car handles differently I feel I ought to state that these are only
opinions I have come to based on my experiences with GPL and are not
being stated as fact. Therefore I think I had better qualify this
opinion by detailing those experiences first.
I bought GPL back in December of last year, but had difficulty getting
used to the cars back then, due to the fact that I was running with too
low fps. During this time I drove only the Eagle and Coventry cars,
putting in many hours with very little success - generally 5 to 6
seconds and more slower than the original lap records - and found the
cars extremely difficult to drive consistently. This eventually put me
off the game and I went back to playing my other driving sims,
periodically coming back to GPL to give it another bash but then
becoming quickly disheartened and putting it back on the shelf for
another week or so.
Eventually in May I decided to find out what other users were saying
about this sim, by subscribing to r.a.s, and based on info gleaned from
this ng changed various settings to improve my frame rate and discover
the wonders of this excellent game. Suddenly the cars, this being the
Eagle and Coventry, were controllable and consistently so too, and
during the next 2/3 weeks I just drove these 2 cars using the default
setups. My lap times improved, but were still 3+ seconds off those lap
records though. :-(
I was now putting in a regular 15+ hours a week on this game, and have
managed to do so more or less ever since, and in early June decided that
I would go through a whole Championship season, beginning at 'novice'
race distance, with each car in turn, in the same order as they are
listed in the selection screen. Then depending upon how well I did
extend the race distance with the next car.
Unfortunately, I cannot remember too much about the first car - the
Brabham - but when I moved on to the BRM I could suddenly 'feel' when
the car was going to break loose at the rear. I also adopted a few car
setup changes that also seemed to help with the handling of the car and
my PBs improved again. :-)
At the end of my season with the BRM I moved on to the Coventry at
Intermediate/short and was able to use the same setup changes on this
car and improve my PBs at all circuits again. I was now getting pretty
near those original lap records now.
Since then I have taken the same setup changes onto the Eagle, Ferrari
and now the Lotus, and I am now racing at Pro/short race distance. In
each case I have been able to drive those cars in the same style and
with the same confidence around each circuit as with the previous cars.
I have also improved on my lap times at each circuit with each new car,
though less so when I went from the Eagle to the Ferrari where the
Eagle's extra speed prevented me from improving my times at the faster
circuits.
In fact, the 'feel' of the Coventry, Eagle, Ferrari and Lotus didn't
seem much different. Yet after reading the book 'Four Wheel Drift' by
Steve Smith, that comes with the game, which I have done twice by the
way, I was expecting quite a noticable difference in handling for these
4 cars. However I was able to go from one to the next and so on, making
the same setup changes, and drive these cars without having to learn how
the cars handle. In fact since driving the Lotus for the first time in
my current championship season I have successfully set PBs at every
circuit that I have raced at, within half a dozen laps of practice. The
car just doesn't seem to handle any differently to the other cars, and
hence no learning curve required to get good times out of the car.
The only differences that I have noticed are the weight of the car
during direction changes, and the power of the cars. That's why the BRM
is noticably different - because it is so much heavier than the other
cars and therefore the weight transference is quite different from the
other cars. However, with the other cars, their weights are quite
similar and so I assume that's why there seems to be no handling
difference under braking, cornering, accelerating etc, although of
course with acceleration this will vary according to the power to weight
ratio of the car in question.
So my conclusion, as far as the cars' modelling is concerned, is that
what you have here are the physics handled at each wheel is the same for
each car, with the only difference on that physics being affected by the
power of the car, ie its grunt, and the weight of the car as it moves
around under acceleration, braking, cornering etc. That's why I noticed
a difference with the BRM compared to the other cars, because each wheel
finds it more difficult to shift that weight around under those varying
conditions, whereas with the other cars weight being similar the weight
transference is similar and hence the cars respond similarly. If there
is any other physics being handled it is so slight as to be unnoticable.
As I stated at the beginning, these are only opinions as only Papyrus
would know for sure, but it would be interesting to hear what other guys
think, and don't get me wrong, in the last couple of months I have
hardly touched my other driving sims as GPL is without doubt the best
one around.
Thanks for your time.
--
Peter Ives