Help needed! No Green flag.

[bearlythere12]

Had this problem many moons ago and can't remember how to fix it. No matter what i do can't get a race started, flagman won't wave green. For the record, 11.3mi RC, pitlane on right, 1st turn heads right.

Redid maxrace, minrace and race LPs and problem persists. Tried to cheat things by having pace speed way down and pitlane speed jacked up, but makes no difference at all. Pace car just barely ahead of front row when crossing s/f line while he's heading down pitlane (maybe 3-4 car lengths).

Also, ai rub against each other coming up to green. If memory serves me they should be in the tracks of the max/minrace LPs during this time, right? But instead they cram against one another, esp those near the back of the starting grid, like they're atop the race LP. They do spread apart nearer the s/f line and appear ready-to-race, but flagman being a persistent jerk.

Tried to swap starting grid as well, you know, left side w/ right side, but that made things worse.

All other ai ini settings seem to be correct, played w/ those with nearly equal result.

 

[jacobc62]

Did you double check to make sure the flagman decision markers in the track ini matched the correct dlong values (in meters) you wanted the restart zone to be within?

 

[ZiggyM]

Try swapping the minrace and maxrace to see if that's why the cars are rubbing each other on the pace lap.

Have you looked at the lines in "Reflap" to make sure they are far enough apart?

What is the "starter_decision = " line say? If the track is 11.3 miles, that's 18185.59 meters so the starter decision has to be before that and also after the pace car pit entrance mark "pace_merge_to_pit_line_dlong =".

 

[bearlythere12]

Did you double check to make sure the flagman decision markers in the track ini matched the correct dlong values (in meters) you wanted the restart zone to be within?

yes sir. Triple checked actually.

 

[bearlythere12]

Try swapping the minrace and maxrace to see if that's why the cars are rubbing each other on the pace lap.

Have you looked at the lines in "Reflap" to make sure they are far enough apart?

What is the "starter_decision = " line say? If the track is 11.3 miles, that's 18185.59 meters so the starter decision has to be before that and also after the pace car pit entrance mark "pace_merge_to_pit_line_dlong =".

Did the swap. Actually easy to tell if you've got things backwards b/c the raceline LP won't show up w/ it reversed (no rubber worn into the track).

min and max lines plenty far apart, redid them twice.

Starter decisions... values are correct and well after pace entrance. Pacecar drives perfectly down pitlane.

I'm missing something obvious, wish i could remember how to fix this. Thanks though.

 

[Riviera71]

Since it's a roadie, have you tried tinkering with the road_caution_advance_dlong = xxx line in the ini?
iirc having it not set up properly would cause something like this.
I thought I remembered that the value had to be over halfway of the lap but looking at Watkins Glen it looks like it's the other way around. WG is 3942.89 meters according to sandbox and the value in the ini is 1550 which is in the first half of the lap.

Edit here too: You don't seem to have that line in the ini for Rascal, maybe it's the same here? Grab it from the Watkins ini (bottom of the first section in the ini) and then set the value to something like 8900 and see what happens.
Maybe the 2 lines above that in the Watkins ini
starting_grid_0 = 2 ; grid_2x2_InLinePoleOnRight
starting_grid_1 = 2 ; grid_2x2_InLinePoleOnRight

can help with the rubbing if your first turn is to the right?

 

[bearlythere12]

Since it's a roadie, have you tried tinkering with the road_caution_advance_dlong = xxx line in the ini?
iirc having it not set up properly would cause something like this.
I thought I remembered that the value had to be over halfway of the lap but looking at Watkins Glen it looks like it's the other way around. WG is 3942.89 meters according to sandbox and the value in the ini is 1550 which is in the first half of the lap.

Edit here too: You don't seem to have that line in the ini for Rascal, maybe it's the same here? Grab it from the Watkins ini (bottom of the first section in the ini) and then set the value to something like 8900 and see what happens.
Maybe the 2 lines above that in the Watkins ini
starting_grid_0 = 2 ; grid_2x2_InLinePoleOnRight
starting_grid_1 = 2 ; grid_2x2_InLinePoleOnRight

can help with the rubbing if your first turn is to the right?

Give me a few days to test and reply, gonna be spring-like and i need some outdoor time. Big thanks though, sounds like you may have Sherlock'ed Holmes this bitch.

 

[bearlythere12]

Since it's a roadie, have you tried tinkering with the road_caution_advance_dlong = xxx line in the ini?
iirc having it not set up properly would cause something like this.
I thought I remembered that the value had to be over halfway of the lap but looking at Watkins Glen it looks like it's the other way around. WG is 3942.89 meters according to sandbox and the value in the ini is 1550 which is in the first half of the lap.

Edit here too: You don't seem to have that line in the ini for Rascal, maybe it's the same here? Grab it from the Watkins ini (bottom of the first section in the ini) and then set the value to something like 8900 and see what happens.
Maybe the 2 lines above that in the Watkins ini
starting_grid_0 = 2 ; grid_2x2_InLinePoleOnRight
starting_grid_1 = 2 ; grid_2x2_InLinePoleOnRight

can help with the rubbing if your first turn is to the right?

To answer your Q, yes, 1st turn after s/f line to the right, i assume requires "2" as a value (I noticed this is in Fortine/Kurt's track '3 Forty 9', they have a left turn and a value of "1").

