Why don't we have reasonable Practice sessions?

Daily. Now, that server did reset twice due to timing out. After the first timeout the countdown timer was at 1:56:00 when I went back in.

I told my buddy (on comms)...."that can't be right. The race is in 20 minutes". A few minutes later it reset again and had the normal 00:18:00 counter.

Not sure if it was a glitch, or something they're messing with.

But, either way, we could join the practice way earlier the before (we both have RC pro).
 
So I might be about to say something silly, but I’m still wondering about it. What’s the point of doing online practice?
Aside from getting a quick overview to compare lap time but in that case, 15 minutes is more than enough if that’s all it’s for (and even then, since the split system isn’t active, there’s a wide range of skill levels).
Everything else can just as easily be done offline, especially if you want to prepare for a race calmly and get your bearings.
Also, server resources are valuable, so having lots of practice servers running continuously seems counterproductive to me. The risk is ending up with a more expensive subscription just to be able to do more practice sessions…
 
I drive a lot both online and offline but I do like to practice an event I'm going to do later - online. OK, there are not a lot of cars about (usually) but when you practice with the AI their behaviour is very different. Consistent. The same lap after lap. I know how to deal with them. Practicing 'against' other players introduces a little of the the level of 'inconsistency' that you'll experience in a race. Practicing offline also gives me false confidence as I'm much faster offline as I don't have human drivers to slow me down. That probably sounds daft as I'm not exactly the fastest driver out there but you have to deal with the divebombers and spinners online. It's not as bad as in a race of course (my last two Monza races have been truly awful), but I think it gives you a lot more than just hotlapping.
 
Aysedasi said:
I drive a lot both online and offline but I do like to practice an event I'm going to do later - online. OK, there are not a lot of cars about (usually) but when you practice with the AI their behaviour is very different. Consistent. The same lap after lap. I know how to deal with them. Practicing 'against' other players introduces a little of the the level of 'inconsistency' that you'll experience in a race. Practicing offline also gives me false confidence as I'm much faster offline as I don't have human drivers to slow me down. That probably sounds daft as I'm not exactly the fastest driver out there but you have to deal with the divebombers and spinners online. It's not as bad as in a race of course (my last two Monza races have been truly awful), but I think it gives you a lot more than just hotlapping.
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Just a quick clarification on my side, when I talk about preparing offline, I’m not talking about racing against AI. I’m fully aware that AI is probably the worst way to prepare for racing against real players 😄
I’m referring more to learning the track layout, identifying braking points and apexes, checking actual fuel consumption, working on the setup, etc... Basically, more like a real-life practice session.

Thanks for your reply, I understand better now. But personally, do you really find it helpful to practice with other players?
When I try online practice sessions, I feel like the skill gaps are too big to get meaningful insights, especially for identifying overtaking zones. Even just maintaining a consistent lap time without pushing too hard can be difficult with players who seem a bit “lost” on track (some clearly go for it but don’t even seem to know the braking zones or corner shapes given how often they go off track). I’ve never really managed to learn anything from that side of things, based on my personal experience 😟

That said, I completely agree that having a practice session that seamlessly transitions you into your race session when it starts would be a huge plus 😉
 
GaetanL said:
Just a quick clarification on my side, when I talk about preparing offline, I’m not talking about racing against AI. I’m fully aware that AI is probably the worst way to prepare for racing against real players 😄
I’m referring more to learning the track layout, identifying braking points and apexes, checking actual fuel consumption, working on the setup, etc... Basically, more like a real-life practice session.

Thanks for your reply, I understand better now. But personally, do you really find it helpful to practice with other players?
When I try online practice sessions, I feel like the skill gaps are too big to get meaningful insights, especially for identifying overtaking zones. Even just maintaining a consistent lap time without pushing too hard can be difficult with players who seem a bit “lost” on track (some clearly go for it but don’t even seem to know the braking zones or corner shapes given how often they go off track). I’ve never really managed to learn anything from that side of things, based on my personal experience 😟

That said, I completely agree that having a practice session that seamlessly transitions you into your race session when it starts would be a huge plus 😉
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I also don’t get this. Online practice servers require no minimum safety rating, so you get a massive skill gap in most, you have players joining/leaving constantly which in term means cars parked on the side of the track or slow cars on cold tyres leaving the pits almost the whole time, you may or may not get stutters/FFB drops when players join the server… the list goes on.

