>On 08 Jun 1999 15:15:32 PDT, "Larry Linthicum"
>>I noticed the same thing and was disappointed too. Open wheel racing is no
>>place for "trading paint" but the colossal online crashes that result from a
>>tiny touch make that part of GPL one of the worse simulated in history, imho
>Actually IMO that makes it one of the best simulated.
>The problem is that "Car A" and "Car B" are almost touching - if they
>touch a gentle collision will (and can) occur. However, a slight warp
>happens and "Car A" lands in the same position as "Car B". Obviously
>the collision energy to put it in that position must be enormous, and
>the engine responds in kind - that is wholly accurate as far as the
>elasticity of the collision and conservation of energy, and wholly
>inaccurate insofar as the way the cars moved (warped).
I have been thinking about this a little, and what appears to cause
warps is that when there is an error between the way GPL has predicted
the position of the car and the way having received a packet saying
where the car actually was a short while ago (and predicting its
position now from that?) it immediately rushes the car to the new
position. I actually think it may be slightly clever than that (not
sure on this one - Randy?) but it drives the car very rapidly but not
instantenously to the new position (the reason I say this because I
saw an on-line warp the other day where the car seemed to come past me
at about 1000mph with a sound like wind).
What would be nice would be that the sim engine was much gentler with
those little warps (so when you see the skid marks they are not so
jagged) by driving the car more carefully between the last predicted
and new predicted/actual position.
Alan
http://www.chandler.u-net.com