"David G Fisher" wrote...
> <snip>
> You don't think that a 32 year old man who had a privileged
> upbringing in Germany, and loves auto racing, knows what
> driving sims/games are, and what it would take to evaluate
> them?
Quite ironic you should jump to the defense of Schum as a game reviewer. <g>
> I knew these things before I was even that interested in
> driving sims because they're so obvious. Racing games are
> hardly recent inventions.
Older racing titles were as good as they could technically get. Nowadays the
computing power is there if the developers and publishers are willing to put
simulation before eyecandy and with the latest systems and titles even that
is no longer necessarily a pre-requisite. There can be no more excuses.
Anything billed as a sim should be one.
> > <snip>
> I've seen kids sit down in front of driving games and
> drive them with ease, including GPL. Your making the
> same mistake a lot of adult sim racers make, which is
> to take these things so seriously that we "talk" ourselves
> into believing they are more difficult than they really are,
> sometimes in order to justify our (what many people would
> call childish) hobby to ourselves and others.
Kids do have the advantage of not having a pre-set idea what's possible, but
nevertheless you must live around some extremely talented people and kids...
of the 20 odd non-simracers (some of them experienced gamers) I sat down in
front of my PC none could drive their way out of a paper bag in a simulation
(even with driver aids on).
> All he's saying, is that without the physical effects of
> driving a race car, most of the simulation is gone. Driving
> a car (sim or real) isn't that hard.
Just driving around isn't. Going fast, racing and winning is bloody hard in
both disciplines.
> Everybody does it. Simulating a real F1 car without the
> physical effects is like simulating sex. Will any computer
> program ever come within a million miles of satisfying you
> in the same way real sex with Cameron Diaz would?
How would you know? -Did you have sex with her?<g> My guess is you had sex
with her just as many times as I've driven a real '67 Grand Prix car, i.e.
none. In the absense of the real thing....
> All I'm saying is let's not take this stuff so damn seriously
> that we actually think we could mimic what we do on screen
> if we were "just given the chance".
Of course not, but let's take it seriously in it's own right.
> Let's not put down real life drivers because we think we know
> "what it takes".
I don't know if I know what it takes (I have an opinion, though <g>), but I
have sure gained a deeper appreciation of it through simming.
> How about not ripping the shit out of one sim, and praising
> another as if it's our religion? Perspective.
That's a bit rich coming from someone admitting to not being able to watch
anything but the top level any given sport has to offer.
Again, I take issue with your generalisation. Name the offenders or use
"some".
> > <snip>
> I rarely EVER rolled the cars in RC. It was never an issue
> with me or many other people who drove RC. Real rally cars
> actually do roll fairly easily though. You should know that.
To a certain extend, yes. I never seen one go up on two wheels and then roll
onto it's roof without the side ever touching the ground though.
> How do you explain the different experiences that some had?
For RC I used to think it was a framerate/resolution issue. Having gone back
to it with a more powerfull PC, I've concluded it's not that. Perhaps a
matter of viewpoint, with me using cockpit only.
Actually, I never really compared my experience to others as, on the whole,
it wasn't the actual driving quirks that bothered me much.
> There is only one answer and that is that some people drove
> them correctly, and kept them on a part of the track which
> wouldn't cause the car to roll over in real life. Some people
> drove them at realisitic speeds, while others had no idea
> what their speed was as they were going around a sharp turn.
There's no way you're ever going to get close to the AI if you drive the
cars properly and at "realistic speeds", i.e. as if you don't know exactly
what's coming and leave a certain margin at dangerous spots. You're back to
"practising until you know what's possible and what isn't". This is not what
rallying is about. Rallying is done somewhat "on the fly" and therefore I
didn't really want to get to know the stages by heart by playing the game
continuously, instead returning to it from time to time when the stages
faded from memory a little. Then again, if one doesn't have changable track
conditions the only way to put some sort of lasting challenge into one's
game ('cos some people are going to practise the stages to death) is to put
the AI out of "easy" reach. Can't say I agree with that decision, but: fair
enough.
