rec.autos.simulators

http://www.racesimcentral.net/

- models and some graphics from the wheel2wheel 2002 mod
- engines and aero are 2002 spec (altho speeds on ovals are a bit
faster and closer to mid 90's since I can't have separate wings for
ovals - more fun with proper champcar wings anyway)
- suspension/tires still using f1 values, so f1 setups should work
with a few clicks added to the final drive

Lemme know what you think.

Jason

Woops.  Was meant for email. =)

Jason

Sounds great!

   It's a beta of a Cart/OWRS mod Jason is working on for F1c.
Strictly hush-hush.  NOBODY is supposed to know about it.
In fact, I've already forgotten what we were talking about.
Lovely weather today isn't it?

dave :) henrie

I can't wait until it's done, what a great idea!!!

Interesting; what are the obvious mistakes in the car's parameters?

After reading the above, I DL'ed the NT2004 demo so I could compare apples
to apples.  Drove the same tracks back to back with both NT2004 and NR2003.
Well, no surprise here; I came away with a different take.  No big deal, and
probably a good example of why there aren't more sims out there; it's no
easy task to make one, and even if you do, different drivers will perceive
the experience very differently.  How do you define what's *right*; where do
you set your target?  Tough job!

Sim driving is such a different environment from real driving that you
perceive the experience very differently.  So the mechanisms that developers
build in to give us the seat-of-the-pants feedback that's missing are vital.
I could sample two stock car sims with absolutely perfect (& therefore
identical) physics, but if one didn't communicate to me as the driver what
my "virtually perfect" tires were doing in as much detail as the other, I'd
think it was less of a sim.  Even though from a pure physics viewpoint, it
wouldn't be.

I guess it's a matter of how a developer "translates" the driving experience
from the real to the virtual world.  You get a certain level of overall
sensory input driving a real car.  Even if you can build a virtual car that
behaves absolutely identically, you're still deprived of the majority of
those real-world sensory inputs, and unless you find a way to get enough of
them back into the virtual experience (through admittedly other channels
than the real ones), and on a high-enough level, the experience is going to
feel sterile.  I think Papy's many variables for modulating the tire sounds
in NR2003 are evidence that they understand the importance getting these
sensory inputs back in by providing very precise aural feedback.  The car
and in particular the contact patches, are "talking" to you, and one just
has to learn how to listen.  The graphical nuances in their skidmarks points
are just further evidence of the richness of the tire model.  There are more
translational cues in how the***pit moves relative to your POV and the
track.

ISI have made great strides in their physics, to be sure.  But I think Papy
are still up the road a bit in the "experience-translation" area.  As the
cues they've added are so subtle, I can easily see why not everyone's picked
them up.  It's common to hear tales of people having struggled with GPL,
until it suddenly "clicked" and from then on they loved it and everything
else was suddenly "no GPL!". ;-)  Heck; even Dave Kaemmer himself has been
quoted on the need to develop new "neural pathways" for driving Papy sims.
And I think that's a big part of why you have people on both sides of the
fence regarding Papy's stuff - if they haven't clicked for you (or just
don't for whatever reason), you won't think so highly of them.  But once
they click, everything else just feels (here it is again) sterile.  I also
think the variation in ability of people to perceive and interpret the
subtle cues in Papy's current sims is where you get the alien/mortal divide.
I rather expect Huttu, et al "got it" right out of the box!

Getting this long-winded bit back on-topic; I have no idea whether Warthog
will get RBR anywhere near the levels Papy and ISI have established, but it
looks promising at this point.  They sound like they might "get it" too.
Let's all cross our fingers.

SB

One thing that's broken that won't be fixed is the pit guys being
white.  It sucks, it looks retarded, but it's not worth the effort to
get it working atm.

Jason

I look forward to the finished version, good luck!

I wanted to try it, but I probably can't without the patch.