rec.autos.simulators

Please consider my thoughts, and bring us good CART, OLD F1, Modern F1 and
Nascar sims.
Please don't waste your talents.

Chris

Why go for the small niche market? Kaemmer and Cassidy should be looking at
the huge market that is formular 1.  Thats were the the money is, surely the
teams must have some interests in simulators. From the inside it would be
much easier to get the licences needed and a commercial product would just
be a by product without the need to appeal to the masses to pay for itself.

 Todd.

Are you sure?  We haven't seen it in any other Papyrus simulation, so its
hard to judge how hard or not it is for the general *** market.

Don't now that you have to make the underlying physics engine easier.
However, adding to the game the ability to make it more scalable would be a
good benefit in the market because then its more approachable by the general
*** mass [the game also has to be of an era/racing genere that appeals to
the general *** mass too...F1, Nascar, CART, dirt track, go-karts,
Trans-Am.  Anything thats highly visible or highly recongized or
participated in by many in the *** market] but yet still quite
challenging for those who want it.

Everything maybe but the collision detection system. ;)

Again, thats not really Papyrus' call.  You'd have to convince the Sierra
brass that the niche market would buy enough copies to offset the
development costs of the game.  GPL spent approx. 3 years in the making and
I have no idea on the figures of the development costs.  But nonetheless,
games are in the millions of dollars for development costs and Sierra wants
to recoup those dollars and make money to fund additional games, line their
pockets, etc.  They, nor Papyrus are not a non-profit organization.

True sim racer?  Being elitist?  Heh.  However, there is a point.  I know
many folks would be more than willing to pay a higher price for a high
quality product.  But then again, that product would really have to be
outstanding and be upgradeable with a much longer life span than current
crops of games.

Again, it has to appeal to the mass market, even if it is hard.  CART, F1,
Nascar, sports cars, Muscle car era would be more appropriate in the US,
etc.  GPL era cars won't cut it, except for a niche group of folks.

Harjan,

An excellent Post. And one that I am in complete agreement with.  I am in
software development and I know how much a piece of software can cost.  I
would suspect the a Nascar with the physics engine would cost millions to
produce.

If there were 10,000 *** SIMmers out there, that were willing to pay
$150 US for it, it would be sales of 1.5 Million dollars.  My question is:
"Is that enough?".

I have an idea.  I would like to make a web site that is an "electonic
petition" that says something like, by adding your name here, you are
telling Papyrus that you would purchase Nascar/CART/F1 SIMS which use the
GPL physics engine for up to ???? dollars.

What do you think.   I'd like to see if we could get over 10,000 names on
it.

Dean

I dont mind the hard to drive part someone of us just don't like that type
of racing, Stockcar racing is the only racing sim I will buy, not because
gpl is hard to drive but because its not as close racing as stockcar racing
is.  I think stockcar racing is more exciting side by side racing

Robert

Sent via Deja.com http://www.racesimcentral.net/
Before you buy.

IMHO, they made a mistake when they did not allow, by default, the
possibility of racing against the trainer and advanced trainer cars.  We
could only lap alone (boring) until later when it was made public
through R.A.S. and SpyBoy (thanks to the Barlow's and Seery's and others
) that by a simple editing of a file, you could race off or online
against a field full of trainer (F3) and advanced trainer (F2), which
were , for me anyway, much easier to grasp and learn from.  Racing from
the start the F1's made me frustrated.  But since I'm an avid F1 fan, I
stuck to it.  Many did not, hence GPL's false reputation that it is too
hard. Its not too hard, just more advanced than the N3's and others.

My fear with having the GPL engine used for other era or genre of
autoracing is that we could dilute a product that's already in need of
more fans.  Just look at races on Spy; lots of servers but not many
racers in them.

Have a nice day GPL'ing and thanks for reading my post.

Robert =:-D

Sent via Deja.com http://www.racesimcentral.net/
Before you buy.

[...]

I hate to break it to you, but Papyrus lost the ability to
self publish titles when they were acquired by Sierra
in 1995 and then integrated into Sierra Sports.

'Papyrus' is nothing more than a design group in a
large multinational corporation, Papyrus answers to
Sierra Sports, Sierra Sports answers to Sierra Core
Games, Sierra Core Games answers to Sierra which
in turn reports to Havas Interactive which in turn is
part of Vivendi Communications.  They have some
measure of independence but I'm afraid that doesn't
extend to the type of suggestions you make and
given the ongoing refocus on profitability at Sierra
I don't see your ideas being meet with much
enthusiasm.  From a purely business point of
view the market has spoken.

Lastly, posting your opinion on what direction the
company should go next on a public newsgroup
is pretty much a waste of time, they have
mechanisms set up for that type of thing and
I suggest you use them.  In other words cut,

 - George

Not an....... Oh forget it, why do I even bother.

I think the only way to make this niche market large enough to be
worthwhile is with an "open architecture" sim. That is, like Quake 2,
where users are free to create new cars/tracks and so on.

Big mistake there. You need shelf space on retail stores. There aren't
that many people purchasing from the web yet (compared to retail).

Joe McGinn
==========================================
Staff Writer for the Sports *** Network
http://www.racesimcentral.net/***.com/
==========================================

Joe McGinn
==========================================
Staff Writer for the Sports *** Network
http://www.racesimcentral.net/***.com/
==========================================

Joe McGinn
==========================================
Staff Writer for the Sports *** Network
http://www.racesimcentral.net/***.com/
==========================================

Jeff