B-Spec Grinder 2.5.2: Automate Remote Races

[SonicWagon]

My 160 Slim has been on 24/7, ever since the remote racing started.

Mine too, I just today put it horizontal because of the thermal images hoodfield posted showing that it cooled more efficiently horizontally. I blast the vents with canned air once or twice a week and dust the entertainment center twice a week. I live in a very dusty area and it has killed a couple computers over the years.

 

[Shibby2142]

2.0 works great, but I feel overheating will get the better of me...
what's the longest you've had your system running at one time? I have a slim 320gb and I don't want it to die

I took an extra step to go into the display dashboard and set the video output to only do 480p ... way less taxing than running at 720p or 1080p!

Also (this is pretty well known) if you are doing a 24 hour event, put the living timing screen on as there is less to render for the PS3.

Any other ideas people have feel free to post away or let me know if I am wrong somehow, lol...

 

[IFLATLINEI]

I took an extra step to go into the display dashboard and set the video output to only do 480p ... way less taxing than running at 720p or 1080p!

Also (this is pretty well known) if you are doing a 24 hour event, put the living timing screen on as there is less to render for the PS3.

Any other ideas people have feel free to post away or let me know if I am wrong somehow, lol...

It makes sense that 480 would be lass taxing on the PS3 than 720 or 1080 but how can one really be sure thats actually the case? Consoles act more like computers these days than ever but even still Im not convinced.

Anyways I just wanted to say the update to Grinder is awesome. Ive been using it alot and everyone on my friends list has benefitted. I just wish one of my friends would use it once in awhile.

 

[Shibby2142]

It makes sense that 480 would be lass taxing on the PS3 than 720 or 1080 but how can one really be sure thats actually the case? Consoles act more like computers these days than ever but even still Im not convinced.

Anyways I just wanted to say the update to Grinder is awesome. Ive been using it alot and everyone on my friends list has benefitted. I just wish one of my friends would use it once in awhile.

I don't have any thermal guns but to the touch it feels much cooler. I would think it would be less taxing since it isn't rendering as many pixels during output. My lcd monitor says 740xsomething when using 480p while 1080p is 1920x1080.

To each their own I guess. It works for me.

 

[Xenn]

I took an extra step to go into the display dashboard and set the video output to only do 480p ... way less taxing than running at 720p or 1080p!

Also (this is pretty well known) if you are doing a 24 hour event, put the living timing screen on as there is less to render for the PS3.

Any other ideas people have feel free to post away or let me know if I am wrong somehow, lol...

There's actually more to render if you put it on the live timing screen.

 

[Downforce]

Checkin in real quick, it's been a great week of remote racing so far.

I'm taking out 4 drivers to do the 4 hour Nurburgring endurance.

I'll put em back in after to resume the full 6 man remote race blitz!! I have a few holes in extreme as well, like the nascar and FGT race but I'll do those during the week.

 

[Shibby2142]

There's actually more to render if you put it on the live timing screen.

That so? PS3 seems to run cooler to the touch on live timing screen since the actual gameplay is in a tiny box. I would think doing all the video vs. displaying data would be easier on the system.

 

[Xenn]

That so? PS3 seems to run cooler to the touch on live timing screen since the actual gameplay is in a tiny box. I would think doing all the video vs. displaying data would be easier on the system.

Oh really? Just would've thought that, since there's more on the screen in that mode, there is more to render and would make the PS3 hotter.

You learn something everyday!

 

[Shibby2142]

Oh really? Just would've thought that, since there's more on the screen in that mode, there is more to render and would make the PS3 hotter.

You learn something everyday!

Supposedly.

Well...

I took some measurements when running b-spec on my ps3 slim. My conclusion was that the ps3 consumed ~10 % less power when in live time screen and the view was set to track side cameras.

Also in full screen the track side camera view averaged the lowest consumption. The chase cam view consumed the most. There wasn't that much difference between the cockpit and the bumper cam views (in X2010 at least).

In short, the chase cam view in full screen took a more or less constant 86-87 W and the track side cam view in live time screen took 75-81 W depending on the amount of cars that were in the shot. Based on this, the latter option is my choice when grinding b-spec endurances from now on. 💡

 

[yonis]

In short, the chase cam view in full screen took a more or less constant 86-87 W and the track side cam view in live time screen took 75-81 W depending on the amount of cars that were in the shot. Based on this, the latter option is my choice when grinding b-spec endurances from now on. 💡

Makes sense. In the track-side view, the PS3 is limiting itself to somewhere around 30fps so that it can render motion blur and depth of field.

 

[Downforce]

addendum: giving some love to the toyota '70 race car in the 4 hour Nur race

I should still have 2 drivers going in the remote and I'll be back on the widget in a bit, also watching NCAA, so the PS3 once again can idle happily

 

[toymdngn]

kept getting a "your drivers are all racing elsewhere!" message even though none of them were racing... manually started a remote race via PS3 and we'll see what happens.

 

[Watto]

I have no trouble with anyone using ALL of my drivers.

The widget tries to reserve a driver so often, you're bound to get one as soon as it becomes available (like less than 20mins). When remote racing manually, which I don't really do any more, it's annoying when you don't have a driver free. The widget resolves that problem completely.

 

[yonis]

So I found some interesting things as I was digging around on the gran-turismo.com servers for track logos.

Their server has the directory listing disabled for the place where all the course logos are stored, so I had to find a different way to get them all.

Here's a URL for one of the images:
https://us.gran-turismo.com/common/images/gt5/remote_race/common/courselogo/6a79bdcea1ea337e9bff99eb4289e376.png

Now that filename is pretty recognizable as an MD5 hash. Through some brute-forcing, I figured out that the hashes were of a simple naming pattern. I saw names like "sarthe," "route5," "laguna," "daytona," and so on. But, I wondered why they were using hashes for these. Couldn't they use the names themselves, or simple numbers?

