rec.autos.simulators

Thanks for the in-depth review Alison.

I'd like to take a moment to respond.

Since there are many (many) people enjoying CPR right now I would
guess (and our customer support logs confirm) that many of
the quirks you describe appear to be unique to your system - and you have
simply
missed features that address some (but not all) of your complaints.

"Random frame rate generator" - new one on me - and I have been here on ras
since the
release. The NG has been extremely vocal - but this one has never come up.
Framerates
obviously vary according to how much work is going on, but it is consistent
in consistent situations.

"How do you sort out the chasis?" - try a Test Session (in the garage
screen)

"Excellent" Default Setups. In their early advertising, Microsoft made much
of how "unlike other sims, CPR comes with excellent setups." - can you show
me where you saw this? We have _never_ claimed the defaults were good -
average at best. See any of my earlier FAQ postings on this.

"Popup control problems" are unique to your video card and drivers - they
work.
Like your "random frame rate" problem - you should run in software rendering
mode
to test the program itself without your hardware config problems masking the
true cause.

"Brake bias" keys are fine tuning - try the "Brake Proportioning" slider in
the garage.

"OS corruption"? - I think we'd have heard about this one by now if it was
for real.

However, you have identified some items that have been described by others
and
are being addressed in the patch - namely:-

* null zone slider for controllers for better straightline stability
* AI improvements
* pit lane autopilot

So you have caught some real items that we are aware of - and are
addressing.

But I think you have also managed to lay blame for a variety of your system
problems
on the game. Check the CPR postings here on ras - these should give you a
good idea
of what others are seeing - and not seeing.

Here's a posting from ras just yesterday that doesn't sound consistent with
your
experience ...

Trevor Dwyer: Re: CPR on low end computer?

"I run it on a 3dfx 200mhz FF system and it runs beautifully.

I also run on a Pentium 60 and Pentium 90 laptops. It runs slow (but runs)
on a 60 and runs fine on a 90.

The difference can be almost compared to the way quake runs normal and then
the GL version.

Note how many followers did Quake get before the advent of 3d cards?

Highly recommend this game, as I previously did not play many games. Since I
got this game and this is the honest truth, I know own a ForceFeedback, have
most
of the top twenty pc games and am pulling my hair out over how I can create
a
texture (I have the scheme and idea) to put on my own car with absolutley no
artistic skills!!

Enjoyable to the extreme!

Best Regards

Trevor Dwyer"

I've posted a review of Microsoft's CART Precision Racing on my Eagle
Woman Racing Sims Web site:

  http://www.racesimcentral.net/~alison/sims/cpr.htm

The review is quite extensive, so I am not posting it in its entirety on
this newsgroup out of deference to those with limited bandwidth.
However, I will synopsize it.

I really wanted to like this game.  At first glance, I was quite
impressed with its beautiful, well thought out menus, extensive car
setup features, excellent engine and tire-squealing sounds, and its
curb-hopping, tire-smoking, ***-laying graphics.  

However, after struggling for many hours to work around some
showstopping bugs, I found that I must agree with John Wallace, who
concluded that it flatters to deceive.  

There are moments when the awesome potential shows through.  At Long
Beach, when I'd momentarily worked around the worst of the bugs, I had a
few laps where I was able to fling the car through the turn 1, 2, 3, 4
complex as I think it was meant to be done, the inside tires just
nicking the curbs, the car skittering a little under throttle, engine
wailing as it went up through the gears out of turn 4...Ah!  It was
beautiful!

But.  If only!

I tried CPR on two different machines, with two different controllers,
and two different Rendition 3D cards.  On both machines, I encountered
bugs which were sufficiently serious to render the game essentially
unplayable.  One of these bugs was common to both machines, while each
machine also displayed an additional showstopping bug, for which I could
find no acceptable workaround.

In addition, I encountered a considerable array of less serious bugs,
and numerous design flaws which ranged from mildly annoying quirks to
the omission of essential features.

Finally, the game installation corrupted the operating system on one of
my machines.  I was able to play it after installation, but immediately
after that, I found that the machine would no longer boot into Windows
95.  I had to restore its registry and configuration files from a
configuration backup.

The anticipation of the superb racing experience promised by the game's
better features amplified my ultimate disappointment - and extreme
frustration.  As I encountered one critical design error after another,
I found myself wondering over and over again, "Did any of the developers
or designers of this 'simulation' even *try* ICR2/Rendition?"  Or GP2?
Or SODA?

Unfortunately, a product so riddled with bugs and design blunders can
only be considered a failure.  After many, many hours of trying - and
failing - to get it to work well enough to be playable, the impression
I'm left with is that this is a project just entering the alpha stage.  

Yet, somehow, it's been released.

