rec.autos.simulators

After adding a 12MB Voodoo 2 (cost me 220 at the time!), I was able
to get around 28fps in GPL with just some of the details turned off,
even in the higher resolutions. Without the Voodoo 2 I was only able
to reach 3, maybe 4 frames per second. On a system like that, that's a
HUGE increase in speed!

The V2 is very good, even for low-end systems. For games like GPL,
Rendition cards would be faster.

Dave Bowman

Sounds very promising!  With a lot of details, I get about 5 frames per
seconds right now with the Pentium MMX 200.

Could someone explain what a Rendition card is?  I know about the 3Dfx
family but that's about it...

I'd also like to know which racing sims would be happy with a Rendition
card.  What about TOCA2, or maybe the Ubisoft F1 sims?  I certainly
won't play all those games but I'd like to understand more about those
3D cards to make the best possible buy for the amount I'm willing to
pay.

Thanks,

--

NP: ?nglag?rd - "Hybris"

However, back to the real question.  No, there isn't much 3D hardware for
notebooks.  Generally notebooks are bad for *** due to limited resources
[older ones], and because the LCD screens dont have the best refresh rates.
However, ATI has been making ATi Rage Fury OEM boards for notebooks.

WHY!?!?  If you are going to race in F1 or CART, you don't try and run in a
IndyLights or F3000 car. Why try and run the latest software on ancient
hardware [and with computers, that can be as little as a year to two year
old hardware].  I'd like to see every new game run on everyone one's
machines, but that puts a bit of a hamper on the developers.  And does take
time to really optimize the heck out of a game for those lower end models.

Aye, but this goes hand and hand with graphics and sound.  Graphics, sound
and now forcefeedback are aboslutely the ONLY way we can tell what the car
is doing.  Really good physics that require instant reactions would be
unhumanly hard if your graphics were not good enough to relay the
information.  Now, this doesn't include over the top eye-candy.

LAN!?!?  Come on, a very low percentage of computers race on a LAN so there
is aboslutely no sense providing IPX protocol since its only useful on a
LAN, where as a LAN will run prefectly fine using only TCP/IP and it
obviously is the protocol of the internet for multiplayer there.  In other
words, if TCP/IP works for the internet really well, then it will work
really well with a LAN.

Ok, just to make a point here.  Lots of developers use large high end 3d
modelers, etc to model their tracks and cars and then convert them into
proprietary formats through plugins in the software.  Not sure how pratical
it is to create, for the developers, full tools to do it.  But perhaps it'd
be nice if they'd release the plug-ins, etc because many racers are also
graphics and 3D artists.

Absolutely David.  Absolutely.  Graphics are as important as physics.  Can
you imagine trying to drive GPL with N2 [hardware accelerated physics] at
640x480?  I cant now that I have it at 1024x768.   The tiny movements I can
detect with the higher resolution makes it easier to control the cars.

I'm eager to see the physics, 3D is in the 2nd place. Reality and
playability is what counts, better AI etc. I don't care if it won't have
state-of-the-art graphics.
--
************************

ICQ#:  19515465

have

You can play it in lower resolution or something. When gp2 showed up, I
played it in low res with half of possible textures included, and I
didn't give a dam because *it was so good*.  Everybody who loves a real
sim will play it with joy and won't complain that "it can't be played in
1024x768 with all textures on and blabla...". IMHO.

We'll have to wait and see. I won't mind gp2.5 if the physics and AI are
gp3.0 quality, and graphics are gp2.5 quality.
--
************************

ICQ#:  19515465

Diamond Multimedia have assembled a nice quality and speed videocard Diamond
Stealth 220 using Rendition Verite 2100.
Maybe someone will mind but I guess it's the best of Rendition. Very
enjoyable in Nascar 2, it looks even greater then on Voodoo 2
(nice colored fog etc....).But most of the latest sims require more than
Rendition can do. And also it's highly processor-dependent when
Voodoo 2 lets you have more framerates with Pentium MMX processors

  That's all, folks.
Warren Reicho.

: My son has a very powerfull machine with V2 and loves MGPRS2 but, I am
: mainly a notebook user. Has someone ever seen a descent 3D video on
: notebooks? I have never seen. But, I have a PII-233 and GP2 is great in it.

Some ship right now with a second generation ATI Mobility P, but it's
basically a stock Rage chipset with AGP.  It's nothing special, but runs
some D3D games reasonably well.  In the autumn Savage will roll out the
Savage/Mx, which is based on the Savage 4.  It features texture
compression and bump mapping, up to 16Mb on board memory, and a very good
OpenGL implementation.  Quake timedemos score it just a bit below current
desktop boards.  That might not sound like much for a new product, but if
you understand the space, power and heat constraints in a notebook, then
you begin to see how amazing this is, if it lives up to the early hype.

stephen

I think 95% of the people here disagree with you...many of us turn down our
grafx detail to pull 36fps.  I could run 1024 and get about 30fps, but when
I you can keep a machine pegged at 36fps in a race I will drive laps much
more consistent.  It looks worse for about 2 minutes and then it seems
normal...next time you race you can't tell the difference.
I'll take GPL physics and 640x480 resolution over MGP with a higher
resolution any day...but I guess that's just me.

________________________________________________
Jon   Van Ginneken

"Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play.  It is bound up
with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules, and
***ic pleasure in witnessing ***:  in other words it is
war minus the shooting."

                                                                    --George
Orwell

Brian

If you have all of the Papyrus sims it might be worth picking up a
Rendition card. They're dead cheap these days, and in GPL, for
example, can help make the graphics even sharper than a 3Dfx card.

Nope. ICR2 (Rendition version only), N2, N99, N3, GPL all support
Rendition.

Dave Bowman

Of course I think you missed my point, which is that graphics goes hand in
hand with physics.  Better the physics are, the better the rest of the
subsystems that give the gamer feedback [input, visual, sound are what we
have right now] need to be.

And btw, I tried the demo of MGP and laughed and deleted it pretty darn
quickly.

M

The reason being presumably that since GP2 runs well on their current
hardware there is no reason to upgrade - it doesn't then follow that
if GP3 requires an upgrade it would be out of reach.

Frankly GP2 doesn't run all that well on a 200Mhz Pentium, and to
think that GP3 should aim for a similar level is, IMO, aiming far too
low. With 3D accelerators going for a song and powerful Celerons
available for 50 and less upgrades are far from expensive.

Last time Geoff messed up to some extent by making GP2 way too
demanding of systems at that time, I hope now he doesn't go too far
the other way. We already have plenty of sims that drive really well,
and for GP3 to interest me at all it must have 3D acceleration and
must look good. No matter how spiffing the driving model why would I
want to slog round in 320x200 256 colour VGA? I agree that clever
coding can improve things, but with 3d accelerators offering smooth
framerates at 1024x768 in 32-bit colour there is no optimisation in
the world that will beat faster silicon and benefitting from the
hardware in the marketplace.

Cheers!
John

--
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Zack Sandberg
ICQ# 22150723

Home Page: www.geocities.com/motorcity/track/9049
"Go'n Fast with Class"
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~