rec.autos.simulators

    So, after all this time a-waitin', is it worth a purchase or not?  Note:
I'm in to SIMS, not GAMES!!!

    I'd like to know before I drop 60 bucks.

    Thanks

    PC

Yes, absolutely!! If you like sims it is a must-have!!
                                           Ken
The Game Pad
http://gamepad.org/

Hi!

Since I used the word "Suck", I'll try to write down some decent
reasons:(I put the good thing below)

The bad things:
Driving Model:
1.Cars are partly front-wheel driven. Try to race some cars in real life
and you'll notice that cars with engine in the back feel like driving on
ice. The car will slide much quicker.
2.Steering 'lock' is not reduced by speed. It's totaly the same
stereeing behavout when at 10mph or at 100mph. Not in real life.
3.Driving in the wet is even more unrealistic. I admit that it is not
easy, but it's not realistic.

Graphics:
1.Tracks are foolishly wrong:
a.Monaco; Tunnel and start/fin too small. It's twice as wide as ***.
          tunnel is too dark. Cerbs are too low wich makes it easy
to           cutoff corner.
b.Japan;  Too flat, which ruins the build of circuit. elevation
is           needed
c.San Marino; Historic track, but only the start/fin is ok.
              wrong elevations, and unknown half-high walls.
              Looks like park of Monza, but SM is in a farmers
land.               (not much trees)
d.Monza; Parabolica is 30% too small, it's alomst a pit entance.  
etc,etc,etc
2.***pits are too unclear. Can't read displays at bottom.
3. Pitradio is terrible. It shouts in your ears. Ruins my concentration.
   Should me controlable from cokcpit (like in real-life)

Others:
1. Returning to garage form track takes toooooo long(certainly for minor
adjustments.
2. Menus are too slow because of "music"
3. Slowdown is 1st corner, with anything less than a p2 with 64 mb
   Not everyone has got a p2 !!!
4. Too many patches, too much to download for a full priced game.
5. Some patches don't work witout the previous.
6. twice as much diskspace needed as everyother game 100mb -> 200mb
7. Weak AI for easier levels(easy,etc)
8. It costs a $15 more than other games.

GOOD THING:
1. Great feel of being there
2. Beatiful smoke,etc.
3. Great bumps in Buenos Aires,etc.

But I didn't want to offend any of you!!!

With kind regards,

   But an F1 car is 12 or 14 hundred pounds, fat slicks, wings
and 7 or 8 hundred horsepower.  Some argue that such a machine
wouldn't be just a better version of your car.  They feel it
would be as *** as GP2.  I loved GP2, but nothing I learned
from 30 years of driving applied to getting those cars around a
lap.  That might be exactly the way it should be.  

   Some find F1RS to be bug infested and to slow for their
systems.  With a full install on a PPro/200, 1/4Gig of memory,
and Pure 3d(Voodoo 1), I have no performance problems.  Pentiums
seem to need to be 233MHz for this title.  

   One bug I have seen is being tossed to an outside view of the
car after leaving the pits.  Sometimes I have time to "F2" myself
behind the wheel, sometimes I crash or loose time by slowing down.  
I have seen the game freeze.  I deal with these problems by
regularly saving the game.  This only takes a second, and can be
done at the start of a straight.  

   So, if F1 cars handle like distant relatives of the cars we
drive, F1RS is the best sim out there.  If F1 cars are nothing
like what we drive, then it's just arcade eye candy.  

   I love balancing the F1RS cars on the edge of control and a
spin.  John Wallace might argue that in real F1 cars, that edge
is too thin to dance on.  

                                                           Larry

I'll only make a few comments here.  Since I don't know much about how a
Formula 1 car should drive, I can't say a thing about the driving model.
Neither do I know much about how life-like the tracks are.  

I've notice that the menus are slow, but am not sure if they are any faster
without music.  There is a file that you can get that will disable all menu
music.

