rec.autos.simulators

Hi everyone,

One of the things worrying everyone about GP2 is the incredible amount
of money needed to be spent on hardware. Just how "incredible" is
incredible?!

Well MPS are too busy finishing it, so we at Sim Racing News got hold of
a copy and did some tests (and before we're accused of piracy, no it's
not the dodgy super-virus copy going round the warez scene. This puppy's
legit!).

Thanks to Marc for all that hard work "testing" GP2 (playing while he
should be working....!).

-=-=-=-=---=-==--=-=--=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-==
Sim Racing News - Special Report
GP2 Graphic Performance Summary - 6/22/96
Marc Nelson - Editor, SRN-USA

(use Crtl-T to view)
======================================================================
Here are some preliminary results of system performance for GP2. All 16
included tracks were tested for the evaluation of "practical" gameplay
for both VGA and SVGA (using the game's auto-detail feature). The
following is intended as a guide ONLY, and are not conclusive.
Performance may be different depending on system and video card.

SYSTEM AS TESTED
CPU:    100MHz Intel (over-clocked to 120)
RAM:    16Mb
CACHE:  256k
VIDEO:  Diamond Stealth-64 (video), w/ 2Mb DRAM

DETAIL LEVEL
================================================================
VGA     TEXTURES | MIRRORS      SVGA    TEXTURES | MIRRORS
================================================================
Kerbs      X         X                     X          -
Fences     X         X                     X          -
Verges     X         X                     X          -
Track      X         X                     X          -
Bank       X         X                     X          -
Hills      X         X                     X          -
Cars       X         X                     X          X
Objects    X         X                     X          -
Sky        X         X                     -          -

                VGA     SVGA    VGA-2*
================================================================
Mirror Texture: On      Off      Off
Objects Level:  All     All      All
FPS Avgerage:   17      16       25+

VGA & SVGA PERFORMANCE REMARKS
================================================================
Track           Practice | Race  Remarks        VGA-2*
================================================================
Brazil            Good     Fair                 Excellent
San Marino        Fair     Fair                 Excellent
Spain             Good     Fair                 Excellent
Monaco            Poor     Poor                 Fair
Canada            Good     Good  (Some Flaws)   Excellent
France            Good     Fair                 Excellent
Britain           Good     Fair                 Excellent
Germany           Fair     Fair                 Excellent
Hungary           Fair     Poor                 Good
Belgium           Fair     Poor                 Good
Italy             Good     Good  (Some Flaws)   Excellent
Portugal          Good     Good  (Some Flaws)   Excellent
Europe            Good     Fair                 Excellent
Pacific           Fair     Fair                 Excellent
Japan             Good     Fair                 Excellent
Austrailia        Fair     Poor                 Good

                Estimated
Remark      Frames Per Second
 Key            (Avgerage)
================================================================
Poor              10-11         Unacceptable (Virtually Unplayable)
Fair              12-15         Playable (Some Flaws)
Good              16-20         Playable (Virtually Jitter-Free)
Excellent         20-25         Near Video Performance

*VGA-2            25+           (Using same level of detail as SVGA)

More info to be made available in the July issue of Sim Racing News,
which will be available the first-week of July. Thanks to all for
your continued support!!! See ya' in July :)

-L8BRKR

-=-=-=--=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

If anyone has any questions about the frame rates or hardware required,
let me know. I'm running a P-200 with Herc Stingray 2Mb, so I'll post
the results as soon as I have a chance to do some testing.

Cheers!
John
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Delete

I guess this was a Pentium CPU?

Delete

Would it be possible to post the raw text to this group - I am
not as yet WWW "linked" and would love to see your reviews of GP2 anf
the F1 for Playstation. Or is the text archived somewhere to get via
FTP?

Cheers
Al

By the way, what is VGA-2 ???

===========================================
James

====== THE AUSTRALIAN SPORT PAGE=======
http://www.ozemail.com.au/~jaymz/aussport.html
===========================================

Thanks for the performance info!
A couple of questions for you intrepid F1GP2 testers:

What is VGA2?  Is is like the 320x400 mode in Doom? SVGA/2? I am very
curious.
I run NASCAR racing now in VGA (eeew) but I like the smoothness of the
graphics. I run ICR2 in SVGA and the frame rate is more than acceptable.
If VGA2 runs that well, I will use it, but how does it look?

Have you tried the Networking? Is there networking.  I am really looking
forward to this, if it exists as I have a small subnet in my house!
Please let me know!

Looking forward in unabated anticipation,

Jeff

--
Jeffrey Hunsberger

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
get the latest racing news at my news link site:
the A P E X: Jeff's Racing Links Site
http://www.voicenet.com/~jeffreyh/apex
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Netscape 2.0 enhanced!!

writes

VGA is the 320x200 with ALL textures. VGA-2 is 320x200 but with some
textures off so that it is the same as the settings we used for SVGA.
That way you can compare VGA and SVGA more meaningfully.

