Screen freezes while driver-swapping

[Maranellodriver]

Hi,

the most dreaded thing in endurance-racing events: Freezes while driverswapping.
Player 2 is now riding with you - pitstop done - pressing the hotswap-key - 3, 2, 1, - silence...

There are many myths and fairy tales about how to avoid this (joining another Server before joining the Eventserver as spectator, reboot before joining, swapping only while the car is rolling in pitlane, of course no plugins and a clean rF-Light install with the eventmod only, and so on. But even if follow all these tips it still happens sometimes - mostly during the important race.

It would be interesting if an someone can exactly tell me WHY? No assumptions please, have heared enough of them.
Is it just a limitation of rFactor, wich appears sometimes, sometimes not? Or does it even depend on the mod? Or maybe the clients system/hardware-components?

Thanks.-

Edit: ups, this one should acually be in rFactor (2005) Technical Support.

[Pandamasque]

I had many problems with driver swapping. Often the plug-ins cause them. But...

the most dreaded thing in endurance-racing events: Freezes while driverswapping.
Player 2 is now riding with you - pitstop done - pressing the hotswap-key - 3, 2, 1, - silence...

You're not supposed to press the hotswap-key when swapping during the pitstop!

[Maranellodriver]

Sorry, of course not. We usually swap via hotswap (not pitmenue) after the Pitstop, while driving slowly in the pitlane.

[marrs]

the most dreaded thing in endurance-racing events: Freezes while driverswapping.
Player 2 is now riding with you - pitstop done - pressing the hotswap-key - 3, 2, 1, - silence...

There are many myths and fairy tales about how to avoid this (joining another Server before joining the Eventserver as spectator, reboot before joining, swapping only while the car is rolling in pitlane, of course no plugins and a clean rF-Light install with the eventmod only, and so on. But even if follow all these tips it still happens sometimes - mostly during the important race.

It would be interesting if an someone can exactly tell me WHY?

Because there are bugs in this feature, and those bugs are concurrency issues. That's a type of bug that does not happen all the time, is timing related somehow and therefore very difficult to reproduce (if at all). The best way to fix them is by doing a code review of the appropriate pieces of code. This obviously will not happen anymore for rFactor, so we're stuck with them.

[Noel Hibbard]

I am about to do my 23rd event in an endurance league which has 6 - 12 hour races about once a month and so far my team (3-4 drivers) hasn't had a single failed swap.

Here are the plugins I have been running for all of these races:
RealFeel
GID
MoTeC (Lazza's version)

I don't believe in the whole plugin myth. I know of three plugins just about everyone runs and they are:
TrackIR
NetCode
RaceCast

I personally disable the TrackIR plugin as I don't have TrackIR. I also disable RaceCast as ISI's RaceCast server has been down for many many years. Obviously I can't disable the NetCode plugin. Sure some plugins could be buggy and cause problems but they will most likely cause problems in any race.

For my team the key things we try to do is:
- Make sure our car upgrades match (even that has proven to not have any effect though. The starting drive dictates the upgrades and it ignores upgrades on the swaps.)
- Make sure our setups all match and are all assigned as the default. We also try to make sure our filenames match but sometime we forget and still haven't had problems.
- When joining the car as a passenger we always communicate over the radio to make sure the correct name shows up in the chat box. Some times the wrong name shows up. In that case we just hit passenger select to exit the car and then again to go back in. It has taken us 10 passes before it shows the correct name. Normally it works the first try though. The last thing you want to have happen is have .5laps of fuel left and need to come in only to realize the wrong name is showing in the pit menu and then you run out of fuel before you can resolve to problem and make the stop.
- When doing the swap make sure that the original driver doesn't hit Esc until he sees the new driver pull out of the box. My hunch is this is where most swaps go bad. No driver is going to confess that they ended a 12 race 8 hours in because they hit esc before the new drive pulls out. "Hmmm... what? I have no clue why the swap failed." Hahaha

I think if you stick to those rules you should be safe. I have no experience with hotswaps though. It isn't particularly realistic and haven't even heard of any leagues actually using them. Perhaps hotswaps have a whole set of bugs of their own.