I remember feeling ambivalent about GPL too, when it first came out. It
just felt so different from anything that had come before it, and yes,
different than I would've expected a real "simulated" car to feel. My first
thought after trying the Lotus was that if someone in real life sent me out
in something that evil-handling, I'd go straight back to the pits and punch
'em in the face. But the more I drove it, the more I got it, until finally,
it clicked. Heck, even Dave Kaemmer was quoted somewhere on the net talking
about the need to develop "new neural pathways" or something like that to
really "get" GPL and it's brethren. I finally came to regard GPL as having
really great rigid-body physics with really odd tires. But even given its
tire (and other) idiosyncracies, it was still by far the best driving sim
out there for communicating where the limit of grip was to the driver.
That, I think, is what makes it so rewarding. The thing that makes fast
driving exciting is risk, and fear of the disaster waiting if you go over
the limit. The thing that makes it rewarding is feeling like you put the
car right on that limit and still brought it back. A lot of sims let you
drive fast, but none before (or since, it might be argued) did as good a job
of letting you know when you were approaching the "edge of disaster" - of
communicating exactly what was going on at the contact patches. That's what
makes the GPL driving experience dramatic, exciting and rewarding. GPL had
lots else going for it; a romantic period with legendary tracks and drivers,
an obvious passion on the part of its developers, great multiplayer, etc.,
but the quality of the driving experience is what really differentiated it
for me, originally.
The quality of the community that's sprung up around it and the great
enhancements that have followed only continue to widen the gap to any other
sim out there for me, even though the physics have been bettered since.
There's a lot of craft on evidence in sims these days, but to my mind, GPL
is still the only one that approaches art.
SB
> I've asked myself the same question in your header numerous times, but
> from a different perspective...
> I played the demo a lot when it came out, and bought the full version
> on the day it was released. I messed around with it for a few weeks,
> tired of it, and basically quit playing.
> The newsgroup gushed on and on about it. I must be missing something.
> I kept going back, and kept coming to the same conclusion. I just
> couldn't get into it. I read about the totally realistic physics while
> watching replays of cars flying 200 feet in the air and pulling off
> lurid full corner slides that real GP cars of the era never performed.
> I must've tried coming back to the game half a dozen times, forcing
> myself to play it, trying it online, reading the posts, messing with
> setups... Low Rider, High Rider, cheatin' Rail Rider, all to no avail.
> I actually felt I had to be missing some key aspect. It was like the
> movie everyone loves, but you dislike. What was I missing? What was
> the plot point that brought it all together that I wasn't seeing (was
> the evil Darth Enzo actually Colin Chapmans father?!?)?
> I never found out, and I still don't get it. I avoided the flame wars
> about it, but occasionally piped in with some "not too critical"
> comment that'd get me branded a fool for not knowing old GP car
> physics, despite knowing that real race clips from the era on
> Speedvision looked nothing like what I was seeing on my computer
> screen. I'm not a super stickler for perfect physics either, I really
> just care if a game is fun, and couldn't have fun with GPL.
> To this day, I feel like I missed out on something special because
> everyone holds GPL in such high regard and I never "got" it.
