rec.autos.simulators

R.A.S. never ceases to amaze.  The CPR debate has reached Holy War
status, fueled no doubt, by resistance to the MS "Evil Empire" and
support for the old guard, Papyrus and Microprose.  The resulting Dean
vs. Allison love-fests make it difficult for a non-partisan voice to be
heard.  The middle ground is none too safe.  (The flames come from both
sides.)  With Nomex Anti-Flame gear securely fastened, this post is my
addition to the store of sanity in R.A.S.

CPR hasn't crashed my system, sent Bill Gates the contents of my hard
drive, threatened the health of future offspring or summoned demons from
hell.  I have no doubts, however, that Allison's registry was fried
after she installed it.  (I'm still waiting on the demons.)  Front Page
98, Office 97 and IE 4 have done the same to my system.  Only MS apps
have managed to notch registry kills on my PC.  I challenge any of the
"Your PC config SUCKS!" faction to predict or fix a registry kill
without going to backups.

For the most part, controller issues can be eliminated through tweaking
the settings.  These fixes do not excuse TRI from making the controls
better out of the box, but tweaking the system does make for a better
experience.  I find it difficult to believe that experienced sim pilots
would have a difficult time keeping the car controlled on the straight.
A little time with the game, and car control on the straights becomes
second nature.  The on-center feel is different from Papyrus or games,
but is that surprising?  Different company, different feel.  Ford vs.
Chevy.  Apples vs. PC's.

The AI does need work.  The problems with CPR's AI do not need to be
rehashed.  Personally, I never race against the AI.  In my view,
multiplayer CPR games on the Zone put CPR at the top of my play list.
(And yes, I do own and play World Circuit, GP2, N1, N2, ICR, ICR2 and
Papy's original Indy 500.)  On the Zone, cars ramming into mine, going
50 mph on the straight and generally causing a mess are the result of
bad human intelligence.  That somehow makes it all easier to swallow.
The hard core CPR racers on the Zone, however, bring far more to the
game than any AI could ever offer.  Even races with 4-5 people show good
performance on the Zone.  To all the NROS pilots getting set to point
out how much better NROS is than CPR, rest your keyboard.  CPR on the
Zone is free (for now at least.)  That distinction makes comparisons
between the Zone and TEN unfair.  If the Zone goes pay for play, then
I'll join you in that particular thread.

And now for frame rate.  Glide vs. D3D.  I find it amusing that people
have gone after the D3D part of the patch before it's release.  I read
too many complaints about how CPR was shipped in alpha, and I hear about
the same number of complaints about how the fixes for D3D will be
inferior.  We can fault the TRI team from releasing a product before
it's finished, but what makes it any better for us to fault the frame
rate fixes before we've seen the results?  I own a 3Dfx card and I've
seen what Glide can do for a game.  However, I don't pretend that Glide
is the end-all graphics API.  If MS can boost performance with their own
API, why fault them?

I genuinely enjoy CPR.  I like it enough to write articles for it in the
Pit Talk section of the Apex (http://www.racesimcentral.net/  shameless
plug.)  If you don't like the game, that's fine too.  The fact that
you've bought a game you don't like, however, is not justification to
flame any of its supporters.  The converse is also true.  Aside from
sounding particularly uneducated, posting "This game SUCKS!" or "Allison
made Dean go away!  She SUCKS!" doesn't really add a lot the the party.

In the end, CPR is just a game.  No need to get hostile.

Roel Canare

You're a hell of a lucky guy <g>

Even with twenty and more ! (32) NROS show GREAT performance.

Still, take the Zone in it's entirly.  Take JediKnight.  Instead of playing
on the Zone, they go there, chat with people, get the IP of the host, and
join a game without MS IE.  THis makes incredible fast ***.  Fact. The
Zone is slow. But still I enjoy it when I go to play backgammon.

I enjoy it stricly in a mid-arcade/sim style.  I don't take it seriously,
hotlaps are boring and why play against humans on the zone when I can have
100x time more fun on NROS.

Yes 100% true.

For us, we are racing, not ***.  We are up a level higher than just
"having fun".
Finally, my 3Canadian.  The only thing that I deplore to MS is that the
game isn't what we were expectating and what Microsoft said it would be.
Just that. I hope the patch will fix some little things.  But still it's not
the type of sim/arcade that you will play even 7years after it's release,
like I do with Indy500:The simulation.

Fran?ois Mnard,
Creator, rec.autos.simulators

With great respect,
May the downforce be with you,
Good race at the Brickyard,  (-o-)

ymenard on NROS, sponsored by
http://www.racesimcentral.net/
SimRacing director, AWPSS

- *Excuse me for my poor English(I'm French speaking) * -

wrote lots of very wise stuff, including:

I haven't seen Alison's registry. I dunno if CPR messed it up (or
could). I *do* know that, as you say,  other MS products can indeed
mess the registry up big time. Certainly, with that track history, I
can understand high  levels of suspicion re CPR and the registry. I
know I had it before installing CPR (which, in my case,  certainly did
the registry no harm as it turned out).

The answer is simple, though... don't EVER install an MS product
without backing up the registry. :)

[snip]

Ok, now for my .3 FIM--

What if you "serious racing persons" don't actually know what it
feels like to drive the real thing and only base your conceptions
on what you believe the most realistic driving model... ?

