Many are the users who frequently experience problems with the performance and service of iRacing. There is no doubt that iRacing is a very complete and complex service at the same time, and if we do not know all its functions it may be difficult to find the root of our problem. In this article, we will help you to use a tool that iRacing provides us and that can be very useful to control the “health” of our service and detect the possible problems that we have.
Pressing F on our keyboard, we will activate a panel that will appear at the top right when we are inside our vehicle. The function of this small option is to show us the graphic performance in frames per second (Frames Per Second), and the status of our connection in detail.
What does each letter mean?
| FPS | Frames Per Second (Frames Per Second) |
| L | Latency, or data transmission time between our equipment and the iRacing servers. |
| Q | Quality of the connection with iRacing servers. |
| S | Service, synchronization status between our team and the iRacing service. |
| P | Page Fault Meter, indicating if the system is experiencing any page fault in memory. |
| F | Force Feedback (Force exerted by our steering wheel). |
If we want the panel to show us extra information about the performance of our computer, we must go to the configuration file app.ini, and look for the line CPUMeter. By default it will be set to 0, if we change its value to 1 we will have three new fields.
CPUMeter=1 ;
C: CPU level used for physics.
R: CPU level used for rendering.
G: Global CPU level used.
What is FPS?
FPS (frames per second) is a numerical value that represents the rate/frequency/speed at which a device displays images. The less FPS we have, the less fluidity we can appreciate in the image. On the contrary, if the value is higher, we will have a greater fluidity in the image.
What is latency?
Latency (L) is the time it takes for a packet to be transmitted within the network, and is a key factor in Internet connections. Depending on the connection we have, this latency will be higher or lower. Latency influences, for example, the time it takes to load a website.
What factors influence latency?
- Internet access technology: ADSL or Fiber.
- The distance between the points that want to establish communication.
- Capacity of the device from which we connect (computer, laptop, tablet, mobile … etc) and the load of the server to which we are connecting.
To measure latency, ping is used. The ping, measured in milliseconds, measures the time it takes to communicate our equipment with the iRacing servers. For example, the lower the ping, the less time the server will take to register our movements, therefore, the experience with the iRacing.com service will improve. Therefore, it is recommended to enter servers close to your location, in case of Spain, we will try to enter Dutch servers.
This bar can vary in length and color – a shorter bar or a green bar indicates less latency or delay, and if the bar turns red it indicates that our latency is reaching unacceptable levels. When we see a red bar, it may result in a disconnection from the iRacing server.
What is the connection quality?
The Q represents the connection quality, and this bar can show different colors – a green bar means that our connection quality is optimal, yellow or orange means that we have some problems and our connection is not ideal, and it will turn red if the quality is dropping below an acceptable level.
We have to be careful if we see a red bar, it is an indication that our connection may drop and we may be disconnected from the iRacing servers. Connection quality is related to latency.
What is the connection status?
The “S” shows the service status or the course of our connection to the iRacing servers. As with the “Q” bar, a green bar will mean that our sync with the iRacing servers will be optimal, yellow or orange will mean a less than ideal sync with the iRacing service, and it will turn red if our sync is dropping below an acceptable level.
Note: We have to be especially careful with the L, Q, and S as they are all related to our connection to the iRacing servers.
What are page faults?
The “P” part is a page error meter, it tells us if page faults are occurring because the system is using the disk drive to compensate for the lack of available physical RAM.
If the bar is yellow or red, we may be experiencing a drop and reduction in image performance. To fix this possible problem, we should lower the GPU memory allocation (move it to the left) so that it uses a smaller amount of RAM in the graphics options.
If at any time you see a constant gray bar, it means that multiple interruptions (page faults) are occurring in the system when managing virtual memory. The solution to this conflict is to reduce the GPU through the bar and restart the service.
What is clipping?
The F portion shows us when our steering wheel is clipping, that is, when it is doing more force than allowed. The idea is to keep the bar without turning red.
To solve this problem we will have to go to our steering wheel profile and adjust the force in an optimal way. We can also adjust it in iRacing.
Hopefully this article has helped you to have a better control of the iRacing service and to improve your experience as users.
