There are three important settings you can configure for Trackside mode:
- What sessions to synchronize with during race weekends
- What delay to apply to the light effects
- What lights to use for Trackside mode
Session selection
Every race weekend is composed of 5 sessions. Most of the time, there are 3 free practice sessions (1h each), 1 qualifying session to determine the starting order, and one race. For 6 special weekends (China, Austria, Miami, Austin, Brazil & Qatar), a Sprint race (half distance of the feature race) is held on the Saturday, and the sessions are then a single Free Practice (1h), Sprint qualifying, Sprint race, race qualifying, and race.
Depending on what you watch, you can now select what sessions to sync with. By default, we pre-select Sprint races and feature races for you, but you can adjust this to fit your needs. To do so, go to the "Track sessions" menu.
Delay
Trackside mode sources its data almost in real time. As a consequence, it is fast, and often faster than your video broadcast. Video taken around the track takes a few seconds to be transmitted to a control room, then someone picks what camera feed to show, then it travels to you. In practice, that can easily take 10s, or even 20s depending on where you live.
If you do not want the light effects from Trackside mode to be displayed before the action appears on screen, you will need to add some delay. To do so, go to the "Delay" menu and pick the duration you need. By default, this is set to 5s. The maximum is 2 minutes.
It's all up to you: you can get a perfect screen sync, or set it to 0s and have a cool party trick where your lights literally "predict the future" 😉.
Targeted lights
Select what you lights you want to sync with the race! Once again, it's all up to you. Turn the whole living room into a giant race monitor, or just pick a few lights to keep you updated with the action. To adjust what lights to use, head to the "Targets" menu.
