rec.autos.simulators

I am an open wheel racing sim fanatic...

I was/am a big fan of Grand Prix (1 &2) and Indycar (1 & 2) for their
'drivability' and got really amped when I saw the graphics in CPR (even
knowing the Microsoft games are WAY to 'arcadish').

"Luckily" I got the game last September as a gift and thought it sucked. I
put it in the closet where I thought it belonged, feeling sorry for the
giver who actually spent $$ on it.

However, once I got a 3Dfx (Diamond Monster 3DII -Voodoo2) and a P2-266
w/128m RAM I decided to give it another shot.

For those of you who played the CPR demo and think it sucks, you're
absolutely right.  -Until you get it running on a smooth machine (type FRAME
while on the track to see your frame rate).  Mine can hit 30-40 frames/sec
on this particular game.  ONLY then do you pick up control of the car that
you desperately need.

Once you turn off all the lame "auto functions/driving
assistance/I'm-so-worthless-I-wanted-a-video-game-not-an-actual-simulation"
features, actually drive the damn car a few laps on a track that you know
well, it is a very tolerable and ***ing game.

AGREED, the AI is among the worst I've ever seen, but the car YOU drive
drives the tracks very well.  If you want AI, give up on Microsoft all
together and get on the net.  There are real people out there driving the
cars, you just have to find them.

PS, the graphics make this game.

--
Regards,
Bruce.
----------

-don

"To race is to live, everything else is just waiting." - Rudi Caricciola

It took you 1year to post this ?? Hehe well it took about 1day for the
majority of the people here to realise that ;-P

Well, like I would say, it's a great hotlapping _game_ , mainly because of
high-speed cornering physic flaws, but that's all...

And if you really want to race on the net, the NROS is the only real place
to go.

Hmm... I could agree on you when it was out, but GPL kick his arse now ;-P

- Fran?ois Mnard <ymenard> Good race at the Brickyard, (-o-)
- Official Mentally retarded guy of r.a.s.
- Member of the r.a.s. Ego-maniac club
- Excuse me for my English (I'm French speaking)
- Excuse me for being provocative (I'm dumb speaking)
- "People think it must be fun to be a super genius, but they don't realise
how hard it is to put up with all the idiots in the world."--

I've done very, very, well with CPR and if I like GPL, I'll do even better
and I'll owe it all to CPR. I hope none of you gentleman are offended when
after I rip you up in GPL on-line, I use the same adjectives (suck) to
describe your driving as you do to describe a sim I have spent a lot of time
with the past year. I may just have to act like a typical r.a.s. a**hole and
really slam your talents. If you say the sim I drive sucks, you are
basically saying I suck as a sim driver, right?

I'm ususally very friendly and never have even thought of saying anything
about someone's talents, but an eye for an eye is the approach I may take.
What do you think?

Have a nice day.

Dave
DmndDave

Here's the main point. CPR vets WILL be at the top of the GPL rankings.
Guaranteed. IF GPL had the most utterly amazing driving model of all time,
and IF CPR's driving model was so poor (sucked), that would not happen.
Right?

I've said before, the GPL driving model is very nice, but not the most
challenging to for me. I also don't know that it is the best driving model
of all time because I, and no one else here I am sure, has ever drivien a 67
F1 car. Right? NO ONE  KNOWS HOW  THOSE CARS REALLY HANDLED. Just like they
don't know how a CART car handles, or a modern day Ferrari F1. NO ONE AT
ALL. How many times does this have to be said on r.a.s.? It's all
speculation so when people make statements like "CPR sucks" (or F1RS, GP2,
whatever, I hear the same dumb statements said about all sims) I'm just
going to give a gutter response from now on. They don't really know what the
hell they are talking about.

I am the LAST person to equate being good in a sim means that a person can
be good in a real car. Far from it. As a matter of fact I've stated the
opposite so much that I've been ripped for it often by some r.a.s. regulars.
Some of them apparently need to feel like real race car drivers because they
drive these sims. I've also said a million times that these sims are far
from realistic because, just like you say, a child can take a sim, and GPL
is one of them, and tear most of us up in a race. How is GPL, or any sim, so
much better and realisitic if that can be done? The answer is that they non
of them are much better than any other.are all GAMES.

I take the view that as long as a child can sit down and rip those regulars
apart in a race, then the reality level in this sim or any others is lacking
enough so that they are all basically  in the same class.

