Well I finally got my copy of F1 Racing Simulation. I made the dumb
mistake of trying to save $20 in brokerage fees by having it shipped
via 1st class air-mail from www.interact.com during the Christmas
season and after a mail strike. It took 28 days from the time it was
shipped to when I got it. Caused me to make several irritated calls
to Canada Post and Customs about this.
Its been about 36 hours since I've installed F1 RS and I've not been
doing much else but racing since that time. I liked the French demo
version back last September. The English demo was better. The full
game is incredible. More than I expected. The F1RS team have created
a work of art with this. It is so enjoyable to race. After getting
used to the feel of the car and experimenting with some setups that I
downloaded its such an immersive experience to feel the car on the
edge of its traction limits as it loses grip and then regains its
through a corner. I've had the settings on Pro with ABS, anti-skid
and anti-spin for now. Without anti-spin on, its too hard for me to
control rear wheel spin even in 3rd gear.
Just for reference, my system is a PPro200 with 128MB, Monster3dfx,
AudioPCI and TSW wheel and pedals.
The graphics are just awesome. No dropping of frame rate with highest
detail and full view of 21 cars. I especially like the Variable
Weather with about 4% humidity. I started a 100% race at Imola. It
was lightly raining and there was no announcement to change to rain
tires. The road had a light haze to it and the distant mountains were
barely visible though the fog. Within about 15 laps, the rain had
stopped and the sun was out. Another 5 laps and it felt burning hot
with a deep blue sky. 10 laps later it started to get hazy again. I
haven't seen it actually start raining heavily enough in a race to
have to change to rain tires mid-way in a race yet though. That would
be really cool. Watched most of a full race at Spa that started with
rain and kept it up for the full race. The spray effects are very
well done both from within the car and from an outside view.
I thought that the Imola track seemed really different from what I
remembered with GP2. Particularly where you go under a sort of arch
at the top of a hill about 3/4 of the way through the track. In GP2,
it was possible to take the gentle right corner flat out passing under
the arch and then slowing down for a left. In F1RS, there is a very
tight chicane right after the arch. Haven't checked actual race
footage but maybe this was one of the changes in track layout for
1996. Anyways, I loaded up GP2 and was amazed at the slide show that
I saw. A few months ago I was saying that it was playable (I used all
graphics except sky at 21fps). It was terrible looking and the car
seemed be very hard to control with the jerky movements. Anyways, I
never made it around to the corner that I thought looked different. I
just couldn't stand it with F1RS just a click away. Goes to show what
a solid 30-40fps will do to ones definition of smooth.
The AI is generally very well done. There is good honest competition
possible. Although, at least on Pro level, they are somewhat too
forgiving and will yield even though they are in front with the line
if I force them. They are probably smart to do so since otherwise
they would be in an accident with me around <g>
There are a few bugs and design flaws that I've encountered. Many of
these I've seen posted by others here. Oh yea, I installed the 1.05
patch first thing.
1) sound problems. As I posted in another message, with the initial
install, the program would crash after about 10 minutes into racing
with a protection error in module WAVX2BVR.DLL. Changing the WAVX2
entry in the cpa.ini file to WAVPW fixed this problem. At least it
hasn't occurred in about 20 hours of racing. However, I still get one
or the other channel breaking up occasionally. It just affects the
motor sound. The gear changes and voice announcing still come
through. In fact the motor sound usually comes back when a gear
change occurs. Tried changing the SXD_DIST_SATUR and SXD_DIST_FADE
variables but this didn't fix this problem.
2) The pit menu that comes up when making an unscheduled pit stop
drastically needs to pause the game. Its frustrating to be fiddling
with arrow keys to set the amount of fuel. At least being able to
type the amount of fuel would be faster, but in reality, this
information would already have been conveyed to the pit crew before
entering the pit.
3) Not a major problem but after an unscheduled pit stop, you are
still notified of pre-scheduled pit stops and for a couple of laps
after that there is a 1 second pausing or hesitation in shifting when
passing the pits.
4) Occasional crashes when going to Replay from the Pause menu.
5) Would be nice to have a Reload item on the Pause menu.
6) Should save the most recently used car setups as the default for
each track.
Well that about it for now. None of these problems are severe enough
to keep me from enjoying this great game. I know its going to be
around for a long time. Thanks to everyone involved in making F1 RS.
Dave.