rec.autos.simulators

Bring back a playable Racing Sim.

Michael E. Carve

Bring back a playable Racing Sim.

by Michael E. Carve » Fri, 12 Dec 1997 04:00:00


% I know you believe what you say and all. But somebody has to tell you
% straight up. Your wrong. Win '95 understood is much better than DOS. You
% make it sound like a game is completely different if programmed for DOS or
% Win '95. There very similar a properly setup unit will result in equal
% enough to be called equal performance between a dos program in dos, a dos
% program running in  under w95 and a w95 game. When you see good or bad
% performance on any platform one needs to look at the program not the O/S. It
% really is that simple. Sorry.

No it's not that simple.  I have coded in machine code level and I can
tell you that an O/S can cripple the performance of an excellent coded
program that must use the O/S.  That's why DOS has it's GOOD side. The
approach to programming in Win95 is to take away the ability to
side-step the O/S.  Win95 is just a gui (gooey/icky) layer of flab
between the program and the machine.  And this layer is what gets in
the way of the peformance.  But, then the O/S is just a program, so in a
weird sense it is that simple.  It just so happens that for some types
of games, Win95 still ain't the platform of choice for performance since
the underlying software (O/S) is not up to the chore.  

I still believe that there were better games programmed for the
Sinclair Spectrum than many I see today.  And why is that so, because
most of the good ones chucked the O/S and were coded directly to the
hardware.  Try doing that in Win95.

--
**************************** Michael E. Carver *************************
     Upside out, or inside down...False alarm the only game in town.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=<[ /./.  [-  < ]>=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Jo

Bring back a playable Racing Sim.

by Jo » Fri, 12 Dec 1997 04:00:00


>>I know you believe what you say and all. But somebody has to tell you
>>straight up. Your wrong.
>Okay, thanks for clearing that up for me....<cough> :)

Don't ya just love those graduates of Monty Python's School of
Argument? ;-)

Joe

Fusi

Bring back a playable Racing Sim.

by Fusi » Fri, 12 Dec 1997 04:00:00


>Yes they are. Maybe you should try them out yourself sometime? I have.
>The fact that WinQuake is definitely faster than Dos Quake has been
>reported all over the net, it is not just me either.

I always kind of attributed that to the fact that a lot of the
machines it was being tested on were department store computers with
video cards that were rotten DOS performers.
For every computer with Tseng ET4000 or later video card, there are
probably 10 with a miserable Trident or ATI Windows "accelerator".

This is a good thread. I came in late, and I'm sorry it's kind of
turning into an argument, but I suppose emotions run high on this
topic. Just a couple thoughts...

I actually wanted Win95 to be the *** platform it was billed to be.
It is not. It hasn't made things easier... Quite possibly, it has made
them more difficult.
Here we are on the virge of Windows98, and DirectX is still
half-baked. Will it ever be right? I'm doubting it, now.
These problems were supposed to be over by early 96.

With the advent of DOS4GW and the Miles utilities for managing memory
and detecting hardware, problems were actually pretty rare.
That also took the burden of writing drivers for all hardware away
from game makers -one of the reasons Win95 was so appealing to them in
the first place.

I recently bought Jetfighter3 Platinum. I must say it was  a
refreshing experience to install and play a game under DOS.

The frame rate absolutely screams on a P133/3DFX, never dropping below
mid-20's (guesstimate) regardless of how much is going on.
Not having to deal with the miserable DirectX 5 joystick applet is a
blessing...
JF3 joystick implementation works great, and I can recalibrate from
right inside the game (gasp!) if anything causes it to get goofy.
Mission Studios made me a fan for life by doing this. I wish other
companies would do the same.

--
Tim - remove REMOVE to e-mail

Ronnie Bigwhi

Bring back a playable Racing Sim.

by Ronnie Bigwhi » Fri, 12 Dec 1997 04:00:00

hmmm...Why did Microsoft or anyone else want to do away with DOS? I
dont get it? The only thing I could possibly think of is that gamers
wouldnt have to upgrade to win95 ect. If they were only playing games.
Im not really sure that thats it though cause I would have rather had
Microsoft create a new version of DOS, I think its great if a company
can dominate the market but Microsoft just doesnt seem to be very
concerned with people like me who own a computer for no other real
reason but to play SIMS. If N64,Playstation,ect. could play Nascar2
ect.,properly and over the net Id trash my computer!