Game-play bugs and design flaws aside, the corruption of my Windows 95
configuration is a horror.  No product whose installation risks hosing
my operating system is worth a moment of my time, or a penny of my
money.

After months of eager anticipation, I find that I am very sorry I bought
Microsoft CART Precision Racing.  If you make the same mistake, don't
say you weren't warned!

                        ***

If you disagree with my experiences and conclusions, please read the
complete review at http://www.racesimcentral.net/~alison/sims/cpr.htm
before responding.

Alison

Remove the spam blocker NOSPAM to email me.
http://www.racesimcentral.net/~alison

I forgot to add that you didn't cover CPR's extensive multiplayer features
at all - a pretty
huge omission in any CPR review seeing as how most people who have spent
time with
the program rate this as one of the strongest points of the sim and a huge
differentiator
from the competition.

You wrote ...

"I've read about ... how great CPR is for networked racing (one of my
primary interests)
but frankly, how can I get e***d about racing if I can't even drive the
damn car down
the straightaways?"

A balanced review covers the strengths as well as the weaknesses of a game
... "I don't like this feature
so I'm not going to bother reviewing this other feature." Ouch.

You also quote as one of your "other voices" from someone who ...

"downladed CART Precision Racing off the Internet, 35x1.44meg disks. It's
the full packaged
version, minus the movies."

No comment ... !

On Tue, 9 Dec 1997 23:55:44 -0800, "Dean (CART Team)"

I spent *many* hours verifying this bug, and looking for a workaround,
including turning off all graphics options and everything else I could
think of that could possibly affect the frame rate, including turning
off the dash, the pit board, shrinking the display area, changing the
sound options, turning off interrupts while polling the joystick.
Everything I could find.  The frame rate was still glaringly
inconsistent between two runs with the same settings.

There *is* a bug here, Dean.  I suspect that one reason there are so
many people in the newsgroup complaining about frame rate is that this
bug appears only on some systems and not on others.  It may be a
configuration problem, or an incompatibility with drivers.  

I plan to try de-installing my Sierra Rendition drivers and installing
the Verite drivers that come with DirectX 5 to see if that helps.  If it
does, I'll post something here.

You have quoted me out of context here, Dean.  My question was, "How do
you sort out the chassis without tire temperatures?"  This question
still stands.  How can you set tire pressures, camber, spring and shock
rates, and other parameters without knowing the tire temperatures on the
inner edge, the middle, and the outer edge of the tread of each tire?  

Tie temperature is a fundamental piece of information for any race
engineer!  I doubt if *any* professional race team in the world ever
goes to the race track without tire temperature guages and lots of
notepaper.  Sure, I can work on the setup in the garage, but without
tire temps, I'm really shooting in the dark.  See Steve Smith's
excellent discussion of this issue in "Winning", a book contained in
Papyrus' recent re-release of ICR2 as CART Racing.

Incidentally CPR's built-in "race engineer" seems totally unaware of
tire temps, although I believe he will tweak tire pressures and camber
based on rather simplistic criteria - and he's often wrong.  For
example, if I complain to him that my car understeers in slow corners,
he'll keep cranking in more negative camber at the front till both sides
are at the limit of 4.0.  But the car still pushes till I tweak
something else.

The point here is that the game does not run consistently or predictably
on a given configuration, and that difficulties appear on some machines
that do not appear on others.  Granted, these problems are elusive and
may be difficult to reproduce in your lab.  That is one of the problems
I see with the Windows95/DirectX platform; it is often not consistent
from one machine to another, even when the machines are very similar.
Tracking down the cause of anomolies can be very difficult and
time-consuming.  Many people, including on this newsgroup, seem to take
the expedient measure of trying different drivers for their video cards,
and sometimes that fixes whatever problem.  Others put the game on the
shelf.

How much testing have you done with machines with only Rendition cards
in them?  Have you tested Sierra's latest drivers, or those of other
manufacturers of Rendition cards?  With different screen resolutions?
On TX, VX, and HX motherboards, with SDRAM as well as EDO and non-EDO
RAM?  With a variety of sound cards, game controller cards, modems and
network cards?

I know it's impossible to test every possible combination, but I find it
very frustrating to conduct such extensive testing on my own machines,
document it carefully, and then have my difficulties written off by you
as system configuration problems.  If your team could have missed such
fundamental issues as the radically incorrect null zone in the steering,
the omission of tire temperatures, ludicrous AI, inadequate steering
lock...you get the point...then isn't is possible that they have missed
some other issues that show up only on certain hardware configurations?
Particularly if those hardware configurations include hardware that
isn't the state of the art at the moment?  Hardware that is strongly
linked with CPR's most formidable competitor, and maybe doesn't get
tested on a whole lot in-house at Terminal Reality or Microsoft?