Cheers!
John

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Thanks Dave :)  I thought I'd explained that in the original post, I was
beginning to think I was cracking up! (and yes, VGA-2 is Marc's own
expression for it!).

Cheers!
John

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It is explained in the post (I think, unless I deleted that bit!!). It
is VGA mode (320x200), except with some textures removed so it had
exactly the same textures as the tests we did in SVGA mode (no track or
sky essentially). SVGA is fine on a P-100 with low mirror detail and no
sky or track texture, but if you turn on sky or track......YOUCH! Slow.

The overall opinion was - surprise! We were really expecting SLOOOOOOW,
but actually everyone's fears are unfounded. If you reduce the frame
texture levels to the same as ICR2, the game is actually about 50%
FASTER.

Most VGA games really suck compared to the same game in SVGA - that is
not true of GP2. It looks great in VGA, and if I hadn't seen it in SVGA
I'd have been delighted with VGA (looks REAL cool in SVGA though!).

There's no networking in the initial release. There is an intention to
release an upgrade, probably at the end of this year or early next year.
The content of the upgrade hasn't been decided yet, but network play is
one of the options.

If you want more info, check out the GP2 previews in Sim Racing News.
There's a lot of info there (and so there should be, they took me long
enough to research and write!!). The URL is in my .sig.

Cheers!
John
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: >The overall opinion was - surprise! We were really expecting SLOOOOOOW,
: >but actually everyone's fears are unfounded. If you reduce the frame
: >texture levels to the same as ICR2, the game is actually about 50%
: >FASTER.
: >

: Well, I get 23fps in SVGA for ICR2. That's worst case with all details on
: and all cars seen. Since you state that F1GP2 is about 50% faster, then can
: I expect that I can run F1GP2 with all textures on in SVGA at 28-30fps
: worst case on my P6? Tell you what, send me that F1GP2 CD by FEDEX and
: I'll do some testing on a P6 for SRN. :^)

We have to keep in mind that the 3D simulator engine in F1GP2 is the most advanced so far in car simulators. It features shadows under the cars from blocking the sun, phong shading highlights (shiny spots from light reflections) as well as sophisticated physical calculations. And considering that, even though the framerate might be slower in SVGA F1GP2 than other car sims this engine might very well be the fastest around. If one disables all the extra features not implemented in, for example, ICR2, the fra
merate would probably be a lot faster.

/Linus

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Hi Dave,

For your P-90 you could turn off all mirror textures and some "main"
textures and the game would fly in SVGA. Right now you have a P-90, but
they were worth hundreds a few months ago, and now are worth a mere
fraction of that. Give it six months to a year and a P-166 will be had
for about 100 or so. You know GP2 will run great on that, and how long
will we be playing this? You just said that you are STILL playing F1GP
:)

Honestly, it is REALLY configurable, to the point where I doubt anyone
will have a problem, certainly no Pentium user.

Cheers!
John

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:For your P-90 you could turn off all mirror textures and some "main"
:textures and the game would fly in SVGA. Right now you have a P-90, but
:they were worth hundreds a few months ago, and now are worth a mere
:fraction of that. Give it six months to a year and a P-166 will be had
:for about 100 or so. You know GP2 will run great on that, and how long
:will we be playing this? You just said that you are STILL playing F1GP
::)
:
:Honestly, it is REALLY configurable, to the point where I doubt anyone
:will have a problem, certainly no Pentium user.

John, the one question that hasn't been answered by all these
performance figures is how does it compare to ICR2 at a similar detail
level?

TIA

Ken

Pentium, I presume?

EDO? Bog-standard DRAM?

PCI, I presume, not VL-BUS?

Sorry, I just felt like being really picky. Such performance stats are
all very well, but there are so many factors wich can be forgotten or
overlooked...

*exits Grumpy Old Git mode*

--

Ahem...yes....<sheepish grin>

Here I have a bit of a confession to make. When I said VGA2 was the
equivalent to the SVGA textures, it wasn't! Actually VGA2 is GP2 with
the textures turned down to be the same level as ICR2 - so you can
compare the VGA2 figures with those from ICR2

Sorry 'bout that...!!

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Yes.

Standard

PCI

Such as whether it had pipeline burst-cache (no), used aggressive BIOS
settings (yes), had UniVBE installed (no) or other things we never
mentioned? :)

As Marc mentioned, we'll have more info in Sim Racing News, but we
thought people would like a preview at the moment. This was done as soon
as the latest beta was received, and the time since then has been spent
playing it :)  I thought it was good going managing to do any tests at
all!!

Cheers!
John

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