I just don’t get the obsession with online practice servers. I use them occasionally if I haven’t been online for a while, just to get out of that almost “I’m not racing AI anymore” muscle memory reset, but very rarely am I able to get a clean lap in without a yellow flag, someone crashing into me, a lag spike, a loss of FFB, coming across someone not respecting a blue flag or trying to fight me on cold tyres.

You can simply start up an offline practice server with similar conditions (don’t get me started on people obsessing with being able to practice the “exact” conditions the race will have. A few degrees here or there aren’t going to make you any faster than you are, and you’re likely not skilled enough to even notice a few degrees difference). Get the temp the same, get the starting grip the same and off you go. Even with AI it’s a mostly better experience than an online practice session.
 
Horses for courses, I guess. For me, there's just something different about practicing online. I can (and do) pound around for hours offline but doing that solo soon becomes boring and doing it against the AI is just a bit too predictable. I'd rather practice by way of a 20 or 30 minute race offline, starting from the back...
 
Aysedasi said:
Horses for courses, I guess. For me, there's just something different about practicing online. I can (and do) pound around for hours offline but doing that solo soon becomes boring and doing it against the AI is just a bit too predictable. I'd rather practice by way of a 20 or 30 minute race offline, starting from the back...
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Of course. But I’m also not one for pounding round for hours on end too. I’ll get a quick feel for the car and go straight into a race like yourself. I’m responding to the topic in matter. If you want to pound round for hours on end, I think expecting them to put up 2/3hour practice servers is reaching a bit when you’ve got a perfectly good offline mode to do that. That was all I was responding to.
 
No that's fine Aaron. I don't expect hour long practice servers, but I don't expect to go into a practice server and find only 3-4 minutes left probably 50% of the times I try. It's just unnecessarily frustrating for those who do want to practice online.
 
Aysedasi said:
No that's fine Aaron. I don't expect hour long practice servers, but I don't expect to go into a practice server and find only 3-4 minutes left probably 50% of the times I try. It's just unnecessarily frustrating for those who do want to practice online.
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And I totally get that part of it too. Think we’re getting caught in the middle here of the extremes often asked for on this forum. I think we’re both sensible folk (well, I’m relatively sensible, you’re much calmer than me). I totally get where you’re coming from in your posts.
 
GaetanL said:
So I might be about to say something silly, but I’m still wondering about it. What’s the point of doing online practice?
Aside from getting a quick overview to compare lap time but in that case, 15 minutes is more than enough if that’s all it’s for (and even then, since the split system isn’t active, there’s a wide range of skill levels).
Everything else can just as easily be done offline, especially if you want to prepare for a race calmly and get your bearings.
Also, server resources are valuable, so having lots of practice servers running continuously seems counterproductive to me. The risk is ending up with a more expensive subscription just to be able to do more practice sessions…
Click to expand...

aaron0288 said:
I also don’t get this. Online practice servers require no minimum safety rating, so you get a massive skill gap in most, you have players joining/leaving constantly which in term means cars parked on the side of the track or slow cars on cold tyres leaving the pits almost the whole time, you may or may not get stutters/FFB drops when players join the server… the list goes on.

I just don’t get the obsession with online practice servers. I use them occasionally if I haven’t been online for a while, just to get out of that almost “I’m not racing AI anymore” muscle memory reset, but very rarely am I able to get a clean lap in without a yellow flag, someone crashing into me, a lag spike, a loss of FFB, coming across someone not respecting a blue flag or trying to fight me on cold tyres.

You can simply start up an offline practice server with similar conditions (don’t get me started on people obsessing with being able to practice the “exact” conditions the race will have. A few degrees here or there aren’t going to make you any faster than you are, and you’re likely not skilled enough to even notice a few degrees difference). Get the temp the same, get the starting grip the same and off you go. Even with AI it’s a mostly better experience than an online practice session.
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Thank god someone said it.

