rec.autos.simulators

Well, sometimes working nights has its advantages.

1st impressions...

1) It's hard :-)
2) It's pretty
3) It's fast on a p200mmx + 3dfx at 640x480. Holds up well at 800x600 as
well, though -- as I've found with other sims -- 800x600 is a lot darker.
512x384 is very fast and hard to accept once you've seen 640. Tried
software briefly with all detail and it looked like about 2fps :-)
4) It's hard (still ;-)
5) default joystick control worked fine for me. Turning circle (at very
low speed, obviously) seems a little on the large side, but I haven't
fiddled extensively.

Only "problems I've had so far were...
a) starting in GP3 mode by mistake (easiest setting) and wondering why it
was easier than I expected <doh!>
b) got stuck on wrong side of some fences until I realised shift r puts
you back on the track (once you've stopped bouncing :-) (On the subject of
shift r, I'd like an option like shift r in other sims, where it puts you
back at the start of the lap/race).

Overall though (after a whole half hour) I can see how reviewers got very
frustrated... and I can also see why they persevered!

So far, so good. Thanks to all involved.

Andrew

PS Not going to tell anyone what my fastest lap is <gg>

Give that man a pat on the back! Yup, I had my glide setting at 75.
Changing to 60 brightened it up nicely... now I can see it's smooth at
800x600 as well. No doubt a few AI cars will slow things down, but it's a
great start.

While I'm thinking about it, a couple more things I noticed.

(1) one really horrible thing... use the external view and get the little
bloke to wave his arm. This guy needs some spinach!

(2) At 800x600 I was just watching myself again from the external view
while upside down on the track. One rear touching the track so I can rev
the engines and move the car around a little. As the car rotated in the
light, and the rear wheels speed up/slow down, I suddenly realised the
patterns caused by the blurred grips on the tyres were precessing (think
that's the right word ;-) just as you'd expect them to. Trivial detail,
perhaps, but as I'm so fond of saying about Flanker, "God is in the
detail".

(3) I need to get on a plane and pick up a TSW or ECCI setup *today*! :-)

<rummages around in pockets looking for enough change for a day return on
Concorde>

<finds a tissue and some pocket fluff>

<sniffs>

;-)

Oi, what you doing ere?

Psst; I told you before, get an F1 Sim.....

8?)

*Peter*  8-)

GPL downloaded and installed just fine.  But when I run it, I can only get just
past the title screen to -- a calibration window opens up, but no matter what I
click on, GPL just shuts down and I'm staring (disappointedly) at my desktop.
I reinstalled, but that didn't help.  My computer doesn't crash when this
happens.  I have a PII233, 32 megs, Nvidia card.

Anyone have any suggestions?  Y'all have got my nostrils flaring wanting to
drive this thing.

Kurt