This must be your system.  I've heard of others saying that this happens to
them, too.  How much memory do you have?  I have 64RAM but only have a
p200.  This may be memory related.  It is certainly not processor related.

This is a weak complaint.  Would you have rather downloaded the 8 meg patch
file for Quake II?

I'm not too sure that this is the case.  I know that when I got the game I
installed the 1.08 patch and that was all that I needed.  More tediousness
here, I think.

Really?  Refering again to Quake II, how about 400 meg?  The way that I see
it, 100-200 meg is pretty good.

This certainly makes sense.  Play at the higher levels if you want a
stronger AI.  I've never played under "easy" nor have I ever used any aids.
 I suppose that you want someone to drive the car for you, also?

Your arguments get weaker as you progress.  I payed $44 for my copy.  If
you paid $60, then you'd better think about looker elsewhere for a better
bargain.

Indeed.  I know this much, I would've turned right around and returned my
copy of F1RS if the smoke turned out to be not as good as it should have
been.  Smoke means fire; and fire means, it's a good buy.  

Are you the person who asked how one could increase the memory allowed for
skid marks?  I think that person-- or you, if it was you-- wanted to skid
all around the track once and then take another lap just to look at what he
had done.  

I'm just kidding about the above, so don't take offense.  But I don't think
that some of the arguments that you made are valid arguments.  F1RS is a
great racing simulator, period.

Alanb

I beg to differ. No car I know reduces lock wiyth speed. If I turn the wheel
30 degrees when stationary, they will point in the same direction as when
doing 200 and the wheel is at 30 degrees. What does change is the "wight" of
the wheel.... though for that we'll need a good force-feedback wheel (and good
software support).

Again, I beg to differ.To me this feels like wet road, unlike other car-sims
it doesn't just reduce traction but gives the car a lot more "foatty" feel...
just like real cars :-)
Deffinately wrong here. I was in Monaco barelly a year ago and spent about a
month there. I tell you that looking at the track in F1RS, I have not seen
anything as close to the real thing as what they've done here. I would go as
far as saing as that even the bumps are in the right place. Trust me, the
width is spot on.... if anything not thin enough; you wouldn't believe how
thin the Monaco track is in real life.

You're probably right here, though TV is all I have to comapare against.

Same as above... can't comment.

I don't bother reading the cocpit (just like real drivers) but it look crystal
clear to me.... I don't know where you're seen a ":clearer"***pit.

You can turn down the volume of this in the options. I have it all the way at
the bottom 'cos it anoys me as well.
I agree.... also, I hate how it takes over driving of the car when you're in a
tip lane. That's not right. Same with pulling out of the pits.

They are slow, but not because of the music. You can get a "patch" to stop the
music but it doesen't make the menus quicker. Full install makes them barable.

Agree. Giving us an otion to set how many oponemts you "see in front and
behind" would have solved this. Shame they didn't put that in.

Anything to improve the game. I agree that it should better out of the box
though.

The pathes are independent, you don't need the previous patches.

That's for a full install. I'm sure that full installs on other games will not
do much better. TRhough, you can decrease the required space by dowloading
"substitute" AVIs from the web to replace the originals.

Don't know.... Expart AI is good though a percentage dificultry would have
been much nicer for everyone thatn the 3 setting Ubisoft gave us.

Depends what shop you're looking at.

Not offended at all, because I can list an pagefull of things that could be
better of are not right. but a lot of the things you comment on just are not
right.
Good luck with it all, and have fun racing,
David Mocnay

Hi there,
I read about your first corner problems...

If it happens only in race mode just after starting the race, it might
be your sound settings. Some guy told me to change the values in the
snd_cpa.ini file in the dll directory of F1RS. If I remember things
right you should change
snd_fade=     and
snd_satur=

The recommended values are about 15 for the higher number and 5 for the
other. This changes the ratio of sound volume and distance to the cars.

I'll check the exact file name and settings on the weekend.

Joerg