Automated Splits
Over the past few partner competitions we have been running, you would have seen that we have been extensively testing the new automated splitting functionality in preparation for launching it to our community owners.
When building an event, check ‘Automated Splits’ and 2 new options will be shown to you, these options allow you to set the minimum and maximum grid size you would like each split to have.
You can choose how big or small you would like the splits with a maximum size being no larger than the amount of grid slots available per track.
This feature has been really well received within the Moza and Logitech competitions that we have been running recently, with drivers having a more engaging race with drivers of similar SGP Rank as them, allowing for closer racing, better battles and more chance to learn in the lower ranked splits.
Again, this can be done at the click of the button by community owners and will save a whole heap of work that an owner would usually do if they wanted to match drivers up based on ability.
SGP Pure Performance Rank - #itsnotelo
First and foremost, let’s clear the confusion. SGP Pure Performance is not an ELO Based Ranked system, and therefore is not comparable to any other ELO Based system.
ELO was originally developed for Chess, 1v1, clear and even rules for either player where the outcome was solely based on the player's skill against the other player.
Race results in sim racing are depending on a multitude of factors: driver skill, weather and track conditions, car capabilities, number of drivers, so every race is unique in a certain way. It is not a 1v1 game in the same conditions. .
For example, there are 2 communities: one is fast pro’s and the other is casual racing. The drivers of both communities are not driving among themselves. Given the same amount of races and similar conditions, top drivers of both communities would have similar ELO as they won the same number of races. You can already see that the driver levels are different, but the ELO would not show that. Only if they race together. This can happen even in a single large community where some drivers are not meeting others. Those communities need to do additional work to evaluate driver level.
Another example - if a very fast driver joins rookies’ race or similar, he can win the race without much effort, not even trying to match his top performance and ELO would still give him some rank increase as he had won. SGP rank would reduce the rank for the winner as he was driving much slower than he could in given conditions. Therefore to keep his rank a driver will need to choose the races and opponents of his or higher level, or race at his capabilities. No sandbagging..
This is why SGP Pure Performance was built, to take in 10s if not 100s of variables that you go through when you take part in any sim race and judge your performance based on how you perform against the ‘Perfect Performance’ using that car and track combination and conditions. So you are not just competing against the other cars on track, you are competing against yourself, to deliver, time after time, your Ultimate Pure Performance. The better you perform, against your ultimate best performance, the more rank you will receive, the worse you perform, against your ultimate best performance, the more rank you will lose.
Everyone has their own Ultimate Best Performance, so your gains and losses are not comparable with anyone else on track. What you gain, someone else will not lose.
Change is hard, I get it, everyone hates change, my wife bought Tesco’s own ketchup instead of the good ol’ Heinz stuff, we had an argument about it, but actually, Tesco’s own tastes half decent, and saves us £3 in our weekly shop! The point is to look at things, not always from the same angle, live a little, move around, try something new with an open and fresh mind on it going forward, you never know, you may realise that it's not half bad!
Anyway, that has been the first of my series of ‘Thoughts.’ To those that know me, and those that do not, you will notice where I lose the plot a little towards the end and give you a random analogy, but hopefully, taking sim racing out of it, and putting it into the real world, will give you some perspective that things are different, but different things are good!
See you on track.
Dan
