[Race Coordinator]

At long last I've posted a new version of the SRMS. We'll be posting more in a bit about it, but for now I wanted to share the most important change.

SRMS 1.14.x.x and all future updates now require 3 dongles for dynamic throttle control. This was a hard decision but the right one. Previous 2 dynamic throttle support could run 3 or 4 cars at most before latency issues made the car hard to drive and not a whole lot of fun. We've tested 10 cars under the new system with no noticeable issues and in theory it'll run up to 23 cars.

Here's how the setup works.

Direct Drive: 1 dongle, but none of the advance RMS features including pace cars fuel weight simulation, tire simulations, and all the future support we have planned.

Pace Cars: 2 dongles. Both constant speed and recorded pace cars will run with two dongles as before. As with a single dongle none of the advanced features are available.

Dynamic Throttle: 3 dongles. All current and most likely all future RMS features are supported

 

[Race Coordinator]

Here is how the cars/controllers need to be setup for each use case the RMS supports:

No pace cars, no dynamic throttle

One dongle required

Car and Controller: 
   ID: [1, 24]
   PIN: [0, 999]

Car and controller share same id/pin pair.  Dongle data is 
used for lap counting and other pit features.

Pace car only (no dynamic throttle)

Two dongles required

Human car/controller
   ID: [1, 24]
   PIN: [0, 999]

Car and controller share same id/pin pair.  Dongle data is
used for lap counting and other pit features.

Pace cars:
   ID: [1-24]
   PIN: [0]

Pace car data is sent out on the same channel as the pace
cars assigned id.  The pin is always 0.

Recording for pace car playback

Two dongles

Controller and Car
 ID: [1]
 PIN: [0]

One dongle reads the controller values and saves the data.  The other dongle
reports car locations which is paired with the throttle levels for playback

Dynamic throttle (with or with out pace cars)

Three dongles:

Human/Pace cars:
 ID: [1, 23]
 PIN: [0]

Controller:
 ID: [24]
 PIN: [1, 23]

Throttle data is read from the controller which is modified based on the race configuration
and sends data to the car through the third dongle.  Pace car data is sent out on
the third dongle.  Dongle1 reads car data as always and applies fuel consumption

 

[ryk4racing]

New SRMS Features:
There are also a number of new features and enhancements in this release which make it worthwhile for everyone to download and use. The features below are applicable to any setup, regardless of how many dongles are used. Defaults for new parameters are set to maintain the current behavior of your race setups.
————
Missed lap detection has been enhanced.

Sector timing now displays current, last, and (new) best lap time sectors. Much more useful.

You can now remove a car from the track while in the pits without causing a Yellow flag. Car will continue to refuel, etc. Great for adjusting braid etc without interrupting track action.

A pit delay time minimum and maximum has been added. This lets you set a range of time for the pit delay, introducing a bit of random luck into pit stop times. Min - Max set the same by default.

Running Yellow Flag: Now when a Yellow Flag is called drivers have X seconds to slow to the Yellow flag speed limit. Failure to do so will result in a Speeding penalty flag. They then have an additional separate Black flag delay time to get under the limit, failure will result in a 2nd flag. If the Yellow speed limit is set to 0, all cars must be stopped before the delay time expires or they will receive a penalty. When you don’t have corner marshals, this will prevent anyone from gaining an advantage over the driver who has to re-slot the crashed car(s). During a Running Yellow Flag (with speed limit > 0), cars may change lanes and enter the pits to refuel, serve penalties, etc. Pitting under Yellow you will lose less track position than pitting under racing Green conditions.

There are now separate penalty types for Speeding and False (jumped) Starts/ReStarts, as well as separate # of laps to serve the penalty and separate time parameters. Penalty types are Drive Through, Stop & Go, and Timed Stop.

Drive Through has remained the same- drive through pits (not exceeding Pit speed limit). Penalty is served when pit exit is reached.
Stop & Go now has a time parameter for length of stop . No car service is allowed during the stop. Default time is 0.
Timed Stop now allows refueling etc to begin after time is served. If there are more laps to serve this penalty than laps left in the race, the driver is not required to serve the penalty and instead will have the time added to his total race time at race end. (Note: To use the time penalty, the Heat Tiebreaker needs to be set to Total Time in race setup.)

