rec.autos.simulators

Practically the only "games" I'm interested are the car racing
simulators...

One question came to mind: When I have been using happily the GP2,
there never was any talk of "patches", I just could (and can!) use
the program happily: everything works ...

But when I started to know other simulator programs, ... let us
say F1RS, or even the Track Pack for GP2, ... or nearly whatsoever
program nowadays, I have to run some "patches" every now and then,
..., and there seems to be no end to these ...

I hope the CART I ordered today belongs to the GP2 group in that ...

Is this really the way we should have to use the computers? Or is this
just the MS way of doing things?

Arto

GP2 was unfinished and has bugs in it, but the reason why there was
never any talk of patches was because Microprose had no interest in
supporting GP2.

MS CART won't need any patches...if you like bugs and horrible AI,
that is.
--
Please remove nospam from address when replying via e-mail.

That's good! I wish I didn't get distracted by all those other games!

Not every thing in GP2 works: Multiplay being the best example ie no network
even though it says it does on the box (?) and serial link play dramatically
slows things down.

We have all even up hope of a GP2 patch, which is why you see no mention of
one.  I would love one for network and 3dfx.  Won't happen.

I have been happy with f1rs and itt runs fine on my machine, but others have
problems.  I have no trouble with TOCA (as far as the game goes) but the makers
have announced a patch (I didn't see any big firestorms about this game)!
I'd rather have the game and download the patchs when they're ready.  That way
I get my cake, and can eat it too, but not for a while.
CART Precision Racing? It doesn't!

Brian

--
remove 'bye' from address to reply

I've been driving this sim for a while...,
can you tell me about some of these "bugs"?  Seems to run fine for me!
Bob Bess.

RLBESS heeft geschreven in bericht

Well, for instance, under Win95 I can't use the replays in GP-2. You can see
cars driving through the air or tiny cars driving where they shouldn't i.e.
in the public.

Marshals dragging cars ONTO the track, changing 4 tires and one blown engine
in under 7 seconds, plus filling her up. The absolute inability of back
markers to GET OUT OF THE WAY!!!

Now, F1-RS isn't perfect, but when I see that a Minardi being lapped DOES
give me room, I say: impresive.

GP-2 is bugged. Pieter's site has a whole section devoted to it, check it
out. You can find one I sent in...

Especially the graphics department of GP-2 is extremely buggy with half
cars, smoke coming from lost tires, the whole point of ghost-debris meaning
you can drive through it.

Those are bugs not shown in F-1 RS. Sure, GP-2 runs, but at an appaling low
framerate of a measely 16 FPS on my P-166. F-1 RS gives me a silk smooth
framerate.

"On 5 August 1944 in the vicinity of St. Sever Calvados, France, witnessed a
German Mark V Panther tank knock out three M4 and three M5 tanks during and
after being hit by at least fif*** rounds of 75mm APC from a distance of
approximately 700 yards. All of these shells had ricochetted, with the
exception of a six***th round which finally put the Mark V Panther out of
action." Sgt. Thomas P. Welborn, Germany's Panther tank, the quest for
combat superiority by Thomas L. Jentz
http://www.racesimcentral.net/
http://www.racesimcentral.net/

You don't have to download _any_ patches. You could just keep the bugs and
limited functionality.

--
<<Phoenix>>

That may be, but when was the last time you saw an F1 car hit an
object at anything over 35+ mph and receive no damage?  Let's
not forget those amazing 8-second pitstops, where you can replace
a wheel that had been forcably removed several turns back...

...oh, and how do you like the multiplayer feature?  ;)

Cheers!

Marc - Patchez?...We don' need no stinkin' patchez! - Nelson

GP2 didn't "need" patches because it was never supported by the people
who published it!!

If I owned a product that was not provided with
upgrades/enhancements/improvements then I wouldn't have a computer
system.  Windows 95 would not exist, neither would Windows 3.11, 3.1,
DOS 6.2, 6.0, 5.0, 3.3, 3.0, ad infinitum.

A "patch" can be a darn sight more than just a bandaid: it can actually
upgrade the original product.

--
Bruce
(at work)

"Laziness is nothing more than the habit of resting before you get
tired."
(Jules Renard)

(snip)
but when was the last time you saw an F1 car hit an
object at anything over 35+ mph and receive no damage?
(unsnip)

Jerez, 1997.  :-)

--
Bruce
(at work)

"Laziness is nothing more than the habit of resting before you get
tired."
(Jules Renard)

On Tue, 6 Jan 1998 20:51:06 +0100, "The Unexplained"

Backmarkers certainly do get out of the way, and changing four tyres
and an engine in seven seconds is _not_ a bug. It is certainly wrong,
but it is not a bug. A bug is something which causes misoperation in a
program or to behave in a manner which it was not intended to do - the
length of pit stop in GP2 is intentional and therefore not a bug.

A little like the fact that in F1RS I can drive at 190mph with one of
my front wheels missing? No pulling sideways on the straight nor,
amazingly enough, when I brake into a corner. The braking distance is
increased, but the car doesn't spin.

Sorry to say, but that is your choice. If you want to turn on more
options than your system can handle then you must accept the resulting
frame-rate. If you also choose to compare a two year old product with
a brand new one and draw conclusions then that is also your choice. My
P225MMX which cost <100 is much faster than the P166 I was using two
years ago - yes it is better, but that fact in itself should not come
as any surprise. Things do progress after all.

