rec.autos.simulators

Arthur
Stealth Racing
http://www.***sys.com/stealthracing.html

Mike

Don Hancock
"Gunner"

Apples and oranges.

Im extremely happy that the airsim industry has great software (most of the
Jane's sim, F4.0, etc..).  But do understand that there is :

1) Bigger market for serious hard-core sims
2) More past titles in the evolution than racing

Hard-core racing sims have a smaller market than hard-core airsims.  We
understand that.  That won't change.  So in a certain way it's normal that
airsims are more evolved than on our side. But who cares ?  They have
hard-core air sims since like the early 1980's, when here the first serious
titles were Indy500 and F1GP (maybe Revs).

- Fran?ois Mnard <ymenard> Good race at the Brickyard!
- Official Mentally retarded guy of r.a.s.
- Excuse me for my English (I'm French speaking)
- NROS Nascar sanctioned Guide <NAS-Frank> http://www.nros.com/
- "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."--

I'd say the difference between F3 and F4, and Indy 500 and GPL is about the
same in terms of technological advancements.  What you have to realise is to
build a sim like F4 requires almost an entirely different development focus
than a real-time racing sim.  For example, F4 doesn't have to deal with
absolute perfection in the physics model (you'd never notice minor
glitches), and in F4 how many times are you wing-tip to wing-tip with 20
other planes such as you are with cars in GPL... and the first time one of
those cars does something wrong in GPL, there'd be numerous posts rubbishing
the AI.  In F4, are you really going to notice when a tank drives across a
lake 400 miles away??  No, but you'd notice a bad AI move 6 inches away!

I'm not saying you're wrong - in fact until GPL I was thinking the same
thing, but don't forget that the demands of the two games really couldn't be
more apart.  GPL makes great strides in closing the gap perceived between
the two technologies.  I think what most people see is the shear depth of a
game like F4 and make parallels to the racing arena.  Well, yes you'll see
deeper, more complex racing sims to come (team and pit management, realistic
weather modeling etc), but everything has a price and the price is you'll
need to keep upgrading your hardware...  now that must sound familiar to F4
pilots :-)

Mike.

Mike.

    That's what I was talking about "incremental improvements" earlier: Papy
didn't go STRAIGHT from Indy500 to GPL, I assure you...

    A very good point, indeed... But take a look at WWIIF where there are
MORE than 20 aircraft rubbing noses (though, admittedly not as close, they
ARE visible and tracked).

    I seriously doubt there's any real "slack" in the physics for either
genre. The computer's only problem may be with rounding, but I doubt it's
much of an issue for either program.

    That is pretty much exactly what I've been getting at: we'll see deeper
sims (just like the flyboys), but it WILL require heftier hardware to
operate satisfactorily.  Ohhhh... the price we pay.....  the burden we
bear....
    Those with less than a P233MMX should get nervous about N3...

Don Hancock
"Gunner"

A war is just so much more complex than a race, and a fighter jet
is so much more complex than a car.

rob.

I have this flight sim called "1942: The Pacific Air War".  This not only has
planes but ships too all being tracked.  However they arent detailed but
tracked none the less.  

Would you belive i still have that game on my HD.  I keep it simply cause its
like GPL by now.  Indy cars from the 80s!!  Actually pretty cool if you think
about it.  But i mean i got that thing like the day it came out,  and i still
have it.  Its great if you have a laptop and want to play a game on an airplane
or something.  However some laptops now could run ICR1 or N1 pretty easily.

Mike

Mike

Well, I was more trying to say "Games that were targeted as simulations".

When you people had the early Microsoft FS (From 1.0 (still it's [sic] a
sim) to 4.0), we were stuck with titles like Pole Position ;-)

Especially if you check out the end of the 80's/early 90's.  We had somehow
Indy 500 in 89 and Revs on the C64 (F1GP was out in 91 IIRC).  At that date
military airsims were already complex and you had early airsims such as Red
Baron, AW and some early Jane's sim that were very successfull and IMHO
accurate for this period of time.  Even LucasArt had more developed game
engines than racing simulator, with it's Space Sims (X-Wing is still one
heck of a product even if produced in the early 90's) and also AirSims
(Secret Missions of the Lutwaffe (not sure if this is the real title, but
close).

Im not saying they were very accurate, just more "advanced" at that time
IMHO.

- Fran?ois Mnard <ymenard> Good race at the Brickyard!
- Official Mentally retarded guy of r.a.s.
- Excuse me for my English (I'm French speaking)
- NROS Nascar sanctioned Guide <NAS-Frank> http://www.racesimcentral.net/
- "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."--