rec.autos.simulators

I play it for over a year now and still like the game.

GPL has until today no real D3D support, this is a shame and a reason for
most of gamers to ignore that gem of a game.

Just face it, great game, poor graphic support.

Jochen

The Riva TNT was and still is THE standard 3D graphic card!!

A 3D game with an unsupported beta patch is a shame, nothing to get
proud about.

Sure, but I don't like those companies who are incompatible to standard
hardware.

Forget it. The pace of GPL is totally dependent on resolution and textures,
not
on the driving model.

Okay, you got a point! I DO associate religion with intolerance, but this
is overgeneralized.
Jochen

If you feel up to it later in the day, care to meet down on the corner?  :)

And I'm afraid here you are incorrect. In fact the law specifically says
that profit motive is irrelevant and imposes a minimun fine of $250 *per
count* on those who distribute copyrighted material without permission.

If this were not the case piracy without a profit motive would be legal. It
isn't.

The rational is that IP is indeed property, and thus the owner, and ONLY
the owner has to right to distribute it as he sees fit. If he chooses to
distribute for profit anyone distributing for free dilutes the value of the
property and thus finacially  harms the owner, whether the said distribution
was overtly for profit or not.

Think about it a bit, you'll see how it works and makes sense.

I've spent years as a music publisher, and am now considering the switch to
software publishing. I know what I'm talking about here.

You are correct. See my response to our electrically charged relative.

Note the DMCA specifically forbids this. People have some vague awarness of
this perhaps and add it to their mistaken belief that it's illegal to look
at or modify the code.

The DMCA again *specifically* states that this does NOT modify any existing
fair use laws. i.e., the *end user* retains the right to whatever he damn
well pleases to do with the code * for his own use.* Some shrink wrap
licenses under the code deny this. Just as the "FBI warning" on your video
tapes falsley claim, or at least intentially  misleadingly claim, that you
can't copy them legally.

Noonan's case is actually somewhat different. He isn't distributing any code
to which he * is not the legal copyright holder.*  His converters are all
his own, and only  his own work. They do in fact modify  existing code, but
they only do that to code that the end user already has the legal right use,
and the fair use right to modify.

Hear hear! Only if you want my  advice, ( which is a statement that always
precedes said advice whether wanted or not), develop it in Linux and
simultaniously port it over to Windows. Avoid all that MFC ***and other
related Microsoft canned code.

The best NASCAR, WSC, Modern F1, CART sim that can be imagined won't replace
GPL.

I play chess too, this despite the fact that it's "more than 2 years old."
It's still a good game and the great granddaddy of all strategic war games.

The TNT chipset was announced August 1998 (I checked ;-)), after GPL had
gone gold. GPL supported the two major propriety API's which had been
present during it's development: Glide & Rendition. Back then D3D and OpenGL
didn't look like ever putting a dent in 3Dfx's armor. Looking back it's easy
to say they should have supported Direct3D, but at the time I think it was
the right decision. The hardware back then had a hard time producing a
decent framerate with a propriaty API let alone in Direct3D.

Get this: Sierra-Papyrus never had the intention to support Direct3D. Grant
coded it in his spare time. You can hardly expect him to do a full HWC test.
Neither can you expect Sierra-Papyrus to support Grant's creation other than
to provide a little webspace on their site for it.

Again, Direct3D was not a standard back then and your "standard" card didn't
even exist! -Even if you're talking about the budget release, your demand
makes no sense. No budget release has ever been updated to include current
technology (most of them don't even include available patches). GP2 was
released on budget a while back without any 3D or Force Feedback support and
why should it?

Eh? -Then why, prey tell, does GPL produce less fps than NFS:PU at the same
"eye candy-level"?
Same processor, same clockspeed, same 3D cards, same API... does my
processor do "nothing" for a while each frame in GPL perhaps? -Surely,
you're not going to tell me GPL is the visually more intricate game of the
two?

GPL runs slower than NFS:PU because it calculates more parameters more times
per second, end of story.

Jan.
=---

<grin> As one who has no interest *at all* in racing on-line, and
who is married with a partner who has no interest in racing sims,
and who therefore has only a very limited time to indulge, GPL is
too damned hard. I don't have the *time* to indulge in the
learning curve, much though I'd like to. The sim looks terrific
now I have the patch to properly support my TNT2 graphics card
(bought long before I bought GPL - I've only owned the sim for
about 3 months, bought as a cheapie in the local discount store)
but it's not much fun if the car won't stay on the track...

GP2 OTOH I enjoy immensely - I can tinker with the setup enough
to make a difference, score points just often enough to keep my
interest - and stay on the track unless I do something *really*
stupid...

I don't decry GPL for those who enjoy the precision and the
enjoyment of conquering one of the most... taxing... driving sims
out there. But it's not my cup of tea...

Martin D. Pay
Just my 2 penn'orth...

Agreed. Actually I didn't quite mean it like that (originally I had an
anti-DGF line in there but I changed that because it was rude and
intolerant :-) ).

What I meant was that if the driving experience and multiplayer is on a
par with GPL then GP3 may well become the most talked about and driven
of the current sims. Although even if it is I'm sure I'll fire up the
Ferrari at the Ring ever now and then :-)

FWIW I don't think GP3 will be up to GPL standard in those areas. I'm
awaiting WSC most of all...

--
Cheers!
Graeme Nash

Again I think it all comes down to the subtle differences that *can* exist
between a "racing simulator" and a "driving simulator".Other (?) people have
tried to discuss this subject before (at length, I may say... :-)  ). "GPL
***s" have great difficulty recognising any value in this different approach.
Or they shoot it *immediately*. I can somehow understand because it is very easy
for them to believe that they are right and the rest is bullshit.

I can see some parallells with religious fudamentalism here. Just like they
can't accept anything that doesn't follow their texts to the letter, the most
*** GPL crowd can't take anything that contains even the slightest flaw
against the Physics (which they know so well)

(I'm gonna pay for this, I just know  :-)   )

JoH

------- The best way to accelerate a Mac is 9.81 m/s2 --------
--------------------------------------------------------------

David G Fisher

But is does Remco, just check out the code yourself!

Andre

Glide, Rendition and OpenGL are just as much a 3D API as D3D is, just
because 3D isn't in the name, doesn't mean if you don;t have D3D (in 1998)
you don't support 3D.!

Do you really think you would be able to jump right in a F1 McLaren and turn
GP qualifying speeds in a couple days? And then take away several tactile
sense, and still do so?

If there was a simulated Toyota Corolla driving through the country of New
York based on the GPL physics I would hope all of us with licenses could
just cruise a long. While a modern F1
 game should take a considerable amount of time to be able to make
consistent laps. If not, then Michael Schumacher doesn't really have talent,
he just got lucky and get to drive an extremely easy car around the track,
and make it looks hard so that some upstart doesn't get any ideas.

So GPL still has some ways to go, and in physics GPL is superior to GP2,
it's a newer sim , and the way technology develops, I would hope it's pretty
far. At least as far as GP2 was from the Indy 500 simulation. Far is
subjective.

and no GPL isn't life for us all, but for those who live for the most
realistic and challenging simulations, then it is ok to really love GPL
above and beyond everything out there, if that's how you feel. And people
have the right to express their feeling about that. It's their opinion, and
everymen someone thinks that they don't deserved to be flamed.