Best way to organise a time trial contest at a conference?

[dvdj]

Hi,

We have a booth at a conference and we're going to give away a PS5 to the person who puts in the fastest lap over a period of 2 days. We will be using a racing seat, Fanatec wheel + pedals and a PSVR2. The car needs to be a Lamborghini Huracan (either road car, GT3 or GT4).

What is the best and easiest way to organise this? Considering:

• we're using VR2
• we clearly want see (and don't want to lose) a person's fastest lap
• we want to keep track of the overall fastest lap
• we will have wifi, but to make it foolproof ideally it will work offline
• we will have a Top Gear style fastest lap board
• we want fixed settings for everyone (e.g. manual, TC0, BRAKE message on...)

I was thinking of just going to World Circuits -> Time Trail.

Which track should we choose? Since lots of people will be racing unfamiliar with GT7, a non-fictional short track is best so everyone can get familiar with it quicker. I was thinking about Tsukuba, Nurburgring Sprint, Brands Hatch Indy, Red Bull Ring Short Track.

Which Lambo? The road car is the most impressive in VR2, but it doesn't brake...

Am I doing it right? Or can I better choose a Mission or License test for this contest?

Thanks for your input!

 

[ZEE]

Hey Dvdj,

Your post is very interesting, can you specify more what kind of booth of show you are doing it for, or is that a need to be confidential?

Defo use the Lambo Huracan as the results will be more varied with general public drivers, which I guess is what your aiming for.

Do not ever depend of WIFI for GT7, it will be incredible laggy and in a large arena type place coverage (even with 5G) won't hold up, organise some way of getting a cabled connection to the PS5. More reliable results and time trial sessions.

I personally would choose Tsukaba, as the laps would be around a 1 - 1:30min or less in the huracan, so you can go through many times and punters that are intresteed in your booth. SO more foot traffic., hopefully.

Not sure if there is way, but maybe a preset car setting sheet in game beforehand and lock it to the car, test it before you open up the booth on the day. Make sure all the gear is clamped down nicely too e.g. racing seat and TV screen

There are other points I'm sure folks here can add to, hopefully that helps a little. I cant comment on PSVR2 as I have yet to experience it but I heard its awesome!

Gratitiuous race setup image (lol):

 

[RX-7_FD3S]

Na Time Trial is fine. Also the person updating the ranking can save the top time so you have a replay of it.

As for which lambo definitely the gr4, it's the most beginner friendly car being awd and gr4 are pretty forgiving on RH.

For tracks I would run it on Suzuka short, not too long and too technical, long straight with a big braking at the end and it's a well known tracks. High Speed Ring can be used too, not too difficult and still somehow fun to drive.

 

[Lomic]

As it is a booth, I'd pay attention to what the track offers in terms of surroundings, people watching will enjoy it more if the track is nice to look at. And I'd fix the camera used for driving too, to choose the most scenic one for the public.

 

[Real_StiFex]

From reading your first message it seems that your whole event setting would be in a workplace environment and not in « public » as in a retail zone.
In this case it would be better not to got too much towards optimizing the « advertisements » conditions but rather taken care of the user experience.

I would leave camera as free settings even more that the replay can be then edited easily camera wise for further use.
Some people will not be able to drive in cockpit view but in bonnet. Bet yes PSVR kind of exclude chasing cams anyway.
It would require an organizer to give instructions before user session anyway. Navigating settings and some parameters are not obvious to all. Or saving best lap replays or tracking user results.


Track & car selection has to be relevant to the situation. It would mostly depends on your participants.
A short non fictional track is a great idea.
In my opinion Brands Hatch Indy would be a great choice. It offers a real track « feeling » with some elevation and curves enough to give the sense that there is several way using trajectories. No excessive blind turns, easy to memorize layout.
I mean tou can give people 5-6 laps to score their best. There is a good balance in average lap time / learning curve / challenge.
If you compare it to Red Bull Ring Short , Brands is better. For instance the turn 2 in Red Bull is not easy to get a grasp of as it is quite « unnatural ». For Suzuka, again in this setting, it would feel boring for the general audience because of the esses. Test it with a person non familiar with racing. Suzuka can be quite frustrating very quick. Some will not memorize how many left-right curves there is and will go off track. The Suzuka off track with a lambo could be quite unforgiving ( the green kerbs in T1 will be a pain for many unaware). Brands would be much more forgiving to mistake and track exit. T1 in Brands is always fun IMO but can be see as a good challenge since it is the first turn it is easier to remember for novices.

The car settings, for ether models, could be set in advance is needed to best suits your needs.
I would not use a GR 3 if it can be avoided.
If tou want to go towards a racing spirit go for the GR 4 . If you want to showcase the Huracan itself go for the serie version.
You could buy all color variations to allow your competitors to chose their own or the one they like.
You could use a special livery for the GR4 as well.

I don’t know if you needed some other kind of input as well.
Think in advance if you want to hide the best lap phantom or not in your challenge setting . If the best player is above everyone and set his time early the phantom would be demoralizing to everyone…
Little things like that can be tough of before hand but since I don’t know exactly your specific needs in that regards but well feel free to ask/elaborate since we coyld find a lot of parameters or functionality to use adequately

 

[Steer]

Suzuka East (the short track) would be my choice of track. The tricky turn 1 into 2 followed by the essess are great fun and a real challenge, even if that that slightly irritating off-camber final corner might spoil it a little.

