rec.autos.simulators

Certainly they feel *really* easy to drive for me now compared to the
way they were before, but that could be because I've already "done my
time" going through the learning phase.

I guess '30s cars will be even heavier and slower to stop than the '67
cars, which is probably the thing that beginners find most difficult -
it's not easy to judge the distance to the next corner without stereo 3D
vision, and the earlier you have to brake the harder it is to get it
right.

Also with heavier cars there will probably be even more weight transfer,
which again means you need to be aware of the effects this produces -
again difficult for beginners if modelled correctly.

I guess if the physics model is simplified this in itself will make it
easier to master the game, as the cars will be more predictable, but it
doesn't necessarily mean it will be more fun to play!

I really liked the feel of the Colin McRae Rally cars, but once I'd been
hooked on GPL, going back to CMR the car felt really "dead" - it was
easy to predict oversteer and understeer because it didn't take into
account the bouncing on the springs, etc etc. - you just brake the right
amount before each corner and then accelerate through the turn.

Maybe these two things are mutually exclusive - if you can get straight
into the game right from the off then it will probably bore you after a
few months, and if it poses a true challenge it will probably be very
frustrating at the start.

Personally I'd rather have a challenging physics model with good
"gameplay" - ie. training modes and lots of help with learning the
technique (and AI cars that will wait for you while you're learning!).

  I thought that where this _was_ the case in Grand Prix it was due to
either (a) selective editing or (b) the footage actually not being from
the race but from the later added in sequences.

: Also similar events are apparent in the Watkins Glen and
: Nurburgring sequences in 'Nine Days in Summer'.

  I got the opposite impression from Nine days in summer.  To me, in the
majority of those shots the cars were neat and tidy.

: So what accounts for the tractability of the cars at Coy's and the obvious
: difficulties in driving GPL? It may indeed be that the physics model is
: imperfect but I think there are simpler explanations, particularly bearing
: in mind that once mastered (and not driven by the sim-meisters like Woeger
: who clearly have special skills), GPL produces VERY similar lap times to
: those turned in the actual '67 season.This implies to me an uncannily
: accurate model.

  Perhaps.  The lap times are not _that_ comparable with the '67 season
and where they are comparable they are often comparable with different
cars.  (Especially at the start of the season races where the real '67
drivers did not have 3L cars) when you take this into account the
similarity is not that remarkable.

: The tyres at Coy's all felt very sticky to me, at least as sticky as the
: slicks on the 71 Brabham. I wonder who makes these tyres today and what
: compound they are using.

  (Grin) Glad to know I wasn't the only fan going around feeling the
tyres.  They felt quite tough by modern standards though, even the
slicks were not as gummy as modern touring car tyres.

: A 1500cc F2 is fast but lacks the brute unsuitability of 400bhp in a
: half-ton package. Most of the F1 cars at Coy's had wings (there were no 3
: litre mid 60s F1 cars racing ) and the more powerful cars were driven by
: people like Duncan Dayton or Martin Stretton who are effectively
: professional racing drivers.

  I'm pretty sure there that 67 BRM in the pre-72 race was a 3L.  There
were also two 68 season BRMs.  I wish I had the program here with me to
confirm this.

: Also they weren't going flat out and who can
: blame them (two thirds of the drivers who started the '67 F1 season died at
: the wheel of a car). The current  Lap Record for F3000 at Silverstone is
: 1m41.xx and the F3 LR is 1m43.xx (Grand Prix circuit) whereas Duncan
: Dayton's average racing lap in the BT33 was about 1m50, and Simon Hadfield
: in the Lotus 48 was 1m56 or so, on the slightly easier and faster Historic
: circuit (no Abbey chicane). I bet Jim Clark would have driven race laps
: around 1m35 in a '67 Lotus 49.

  I bet he wouldn't.  In the 49 being just a below 1:30 was a reasonable
time for the old style silverstone where every corner was just a kink.
The whole circuit has been slowed down a lot since then.  The modern
course is not just _slightly_ harder - it's a lot harder.  Imagine
trying to thread your way through Becketts or negotiate the complex
without flying off in GPL?  How much slower are brooklands and luffield
than the old single kink that was there.  To me, Hadfields times in the
low 1:50s (I timed a lap at 1:53 - and remember, that was through
"traffic") were indicative of someone who's really moving and not too
far off the limit.

