rec.autos.simulators

http://www.racesimcentral.net/

  Not bad, thanks for the link.  A bit to heavy with rose colored glasses
imo, but a good read.

Indeed, thanks for the link.

dave henrie

Funny to see that Kaemmer is one of the original "wreckers", and he recalls
(no doubt with a sheepish grin) that the Indy road course was the best one
for backwards driving, or just laying in wait on the front straight, as he
could take out almost the whole field in one accident.  :-)

Stephen

p.s. tongue in cheek here; anything goes in an offline environment.
p.p.s. of course I also did this...

Stephen

  I expect PC sales of NASCAR Thunder on PC wouldn't be too high.  It's a
new series, and PC games don't sell as well as console games.  But that
hardly means that NASCAR Thunder has been a failure on the PC.  It seems to
sell fairly well on consoles too.  Let's not forget Infogrames Dirt to
Daytona (that would make a good PC game, too bad...).

  I hate to say "The Emperor has no Clothes", but there are several things
that Papyrus got wrong with their games.  First off, NASCAR stock cars have
power steering.  This is simulated in NASCAR HEAT, NASCAR Thunder, but not
in any of Papyrus NASCAR games.  Why is that?  At best, you get some speed
sensitivity at low settings.  You can really feel this if you play the games
with a force feedback wheel- the forces are raw, ragged, overwhelming, and
the degree of steering you need changes with the speed (like a riding
lawnmower or go-kart going 200 mph).  And why do people praise EA's F-1 for
it's physics, and slam NASCAR Thunder's physics in the same breath?  It's
the same gosh darn physics engine in both games.  One cannot be good, and
the other bad.

  And let's not mention the total absence of a career mode, or any other
frills, in Papyrus games.  The only focus that they did well at was online
racing.  Granted, it's no small feat to get 42 players online all on one
server playing the same game, racing around a virtual world at high speeds.
And for that, they deserve praise.  But beyond that, as games, they are
sterile affairs that will only appeal to *** "sim-ers" (can't use the
word game with these folks) who hold their noses up in the air ever so
slightly above the rest of us.

  For a design team that claims to have realism down to a T, so many other
developers have done a good job, but haven't gotten the credit due to them.
And that's unfair.  How bad it is that every single racing developer will
have the ghost of Papyrus haunting them forever.  Like the champ boxer that
retires with the title, every other developer will have to live up to this
guy they can never hope to beat.

uwe

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Once you've spent the better half of a decade racing friends in a
league, it becomes an aspect you don't want to miss in any new
release.

Cheers,

uwe

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mail replies to Uwe at schuerkamp dot de ( yahoo address is spambox)
Uwe Schuerkamp //////////////////////////// http://www.racesimcentral.net/
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All in glorious 320x200 and I thought it looked great :)

To the *** simmers this was a scandalous waste, which is neither a
pompous nor superior stance, simply that moving one of the few talents
capable of providing *** sims into an area already well served simply
seemed a loss.

Whilst the loyal few will mourn the loss of Papyrus, the future now looks
far more promising without Sierra and Vivendi at the helm, and we may see
another open wheeler from Kaemmer.

I would hope there is a place for niche developers to co-exist with the
mainstream. Even if we do have to admit to being gearheads...

-Larry