rec.autos.simulators

Professional racing simulations exist since many years and are already much
more accurate than the Papyrus game engine.  Those units almost cost in the
million dollars, and are much more accurate than the GPL game engine will
ever be.  I've personally seen articles on this, and those simulators run on
SUN Microsystem computers and feature incredible telemetry and aerodynamic
physics.  I doubt there is a place for Papyrus in this market, but I
wouldn't be surprised neither if the company did non-public projects
sometime in their history.

--
-- Fran?ois Mnard <ymenard>
-- May the Downforce be with you...

"People think it must be fun to be a super genius, but they don't realise
how hard it is to put up with all the idiots in the world."

: Professional racing simulations exist since many years and are already much
: more accurate than the Papyrus game engine.  Those units almost cost in the
: million dollars, and are much more accurate than the GPL game engine will
: ever be.  I've personally seen articles on this, and those simulators run on
: SUN Microsystem computers and feature incredible telemetry and aerodynamic
: physics.

  Where do you get your information from on this?  I really doubt the
existance of such things.  In two of the best funded forms of
motorsport, F1 and CART we know that drivers _don't_ use such things
because they actually use game products to learn tracks.  I expect
NASCAR drivers would try to chew the computer or something so which
form of motor sport is actually building these simulators?

  Are you sure you're not confusing their CFD simulations and
strategy simulations with race simulations?  These are very different
things.  When your GP commentator talks about GP teams running "race
simulations" he doesn't mean they've got some super GPL game and drive
round - they just have a model which estimates fuel consumption, tyre
wear and so on to work out the good pit stop strategies.

--
Richard G. Clegg     Only the mind is waving
Dept. of Mathematics (Network Control group) Uni. of York.

www: http://manor.york.ac.uk/top.html

They do exist and there are quite a number of millitairy/commercial
simulator companys around. One thing though. Graphics dont mean a lot to
these guys, ive seen an accurate f1 sim and the cars had less polys than
world grand prix.

I seriously doubt that would sell much in the games market.

-ilmore

: They do exist and there are quite a number of millitairy/commercial
: simulator companys around.

  Means nothing - the budget for a military jet is much larger than the
budget for an F1 team.  The military has top notch sims to train pilots.
If the F1 world has them then it doesn't use them to train drivers.
(You ever heard a driver talk about it?  Me either - I've heard drivers
talking about using play station games to learn tracks though).

: One thing though. Graphics dont mean a lot to
: these guys, ive seen an accurate f1 sim and the cars had less polys than
: world grand prix.

  What _exactly_ have you seen?  I suspect that you've seen some old
print out of the design modelling.  I really don't believe that F1
companies develop sit in sims for their cars.  I think you're confusing
a whole lot of reasons that race teams have to develop computer models
of their cars with the idea that they are designing actual sims of
racing - a very different proposal.

--
Richard G. Clegg     Only the mind is waving
Dept. of Mathematics (Network Control group) Uni. of York.

www: http://manor.york.ac.uk/top.html

Now THERE'S the mystery of the ages! If you ever find out, let the rest
of us know!

BB

Although written as a "Dear Papyrus" post, it was to my mind designed as
discussion topic for the group.

I don't believe Harjan intended it to be the definitive suggestion, but a
collection of ideas that perhaps could be developed within the newsgroup.

Otherwise an awful lot of posts to this group could be regarded as "pretty
much a waste of time"

Cheers

Tony

What is to be developed?  We have been down this road many
times, we want GPL engine based games, most of us are willing
to pay extra to get it.  End of story, now go tell Sierra.

If half of the posts on this forum (or any other forum) that dealt
with GPL2, ICR3, N4 or any other future Papyrus game were
actually directed to Sierra through the proper channels we might
actually see some results.  Commiserating with one another
is fine, but if you never take that additional step of asking
Sierra to give you what you want then you don't really have
a leg to stand on when you never get it.

Buy another copy of GPL, send Sierra email, volunteer to become
a beta tester of motorsport games and work in lack of realistic
physics in your feedback, volunteer your time to a GPL addon
project!

