rec.autos.simulators

Just a question for those of you who have tried the 2-player mode in
Indycar.  On road tracks like Detroit and Australia, the other
player's car is really "jumpy" on the screen - has anyone else noticed
this?  Sometimes the other guy's car will jump a car's width to the
left and right within a single frame, and for me it's led to numerous
arguments with my brother over who was in error when we get together
during races.  Finally, after tonight's "incident" at Detroit we
stepped through our replays over the phone, describing where each
other's cars were at every frame.  Turns out that there was over a
car's length difference - i.e., on my replay I was completely past him
by a foot at the exact same time that in his replay I was right beside
him.  Needless to say, we got together and one of us ended up
backwards, leaving the other guy (me, in this case) to go on to finish
in first.

So - I was just wondering if this irritating jumpiness is something
wrong with our connection, or if it's something that everyone is
experiencing.  We're connecting at 9600 baud, BTW.  Possibly having a
14.4K connection would resolve this problem?  
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If you actually bought a copy of the game I think you would know what
the problem is. Just to make sure, email me the word on page 38, line
13, position 8 of the manual and I will tell you what the problem
most probably is (ha ha). Otherwise, you are wasting everyone's time
making us solve your problem because you can't be bothered to
purchase a copy of the game, in which it tells you how to run a modem
game (one of the advantages of actually buying the game).

Thanks for the useless post.  Nice waste of bandwidth.  Obviously, if the
suggestions provided in the manual solved my problem, I wouldn't be asking
the question here...  Get a life, or at least stop using your dad's
computer to post rude messages.  I'd be happy to scan and send you my
original purchase receipt for Indycar...  Well, I take that back, I wouldn't
exactly be *happy* to do it, since your post pretty thoroughly pissed me off.
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I believe the jumpiness is due to the delay in communicating the new
position of a car from one machine to the other.  When you connect,
ICR displays a number for you which represents this delay.  I often
see .13 seconds, sometimes .07 seconds.  This is the delay between
the time when your car reaches some position and when the other machine
finds out.  I assume the game uses some sort of prediction to try to
smooth out the motion of the cars, but I really don't know.  

A car moving at 120 mph moves 176 feet each second.  During that .13
second delay time at 120 mph your car moves almost 23 feet!  It is
easy to see how the two machines fail to stay perfectly in sync.

Because of the delay, one machine might "decide" that a collision
had taken place, while the other machine would not.  In that case
the car on the machine that thought a collision occured may
spin or crash, while the other machine's car drives away unaware.

The jumpiness also applies to the computer generated cars.  I think
the answering machine generates the computer cars and sends their
positions to the calling machine.  (I could have this backwards)
So for the answering machine, the computer cars are smooth, but for
the calling machine they are jumpy.

I believe that Indycar will only connect at 9600 baud.  BTW, Nascar
will connect at 14,400 (and even 28,800) and I have less of the
jumpiness in Nascar than in Indycar.

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Mike Corrigan

The reason I got annoyed with your post was that you were asking for
help but didn't provide what modem you were using, or the configuration
strings you were using, which is pretty silly considering that is
where the problem is. In the documentation, it tells you to turn
data compression and error correction off. If you don't do this you get
the jumpiness. But how is anyone supposed to help you with this if
you don't give us your modem or the configuration strings you are
using? Or you didn't think these were relevant? Or perhaps you bought
the game but didn't bother to read the documentation, just easier to
ask someone else.

        I thought so, too, but a guy on CServe said he plays with his

        AJ