A group session is a race or a traffic run that several of your simulators join at the same time. Multitap starts a private Assetto Corsa server for it, seats each rig with its driver, car and livery, and launches the game on every screen with one click. When you are done, it tears the server down again. Nothing about this needs a keyboard at the rig.
The page at a glance
The Groups page has four areas. At the top is a single Start New Race button, which opens the Configure Session drawer. Below it are three sections that only appear when they have something to show: Quick Starts, your saved race templates; Saved Lineups, rosters of drivers you have preserved for a repeat visit; and Active Races, one tile per race currently running. When nothing is running you see an empty state with a Start a Race button that opens the same drawer.
The page refreshes itself. Active races update every five seconds and their timers tick every second, so you can leave it open on a tablet at the desk and trust what it says.
Starting a race
Press Start New Race. The drawer slides in with two tabs, Race and Traffic. It always opens on Race. The left column lists your simulators; the right column holds the settings for the session type you picked.
Choosing the drivers
Every simulator that is currently connected appears as a row with a checkbox labelled Include followed by the cockpit's name. Tick the ones taking part. A ● Saved badge marks rigs you have saved in Settings. A rig that is already in another group race is dimmed, shows 🏁 IN GROUP, and cannot be ticked until that race ends. Rigs in a solo session can still be added; the group launch simply takes over the screen.
Include all idle ticks every available rig in one go.
Next to each checkbox is a Driver Name box. Start typing and Multitap suggests names from your driver database. The name you enter here is sent to the rig straight away, so it appears on the customer's launcher and on the leaderboard from the first lap. If your broadcast PC is connected it appears in this list too. Include it and it joins the server as a spectator named BROADCAST; it is never asked to choose a car.
Track
| Control | What it does |
|---|---|
| Region | Filters the track list by the region assigned on the Cars & Tracks page. Defaults to All. |
| Track | Every track installed at the venue, by display name. Tracks with several layouts list each layout separately. |
Cars
| Control | What it does |
|---|---|
| Car Selection | Same Car for All puts every driver in the car you choose below. Driver Chooses lets each driver pick their own car and livery on the rig before the race starts. See Driver Chooses. |
| Car Class | Filters the car list by class (GT3, Cup, Street and so on). Hidden when drivers choose their own cars. |
| Car | The car everyone drives in Same Car mode. Each rig is given a different livery where the car has enough of them, so a field of identical Miatas still looks like a field. |
Session Timing
| Control | Default | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Practice (min) | 10 | Length of the practice session. Set 0 to skip practice. |
| Qualify (min) | 5 | Length of qualifying. Set 0 to skip it and start the race from the join order. |
| Race Mode | Time | Time runs the race for a number of minutes. Laps runs it for a number of laps. The label on the next field changes to match. |
| Race Length | 10 | Minutes or laps, depending on Race Mode. Leave it blank for no race session at all, useful for an open practice lobby. |
Every session you enable is open to join at any point, so a driver who sits down late can still get into practice or qualifying. The race waits ten seconds after the previous session ends before the lights go out.
Session Settings
| Control | What it does |
|---|---|
| Mode | Pro means full fuel use, full damage, tyre wear, and factory assists only. Standard turns off fuel use, damage and tyre wear and forces ABS and traction control on, which is the right choice for first-timers. A third option, Custom, appears if you have enabled a custom mode in Settings, using the name you gave it. The mode is also sent to each rig so the launcher shows the right assist profile. |
| Time of Day | Day or Night. Night sets a late-evening sun and switches on headlights. |
| Auto Clutch | Remembered with the session and with any Quick Start or lineup you save from it. The clutch rule the server actually applies comes from the Mode above. |
| Autogrid | On or Off. Passed to the rigs with the launch so the in-game grid helper follows your choice. |
Weather and conditions
The Weather selector offers Clear, Clouds, Light rain and Heavy rain. Rain is real rain: the track gets wet and grip falls, so pair it with Standard mode for guests. Under Advanced weather you can set wind speed range and direction, ambient and road temperature with a random spread, and a time multiplier. The multiplier defaults to 0.1, which keeps the sun where it is; raise it and the light changes over the course of the session.
Preserve this group
Tick 📌 Preserve this group before launching and Multitap keeps the roster after the race: which rigs, which drivers, and how long they sat. It appears under Saved Lineups, ready to relaunch on their next visit. If the exact set of rigs you have ticked is already preserved, the box is greyed out with a note saying so.
