rec.autos.simulators

from Yates' column at www.speedvision.com
---------

Good news for racing simulation geeks; bad news for Papyrus, the big player
in that popular industry. My underground source, J.J. Hunsecker II, tells me
that a Brit computer genius named Dave Noonan has developed a program
whereby you can run your 1967 "Grand Prix Legends" Formula 1 cars on any one
of almost 30 road courses and speedways. Want to try your V12 AAR Eagle on
the Bristol half-mile? How about a Lotus 49 at Elkhart Lake, or a BRM at
Suzuka, or maybe Imola? It's all possible, thanks to ol' Dave and his
skunkworks, surely located in a scuzzy ba***t somewhere in the Midlands.
Needless to say, this development is akin to tearing out the pages of a book
and re-arranging them and therefore calls into question whether or not
copyrights are actually infringed; this has to make the guys at Papyrus
nuts. My man J.J. says that it's costing Papyrus over $3m a year. Yet to be
tried are Winston Cup stockers from the "NASCAR Racing" series on great road
courses like Spa and the Nurburgring, which is of course possible with
Noonan's program. Apparently the stock-car gamers don't care about road
courses, although the "GP Legends" gang are having a grand old time
experimenting on all manner of obscure tracks..

-------

--DK

This is a crock of shit.

1) There's actually almost 50 tracks available.

2) The converter requires that you have the sims that contain the
tracks that are convertable.

3) The converter does not include any code originally created by
Sierra/Papyrus.

4) This converter doesn't cost Papy anything.  If nothing else, it
promoted a small SURGE in sales of what is universally recognized as a
series of obsolete sims, namely Indy Car racing 2 (or CART 2 for the
politically correct readers), Nascar Racing, and Nascar Legends.

5) If Sierra/Papy had released a converter, THEY would be making money
off of it instead of Dave Noonan.

6) If Sierra/Papy had made tracks compatible between sims, THEY would
sell more copies of their sims, and a converter wouldn't be necessary.

7) Some of us Nascar gamers DO care about road courses, and would love a
chance to drive at some of the wider road courses.

8) This guy should get a grip before he spews garbage like this.

9) If it wasn't for the rogue programmers out here in the wild, many of
these sims wouldn't live longer than 3-6 months before being retired to a
box in the garage.

--
=========================================================
Redneck Techno-Biker (Zerex12)
  http://www.racesimcentral.net/
Barbarian Diecast Collector (420+ cars and counting)
  http://www.racesimcentral.net/
DeMONS Scheduler for N3 and NL
  http://www.racesimcentral.net/

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above & click "Send Me Mail" in the contents frame.
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Remco

How on earth is this supposed to be "costing" Papy a single thin dime? Are
they selling these tracks to GPL players?

Well, yes, they are. So far I've bought NR1999, N3, TWO versions of CART to
the damn right one and, of course, GPL itself.

Seems to me that Papy's doing ok and that to the sales of GPL they ought to
attribute to its profitability rating all the stuff that GPLers are buying
to support it.

Lord knows, Papy ain't.

Andre

How could this possibly be costing Papyrus $3m a year. That is ludicrous.
You have to own their other products (Nascar 3, Nascar Legends, Indycar
Racing II) to even run the track converter. If anything, Dave Noonan's
converters bring more revenue to Papyrus. I have friends that race GPL who
bought Nascar Legends just to run Riverside in GPL, and bought Nascar 3 just
for Indianapolis(this was before they were released together in the Nascar
Acceleration pack - Doh!!). These people would have never even purchased
those games because they have no interest in stock cars, but because of Dave
Noonans converter they did. There is no way that Noonan's converter could be
costing Papyrus money. These converters allow these games to have a much
longer shelf-life, thus more chance of being purchased. Just look at all the
posts recently of people trying to buy the 5 year old Indycar II by Papyrus
because of the converter.

Dave, thanks for the all great converters! - I have glady paid for them all.

