rec.autos.simulators

Good, finally some substance, okay lets talk.

Since I watch every F1 race and have played each F1 sim (yes, even
Power F1, God help me), I think I can say I know something about the
F1 experience.  And the things that you mention are mostly
atmospheric, but lets get to it:

Nope.  No weather.  Edge: F1RS.

A repeat of the above. No more points scored for stating the same
thing twice.

Challenge taken:

In my opinion, so does F1RS in many ways.

I've spent a lot more than  'few hours" with it and yes all the cheats
are off.  In spite of a heckuva lot of setup work, I still find that
the car pushes too much on entry and middle of the corner and wags too
loose on the exit. Part of this has to do with the crummy acceleration
curve relative to gas pedal travel.  No matter what I set the gear
ratios to or how many setups I've downloaded off the Unofficial F1RS
site (that is, all of them <G>), I still get a 'threshhold'
accelerator effect whereby adding up to a certain % causes smooth
(albeit slow) acceleration, and then afterwards a wee bit more on the
throttle causes an accelerator spike and the revs max out.  Its
absolutely maddening, particularly if you've still got a little wheel
lock exiting the corner.  It treats me as if I'm breaking the car
loose, when all I'm REALLY doing is following what I learned in Skip
Barber and trying to smoothly apply throttle while releasing the car
after the apex.  If you believe you can help me remedy this problem
and find that smoother rev curve I'll be happy to concede I'm wrong,
but until then you simply cannot convince me that this kind of
'digital-style' threshhold on the accelerator models real car physics!

Please.  You must be running GP2 at 150% occupancy.  F1RS feels like
it absolutely crawls.  For all of CPR's faults, it sure does capture
the sense of speed well.  I have to look down at the dash in F1RS to
see that I'm *really* doing 180 mph because things appear to be going
30-40 mph slower than that (and yes the frame rate is liquidy smooth
on my P300).

The AI is great most of the time.  I still get whacked in the rear a
fair amount by AI cars in F1RS, and I'd say it looks mildly more
intelligent than the AI in Gp2, but not by much.

Since GP2 doesn't have rain, it would be unfair to rip it twice for
the same problem.

This is one doesn't even merit a substantive response its so out
there.

No, EVERYONE is still way behind Papy on this one.  No one has done
replays as well.  Not MS, not Papy, not Ubi, not MPS, NO ONE.  F1RS
may be better than some of its peers, but its like, okay, we'll give
it a D while we give GP2 an F.

Weather again?  Anyone else notice the single-mindedness of the
comparisons?

Which, I might add, is not technically supported in F1RS.  You have to
use Kali to hack in IPX support.

Lets see, we've boiled your complaints mainly down to lack of rain and
YOUR assessment of the driving model, which I've disagreed with and
provided a great deal more backup than you have.  Gee, is that ALL
there is to these two games?  The physics model and the weather?  I am
SOOOOO disappointed that you could be so mocking and venomous and yet
utterly fail to do a convincing job arguing substance.

So do I, and I think GP2 drives better.  Sorry if you don't like it,
but tough.

Randy
Randy Magruder
Contributing Reviewer
Digital Sportspage
http://www.racesimcentral.net/

Randy
Randy Magruder
Contributing Reviewer
Digital Sportspage
http://www.digitalsports.com

Well some people seem to think it is that important.

I guess I don't know what to make of this since it doesn't happen to
me. It sounds like you are over driving it still. I can pretty much control
the car to do whatever I want. If I push too much trying to catch someone
then I notice I start pushing. I also notice that if I hit the gas too hard
on exit, the rears will break loose. Seems to be modeled pretty realistic
to me. In fact I notice that I have very fine control over the gas and
brake.
I have the gas pedal mashed down plenty and it does not cause the
accelerator to max out until the gear has reached it's maximum
speed. The the lights do spike to red fairly quickly. But that is how it is
I believe. As soon as it hits amber shift.

Slow? Then lower your rear wing, crank up the power setting on the
engine or go to a lower gear setting on 6th. I just do not see this at
all. I may not be doing the best times, since I have not done setups
on more than silverstone but I certainly do not have the sense of
laboring around when I am driving. Withing 10 minutes of trying
Canada in F1RS for the first time I got a 1:26 which is not fantastic
but it was with the stock setup. Blasting through the course was
an unbelievable experience. Great sense of speed.

Again when I smoothly apply throttle I am OK. When I apply more
throttle than I should I will break the wheels loose. I certainly do
not see this.

