pricing thread, I thought I start a separate thread.
GPL was the first racing sim I ever owned. Prior to that,
the only racing games I had for PC's were the NFS series,
from NFS2 to NFS5 - Porsch Unleashed. Hearing that GPL was
a challenge, I dediced to buy it and try it out.
Even though NFS games are arcade games, they still helped in
that I had learned how to drive without the sensory feedback
of a real car. The only hint of realism was the fact that some
of the games incorporated some form of oversteer. In High
Stakes (1999), the Mercedes CLK required a bit of early turn in
to allow it time to settle into an oversteer state. In Porsche
Unleashed (2000), the physics prevented power oversteer, but
the cars could be setup with lift throttle oversteer. Which
eventually lead to me using an 85/45/4 differential in GPL
with the Lotus.
I started with the Lotus at Kyalami, and after the typcial few
spintouts, started to get the hang of it. The main thing for me
on a new game is getting a sense of the relative speed based
on the in game view, and motor sounds (combined with what gear
I was in). I stayed with the Lotus for my GPL Rank (jeffr).
I started working on my GPL rank, back in August 2002, getting
it down to a +35 in about 6 weeks, then took a break for about
4 months (probably due to other games, like TombRaider or some
first person shooter, plus it was the holiday season). I went
back to working on my GPL rank in Feb 2003, and it took about
9 weeks to go negative.
So it took me about 4 months of active game play to go negative,
which I was told was relatively fast, but I honestly thing my
experience with all the varying physics in the NFS games helped,
especially the usage of lift throttle oversteer to control
speed and turn in while approaching a corner apex. Unfortunately
I now want to be able to use lift throttle oversteer on every
racing game I play now, since I really liked the effect in GPL.
The other thing I liked about GPL was the fact that driver induced
understeer (steer inwards to wash out the front end to prevent
or recover from oversteer) worked. This works in real life as well,
but it's really only useful on only a few types of racing cars
combined with the setup.
When in between other games, and when I had the time, I would
occasionally spend time with GPL again. The last goal was to join
the sub 500 second (8:20) club at Nordshcleife, which I finally
did with an 8:15.32 (500 seconds is 8:20), back in Sep 2005.
Even though I rarely play GPL anymore, I'll always be a fan of
the game.