an acceptable framerate in the F1 mod! Ive bought an nVidia GTX 295 (second hand off eBay) to replace the 8800GT i was struggling with (see earlier posts).For those not familiar with this beast of a card it is essentially 2 cards strapped together & by all accounts should make rFactor fly with all the graphics settings set to max. Ahem. I installed the card, when i boot up my PC i hear a series of beeps, my monitor stays blank & a red LED on the back of the GTX 295 comes on nextt to the DVI -D connector for the monitor. The card itself has two connecting slots for the power cable, an 8 pin & a 6 pin. My power supply unit is a Jeantech 700W 12v rail type & so should have plenty of juice to power the GTX 295. I have the six pin connector in the card at present as I dont have an 8 pin block to the PSU. After several fruitless attempts to get the card working I replaced the old 8800GT & my PC then boots into windows as usual with no issues. Any ideas? I was wondering if 1) The GTX 295 has been fried due to overclocking 2) The GTX 295 is a DX 10 only card (I use DX 9 & Windows XP as I cant install windows Vista or Win 7) 3) Its a driver issue. I have the latest nVidia drivers installed v301.42. Should I do a clean uninstall of the drivers before inserting the GTX 295 into the PCI slot on the mainboard? 4) The card is such a power hungry beast that both the 6 & 8 pin connector should be in, & can you get 6 to 8 pin converters? Any suggestions welcome please

thanks nezza i'll give that I try. Thankyou to everybodys suggestions, appreciate them.

number of cars seems to make no difference with my rig, just as many cars were in the A final at KL on the night as in the world semi. I've tried running a race weekend with 30 cars per race & no slow down whatsoever.

Been doing some digging around the graphics cards forums & apparently updating nVidia Geforce cards to more recent drivers can lead to flaky performance in rFactor. I always tend to use latest certified (& beta) drivers to squeeze maximum performance out of my aging geforce 8800 GT, but apparently beyond revision 197.45 the card causes stuttering & slowdown in rFactor, something the devs who make the game officially aknowledged. Ive never experienced slowdown to this extent before, despite me updating drivers regularly since i installed the card, but i'll revert back to 197.45 just to see if there if it improves things.Bloody computers!

Thanks for the replies fellas, im pretty sure its not a graphics card temperature issue for me though as my heats & A final & GN were all fine. My PC didn't shut down or any weird graphical glitches or screen tearing occurred as can be the case when graphics cards run too hot, it was more a general SLOOOWWWW down, i.e. car steering became unresponsive, all cars around me were moving frame by frame, probably single figure FPS, the clouds in sky & track side scenery became jerky, however after about 3 laps normal service resumed, obviously by then my race was pretty much run.

Thought it was down to my graphics card running too hot, but below 100 degrees centigrade so not that. Just my luck to happen on a world semi roller!

Ok got a frustrating issue running the F1 mod with my set-up. Last night at the Semi final at Kings Lynn my heats go fine (with 15 cars) then comes to the Semi with 20 cars & as go is called my framerate dropped alarmingly, was barely playable, jerky, delayed response from moving my G25 wheel, other cars moving in short spasms. Back to the meeting A Final with 22 cars no problems at all though! My PC specs: Operating System MS Windows XP Home 32-bit SP3 CPU AMD Athlon 64 FX-62 41 °C Windsor 90nm Technology RAM 4.0GB Single-Channel DDR2 @ 311MHz (5-6-5-15) Graphics Samsung SyncMaster Monitor @ 1280x1024 (v-sync off) Graphics card512MB GeForce 8800 GT (XFX Pine Group) @ 61 °C Can it be down to the rolling closed grid start & having to display more cars at once? In rFactor in-game settings I have all settings set to medium, bi-linear, max. cars shown 30, anti-aliasing off, shader level to quality DX9 & pretty much everything set to mid - range so not making too many demands on graphics card & processor. My graphics are set to 1024 x 768 32 Bit. Surely my PC specs can handle this? For instance my PC can run Dirt 3, Max Payne 3, Skyrim etc. at acceptable framerates at medium settings. I have the latest drivers installed for the nVidia geforce card. Could it have been a server or internet connection? The replay from the server as seen from my cab shows no issues & a smooth framerate. Weird that rest of races were fine with no issues, & internet connection seemed rock solid all night. Really annoyed that this happened on roller of a WF semi & would like to resolve it! Any ideas or suggestions gratefully accepted. Cheers

Surely you want to make shootout spike this year eh? you are handily placed m8

Video card :Geforce 7900 GT or Radeon X1900 GT - 256 MB video RAM Processor : Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 processor Ram: 2048 MB The minimum settings in the game arent too demanding, try the rfactor demo first & have a tinker about

Matty 300

yeah thats the one southy, cheers for that

Does anybody have the Grand National 1 replay file they could post on here please? The one from the server link seems broken. Thanks, Matty

It was Lars 52 Aza with the third one he posted in this thread.

Congratulations Dan, a great drive in the final. Felt like I was going backwards when you went by, couldn't believe I was a lap down after such a short while, I thought I was keeping up with the pace quite well too !

well done al. dont let it go to your head mate. You were away in the GN & 3rd was a superb result, great stuff

Still a week to go before winner announced at the Kings Lynn meeting guys........

Im not really certain but irrespective of which chassis you opt for the default setup should be the same & work equally well? Can anyone clarify this? I always assumed that we were all starting from a blank template, where theoretically at least you should get the same times with any chassis & it is driving technique & ability that makes for quicker laptimes?