rec.autos.simulators

That seemed to be the problem: you might be a GP2 nut, but not nearly as nuts as
most of US are..  ;-)

Actually, this sounds much more plausible. You could still be lying, but it's
not as obvious any more :-)

I advise you to keep this setting, because once you tasted higher framerates
(with lower detail), it's difficult to go back and be satisfied with 19.6fps.

It's crap, that's all....And they needed a way to make it look that GP2 was
playable on a DX2/66.

JoH
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Cheers,
Richard

untrue.../true.../wrong..../opposite... etc... etc...

....

Let me stop this useless discussion by telling that ALL of you are right: it
just depends whether you are talking in "real"time or in "GP2"time.

Time is relative, as Einstein said before I could come up with it... :-)

JoH
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Rui

--
Aegis

On the contrary - I think GP2 may well have the best graphics
engine around. Remember - it is using no hardware acceleration
from additional graphics cards like more recent games. I used to
get a good frame rate with some of the detail turned off on a P133,
but that is not the case of any recent game on my P200.

Seems to me that most programmers these days don't fine tune
the performance of their graphics code much because the 3D cards
ultimately do the work for them. Two years ago when Crammond
was writing GP2, he didn't have that luxury and his straight code
to do all that calculation in real time does indeed use up a lot of
CPU, but is faster than any other game I can think of without 3D
acceleration built in (except maybe the original ICR2).

I began to think I couldn't run games any more on a P200, but
since I've got my 3dfx card, I've apparantly doubled the speed of my
system. Just try running any recent games in non-accelerated
mode and I think you'll find the graphics are much less acceptable
than in GP2.

Cheers, Gwyn.

D. Gwyn Jones

I did a similar upgrade: P100 > P200 (non MMX; just changed the CPU for a
bargain!). The frame rates improved a lot, but it is still impossible to
play GP2 in SVGA without removing some of the trackside objects.
BTW, when I say "impossible", I mean I stick with 25.6 fps with no
concessions whatsoever. I give a lot more importance to the speed and the
feeling of the driving than to the graphics, but on the other hand, I'm not
particularly fond of driving in a desert!!! So, I tend to use mostly the
VGA mode, boosting up as many graphics as I can.

Spoiled people...remember the miracles and the wonders that the games
programmers used to do with the ZX Spectrum and it's fantastic 3.5 MHz 8
bit processor and it's gigantic 41 Kb for code placing???

Right! Now you said it all! ICR runs silky smooooooth on SVGA with
everything on on my P200 (it almost did so on my former P100)! Now, why the
heck can't the same happen in GP2??? The only explanation is the
sophisticated physics modelling...because the landscape and all the
trackside stuff look pretty nice in ICR2.

Motoracer runs nicely fast... my graphics card is still an old one: a S3
868 (Genoa Phantom 64), but anyway it's an arcade game: almost no physical
laws to simulate...

Cheers,

Rui

That's a pretty weak argument though Gwyn. Taking the above example, I
could say that F1RS was designed to run with a 3D accelerator and
gives a good frame-rate. GP2 was designed to run without a 3D
accelerator and cannot.

That's nothing to do with the 3D accelerator, since it was never
intended that GP2 rely on one. Software companies need to make the
best use of the platorm they are designing for, and I would argue that
a program like F1RS achieves a much better result than GP2.

Cheers!
John

Sure, it is only with today's processors that you can actually run it at
the intended frame rate, but I doubt it could be easily beaten by any
other coder without hardware acceleration. I guess my point was that
Geoff had a pretty tough task, but comparing his engine to today's
games is apples and oranges. Before getting a 3d card, I could play
GP2 at decent frame rate but not the newer games (even if they said
I could, they were too slow). Of course now I have a 3dfx card my
eyes have been opened and I will find it very hard to go back to GP2
after F1RS.

Cheers, and Happy New Year (I'm off to party!) -- Gwyn.

8?)

* Peter *  8-)   Please remove asterix from address to email.

I think if you actually compare the amount of textures you will see that
(non-3D) ICR2 and GP2 have pretty similar performing graphics engines.

Papy made a wise decision with ICR2 to create the atmosphere of the
tracks rather than to try and put textures everywhere. Compare for
instance the amount of tree textures used at Elkhart Lake to, say,  GP2's
Monza.

CHeers,
Richard

In my opinion the driving model is the most important part of a racing sim.
Of course I also want it to look as good as possible, but that does come
second place.
As some mentioned in some other postings, the accurate calculations for the
driving model of GP2 take up quite a share of time, leaving less for the
graphics calculations compared to other games.
I think the driving model of GP2 still is far from beaten, maybe even the one of
GP1. Geoff understood was he was creating, a !simulator!. When trying out ICR2
(no-3D version at the time), it looked incredible compared to GP1, but I didn't
have any doubts about preferring GP1 above ICR2. And that was only because of
the driving model.
--
Ren van Lobberegt, The Netherlands.
Personal Web Site : http://www.toptown.com/INNERCIRCLE/1846/
Webmaster of AMCA Web Site : http://home.pi.net/~amcarcnl/

As in flight sims, I believe there are a number of elements that must be
present.  One, like the above, might be paramount, but it better not fall too
far behind in the others.  I'd list them as...

a) driving(flight) model
b) framerate
c) graphics
d) AI (not important if driving/flying solo)

For flight sims, another element is systems/weapons modeling.  The only way
something similar comes into play in racing sims is the modeling of the car
mods (which I'd say is part of the driving model).

I don't buy this as a reason for its slower SVGA performance.  Just look at
how fast it is in VGA.  If the *physics* took a large percentage of the SVGA
processor load, VGA would be slower than it is.

I don't really understand the veneration of Crammond we see here.  Yes, I
loved GP1, and played to forever (which, one might argue, is the true test
of a game?).  When GP2 came out, I ran out to buy it.  But moreso than with
GP1, perhaps due to the slower framerate, I find myself chagrined by the
choice of a fixed framerate system.  Why the heck would any designer (ease of
programming aside?) choose this?  To get a fast framerate, you get extreme
slowdowns in crowded scenes.  To get accurate timing (I argue critical for
driving), you have to choose a low framerate, or knock the graphics down to
the lowest common denominator.  Worst of both worlds.  ICR2's system is far
superior, IMHO.  If I had a PII-233 or above, maybe I wouldn't be as down on
GP2...
(before suggesting VGA, I'll just point out that it, like many SVGA games'
VGA, is just too darn ugly.  Far worse than a VGA-only game's would have
been).

<snip>

I don't think that's true... VGA looked OK to me as long as I didn't have the
possibility to run any kind of SVGA (as long as I owned my DX2/66, in other
words :-)  )

VGA mode only looks bad after you got used to SVGA, that's all...

JoH

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=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
When everything else failed, we can still become im-
mortal by making an enormous blunder....

                             John Kenneth Galbraith
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Why thank you :-)

Ouch!

I might have said that too.  But I loaded up GP1 as a comparison and preferred
it to GP2's VGA!  Also, look at the VGA in ICR2 compared to ICR1.  The dash in
ICR2 is much blockier and hard to read.  I've noted the same thing in quite a
few VGA/SVGA games.  They just don't spend as much time making the VGA
graphics attractive as they did in the past.