DQ Penalty: Instead of instant disqualification you can choose to penalize a lap(s) or an adjustable amount of time, or both. If any penalty is unserved before the # of laps expires, or if a DriveThrough or Stop&Go penalty is unserved at the end of race, the DQ penalty will be applied. If a driver receives two concurrent Black flags, they will also incur a DQ penalty. This permanent penalty will be reflected in the displayed positions during the race. (Note: To use the time penalty, the Heat Tiebreaker needs to be set to Total Time in race setup.)
————

I will do a separate post with details on using the enhanced Yellow Flag / Penalty features.

 

[Ade]

Very nice write up Ryk 👍... Things have certainly moved on.. ☺...

 

[ryk4racing]

Very nice write up Ryk 👍... Things have certainly moved on.. ☺...

Thanks, Ade. I hope everyone will move up to this release, it really has a lot to offer that improves the actual racing environment. IMO

 

[maserati]

Thanks, Ade. I hope everyone will move up to this release, it really has a lot to offer that improves the actual racing environment. IMO

The only team still investing serious development time for 20-24 cars.
Nothing comes close to SRMS and now the gap is even bigger.
The detail and flexibility in the new a safety/pace car functions is truly amazing.

Best

 

[Ade]

Update to Scorpius Race Management 👍🏼

The Virtual Safety Car (VSC) features are all implemented now, still some debugging to do on special cases but going well. Procession order during a Yellow is being well maintained (with penalties applied for transgressions), and cars de-slotting, running out of fuel and/or pitting and re-entering the track are being handled properly. Just installed is an option for limiting the procession leader's throttle (by %) separately from the Yellow speed limit. Using this will enable one to bunch up the field behind the leader for a restart (if set the same things will behave as they do now). I will be doing testing on that this coming week, checking to see the throttle % is properly passed to the new leader if the current one pits, etc.

Once this last set of changes are debugged, fine tuned, etc. we will be ready to call the VSC complete, and can start on the next stage: adding a Physical Safety Car.

We will also be adding a “manual drive” option for the PSC. This will be easy to add, and will let someone without 3 dongles still use a real safety car if they have an extra throttle and driver.

TeamScorpiusThe VSC features are all implemented now, still some debugging to do on special cases but going well. Procession order during a Yellow is being well maintained (with penalties applied for transgressions), and cars de-slotting, running out of fuel and/or pitting and re-entering the track are being handled properly. Just installed is an option for limiting the procession leader's throttle (by %) separately from the Yellow speed limit. Using this will enable one to bunch up the field behind the leader for a restart (if set the same things will behave as they do now). I will be doing testing on that this coming week, checking to see the throttle % is properly passed to the new leader if the current one pits, etc.

Once this last set of changes are debugged, fine tuned, etc. we will be ready to call the VSC complete, and can start on the next stage: adding a Physical Safety Car.

We will also be adding a “manual drive” option for the PSC. This will be easy to add, and will let someone without 3 dongles still use a real safety car if they have an extra throttle and driver.

Team Scorpius

 

[Ade]

Hi,

Thought I’d send another update as we approach the next SRMS release.

A couple more items ended up with the VSC (virtual safety car) package that we realized would be needed/wanted for the physical Safety Car. It made the most sense to complete everything that could be used for both the VSC and SC first, to make debugging the real SC easier.

One of these was the Auto Start/Restart feature. You can designate a timing segment LB to use as the trigger point for the countdown to Green (with an adjustable delay before the countdown starts). This lets someone fine tune the point on their track that the speed limits will be released for the run to the s/f line restart (ie not in the middle of a curve, etc). No passing is allowed before crossing the s/f line.

The other feature was one we realized would be great for the SC as well as VSC- a Rolling Race Start. Very little extra was needed to implement this- setting the grid positions by the first crossing of the s/f line for the parade lap(s), and delaying the counting/timing of laps until the the race goes Green. The rolling race start is otherwise functionally identical to a rolling restart from Yellow.

So now rolling starts and restarts are truly functionally complete. A new flag image has been added- it’s a Yellow flag and a Green flag together, which indicates the race is still Yellow, but headed toward the countdown to Green. You can abort the restarts (flags change back to double Yellow) and go around another lap to try again.

I need to do more testing, especially direct-drive as I’ve been testing just dynamic throttles for several weeks. No major bugs or issues at this point.

So as soon as I can run through some more testing, Dave will be able to release the VSC implementation.

The Racer Review:
Two of us have spent a few hours practicing / testing starts and restarts. Definitely a skill to develop. The Leader tries to pull a gap to the first curve, the followers try to keep close to take advantage of an error. Very fun challenge that will add a lot to the racing. We will be using the rolling start/restarts a lot.

Looking forward to the real SC!

(Update from Ryk Team Scorpius member 👍🏼)