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Swamp

Good that I get at least some symbolic PTB hours for posting a further improvement over his time.

By now it's adding up to be beyond symbolic  (If I'm eyeballing it right, this evening's update should show you having more than 70 h, well on the way to PTB +0.5!)

As far as the final standings on the scoreboard go, equal times on the scoreboard result in an unbroken tie. Had the race ended a few hours ago with you and KyLiE at 1:17.09, the two of you would share the 3rd place and get 10 points each. There indeed are a few places in the site which don't display such cases as ties; you can think of these as display bugs that we'll get around to eventually. (The XP one, in particular, is mostly harmless, as for the moment XP updates are applied manually, rather than relying on the calculations used for the XP bubbles on the season scoreboard.)

For PTB, though, it's a different matter: to improve your PTB factor, you do need to overtake the time ahead of you rather than just match it, so in that equal times scenario you'd still be regarded as 4th for PTB purposes. In that regard, the PTB system (or at least my implementation thereof) follows the precedent of the old LTB system, in which leading hours were never shared.

Also, how would you visualise PTB during a race, on the track page?

It's a good time as any to consider this, and having gone through a few races with the new system can only help. So, what's your take on displaying PTB information? Below are a few possibilities to kick-start things:

• A detailed chart with the hour totals, like those in the provisional page, could be useful to have somewhere, and in particular works well as a post-race summary. For the main scoreboard page, though, I wonder if a more condensed and directly actionable presentation would be more relevant.
• The mock-up in the opening post of this thread mooted showing the hours needed to reach a PTB target (+0.5, +1, +2), which should be a more directly actionable piece of information. There are some rather tricky question on how to best display that, though: should we use stunts hours, or real hours in the current position? and should we show just the next target for each pipsqueak, or all of them?
• An alternative to hours needed is the concept of a PTB margin that I brought up in discussions elsewhere. The margin is how many (stunts) hours a pipsqueak can afford to miss in order to reach a target. The question of whether to show all of the margins or just the one towards the closest target would also apply here.
• There's also the classic LTB timeline display used in scoreboard pages from previous seasons. The main caveat in adapting that to PTB is that, at least in principle, there would be six timelines, and replays would show up in several of them at once.
• We might also figure out a more visual presentation of the PTB situation. To mention one off-the-cuff idea, a bar chart of the progress towards the targets in stunts hours could make sense. The main question with that might be what to include and what to leave out of the display.

Here is the ZCT284 update of the rankings! The main news in this round is that Argammon has tied Ayrton's long-standing record of 2351 points, and is now very close to taking the lead in the historical ranking! Besides Argammon, Frieshansen has also reached a personal best, while satanziege has returned to the current ranking. Below is the updated evolution chart:

Hello @Sledge ! Fantastic event, thanks for running it and sharing with us 

Yeah, this one had a clear winner! 

5) KyLiE: Is in an eternal battle with Frieshansen.
6) Frieshansen: Is in an eternal battle with KyLie

And this one did end in a tie!

Excellent work, @HerrNove and @llm ! It's taking me forever to be able to sit down and play with Restunts, but anyway I can't wait to try the improved build process!

1. Argammon
2. Duplode
3. KyLiE
4. MiDiaN
5. Alan Rotoi
6. Spoonboy
7. Frieshansen
8. HerrNove
9. Zapper
10. Mortimer McMire
11. Mark Nailwood
12. dreadnaut

Excellent work! These lap time comparisons with varying grip/surfaces are very interesting.

As you can see from the screenshots taken with Bliss, for both track types there is a base asphalt path and two symmetrical paths on dirt and ice surfaces for better comparison although these can surely be biased by the game's steering bug.

One way to eliminate bias that could be more convenient than e.g. reversing the tracks is testing on the Mindscape 1990 game version -- with it, left turns aren't faster than right ones.

Audi or Mercedes? 🤔 This is not the first time the Audi Quattro runs along one of the DTM cars. In ZCT217, for instance, the Audi Quattro and the BMW DTM stayed at close quarters for pretty much the whole race.

Speaking of projections, the PTB update at the end of public days (and 360 hours from quiet days) has just been posted. While having half a dozen pipsqueaks in contention for PTB +1 is a pretty realistic scenario, only Frieshansen has a chance of reaching PTB +2 (margin at midnight: 31:44).

The rankings have been updated for ZCT283! Argammon and Frieshansen have reached personal best ratings in this round. Another highlight is Alan Rotoi being back into the 2200s range, not having dropped points in any race from ZCT275 on. There is also plenty of action going on below the surface: though HerrNove, MiDiaN and Raskolnikovik still need a few more completed races to enter the rankings, they are already making good progress and stacking up points. Below is the updated evolution chart:

Updating the calendar with @dreadnaut at ZCT291. 11/12 

A few post-race notes...

@Argammon 's infield carpetcopter on the final sector was the cherry on the cake, consolidating a lead whose buildup was well underway. At the midpoint between the two final banked corners, Argammon's split time was 1:16.80, while Alan's split with the Lotus (converted to the Diablo bonus) was 1:17.97, and my own split with the Diablo was 1:18.30.

In a race of details, it feels fitting that the second place was decided by 0.05s separating two Lotuses. In fact, @alanrotoi and @MiDiaN were within a quarter of a second of each other through the whole track!

There was a very even split of PTB time between the pipsqueaks on the podium: 358:39 for MiDiaN, 354:11 for Alan, and 353:53 for Argammon -- eighteen minutes between the latter two! Elsewhere on the PTB chart, @Frieshansen will start ZCT284 less than an hour away from PTB +0.5, while @KyLiE and @Spoonboy will also bring substantial amounts of carryover.

With the final week underway, does anyone dare to bet about cars? Is the Lotus domination about to be confirmed?