rec.autos.simulators

I bought this game yesterday, played it all day, and this morning,
decided I had had enough, and put the game away in the cupboard,
probably never to be played again.  I would like to list some of
features and annoyances about the game:

Monaco is a buzz on a lap of your own, the graphics are very fast and
look very impressive.  I'm running a Cyrix 686-200, 80mb ram, Diamond
Monster 3d, the problem is when running with other cars around you the
frame rate slows down to point of unplayability.  You just cannot
control the car.  The other tracks do not look too great an
improvement over GP2, even with 3dfx, and I thinks the cars have
poorer detail.

The menus are slow and poor (I have made a full installtion).  There
is no intuitive feel about them.  It is ridiculous that you cannot
edit the driver names.   Villenueve is refered to as driver x, YOU
CANNOT CHANGE IT!!!!.  You have to drive as Eddie Irvine or Damon
Hill, not yourself.  

Using the Tag Heuer timing TV presentation is good, gives a nice feel,
and the starting grid sequence of moving along the cars and showing
the grid position and times is a very nice touch.  But once the race
starts, and your getting 3 - 4 frames a second whilst the other cars
are around you (and thats with the sky turned off), it becomes a waste
of time.

The sound is horrible.  The engine honestly sounds as if somebody
where trying to imitate a renault engine on a flute, this totaly
destroys the sensation of driving an f1 car.  The skids sounds do not
seem to be proportional to the loss of traction, again you lose the
feel of the drive.  

The car physics are not quite arcade feel, but are definately not GP2.
The manual describes setup cures for oversteer, understeer, pitch and
roll, but I've experienced none, so how do I cure it!  And yes I have
the realistic option on.

All in all, it has some nice touches, but there outweighed by the bad
points, nice presentation but horrible driving experience.  If I was
you I would save your money!

John Dixon

I agree with you that it is unplayable in a race, which is a real
shame as the car handling is pretty realistic I thought, I always
found GP2 far too sensitive on the brakes. I thought the game had
great depth (even if the menus are a little odd), so its a real shame
its ***to race which is the whole point after all!

Licensing issue, Ubisoft would have had to pay Villeneuve for using his
name in the game. Not a biggie IMO, I care more about the actual
gameplay.

Sorry, but some of us have Intel CPUs with better floating point
performance! ;^)

I just raced a race in the rain at Monaco and while it's quite slugish
at the start, it was great during the race. The lesser visibility
increases the performance but the looks of the scenery is just breath-
taking...

You are comparing the graphics of GP2 and F1RS? You ran GP2 in hires?
With all options on? I didn't think so! And still you don't see
improvements? What shall I say...

Agreed, that sucks...

snip

I think it pretty much sounds like the sound during tv coverage.

It's at least on par with GP2 physics...

l8er
ronny

--
          |\      _,,,---,,_        I want to die like my Grandfather,
   ZZZzz /,`.-'`'    -.  ;-;;,_              in his sleep.
        |,4-  ) )-,_. ,\ (  `'-'     Not like the people in his car,
       '---''(_/--'  `-'\_)            screaming their heads off!

In hotlap mode the game is very frustrating, handling is "oh so close"
to being right but the car constantly feels nervous and unable to be
driven with anything like the assurance of the CCs - this may change
with time. In race mode it is _supersmooth_, even with all CCs on
track, and the e***ment of racing somehow masks the infuriating
things about the driving model. CCs are pretty aggressive, especially
Alesi who is truly a nutter. All in all quite fun to race.

Looks like we now have CPR which is great fun for hotlapping but ***
in a race, and F1RS which is infuriating when hotlapping but great in
a race :-)  So who is going to put the two together? CPR with the
patch? Dave and the Papyrus gang with Grand Prix Legends? The
perennial "Dark Horse" of Geoff Crammond, maybe lurking in the pits
and maybe with GP3 tucked away on a hard disk?

Cheers!
John

PS - No comments on F1RS yet, I'm still playing around and getting a
feel for it, as I did with CPR. Below are my first thoughts (which
I've been trying and failing to e-mail to Marc Nelson, so Marc, if
you're listening, here they are...!!) if they're of use to anyone -
comments welcomed...

---------------------

I've been messing around with this since last Thursday. Have to say
I'm a bit underwhelmed by it so far. Graphics are gorgeous without a
doubt, the fog, rain and smoke effects are truly stunning. A lot of
detail is there, the wide flat rumble strip leading onto the main
straight in Canada, the Ferris wheel in Japan, lots of little things
like that. Unfortunately an equal amount is missing - the massive
camber leading onto the main straight at Interlagos, ANY kind of
elevation at all at Suzuka - the place is totally flat, what the heck
is that all about?

I've given myself four days now to like the driving, and like XCAR and
CPR it is close, but lacking the proverbial cigar. The throttle is
notchy, leaping from idle to full power, steering is similar. The car
understeers all to hell, even with massive amounts of front wing
stacked on, softened front springs etc, and then leaps wildly from
understeer to oversteer when trying to balance. No amount of playing
with control configurations or setup will cure this, so I'm wondering
if it's supposed to be like that. Sounds are awful, really
sub-standard compared to the graphics. The noises of the plank rubbing
and the tyres sliding in the rain are very disappointing. Engine is
beyond annoying, a high pitch scream, and the noises in the menu get
tiresome too - they can't be switched off unless you tuen off the
noises of the other cars and your own tyres! Nice one.....

I'm still working on this, and will give it quite a while longer
before I make up my mind on it (as I did with CPR), but like CPR it is
a chore to work on this sim and try to like it, unlike my first
faltering steps with Indycar2 and GP2 where I had to be dragged
kicking and screaming from the computer :-)

More later...

Cheers!
John

Its amazing how many different experiences we are having with F1RS

My first impression was very poor - the handling way off the pace with
terrible understeer, the throttle like a switch.

But after messing around with the controller sensitivity, bolting on loads
of front wing compared to the back, stiffening the rear springs & dampers
and putting in rear brake bias it transoformed the handling.

I would now say that F1RS is my favourite handling sim - and to me feels
the most realistic - possible to balance the car on the throttle, twitchy
under braking (but controllable) and feels like you are balancing a high
powered machine (i.e. care with applying power required).

The great thing for me is that mistakes with applying too much power,
braking too late generally result in lost time rather than always falling
off - which I find more realistic - there is more scope to control the
error if you are quick enough.

I spent a long time on GP2 but never achieved this feeling - this sim
allows you to set up for slow (springs/dampers etc) & fast corners
(primarily aerodynamics) which again I never achieved with GP2 (getting
slow corners right would wreck the fast corner setup).

I know a lot of people did achieve this with GP2, but I can only relate my
own experience.

I believe we need to tune sims to our controller setups, as well as driving
styles and that F1RS is the most sensitive to this controller tuning.

Also F1RS probably comes with the worst default setup of any sim so far!

Persevere!

Tony

Yep, total agreement here...! Work is needed, but with perseverance it
gets better and better.

Cheers!
John

I use an AMD 233 and it is smooth. I don't even get the stutters other
people have mentioned when all the cars are taking that first corner
in front of you.
Steve W

John,

Swap your chip!

Also, if you genuinely cannot see an improvement over the detail in F1GP2
you may also need an eye-test.

A colleague & I have just finished playing this over a LAN on 2 PII 266 with
Orchid R3D cards and it was a blast. Not a hint of slowdown (not even the
first corner of Monaco).

Regards
DM

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