> I saw so many replays of people rolling or crashing their car,
> and blaming the game. They had no idea how fast they were
> going, or what they hit. They simply blamed the game.
The game is not to blame for me not getting long time enjoyment from it. Not
the game's fault, I'm just the wrong player for it.
The driving model on the whole is not too bad. Not as immediate and poised
as I would like, but it's a lot more like rallying than CMR2, for example.
Pace notes could have been better, again: not terrible. The only areas where
I think Magnetic Fields really dropped the ball are on setting just the one
difficulty level and making a mess of the settings/repair system.
They ended up with a game where, if one respects the stages and the
conditions one gets humiliated by the AI and pasted with a completely
unreasonable wear-rate to boot.
> As for GPL, the reason I lost interest in it was because IT did
> things that the real life footage showed was not accurate. Mainly,
> the excess sliding and drifting. Good, practiced drivers criss-
> crossing the driving line all the way around the track. They
> looked nothing like the AI or the real life footage.
Yes, if one only moves in the fastest circles I can understand that
sentiment.... having to destroy the illusion to keep up. Align yourself with
those who mostly treat it as playable history, however and things change
dramatically. Which is not to say it shouldn't have been possible to do that
in the first place. I don't think even the "diehard GPL heads" would deny
that. It's just, all things considered, some people still prefer GPL as a
vehicle for their simracing hobby. How much of that is "comfort" is for each
of those individuals to come to terms with, not for you to condemn, IMO.
If I were just running off-line, I pretty sure GPL would have been deleted
and I would feed my habit solely with a mix of SBK2001, MBTR, F!RC and N4.
However, I happen to like the bunch that races GPL online and I derive great
enjoyment from pitting myself against them using this ageing sim, while
GPLRank keeps practising fun. Nice compromise as far as I'm concerned.
> > <snip>
> I'm glad to hear you noticed this about F1RC, but unfortunately,
> this group which is supposedly the most knowlegeable collection
> of sim racers on the planet has spent little time discussing
> F1RC's excellent simulation of an F1 car's behavior, and more
> time bickering over a bunch of bullshit.
I noticed a whole bunch of stuff about F1RC... as with F1RS and MGPRS2, I
really like Ubisoft's latest offering. I'm having trouble compiling all the
info into a coherent report, but if the muze decides to visit I will expand
on the subject.
> > <snip>
> Without the electronics, no driver would be able to drive those
> cars near their limit. 18,000rpm. 850 hp. Advances in
> aerodynamics. Grooved tires. Incredible braking power. Technology
> has now made a car which outpaces the abilities of a human driver,
> and that's why the electronic aids exist.
The same situation occurred in Rallying in the 80's... Walter Rohrl on the
Audi Quattro Turbo: "One nearly couldn't think quickly enough to keep pace
with that car." The electronics probably weren't there to remedy this, but
all the same the governing body simply banned the cars. Result: cars are
still high-tech, but the excess is gone and drivers still take the fight to
eachother.
If the manufacturers build racing cars which are beyond the capability of a
human to drive they are conceptually on the wrong track. I can understand
dynamically unstable jet fighters beying kept aloft by computers. After all,
war is a matter of life and death. Racing is not, it's supposed to be a
competition between drivers, *using* cars.
> I want to see what the cars are truly capable of, and the aids
> make that possible.
So you rather see the interests of the machines served than those of the
men?
> There's the limit, and then there's *the limit*. The true
> limit is still only reached by the best drivers, so nothing
> has really changed. The driver who reaches that true limit
> the most consistently, lap after lap and race after race is
> MS.
MS will only go as quickly as he needs to go to win, just like any other
professional racing driver in one of the best cars.
> MS always outperforms his teammates. RS outperforms JPM.
> MH is still probably a bit faster than DC. Zanardi
> dominated CART and his teammate, but couldn't do much in
> F1. Within a team, there is usually one driver who is
> consistently faster than another. Aids don't prevent that
> fact from showing through.
True, not exactly rivetting, but true.
Jan.
=---