And before anyone dives headfirst into my blog here, last things first:

Saw something COMPLETELY bizarre. The beginning of pitlane has a crazy dlong value. The racing surface is around 17,000 and pitlane is like 4600, even though they're parallel. This is just the tailend (tailbeginning??) where pitlane starts...investigating...ah, he's got that segment overlapping another portion of the track, of course the 4600 portion. Okay, hopefully this is the cause.

Well, slimmed up those portions to not overlap but issue continues. Thought maybe this caused the pit LPs to be broken up but they look fine to the naked eye. I should still redo them i'm thinking, but it's odd that the pacecar enters and runs down pitlane just fine, right where the dlongs were all nutty.

------------
Back to our regularly-scheduled program:

Spent an afternoon screwing around w/ all sorts of ini values, trying to be scientific about it.

What i learned is that <starting_grid_0 & _1> does indeed help w/ the scraping of door handles. I still have a couple guys doing this when they get rolling but they quickly settle down.

I tried all kinds of crazy w/ the <road_caution_advance_dlong> #'s. By that i mean most values were around 30-70% of the track length, but i even tried ones closer to the s/f line (fore and aft). Didn't seem to do anything other than at some point i realized the pacecar stopped coming out of the pits when the green never dropped. Interesting...maybe.

I then placed the pace car well ahead of the grid, jacked up the pace speed to 70 and pitlane to 100, just like @ '3 Forty 9'. Pacecar had plenty of time to park and sit in his stall and for the field to cross the s/f line. Still no green, but the pace car at least popped right out of the pits and in front of the field. I think this is telling me something positive, just not sure what.

Only thing i pray isn't causing this is that the trackmaker (forgot to mention this isn't my track) at some point moved the s/f line and he hoped this wouldn't cause any issues for me. 15yrs ago i had problems after moving the s/f line too. I just don't remember what it was other than i never attempted such antics again.

I should mention that i don't think this is the route i went down to fix the non-green issue the last time this happened to me. Seemed like it was something far simpler, and i know i've never had the <starting_grid_0 & _1> or <road_caution_advance_dlong> in any track i've ever built. But then i've never built anything this big or worried about yellows on a RC.

I am open to suggestions from anyone.

Just a pic of the overlapping sections before i fixed them...a splash of color to accompany all my words.

 

[Riviera71]

my gut feeling is that it's something in the ini. Your other tracks has had the surface definitions around the pit road right so this one should too. There are longer rc's like nurburgring and isle of man that works (I assume they work, never raced either of them ) so it can't be that it's too long. If you've fixed the overlap so that they can't get confused as to where on the track they are and the surface defintions are correct there's not much else left?

 

[bearlythere12]

Still haven't redone LPs...stalling b/c of track length and working on Rascal Roval. 1st night i did them i calculated over 180mi in one sitting. Normally do-able except (of course you realize) this was running through florescent triangles. Trippy, man.

Yeah, i think you're right about a simple ini value i screwed up. Will look thru it all again for the umpteenth time, if unsuccessful i'll have to upload the track early and see if anybody else can figure things out.

I also noticed he's got the track overlapping in several other spots too. Maybe, just maybe?

Thanks again.

 

[Riviera71]

Never say never on the overlaps, I've seen tracks that absolutely shouldn't work (pit road definitions, ini values etc) work and other tracks you have to drag screaming and kicking to work

Does the AI pit properly in practice sessions?

 

[bearlythere12]

Does the AI pit properly in practice sessions?

Not sure about entering pits, didn't really pay attention. But they do exit perfectly and run around the track just fine under practice.

Busy re-releasing Rascal this week, will be back to bashing my head over this place next week as i want it done before March 1st.

Again, i appreciate you taking the time....

 

[bearlythere12]

Finally got a green, but only AFTER the pacecar went around the entire track (Full Pace Lap NOT checked). Haven't thought thru 'The Why" yet. Could it be as simple as moving the starting grid back further from the s/f line i wonder? I tried this once already, but only back a couple of turns. Is there a rule of thumb for the best starting grid locale...you know, like 30% of the track length back or......??

I also wonder if maybe that 1st overpass (1st blue arrow after s/f line) is doing something wacky, esp with all the overlapping the trackmaker has on the track.

 

[fortine_oo]

For a short pace lap, the starting grid must be greater than half distance for the entire field.

 

[bearlythere12]

For a short pace lap, the starting grid must be greater than half distance for the entire field.

Well now, don't i feel stupid. That's the one thing i didn't check out in some of your tracks. But i gotta say, I've never ever done this on any of my other road courses and they've worked fine as far as the green flag goes. I guess Riviera's comment about how some tracks shouldn't work but do certainly applies to my past stuff.

Thanks for pointing me in the right direction, nearly 20yrs doing this and i'm still learning. Humbling business, this.

 

[bearlythere12]

Final word from me (hopefully), had to test out a much shorter length b/c no one wants to run over 5mi under pace. Set my starting grid back approx 28% behind s/f line, a bit over 3mi on a 11.4mi track. Flagman finally cooperating, i'm happy other than it's clear i got too cocky w/ my LPs, gonna have to redo all of them - racing terrible and the track CTD when the pacecar enters the tunnel seen below (I laid the pace LPs up on the cement banking and the game no-likey). Thanks guys, can finally wrap this joint up.