: Anyway I have had more fun with the 'difficult' GPL than with any other sim,
: so I hope that other similarly challenging sims emerge in the future. I
: imagine that a GPL style 50s sim would be even more difficult because of the
: skinny tyres. I would also have to get a huge wood rimmed steering wheel to
: make it feel halfway authentic.

  Heh... well, like you, I've had more fun with GPL than with other
sims.  I'm just convinced that I could have even more fun with a sim
where it was easier to stay "on track" and therefore you could
concentrate on "racing" rather than merely desperately*** on.  I
also think that there's a tendancy in this group to assume that

--
Richard G. Clegg     Only the mind is waving
Dept. of Mathematics (Network Control group) Uni. of York.

www: http://www.racesimcentral.net/

  On the other hand, the 30s cars will be slower to start with so
there'll be less wheel spin and "getting the power on" problems.

: Also with heavier cars there will probably be even more weight transfer,
: which again means you need to be aware of the effects this produces -
: again difficult for beginners if modelled correctly.

  The thing that looks horrible to me is that parallelogram thing that
the pre-war cars do with their wheels.  If they model that then the
weight transfer is going to be just plain *** anyway even if the car
is relatively light.  (For those who don't know what I'm talking about,
a lot of the pre-war cars have their wheels set up so the whole wheel
"tilts" but the wheels tilt together so that the wheels going round a
right hand corner would lean over but remain parallel.  Does anyone know
why they did this?  It seems damn stupid to me but everyone did it.
Was there a good reason?

: I guess if the physics model is simplified this in itself will make it
: easier to master the game, as the cars will be more predictable, but it
: doesn't necessarily mean it will be more fun to play!

  I think that even if you take a complex physics model you can
abstract it and make a simpler game which the lead-footed amongst us can
enjoy.  Adding optional traction control, anti-lock brakes, spin
correction etc etc which still allow you to remain reasonably
competitive would definitely increase the saleability without at all
damaging the realism (because the purist can turn them off).

: Maybe these two things are mutually exclusive - if you can get straight
: into the game right from the off then it will probably bore you after a
: few months, and if it poses a true challenge it will probably be very
: frustrating at the start.

  Hmm... I'm not so sure...  I'd love to see a sim where you could get
in and from day one put laps in and not be all over the damn place but
you could also get that GPL feeling of gradually getting better and
better.  IMHO it's just plain foolish that in GPL the ordinary mortal
can't "win" an offline race on the easiest level without six months of
practice (and _I_ can't even win then).  I don't see how it would have
made GPL a worse game to put in some newbie levels where the computer
cars are slower and more circumspect.  I would certainly imagine that
this is the approach that Microprose/Hasbro will take.

--
Richard G. Clegg     Only the mind is waving
Dept. of Mathematics (Network Control group) Uni. of York.

www: http://www.racesimcentral.net/

Quite right, sorry
But it's interesting to note that none of these finished in the top ten. I
wasn't there on Sunday. Did they all retire or perhaps they were more of a
handful to drive.

Tim L

TL wrote
I bet Jim Clark would have driven race laps
around 1m35 in a '67 Lotus 49.
time for the old style silverstone where every corner was just a kink.

Clark's pole time in 67 was 1m25.3. The lap distance hasn't changed much
(2.97 miles vs. 3.14 miles). I reckon the old Maggotts-Becketts-Chapel must
have taken quite a bit more time than the new version. I agree that the new
complex must take a lot more time than old Woodcote and I guess that it
takes a bit longer now to get out of the Vale and round Club. But having
seen Duncan Dayton qualify on Saturday in 1m42.xx in his BT33 I still
maintain Clark would have been quite a bit faster than that.

But it's all guesswork :)

I would guess that 90% of the "extra" difficulty in GPL (compared to
a real car) comes from the pc limitations and not from the physics model
(which _don't_ mean that I'm in any way certain that the GPL physics
is perfect, or even close to).

Think about limitations like:

1/ Screen resolution: Anyone with eye sight comparable to the 1024x768
   or whatever you use with GPL wouldn't be allowed to get a drivers
   licence to begin with in real life. Racing?? Forget it.

2/ Field of view: It's a lot easier to feel where the car is on the road
   with the normal 180+ degrees field of view. Then think about driving
   beside another car through a fast corner with the pc sim tunnel vision :-)
   Estimating the speed of the car is also much harder without the
   peripheral vision.