And as for Papyrus, I have purchased Indycar 1, Indycar 1 Track Pack,
Indycar Indianapolis, Nascar 1, Nascar 1 Track Pack, Indycar II, Indycar II
Windows Version(because it had the much anticipated patch for the superior
DOS version several weeks before it was available on the internet), Indycar
II Rendition (came with my Rendition card), CART Racing(contained DOS,
Windows, and Rendition versions with awesome Steve Smith strategy guide),
Nascar 2, Nascar 2 Busch Expansion pack, Nascar 1999, Grand Prix Legends,
Nascar 3, and Nascar Legends.

package. Now, after I spent $49.99 a piece for Nascar 3 and Nascar Legends,
I will have to wait for Craftsman Trucks to be availble as a single package,

I wonder how many GPL enthusiasts who had not already purchased Legends or
N3, will now buy the Nascar Acceleration pack for use with Dave Noonan's
converter? From my perspective, Dave Noonan has helped Papyrus sell more
product.  Its all the 3rd party developers like Dave Noonan, The Pits, The
Sim Project, TPTCC, IWCCCARS, Simulator ***world, etc. that keep these
games fresh far beyond their normal shelf life. If you pay Dave Noonan for a
converter that uses track information from software that you have already
purchased from Papyrus, I just don't see that as money being taken away from
them. Its not like they are producing any extras for GPL! Sorry to beat a
dead horse, but this kind of stuff is just frustrating.

Don Chapman

Roger

As someone else has pointed out, legally this is nothing more than tearing
the pages out of  books, rearanging them, and scribbling in the margins.

Think about this for a minute, If Papy were actually losing 3 mill a year on
this, and since it would only cost about 5K or 10k, TOPS, to stop him, don't
you think they would if they felt they had a legal leg to stand on? Software
companies are the most litgous group in the history business.

They arn't losing money, they're making extra money, from the legal
activities of someone they don't even have to pay for doing it.

Sounds like a pretty good deal to me.

Companies that understand this are making more money than Papy could ever
dream of. Look at id. They not only don't stop people from***ing with the
software, they HELP them, going so far as to *release the source code* of
the previous version when a new version comes out. They are up to Q3 * and
still selling more copies of Doom than Papy sells total!*

Will we ever see an official car or track editor from Papy? Nope. GPL is
deadware. Will we ever see source code from this deadware? Nope. Wouldn't
cost Papy a dime. It would stretch more money from a dead horse. It would
enhance their reputation immesurably. It would make people more likely to
buy ANY future editions of any sim they put out.

If right now someone would put on the market an open source track and car
editor with a decent plain text editable physics and AI engine, with NO CARS
or TRACKS, they would own the market inside of 6 months.

If Papy did it THEY would own the market.

I'd pay $200 just for this package alone.

Hey, I'm a physicist with a specific background in automotive engineering,
chassis dynamics, and programing. Guess I'll just have to spend the next 5
years of my life writing it.

And as for Papy going after Dave for this one, I don't think so, both he
and the other "conversion guru's" working out of "The Pits" have a
dialogue with the people over there about all the stuff that they
release, sometimes they goof up a bit, like posting the converted "GPL
Glen" for the TPTCC series (which was taken from the demo and I think
that was nitpicking, but they were in their rights to do so) which was
promptly removed, and as far as I know, as long as they don't distribute
any original Papy code, Papy won't ***into it too much, and I'm sure
Sim***world and other sites have the same "deal" with Papy

That's not to say that Papy is happy about it, I have no idea really, or
they could be ecstatic about "The Converter" and have bought several
copies of it (this I'd like to know :-), but they would shoot themselves
in the foot by going after people like this, better concentrating on the
"real" hackers that distribute complete tracks and such, "live and let
live" I guess ?

Yes, I have issues when it comes to Papy as I happen to think that they
could have done so much more with their sims by including the "hacker
community" a bit more, endorsed these add on's a bit, or at least the
sites that distribute them if that's easier license wise, and I'm now
back into my dream about "The Pits" and "Sim***world" and other sites
being to Papy what "Alpina" is to BMW and "AMG" is to Mercedes, but do I
think their offices are populated with complete idiots ?

.....uh, no :-)

Beers and cheers
(uncle) Goy

"Team Mirage" http://www.racesimcentral.net/
"The Pits"    http://www.racesimcentral.net/

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--
don

[|]-(_)-[|]

by:

===> Snip!
===> Unsnip!

===> Snip again!

"which is of course possible with Noonan's program"?

This I was not aware of.  How do I convert tracks FROM GPL TO Nascar 3 with
David's great converter?

Should that have been "which of course WOULD be possible if Dave had
designed a converter that would do that"?

Pops

Correct

Beers and cheers
(uncle) Goy

"Team Mirage" http://www.teammirage.com/
"The Pits"    http://www.theuspits.com/

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Z.

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