Whenever a player is leaving pits and at the same time updating controls, I believe the basic succession of events is always the same. First NewPlayer packet is sent (the "Joining race" line), then the PlayerChanged packet is sent. But this one includes different PID, which Airio does not find (and thus can display the "Captured" line).

The following is just for info: Airio remembers the faulty condition and as soon as it sees is server output (normal text) that someone "updated controls", it spectates the player by his nickname (this is the "Solved" line). Note the wrong PID is then seen also in entering pitlane and leaving race events.

The primary problem is that I cannot recreate the condition, I do not know what to do to be joining race and updating controls at the same time. I was sking people that I saw somehow accomplishing this, but I was not able to get some reasonable answer. A guy said: "Now automatic gears," but when I tried to change autogears in pits, I never generated the two events.

Mu humble suggestion: Find out all cases when the "updated controls" is displayed and how come it is sometimes shown when joining track. Sorry if this is not for some reason workable. :-) Also, unfortunately I do not have any replay of this event available, but I'll try to spread the word and get one...

Below are examples of theprobable bug. Notice the basic mechanism is always the same. Thanks a lot for looking into this (and hopefully also updating other InSim or OutGauge info)! :-) Good Luck!

Concerning lap time I'd like to note two things:

1) Even very generous lap time requirement (say 5 or even 8 percents above WR) would mean that at least half of the people milling around at the proposed race time could not join. Often I see people requiring to put tight limits on required lap time, say within 3 or even 2 percents of WR. It never works, because 3/4 of the drivers cannot join then and the rest soon loses interest, leaving the server empty. (Note that the ranking system actually tries to fight this problem - it doesn't require any lap time to join, but it requires proof of driving ability.)

2 ) Lap time actually does not say much about driving style of the guy. So often I see really fast people causing immense havoc, either because they simply drive their line and do not care about anything else, or because they expect all slower cars will jump out of their way. And so often I see a bit slower drivers racing very sensibly, always knowing about their surrounding area, giving resistance when reasonable and letting go when obviously the resistace would lead to crash.

These are the reasons why I do not care much about lap time. However a framework for calling a freely accessible race (or series of short races) at specific combo at specific time and at specific server seems like a very good idea to me.

Hm, I don't think so, but the supported letters are always shows in action confirmation box and the meaning should be more or less obvious. Here's the list anyway, as the letters are converted into Airio commands for furter processing and later to LFS commands:

"s" : "!spec " (/spec)
"p" : "!pit " (/pitlane)
"3" : "!pen 30 " (/p_30)
"4" : "!pen 45 " (/p_45)
"d" : "!pen dt " (/p_dt)
"g" : "!pen sg " (/p_sg)
"c" : "!pen cl " (/p_clear)
"i" : "!pi " (player info)
"u" : "!unban " (/unban)

The !kick (/kick) and !ban (/ban) commands have separate buttons, they're not part of the actions.

PS: If no action or unsupported action is specified, !spec should be carried out, but I do not remember testing this.

I was not studying the above ideas in depth, especially what concerns particularities of the system, but I like the general principle - ability to state your preferences and availability, gather more interested people, then race somewhere. The simpler any framework supporting the idea is, the better chance of success it can have.

However I do not think the idea to take present lap time into account is workable. LFSW lap times are not reliable and anyway you'll soon see that even very good drivers quite often do not have any lap time stored on LFSW for particular combo. And would people bother to make a decent lap time somewhere alone? I don't think so.

Race/preference announcement sounds nice though.

Very good point, I'll check on the bitboard functionality and see if it can be reasonably displayed also after race finish, including some race finish info. Thx for the suggestion!

Well, yes, it is used quite a lot now. And as always some drivers love it and some hate it, though everyone has extensive personalization options allowing to turn off basically every piece of additional info for himself.

What makes me a bit sad sometimes are notes like "oh, this crappy system here again". I would hope people will realize that admins of the server chose to install it and they have complete control over the system setup.

"Crappy" system, in my view, is one that is not performing as it should, as it is configured to behave. And I believe after one year of extensive public use Airio is doing exactly what it is supposed to, what the individual admins want and need.

Quote from AndRand :

Some kind of one uninfied ranking? Well, I hope they wouldnt I will need couple full days of racing to get access to my cars when majority of the servers would require one unified ranking

No, the idea is just to share some kind of points among all servers using Airio (only the FULL version though, probably). Then if admins of some new server want to use ranking points to allow access to certain types of cars, they may have the option to use "global" points, stored in one central DB.

Note however that many servers simply do not use points for limiting car accessibility, of the currently popular ones it is only the IHR server which supports multiclass racing and uses ranks. However there's also the Level System with high potential and others may appear, so "global" points may allow for smooth transition, if the new admins allow this.