3/ Screen update rate: Even a steady 36 Hz frame rate is noticeably
   worse than real life. There is a reason real flight simulators
   use 60 Hz or more. With a less than a 1GHz pc, you probably
   have variations in frame rate also which doesn't make it easier.

4/ Delay: What you see on the pc monitor is old information compared
   to your control inputs. I don't know the figures for GPL, but I
   very much doubt it is less than one or two frames, which means
   something around 50 ms. Doesn't sound much, but is noticable.
   Variations in delay ain't any good either.

5/ Control resolution and stability: A standard pc game controller
   combined with a cheap wheel is so lousy I get somewhat agitated
   just thinking about it. (I hope I finally got a setup that is
   acceptable now, using a pdpi digital game controller together
   with a wheel with the standard potentiometer replaced with
   something that costs more than two cents to manufacture. Note
   that this still is far from the resolution in real life since
   it is now limited by the 8 bit A/D converter in the pdpi card.)

6/ Missing information: Most importantly the forces on the controls
   and on the drivers body. (The former might be partly fixed by
   force feedback, but I haven't tried it. FF is very hard to get
   right though, e.g. the delays from command to force is a large
   problem.) I think its hard to overestimate the importance of the
   forces on the drivers body in making the driver feel what the car
   is doing. Driving a car really fast is like balancing on a tightrope,
   you can't do that very well with visual inputs only.
   There are also lots of small things missing like the pitch variations
   in the tire skid sounds.

7/ Whatever I forgot about, I'm sure there is more.

All these limitations makes it _a_lot_ harder to drive in a simulation
compared to in real life. But you can adopt to much of it, thats why the
experts are able to get real life lap times in GPL. I guess that for
an experienced real life driver learning to drive fast in GPL (or any
pc sim) is like for a hockey player trying to play without his ears,
with only one eye and a way to flexible stick.
It can be done, but it ain't easy.

      _
Mats Lofkvist

Still, the experts show that with enough practice it's possible to
overcome these problems, since GPL has one big advantage over real life
- it's much harder to kill yourself playing it!

And they were VERY fast. I think everyone is going to be in
for a shock if the upcoming sim is a realistic one.. :)

--
* rrevved at mindspring dot com  

: I would guess that 90% of the "extra" difficulty in GPL (compared to
: a real car) comes from the pc limitations and not from the physics model
: (which _don't_ mean that I'm in any way certain that the GPL physics
: is perfect, or even close to).

: Think about limitations like:

: 1/ Screen resolution: Anyone with eye sight comparable to the 1024x768
:    or whatever you use with GPL wouldn't be allowed to get a drivers
:    licence to begin with in real life. Racing?? Forget it.

  Sure there's a lot of problems with this - it's not just screen
resolution but field of focus.  I can look at the screen and the car
park outside my window is kind of fuzzy - if I focus instead on the
number plate of a car outside, I can read that and the screen is kind of
fuzzy - you're never going to be able to simulate this with a 2d screen
- but how useful is it in driving fast - I'm not sure.  I don't believe
that it would make things that much easier.

: 3/ Screen update rate: Even a steady 36 Hz frame rate is noticeably
:    worse than real life. There is a reason real flight simulators
:    use 60 Hz or more. With a less than a 1GHz pc, you probably
:    have variations in frame rate also which doesn't make it easier.

  This I don't believe - TV is around about 30Hz and nobody complains
that their TV looks jerky.  When a framerate of 30 fps looks jerky it's
inevitably because that 30 fps was an average and at some point it
dropped way below that.  

: 4/ Delay: What you see on the pc monitor is old information compared
:    to your control inputs. I don't know the figures for GPL, but I
:    very much doubt it is less than one or two frames, which means
:    something around 50 ms. Doesn't sound much, but is noticable.
:    Variations in delay ain't any good either.

  I'm not convinced by this...  I think the info is getting from
controller to screen faster than 50ms but I'm prepared to be convinced
by that.

: 5/ Control resolution and stability: A standard pc game controller
:    combined with a cheap wheel is so lousy I get somewhat agitated
:    just thinking about it. (I hope I finally got a setup that is
:    acceptable now, using a pdpi digital game controller together
:    with a wheel with the standard potentiometer replaced with
:    something that costs more than two cents to manufacture. Note
:    that this still is far from the resolution in real life since
:    it is now limited by the 8 bit A/D converter in the pdpi card.)

