rec.autos.simulators

Hi,

You can read in this newsgroup that many people who own fast pentium (120+)
computers are disappointed when they hear F1GP2 will only do some 12 frames
per second in SVGA with a P150. But they are also awed by the huge amount of
graphical detail the game has to offer. Well wake up ! You just can't demand a
game that has all those graphical features and run smoothly on a p75 in SVGA.
Just be glad that all those fancy graphical options can be disabled.

Making games still has to be profitable. Maybe overall speed of the game could
 be improved by using more Assembler-coding ( I guess that only parts of the
game are in assembler now ). But this will drive up costs immensely. ( And an
even more important factor right now the development time ).

I will be satisfied if I get smooth running in VGA ( If the sky has to be
off well then it has go to be off ! ) and some 15-20 frames per second without
all detail in SVGA in my P120.

Let's hope it's the 26th of June !! ( Can't say I do ;-) )

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It's all about longevity. The more a sim has to offer the longer
it will last. Given that F1GP is still with us it is pretty safe to
say that GP2 will be here for a long time.

Can't wait!

--
--- Terje Wold Johansen

--- http://www.ifi.uio.no/~terjjo/
--- "I am your inferior superior." O.W.

You've got that the wrong way round, Geoff Crammond writes the whole
thing in Assembler for it's speed, that's why it looks so good at a
decent speed. The things that are likelt to be done in C are the menus
as he doesn't write them.

27th is the actual date listed.

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| Life is what happens when you're making other plans      |
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On Mon, 10 Jun 1996 17:34:03 +0100, Aragorn!

My question is this.  If even a p166 with gobs or ram can't run the
game will all details on at 25 fps or higher in svga mode, how the
heck can future computers do better?  Isn't gp II a dos-based, 16 bit
game?  The newer pentium pros don't even run 16 bit proggies as fast
as the p5's do, so has Microprose basically coded a game that no one
can play to its fullest extent?

Mark
________________________________________________________
Mark Prince                  The WriteDesign Company

Visit my web page at         www.geocities.com/SoHo/1301

I remember when Nascar first appeared. It was rare for a game to offer
SVGA support back then I think. Anyway, the breathtaking h/w
requirements for it back THEN had quite a few magazines commenting on
the fact that it was being built for the future as much as the
present. A lot of people would upgrade eventually and rediscover
Nascar in SVGA. As it happens things have moved on faster I think,
what with the speeded up ICR2 a year later, and with P133/P166's
becoming more and more common. If GP2 is with us for a few years,
that's a lot of time for h/w to move along to levels that truelly
support GP2 at its full glory.

Stuart

--
Stuart Booth
Somewhere in Godalming, England, UK

I am well aware of the 16/32bit performance of the PPro over the
Pentium (I'm wanting one of either at the moment) for the likes of
Linux, OS/2 and NT, but what I am waiting for is firm benchmarks that
declare the performance advantages of a PPro-200 over a Pentium-200
for 32bit DOS extended games running under pure DOS. I'll be running
NT4.0 soon enough, and I never play games under Win95. So knowing what
will happen with existing games under DOS is a factor in my upgrade
path. Yes, I'll happily admit that racing sims partly influence my
hardware purchases!!

Oh, and it's [Sir!] Geoff Crammond (and friends?) who are developing
GP2, not Microprose. MP just distribute/publish it for him, AIUI.

Bye now,

Stuart

--
Stuart Booth
Somewhere in Godalming, England, UK

 If the playibility lives up to the screen shots, it looks like something
I'll be playing
a couple of years. Somewhere down the road I wouldn't mind paying an
upgrade
fee for a ported version to a particular 3D chipset or to direct3d under
win95 if it
means getting 20+ frames with full detail. BTW go check out the June issue
of
sim racing news (www.math.ohio-state.edu/~harmon/simnews [USA mirror]) for
the latest screen shots, drool.

Adam

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| Life is what happens when you're making other plans      |
|                                                          |

|             (o o)  http://www.dcs.napier.ac.uk/~bsc4074  |
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 >Although I don't know for sure, I'm fairly certain that it's actually
 >a 32bit game using a 32bit DOS extender like DOS4GW. Theoretically
 >that should run extra fast on a PPro, but I've yet to see any
 >confirming results of this.

Rick Genter has already confirmed this more than once for ICR2.  If F1GP2 is
32-bit, it will run faster on the PPro.

Clark Archer
IVGA #3920

Dell just came out with their P5-200 Mhz systems a week ago. I wonder
if it is capable of running GP2 at a significantly faster rate than a
P5-166?

                                                                    --

          "Adventure...e***ment...a Jedi craves not these things..."
                                                                 -Yoda

Normally when games refer to SVGA graphics, they mean 640*480
(e.g. NASCAR, ICR2) - VGA is the 320*240 thingy (or whatever
resolution it is - I can't remember). You make a very good point
about the future of GP2 with respect to computer speeds - as
GP2 neither supports 3D accelerator boards nor a multi-threaded
environment (such as Windows NT), presumably its speed will
be limited to the fastest MHz Pentium chip Intel will produce.

If Microprose are still proposing a GP2 upgrade for the end of
the year to allow network support and 95/96 season cars and
circuits then they might also include basic 3D accelerator
card support - I suppose that this depends on how difficult it
would be to support these cards.

Fraser

VGA does do 320* (200 or 240, I forget) with 256 colours as standard
and this is why most games use it as any VGA capable card will support
it.

Anyway, while all that resolution is nice, there's a lot more to good
graphics than that. Just compare Need for Speed in VGA mode to F1GP in
VGA mode. F1GP looks pretty good while NFS looks like shit. (Of course
in SVGA mode NFS looks great!)

--
Thomas Beagle

This is originally from another thread, but it sure would be nice for
someone with indepth knowledge about GP II to answer this (like Geoff
(pipe dream! he's probably too busy) or John Wallace?

Can anyone answer my original question above? Is GP II a pure 32 bit
game or a 16/32 mix, or a pure 16 bit game? And as a result, how will
it perform on the 32bit optimized Pentium Pros and P7s of the future?
My understanding about the PPro is that it was optimized for windows
NT and 95 32 bit performance... and I always thought DOS lived in a 16
bit world.  And finally, again I'll ask this question, has Geoff
Crammond coded a game that no one in the future will be able to run up
to full potential, at least in its DOS version?  I certainly am not
slamming Geoff... I think he's done a fantastic job with this game
(from what I've seen), and he and MP have taken an awful lot of heat
over the vaporware label.

But, that being said, I can't help but see some strange irony in the
fact that you need a $4,000 machine to run this game in good
conditions (i.e., svga and most details on, to get an adequate fps
rate), while, this fall, you can spend $500 on a Sony Playstation, Mad
Katz steering wheel pedal combo, and Psygnosis' F1 game... which
albeit is more of an arcade game than a sim, but with a supposed
30fps, amazing graphics (IMHO better graphics than GP II).

I really, really want to play GP II, but considering its massive
system requirements, I just know my home computer, a dx4 100 with 2
meg cirrus logic vlb card and 12 megs of ram simply won't be enough to
get an adequate fps rate.

Mark
________________________________________________________
Mark Prince                  The WriteDesign Company

Visit my web page at         www.geocities.com/SoHo/1301

=> The current P6 run 16 bit code about 5% faster, and the upcoming 333mhz
=> PPro is supposed to run at 2x the speed of a P166 for 16 and 6 times for
=> 32bit fpu intensive

P Pro 333mhz? Sounds very fast, and expensive...

When is it coming out?