Oh well, obviously it would be like that for anyone who hasn't
actually driven in the real world, but on what do you base
your knowledge ?

Following quote from:

http://www.racesimcentral.net/

... now one could argue that the information could be a bit biased
(-:, but on the other hand, at least the 2nd quote seems sane and
precise enough.

Notes from behind the
scenes:
Mark Blundell had to be pulled away from
racing CART Precision Racing this week.

Mark says Microsoft CART Precision Racing is
"totally amazing" - he made his usual garage
setup and is now turning 1:07 times at
Laguna Seca. This is within 1 second of his
actual time this season!

(No one at Microsoft or TRI has ever turned
less than 1:12 on Laguna Seca - even after
several hundred hours practice.)

This is what
       Mauricio Gugelmin
               has to say:

"Finally there is a race simulation game with
the real feel and characteristics of a CART
racing car. The speed perception, grip and
braking capacity, mirror exactly what we
have on the 'real thing'. Also, all the possible
set ups we can change in the real car are
available in the game. The race tracks
graphics are fantastic and absolutely real.
What will happen is that those players used
with the so far available race games, will
have to re adapt their playing, because what
they've played so far are games that don't
have the feeling of a real car."

--
What you do to my dog, you do to yourself

Some good points =)

I think many people forget this IS a game (sim).
I personally DO have racing experience via SCCA in GT-1 ,S2000 and have
driven a NASCAR modified in non-competition.  However... that does not
come close to the feel of a real CART car =)
I havent downloaded or purchased cpr.. probably wont until the patch and
I find some "objective" information on the game.  (ie... This sucks is
not objective).  Also... the experience of a SIM comes from more than
just the physics model, although that is the major part.  Sound does
play an important part as well.  Some of the sounds in N2, like the tire
squelching, detract from the "realism" of the game... although N2 is
still my favorite sim.  Another point is the Touring Car Patch by the
pits...  I LOVE the sound effects in that game!!  Superb!!  Really adds
to the driving experience.  

Just my .02 worth of opinion =)

Scott B. Husted
http://www.racesimcentral.net/~sbhusted

Actualy many many people (I also) have raced one time with a racing car.  So
our conceptions are pretty close to the real CART drivers.

Do you really think that really think about that ? Do you really think they
arent paid by microsoft for saying that ?  This is pure crap, they raced
20laps with a Full-chromed PC with all those great hardware.  Without AI
probably. Yeah the tracks look good. But still it is too much fake and naive
for people like us to trust it.

Fran?ois Mnard,
I`m having fun in rec.autos.simulators
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

With great respect,
May the downforce be with you,
Good race at the Brickyard,  (-o-)

ymenard on NROS, sponsored by
http://www.awpss.com/
SimRacing director, AWPSS

- *Excuse me for my poor English(I'm French speaking) * -

I've never even driven a car with ground effects; how can I claim to
know what a CART car feels like more than Blundell? Of course, there's
plenty of people who haven't who could apparently kick his ass and the
asses of all the testers for TRi in CPR! :-)

---Jim

But let's take a look at those quotes:

Good. When driven in a lifelike manner it is possible to produce lifelike
times. I agree.

But does Mark know how to drive *sims*? This isn't real life. I did a
1:07 after half an hour or so of track time at Laguna Seca with CPR. And
as my above statement demonstrates, I am categorically, *N*O*T* a good
real life driver.

But I am a good *sim* driver. I know how the car should handle and
providing it does so, I can drive fast. What's more I know how to push a
sim car way beyond what a real driver would dare attempt in his real car.
When I do that in CPR the driving model breaks down - I can take corners
at ridiculous speeds and my current Laguna Seca (soft tyre, no deliberate
corner cutting, all demo realism options enabled) times are in the 1:02
to 1:03 range.

And on this basis the game was released as being an accurate sim. If the
MS/TRI team were as good at sim driving as they are at programming this
would be 10 seconds faster and they would have realised that the driving
model was seriously flawed.

A racing sim must be tested by experienced sim racers. Leaving it until
the game is released is too late and the results are plain for all to see
:(

Quite possibly. I'm not going to disagree with Mo - he's the expert in
real racing, I am not. Although I would be fascinated to know how he
manages to judge "feel" when in his Pac-West he has full sensory input
but in CPR he only has 2D sight & sound.

FWIW I think that CPR does have an excellent driving model until you try
and push it hard. But am I supposed to *not* drive to the best of my
abilites because the game can't cope with it?

This is the strangest comment though and I think indicates that Mo has
either had little or no experience on previous sims.

When I first fired up the CPR demo I did indeed have great trouble as I
was trying to trail brake into the corners like I do in GP2 and got lots
of understeer as a result. But I simply gave up on trail braking and just
braked earlier - my times dropped quickly. A bit of fiddling with the
control settings, a decent setup (thanks to Doug Arno) and I was down to
1:07. Another hour or so and I could get the hang of trail braking in CPR
(it's possilbe, just don't overdo it <g>) and was down to 1:05. I then
started really pushing and found that I could corner at far higher speeds
than my inital view of the driving model indicated were possible. My
times came down to 1:03s with a best of 1:02 using soft tyres.

If I had never tried pushing CPR to extremes then I might think its
driving model a lot more realistic. But no amount of quotes from real
life drivers will make me believe that this is a realistic sim in its
current format. I refuse to believe that I am a better driver than Mark &
Mo ;-))

Cheers,
Richard