Massive stuttering as drivers finish a race

[F1Fan07]

Does anyone know what causes this and/or how to resolve it?

In my league this is a random thing that comes and goes. We have one guy that used to get bad stuttering when he was still finisging a lap while drivers taking the chequered flag would do a celebratory pile-up in T1.

I got it last night as drivers were finishing and I had a couple of minor stutters then a 1 second screen freeze (luckily on a straight with no cars around me). However, this is rare for me.

 

[Mangoletsi]

It's because rFactor is modelling/animating the crash damage of the cars.

 

[F1Fan07]

It's because rFactor is modelling/animating the crash damage of the cars.

Even though that's off-screen, eh? That was my initial suspicion as well so we instituted a no post-race crash rule as a result. It still happens from time-to-time as people get excited and forget the rule.

What's strange is when we do a race restart for a first lap incident we usually have a massive pile-up when the admin says "restart" over TeamSpeak (yeah... we're like children sometimes) the stuttering doesn't happen as bad.

My theory is that post-race collision modelling combined with the sim writing out end-of-race data is overloading something.

 

[dandar]

As a fully dedicated server admin on the last year ... the only times I've seen an incredible stuttering increase near the end of the race was because one of the pilots was activating some cheat, since those apps write the values in memory the rfactor engine must spread the new values across the network to keep things in sync, notably increasing the load and lag over a session.
I'm not telling you that this is your case, but take it into consideration in your analisys.
We find this doing some "off schedule" races over the week selecting small groups of pilots in order to determine who was not playing fair. Anyway in rf1 was more easy to find those guys because we've used a motec plugin in a post-race analisys.
In the other hand the same issue do manifest when a pilot was having a very high ping (300ms or more), but in these cases the stuttering was consistent for the entire race and not just a chunk.

 

[Mangoletsi]

Even though that's off-screen, eh? That was my initial suspicion as well so we instituted a no post-race crash rule as a result. It still happens from time-to-time as people get excited and forget the rule.

What's strange is when we do a race restart for a first lap incident we usually have a massive pile-up when the admin says "restart" over TeamSpeak (yeah... we're like children sometimes) the stuttering doesn't happen as bad.

My theory is that post-race collision modelling combined with the sim writing out end-of-race data is overloading something.

Yes, even though it's off screen. it's got to work out where all the debris is left afterwards.

The closing/impact speeds are significantly higher then your restart crashes. On your restart crashes, all the cars are travelling at similar speeds (maybe 30-50kph difference). At the end of a race, usually the guys stop after they cross the finish line. The person crashing into them is usually doing 250-300kph causing a huge amount of damage.

 

[Denstjiro]

But that's not all cars doing the same on one spot, its usually the front runners, they crash and exit, then the new batch of slower drivers come in to crash into eachother, etc. not all car at the same time.

If its the server not able to keep up then surely the starts (entire grid on one spot) would also cause problems? Or heavy fps tracks?
You have issues like these as well?

We run a good server with our league and have also faced some load-issues through the years, but never on end-race-crashes/donuts. sounds weird to me tbh.


If its server overload then it would mean all drivers suffer. but it seems only some do? that would indicate its more a client-issue then a server issue. in that case those individuals could look into shortening their draw-distance etc.

On the other hand, if its ok after a restart, it does seem like a server issue. as if it has issues keeping up and a restart settles things down. you see this often with replays as well, the first run can be laggy etc. but rewind/reload and its fine all of a sudden.
But for a server this would mean it already has other issues. running on its limits so you would see this elsewhere as well?

Do you have many drivers regurarly leaving/returning the server before qualifying and race?
If so then Dandar's post might be a clue.

 

[F1Fan07]

If its the server not able to keep up then surely the starts (entire grid on one spot) would also cause problems? Or heavy fps tracks?
You have issues like these as well?

Just at race end and we don't have a lot of people joining/leaving. I noticed the other night that my anti-virus wasn't set to exclude the rF folder from real-time scanning so I'm trying that now as a possible solution. I'll know next Wednesday when we run the next league event if it makes a difference.