rec.autos.simulators

Good, bad, indifferent, never heard of it?

Cheers.

Bombshell.

I remember the start of Filsca, It seemed to me at the time that it was a
bunch of guys who wanted to draw power in the sim racing world to
themselves. I think filsca is good for the founders of filsca, they are
people who want to be important.

    Who, exactly, wishes to be "unimportant"?

    Can someone explain to me why so many people are so suspicious and
threatened by this FILSCA "mob"? What threat do they pose exactly? As long
as sim companies make sims with direct IP and maybe also offer free lobbies
for use by all, then what possible threat is there?

    My view - FILSCA ---> a good place to look for a league and a good way
to see the performances of other drivers. From a leagues point of view it's
a good way to advertise for free (atm at least - ooooooOOOOOOooooooo - scary
stuff) and give it's drivers more exposure. Quite simply, it's all good from
what I can see. All the paranoia it seems to be generating is quite amusing
too! :)

FILSCA is an attempt to organize things in the sim world, in I simply
cannot see why it is not a good idea. Both for league organizers and new
people.

Gathering loads and loads of people under the same umbrella organization
is worth a lot, and can achieve things accordingly, because they have
the numbers for argumentation.

If the sim world was completely organized, I believe game developers and
software houses would pay attention, and potentially adjust, to this
organization.

And would it at all be possible to implement sponsoring in our sim
"sport" without a collective and huge collection of people? I don't
think so.

Organizing can be a great, great thing, and I have problems seing why
anyone should be paranoid about it. What is the worst scenario
imaginable concerning FILSCA, really? I cannot come up with any!

---Asgeir---

Organization, like fast women and rich food, is a good thing in
moderation.  I agree with many of Asgeir's thoughts about FILSCA's
potential benefit however I fail to see how they'll reach critical mass
required to achieve them in their current form.

Their first white paper, http://www.filsca.com/1000253/812 discussed
raising Sim racing to a professional level and the need for a
sanctioning body to govern/promote the sport towards that end.  Their
current mission statement, http://www.filsca.com/1000253/386
has dropped the "pro" aspect but still calls themselves a sanctioning
body.

While I personally feel the percentage of sim racers who are likely to
"turn pro" is infinitesimally small (about the same size as the
potential audience who might pay to watch), I think a sanctioning body
could do many useful things for the rest of us: lobbying graphics card,
wheel and sim manufacturers so that they knew what our specific issues
were; setting standards and rating 3rd party tracks/mod etc.

However when I suggested that line of thinking to the then-current
FILSCA officers they clearly indicated that not only were they
personally not interested in it (which I can accept), but that
essentially that wasn't what FILSCA was all about.  The latter aspect
was troubling to me in what I presumed would be an association that
would, after a necessary initial dictatorial period, be democratically
run by it's member leagues and therefore it's ultimate goals subject to
change.

Perhaps coincidently most of the initial people who did the setup work
for FILSCA still seem to be the principal officers (those who are still
sim-racing at all).  To me that says they've either been continuously
re-elected thru fair and democratic processes (the results of which
have been kept entirely within the private FILSCA forums) or they
haven't..    Searching their public forums on the words "elect" or
"election" returns virtually no results, something I'd thought they'd
want to advertise at least as much as a race result.

Personally I'm suspicious of why the rules/guidelines for potential
member leagues aren't posted on the public side of their pages, I can't
think of a good reason for keeping that close to the chest.  From
purely hearsay posts I understand them to be fairly draconian.  I
personally don't know, as even though I've exchanged emails with
FILSCAers they haven't outlined the rules to me, so I won't take the
matter to my league.

Not that it bothers me, but I think in some people's eye's they've set
themselves on their back foot to begin with by picking a very
Euro-centric name.  Much the same way that most NASCAR, IRL or CART
teams couldn't spell FIA.

If their goal is simply to maintain driver stats and produce a news
letter (not that that's not a lot of work in itself), then democratic
leadership is less of an issue, however I personally don't see how they
can call themselves a "club" with out it.  Magnus the GPLrank folk have
provided an invaluable service to the community but they make no
pretence about being a club.

Neither service is one that any of the drivers in leagues I'm involved
with have been asking for.

Worst case FILSCA scenario Asgeir:  Irrelevancy.

Sorry meant to say Magnus's track database and the GPLrank folk

Excellent post. I agree with most of your points but most specifically that
the stated aims and the delivery are very far apart.

It seems harsh to criticise because I am sure it is well meaning and the
tools for leagues and newsletters are a good service which no doubt takes
countless voluntary hours. However, as a sanctioning body and being a voice
of sim racing it has not delivered. Possibly because there is a lack of will
within the sim community and maybe it is an impossible task.

What will be interesting is what happens once the Federation of
International Racing and Sanctioning Trust, the FIRST in FIRST-Racing.net
gets going with its aims to incorporate new technology to heighten the
realism as well as a sanctioning body to launch a truly global online sport.

The sim racing community is pretty niche to start with so splitting it with
multiple sanctioning bodies would seem more than a bit daft. I would expect
FILSCA to recognise its aims are now different and drop the sanctioning and
sponsorship goals, but it remains to be seen.

Cheers
Tony

My initial reaction to a developer of a sim also acting as a "sanctioning
body" is skepticism. Why do I get the feeling it's going to be the old papy
crowd crowning themselves kings of sim racing or some other nonsense. :-)
--
David G Fisher

CART/CCWS vs. IRL

GARRA vs. ALMS

Bernie vs. Automakers

Etc.

;-)

-jde

One thing *is* for sure, if there is any meaning in setting up an
organization like FILSCA, it must be to achieve influence over the sim
racing industry, and market value towards potential sponsors. It will be
pretty much impossible to gather all under one umbrella with any other
goals than these, IMO.

So, in order to get that influence and market value in a niche activity,
every little corner must be searched, every league, racer, organizer,
affiliated people must join, simply because the numbers is the best
argument in any cooperation or communication with sim developers and
software houses. If we are to be met on any point, it must be because
someone can make money of it.

Now, in order to gather all sim racers around this globe, organizers and
competitors alike you can use several models. One is to be dead serious
about any aspect of sim racing, refuse working with the leasure drivers,
be rigid about ruling etc etc. This model may indeed work, since people
will aspire to getting under the wings of this exclusive ruling body.
Needless to say, democracy will not be one of the primary goals...

A different one is to be loose, large and including, gathering the
flock, and then start building things from there when you have the
numbers behind you. When you look at the diversity of the sim racing
community it becomes apparent that the "flock" is widely spread, both
geographically, in goals, and in methods. It will be impossible to
gather all this under the same umbrella *unless* you have just a few
goals behind which everyone will stand without hesitation. And I am sure
an organization like this, including say 100 000 people, will achieve
things eventually. And as soon as sim racers around the globe see that
their affiliation body is working *for* them, I am sure that the racers
will be liable to act *for* their affiliation body as well. Boycots of
certain products spring to mind, for instance. This is essentially what
we normally call "consumer power", really, where the key is the numbers.

I would expect the latter model to be the vastly most efficient in this,
and it may seem that this is a bit different way of doing things than
FILSCA have done. I am in no position to judge or evaluate FILSCA,
though, since I have little experience with them.

---Asgeir---

1. You bow to me and my fascist rules (which are a simply copy/paste of the
Filsca ones)
2. You bow to me again after the qualification (with a preset message)
3. 10% of all your income goes to me

Thank you have a nice day.

--
-- Fran?ois Mnard <ymenard>
-- This announcement is brought to you by the Shimago-Dominguez
Corporation - helping America into the New World...

--
David G Fisher

Splitter!

JM