Launch
Press Launch Race. If no rig is ticked you get a reminder and nothing happens. Otherwise the drawer closes and a full-screen progress card appears: Starting your race… Spinning up the server, this usually takes around a minute. Behind it Multitap reserves a server slot and ports, writes the server configuration, starts the Assetto Corsa server, and waits until it answers. Then every ticked rig receives its launch order with driver, car, livery and the server address, and the game starts on each screen.
When the server is up you see Group race started successfully! and the form resets for the next one. If the server fails to start, the message tells you why, using the last line of the server log. If you already have as many servers running as you have simulators, the launch is refused with Server limit reached; end a race first.
Each launch carries its own token. If you press the button twice while the first launch is still working, the second press attaches to the same job instead of starting a second server.
Driver Chooses
Set Car Selection to Driver Chooses and the launch works in two stages. Nothing is started yet. Each rig is shown the car selection screen instead, with a class filter and a livery grid for cars that have skins. The customer picks with the wheel and confirms; the rig then shows a waiting screen until everyone has chosen.
Back in the admin panel a banner appears at the top of the page: ⌛ Waiting for car selections, with a row per driver. A row reads ✔ Sam Selected: ks_mazda_mx5_cup once that driver has picked, or ⌛ Sam Waiting for selection with a 🔄 Resend to Car Select button if the screen needs pushing to that rig again. As soon as the last driver confirms, the server starts with each driver's own car and livery, and the game launches everywhere. The banner clears itself and you get a note that the race is launching; look for it under Active Races a minute later.
Quick Starts
A Quick Start is a saved race setup. From the drawer, press Save as Quick Start, give it a name such as Birthday GT3 sprint, and it appears as a card at the top of the page with the track outline, the car, and a summary line like P:10m • Q:5m • R:10m.
Click a card and the drawer opens with the track, car mode, class, car, timing, mode, time of day, clutch and grid settings filled in. You still tick the rigs and type the driver names, because those change every time. Weather is not part of a Quick Start; set it each time you need it. The small × on a card deletes it after a confirmation. The strip shows your fifteen most recent Quick Starts.
Saved Lineups
A lineup is a roster. It is created when you tick Preserve this group at launch, or press 📌 Preserve group on a running race. The card is named after the track and driver count, for example Brands Hatch — 4 drivers, and lists each driver with their rig and seat time. While the original race is still running the card is badged Live now; afterwards it reads Saved, and the seat time is frozen at the moment the race ended.
| Button | What it does |
|---|---|
| New race | Opens the drawer with the same track, car settings, timing and mode, ticks the same rigs and fills in the same driver names. Rigs that are not connected right now are skipped. Press Launch Race and the group is back on track. While the original race is still live this button is replaced by a disabled Already running. |
| Delete | Removes the lineup immediately. There is no confirmation step, so click deliberately. |
Races launched from a lineup are marked as preserved on the server, which has one more effect: they are never cleaned up automatically for being empty (see Ending a race).
Active Races
Each running race is a tile. Collapsed, it shows a live dot, the group number, a session pill (Practice, Qualifying or Race, read live from the server), the track and mode, a chip per rig with its driver, and the elapsed time. Click anywhere on the tile to expand it.
Inside the tile
The expanded view starts with the facts: track, current session, time remaining in that session where the server reports it, total duration, the timing plan (P 10m | Q 5m | R 10 min) and the cars in use.
The Server card shows the join address in the form ip:port. This matters for remote players: your group servers are private and never listed in the public Assetto Corsa lobby, so friends racing from home need this address. Three controls help you hand it over.
| Control | What it does |
|---|---|
| Copy button | Copies the address to the clipboard. |
| Quick-join in CM | Opens a Content Manager quick-join link. On a PC with Content Manager installed, one click puts the player on the server. |
| Share invite | Opens the phone's share sheet with a ready-made message including the quick-join link and the raw address. On a desktop browser it copies the message instead. |
Actions
| Control | What it does |
|---|---|
| End race | Stops the server, releases its ports and removes the tile. Seat time is frozen on any linked lineup. Drivers still in the game see the server disappear; the rig itself is not sent back to the launcher, so use the Launcher page if you want to end their sessions too. |
| 📌 Preserve group | Saves the roster as a lineup. Once preserved, the button becomes a Preserved badge. |
| ⏭ Next | Tells the server to move to the next session, for example from practice to qualifying, without waiting for the clock. |
| 🔄 Restart | Restarts the current session from the beginning. |
| ⏹ End session | Ends the current session early. The server continues with whatever comes next. |
Per-rig rows
Under the actions is a row for every rig in the race: a green dot if the rig is connected to Multitap, grey if it is in the entry list but not connected, the cockpit name, the driver, the car, and once the in-game app reports it, the current ABS and traction control levels.