If you want to practice a track, offline is 100% better than online. You can turn off the AI, reset, restart at any time, change conditions, change weather, change time of day, crash to your hearts content without disrupting anyone etc etc.

I can see very few reasons to want online practice servers other than:
  • Quick check of others times (random, you don't know what split people will be in anyway)
  • A little bit of following / chasing a real player (depends on your luck with who is there).
  • Calibrate to the exact server settings for the race you're about to do (in which case 15-20 mins is plenty).
  • Check your network connection is smooth.
 
Honestly the practice sessions are just ridiculously short now. I'm paying RC Pro to be able to join any practice session but even if the upcoming race is in one hour, the button is greyed out. You need to get the right timing to be granted a 20-minute sesh. It wasnt like that a few months ago iirc

I like practicing with other human beings as it's simply closer to real life, I have almost zero interest in offline racing. Please bring back full duration practice sessions
 
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I'm new to LMU and practice is the biggest part of iRacing I miss. Having practice sessions available all day with other drivers on track in race conditions and leaderboards is a big miss in LMU! I often like to jump into a practice session in between meetings and LMU is awful for practice. The other big miss is active reset. We are not in the real world, so give me an easy way to practice a section of the lap without wasting time.
 
They are not interested and this will not be implemented, this is a bare bones title, set up to make sure MSG stayed in business, so everything that was not deemed necessary was deleted.

And anything that could be put behind a cost basis like liveries, free hosted servers, and obviously endless amounts of DLC in an 18 month period, was.

If you look at is like a businessman, not a gamer or customer it is very easy to understand. Do I blame them for that, no, it is up to you as customers to decide, and you have. But now it is clear a lot is still missing.

At the time this was fair enough, they did not have to develop a game from scratch, this is basically a patched version of RF2, the tie in would be a very difficult thing to navigate as the ACO would put pressure on them in many ways, and rightly so this represents their series, which is growing hugely.

So anything superfluous was gone. But, now after all this time, the fact there is still very little in terms of a help area, a training area to learn about the huge number of very specific WEC rules there are here, no real single player mode, the fact you have very little data to use that can help you find out what you might be doing wrong, stuff that is stupidly easy to provide and is in just about every sim for 20 years. There is no timed mode, no challenges, no hotlaps, stuff other firms provide are not here. Stuff like this should be here by now. If they wanted it, it is clear they do not.

But it isn't. I can guess the reasons, largely as doing stuff like this makes them no money at all, DLC is all they seem interested in right now. But a complete game this is very much not.
 
What I miss in solo practice or with the AI is that I don't get to see what others do and what I can learn from a faster or similar driver to my own pace live or in a replay for a certain track. But also to recognize drivers that are totally out of my own league or the once I need to avoid because they are "dangerous". With this knowledge I have a better chance of making a good result for myself by "racing" the once worth racing, and not race everyone that turns up ahead or behind me in a race...
 
It's 2 Days and 8 Hours until the next "WEC Weekly" race at Barcelona but we get 15min of practice... at a time :confused:
Is there a reason for the short practice time? (Would like to practice a full stint or the full 100 min)
 
Jdub said:
It's 2 Days and 8 Hours until the next "WEC Weekly" race at Barcelona but we get 15min of practice... at a time :confused:
Is there a reason for the short practice time? (Would like to practice a full stint or the full 100 min)
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From what I’ve seen, staff are inclined to encourage people to take part in races when online and use offline for longer practice.

They’ve said they’d like to make it easier (replicating conditions etc) but I wouldn’t expect it soon.
 
The actual effect for me has been to take part in fewer races.

I load up LMU and want to have enough practice time available to actually run a few laps, get used to the car and conditions and maybe try a few needed setup changes. Instead i wind up bouncing between practice sessions that only have 8 minutes remaining trying to decide which race i may want to do. Eventually i just give up and go practice for a championship race that i may or may not run a day or two later, because the servers are available.
 
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