Scott Johns

Bring back a playable Racing Sim.

by Scott Johns » Fri, 12 Dec 1997 04:00:00



> Just look at how your system gets so much faster
>when you do a fresh install of Win95 - that is a graphic example of
>the resources that are being eaten.

It's because windows95 allows your swapfile to become extremely
fragmented. Place your swapfile on a separate partition from the OS
(preferably it's own), and set the minimum and maximum sizes the same
so it won't fragment.  Makes a huge difference.

Just FYI.

ttamm

Bring back a playable Racing Sim.

by ttamm » Sat, 13 Dec 1997 04:00:00


>>Quite on the contrary. DOS games always had and have flakey sound and
>>multibutton controller support (only supporting some sound cards and
>>controllers, and not using the extra features in them), no cheap/free
>What? Eh? DOS controller support has been _much_ less problematic than
>Win95

Give me a break. Your multibutton flightstick/whatever has to be
_directly_ supported by _each_ DOS game. Usually CH Flightstick Pro and
Thrustmaster, all the others pretty much had to be hardware compatible
with these two to get multibutton support.

In Win95, as long as a game says it supports rudder, throttle, hat and
eight buttons, I know I'm getting support for them for my stick even if
it isn't hardware compatible with any older flightstick.

No issues? How come I couldn't get my Gravis Ultrasound to work in
Tomb Raider and Descent 2, even thought those games even claimed to
support that sound card? Why did I have to change the IRQ from 11
(default) to 5 for my sound card just for Apogee DOS games and Doom,
which for some reason required the sound card IRQ may not be over 9 or
something like that? How come my friend's "SB Pro compatible" sound
card didn't work properly in "Alone in the Dark" and lots of
other games?

In Win95, once you get your sound card working once, it pretty much
works always after that without having to reconfigure it for each game,
like when you install DOS games.

Last update to DOS was DOS 7.0 or 7.1, actually. Not DOS 6.22.

Sorry but it isn't just so. Here's the basic difference with Windows
and DOS: DOS doesn't have any "universal" APIs whatsoever, like for
sound cards, *** controllers, 3D cards etc., simply because it
doesn't use shared libraries. The support (API) for all those stuff has
to come in EACH DOS game separately, and unfortunately different DOS
games use various different APIs, so you never know beforehand whether
your hardware is supported in the DOS game you are going to buy.
And practically never can you get advanced support for your NEWER
hardware in your older DOS games, like you can with Win95 games.
In fact unless your new hardware is backwards compatible in hardware
level with the older "standard", you won't get any support in your
older DOS games.

In Win95, as long as you know you have working DirectSound drivers for
your sound card, working DirectInput drivers for your *** controller
etc., you are all set for all games.

That is what most gamers and *** programmers thought.

How do you know? DOS Quake did get several updates after its release.
"But I didn't expect you to mention that since it refutes what you are
trying to say.". And WinQuake was faster than DOS Quake from the start.

Ever saw these "why is my sound card not supported by this game?",
"why doesn't my joystick calibrate correctly in Nascar?", "what kind of
memory does this game require?", "why do these two two button joysticks
behave so weirdly if I try to use them at the same time for
Speedball 2?", "why do I have to change my sound card IRQ for Doom?".
These are all DOS.

BEEEEEP! WRONG! The machine is two years old P120 with MS-DOS 6.22 and
Win3.1. No Win95 whatsoever. Sound card drivers (MAD16, "SBPro
compatible") were installed per instructions, and generally worked.

It has EVERYTHING to do with DOS and its games. Installing them on that
machine was a true nightmare, maybe half of them worked. That's the
problem with DOS games: you never have even the faintest idea
beforehand if they will work on your system.

And before you claim "if they knew anything about DOS they would
have had no problems", I was there helping them in the end, and
I've been *** with PCs since at least 1989 or so, I definitely
know my way around with DOS and DOS games. But even I had to admit
to them that we shouldn't have to go through all these problems we
had (I even had to edit some the installation batch files so that
they worked properly (incredible!) for some of the games, some
needed some extra attention for the sound card etc.).

Oh sheesh. Now there's a skewed "comparison" if I ever saw one.
Here, let me try this: I compare Ubisoft F1RS (Win95) to
Wacky Wheels (DOS). Damn those DOS games suck big time! ;^)

Worth one 1 fps, and sometimes the Win95 versions are actually faster.

