rec.autos.simulators

Good post Phil.

Cost apart, that's why I prefer LAN. You don't have to put up with the
village idiot/s! If he/she/they won't practise and/or can/won't attain
some reasonable level of expertise & take *reasonable* care to avoid
that first corner pile up....hey..plenty more folks out there just
waitin' to take their place. You don't have to put up with the immature
ones cause they're easily parted with Dad's money <G>, or the poor
drivers because they are soon out of selection by natural attrition, or
at least at the back of the field minimizing their destructive
potential. <G>

A race isn't won in the first lap. This sort of "every lap's gotta' be a
'fast lap'" mentality trying to drive the race from lap one at
qualifying speeds comes from to many 'against the computer with no other
traffic' fast lap competitions (leagues) and a limited attention span.

If one wants to compete in a simulated race environment and expect
sucess then you have to practise in that environment. It's no good
practising fast laps with no traffic for 30 minute periods every other
day and then turning up on the day with computer traffic, other human
competitors and a two hour race and expecting to cope with it and win on
lap one.

At LAST Sierra/Papyrus have finally taken the step an given us what
we've been asking for all along L A N play....Indycar L A N next please?
Hopefully GP2's patch will introduce LAN play which is more implemented
better than it's current modem module.

I'm sweating on my copy of NASCAR 2 (C&B mailorder) down here in the
antipodes!

                       *              -Assembly of Forces in Space-

                        *       Strategy than to keep the forces concentrated."
                       *                      Carl von Clausewitz (1780-1831)

Guess that will vary from individual to individual.  TEN has a
bandwith checker that sort of rates you by the quality of your
connection.  They have several gameplay servers, each of which is
assigned a rating level, from not recommended to optimal.  The better
your connection, the better rated server you have access too.  If the
best your ISP can muster is "Not recommended" or "Satisfactory", you
might be SOL.  If you can get a "Recommended" or "Optimal" though,
it'll probably work pretty good.

Personally, I got my $5 TEN account, but I'm still playing wait and
see.  I hear there's also going to be an additional charge for the
NRO.  I wouldn't mind paying some sort of annual membership fee (say
$50 or so), but if it's an hourly thing, then I won't be playing.  If
the financial numbers do work out though, I'll probably try to do my
racing during the lower latency times on the net, like Saturday
mornings.  Hopefully that'll be good enough.

David

*** You're only young once, but you can stay immature forever ***