Cheers!
John

John Wallace heeft geschreven in bericht

Still people scream GP-2 is superior to F1RS. Do you know how many times
I've been rammed by backmarkers in GP-2 just blindly steering a-la
Schumacher-Villeneuve into my path? Even when my car is 3/4 past theirs? I
have developed a certain degree of "Oh no, it's Frentzen!!!" in GP-2.

In F-1 RS, and this is confirmed by many others, I actually see cars drive
into the gravel to avoid me whenever I spin, overtake them or lap them and
there's not enough room. My bad driving is the cause, but the reaction of
the cars is excellent.

But I have various games saved showing just ridiculous things happening like
the time I crashed at Monza and sat looking how a Marshal pushed a car away
that was only being drawn up to the side-pods, nothing above that.

Multiplayer is a dog. You need to have 2 identical PCs otherwise the lower
end PC will not be able to process the data sent. This is even true between
a P-166 and a P-133.

I still have a P-166, same one as then, and F-1 RS even though it is so much
superior in graphics and features runs smooth as I've never seem a sim do.

People say GP-2 has a better speed-sensation. Why? When I see trees flying
past me in F-1 RS I think "Pretty damn fast."

GP-2 AI is better. None of the competitors cars drives straight into me in
F1-RS when I overtake them. They don't push their cars into mine when
there's a pile up.

The only point of improvement would be the menu system, especially the
garage.

And that Ubisoft has released 2 patches, Thumbs up for this newcomer.
Microprose and Spectrum Holobyte were settled names in the Software
industry, but they totally ignored GP-2 and neglected to give any support.

I like GP-2, but it's gone now, pase.

"On 5 August 1944 in the vicinity of St. Sever Calvados, France, witnessed a
German Mark V Panther tank knock out three M4 and three M5 tanks during and
after being hit by at least fif*** rounds of 75mm APC from a distance of
approximately 700 yards. All of these shells had ricochetted, with the
exception of a six***th round which finally put the Mark V Panther out of
action." Sgt. Thomas P. Welborn, Germany's Panther tank, the quest for
combat superiority by Thomas L. Jentz
http://www.racesimcentral.net/
http://www.racesimcentral.net/

They're all design features, dear boy <g>

$%&ing poor design features though....

Cheers,
Richard

On Thu, 8 Jan 1998 10:25:49 +0100, "The Unexplained"

This really isn't something I have seen in GP2, and actually if
anything I found backmarkers a little too stupid in their eagerness to
get OFF line and out of my way. I generally find that I've already
moved off-line to sweep past them and they will then also move
off-line to give me space - the result is I am blocked and a serious
brown trousers moment as I try to stay out of his gearbox and on the
track. A bit like real life, the backmarkers are unpredictable and
should be treated with caution. In F1RS, the leaders are too obliging,
suffering from "Senna syndrome". This means they can be intimidated
into giving up their place simply by diving onto the inside line under
braking - the CCs are more concerned with avoiding an accident than
with racing, and so they'll tamely capitulate. That isn't racing,
that's hotlapping - if you can catch the person in front you will
always pass them, and that is definitely _not_ the case in F1 today as
you know.

See above - I think it's way too exaggerated the way these guys try to
get out of your way. Do you think Schumacher would really move if you
tried to force your way past him? No chance.

I have games in Quake where I would get stuck in the wall and have to
wait for someone to kill me, and I have pictures in ICR2 where the car
was rotated through 90 deg so that the right side wheels were on the
road and the left side pointed toward the sky - nothing is 100%
perfect, and as long as these issues are "rare oddities" rather than
persistent problems I can accept them. That particular problem in ICR2
I could accept since I saw it once - the HOG bug was also sporadic but
enough that it needed fixed. I think GP2 has several of the former
type and very few (if any) of the latter.

Guess what - it uses a 3D accelerator. Can you imagine how slow it
would be without that? You write your game for the hardware available
at the time, and GP2 was written to be able to run on the prevalent
hardware. Why else do you think all of the options were made available
to tweak the graphics? If you insist on turning everything on then the
problem of the poor frame-rate is yours, not Geoff Crammonds. He
provided you with the options and it is your choice whether to use
them or not.

Sound also needs improved. Pitstops are handled poorly, tyre choice
isn't correct, camber doesn't work, no tyre pressures included, no
separation of slow and fast damper settings, grass slows car down way
too much, some of the circuits are totally awful - there's many things
which could be improved about F1RS if you want to look toward the
negative.

Here we differ - I really don't think GP2 needed to be patched. 3dFX
support would have been nice to have, network support would have been
nice to have, but it was a classic sim as and when it was released.
Newer products like ICR2, F1RS and CPR have been patched, but this is
because they _needed_ patched in order to fix glaring errors which
should have been attended to before release. You shouldn't confuse
good support with releasing a product before it is ready.

I agree, it's been on my hard drive only briefly since this time last
year (to test the add-on track pack). I got bored with it a long time
ago.

Cheers!
John

No, the Microsoft way is to send out a product that's buggy as hell, then
change the release number and charge you again for the fix.  All while
adding more shit to the code to make anything that did work in the past,
fail now.

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It's always great to read a mature and considered opinion that shows
original thought :P