rec.autos.simulators

Yeah....sure thing.
You'll excuse my scepticism, I'm sure, Arthur, but we've heard it all
before.

It's one thing to be a crazily enthusiastic and hyped up spokesperson
(I'm not referring to you!)for new and exciting technology but it gets
rather tiresome after hearing the same message from the same sector for
so many years.

One day it will come, but so will nutritious junk-food, perpetual motion
and combustible fuel from water.

--
Regards,
Bruce.
----------
The GP Legends Historic Motor Racing Club  is located at:-
http://www.racesimcentral.net/

Hi All...

Been following this thread with some interest. Thought I might inject a
veiwpoint from the "Mr. Average" perspective. That is, I loved real
Nascar, saw the first Nascar Racing 1 (in '94?), bought it... got
hooked... bought more sims, upgrade my 'puter just to run sims...
race... play... crash... you get the idea. I'm not that good... but I do
have fun. (And that's the bottom line.)  Anyway, seeing as I've been
racing sims (off and on... a lot more on the off) since N1 days, and
seeing as I'm no where near "really good"... just the "Average Joe"...
figured I'd share the following:

When I first found out about "online" racing, I thought "man, that be a
lot of fun."

However, not long after discovering r.a.s. (about three years ago) I
started reading about online racing. Yep, I read the whining from
onliner's about their woes of pings, warping, latentcy problems, line
connection problems, lousy human drivers that take you out (accidentily
or otherwise), high $$ connection costs, HUGE flame wars concerning the
driving style/lack-of of certain drivers (or accusations that they're
cheating), threats of The Great Grudge Race that usually followed such
inane bantering (reminded me of two roosters trying to dare the
other...) glithes, looong hours late at night, or time-tying race
schedules, goblins, etc, etc, ad infinitum.  But for the most part,
onliners almost always say: "You offline guys just don't know what
you're missing!!"

Don't know what I'm missing?   "8^0   My conclusion: This does NOT sound
like fun.

Nope, not for me. I only race for giggles, and really have nothing I
want to prove to anyone else.  Also, I want to race when I want, how I
want, and with control over my "relaxation" situation.  I don't think I
want the "Frustration Factor" that all of the above techo-kinks could
certainly bring into my racing experience. So, racing humans could be
fun... but in addition to the techo-kinks, it also leads to the
inevitable "HE CHEATED!", or some other cry from those that feel
slighted in an incident or whatever. And that is the bottom line for me.
Racing with other humans might offer some fun, but along with the
technological problems of online racing, there is the very likely unfun
part: Dealing with emotions of humans, theirs AND mine.  

Nahh... I'll just race my CC's.

Besides, with the ability to tweak the AI, custom AI patches, etc...
I've got some mighty tough competitors to contend with.

Have fun...

Andre

I'd question "massive", but it is an improvement. Point is, so is the
offline racing we have just now and it is no better than that, worse
if anything. I like to know where my opponents are, and to win by luck
rather than latency.

Cheers!
John

  Exactly!

Good points Andre. You might be interested to know that the OnOffline solution would
eliminate warping and give other drivers NO chance to punt you off. See here if you have
not already - http://home4.swipnet.se/~w-41236/OnlineRacing.html

    As far as cheating goes, that's in the hands of the developers, another area they
cluelessly overlook IMO!

  I do.  It's great.

On Fri, 28 Aug 1998 12:01:04 -0500, Pat Dotson

Quakeworld only runs under Win95/98. The server can run under NT also
(and possibly others), but since it is going to be dishing out
information to all the clients the latency and bandwidth are
paramount. That's why they are typically run on university systems. It
doesn't take much power to run a QuakeWorld server, my clan used to
run two on a 486, but it does take a fair amount of memory and an
excellent internet connection.

It would be a good idea, primarily because it would free up all the
power of the system to manage the game (rather than driver inputs, car
physics etc). It would also allow servers to be run on high bandwidth,
low latency systems and operated remotely, rather than being limited
to home systems where few people have truly quick access.

Cheers!
John

On Fri, 28 Aug 1998 14:07:16 -0400, "David G Fisher"

The situation you describe below is very enjoyable, but in my
experience is unfortunately not typical of racing online. Most people
you meet are "win at all costs", and make crazy manoeuvres to try to
beat you. Added to that is the fact that what we are trying to
simulate is a Formula One race (or any top level motorsports event),
one where all of the drivers are from the very top drawer and
separated by 10ths of seconds. That is generally not the case online,
since people differ greatly in consistency and speed. The race often
settles down to a procession, just waiting for a mistake from someone.

Those occasions where you do get people of equal ability and have a
stonking fight more than make up for the boring races, but I find that
when people are closely matched, something silly happens (like trying
to pass around the outside of Ascari....John? :-) ), when people are
not closely matched the field spreads out.

As you say, with equal skill it's great. What will be nice in GPL is
handicapping people with different cars - the fast guys in the slow
cars and the slow guys in the fast cars. That should be fun :-)

On Fri, 28 Aug 1998 14:17:24 -0400, "David G Fisher"

Heh :-)  Nothing wrong with a bit of gamesmanship. Seriously though, I
think on the day of GPL's release the internet will be one hell of a
place to be. I fully intend a weekend of non-stop online racing.

Cheers!
John

On Fri, 28 Aug 1998 19:45:29 -0700, Eric Franzen

It's a shame I think since many people play Quake in single-player,
but I for one _only_ ever play Quake, Quake2 or Unreal online or
against bots. After a massive frantic fragathon somehow empty
corridors are unappealing.

I'd certainly still buy it if it were multi-player only, provided it
shipped with bots (like Unreal) to practice with offline.

Cheers!
John

Best platform for any QuakeWorld server for network performance and
speed is, of course, Linux.

Cheers,

Uwe

--
 Spam-proof e-mail: Uwe Schuerkamp <hoover at telemedia . de>
http://www.telemedia.de/~hoover ////// Phone: +49-5241-80-10-66
    Best of Scottish Folk: http://home.pages.de/~nsg
  >>> Blue Ribbon Campaign:  Support Free Speech on the Internet <<<

Well, it is until you fancy a game of GPL, FIFA98 or any other
software anyone cares to mention, and then you suddenly realise you do
need Microsoft after all.

Cheers!
John

I'm afraid this is only too true, John. I do have hope though that
this situation will change dramatically during the next two years,
and I believe we stand a good chance of seeing a native GPL II Linux
version. ;-)

Cheers,

Uwe

--
 Spam-proof e-mail: Uwe Schuerkamp <hoover at telemedia . de>
http://www.telemedia.de/~hoover ////// Phone: +49-5241-80-10-66
    Best of Scottish Folk: http://home.pages.de/~nsg
  >>> Blue Ribbon Campaign:  Support Free Speech on the Internet <<<

<reeling> Okay, but don't hold your breath for it! :-)

Cheers!
John

I dont agree on perpetual motion, Bruce, that will never happen, IMO :o).

/Christer, do think the posters should of altered the subject line long time ago
in this thread, cause now I've seemed to have missed a good one again :o(.
--
http://home4.swipnet.se/~w-41236/ (Read all about the "Global online
racing"-proposal under "For developers". Read it a couple of times, cause noone
has understood it the first time they've read it yet :o))