rec.autos.simulators

Online racing with NASCAR 3 is a disaster for me.

I've had NASCAR 3 for about 2 weeks now. I have yet to find a server
with anywhere near the quality of what I was used to with TEN.

Don't get me wrong. TEN, as we all know, was far from perfect. But it
was playable most of the time. I had some great races on TEN.

I was so e***d about NASCAR 3. Mainly because I hadn't raced on TEN
since I bought my new Voodoo3 3000 card. I could never get NROS to run
since the card was installed. So I just raced GPL, had a great time,
and waited for NASCAR 3.

NASCAR 3 arrived. I bought it without hesitation regardless of all the
flack it was taking about not using the GPL engine (It would have been
great wouldn't it?). I figured NASCAR 3 with its graphic enhancements
and better sound was worth my money (hey! Its my money!). In Single
player mode, its great. Except, 99 percent of the time I wont care
about single player. My primary interest is in ONLINE play.

Terrible warp. To the point of NEVER knowing where the other cars may
be or suddenly appear.
Horrific at finding a server that will allow me to connect. Almost
NEVER finish a race.

First I get:
"Bad Connection"
Then:
"Very Bad Connection"
Then:
"Losing Connection"
Then:
"Losing Connection"
Then:
DUMP

Other times the warp is so bad, I will be leading a race, then out of
know where, the 2nd place car comes into view in my mirror, warps
through 3 lanes back and forth, takes me out, his car keeps going like
nothing happens.

I have ISDN128K, Cable modem, and 56K modem connections. All with
different ISPs.
With NASCAR 3, none of them give me a race that compares to TEN.
I can race GPL fine. I can host GPL fine. I can play other online
games fine. (i.e. In QuakeWorld TeamFortress I usually have the best
ping-quality in the game and I catch hell for it among the other
players).

I have a PII-300 with 128M RAM, Voodoo3 3000, SBLive, PDPI-L4 with a
TSW2 Wheel and Win98. Although I realize my PII-300 is getting a
little long in the tooth, it still exceeds the minimum requirement on
the NASCAR 3 box by over 180 percent.

Please tell me I'm doing something wrong. Please tell me it's a simple
fix, like tweaking an INI file for internet play. Please tell me PAPY
is fervently working on a PATCH to correct this. Please tell me we
wont have to wait 9 months for a PATCH to correct these bugs.

Maybe I was just being overly optimistic, but I hoped it would have
been better. Finding a good server to play on would be easier if you
could ping all the servers at once. This ***of having to
individually ping each server, then wait forever for a result is
ridiculous, because it's a 50-50 chance that it wont even ping!

Ok, my ranting is over for now. Turn on the flames if you have nothing
better to do if you like. I just had to get it off my chest.

I guess I'll go on racing GPL (1.2 soon!) but I would have hoped that
my 50 bucks for NASCAR 3 would have been better spent.

-Gary <---- just wants finish a race IF he can find one

My recommendation to you is that you host races rather than join.  That way
your warping is very low, and others are glad to race with you due to your
fast 'net connection.  :-)

I set the max latency to 150-175, with a field of 20.  I've had many, many
compliments on the "host's connection" and lack of warping.

-Paul

My reply address is false.
Please post replies to this news group.
If you need to e-mail me, it's
scan-man at home dot com

<<snipped>>

I agree with everything to say. Bear in mind that some people try to
host races with 32 drivers on a 56k modem or an ISDN line! There's no
way to know for sure of the connection quality. You can ping the server
first, but that's no guarantee. I like to host th race, max 12 drivers,
max 200 milliseconds. I find quality better than quantity.

Eventually, I'm hopping people with T1 connection will setup servers
(hey you never know...). I play Team Fortress and Tribes and some hosts
have T1 lines. You never know.

Philster