Or if you don't want to go with a real world track, then one of the many shorter itineration's of Lago Maggoire.

 

[DefInfinity]

Which track should we choose? Since lots of people will be racing unfamiliar with GT7, a non-fictional short track is best so everyone can get familiar with it quicker. I was thinking about Tsukuba, Nurburgring Sprint, Brands Hatch Indy, Red Bull Ring Short Track.

Ironically, I think you want to protect the participants from themselves here and make them think about braking and finishing the lap rather than going faster (and making big mistakes). The average person might be fine at daily driving in real life, but that really doesn't tend to translate well into a simracing environment.

Back when I designed courses for GTA Online, the most popular and replayed tracks by far were those with little variance in corner type, had sizable runoff areas with easy to understand racing lines. Elevation change was fine as long as it didn't unsettle the car too much.

Some things to think about...

• Do you want multiple corner types? Only one type of corner?
• How much time do they have to learn the track? How many attempts are they allowed to have?
• What is your timeframe? In an ideal turnout, how many people do you want to have set a time before concluding the competition?
• Will track limit penalties be enabled? How often do you want this to occur?
• Is motion sickness a concern for your participants?

Most will probably still try to brake with their right foot and not react to things in time. They will probably go off in a straight line if they do not know the circuit. Anything that separates the turning from the pedalwork, I think, will be more accessible. They also need to be able to see what is coming up or intuit it, if the participants are really inexperienced.

I would say Huracan Gr.4 @

1. Red Bull Ring Short Track
2. Watkins Glen Short Course
3. Brands Hatch Indy

at or near Morning/Noon.

 

[kowalski__1]

Just my 2 cents but I would go with Daytona road course, just enough corners for that aspect , high speed to get there hearts racing and do it at night time, good for people watching.

 

[dvdj]

We'll be attending https://laracon.eu/ with a booth for https://flareapp.io

I've tried some tracks myself and indeed I'm not going to go for Suzuka because the last corner is indicated with cones. I think this is going to be confusing for novices. It's going to be Tsukuba (flat but visible corners) or Brands Hatch Indy (nice undulations but first blind corner will surprise lots of people).

I'm going to turn off the ghost completely, it will be distracting.

Good point about right foot braking. I've put them far apart for myself, but that's not going to work if you're only going to use your right foot, so I'll position them closer together for the event.

Hmm, a night race with the stars in VR is indeed tempting!

Okay, so no GR3. I still need to choose between road car (nice graphics in VR but poor handling) and GT4 (bare bones interior but behaves very well). I'm leaning towards GT4 because of the easy driving.

Last question: since the Lambo is very drivable, I want to turn off all assist settings. I DO want to show the "BRAKE" sign. Any advice on whether I should choose for automatic or manual? I think automatic is going to be better for an unprepared audience, but it takes so much engagement away.

Thanks all for your extensive feedback! Really appreciated.

 

[JamCar0ne]

Last question: since the Lambo is very drivable, I want to turn off all assist settings. I DO want to show the "BRAKE" sign. Any advice on whether I should choose for automatic or manual? I think automatic is going to be better for an unprepared audience, but it takes so much engagement away.

About a year ago, some relatives visited and got seat time in my rig. These are not car people other than they drive one to work and back. Did not have VR at the time, they drove in pancake mode. I did not preset any thing up and here were my observations.
People come in different heights and sizes. Insure your rig can accommodate them. Does the seat adjustment work freely? Mine took a little effort as it had never been used before. Also, my wheel base has super bright rev-limit LEDs, the short person complained about how bright they were.

They will right foot brake. My pedals are spaced for left foot braking and they still used their right foot.

The only assist I had on were the yellow dot corner markers. All other assists and indicators were off and it was not an issue. They did not drive fast enough to worry about any off it.

Insure your Force Feedback is set how you need it. Mine was near zero from running a kart the day before and didn't catch it until a ways into the session.

We ran at Laguna Seca because they had attended some sort of event there years ago. As much as they thought they knew the track, they didn't. Stick to a shorter track.

Had them driving the 65' mini cooper the game has you tune up early game. Don't recall the parameters, something like 350pp on sport hard tires. It was stable and peppy enough for them to enjoy themselves. And they always went into the dirt on the last corner.

Started off with manual transmission and noticed them driving the entire track in 4th gear as the game had selected 4th at the start. The driver had no interest in using manual (they drove automatic in real life). Even the wanna be 'car person' didn't want to use manual. Unless your clientele normally drive flappy paddles in real life, automatic may be the best solution.

VR is so immersive on its own, I think the big red BRAKE stripe across the track would be more immersive breaking than using automatic.

Suggest you have a track map posted for observers and future drivers to study. VR does not have the on screen map. It may help with the learning curve. Some rely on the on-screen map.

If you can, maybe run shakedown using friends or neighbors. Just to work out the finer details.