rec.autos.simulators

The following is a copy of the letter I emailed to Papyrus regarding the
"Pole BUG" in NASCAR:

While running the Championship Season in your NASCAR Racing simulation, I
encountered a major BUG.  I was lucky enough to get the pole position at
Darlington (2nd race of the season).  I thought I was just lucky with my
green flag start as the field started to drop back.  However, as I
continued to race the field continued to drop back about 1-2 seconds a
lap.  After a few laps I came up behind a long train of cars "hooked up"
and running in the outside "groove".  This pack was maintaining a slow
speed of 143+ mph.  I was able to easily pass the train by hugging the
inside groove.  Slightly ahead of this train was another train of cars
running the inside groove.  The were traveling at about 145+ mph.  By
checking the replay and looking at the starting grid, I found that both
of these trains represented the starting grid.  The outside groove was
the starting grid's outside drivers and the inside the starters from the
inside.  They seemed to be "marching" in line with no thoughts of racing.
This continued until the computer cars started their first pit stops.
Then it seems they decided to get "racey".

I am running with opponents at 100% and a full competition (38 cars).  I
am running the game in SVGA mode on a Pentium 90 with 8 meg of memory.  I
saved the game prior to starting the race and can forward you the
seassave.bin file if you need it to recreate the buggy conditions.
However, I assume it applies anytime the pole is won by the human player,
as I attempted to start again with a new race at Darlington and the same
thing happened when I got the pole again.

Also during this race, I got "CREAMED" will sitting well within my pit
stall as 2 cars were coming into the pits.  One car was coming in close
to the wall and the second car plowed through this car pushing it into my
car.  This seems to be a minor AI bug, and hopefully not "just one of
those racing deals."  I also "cut" and saved the replay of this incident
if you are interested in seeing it.

While I have your attention, I am a disappointed by the single
file restarts.  As I am sure you are aware, this is not the rule for
NASCAR, where lapped cars line up on the inside lane (hoping for a chance
to get there lap(s) back).  I hope there is a fix for this.  I have
noticed a few times during yellows when the car you are "supposed" to get
in line behind moves SLOWLY and makes no attempt to catch up with the
field. This is a breakdown in AI again.  If I stay behind the car the
front of the restart will come up behind us and if I pass the car that
doesn't really want to move I get blackflagged for a lap after the
restart.

Don't get me wrong, I have LONG looked forward to this simulation (since
your first Indianapolis 500 simulation).  I just have HIGH HOPES and hope
to see you addressing these minor & major flaws in an otherwise FANTASTIC
simulation.

Thanks

What pole bug ? - I must have missed some messages in my OLR.

I can across an interesting bug the other day, It happened on my second
ever race at Watkins Glen ( I only got the game on Friday), I was moving
nicely though the back of the field from the start line when the first
bend happened - you know - when everybody stops and kindly acts as a
front brake - and I piled though three or four cars.  When the dust had
settled, I tried to driove off but had very limited control.  When I went
to an outside view, I had ended up INSIDE another car - The collision
detection was keeping me inside (Of course it could have been a bad
calculation inside my P90 !).  

Glad to report it's only happened once and I've come across no other
significant bugs. The game is excellent other than that, but I find it
very difficult to go back to VGA racing games after this.

Neal Rayner.

Same thing happens in IndyCar Racing, and I don't think it has anything
to do with Pentium miscalculations as I only have DX2;-)  Car gets stuck
inside other car and getting out is very slow, sort of punishment for
reckless driving;-)

: Glad to report it's only happened once and I've come across no other
: significant bugs. The game is excellent other than that, but I find it
: very difficult to go back to VGA racing games after this.

This bug isn't very serious in ICR (rarely encountered).  I don't have
Nascar Racing yet, but I expect to buy it later this week.  I just hope
the 1.1-patch works with european version.

: Neal Rayner.

Pasi.