Dean, I appreciate your reply, and I appreciate your presence in this
newsgroup very much.  I am aware of how different this is when compared
with certain other sim publishers, some of whom seem to have never
posted anything to it at all.

I'm also still hopeful about CPR.  There are a lot of things
...

read more »

On Tue, 9 Dec 1997 23:55:44 -0800, "Dean (CART Team)"

I've seen other posts desribing how two systems with identical
settings in the game configuration would display trackside objects at
different times. The more powerful system earlier and the less
powerful system later. I think you touched on this before advising
that there was no "behind the scenes" adjustment of the draw ahead
setting, but I guess people will believe what they see.

In my experience you need to run with a rear bias in CPR to make best
use of the grip served up to you (whereas generally racecars run
60-70% front bias), and secondly the***pit adjustment needs to be
able to cope with different rates of tyre wear front and rear as well
as the shifting weight distribution as fuel load drops. It needs to be
much more than a fine tuning, the effects should be noticable.

I read that, but Dean this guy was happy running CPR on a P60! Okay,
everyone has their point of view, but "CPR runs on a 60 and fine on a
90" isn't a point of view I would point to as being representative. I
personally tried the CPR demo on a P225MMX with 60Mhz 3dFX and found
it extremely disappointing. I can't even begin to imagine it on an
unaccelerated P60... <shudder>

Cheers!
John

Doug

Alison,

OK - let's see if we can get to the bottom of this. I believe you had a bad
experience on your system - that's my point - on_your_system.

Frame rate variation - let's try this - hardware acceleration only works
full screen - if you have the menus_up_the_game_is_software_only. Press F4
to toggle menus/full screen. "The frame will drop from mid-20's to under 15"
as you run in h/w then s/ware. Let me know if this works.

Your comments on tire temps are noted by me. But please note that you didn't
describe the race engineer feature in your review either - another unique
CPR feature you missed.

"Grr.  Zillions of magazines and Web pages; I'm sorry, I can't lay my hands
on this ad now.
If I find it, I'll certainly let you know."

Grr - please let me know when you find one - I reviewed EVERY piece of
marketing on this game.

"It *may* be specific to Rendition cards, or certain editions of Rendition
drivers, but I'm not the only one having this problem."  -AGREED. That's why
I asked you try software only mode to test the game's features - clipping
distance controls work in the game but you claim they do not - Rendition's
drivers are the problem. We have contacted them already about this.

"Are you calling me a liar, or just saying I'm stupid?" - No to both
questions. I AM saying you laid the blame for this problem on CPR. Show me
ONE other posting on ras implying CPR corrupts the OS - this is a
_serious_allegation_ and I request that you provide me some evidence that
this was due to our game. One other posting would be enough for me to go and
investigate this problem. Let me
know when you find one.

How much testing have you done with machines with only Rendition cards in
them?

Answer:  600 hours +

I suspect your h/w problems are related to your Rendition card and drivers.
Try a 3dfx card or software only mode - if you can't get a 3dfx card we'll
send you one. Along with the patch.

And please have a look at or mention the features you missed:-

Multiplayer
Race Engineer
Sound
Pi Analysis
Racing School
Head panning
Force feedback
Car paint tool
Upcoming track editor
Upcoming patch details

Thanks.

Alison Hine wrote in article <349a5c17.642520...@news.nh.ultranet.com>...

read more »

Precisely!

Grrr!

Well, I'm not so cynical as to go that far.  From their participation
here, it seems that Dean and Eric really do care about the sim, and
having happy customers.  However, dealing with problems which occur only
under certain conditions is much more difficult than dealing with
problems which everyone can see.  No question about it; this is hard!

Dean's response is typical of most software support people and product
managers when confronted with problems they haven't seen and which maybe
haven't been too widely reported, and which are likely to be difficult
to find and fix.  It's human nature.  "We've been busting our butts
already to get this thing working, and it works great on our machines.
So we blow off the messenger - she's probably not too computer-savvy
anyway, or just too damn picky - and maybe the messenger will go away.
Then we don't have a problem any more.  Right?  Right?"

But the problem is still there, and sooner or later it will bite
Microsoft by costing them sales, as it is biting users by costing them
time and frustration.  

The more people that report these elusive problems, the more likely the
problems will eventually be addressed.

Eagle Woman

Remove the spam blocker NOSPAM to email me.
http://www.nh.ultranet.com/~alison

"The worm has turned at Microsoft. They don't respond to cries for help and
criticism, anymore."

OK guys - I think that's about it for me on ras. My patience has run out.

I'm joining the other sim publishers and leaving you to it. Sorry.

