Progressive system penalty

Yeah, we need something that is easy to maintain as well (read: no maintaince)

I got no idea of coding.
Is it somehow possible to get this info out somewhere:
"All the points/places where cars are going slower / starts to brake AND/OR driver's wheel are turning more than eg. 40 degrees" ?

 

reference line could be the AI line.

But I think a reference time is the better solution, driven by (a virtual) AI.
This reference time could be calculated at loading time (hopefully doesn't take too long to calculate). Any random errors etc need to be eliminated so the same time is reproducible every time on every machine.
Then we have the problem of changing surface grip. I think we should just use 100% surface grip for the AI, it doesn't need to be that accurate.
I think if leaving the track by mistake it's fine if you aren't allowed to not lose any time.
In my suggestion

I even added some threshold time to the reference. And in any way, if you really left the track by mistake you would only need to give a small amount of time back, just a short lift most of the time.

If necessary you could probably find a cheap approximation formula how to determine the reference time for a given surface grip based on 100% grip though.

 

using the ai line/ctrl+I racing line as a reference seems like a good idea for detecting cuts, using distance from the line seems like it would be easier to work with than time based solutions, but a good time gained solution would obviously be preferable, i can imagine a distance from racing line system resulting in getting penalised for going off on a track like nordschleife where it must be impossible to gain any advantage by going off track, so any penalty would be nuts (but still probably better than the 5 second one at the moment)

 

Penalty determination based on lap times is flawed. Why is this the case? Well, consider a situation where someone has spun off the track. That loss of time might encourage them to cut a later section of track (in an attempt to minimise the damage), but the lap time will still be slower than a "normal" one, so no penalty will be applied.

 

not if you treat those events separately. So of course just the lap time won't work, but having a reference time for every position on the track will do.

 

"If" is the important word here, so far we don't, Stefano needs to implement it first, and this might be the most tricky part.

 

I have created a concept app a few months ago that works very similar to your idea: compare deltas and give back the advantage within a few seconds. I included the app in this post again, for if you or someone else want to try or edit it.

The difficult part is, as you said, acquiring a good reference lap (a reasonable laptime without any cuts or spins). An AI lap during loading seems most feasible, because it could generate lap data even on tracks you've never driven before.
In my app though, the reference lap is recorded by the app itself, so it doesn't work until you set a laptime without any cuts. After that it works pretty fine.

This is what it looks like after a cut. If you fail to slow down in time it will say: 'drive through penalty'.

 

I'm not going to pretend to know HOW it works, but you mention it should work on tracks that have never been driven before. Wouldn't that mean that the track has to contain a valid Ai file though? There are some tracks (laguna sec) that don't have any, and others (Brands Hatch) that do, but are absolute junk at the start...

 

NICE! I hope Stefano will find a way to record an AI reference time.

 

That's right, I assumed all tracks had AI available. If not, it could fall back to the current 5 sec penalty.

 

Is that not something "normal" people can help with? (Normal as in deathly non-programmers )
I remember seing videos of making the raceline, where you basicly just drive a lap while track info is "recorded".
That's not too much effort so I'm sure that would be no problem for any track.

 

I still think the best approach is per-track "cut zones" which are pre-determined in the KN5 files. You would then setup criteria for each zone, ie is he on the brakes, is he spinning etc. It works fine in GTR2 and RACE07, I really cant see any other system being as robust and as consistent. The only thing with that, is that it would need to be done for every track, including mod tracks.

 

Anyone knows how to make those HN5 files?
Yeah, Race 07 is still influating with a lot of thought-through solutions I guess.

 

I can't help but shudder when I think about T1 Monza. Drive through penalty for getting punted (or even slowly pushed ) off by someone else.

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I've been around public servers for long enough to know that if there's an unfair advantage to be had, it will be found pretty quickly and abused regularly by the unscrupulous.

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my head hurts

 

15 pages later and I'm not sure if we are any closer to replacing the 5 second penalty then when we started. No wonder Stefano feels like he is wasting time. Is a blue flag really more important than soft road physics or a better damage system?

Maybe all runoff areas and any grass (or sand) that is more than a car width away from pavement or curbs should act like quicksand. Sorta arcade, but would solve the problem of cutters and people going very wide on corner exits and might be easily programmable.