rec.autos.simulators

by **John Walla** » Sun, 25 Oct 1998 04:00:00

On Fri, 23 Oct 1998 23:15:41 -0400, "David G Fisher"

>In each race? I don't see the names.

For fairness they were only opened up to all-comers after the
championship was decided. I race the Glen, Achim and Doug did The Glen
and Mexico AFAI recall.

I can probably dig out the replay and send it if you still have
trouble believing me...

Cheers!
John

by **Skun** » Sun, 25 Oct 1998 04:00:00

GPL was never even intended to be playable over the 'net
be grateful asswipe
if you a)get a better isp
or b) find local servers or small games
GPL multiplay can be superb
the internet can be as unstable as hell.. don't blame GPL
if i've missed anything, the other posts have raised valid points

by **Dave Henri** » Sun, 25 Oct 1998 04:00:00

What I still don't understand is why

I'm not 100% sure of this, but didn't Papyrus have to sign some
Non-competing clauses with
Nascar to get the license for multiplayer online stuff?? (nros) In other
words, when developing NROS,
Papy agreed not to create a similiar competing product. That could be why
GPL is only setup like it is and
not on some "bigger" grander service.
dave henrie

by **David G Fishe** » Sun, 25 Oct 1998 04:00:00

>For fairness they were only opened up to all-comers after the
>championship was decided. I race the Glen, Achim and Doug did The Glen
>and Mexico AFAI recall.

>I can probably dig out the replay and send it if you still have
>trouble believing me...

>Cheers!
>John

I believe you John. If you and Richard had mentioned that the last two races
were the one's the testers entered (no race reports available) then there
wouldn't of been any question. What I'm interested in is why the testers
weren't allowed in the entire Cup series. There was plenty of room as some
races only had 10 competitiors.

David g Fisher

by **David G Fishe** » Sun, 25 Oct 1998 04:00:00

>>Your kind of hinting that I'm lying.

>Apologies, that wasn't the intention :( But your posts also read like
>you're saying that Papy doesn't give a damn about online play which is the
>absolute opposite of what their track record shows.

Are you aware that Papyrus (according to beta testers) stated that internet
play with GPL was something they were not too interested in and that the
beta testers had to push them for improvements to the online play? This
attitude by them was discussed both here at r.a.s. and at another forum
awhile back.

I guess it's possible that the decision makers woke up one day and
completely changed their minds, but I kind of doubt it and I think their
attitude towards TCP/IP online play shows in the results. If they really had
that attitude, do you honestly think they did the best job they could and
that online play in GPL has reached it's full potential? Alison says on her
site that GPL hosted on an 33 or 56k modem is really limited to 2-3 players.
That's ridiculous. Especially since even 2-3 player races are often
resulting in poor quality.

David G Fisher

by **David G Fishe** » Sun, 25 Oct 1998 04:00:00

help if you could describe exactly what you get in "other

I did in my original post. There is no reason why GPL shouldn't provide the
ability for someone to host up to 8 people, on a 33.6 or 56k modem, from
different countries, without significant warping and disconnects. I've had
100's of races in other sims under those circumstances. I know someone is
going to say that the physics in GPL are so blah, blah, blah, .........but I
am starting to think that is an answer someone gives simply because that's
what someone told them and they choose to accept it as fact. I talked to
someone last night about sims who is a lead designer of simulators for NASA
and he says that some of what I hear being passed around as gospel is just
not true. According to him, physics (and AI) do not eat up that much CPU in
PC sims. He is a flight and car sim nut (has GPL, MGP, CPR, F1RS, MTM2, and
many others as well as a number of flight sims) and considering his
expertise I find it hard to doubt him.

David G Fisher

by **David G Fishe** » Sun, 25 Oct 1998 04:00:00

>GPL was never even intended to be playable over the 'net

They made that choice. Maybe they should have made another one?

Ok. Thanks for setting me straight. What would I do without your words of
wisdom?

I guess the last 1,000+ online races I've had were a dream. I was under the
impression that quality TCP/IP internet racing was absolutely possible.

David G Fisher

by **David G Fishe** » Sun, 25 Oct 1998 04:00:00

>Where was your online racing experience from? NROS? MTM? or Motorcross
>Madness? Have you ever played in massively multiplayer setting?

I am comparing GPL's TCP/IP performance to other TCP/IP racing games. A year
and a half ago I started with POD, then a year ago I took up CPR and have
probably had 600 races online, and also another 400 races with MTM2. All
these work much better over 33.6 and 56k modems.

Alison says on her site that GPL is limited to 2-3 racers when hosted on a
33 or 56k modem. That's ridiculous. The results with just 2-3 racers over
33.6 and 56k modems for many have been poor as well. If that 's the best
they can do with those modems, why would you think that the performance with
a cable modem isn't below avg. as well? Doesn't make sense.