I don't see a digital type on/off throttle control at all. I would almost
suspect your control device or something. I will also admit that our
systems are sufficently different where I can see a different controler
response than you. I had a friend over who has a T2, GP2 and Nascar2.
We both took a few laps in each game (a couple of months ago). I was
surprised at how he was mashing down the throttle and driving like
a dragracer. Naturally he did not even make the first turn at Monza
and was pretty embarrased. So on my rig little throttle was needed
to do the job. Apparently he has to mash the gas to do the same
thing that 33% pedal movement does on my T2.

Nope GP2 was at around 100% or lower with my P5-200MMX.

Huh. I guess our definitions of sense of speed are different. I get
a liquidly smooth framerate and a greate sense of speed. I don't
suppose you have broken down and gotten a 3dfx to try with F1RS ?

turns. This is exactly

I have not gotten whacked yet. In fact they will go into the gravel to
avoid a wreck.

I don't think it would be unfair at all. It was a huge omission.

OK.

Hopefully I have added more substance.

the driving/racing experience.

Right. Same for you and F1RS :-)

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Header address intentionally scrambled to ward off the spamming hordes.

I originally renamed this thread 'F1RS vs CPR'. I fixed it now. Sorry
for the repost. But I thought if I left it as CPR many people would pass :-)

I also wanted to add 2 more comments. One of the things I like most
about F1RS is the changing track conditions. Not necessarily the rain
either. During a session, you can actually see the shadows & sunlight
on the track changing from lap to lap. Very very cool. Also Randy, do
you have the box for 'Poll with interrupts enabled' unchecked?

Well some people seem to think it is that important.

I guess I don't know what to make of this since it doesn't happen to
me. It sounds like you are over driving it still. I can pretty much control
the car to do whatever I want. If I push too much trying to catch someone
then I notice I start pushing. I also notice that if I hit the gas too hard
on exit, the rears will break loose. Seems to be modeled pretty realistic
to me. In fact I notice that I have very fine control over the gas and
brake.
I have the gas pedal mashed down plenty and it does not cause the
accelerator to max out until the gear has reached it's maximum
speed. The  lights do spike to red fairly quickly. But that is how it is
I believe. As soon as it hits amber shift.

Slow? Then lower your rear wing, crank up the power setting on the
engine or go to a lower gear setting on 6th. I just do not see this at
all. I may not be doing the best times, since I have not done setups
on more than silverstone but I certainly do not have the sense of
laboring around when I am driving. Within 10 minutes of trying
Canada in F1RS for the first time I got a 1:26 which is not fantastic
but it was with the stock setup. Blasting through the course was
an unbelievable experience. Great sense of speed.

Again when I smoothly apply throttle I am OK. When I apply more
throttle than I should I will break the wheels loose. I certainly do
not see this.

I don't see a digital type on/off throttle control at all. I would almost
suspect your control device or something. I will also admit that our
systems are sufficiently different where I can see a different controller
response than you. I had a friend over who has a T2, GP2 and Nascar2.
We both took a few laps in each game (a couple of months ago). I was
surprised at how he was mashing down the throttle and driving like
a dragracer. Naturally he did not even make the first turn at Monza
and was pretty embarrassed. So on my rig little throttle was needed
to do the job. Apparently he has to mash the gas to do the same
thing that 33% pedal movement does on my T2.

Nope GP2 was at around 100% or lower with my P5-200MMX.

Huh. I guess our definitions of sense of speed are different. I get
a liquidly smooth framerate and a great sense of speed. I don't
suppose you have broken down and gotten a 3dfx to try with F1RS ?

turns. This is exactly

I have not gotten whacked yet. In fact they will go into the gravel to
avoid a wreck.

I don't think it would be unfair at all. It was a huge omission.

OK.

Hopefully I have added more substance.

the driving/racing experience.

Right. Same for you and F1RS :-)
--
Header address intentionally scrambled to ward off the spamming hordes.

On Sat, 17 Jan 1998 10:58:41 -0600, "Greg Cisko"

I played GP2 a hell of a lot more than I will play F1RS, although that
is down to available time more than anything else. GP2 at the time of
it's release was excellent, easily on a par with what F1RS has
achieved today, and to say that F1RS is "better" than GP2 is like
saying that A Ferrari F355 is better than a Ferrari Daytona. Of course
it is - now.

Cheers!
John

On Sat, 17 Jan 1998 18:34:24 -0600, "Greg Cisko"

Oops, bit of a contradiction there :-)

- GP2 had full lap replays
- F1RS' replays do not work at all well.

Or the eye-candy and replays, as it would seem from the above. GP2
falls down to F1RS with the added extras, 3dFX support, rain etc, but
then so does ICR2. When you look at the driving experience of each of
them then F1RS is no more a step forward from GP2 than it is from
ICR2. All are pretty much equivalent.

Cheers!
John

Just one question. Do you have a P5-166 (or better) with a 3dfx card?

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Header address intentionally scrambled to ward off the spamming hordes.