If anyone of the hundreds of people here we have helped and who are enjoying
the game
cares to reply to this thread then great - but I'm out of here.

The patch and track editor will posted on the MS/TRI site soon - take a look
to see when it's posted.

Bye.

Hi John,

Please read my comments again, you may have misunderstood me.

I am not happy running on a 60mhz, but in my rush to install this I forgot
that a Minimum
machine specification existed:)  I did only say that it ran...albiet slowly.

Running on 200mhz 3dfx machine it looks beautiful - this has been the case
with
the numerous driver versions I have installed to fix 3dfx problems in other
games.

Best Regards

Trevor Dwyer

Dean,

First of all, "who is she"?? I have been to her site, nicely laid out btw. Though, it's seems like a bias site to me, but everyone is entitled to their opinion.

All of this garbage, is system configurations. Lots of people aren't very "technically" sound. i.e., "backyard mechanic".. Though, I have met some good ones, but not "alot" of them.

julian data

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I am very disappointed that you have chosen to "pull an EA" and
withdraw your public participation regarding racing sims. It does not
bode at all well for the future of Microsoft racing products.

Flames have nothing to do with it - there will always be flames on
public forums, and mature people just ignore them and move on. The
vast majority (I'd say 90%+ of posts) of CPR feedback here have been
reasonable and informative. By choosing to cut yourself off from your
customers you will only hurt your own future products.

Joe

Alison,
          Looks like you are number 14. Before your review, It's been the
same 13 people on r.a.s. with the same R E D U N D A N T, complaints. I
know the names of these people so well I'm ready to send them Christmas
cards. If anyone says anything good about the game, you can be sure the 13
professional CART drivers (who I guess made a choice to sit at their
computers monitoring this newsgroup instead of dominating the CART
circuit), and sim experts of all sim experts, will scold and put the poor
boy or girl in his place. Maybe you can take some of their workload on.
I've checked the postings on this newsgroup daily for 5 and a half weeks
now ever since I received the Gold preview version so I'm not exaggerating
in this observation.
          If you are going to review a game in a professional matter,
shouldn't you have  the hardware running correctly first? Try reviewing the
sim on my machine. It is a Gateway 200mmx, 4G, 32meg, STB Velocity 4meg
card, no 3dfx card, T2 wheel. Not an unusual machine in late '97. I have
frame rates in the mid-20's on some tracks with ALL the graphics on. With
various graphic settings, I can achieve frame rates of 30+. I just don't
understand the handling and steering complaints I occasionally hear. Wooly
handling? My cars track a perfectly straight line when I want them to. I
can literally drive a foot away from the wall at 240mph the whole length of
the straightaway at tracks like Michigan. I could go on and on about how
good the handling is.
          An important note. I find it interesting that whenever I have
posted a positive comment(s) I receive e-mails from people either agreeing
with me on various points or with questions they feel I may be able to help
them with. They simply don't put postings on r.a.s. because they KNOW what
will follow. Some like myself go ahead and post because we understand the
"newsgroup mentality"and we want to help a few fellow sim fans. On almost
EVERY newsgroup, there is so-called experts who dominate the topic and
flame those who disagree. It's pathetic but true.
          Since there are literally thousands of different hardware set ups
possible, it is impossible for a manufacturer to test a game on all of
them. The CPR sim itself (by that I mean the CD and all of the contents
hidden inside) is an EXCELLENT product. How it happens to run on your
configuration, which is having problems, is not a definitive way to do a
review. By the way, two of the EXPERTS you refer to in your review do not
even own the game. How many hours could they possibly of spent playing CPR?
Certainly not as many as they have spent on r.a.s. I've said before and
I'll say it again. The upcoming patch will make a great sim even better.
I'm glad the sim was released as it was (already excellent) and not delayed
for even another month. It was obvious from the day I received the Gold
copy what Microsoft and TRI's vision was for CPR and there was NO doubt
that they would continue to improve it. Before someone calls me a Microsoft
***kisser (very original) I'll say that by nature I'm a perfectionist who
is not easily impressed by anything.

Dave

Dean,
     I don't blame you for leaving for a second. Check my other posting
just written a few minutes ago. I personally have never seen a
representative of a company or business put so much effort and time into
helping it's customers and that's not an exaggeration. You DEFINITELY have
helped many, many, people with CPR and I hope you feel good about that. I
wish I had people like you working for me. Keep up the good work on CPR.

Dave

I'm sorry, but the absolutely abysmal AI is unaffected by improperly
configured or otherwise inferior system.  I could care less how well any
game may run or just how gorgeous it's graphics may be when the AI is as
bad as CPR's is.

--
Eric T. Busch

http://ebusch.akorn.net