Hello everyone!

I quite often have thought about how load times, create an unfair advantage for lower-spec hardware and leads to player's lowering their graphics settings to shorten them and increase their chances at a WR run.

Therefore I wanted to ask how our small and sporadic community would feel, about implementing something called "Load Removers"? With these, the time spent in loading screens wouldn't be counted towards a run's total time.

This allows for:

1. Players with lower-spec hardware to compete for the fastest times. (A buddy of mine had slight interest in running the game, but the loading times for him are way longer, rendering his runs as not viable)

2. Runs of the game to be a bit more aesthetically pleasing. (I quite often found myself frustrated by how undetailed and sad everything looks on minimum settings)

I realize that something like this requires quite some effort, and to be honest, I'm not quite sure how a Load Remover is implemented, but once all that is sorted, I feel this game is more attractive (literally) to run. So before any plans are being worked on, I wanted to know how you all feel about this? And if people are looking for a middle-ground of sorts, there could still be different timing methods be used for different leaderboards, one for in-game time with a load-remover and one as a RTA (real-time attack).

Also, if we decide to tackle this issue now, we might have our base layer already set, in case Assetto Corsa Evoluzione has a similar single player mode.

Sounds like a good idea.

It was one of the things I didn't like about, when I was running. It takes out the menuing, but it would be more fair for everyone.

Had the same thought when I started here

Even tho I have a giga PC and there's a strat with apps etc

I don't mind how it is now, but I also don't mind if we change it,

Question from me would be: what would happen with all the current runs? Will they be adjusted or just invalid or what happens

I think there's two solutions:

1. We set up 2 categories for each Run: One using a Load Remover and another being timed as RTA (real-time attack).

2. We keep the times on the leaderboard and give them a "legacy" status of sorts. Meaning: We change the rules but keep the previous records due to their historic significance. Beating those runs would be easier, yes, but at least everyone's efforts (especially yours, you did a stellar job!) wouldn't completely go to waste.

The latter would be my preference. I think, if we implement a Load Remover in the future, it would make RTA runs and this whole theoretical category, obsolete.

I feel that re-timing runs manually after the fact is way too much work, and is impossible to do accurately, as a Load Remover reads the game's cache while it's played and therefore isn't dependent on refresh rate.

+1

and the gap between good players is small so if ever the level is high, the most important thing could become the loading time and menus. which is annoying

also, making car setups is important in simracing and this timing mode doesn"t allow to load a setup, which is braking a big part of what is supposed to be a "simracing game"

i'm new to Speedrun, but as an experimented simracer, those rules makes me sad and don't wanting to play it

skipping to a RTA mode (or IGT idk how you name it) which starts when lights are green sounds better. Only driving skills would count