While browsing the SSCA forums I came across this post. The paragraph that grabbed my attention follows



Heres hoping that the devs can gather enough info to be able to resolve or, at least improve the reliability of driver swaps.

Really hopes this gets sorted out.

Great news.

Sweet! I guess with 37 cars starting in the 12 hour Daytona race a couple weeks ago and only 12 (I think) cars finishing mainly due to driver swap discos, rFactor listened.

I'm gonna have to say latency at the moment of the swap is a big factor, going on Vikz' experience.

What worries me is the RECREATABLE requirement. There were so many theories as to what causes discos, such as plug-ins, views, setups, car entry/exit timing to name a few. However, no one can recreate any of them with certainty. Perhaps Ahmed's assertion that it is none of those things, and perhaps something as simple as latency. Perhaps those ideas about what causes discos are merely the symptoms of the real problem. While the dialog is a good one, and I applaud the community and SSCA in particular for taking the lead, I will be more enthusiastic about a solution being found when they know where to look.

Well, I think we can recreate a few driver swap errors related to latency with me?

If latency is the problem then I won't be able to make one successful swap, true?

After all the work and practice, and racing all those hours with the #35 SimHQ R8 I still keep looking back at what could have gone wrong and nothing clicks for me.

After racking my brain for the past two weeks the only thing I can think on my part that was remotely different from Vikz and my first successful swap...I escaped out of the car earlier than the first time. The first swap we did I stayed in the car with him until he was almost to the pit exit road out of the pits. The second time when we disco'd the timer went to 0, I saw his name pop up as taking over the car, my wheel went slack from the FFB (so I knew he was in the car) and I escaped about a second later. Looking at it now that might have been too much on his machine (or anyone's) at one time with everything else going on and I probably should have waited a bit longer.

Steve, DJ, Vikz, after swaps when did you guys escape out?

I think the issue is that the discos are not "recreateable" per se, but rather quite random. No doubt there is something in the code that's causing it unintentionally, but it's there.

Here's one: A person drives a race, and all looks good to them. They are in from start to finish, but in the other racer's replays, that driver's car disappears for a few seconds at a time, then pops back on the screen. We've all seen it.

Could it be, as Ahmed theorizes, that these momentary drop-outs or drop-synch situations are causing the seemingly random driver swap discos, if that drop-out or drop-synch happens just before or during a driver swap event?

Of course, beyond that, the 'procedure' for executing a driver swap is awfully complicated and full of potential to screw it up. There may be some way to prevent that, like setting driver swap partners before a race session, so that a single key stroke from each player could accomplish the same end result. It's not like we randomly say "hey, wanna swap into my car?" We have set drivers, we need the same setup in our files, etc. If you know the driver name, just pre-load it into the "setup", perhaps in a special Driver Team roster with about 6 empty fields (just to be safe), where you type in the player name as it appears on-screen and in the User Data folder. That way the game knows who to look for during a race session, when that person clicks on the "driver swap" hot key. Just spitballing there, but you get the idea.

So what I want is: 1. More reliable and flexible driver swap code to prevent discos and 2. Easier procedural implementation to prevent human errors.

I waited till the car was out of the pits and back on track and then hit the 'E' key and then the 'Escape' key

It's great news that ISI is looking into it. I suggest that all of us keep an eye on that thread at the SSCA forums and see if we can help to fix the swap issue