So have you tried any of those games I mentioned? Too bad if it
destroyed your world.

ttamm

Bring back a playable Racing Sim.

by ttamm » Sat, 13 Dec 1997 04:00:00


>ttammi....Windows95 does have some problems,my main problem with it is
>that for one the Virtual memory does not always work properly. Win95
>will swap even if it isnt necessary(affecting game performance cuasing
>pauses)thats my main gripe about win95. Pausing due to disk swapping.

Ok, this might help: Control Panel|System|Performance|Virtual Memory,
set the minimum and maximum settings to the same, like 150 for example
(less may be quite enough, but I've set it to 150 MB because glQuake
used to be such a memory hog because of OpenGL).

Another thing you could do to improve a bit is to set your VCache in
SYSTEM.INI, adding these lines under [vcache]

[vcache]
MinFileCache=2048
MaxFileCache=2048

That is two megabytes, you may want to use more, but I'm quite happy
with that in a 32MB machine.

Usually the uninstallation scripts take care of that, but just in case
you want to know yourself what a game changes in your system, I suggest
you get InCtrl3 utility, which tells you exactly what happened during
the installation (what files were added or delete or replaced, what
modifications were made to system.ini, win.ini or registery etc.).
It's free, and it works both in Win95 and NT, and InCtrl2 works also in
Win3.x.

I agree, this was better handled in MS-DOS, because in it usually
deleting the game directory and maybe another files/directories from C:
root was enough. It takes more effort to keep your system tidy in
Win95/NT, but it can be done with e.g. InCtrl3, without having to
"reinstall every now and then" what is what some people say they are
doing to keep their system tidy.

Most of those automatic uninstallation scripts seem to work right, but
there are some which leave some entries or files in the system
(Activision's MW2:Mercs for example, leaves a few registery entries in
there). Too bad some game developers do such shoddy job, but then there
were some MS-DOS games with similar problems, like Wing Commander 3-4,
Magic Carpet 1-2 and some Sierra games (they added extra .bat files,
configuration files and directories in C: root without telling you).

Ubisoft F1RS works great for me without hiccups, as do Flying Corps and
F/A-18 Hornet Korea.

Never has happened to me during these years.

I agree with that, and fortunately that hasn't happened to me
with Win95 either.

Ronnie Bigwhi

Bring back a playable Racing Sim.

by Ronnie Bigwhi » Sat, 13 Dec 1997 04:00:00

ttami,hey!  Ive set all my options ect. in win95 thats beginners stuff:)
there is a bug in win95 that causes the system to swap memory to disk
before it is nesecary if you set the VM setting to the same! I have mine
set with a difference of 1 meg to. VCACHE on my system is at 1024 min
max usually. Im just upset that win95 has not lived up to the hype for
gamers! Im going to buy a Quantum HD soon so maybe that will help with
the speed of the swap file.heh...the hard drive I have now really sucks
so maybe Ill be a believer once I get a faster hard drive.   GOD I SURE
HOPE SO:) But even if it does work to resolve hiccups..it will take me
meesing with win95 configuration settings in system.ini ect. SO..whats
the difference really? God I hate pauses!!! LOL LOL LOL Ive seen some
really bad ass systems pause too,but they werent mine so I didnt get to
try to tweak them out. tweaking is tweaking in win95 or dos!

Richard Walk

Bring back a playable Racing Sim.

by Richard Walk » Sat, 13 Dec 1997 04:00:00



I think it probably had more to do with original thinking <g> Can you
recall a single *simulation* for the Spectrum? Would you like to see Papy
trying to code a CART sim for it? <gg>

Bakc in those 'good old days' programmers had to work out how to exploit
every last item offered by the machine, whether that be an advertised or
unadvertised feature, because the base machine offerred very little.
These days there is both no need to do that and it wouldn't work in any
case - undocumented features are *not* going to work in a clone market.

Cheers,
Richard

Jo

Bring back a playable Racing Sim.

by Jo » Sat, 13 Dec 1997 04:00:00


>doesn't use shared libraries. The support (API) for all those stuff has
>to come in EACH DOS game separately, and unfortunately different DOS
>games use various different APIs, so you never know beforehand whether
>your hardware is supported in the DOS game you are going to buy.

Fortunately, this system made it at least *possible* for device input
to work reliably, as opposed to Win95 where device input is
permanently screwed up on large numbers of systems.

Joe

Fusi

Bring back a playable Racing Sim.

by Fusi » Sat, 13 Dec 1997 04:00:00


>>No, I care that I get 55fps in ICR2-3D and yet the people who wrote
>>Win95 can only give me 15fps of far inferior graphics. I care that
>>Monster Truck Madness is jumpy with D3D and Rendition NASCAR2 is
>>supersmooth.