Quote from AndRand :

EQ, what do you think about my idea ...

Ehm... It doesn't point anywhere?

EDIT: Ah, I guess p should be used instead of t in the link, will read now...

Quote from menantoll :

It just has the act button rather than a button for each spec etc.

Yes, it is basically impossible and also very inefficient to display separate button for every possible action, including some Airio actions such as i for displaying !pi of the guy or u for unbanning when using !lb (list bans). [But this last remark concerns only FULL Airios with custom banning system active.]

The responses above are correct, under FULL Airio the easiest is to call !pl (players) and see a list of all people with Ban, Kick, and Act buttons. To spectate someone click Act and specify s as the action. As Crady says, you can call many other actions using single letters - send to pits, give/clear penaties.

The mentioned buttons are also available e.g. in !rn (recent) list of last 24 drivers that left your server. They're very handy if someone causes a big crash and then disconnects before you could capture his username. Just type !rn, find him at the top of the list, click Ban, enter number of days (if you have sufficient rights). Done.

Now that's a very optimistic view. Maximum number of drivers I saw managed at once by one Airio instance was about 70, two full servers. Managing some 200 or even more cars at once would be in my view possible, but there'll be many obstacles. For one, connecting Airio to remote servers (run on some other PC or box) is not as reliable as a local run. Also there are many config items common to all connected servers, e.g. all track/car data (such as restrictions). Creating those to make everyone happy would be quite impossible, I think.

But, as I already mentioned, sharing points between servers is a valid and very reasonable requirement. It requires some update and a bit more communication (but really just a small bit). And also new options for admins to allow using "global" points or whatever other data may be available. I consider this my priority now, but please do not expect to have it by next week. However I'd like to offer this option in Airio 2.3.6 to be released in a month or two, hopefully not later. Testing of feasibility first, then creating the necessary DB framework and later tidying up the admin/user side of the whole matter. Not easy.

Well said! But I'd love to take a 6 months break. Of course none of us wants in any way to damage LFS, the community. The various restrictions actually try to make racing more interesting and also safer from the crashes perspective.

Script timing out means it gives no response in an alloted time, which is usually several seconds. If you're sure the script (mentioned in warning) works OK, I guess you can ignore the warnings.

Files used by other process usually mean there's another instance or the same Airio running hidden somewhere. But to see this in the case of a PTH file is rather strange, it is open only for a very short when a race on BL1 is starting. Was this happening regularly or was it just one special occasion?

Unknown bytes to decode mean LFS->Unicode or Unicode->LFS conversion is not correct, because such codes do not exist or are not supported. In your case it is a left-over from the earlier wrong encoding and display of some special characters, which I believe will be solved very soon in Airio 2.3.5d. It is purely display matter not affecting anything important, so for now this can also be safely ignored.

Unfortunately another kind of points would have to be used, not configurable, separate, to be sure it doesn't interfere with the existing framework. These points could be sent over to airio.eu database in regular intervals and retrieved e.g. on each connect.

Actually I already started some work on Airo FULL stats available via Web, though for now it is "simply" displaying various tables of sorted data from one selected instance. To have a peak jump to stats.airio.eu and click some button – the AirAttack instance is auto-updated every 15 minutes, Ready2Roll is just static table for now, it will be dynamic once I have a chance to update the Airio there and adapt config a bit.

But overall, the same DB could be used for global data, summary of all Airios, but limited to FULL versions only I guess, with queries going there and back again.

Quote from Mysho :

IHR - 40/47
FM - 31/47
Dead Men Racing - 6/24
R2R Gen Racing - 14/47

Of these servers only the IHR uses limitations, and that's because it is a multiclass server. FM and R2R have no limitations, although they both use Airio. I'm not sure about DMR setup, but Airio runs there as well. That just points out the fact that limitations are defined by server admins.

Quote from troy :

... there is a nice discussion going on about sharing Airio license points globally on different servers ...

Nice discussion indeed, rather desperate though , but I undestand some of the issues. I've replied here: http://www.lfsforum.net/showthread.php?p=1344969#post1344969.

In principle, global points sharing could be possible, though there are issues - e.g. what if some server gives 1000 points for victory while other 10? But all troubles have a solution. I'll certainly think about it and attempt something. Thanks for pointing out the discussion!

Quote from o000o :

Thx EQ Worry, all seems to be working now

Ah, great!

Nice discussion. My comments from the view of Airio developer:

1) Airio by default contains no restrictions per car type or anything else, there's a very limited set of checks running and everything is optional, both for admins and drivers.

