Pace Cars Slowing Down

Hi Guy. I have a rather unusual problem that I just can't figure out.

We did some quick races tonight with pace cars filling in 4 out of the 6 racing spots. The races started OK but we noticed that the pace cars were being lapped more and more. Originally I thought our driving was improving (nice thought) so I started cranking up the pace car speeds. The cars started travelling at different speeds and started causing more crashes.

So I started trying to speed match my pace cars but I've found that they slow down, each lap, until they eventually stop on the corner lane changers. I've set up a practice race with fuel management OFF.

The first lap is about 8 seconds and eventually, after 30 or so laps, the lap times are down to almost 12 seconds and at that point, they start to stall on the corner lane changers. If I run the pace cars using the powerbase features themselves, they run fine and don't slow down.

I'm using PC Lap Counter v5.19i with the 6-car C7042 powerbase. Is there any other settings that I should check or things I should try?

There is no other settings, are you sure that you do the same number of laps with the powerbase features themselves ??
On my side i did a test during a race of 15 min and i don't have any problems but before i clean up my track and cars , here is the grap of the ghost car.
Look at this graph, if you take in account the degradation of the tires, braids and motor i think the lap time is constant.

Hmm... I'm not sure what's going on here then. I've run tests with PC Lap Counter, Stock Powerbase and SSDC.

I used 3 different digital cars for the 3 tests below:

Stock Powerbase: Over approx. 150 laps, the lap times varied by approx. half a second (8.5 to 9 seconds).

SSDC: SSDC varies the speed for cars until they match the specified lap time (of 8.5 seconds) but it only varied the speed twice during 200 laps in order to keep within 8 to 9 second lap times.

PC Lap Counter: The 3 cars started at around 8.3 seconds and by lap 36 all 3 were around the 11.5 seconds per lap mark. After 45 laps all 3 cars stalled on the corner lane changers, not having enough speed left to get clear of them.

I've triple checked all my settings and even re-installed PC Lap Counter, all to no avail. I'm not sure what else I should try... If it helps, I'm using v1.09 firmware for the powerbase, running PC Lap Counter on Windows 7 64bit.

i have also firmware 1.09 but i will make a test with my windows 7 64 bit and 3 ghost cars, what you can do is check the throttle data window and take a look at the throttle level of the ghost cars, also you can use the up/down arrow button of the powerbase to increase/decrease the speed of the ghost cars.

I made a test with my W7 64 bit and 2 ghost car and no problem, just to know : did you use 2 power supply or only one ?
On my side i will see if i can implement the target lap time for Ghost cars like SSDC

Hi Guy. I checked the throttle data and they don't seem to move. I thought it might be that the cars are slowing down over the crossovers, thereby making the laps longer but the cars are getting visibly slower and slower along the main straight. Upping the speed every 5 to 10 laps using the power base seems to work and the throttle data goes up accordingly. Only problem is the cars still slow down.

I'm using one 24amp, 15volt power supply plugged into both ports on the power base.

I was going to create a request in the demand section for the "target lap time" feature. One request I would add to that feature is a way to mark a lap, either manually or automatically, when a ghost car comes off the track. One of the problems with SSDC is that when the car reaches the target lap time and then comes off, the next lap will be slower (obviously) but SSDC compensates by INCREASING the speed to get back to the target lap time. This usually means the car comes off again because it's going to fast and, consequently, another slow lap and ANOTHER speed increase.

The speed just keeps increasing and the only way to fix this is to start the race over again or swipe the car over the start line quickly to bring the speed back down. Maybe if there is an unusual lap time (+5 seconds for example - preferably configurable) after getting to the correct target time, it won't increase or decrease the speed unless the next full lap is also slower. I understand that it's a hard thing to compensate for though.

I'm going to try a different laptop to see if it is a combination of software + hardware but I'm running out of ideas on this strange issue. Do you know of any other SSD software with ghost cars that I could try to see if any others have this problem? SSDC isn't a good comparison due to the way they handle ghost cars.

I'll see if I can get a video up in the next few days to show you exactly what's happening.

Edit: Speaking about the "target lap time". Can that be implemented "per car" rather than "per driver"? At the moment I either have to have multiple pace car drivers with different speeds or I have to set the pace car speed before each race, trying to remember which car can run the track at what speed. It can get confusing with the 40+ digital cars we have.

SSDC also have a feature where is will record the throttle data for a car and using a collection of the fastest laps it will replay that throttle data back to the pace car. I think this is a pretty handy feature as well that I wouldn't mind in PC Lap Counter. I should probably create a new request for that in the demand section though. Only problem that mightn't make this feature worthwhile is the sync issue if a pace car deslots or slids out around a corner. 100% throttle just before the corner onto a straight can be disastrous for a car!

ok understood, pacer target lap time will be available normaly in version 5.20 for O2, APB 7042 and PB-Pro, i already made a quick test of some modifications and it's work, really don't understand why i didn't make it before

Woohoo! That's great news.

Managed to get a hold of another laptop to test on and the slow down is not as bad (but still only 50 odd laps) as the other laptop so it appears to be a software / hardware combination. I'm out of ideas now on what to test. I'm going to re-install the problem laptop completely and see if that makes a difference.

One question though, should the speed in PC Lap Counter match the speed set in the powerbase? In PC Lap Counter I set the speed to around 24 to 26 to get a 9 second lap. To do the same with the powerbase, I need to set the speed to almost 50.

Hopefully the target lap time feature will basically make my problem null and void.

I just want to say thank you for your awesome support for this product. It's very hard to find decent support for software these days. Your speed and communication when dealing with problems, bugs and feature requests is really to be commended.

This problem appears to have disappeared using the latest 5.20 beta. Reverting back to the old 5.19k, the problem returns.

I have set the target lap time to 0 and have a speed set and the cars do 150+ laps before either slowing down or coming off.

BTW, sorry for all the requests in the demand section but they're just ideas I thought of during testing that might be cool.