 - George

But Im talking about Formula 1 here.  You can agree that the step in
technology and surrounding material is much, much larger.  A F1 budget for
the top teams is over a hundred million dollars almost, compared to a CART
Team (basing my facts on the Players team) who is around 5-6million per car.
I know personally that the Players Team in CART has a very powerfull
simulation for telemetry and they use it to test their new chassis during
the season.  And this was in their press release information from 1999.

Not at all.  There was a show in Discovery Canada about this.  It included
even an interview with a Papyrus person, it was around 2years ago, I think
it was "Beyond 2000" it was called.  They showed at this time the Tyrell
team (I think?) hard working on their telemetry output from the newest
version of the chassis they modeled in their simulator to know how it would
react in racing conditions.  It is more a tool that is used by the engineers
than the drivers.

Not to say the Papyrus game engine is not good, au contraire, but there is
in existence professional telemetry simulations that are incredibly accurate
and will never be released to the public.

--

-- Fran?ois Mnard <ymenard>
-- May the Downforce be with you...

"People think it must be fun to be a super genius, but they don't realise
how hard it is to put up with all the idiots in the world."

     Thanks for finally shedding some intelligent light on this topic.  I've
been following this thread from the beginning,and one can see from the
various posts who has business experience and who is still taking business
101.

     I believe it was Harjan who said that he and most of us would be more
than willing to pay 2 to 3 times the going rate for a sim the quality of
GPL. Well,that wouldn't come close to the numbers that Sierra is looking
for. I believe Nas2 sold more than a million copes as did GP2. So at $50 per
sim that comes to $50,000,000. GPL only sold 40,000 copies,so each person
would have to pay $1250 per copy,not $150 per copy. Big difference. At $150
for 40,000 copies they would have only grossed $6,000,000,so they would be
in the red by $42,000,000.

     Then there was a post suggesting that we all sign a up at a web site to
demonstrate to Sierra our commitment. And he was only looking for 10,000
signatures. Well,what about the other 30,000 who purchased gal. Show them
500,000 legit signatures,and maybe you might be getting somewhere.

     So lets just drop this silly dumb ass thread and move on.

Joel Willstein

The point is collaboration - either Harjan writes a lone post to Sierra or
if he can stir up enough interest that a significant group of people do so
then the potential influence is much higher.

I do think we are agreed that there probably isn't sufficient numbers to
make a difference - but that doesn't invalidate asking the question in the
first place.

Out of this thead came the suggestion of setting up a web site to collect
names & suggestions & then go to Sierra. Some form of user group that
perhaps could be recognised by Sierra as a positive step rather than having
a collection of individual mails to do something with would be beneficial.

If it could be run by someone known to us & to Sierra - all the better, then
we could have respect on both sides.

Cheers

Tony

OK

Mark
Reading, UK

In other words don't go attaching your logic to what another
person writes.  I wrote that posting messages directed towards
companies on R.A.S is a waste of time unless you also send
those messages through the appropriate company managed
channels.  You seem to think that was being too harsh since
a message entitled "PAPY: Please read" wasn't really directed
towards Papyrus.  Am I missing something here?

 - George

I get a lot of manuals for gear in PDF form. It works quite well.

PS Hire Geoff Crammond and I'd double my outlay. :-)

--
Mark Jeangerard
www.soundchaserweb.com
New Mexico USA

George M. Smiley wrote

Ok George, at a literal level you are quite right. Maybe I read more into
the intention & felt maybe something positive came out of the thread. This
may of course have been more by good luck than intention.

I still believe some form of co-ordinated group has more to offer than a
collection of individuals.

Go on Harjan, tell me you mailed this to Papy & copied it to the group -
otherwise I just have to stand up & say I was wrong (gulp) :)

Cheers

Tony

Forgive me for being a completely ignorant of business but, are you saying
it would cost $50,000,000 to produce the game? Or would that be the ol'
greed sneakin' in? If it's unbusinesslike to let your commercial profits pad
your racing interests then who needs business?

Agreed. BTW Let's say, just for the sake of exploration, you were assigned
to have your team create one smoking sim biannually. One that wouldn't take
a loss necessarily, but wasn't focused on profit. How would you go about it?

So far, I've learned from this thread that a sim is not going to take place
on it's own. The only people with resources to create one would be a large
company. Which brings me back to the original post.

--
Mark Jeangerard
www.soundchaserweb.com
New Mexico USA