rec.autos.simulators

Has anyone tried e-mailing Thrustmaster with any success.  I have sent
them numerous messages requesting the converter required to use the T2
with Need for Speed but with no response.  On the occasions I have tried
phoning them I have been put through to someone's voicemail with the
same results.

I guess I'll have to buy any future products from a different company if
they cant get their act together.

Ed

All this and more can be found at

http://members.aol.com/ARobe85580/home.html

Work on GP2 is furiously continuing. Many who have seen GP2 recently
have considered the product flawless, and of releasable quality -
they however, are not Geoff Crammond. The later release date is
partially due to a joint decision by Microprose UK and Microprose USA
to further add to the features already in the sim, and partly by the
development team's desire for perfection. This has not been a popular
decision by some, mainly those who don't know what is being added,
but read on and I'm sure you'll agree it's been well worthwhile to
wait 8 weeks for. Remember, this is aiming to be the premier F1
racing simulation for a long time to come, so it's got to last.

So what's new? Well, the team have been working on the following areas....

Improved AI : Being one of the most important areas of a simulator,
AI can really make or break a game and, as such, is being constantly
tested and improved. If you saw and liked GP2 at the recent E3 and
ECTS shows well, the AI has been even further improved since then.
Rumoured ground-breaking features such as backmarkers moving over for
the leaders are implemented which should make for not only better
racing, but a better sense of "being there" in real F1 racing. Even
the Microprose test drivers find this feature awesome, and they've
been racing for months (chorus : "lucky.......!").

Frame rates :?Since the ECTS / E3 versions, work has been ongoing in
further improving the frame rates. See later in this section for an
update on frame rate advice.

Miscellaneous bug fixes : Those who have seen earlier versions will
notice that the "drive-by" noises were sometimes a little...strange!
This was tracked down to the wrong sample being played at the wrong
speed - this and other problems have now been identified, tracked
down and shot.

TV Director mode :?Now THIS?I?like!! How often have you crashed out
of the race and sat and watched? I used to do this all the time in
F1GP. The problem was, you could only be in one car at a time, and
constantly had to flick back and forward to find good action. Well,
"TV?Director Mode" will automatically switch between various cameras,
positions and cars to give the player a tv style presentation of the
race - depending on the action. Once activated the 'director' will
automatically switch between cameras to show you the best action at
that time. This feature has now been fully implemented. As an example
of how good this looks, on the morning of the Monaco GP, the lead
tester set up a machine to run 100% race distance at Monaco using the
TV director mode. Within 10 mins he had a crowd of people around
standing watching the race and having bets on who would win! In case
you're interested, it was Coulthard (yeaaah Scotland!!).

Breakdowns :?All reliability &?mechanical failures have now been
implemented. With GP2 you can actually see what has happened to
another car, suspension failures result in the car sitting at a funny
angle, there are electrical problems, and as for engine
fires....well, over to MPS friendly test driver : "...imagine
following Damon Hill around the track. Just as you're about to give
up and settle for 2nd - you notice greyish white smoke coming from
the rear of his car. Closing up - you watch Hill struggle around the
next series of bends and, as he exits the final corner, the rear of
the Williams-Renault suddenly becomes engulfed in red and yellow
flames....The once white smoke now changes into a thick black cloud
which covers the road ahead....". Glad you waited...?! There is also
the possibility of "partial failures" - all breakdowns happen in
stages, so it is possible to have a "crippled" car without being out
of the race. Sorry for the sketchy details on this, but this is being
worked upon even as I write this!

Linked racing :?The ability to race with or without CCs has been
added, as well as more qualifying options etc.

Cheating inhibtors (!)?: Always a problem in simulators. There are
always those who will simply "straight-line" a chicane to save
several seconds. In GP1 we had Trev Kellaway's utilities which marked
a lap as illegal if any grass was touched, and Papyrus have put walls
around the chicanes to totally prohibit driving through them. As
usual, Geoff has his own elegant "no-compromise" solution, made
possible with the 3D engine of GP2. To deter people from leaving the
circuit, of course the 3D nature of the kerbs will upset the car's
handling, and at speed will launch the car into the air - with
indestructible mode turned off, landing after a heavy fall will now
result in car damage.?Good.....<g>

The '94 "plank" :?While the "plank wear" has always been part of the
game, there wasn't actually a plank to be seen! Now the bottom of the
cars have been texture mapped to include a plank.

Tyre wear :?As we enjoyed from Trev K's fantastic F1GP utilities, a
cockpit message "Tyres Worn" has been added, to inform the player of
badly worn tyres.

