Hi guys, I created a little survey to see what you people think about online leagues/simracing. What you like, what you don't like and most importantly what you really care about. If you'd like, please take 3 minutes (it won't take longer, I promise) to answer these questions. https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1itrsN_0f1T0Mj6KyrRYeJkfOv587LmcFxJRAjb2o9-0/viewform?usp=send_form You can view the results later so it's not just me who can learn stuff but you as well. Thanks guys, Cheers
Wow guys, amazing feedback! More than 150 replies so far Thanks a lot. You can check the results here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1itrsN_0f1T0Mj6KyrRYeJkfOv587LmcFxJRAjb2o9-0/viewanalytics But of course you can still vote. I added some of your feedback into the poll so if you want to re-reply to some questions, feel free to do so. What a perfect league would look like? Assetto Corsa, GT cars, 12 races, 1 hour long, each week, on Sundays, on renowned circuits, free of costs ( ). Interesting insights for all of us I guess, keep 'em coming!
I've found in my experience that people are willing to throw in a couple of their units of money per month to help with server costs, which is only fair, to be honest. If you find the right people, they're willing to help out.
I was a bit concerned myself when I saw how many people don't want to pay for an online league. They obviously have no idea about costs of hosting a server.
I wasn't aware that hosting a dedicated server cost anything at all? Didn't seem to cost me anything when I hosted a couple of weeks back. I was actually surprised when the question of how much I'd be willing to pay for an online league, was raised.
You are right as long as you host a server from your home. The problem most people don't see is that most private internet connections are not capable of hosting in a stable way for a good amount of cars. Bandwidth needs are usually underestimated. A game server needs mostly a good upload rate and most private internet connections - at least here in germany - are async, which means the upload is substantially lower than the download. So if you really want a good gameserver you will have to rent one. Windows servers are usually a bit more expensive than Linux servers. Every serious league uses rented dedicated servers from one of the usual providers. Only this way you can provide a good and stable experience on the server, even when you host for a lot of cars or have several servers running on one machine or both. The possibility of having up to 52 cars visible is already there in the graphics settings. So I guess at some point in the future you will be capable of hosting for at least this amount of cars. And you will need a really thick cable to do so... Just think about the possibilities of having an endurance race with 52 cars on the Nordschleife. A lot of the problems people are experiencing on privately hosted servers like invisible cars and lagging all about are in most cases a result of an overestimation of the capabilities of their connection. Of course, nowadays there are private connections that are good capable to host a gameserver, but even if you have a 100 MBit connection (up and down) at home for private users it is mostly a bandwidth that is labelled with "up to", so no guarantee that you will always have this bandwidth. While professional (game-) server hosters have professional dedicated lines and guarantee a certain up- and download. The faster, the more expensive of course. Quality services cost money. That's just the way it is. And in the end simracing is our hobby and hobbies have to cost money. If something you do doesn't cost money it's work... I've read somewhere on this forum that you don't need to open ports on your router to host a PCars server. I don't own PCars but this can only mean that hosting a server with PCars does not mean actually hosting it from your home, but only configuring a server that runs somewhere on SMS' machines. In this case you really don't need a dedicated server of your own. But this also means that you don't have full control over your server. This kind of service is also quite expensive for the provider (SMS) I can imagine. So after a few years it will most probably be shut down as soon as PCars doesn't generate enough income anymore to be profitable. But for the way S3S chose they only need to host the lobby as a cntral hub for all server connections which obviously is a lot cheaper. And look at GTR/2 - being this old you can still play them online through the lobby, which is a great achievement and also shows the dedication the guys fron S3S have for what they do. In my opinion this is the far better alternative. I will end this now as I have already written far more than anybody can be forced to read...
Well written, clear and informative response, I now see your point. I remember renting a server on the PS3 when I played Battlefield, prices weren't massive and they worked fairly well (apart from lag compensaters punishing people with higher bandwidth), I wonder if @Sector3 could consider doing it that way with a proper lobby, in my opinion, hosting on a home PC isn't working, at least not in this early stage, I'm fortunate to be able to host and get a server running but, I know far too many people who can't for a multitude of reasons.