So I did some Googling and I came across this list of track codes. I converted that entire list back into MD5s and downloaded the images. Here's what I found.

The following codes don't have images for them on the server, which means that the codes have changed or that some of the tracks have been abandoned:

fisco_old
fisco_slalom
infineon_nascar
motegi_east
motegi_west
oval
sarthe24
suzuka_west
testcourse

And here are course logos for tracks which would be new to GT5. Logo on the left, code on the right:

: 20r60r

: apricot

: assisi

: capri

: grandcanyon

: hongkong

: icerace

: infineon

: kashiwa

: lasvegas

: midfield

: motegi

: newyork

: paris_rally

: paris_tarmac

: seattle

: seoul

: smtsouth

: tahiti_maze

: valencia

: yosemite

: yosemite_dirt

: yosemite_dirt_mini

: yosemite_dirt_short

It could be that they were just uploading images for all the race codes they had, and that these images were just dumped on the server as a batch. But what's exciting about this is that there is a hope that perhaps these tracks could make it into GT5 in the future.

EDIT: Found another:

: super_speedway

EDIT 2: Our friendly neighborhood squadjot has found two more track logos!

: campo

: grandcanyon_north

 

[shirakawaa]

Are you able to obtain GT5 and GT5P track codes from that? That would be interesting to know.

 

[yonis]

Are you able to obtain GT5 and GT5P track codes from that? That would be interesting to know.

Like I said, I just used the codes in this list. Despite having a blu-ray drive in my machine, I don't have the skills required to look at the contents of the GT5/GT5P discs and thus can't get an up-to-date list.

 

[shirakawaa]

In the post above (differently than in the master track list thread) I meant if it's possible to reverse-engineer by brute force hash codes from remote spec image filenames in the officical website in order to obtain GT5 tracks codenames. Is this possible for you (I assumed it is since you figured out a few names by yourself. But probably that's because I haven't understood properly what you did in order to do that) ?

 

[the_greeze]

Interesting find Yonis. I'd love to play El Capitan again, but in HD!

 

[Xenn]

I can't see any reason why they'd be there just for the heck of it. They've got to be planning to return these courses in the future.

 

[McClarenDesign]

I can't see any reason why they'd be there just for the heck of it. They've got to be planning to return these courses in the future.

PD can name their price! If they offer these, I'm in regardless of how much they charge. Who do I make the check payable to, Sony or PD?

Also makes me wonder if it's part of development for GT6. A week after GT5 came out, PD mentioned that they've already begun working on it, so who knows.

Yonis, again, you deserve the Nobel Prize!

 

[SonicWagon]

I want the grand canyon, sounds awesome. Hopefully all those tracks are on the disk.

I would gladly pay another $50 for all those tracks if they were included in a-spec and new events generated.

Good detective work Yonis.

 

[Caliper]

hi

I don't know if I'm doing something wrong here, if someone could help
downloaded and installed widged, added PSN info, created a dummy account to have another bob to race against mine. Set remote race to standby and activate the widget but it shows in it's queue reserving driver, starting race and then immediately ending, I check the PS3 and it always stays in standby mode, it doesn't load any races.

uhh...help

EDIT: Nevermind, got it working, THANKS A LOT! great stuff

 

[gambleboyen]

Could someone explain to me what the "reciprocal" option does? Does it make the widget choose bobs from friends who are racing your drivers? If so, how does the widget know what friends race your drivers?

 

[squadjot]

Could someone explain to me what the "reciprocal" option does? Does it make the widget choose bobs from friends who are racing your drivers? If so, how does the widget know what friends race your drivers?

Yes, it does what you guessed!, it loads the race logs from GT website.

 

[gtuned]

Woah Yonis.. I Think you're easily becoming the coolest person on GTP right now. The awesome Grinder, and the track logos you found... Great job man !

 

[Sumbode]

Yonis... Your a Hero dude... Thanx for the cool stuff...

 

[sebbemann]

A bump on this issue.

I have also set the widget to leave 0 drivers free on my main account to hopefully force it to use all my drivers on my main account.

The mule account has only 1 friend, being my main account.

Overnight the program ran, and I checked the logs and it indeed did some of the 6 main account drivers (at once) races. However, for some good stretches of time it will only do the 1 mule vs. 1 main account races as well.

The only side variable I can think of is that on my main account I could remove all my GT5 friends, therefore no one could (possibly) take any of my drivers.

Let me know what you guys think.

I feel another BUMP is in order, as i struggle with the same thing. I'm sure its just a setting issue, but i'm just terrible at that stuff. My main account is set to "always use", but drivers from that profile only gets used every other race, and even then only 1 or 2 of my 6 drivers get picked even if they are not used by others. The grid is full almost every time. The widget is amazing, though!

 

[Turb0wned]

This is great, I cant wait to try this maybe I can get to level 35 and get my x2010 instead of doing the ridiculous hard challenge.

 

[squadjot]

But probably that's because I haven't understood properly what you did in order to do that) ?

As i understand it, Yonis found a short_name tracklist for PSPGT, he took that list and converted each name into MD5, and used that to request filenames files with those names.

 

[gtvault]

Great widget! It's been a big help for me, even having just discovered it over the last weekend.

For those who may be having problems "Verifying Internet Connection", I am unable to ping store.playstation.com this morning. The other sites listed are all accessible. I thought perhaps Sony/PD is attempting now to block suspected B-Spec Grinders. I doubt that though, as I was also unable to access store.playstation.com via my Motorola Atrix 4G phone over AT&T's mobile network. Is anyone else experiencing similar issues?