What is the current "status" of Racer? In other words, what can you
now do in Racer (ie., hotlapping only, racing, online races, how good
are the physics at this point, etc...)? Thanks!
Hotlapping only at the moment. Latest version is 0.5.0 beta 3. Physics
engine is very solid so far but not yet complete - give it another 2 or 3
months for Ruud to finish the suspension redesign and debug the camber and
then the physics engine will be about level with GPL and not at all far
behind F1 2001.
Ruud is on a bit of a break from Racer at the moment to develop the GPLex
utility, which the Simbin team are using to great effect to convert GPL's
Nordschliefe to F1 2002 :0)
Online racing is broken at the moment, although I believe it was working in
the Linux distribution at some point in the past. Again, give it a couple of
months and you should be able to race online quite happily, although 56kers
might need to wait a little longer.
A handful of the cars available are better than any car model in any other
sim. Stecki's work in particular is extremely good - you might have seen his
Celica or Minis converted to F1 2001 - his Alpine A110s and Nissan 350Z (due
for release this week) are of a much higher quality than the Celica.
It's free - download it, get some addon cars and tracks, and try it out.
Cheers
Jim