rec.autos.simulators

Not according to Motorsims and the testing I have done.  See
Miguel V. Parra's comment below:

"The focus in the latest version had to do with online fixes
since we had promised the open beta by Sept 30th, and yup
we were one day late."

 - George

note to mark: this did go to newsgroups and you.  just incase you care.  I dunno
why you would tho.  any way...
note to readers: i am still not a fan of this game, but I've settled down.  also
thanks for gigantic amout of replies to my message and the others.

    First and formost thank you for coming out and puting up your opinions on my
opinions and actualy taking them as well as you have.  Atleast you are working
on it.  One thing I didn't mention since I was on a "rampage" is the great job
you've done on the advanced settings.  Allows for you to get any type of
controller working the way you want it to.  But don't forget, dont need too much
eye candy in a basic thing like the UI.  Think of it this way, get it in between
your UI (fancy pants, and huge on gfx and animations) and on the UI from CARTpr
(kinda like your idea in some sence but really blah on looks).
    Otherwise good luck on this release, but my mind has been made.  And I'm one
to stick with first impressions.  As I said earlier tho Mr. Crammond had many
dates set for release of GP3.  We may complain about this date being pushed
back, but I am glad that he is trying to set high standards for his game before
a retail copy is released.

DjFIL

PS: One thing I still wanna check out in your game is Laguna Seca.  I can't
think of one perfect version of the track designed yet.  My personal fave is
from EA Sports SBK (pretty damn close and looked really wicked), and 2nd is one
in CART Precision Racing (really good lay out, looked kinda blah compared to
SBK).  Any hoo.  Later.

Motorsims' version of Laguna Seca is the exact opposite of how good it
looks in EA Sports SBK.

Constantly.

Thanks. That flexability also allows us to handle the fancier controllers.

Yes. We did. You don't know our artists. <g>

Hey ... I admit we did get a bunch of WTF's about the UI. Once we explained
why it was designed that way, a lot of people just go: "Oh ... I see ...
makes sense." Another f'rinstance, there's a lot of repetetive work in sim
racing. Tuning the vehicle being the biggest, but also tuning the
controllers, tweeking custom skins, etc. Back and forth to the track. The
way our UI works, you can get back to the track from almost every screen in
the game. The downside is that there isn't one known path to go racing. It's
a trade-off.

Never say never ... we'll get you yet <g>.

As a company, we were not in a position to delay shipment any longer than we
did. We ain't Sierra or Microsoft or EA. It's that simple.

And, FWIW, I do *not* hold with the theory that "games are always late in
releasing." Hell, look at Ensemble Studios ... they released Age of Kings
weeks before they said they would (OK ... they have bazillions of MS dollars
to use ... but anyway ...). All I can say is that we're fixing what's
broken.

Seca asked to review the track model before signing their contract with us
(we have contracts with every track) and were very, very pleased.

    -MSM

--
__________________________________________________________________________
Mark S. Miller                       "Be regular and orderly in your life,
Director of Design                    that you may be *** and original
Motorsport Simulations                in your work."

http://www.racesimcentral.net/

LOL Max,

Give it a break already

Our Laguna Seca has even visual approval from the track owners, need I say
more :)

And not just because of the track surface itself, it has way more details as
well

I'm not going to get tangled in a flame war with you, which is what it seems
you want, instead I'll bite my tongue and let you be.

 I know better than that ;)

Miguel Parra
Motorsims

  I'm looking for the sarcasm warning sign.  You thought CPR's Laguna
was good?  I only ran the demo...(famous last words)  but where was the
hill, I made the left turn, expecting to go up...I never got the sense
that the run 'UP' to the corkscrew was UP at all.  SCGT was different
enough from the Papyrus ICR2 track that I took several laps before I
came close to nailing the corkscrew.  Just curious.
dave henrie

I gaurantee you the track owners are not avid pc simulation players.
I'm sure the have little or no time with any car or motorcycle sim on
the pc.  Sure they've given you visual approval, they probably don't
know any better.  But I can tell you this.  If they saw your Laguna
Seca and EA SBK's Laguna Seca in a side-by-side comparison, your
version would lose miserably.  

I guess we have to wait for some unbiased person that has actually been at
Laguna Seca to set the matter straight.

If you care to tell me one of the parts that the track is not accurate, I'll
go through the videos and the hundreds of reference pictures we have to see
if you are correct or not, I wont post in here since this group is not a
binary posting group, but I could scan it and send it to you via e-mail.

Miguel Parra
Motorsims

Myself and one of the other gamespot beta testers had
a discussion about this a few weeks ago.  In his opinion
the tracks he has first hand knowledge of (Willow Springs,
Sears Point, and Laguna Seca) are not entirely done justice
by AMA Superbike.  He did praise the CHS 2000 version
of Laguna Seca (although the game itself wasn't much to
write home about).  His opinion, not mine, unfortunately
he doesn't read newsgroups so he isn't here to share it
(smart guy, eh?).

The only track I have first hand experience with is Mid-Ohio
and it seems reasonably close for a game.  Camber is off
in some of the corners and a few of the elevation changes
seem a bit too 'pointy'.  The other AMA track I have ridden
got cut (Las Vegas) but there really isn't much to***up
there.

I'm curious, how did you go about constructing the tracks?

 - George

AMA Superbike's LSR was "up" enough that we
had to increase the maximum altitude used on some of
our aerial debugging views after the first time we used them...
The corkscrew isn't as impressive from underground ;)

--
Matthew V. Jessick         Motorsims

Vehicle Dynamics Engineer  (972)910-8866 Ext.125, Fax: (972)910-8216

good way to study tire contact patches??
I have a couple of questions.
  Online race, I got a penalty for an off course excursion.  How do I
serve that?  Just wait til the last flagman grabs my over and holds me
for a short time?  and I had one race red flagged after a bozo went
backwards.  What do we do when the course marshalls are waving the red
flag?
  Gotta work on that warping!
dave henrie

;)

Actually, the online red flags come from multiple
simultaneous wrecks on or near the course.
We may have to increase the threshold until the local
motorcycle shops run out of stock ;)

As for the penalty system, I really don't want to talk about it. ;)
We just couldn't get a proper stop and go penalty system in for
this version. ;(  It requires the option of grabbing a "jerk" and
forcing him into the pit lane to handle his "time out" and that
is a bit complicated. A similar system is needed our first SCCA
game for several uses so as soon as it's developed for
that one I expect we'll get it into AMA Superbike also.
(We thought of just teleporting miscreants to a corner of a
garage for awhile, but that was vetoed as possibly
encouraging a tantrum ;)

No comment. (We were intending to restart the race, but
haven't coded that process yet! :):)
--
Matthew V. Jessick         Motorsims

Vehicle Dynamics Engineer  (972)910-8866 Ext.125, Fax: (972)910-8216