rec.autos.simulators

Where else can you race 600 cars, all with individual characteristics and
tweaks?. The GT1 cars are breathtaking and I can now drive a Lotus Elise, at
least in virtual reality.

I'm still playing the original, which is still a great game in its own
right. Never has so much detail and gameplay been lavished on an ageing
console format  - it's a unique achievement!

With fun like this at an all in cost, including machine of around 100, who
gives a damn about P3 1000's and this year's trendy video card.

I have a feeling my PC sims will be gathering dust for quite a while - at
least until GP3 comes out.

Best wishes
Chris

now back to our regular broadcast

But it is far from perfect.  I think the performance is overestimated.  
At least it was in the first (150 hp Civic Si's capable of 150 mph?  
Yeah, fersure).  No dash.  And most importantly, while the driving and
hot-lapping is excellent, the racing is far less so.  It is badly marred
by the "catchup" compensation AI and the bumper-car action and
aggresiveness of very clueless AI (and, umm, me sometimes :-)).

BTW, I can't get my tweaked Elise 190  (300+ hp) to handle worth a damn.
It will always spin out even when I'm SS high-speed cornering.

For me, that honeymoon lasted 2-3 weeks.  I've now found I'm more
interested in really giving GPL a try.  Hmm, maybe GT helped me as I've
gone from clueless to 1:07 WG's and a 1:30.000 (damn!!) Monza.

Joe Marques

Are you talking about GT2, the most buggest Playstation game -ever- ? So
bugged that you can replace your crappy copies to Sony ?  And the
replacement versions are still very buggy and offer not much compared to the
original version?

Only good thing is gameplay, as for physics and graphics..  those are very
bad points.  Just a good arcade game with solid gameplay and great lenghts
of replayability.

--
-- Fran?ois Mnard <ymenard>
-- May the Downforce be with you...

"People think it must be fun to be a super genius, but they don't realise
how hard it is to put up with all the idiots in the world."

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Well, the graphics are certainly not up to PC standards, which I gather
is your point. I agree.  One shouldn't come away with the impression
that they are a letdown to those familiar with PSX limitations.

As to the physics, I've noted one shortcoming previously.  Ya know, I
get the feeling that most people who talk about physics here, and in the
FS ng, really don't have the info or background to have what I'd
consider to be an expert witness opinion.  Yes, many (but not all!) can
tell obvious extremes apart, but a lot of the rest is just faith and
hype.  For example, for years after the release of Falcon3, I saw
hundreds of posts on its "almost classified" flight model.  For its day
it was good, in absolute terms, ***(IMHO :-)).  Endless debates on the
merits of GP2, SCGT, F1RS, Viper, MGPRS2 come to mind.

No bugs to me are minor.  On the PC, we have this great (and not great)
thing called a patch, which of course is very difficult to implement on a
Console-based game.   GT2 is ridiculised on PS newsgroups, and many
websites.  They did a very bad error with such a decision.  I mean cmon you
think that features _left out_ are minor bugs ?

The cars are worse than in GT.  They have a lower polygon count, and have
very edgy parts, especially between the side panels and roof/hood.  They are
not as spectacular as in the original title.

LOL! What the heck do you know about us ?  Many of us are real life racecar
driver.  What do you want more ? We've read tons of books.. the whole "to
win" series.  I think we can tell quality physics from physics that are
there to please the majority.

GT2's physics are as good as what an arcade racer can be.  Sure they are
fun, but not accurate.  Just throw the car into the corner, and see how the
output results in.  It's as simple as that.  It's how the short-minded
average gamer likes it.  They like to trailbrake in a very unrealistic way,
which makes fun races but not very accurate.  Yes Im talking about the
Simulation CD btw ;)  Especially on the PS, which has no accurate
controller.  Cheap plastic wheels, or gamepads.

--
-- Fran?ois Mnard <ymenard>
-- May the Downforce be with you...

"People think it must be fun to be a super genius, but they don't realise
how hard it is to put up with all the idiots in the world."

Left out features are not bugs at all, and surely you must know this.

I haven't played GT2 yet, but I expect to soon. However, it is very
refreshing to read that the playstation people are just as screwed
as the PC *** people when it come to russhing ***out the
door.

Um... I hate to break it to you, but I am 105% sure that Dave is a
Physicist. As such, I expect he would know more about the subject
than people that read books.

I thought you could use the ActLabs FF wheel on the playstation.
Surely after over a year of hype, that has been done by now.