Papyrus said themselves they were not too interested in GPL online. That
says it all. If you want to ignore that and think they still did their best
with that attitude, fine. Why you would insist that GPL is running at the
optimal level when they took that stance is surprising. I consider my time
somewhat valuable and am not interested in waisting too much of it being
booted, or putting up with poor performance from a sim online when it may
very well be that it didn't have to be that way.

Like I said in my original post, I'm not a self declared expert, but I have
over 1,000 online races spanning 3 different sims so I have a good idea of
the potential of online racing too. YOU HAVE 3 GUYS IN THE TOP
10......great. I placed high in POD's 10,000 tourney, 5th in MTM2's Vegas
Challenge, and held the #1 spot on the CPR Ladder. I've done some serious
online racing with some serious talent and can tell you that my ISP works
just fine. It's the game. Considering that the majority of veteran sim
racers that I chat with regularly are having the same problems, and I keep
reading here at r.a.s. and elsewhere similiar complaints, I'll have to just
disagree with you on this subject.

by **Mike Laske** » Mon, 26 Oct 1998 03:00:00

David, just to clarify, it was thought for a while that internet play was
not going to be technically possible with GPL... the suggestion of a lack of
interest is indeed quite far from the truth. Randy Cassidy at Papyrus
worked like crazy with many hours of personal time dedicated trying to
improve this and to make it possible. I really think he should be
congratulated - online GPL has turned out to be nothing short of fantastic.

Mike.

by **John Walla** » Mon, 26 Oct 1998 03:00:00

On Sat, 24 Oct 1998 00:05:07 -0400, "David G Fisher"

>You say that GPL is more subject to the quirks of the internet. That's a
>very odd way of saying the game doesn't perform well online. You ought to be
>a politician John. :-)

Politicians are reknowned for twisting the words of others - you did
that to me with the comment above. I didn't say GPL doesn't perform
well online, I know that for a fact to be untrue. I've had occasional
problems with online games but less than 10% - that's equivalent to
what I get with any other sim including CPR on the zone or even NROS.
What I said was that GPL seems more sensitive to the foibles of the
internet - if you have a good connection you'll have no problem, if
you have a bad "something" it will be bad.

We don't know what the "something" is that causes problems for you - I
am simply saying we should know what it is before hammering GPL. GPL
is affected by it, but I don't think it is at the root of the trouble.

It simply means that the method Papy choze isn't as seamless to you as
other sims, no more and no less. It could be like Motocross Madness
where the people in the game are seeing completely different things on
their screen, but that's not racing. Given that many people are
experiencing no problems racing GPL online with 28.8 modem you must
say there is something wierd with your combination of hardware,
connection and GPL.

Cheers!
John

by **John Walla** » Mon, 26 Oct 1998 03:00:00

On Sat, 24 Oct 1998 17:28:27 -0400, "David G Fisher"

>I believe you John. If you and Richard had mentioned that the last two races
>were the one's the testers entered (no race reports available) then there
>wouldn't of been any question. What I'm interested in is why the testers
>weren't allowed in the entire Cup series. There was plenty of room as some
>races only had 10 competitiors.

It took a while to sort out the firewall, plus I think it wouldn't
have been fair to the guys who had been in the series from the start.
Once the championship was won we could all pile in, and damn fun it
was too. I think Doug and Achim did really well at Mexico, Achim also
did well at the Glen. He and I qualified third and fourth behind
Kaemmer and Sentell.

Cheers!
John

by **Neil Yeatma** » Mon, 26 Oct 1998 03:00:00

> Alison says on her site that GPL is limited to 2-3 racers when hosted on a
> 33 or 56k modem. That's ridiculous. The results with just 2-3 racers over
> 33.6 and 56k modems for many have been poor as well. If that 's the best
> they can do with those modems, why would you think that the performance with
> a cable modem isn't below avg. as well? Doesn't make sense.

Just my 2 cents here, but based on what I've seen with GPL, the host is
the most critical factor. Cable, ADSL, and ISDN seem to offer the best
speed, but I'm not convinced that all cable companies are created equal.
I've raced with a lot of different hosts, but there's only a handful of
them that are consistantly stable hosts. I just got off a race at Rouen
where 16 guys completed the race. This guy was a *great* host.

On the other hand, earlier tonight there was a cable host (I had a sub
150 ping to him) and he couldn't keep 3 people on.