  I think that most modern digital wheels have sufficient control
resolution and stability.  I may be wrong.

: 6/ Missing information: Most importantly the forces on the controls
:    and on the drivers body. (The former might be partly fixed by
:    force feedback, but I haven't tried it. FF is very hard to get
:    right though, e.g. the delays from command to force is a large
:    problem.) I think its hard to overestimate the importance of the
:    forces on the drivers body in making the driver feel what the car
:    is doing. Driving a car really fast is like balancing on a tightrope,
:    you can't do that very well with visual inputs only.

  This is the thing that is hard to judge I guess.  Maybe a few years
down the road when we have force-feedback lotus***pits to sit in we'll
be in a better position to comment :-)

: I recommend to you the dual-pack video covering the Mercedes "Silver Arrows"
: (never referred to by that name by the factory, or the motoring press of the
: day, I might add) for some fascinating footage of the F1 cars of that era.

  Sorry - didn't mean to imply that they would not - just that the 30s
cars I've seen race are typically heavier and less powerful than the 60s
equivalents.  They're also noticeably slower.  Should have _less_
wheelspin surely - even on those ultra skinny tyres.

--
Richard G. Clegg     Only the mind is waving
Dept. of Mathematics (Network Control group) Uni. of York.

www: http://manor.york.ac.uk/top.html

Yes, but not much.
The racecars of the early 30s, according to the 750kg-Formula, had a
maximum weight of 750kg. Mercedes needed to remove the white paint of
their new cars at their very first race in 1934 because they've been
slightly too heavy.
So, a 1967 Honda or BRM F1 with filled tanks was as heavy as a 1930
car with nearly empty tanks.
Earlier 1920s race cars like the big truck-like supercharged 300hp
Mercedes SSK or Bentley Blower, were strong, fast, very heavy,
expensive and very hard to drive. And dangerous, of course.
So the 750kg-Formula was introduced to force car makers to produce
Bugatti-like small and light vehicles with presumably less power.
The rule-makers just could not imagine the progess that was made by
race car engineers in terms of power and light weight.

Ouch!
As engines, everything was permitted in the 750kg-Formula until AFAIK
1938, when size limitations were introduced (maximum 3 litre with
supercharger, 4.5 normally aspirated).
This led finally to 6 litre supercharged V12 or V16 monsters with over
500 hp (Auto Union) up to 646 hp of the latest Mercedes (AFAIK W125 in
1937?).
Until the turbo era of the 1980s, F1 cars had less power than the
1930s cars.
Even with a limit of 3 litre, the supercharged Mercedes engine
produced 480 hp. F1 did not beat this before the 1970s Ferrari 12cyl.
The early 1950s Alfa Romeo, which were more or less pre-war models as
the same rules still were in effect, came close though.
Nowadays, Top *** or Top Fuel dragster engines are the closest
thing to the giant supercharged methanol burning engines of the 1930s.
The modern high revving 3 litre F1 engines with no low or mid range
power are completely different - these nervous little things can even
stall if the driver is not hard enough on the gas while starting.

The 1930s cars reached over 300 kph in races easily.
During world record attempts, over 430 kph were done with special
streamline-designed cars based on the GP cars.

As typical underpowered road car or lower-spec race car of that time
is concerend, yes. But not the Grand Prix dinosaurs which were made in
Germany (and Italy or France) during that time.
The drivers needed accelerator pedals with extra long travel in order
to control the power and especially strong mid range torque of those
big supercharged engines.
Wheel spin was almost inevitable, tyre wear was a big problem: In the
museum at the Nrburgring, there is a diagram showing the tyre wear
vs. the lap times, recorded by Mercedes.
In hill climb races (equipped with truck like double rear wheels) and
accelerating world record attempts, the mid engined Auto Union cars
designed by Ferdinand Porsche had much more grip than the front engine
Mercedes.

--
Matthias Flatt

  <snippage of much useful, interesting and historic data on 30s GP cars>
Well, I stand corrected - thanks Matthais.  I think my impression had
been gained by two things - 30's sports cars - which are visibly much
slower off the line than the 60s ones and the fact that some 30s sports
cars were used pretty much as is as GP cars (they just took the
mudguards off apparently).  

--
Richard G. Clegg     Only the mind is waving
Dept. of Mathematics (Network Control group) Uni. of York.

www: http://manor.york.ac.uk/top.html

- Michael