rec.autos.simulators

You might want to take a look at yourself and ask who the kid is...

Although out of all my consoles the PS2 as at the bottom of the list in
terms of how much it is played and how much I like it.  But it does have
RBR and GT4 with FFB.

--
My Games Collection:  http://www.racesimcentral.net/
Games Blog- http://foos***.blogspot.com
Motorsport Blog- http://www.racesimcentral.net/

Today the consoles arent an option for me either.  Someday that may not be
the case though.  When a console can run high res with all the accessories I
can use now (wheels, sticks etc) I'd actually much prefer $3-400 for a
console vs $1000-2000 for a high end PC.  Today isnt the day though ;)

Mitch

--
Pete Ives
Remove All_stRESS before sending me an email

As far as superspeedways not requiring any driving skill, tell that to
the 8/10 and 9/10 racers out there. They will slice and dice you at
their leisure. People don't get the higher ratings without putting real
time in finding how to handle the car in the low and high lines. Maybe
it's not a skill you wish to acquire, but it is DEFINATELY a skill.

Never having raced superspeedways before, I had my first win
on my second online session. I don't think this could happen
with any other racing sim, or with the road courses in NR2003.
It would take a lot longer than just two sessions to run
1:14's at Watkins Glen, the time that most fast players run at.

The only driving skill I see is during qualification and pitting.
Just need to qualify near the front to be able to avoid wrecks and win.
Most of the 8/10 and 9/10 players work with a group or team, and
this is very difficult to beat as an individual. The team or group
work together in pitting and getting back into a draft after pitting,
which is the key factor for winning a race (and wreck avoidance).

In order to get a rating of 7 or 8, the main thing is to race in
a large field (30+ players), and finish in the top 7 or so. Getting
to a 6 on an open server isn't that difficult (takes me two nights).
Getting to a 7 or 8 is best done on an FLMS server with a minimum of 6
rating. FLMS also has a minimum 7 rating server, but it's not
very popular anymore since they added a 6 server also.

Regarding the inside versus outside line, the standard speedway
tracks favor the inside line. Only a cooperating group or team
can make the outside line work.

I never got the impression from the other game sections that the
players of that game thought that their game's physics didn't have any
flaws.

Many GPL fans used to think that GPL was the best simulation ever, but
were also willing to admit GPL had some physics  / setup bugs.

With such a small team, LFS is destined to fall behind other sims by
the time LFS S3 is released. Also, only a small number of cars in
LFS get any actual real world feedback. I still feel that the tire
physics isn't right, and wonder if the team ever got any actual
slip angle versus lateral force curves for the various types of tires
used in actual racing, specifically, bias ply racing tires used in
most non-downforce racing classes, which lose very little grip
when pushed past the limits. In my own testing, steering beyond
the max on LFS S2's LX6 can reduce the cornering forces from 1.15g's
to below .8g's, far more than what a real racing tire would do.

One of the issues some (like me) have with LFS is that slicks aren't allowed
on more cars than currently allowed within the game. There is a slick for
all cars mod for LFS S1 and S2 alpha, so obviously there is a demand for
this. If this is supposed to be a racing simulator (not just a fun
run simulator), then model the tires actually used in racing of these
cars. Most racing classes allow slicks on some events, and for some
spec classes, the restriction is to DOT racing tires. LFS doesn't have
the equivalent of a DOT racing tire yet.

    Once rFactor has tracks that appeal to all and mods that appeal to all
(F1, Champ cars, Daytona Prototypes, Aussie V8 Supercars, Euro GT stuff,
etc) then you will see no activity anywhere except rFactor - it is
inevitable! :) We are at the beginning, not the end!

    Not to mention that you could say goodbye to every mod, track, etc that
was ever released for any sim - think about that for a sec!

and the fact that consoles are commodity items and get replaced by
newer versions. Unless you have space to store them, this means older
games get obsoleted as well.

It isn't dead, it's just that the remaining 2 or 3 players
are busy going around the world in real time flying Cessna 172's.
(A lot of islands had to be invented for the cross ocean flights).

I don't think any one game is ever going to dominate online play.
The closest to this we have right now is NR2003 online superspeedway
racing, where 300 to 500 players are online during peak times. For the
rest of the racing games, I suspect it will remain around 100 players
or less.

Collin McRae Rally isn't much of a sim. But RBR is stunning, it probably
has the best car physics among all sims. Unlike road racing sims it's much
more believable when you go off the pavement and over bumps (intentionally
or not). If you haven't driven RBR or rally car in real life you just
haven't experienced rally style driving. If you want to try, RBR is likely
to be a cheaper option (than real life rallying ;>)

I'm not sure, I run GPL almost exclusively online. It was around for such a
long time that most people got quite proficient and primarily race in the
leagues (official or practice races). There's a quality racing there, so
pick up racing is dying out. The funny side of such an established sim is
that many drivers are so consistent that races often resemble typical F1
processional races. Drivers qualify in the order of their pace, and 0.1s
per lap becomes unsurmountable margin when nobody makes mistakes. This
often makes practice races more fun, because faster drivers usually fall to
the back and try to make positions on track.
Alex.

I see a very big egg vs. chicken problematic here for rFactor.  Do
tracks/cars/mods bring people to the online environment, or will the people
online bring those tracks/cars/mods?  Because at the moments, it's quite
evident that rFactor is not a big seller at all, the arenas and race servers
are not populated at all.

Considering there's no boxed release of rFactor, it's all in the
word-of-mouth.  That thing can easily kill rFactor into the nothingless of
the internet, within half a dozen so-so 6-months-of-fun sims that are
developped fastly, fragment the community and aren't supported with patches
by the developpers (hmm ISI's babies anybody???).  Or worse, if the rFactors
guys leave the community on it's own to create tracks, fix problems, WRITE A
MANUAL (jebus guys was it that hard to make?).

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

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

    The m***to the story is simple - if it's good, real good, word of
mouth will do the rest.

    And it already is really good. Not only are the mods and tracks on the
horizon (not too mention some in place), but a trip to
http://www.racesimcentral.net/'s about to get a
lot better and has a heap of bug fixes (and this is in a sim that has hardly
any bugs at all). This is a very good sign if you ask me.

    I'll go on the record right now and say that rFactor is easily the best
thing since sliced bread and GPL (wondering if sliced bread and GPL are of
the same era LOL).