--

Header address intentionally scrambled to ward off the spamming hordes.

cisko [AT] ix [DOT] netcom [DOT] com

And praised on many more.  You and I have been around long enough to
know that when unrealistic expectations aren't met, whining begins.  And
whining is an art not exceeded by any more than netters. I'd expect
console advocates to be experts.

That they released it early for sales is something I agree they did and
won't defend.  They at least did release a patch (which you apparently
consider a negative meanwhile expecting N patch releases for each of the
sims you and I play).  You haven't yet listed a bug that seriously
effects either its sim or gameplay (I did mention THE one, the
disappearing garage).

Actually, I don't think they are bugs at all.  But yes, I sure would
like to know my competition before the race starts.

I did a comparison by switching between the two games.  I didn't note
any very significant difference.  If anything, the second title looked a
bit better.

I've read your posts for as long as you've been here.  I've been around
that long, and longer.  Just I get tired of it sometimes.

(Partial) apology to those.  Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that
there aren't some very educated informative people here.  But some of
you just go on one-man campaigns against sim/games they dislike.  And
many more just talk about F1 cars not "feeling right".  I use endless
debates about F1RS/MGPRS2 as an example.  The discussion generally
centers on "canned spins" and "riding on rails" and "steering doesn't
feel real", not on talk of weight transfer, rotational inertia, bump
steer... And even a "racecar" driver (does that mean a professional, or
one who has taken a Bondourant course?), isn't necessarily privy to
enough info to be an "expert witness" on a physics model (more on this
below).

Well, I'll give you an example of what I mean.  Suspension performance
is not only about spring/damper/sway rates and bump stops.  The actual
geometry of the links has a big effect.  How is this handled in the sims
you laud (we'll assume it isn't in the ones you don't)?  Do you really
know what is under the cover of these physics models, or just go by the
honor system?  I work every day with modeling and simulation of complex
systems.  Before I pass final judgement on a physics model, I'd have to
look "under the cover" and see what governing eqns are used.

Sure you can tell a lot by judging the end results, how it works when
you "drive" it.  That is, afterall,  the end goal.  But very few of us
have driven F1 cars, '67 or '99.  Okay, most of us *have* driven cars
like in GT2, thus the comparison is more valid.  Input from racecar
drivers is not only informative and welcome, but should be in part what
this ng is about.  

I'd be interested in more concrete and specific examples of car
behavior where you think GT2 fails, and where say SCGT (or pick another
game with cars you've driven) succeeds.

Have you adjusted the LSD settings?  I think the physics model assumes
wheel spin can be provoked very easily otherwise, causing instant loss
of traction and induced oversteer.

I had been leaving the acceleration and deceleration settings as they
came, and raising just the "initial" (does that mean "base"?) setting
--to the max for anything over 500bhp, and somewhat less for other
cars.   But now I think for a RWD car you want the acceleration setting
high, initial somewhat low, and deceleration setting very low.

For a Denso Sard Supra GT in the Laguna Seca 200 mile race last night
I used:     LSD initial        20
            LSD acceleration   56  (max)
            LSD deceleration   1   (min)

I found all the Lotuses I looked at "twitchy".  (I looked at a lot
because I want to see if I cat get one close to the 295bhp limit for
the Trial Mountain 30, and see if it can catch the cheating AI
Vector).  I think different sets of GT and GT2 car simulations are
created by different people and some have more innate stability than
others, regardless of how you tweak them, and others are really easy
to make a real mess of, and can be made just tolerable with a bit
of difficulty.

Many, if not all, MR cars in GT2 have a, perhaps not unrealistic,
tendency to spin easily.

Adrian.

So for your left-out features are a good thing ? Especially on console-based
games, in which you have about no chance unless you need to do extreme
measures to fix the problems like for GT2.

Well, your right about that.  Console games are not immunised from bugs, au
contraire.

Please don't tell me that he find GT2's physics to be realistic.  What about
driving -racecars-.  Touring Cars, little drag racing, Karting, Driving
Schools, normal life cars in the normal world... That's way enough to see
that GT2 is an arcade game that is very fun and has a deep gameplay, but
lacks many parts in the realism aspect of the game.

Ok, you have a point here.  So, how is it on a quality plastic wheel ?

--
-- Fran?ois Mnard <ymenard>
-- May the Downforce be with you...

"People think it must be fun to be a super genius, but they don't realise
how hard it is to put up with all the idiots in the world."