2) If a server uses rankings and all kinds of limitations, it is because the admins of the server, who are paying for it (and for Airio as well, in many cases), want it to be so.

3) If you do not like it, ask the admins to change the setup. If they refuse, they have a reason. If you do not like it, bad luck for you.

4) Only about 1/5 of the available LFS servers use Airio only only about 1/20 of those (or even less) impose some limitations, sometimes quite substantial.

5) If that 1/100 of the available LFS servers appear to be quite popular, maybe it is for a reason?

6) You want nicely filled races (20+ cars) with mature drivers in your favorite combo, still open to everyone. Is that at all possible in public racing, particularly on multiclass servers?

7) The request to have a kind of global points or other data shared between different servers is a very valid one. It has its catches though, but I'll try to think about ways to overcome the problems and allow gathering and use of such data, if the admins of a particular server wish to do so.

Happy racing!

Last edited by EQ Worry, Sun, 3 Jan 2010 19:27.

Eehhh... You updated the correct files, it was me again that failed, this time turning off the overflow check even in the FREE version. Sorry. Please download version 2.3.5d using link in my signature. Then please check the various commands, all should work. But note this d version updated raw and Unicode nickname handling and the changes were not tested thoroughly yet.

Quote from o000o :

Updated to 235c and have problems showing stats: ...

See here (a few posts above): http://www.lfsforum.net/showthread.php?p=1342696#post1342696

Did you overwrite the two Aegio library (DLL, PDB) files?

That certainly looks to me like an update at a wrong place, wrong one of the eight RR servers... Airio certainly cannot use other than its own directory, much less on 500servers where all directories have these very strange names... Currently I have no reports of any troubles from other people.

And one more thing concerning the special R consisting of two Japanese characters. With this Airio version you just replace them in config files with the correct unicode characters, because there's now full conversion from Unicode and back supported in the Aegio library.

:ufo:

I'm SO sorry, it was my bad!

It looks I took a bit optimistic approach (probably being in a festive mood) with version 2.3.5b enabling internal arithmetic overflow checks in the Aegio InSim library, leading in some cases to errors when handling LFS strings, leading then to failures at different places - reading stats, doing commands...

Version 2.3.5c without this additional check is now available, which should solve all the issues, also the updated files are sent to 500servers. Be sure to overwrite the Aegio InSim library files (LiveForSpeed.InSim.Aegio.dll and LiveForSpeed.InSim.Aegio.pdb)! Sorry again for the troubles... Have a happy new year!

PS: Actually I believe the above problem is also caused when moving from older versions to the newest. Something may fail, but if stats are saved and later read again (Airio 2.3.5b restarted), very probably the problem will disappear... That's why the very strange behavior some of you experienced.

There were two small bugs in initial Airio 2.3.5a (!pi output not working and server best lap shown wrong), so please get Airio 2.3.5b correcting (probably) the issues.

Quote from Cabby :

I'm acutally only using Relax for the pitspotter, all buttons and on screen info I'm using Aonio. If you're ever able to incorporate a pitspotter like Relax uses then I'll no longer have a need for Relax.

There is actually a kind of pitspotter incl. customizable sounds in Aonio. It is not quite like the one in Relax, but it can say/show the closest car in 8 directions and announce safe distance (clearing)... But I guess you know about this, just do not like it the way it is done.

Quote from Cabby :

... I still use the LFSRelax for the pitspotter and I accidentally had that set to close outgauge. ... Has anyone done a complete car and track setup for the bottom of the Aonio config file yet?

I'm afraid clashes with Relax, especially concerning buttons, ale almost inevitable, but of course it depends on what specific features of the aplications you're using.

The apex/top speed display setup is very much a personal preference matter. I've included BL1 and BL2 numbers rather as an example. I'm afraid for most of the other tracks you'll need to configure the nodes yourself, but I think it is a matter of 5 minutes or so...

Quote from yeager :

EQ, do you think AIRIO would be able to be configured to do the following?

The overall answer is YES. Configuration very similar to what you suggest is used for Dailycious races on R2R and also for Race nights on AMG, although they are a bit longer events.

The biggest problem is timing the config changes. You need FULL version for this with scheduled commands. Also it is not currently possible to say "change this 2 minutes after race 1 is finished", the change time must be set previously and in absolute numbers. (I can smell an improvement suggestion here.)

There may be other minor things that would probably need some small improvements, such as adding the ability to display to everyone the race serie results.

Another question is what to do then with the points and data. Would this all be just for the moment your name is (maybe) displayed for a short while or would it be better to keep the data for a longer time?

But again, overall I think the FULL Airio can support what you suggested. Making people aware of such races and interested in taking part is the hardest thing though...