--

Neil Yeatman
Ajax, Ontario, CANADA

by **Gambler** » Mon, 26 Oct 1998 03:00:00

TO add to this its been documented also that the core.ini files <and there
are several versions depending
on host config etc. > help as well as making sure the host limits some
graphics on his end .
Also we found than obtaining the IP address of the host and connecting
directly works very well
and allows you to drop netscape from running in the background . Also make
sure all parties
disconnect from VROC chat before starting the racing if going that route .
Surely their are limitations depending on logistics and "traffic" but from
my personal experience
with a good host the racing is extremely pleasurable .

--
David Hudson
"Gambler 1"
Team 3DFX NROS Racing Team
http://www.groupz.net/~augusta/team3d/3dfx.htm
Director of ARSE Online Racing League
http://www.groupz.net/~augusta/arse2/stats/arse2.htm

>> Alison says on her site that GPL is limited to 2-3 racers when hosted on
a
>> 33 or 56k modem. That's ridiculous. The results with just 2-3 racers over
>> 33.6 and 56k modems for many have been poor as well. If that 's the best
>> they can do with those modems, why would you think that the performance
with
>> a cable modem isn't below avg. as well? Doesn't make sense.

>Just my 2 cents here, but based on what I've seen with GPL, the host is
>the most critical factor. Cable, ADSL, and ISDN seem to offer the best
>speed, but I'm not convinced that all cable companies are created equal.
>I've raced with a lot of different hosts, but there's only a handful of
>them that are consistantly stable hosts. I just got off a race at Rouen
>where 16 guys completed the race. This guy was a *great* host.

>On the other hand, earlier tonight there was a cable host (I had a sub
>150 ping to him) and he couldn't keep 3 people on.

>--

>Neil Yeatman
>Ajax, Ontario, CANADA

by **Grant Reev** » Tue, 27 Oct 1998 04:00:00

Hi David,

> A year
> and a half ago I started with POD, then a year ago I took up CPR and have
> probably had 600 races online, and also another 400 races with MTM2. All
> these work much better over 33.6 and 56k modems.

I have a little bit of a theory - just an idea so far but i'm not
sure if it's right or completely in the wrong ballpark, but perhaps
it's something to do with the gameport?
Normal techniques of polling the gameport disable interrupts in the
system so with a loaded serial port incoming packets can get lost.
I have just a 33.6, with usually 600-700ms latency to US servers,
and *never* get disconnects unless my modem drops, GPL crashes, the
server crashes, or packet loss occurs. no random disconnects. But,
i run a PDPI L4, which in no way interferes with serial port operations.
CPR and MTM2 are both M$ games, and thus use DirectInput. Did POD
use DirectInput too? DirectInput can be configured to poll the joystick
without disabling other interrupts, allowing better modem function.
Have you tried GPL using the DirectInput joystick routines, yet?

This may work - or it may just be a nice idea. Let me know if it
helps at all.

I believe they probably didn't think you could have quality online
racing with latencies over 200ms. I certainly never thought it was
possible myself, and i'm a programmer. But the beta testers pushed
hard, and we got surprisingly good online play from GPL, much better
than I expected. So perhaps now that Papyrus have seen how well
online play is going down they might put more focus into that area
for subsequent titles.
of course, that's taking a positive view ;)

Grant.

by **John Walla** » Tue, 27 Oct 1998 04:00:00

On Fri, 23 Oct 1998 02:34:41 +0100, Paul Jones

>> It would be a relatively simple matter to make an online
>> sim with no warping at all. Whenever the sim lacks constant positional
>> information it smoothly substitutes AI lines or a fixed line to avoid
>> any jumps or warps - the player car is smoothly moved from one to the
>> other.

>But you would still have the possibility of one instance of the program believing
>its car had crashed into the other one's because it had got the position of the
>other wrong.

Exactly, that's what I was saying. It can be done quite easily, but
since the condition of the internet at the time of the race cannot be
predicted the program itself must compensate by creating the illusion
of a solid connect - that's all it is though. an illusion. Or, it may
not be an illusion - until reviewing the two replays we don't know.
It's basically a slider between smooth racing and accurate
positioning, and everyone would place it somewhere different - I
strongly favour only being able to race people with good pings but
always knowing exactly where they are, but others will surely differ.
Depending which path a program follows it will appeal to one or other
camp.

Cheers!
John

rec.autos.simulators

GPL Multiplayer is Poor

GPL Multiplayer is Poor

GPL Multiplayer is Poor

GPL Multiplayer is Poor

GPL Multiplayer is Poor

GPL Multiplayer is Poor

GPL Multiplayer is Poor

GPL Multiplayer is Poor

GPL Multiplayer is Poor

GPL Multiplayer is Poor

GPL Multiplayer is Poor

GPL Multiplayer is Poor

GPL Multiplayer is Poor

GPL Multiplayer is Poor

GPL Multiplayer is Poor

GPL Multiplayer is Poor