| Button | What it does |
|---|---|
| Assists | Opens the live assists panel for that rig. See below. |
| Rejoin | Sends the launch order to that rig again. Use it when a rig was off when you launched, or the game crashed and needs to come back into the same race. |
| Stop | Ends the game on that rig and removes it from the race. The server keeps running for everyone else. |
Live assists
The assists panel has two halves. Live assists are pushed to the rig instantly, mid-session: ABS and TC steppers with a − and + either side and the car's maximum shown as cap, plus Virtual Mirror and Ideal Line toggles. Press one, and within a couple of seconds the panel refreshes to show what the game confirmed. This is how you rescue a guest who is spinning at every corner without anyone leaving their seat.
Queued for next session holds changes that need a server restart: Auto Clutch, Stability, Damage, Tire Wear, Tire Blankets and Fuel Rate. Each button cycles through unset, true and false. Queued changes are applied when you press Relaunch with queued, which ends the race and, for races launched from a lineup, reopens the drawer with the same roster and the changes staged. For a race that was not launched from a lineup, the race ends and you rebuild it by hand.
Ending a race
Three things end a group race.
- End race on its tile, described above.
- Stop All Servers at the bottom of the drawer. A confirmation lists what will happen. This stops every group server at the venue at once. Traffic sessions are separate and are not affected.
- The automatic sweep. A race that is not preserved, has been running for at least three minutes, and has had no rig connected for a full minute is cleaned up on its own. That keeps a forgotten server from sitting in the list all night. Preserved races are exempt, so a lineup you want to hold for a group that stepped out for pizza will wait for them.
Traffic sessions
The Traffic tab sets up a shared road with AI traffic to weave through. Several rigs can join the same server, so friends see each other in the same stream of cars. The scoring app on each rig turns near misses into points and the results go to their own leaderboard.
Traffic settings
| Control | Default | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Track | Only tracks with AI lanes can run traffic. The list shows tracks you have flagged as traffic tracks on the Cars & Tracks page; if you have not flagged any, it shows every track where AI lanes were found. | |
| Car Selection / Car Class / Car | Same as a race: one car for everyone with random liveries, or Driver Chooses. | |
| Traffic Density | 1.0x | A slider from 0.5x to 2.0x. Higher means more cars on the road. |
| AI Speed (km/h) | 80 | The speed the traffic cruises at, from 40 to 120. Cars in the fast lane run a little quicker, and every car varies a bit so the stream feels natural. |
| Session Length (min) | 30 | How long the road stays open, from 5 to 999 minutes. The server loops, so it never kicks anyone out mid-run. |
| Mode | Pro | Pro or Standard, sent to the rigs for the assist profile. The traffic server itself always runs with ABS and TC available and damage at half strength. |
| Time of Day | Day | Day is noon. Night is a late run with headlights. |
| Autogrid | On | Passed to the rigs. |
Press Launch Traffic Session. The progress card reads Spinning up the traffic server. AI cars are warming up, and when it is ready each rig gets its launch order. Driver Chooses works the same way as for a race, with the banner at the top of the page counting 2/4 ready.
A traffic session ends when the driver quits the game on the rig, or automatically once the server has sat empty. It does not appear under Active Races, which lists races only.
How traffic scoring works
The scoring app on the rig shows a live HUD. The rules, so you can explain them at the desk:
- Nothing scores below 60 km/h.
- A near miss is passing another car with less than five metres between the bodywork. Closer passes are worth more, and each pass is multiplied by the driver's current speed, their closest pass so far in the run, their combo, and a wrong-way bonus.
- The combo climbs by one per near miss and starts to decay after four seconds without one. Every five in a row pays a combo bonus.
- Driving against traffic for ten seconds doubles the multiplier; it fades twice as fast once the driver turns around.
- A drift that lasts more than a second and includes near misses pays a drift bonus.
- An overtake pays for closing on a car from behind and getting past within five seconds.
- Any contact ends the run. The score so far is submitted, then everything resets to zero and the driver goes again.
Scores are recorded per driver and per track, and the traffic leaderboard keeps each driver's best. New personal bests, top ten entries and track records are announced on Discord if you have connected it.
AI traffic uses a set of traffic car models and AI lanes for the track. If a session starts with an empty road, the venue's traffic car pack or the track's AI lanes are missing. The Cars & Tracks chapter explains how AI lanes are uploaded.