>Oh sheesh. Now there's a skewed "comparison" if I ever saw one.
>Here, let me try this: I compare Ubisoft F1RS (Win95) to
>Wacky Wheels (DOS). Damn those DOS games suck big time! ;^)

OK then, ICR2 vs. CPR would be a very valid comparison.
While CPR isn't the turd that Monster Truck Madness is (or every other
D3D game except for Motoracer), it still has half the frame rate of
the accelerated version of ICR2 on a similar PC.

For the sake of expediency, I'll argue with myself for a second. ;)
The argument? "Well, CPR is written to D3D, and open spec, ICR2 is
written to work on a certain card..."

Precisely... and that is how it should be. D3D patches are bloated,
slow freaks, just like their host.
It'd probably be easier to write native code for the leading 4 3D
chipsets than one 5 meg, underperforming D3D patch.
Flying Corps and Mercs D3D are both beautiful, but they're quirky,
slow, pausing pigs. I was heartbroken by Mercs, since I love the
genre.

--
Tim - remove REMOVE to e-mail

John Walla

Bring back a playable Racing Sim.

by John Walla » Sat, 13 Dec 1997 04:00:00



>It's because windows95 allows your swapfile to become extremely
>fragmented. Place your swapfile on a separate partition from the OS
>(preferably it's own), and set the minimum and maximum sizes the same
>so it won't fragment.  Makes a huge difference.

It's actually because of a number of things - your registry becoming
cluttered, too many things running in the background, fat from ond
installs, fragged hard disk, fragged swap file, blah, blah, blah. Even
with a totally unfragmented swap file this happens, and with 64Mb,
swap file fragmentation should have minimal effect in any case.

FYI my swap file _is_ on a separate partition, and Win95 still gets a
turbo boost whenever a reinstall is performed.

Cheers!
John

Jim Sokolof

Bring back a playable Racing Sim.

by Jim Sokolof » Sat, 13 Dec 1997 04:00:00


> Give me a break.   Grand Prix 2 was a DOS game and you seriously don't
> remember the shellacking it got online for the fact that maybe 1% of
> the machines out there could run it with everything turned on?!

People haven't gotten any smarter and don't show any signs of turning
in that direction. People have a mystical fascination with turning
"everything on" and then complaining when their middle-of-the-road
machine doesn't kick ass. As a result, sim manufacturers either
deprive the high-end consumer of goodies, or suffer the wrath of P90
owners. If people would just learn to "live within their means", and
accept that they can't run "everything" a sim offers, no one really
loses. I know that there is serious talk at game companies of how do
we convince users that half of the graphical features is "everything"
and that anything beyond that is "more than everything". Greed is an
ugly thing.

But, you only have to look to how people manage their finances to know
that the average American is as likely to walk on water as live
completely within their means.

And your point is? If you're not getting 30 fps in Papy sims to date,
turn off graphics until you do. IMO, it makes for a better ***
experience. Personally, I don't like the asphalt or grass textures, and those
stay off for me anyway...

---Jim

Mike J Laske

Bring back a playable Racing Sim.

by Mike J Laske » Sun, 14 Dec 1997 04:00:00


>It's actually because of a number of things - your registry becoming
>cluttered, too many things running in the background, fat from ond
>installs, fragged hard disk, fragged swap file, blah, blah, blah. Even
>with a totally unfragmented swap file this happens, and with 64Mb,
>swap file fragmentation should have minimal effect in any case.

Hey John, I've even got corrupt entries in my registry but you don't hear me
complaining :-)

Mike.

Mike J Laske

Bring back a playable Racing Sim.

by Mike J Laske » Sun, 14 Dec 1997 04:00:00


>I still believe that there were better games programmed for the
>Sinclair Spectrum than many I see today.  And why is that so, because
>most of the good ones chucked the O/S and were coded directly to the
>hardware.  Try doing that in Win95.

Hey Michael, what about those Amiga days?  Did you have one?  Programmers
could really hit the hardware on that old platform - all those hackers
releasing their flashy 3d demos - don't see much of that nowadays.  Still
didn't see many playable racing games though. :-)  Let me think... hmmm,
Ferrari Formula One by EA, and of course Papyrus' Indy 500 for which I
purchased a 68020 accelerator board!  Damn, I spent way too many hours
playing that game.  Good though, wasn't it?!

Mike.


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