(snip)
F1RS feels like tip-toeing all the time.
(unsnip)
Do you *really* believe that it is possible to drive an F1 car at
ten-tenths and *not* be tip-toeing?  Or are you driving in F1RS with all
the aids enabled?  This sim gives a far better impression of the
nervousness of a F1 vehicle than GP2 does.

(snip)
GP2 had full lap replays
(unsnip)
Big deal!!  One lap! And even that doesn't include the start and first
lap.

(snip)
Or the eye-candy
(unsnip)
So what you are saying is that the quality of the graphics is of little
importance to you when it comes to your overall enjoyment of a
simulation?  Hmmmm.........still running an EGA card with 16 colours,
are we?!

And the menu system in GP2 sucks just as strongly as that in F1RS.  The
sequence in which one has to labour away in order simply to change a
setting is as silly as that in the French product.  Papyrus have the
best menu system of the lot in NASCAR2 and these other companies should
have learned something from them.

--
Bruce
(at work)

"Laziness is nothing more than the habit of resting before you get
tired."
(Jules Renard)

(snip)
GP2 at the time of
it's release was excellent, easily on a par with what F1RS has
achieved today, and to say that F1RS is "better" than GP2 is like
saying that A Ferrari F355 is better than a Ferrari Daytona. Of course
it is - now.
(unsnip)

Uhhhh, John.....this is called *progress*!!

Of course something can only be better *now*!!  Then something else will
come along and exceed it....if not in all areas then at least in some.
This is exactly what F1RS has accomplished: in some areas there is no
significant improvement (***y menus to start with) and in others it
rocks (weather effects and graphcis under 3Dfx).

You can't halt progress......when there *is* progress.  This is what
software/hardware is all about.  GP2 was King*** for 3 years in the F1
sim arena and has now had its crown taken.  Something else (not CART
PR!) will come along and take the crown off F1RS.  here's hoping that
it's GP3!!

--
Bruce
(at work)

"Laziness is nothing more than the habit of resting before you get
tired."
(Jules Renard)

On Mon, 19 Jan 1998 10:57:06 +1100, Bruce Kennewell

Does the progress in training, fitness and expectation make Senna a
better driver than Fangio was? Of course it does, but does the
counter-argument then follow that Fangio was therefore crap? It would
seem to be the case, according to the logicists around here.

I have no problem with people saying F1RS is a great game, but for
that train of thought to be taken a step further and conclude "Hey,
that means GP2 is tripe" is plain wrong.

Cheers!
John

On Mon, 19 Jan 1998 10:51:09 +1100, Bruce Kennewell

Come on Bruce, cheap shot - you know what I mean. Would it surprise
you to know that I prefer driving SODA to driving CPR? Eye-candy is
pretty much essential to any sim these days, but it still doesn't beat
a good physics model. That IMO is why so many people work with CPR,
because it looks like the sort of game you want to enjoy. SODA doesn't
fall into that category, but F1RS sure does - it just happens to be
quite good to drive in addition.

Cheers!
John

So F1RS *IS* quite good. Huh, judging from your first paragraph
I would almost think your thought it was crap. My apologies...

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I haven't spent much time at Monza with F1RS and certainly haven't peaked
but I have a 1:23.0. Heck, I didn't even think that time was good enough
to be worth submitting to the F1SA hotlap charts... ;-)

Let's see now, John has been at the forefront of sim racing for a couple
of years at least, Randy is a beta tester for Papy and I'm (sorry for
blowing my own trumpet) one of the fastest no aids hotlappers around.

F1RS is good - I don't think anyone experienced with sims would think
otherwise - but it's driving model feels a little simplistic at times. It
varies by track though. If one of the F1RS programmers told me that the
driving model actually varied by track I would believe him, because
that's how it feels. It's obvious that a lot of care and attention has
been paid to Monaco and F1RS drives really well there. But take some of
the other tracks - Suzuka, Nurburgring, Hungaroring, Silverstone, etc and
there just hasn't been the same level of detail spent on either the
tracks or the way the cars drive.

Finally, the AI in F1RS is too much of a push over. They will just give
up (try passing them round the outside) and won't challenge for position
as aggressively as GP2's AI does. It also gives a very poor impression of
racing when the AI are behind you. I spent several laps at Silverstone
with Schumi within a few tenths of me and it never felt like we were
racing :( But if you watch the AI race amongst themseleves then the F1RS
AI looks very much more realistic than GP2's.

And that's probably about how I would sum it up. F1RS *looks* more
realistic, but GP2 drives more realistically. Take your pick - and
despite my protestations, F1RS is the F1 sim that I am currently racing
<g> I very much doubt if it will have the staying power of GP2 but it
should keep me interested until GPL and then GP3 is released...

Cheers,
Richard