Crew Chief overhaul for ACC

Evenin' all

Having been playing rather a lot of ACC recently, and enjoying it very much, I decided it was time to get my head out of my backside and get Crew Chief working properly with it.

The latest CC release includes full support for ACC with pretty much all of the app working as it should. I rewrote all the data synchronization code and implemented much more effective workarounds for the various challenges with the data and generally brought ACC support up to the same level of polish and functionality that other sims have with CC.

Things like gaps, sector times, lap times, race positions, and pretty much everything else now works. No more random calls, nonsense positions, weird repetition or crazy timings. It all seems to work properly now.

It still relies on the UDP broadcast data to fill in the missing bits of the shared memory data and there are still some tricky synchronization issues between the various pieces of information the game sends but I think i've got things lined up nicely.


Thanks again to Steve (Thx1137 on here) for the UDP integration work that made this possible in the first place, and thanks to the guys who've help test all these changes.


So if you've had to turn CC off with ACC because it was talking rubbish, make sure you get the latest 4.16.1.1 update (should auto update but if it doesn't, the link is here: http://thecrewchief.org/) and give it another try

Jim

 

I never really had issues with CC except for Jim sometimes not understanding what I say, but I dont use it very in depth I guess.
It does work rather beautiful for VR users as you dont have easy acces to physical buttons except whats on your steeringwheel.

One thing I would like to know is, is there a way to have Jim warn me for upcoming traffic.
Say Im about to get taken over, is there a way for him to warn me when a car gets within say, 100m from me?

Ive had a few cars surprise me and it scared the **** out of me…

 

THX for that Jim, thats fantastic. CC is just a must have!

@The_Bad_Fasterd you have regular messages when a car is catching up - get your **** together, he is faster than you
And you can change the frequency of gap behind reports

 

Thank you very much! I'm using CC with ACC almost every race, it's a must-have for me. Great work!

Updating now.

 

Amaizing!!!
I can only agree with the others. This tool brings so much immersion to this sim!
many thanks for this

 

Ok Ill have to look into that a bit deeper.
I love those “ignore that ****er in the mirror” messages, but sometimes im Im so focussed a car will pull right up next to me and catch me off guard.

Thats why I was wondering if theres such a thing as a “car coming up right behind you” message.

 

There is the spotter as well, you probably have to turn off CC's Realistic mode Property for it to work on non-ovals, I haven't tried it.

 

Awesome news, thanks for doing this! Loved the app for ACC even in its old state, but now with full functionality it will be even better.

 

Thank you for the update, the messages are really on point now!

A minor detail: ACC v1.8 introduced dew, which CrewChief interprets as drizzle. The weather status for dew looks like this:

Code:

"status": {
   "ambientTemperature": 11.792760848999024,
   "roadTemperature": 11.792760848999024,
   "windSpeed": 8.82649040222168,
   "windDirection": 129.40444946289066,
   "cloudLevel": 0.3487786948680878,
   "rainLevel": 0.0000036030887713423
},

Notice the very low rain level. Meanwhile the in-game weather icon keeps showing "sunny with light clouds" and the track state changes from optimal to fast.

Really not sure if it's worth considering implementing though, I'm under the impression drizzle doesn't occur all that often.

 

CC''s threshold for 'drizzle' is 0.01 so if that game's only sending 0.00003 or whatever, something's gone a bit wrong. The code looks OK so i'm puzzled by this

 

When CrewChief announced there would be drizzle in 15 minutes I immediately saved the game and went to check the weather status. At that point rainLevel was still 0. The weather status above is part of a savegame a few minutes later, when CC said "we're seeing a few spots of rain". My best guess is there's a difference between what's reported by shared memory/UDP and what's stored in the savegame files.

 

Just updated CC with a few more bits and bobs for ACC.

This includes fixes to the pre-start messages and support for rolling start grid-side and car-to-follow message. The app should announce these when you're near the end of the formation lap (or more or less immediately for short formation laps). There are a couple of potential issues - firstly, I'm not 100% confident that it handles being on the front row properly (I'm *never* on the front row so haven't tested this enough). Second issue is that it gets the required grid side at the start of the formation lap. I don't know if this can change. If one car ahead disconnects, does it change the side you need to start on? Feedback on these 2 potential issues would be helpful

I also fixed some session restart issues, car number reading and a few other bits and bobs

 

Hi Jim, just popping in to say it's great to have CC back... was an avid fan back in the AC days but had to stop using it with ACC due to issues u mentioned in ur first post.
I still have some tweaking to do... I think it lets me but will have to test...
for example, I love having the leading sector info back, but have to see if it (you?) can tell me after I exit an apex not just as I'm about it hit it haha...

 

Have you tried enabling the "don't talk in corners" option? At least I think it's called that. Or maybe it's hard-parts (oo-er) or something. You can also make a voice command -"don't talk in the corners"

 

yeah I was flicking though the options and turned them on after my race but will only get a chance to test again this evening

 

@Jim Britton
Hi, you have already done a fantastic job with the previous version of CrewChief and in fact I had dedicated a page to it on my blog. Now I will update the article ;-)
https://trinacriasimracing.wordpres...racing-track-engineer/?frame-nonce=f1af73fa2d

 

Thanks for that, do you know if the leaderboard positions in shared memory / broadcast data are updated immediately to reflect the missing car?

 

Understood. I should probably disable this for online races but I'll do a bit of testing, see if there's a way to make it robust enough to handle drivers dropping out.

[edit]

I think it's possible to address this by taking a snapshot of all the cars and their positions at the start of the single-file formation period and comparing the connected opponents list at the start of the double-file formation period. For each car that's dropped out (who started ahead of the player), swap grid sides. If a car has dropped out who's one or two places in front, recalculate who you need to follow.

This would rely on the initial single-file formation data being complete (no one joining after that single file period has started). There's a delay between a car disconnecting and him being removed from the data, both in the game output and in CC's internal state. Because of this a car disconnecting a second or two before the double file period will probably break the logic, but it's an edge case and probably acceptable