<Picture: Exhaust flare>

New Graphics :?Exhaust 'flares' have been added, with two little
flames appearing from the rear of cars as they change gear.

Physics changes :?Height restrictions and modified gravity effects
have been implemented to keep the "flight model" realistic if you
should be crazy enough to go wheel to wheel with Jean Alesi. Chocks
away....!

Weather?:?The weather options we saw in F1GP will not be a feature of
GP2. This was planned to be included, but would take too long to be
implemented, delaying the arrival of GP2 by an unnaceptable amount of
time.

Some other things people have been asking about which are not
implemented in GP2 are parade laps, safety car, "marbles" and tyre
marks left on the road from wheel locking. The CPU power and
development time for these has been used elsewhere (which is not a
bad thing depending upon your point of view).

A final word on the "Data Logger" which should be of interest to the
hotlappers among us. As already reported, GP2 allows an entire lap to
be saved out which is useful for submitting "hotlaps". This "hotlap
file" not only contains an entire replay of the lap which people can
view, it also contains all of the ".PRF" data on speed, gearshifts,
rpm, throttle opening, braking, wheelspin, suspension movement - you
name it! It does not however, contain setup info, keeping those
super-secret hotlap setups safe from prying eyes! This data can then
be loaded into the Performance Analyser, and compared directly with
data from your own fastest lap to see where time is gained or last
(very similar to Steve Pritchard's excellent "GPAnalyser" program).
As with Steve's GPa, the data can also be overlaid onto a map of the
circuit for easier reference - see the Picture Gallery for more info
on the Performance Analyser.

<Picture: Eau Rouge!!!>

The Update A lot has been mentioned about plans for an update disk
following the initial release, MPS have been quoted as committing
December as a release date. Well, there are no firm plans for an
update disk, other than the team want to do one. The release date is
certainly not fixed, nor even the subject of the update. It could be
1996 season update, could be networking, Wireplay support, a
combination of the above or something completely different.

The only plan at the moment is that Geoff will take a very well
earned rest after GP2 is completed, and after that opinions will be
collated and the direction of the update will be decided from there.

Questions
Below are some of the questions we have received about GP2 - we will
endeavour to answer any questions you have, and are indebted to
Microprose and particularly the long-suffering Phil McDonnell for all
of their help.

?Will F1 style "split times" be incorporated in Grand Prix 2?
?Grand Prix 2 does indeed have split times. At 3 points on the
circuit, your split time will be displayed along with a gap
indicator. Eg. +2.000 or -0.003

?Will there be additional flags in GP2, oil, overtaking, black flag etc??
?No, GP2 will have the same green and yellow flags as F1GP - Flag
Marshalls look a lot nicer though!

?When F1 cars go "off-road", the tires will lose grip or possibly be
ruined. Will this be in GP2?
?To a certain extent, this does happen. After spinning in gravel or
going off-road, your tyres will experience a loss of grip for a short
time. However, this will not be severe enough to ruin the tyre.

?Will Grand Prix 2 work in Windows 95 ?
?Strictly speaking, yes - but it is a DOS based program. To run under
Windows 95 will require 16Mb RAM as opposed to the 8Mb minimum
required for DOS. With 16Mb, Win95 operation is possible although not
recommended as optimum frame rates and game performance will be
achieved in true DOS.

?In 1994, traction control was banned. Will GP2 feature traction
control as we saw in F1GP?
?GP2 does have a feature known as "throttle help" which is one of the
driver aids which can be enabled to ease beginners into the game.
This helps the player control the rear wheel spin and although it
does help your performance, it's not classified as traction control
as such. While it would be easy to disable that, F1 cars are
difficult to drive and to have the option is important for people
learning.

Game Speed
One of, or possibly the only criticism levelled at Grand Prix 2 has
been the concern over the frame rate, and the level of equipment
needed to run it. These things are still being tweaked and enhanced,
with new versions of the game being issued frequently, but the
threshold at the moment seems to be around the P-75 / P-90 level.
P-75 and below will run the VGA version "smoothly" (16-17fps) with
high detail. A?P-90 and above can begin to look at SVGA running with
reduced texturing. This situation is not dissimilar to ...

read more »

I have had GREAT service from Thrustmaster.  I wrote them needing two pots
and two springs for my T2.  They sent them within three days, free of
charge.

Keep trying...

Michael Day

: All this and more can be found at

[SNIP SNIP SNIP]

It's all well and good to spread the news.  However, this was bad ethics
and illegal.  The entire posting was a copy of the story from Sim Racing
News which was copyrighted by  John Wallace, Sim Racing News 1996.

