rec.autos.simulators

FOR:
1. very pretty
2. more polygons per car i.e. better shape than indy2
3. much better light and shadows i.e. shading than GP2
4. beautiful track (Laguna Seca)
5. best car sounds
6. good car dynamics

AGAINST:
1. dreadful AI (you can hold up cars just by slowing down in the race and they
make no effort to pass!
2. no car sounds during replay gives no sense of speed
3. bit arcady
4. bit of a *** with car controler setups (took ages for it to recognise my
home-made steering wheel and pedals and also dosn't allow seperate
brake/throttle

I here there's going to be a patch. probably be working properly time it gets
to our shores, but I will not buy it until the above has been sorted,
especially No. 1!
I think that those guys who complain about frame rate, to them I say check out
the FOR: features above. None of the other car sims have gone this far.
Alan

 1 and 2 will be addressed. More detail on 3 please.

Dean (sir!),
    I could shed some light on this...
    I would interpret arcadey (sic) as the following...
    Running out of gas causes the car to slow down to idle.  Once stopped, the
engine still runs...  First time I ran out of gas, it took me a few minutes to
figure out what was going on...
    No matter how hard I hit the wall, I can still drive away from the crash,
missing only a wheel and the (pick one) nose or rear wing.  To test this
theory, I drove headlong into a wall at 180 MPH at Australia.... then drove
away.  That crash should have sent pieces of my car via airmail to Sydney.
    AI.  (I know you guys are working on it, but I had to mention it for
completness. <G>)

    These are just a couple of things I noticed off hand.  I am having some
playability issues that make CPR unplayable to me as of now.  I am using an STB
Velocity 128 (4mb) on a P166 (P54C) with 64MB of RAM.  A couple of the problems
I am having are flicker (reported by a few other people as well), and miserable
frame rates around traffic, including some pauses while car graphics load up.
I am especially concerned about the frame rate issue.  I don't consider my
computer exactly low performance, and yet I still get frame rates (with 3d
accel on) remenicent of when I used to play ICR1 on my 486.  Tis a step
forward, your work is, but please don't tell me I have to get a PII just to
make this work.  That would be bad. <G>
                                        P.

[snip]

I think you need a PII to make CPR work well.  The box says Pentium 60
required (this is ludicrous) and Pentium 166 recommended (still a bad
joke).  I've got a PII 266 with an Orchid 3dfx accelerator and I'm
getting 25 to 30 fps with all graphic options turned on.  This game
drains the CPU more than any I've seen.  I have turned off the music
and that seems to make a substantial difference in perceived frame
rates (I haven't measured it).  I think it's ironic that MS used the
term "Precision" as part of the title.  How in heck can you race with
precision when you're bouncing all over the screen because of poor
FPS.  The Glide patch should make a significant difference however.

That said, I will also say that I have been quite taken by the game.
The more I've raced the more I've been able to avoid the bump in the
back that has pissed me off so much.  However, when you get in heavy
traffic you just hope for the best.  Also I have visited the "Zone"
and played multiplayer.  With 3 people the game runs wonderfully and I
have experienced no glitches at all.  Unlike others, I have no desire
to return this game--I recommend it--but with a fast CPU (read: PII
233/266/300) in non-glide mode.

Dan P.
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