rec.autos.simulators

Top Gear's resident racing driver (Tiff Needell) went for the "Petty
Nascar Experience" at C***te. It was quite funny watching him during
the familiarisation laps in a street car with the instructor. He was
obviously rather worried about it all, even though he must have tried just
about every other form of 4 wheel racing. But almost as soon as he got out
there in the real thing he got a *real* buzz out of it, despite only
averaging 150ish mph... mind you, if there hadn't been a pace car in front
of him I get the impression he might have been tempted to go a little
faster than his 176mph top speed.

You rarely see and mention of Nascar on UK TV and it was nice to see
someone knowledgeable try it (well, not racing obviously!) and get a huge
kick out of the experience.

Heh... I'm nearly inspired to load up N2, but the need to break the 1:10
barrier in GPL is burning me up :-)

Speaking of GPL, one thing Tiff mentioned about his Nascar laps -- and the
onboard shots confirmed it -- was the lack of a feeling of speed. It
actually looked much slower. Not sure if this has any bearing on the
perceived lack of speed in GPL or not, but it made me realise it's not
just sims that's suffer from this.

A final word from Tiff as he came into the pits afterwards...
"this is a motorsport that the word awesome almost isn't sufficient to
describe"

Andrew McP... looking forward to a bit of gentle N3 after a summer of GPL
;-)

PS Just seen some rather scary tornado shots from the Southern States.
Hope everyone in that neck of the woods is managing to avoid the "fun".

Damn, now even real life is suffering from this blatantly unrealistic
aspect! <g>

Thanks for the post; wish I had known that the feature was going to have
been on earlier though - could have watched it myself then <g> Don't
suppose you have a video you could lend me? <g>

Cheers,
Richard

I also was interested by the account of how the steering felt... Force
feedback so far seems like a "toy" but when TM get it together and
produce a wheel maybe we can expect the kind of driving Tiff was
detailing. Seemed to me that he was spending more time trying to pull
the wheel right to counteract the natural tendancy of the suspension
to go left....

Rarely?! Apart from Transworld sport... urm...

<snip>

Ditto. :(

Jon.

When your on the race track speed isn't a consideration, you aren't aware
of it because you are to busy trying to decrease your lap times or to pass
other cars.  Until something goes wrong, then it comes to you with great
rapidity.

I have... but it's now got Frasier recorded over the top of it :-)

Andrew McP

GPL also models that very well! I sort of knew all this (speed perception
stuff) was the case beforehand, but it's always nice to see someone
"knowledgeable" confirm what I've only experienced from the wrong side of
a TV screen.

Andrew McP

I said UK TV... satellite doesn't count... especially if you haven't got
access to it :-)

I missed that as well..... <g>

Cheers,
Richard

I know.... I used to watch an hours worth of TransWorld Sport on C4
every Saturday morning for the Indycar and NASCAR action of '95-96
which was glossed over in a 30 second report, sometimes... Better than
nothing... just. <g>

Jon.