Maybe the poster didn't know this, but if his information didn't come
from Sim Racing News but from the source he points to (which I snipped)
someone's is likely to lose their AOL account.

--
**************************** Michael E. Carver *************************
     Upside out, or inside down...False alarm the only game in town.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=<[ /./.  [-  < ]>=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

: All this and more can be found at

: http://members.aol.com/ARobe85580/home.html

It's all well and good to spread the news.  However, this was bad ethics
and illegal.  The entire posting was a copy of the story from Sim Racing
News which was copyrighted by  John Wallace, Sim Racing News 1996.

By posting the above site info, it would appear that this information
came from this site.  When it's real source is Sim Racing News:
        http://sneezy.dcn.ed.ac.uk/simnews/index.htm
        http://www.math.ohio-state.edu/~harmon/simnews  (U.S. Mirror)

Please be more careful with copyrighted material in the future.

BTW:  I am in no way connected with Sim Racing News.

--
**************************** Michael E. Carver *************************
     Upside out, or inside down...False alarm the only game in town.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=<[ /./.  [-  < ]>=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

But what is the problem if it is not being "published", WWW or
Usenet are surely the same sort of medium. I asked a while back in a
thread started by John Wallace if the text version of his reviews
could be posted or made available via FTP for those of us who have no
WWW access and got no reply. I for one am grateful to have seen the
posting from Michael Carver and would also like to compliment John
Wallace on a most informative review (sans pictures but never mind!!).

Al

BTW, the # is (503)639-3200

--------------
Michael Kirton

: I will try to get the ftp information and post here later.  I just tried
: to access their web page with lynx, but can't get to the ftp info.

It does look like the "publishers" of Sim Racing News are not being kind
to people without WWW access.  If your ISP has a unix shell and has lynx
installed you should be able to download the last 2 issues via the
following URLs:

US site:
        http://www.math.ohio-state.edu/~harmon/simnews/96jun.zip
        http://www.math.ohio-state.edu/~harmon/simnews/96may.zip

UK site:
        http://sneezy.dcn.ed.ac.uk/simnews/96jun.zip
        http://sneezy.dcn.ed.ac.uk/simnews/96may.zip

If any of you SRN people are listening, could please make your issues
available via regular anonymous ftp?  You have a great magazine, lets
spread it around.

--
**************************** Michael E. Carver *************************
     Upside out, or inside down...False alarm the only game in town.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=<[ /./.  [-  < ]>=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Al

...or those who _have_ access to WWW.

Forcing people to use a frames capable browser pisses me off quite
a lot.

                                -TPP

writes

Hi Tero,

Forcing me to write two different versions pisses me off quite a lot
too!  Either each person can download an improved browser ONCE, or I
have to sit and rewrite EVERY page EVERY month to accomodate those whose
browsers can't handles tables, frames, forms and other features.

Sorry Tero, but I think you'll agree that it is asking too much for us
to write Sim Racing News TWICE every month - it is enough work doing it
once!

Just wanted to explain the reasons why - Thanks for your understanding,

Cheers!
John

                     _________________________________
         __    _____|                                 |_____    __
________|  |__|    :|           John Wallace          |     |__|  |________

  \    :|  |::|    :|        Team WW Racing TSW       |     |::|  |     /
    >  :|  |::|    :|_________________________________|     |::|  |   <
  /    :|__|::|____/       * Sim Racing News *         \____|::|__|     \
/______:/  \::/ http://sneezy.dcn.ed.ac.uk/simnews/index.htm \::/  \._____\
               http://www.math.ohio-state.edu/~harmon/simnews

Heh heh...sorry John, I had to.. :)

At any rate, keep doing what you're doing...the SRN is a fantastic piece of
work, and one of the better uses of Frames I've seen.  Well organized, great
content, and downloadable, too.

I don't know what it's like not having a frames-capable browser, but if this
sort of feedback is an indication, I don't want to know.  Tell 'em to
get Netscape!

Neil
--
Meek and obedient you follow the leader
down well trodden corridors into the valley of steel..

       Neil Yeatman, Ajax, Ontario, CANADA

And anybody able to get to these newsgroups should be able to download
the zipped version of their 'zine. If you need the ftp address, post
and I'll try to dig it up.

I can't stand frames... any site that uses them tends to lose me
within one minute. they make me feel claustraphopic- they just don't
let go! They look pretty, but they are problematic, in my opinion.

What does annoy me is that frames just don't seem to be a very good
user interface enhancement for WWW browsing. Or at least, none of the
implementations I've seen so far have managed to persuade me that the
addition of frames is any advantage over a non-framed site.

--
Thomas Beagle