>Here's quoting from someone who sent me a message:
>"I see a lot of people saying the grass sucks, When I hit the grass just
>tapping it, it doesnt do much but I think the people are complaining that
>when they go half car to full car off that it, OH MY GOSH, makes the car do
>something, hehe, like in ICRs you could go off all you wanted and keep your
>foot in it."
>I agree with him. You guys really think driving a car at 100+ mph and going
>on the grass isn't going to do anything? With pratice I can go on the grass
>and not spin it with a high rate of speed! Hey remember Shumacher went off
>last year in one of the F1 races, he tore the car apart but he managed to
>save it, even though it looked like he would spin. It takes skill to do, and
>well you guys aren't shumacher cuz if you were you sure wouldn't be here.
I realize you have a personal investment in SCGT, so maybe you are
having a hard time being objective on the issue of sticky grass.
The issue is not that the cars should do something different when they
go into the grass. Of course they should do something different. The
issue is that they should do the *right* thing. Real grass is slippery,
not sticky, and it's the loss of grip that causes the penalty when you
go off in a real car. Unless you are very lucky and/or very skilled, if
you go seriously off in a real car, you're going to spin and/or slide
out to the fence. You're helpless due to the loss of grip.
In SCGT and in too many other racing games, the penalty instead is that
the grass grabs you and slows you down. This is bad enough, but it's
even worse in SCGT because it's so sticky that if you drop an inside
wheel off at the apex the grass snatches that wheel and the drag whips
the car into a spin. In real life it is quite possible to drop a wheel
off the apex in many corners with no ill effect because the inside
wheels are unloaded and doing very little work anyway.
Similarly, if you drop the wheels off on the outside at the exit of a
corner, in real life often - if you're careful with the throttle and
steering - you can ease the car back on and lose very little time. In
SCGT, the grass grabs your outside wheel and yanks you right off the
track and more often than not into a spin to the outside.
If you drop a wheel off the outside at the exit in a real car, generally
the car will spit with a rotation to the *inside*, because you've lost
grip on the tire that's most loaded at the moment, the outside rear.
When that tire lets go, you're going around, but you're spinning in the
opposite direction from the direction you go in SCGT.
The behavior by the grass in SCGT is *very* unrealistic. As I said,
real grass should be slippery, not sticky.
I believe that game manufacturers use sticky grass to prevent people
from shortgucttting across the grass. They do it because it's easier
than implementing invisible gates and penalties, such as black flags,
which are imposed if the driver cuts the gate - and perhaps because
(probably correctly) they think that arcade racers don't want to be
bothered with stuff like black flags.
Gates and penalties is the right way to prevent shortcutting. Sticky
grass is the arcade-game way to do it.
BTW, I'd like to add that I like SCGT, and I don't mean to dump on it at
all. I dislike the sticky grass, but overall I think it's a good racing
game, in the ballpark with Viper, Gran Turismo, and F1RS, with some
innovative features that might be very interesting. It's an excellent
first effort from ISI, and I applaud their work.
Alison
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http://www.racesimcentral.net/~alison