rec.autos.simulators

My biggest complaint involves a few hosts that think they are in "Offline
mode" and restart the server whenever they crash out or are having a bad
run!  I've run VROC and never to my knowledge been booted because the host
had a bad run.  Perhaps this is due to dedicated servers on VROC?  Or just
the quality/class of the individuals.

Since purchasing my copy of N3 Wednesday I have been flamed numerous times
by numerous individuals for nothing more than being in wrong place at wrong
time.  Usually warp generated, (not always though, mistakes happen).

In the months since I've been on VROC I have not had any controversies or
flame wars for any reasons!  Why would you suppose this is?  The TEN
mentality?  More racers? Closer racing? or just a lame physics engine that
requires so little skill from the driver that whenever a mistake is made a
war erupts?

Beyond these issues I would also like to voice my opinion of N3.

Sierra/Papy can add all of the "eye candy" they want, but it's still N1/N2
(un-believably boring).  Even Indy can't help this title.  Perhaps if N3
came out prior to GPL I would look differently at this situation.  In my
eyes all "simmers" took a GIANT step backwards, and had to pay $50 to find
out.

Mitch Alatorre

Unhappy camper

When you do get shunted off or booted about you are almost always
greeted with an apology, not laughter and that apology is nearly
always met with a 'No Problem'.  I can not think of a more polite
online-society to date, at least not in my experiance.. maybe it's the
genre attracting an older and more mature audience? I would really
hate to see it as a class versus slob argument.  I will (against my
better judgement) be picking up N3 this evening more for the sounds
and supposedly immersive experiance and a different type of online
racing than for the fact that it's a Nas***race sim.  I can't stand
Nas***but I'm willing to support Sierra/Papyrus in hopes that they
come out with more sims, preferably a WSC type race that is
considerably better than Sports-Car GT or some other similar series.  

I have noticed some serious warping from time to time during peak
hours on VROC but usually it's taken in stride. Nothing quite like
trail braking into a hairpin from nearly 180mph only to have a car
magically appear at a dead stop 3' in front of you.  Something tells
me Jim Clark never had to deal with that!  (give or take the odd
idiotic pedestrian and a goat or three) ;)

(Joke mode on)  Maybe they accidently swallowed their dip when they
got nudged out of line?? :)

I am already expecting a physics engine well below that of GPL but
this is going more for the sounds and different tracks than pure
computing experiance.  Hopefully it isn't TOO bad..

____________________
Hydrogen and Stupidity.. The two most universal elements

Pardon me, but I ran GPL til N3 came out and people were complaining JUST
as loudly about this in GPL as you are about N3.  From my experience,
it's not as much a host restarting the event as much as it is the sim
crashing on them.  Last nite, I tried FOUR TIMES to run a race at
Talladega and each time the sim sim crashed and took me back to the
windows desktop.

I think I've discovered the problem - if there's no AI in the event, the
sim crashes.

--
=========================================================
Redneck Techno-Biker (Zerex12)
  http://www.members.home.net/jms1/index.html
Barbarian Diecast Collector (370+ cars and counting)
  http://members.home.net/jsimm/diecast_index.html
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If you want to send me email, go to the first URL shown
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Warping was TERRIBLE, and lots of complaining by certain racers throughout.
And guess what, it was still better than racing the AI.  I just hope it gets
better.

--
By the way, if you'd like to get paid to surf the net, try this link.  It's
free and it really does work.

http://www.racesimcentral.net/

Rick Sweeney

I suggest anyone who thinks N3 sucks online, try racing on Rick's server.  I
was there this Friday night, ran several races, and they were extremely
smooth and warp free.  It was like running offline.

At a Taladega race, we had a 5-car pack up front that swapped positions
repeatedly - you'd go from 2nd to 5th just like that.  It was just like real
NASCAR.  It was extremely fun.  Thanks a ton Rick!!

This was the best server I've been on, but I've been on many more good ones
than bad.  I've seen at least as good racing ettiquette from the N3 drivers
as I've seen on GPL, a very good thing considering it's only been out a few
days.  I've seen a few boneheads, a fair number of online rookies who make
mistakes, and a warp-induced accident or two.  Nothing not seen on VROC.

Compared to the laggy, warpy, 19-car pileups at Monza that usually
characterized the early days of GPL online racing though, N3 is doing very
well.  Plus, as Rick said - the racing is much closer.  Instead of waiting
for the guy in the Lotus ahead of you to spin, you have to stick to the
bumper of his Chevy for 5 laps and work your way around him.  In the
meantime there's a guy on your Pontiac's bumper trying to do the same to
you.

I think N3 is much like GPL when VROC started, everyone is trying to see how
well their machine can host - we had a LOT of people trying to host 8 guys
on a 56K during the first days of VROC, or guys who thought their cable
modem, etc., simply HAD to be able to host a full 19 cars.  As time passed,
the server ops figured out what worked and what didn't, and the guys who
simply didn't have the horsepower or bandwidth to host stopped trying to.
One thing, with the probably exponentially larger sales of N3 vs. GPL, there
will be that many more people with good connections to host.

--
Ken's Sig 3.0

"Who is the more foolish?  The fool, or the fool who follows him?" - Obi-Wan
Kenobi

Go #43 and #44!

volksy (at) geocities (dot) com
volksy (at) yahoo (dot) com

Well my predictions were true.  Stock-car racing is much more accessible to
the Mass market than a *** simulation of 1967 Formula 1.  Nascar Racing
3 has built-in online multiplayer matching servers, so it can be raced by
anybody.  You don't need to know a little the community (You only know about
VROC if you have a slight idea of the GPL community, remember) to hop in and
race online.

restrictive.  The average age was around 30.  For GPL, personally I have
never seen somebody flame a driver in the VROC channel.  GPL drivers are
almost all Gentleman and Sportsman who enjoy the fun of having the chance to
drive those beats.

Now let's go forward to N3.  It's in the nature of the sport.  There is all
those Kids who now can race for free.  Keyboard drivers who are simply not
the market of GPL and the NROS.  There is all the people using AOL who would
never be able to race the NROS/GPL online.  There is keyboard drivers.  On
the NROS those keyboard drivers are easy to find, they never have a LPI over
20.  This way you can look at the statistics for those drivers and simply
not race with them.  For GPL racing with a keyboard is impossible.

But for N3, all those type of people are unfortunately like you, in the same
place, trying to race.  Most of them have no experience.  They do not know
the morals and ethics of online racing.  Most of them will learn, but not
all.  Unfortunately we do not have a centralized chat system to learn them
about those issues.  We neither have rankings so that we can know who are
those drivers.

--
-- 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."

Isn't this the same basically? How can you tell the difference
between a crashed sim and the windows desktop? ;->

Uwe

--
Uwe Schuerkamp http://www.schuerkamp.de/
Herford, Germany (52.0N/8h30mE)
Ever wondered what's wrong with the world? http://bnetwork.com/
PGP Fingerprint:  2E 13 20 22 9A 3F 63 7F  67 6F E9 B1 A8 36 A4 61

Uwe

--
Uwe Schuerkamp http://www.schuerkamp.de/
Herford, Germany (52.0N/8h30mE)
Ever wondered what's wrong with the world? http://bnetwork.com/
PGP Fingerprint:  2E 13 20 22 9A 3F 63 7F  67 6F E9 B1 A8 36 A4 61