Dave
DmndDave

I really don't have many, but for starters, lets talk about the AI.  For one
thing, the starts and restarts absolutely SUCK!  I can throw a coin on each
restart and depending on whether it is heads or tails, will usually come
close to predicting whether there will be a crash or not.  Every other start
will lead to bottling up, wrecks, cars going at half the speed, etc.  This
is unacceptable, I'm sorry but the real thing doesn't have that bad of
restarts at every race.  Also, at some of the superspeedways, you will have
cars going about 30MPH slower than the other cars, and these cars usually
brake suddenly and unexpectedly going into a wide open corner.  Once again,
I don't need to drive an indycar to know that they don't behave that way.

Another problem is the yellow flags.  What yellow flags?  With all the
crashes and bangs, I would think for a game advertised as a racing sim, the
key word being sim, they would include yellow flags, which are a critical
part to indycar racing.  I'm sorry, but I really have tried to give the game
a chance, but the above problems have made the game totally unplayable for
me.  I don't do multiplayer, and for that the game might be fine.  But not
all of us can afford to be online all night playing multi player, and I for
one rely on a games stand alone value.

I'm not saying the game doesn't do some things right.  For the beginner, the
interface is awesome.  You can tweak alot of neat things, although for life
of me I can't think why they along with gp2 left out tire temps and
pressures in the diagnostic section.  The graphics are top notch with a good
machine, and I think the players that gripe about frame rates need to invest
in a good 3d card.  Lets face it, 3dfx is here to stay, so you better get
one to supplement whatever you already have.  The sounds are impressive as
well.  That is why I tried so hard to like the game.  I liked running on the
track by myself, but you just cant race the computer cars.  That is
important to me, and Nascar2, ICR2, gp2, gpl, f1rs, and TOCA all have very
good ai as far as being able to run side be side with a car, TOCA and GP2
being the best I have seen.  Most other sims could learn alot from these two
games.  there is nothing like being able to race someone hard, side by side,
into some hard corners, and not crash.  You just can;t do that with CPR.  I
have heard people *** about controls, and frame rates, but those are minor
things that can be fixed.  The AI is severely flawed, and is inexcusable,
and Microsoft has done absolutely nothing to fix it.  They had to have known
there was a problem with it when the game first came out, and alot of die
hards bought this game based on the demo, which really didn't play that bad.
But when I, like the rest of them, bought the game when it was released, and
tried to race on the rest of the tracks, we all discovered a game that
wasn't worth the box it was put in, to the solo player.  That I think is
what brought on the wrath of most of the sim crowd here the most.  And I
don't blame them.  We trust a large company like Microsoft to have better
control over their products than what they have shown with this one.  They
have given good support on other games that they released, but those were
games that really didn;t have anything wrong with them.  With CPR, we have
gotten one patch from Microsoft, and all it did was make the players car
handle worse to let the AI cars compete better in expert mode.

Without commenting on CPR specifically, I will say that the difficulty
of a game, or the skills required to master it, can NOT be directly
used to prove realism.  I'm sure we can find an 8 year old who could
whip everyone on Wipeout but this in no way could be interpreted as
saying that Wipeout is a realistic simulation.  

So if you're great at CPR, wonderful.  If you're even better than
everyone else at GPL, congrats -- but to say that this necessarily
says anything about the realism of the sim, or that by being the best
you would be better in a real life car than everyone else, is a leap I
would hope you would not make.

Cheers,

Randy

Randy Magruder
http://members.home.com/rmagruder

1.  The lack of an appropriate amount of rear download at high speeds
2.  The lack of precision in control
3.  The slow speed turning characteristics.  These can be most easily
seen at the hairpin at the end of Long Beach.  Turn the car around,
driving very slowly, and you'll see that the car will nonetheless plow
towards the outside of the curve as if you were in a push condition
when in actuality you can be crawling so slowly that this wouldn't be
possible.  If you've watched how quickly and smoothly the real life
cars can 'wrap around' that hairpin in real life, you'll see that CPR,
on ANY setting (i.e. even with high steering locks), is doing
something terribly wrong.

Randy
Randy Magruder
http://members.home.com/rmagruder

--

mark
"You *will* hit what you look at. In that case, try looking at the apex
instead of the gravel at your turn in point."

F1RS - http://www.racesimcentral.net/~chaser/car/results.htm
Remove us here and there to mail me.

That's not true for someone who has given one more day to learning how to
set up the game.

That's not true for someone who has given one more day to learning how to
set up the game.

That's not entirely true for someone who has given one more day to learning
how to set up the game. Although I would call it an inconsistancy, it is no
more bothersome than the "stick to the wall" bug. I find the GUI in F1RS to
be much less acceptable.