While covering the U.S. Grand Prix for the SBK World Superbike Series
this weekend, I met Marc Portugal, marketing director for Motorsims.
I asked him if the Can-Am racing sim they're now starting work on will
be just the modern era, or also include the classics. He said they are
focusing on the modern cars at the moment, as that is the easiest to do
in terms of getting rights and so forth from the SCCA. However, he said
they do indend to simulate the classic cars as well at a later time.
In the media center, when nothing was happening on track, often video
from the EA Sports World Superbike game was playing (EA Sports was one
of the sponsors of the event). I mentioned having downloaded the .avi
file of GP500 recently, and wondered if there were any movies that would
be available of Motorsims' AMA Superbike game soon. He took out his
laptop to show me the opening video for the game, but unfortunately by
the time his machine booted up, the podium finishers from the first
race arrived so I had to go pay attention to that and couldn't see the
movie, but apparently it should be on their web site soon.
After that press conference, I commented that with all the good motorcycle
racing sims coming out, I was wondering if anyone would come out with a
controller for them. "We're working on that," he said. They're talking
to manufacturers of game controllers and trying to work out some kind of
profit sharing scheme.
I wonder if a bike racing game could fully support a controller that
would both turn and rotate (turning the handlebars, and leaning the
bike). Force feedback on something like that could be quite interesting,
if you step the rear wheel out and it catches... simulating that wobble...
It'd be fun!
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http://www.racesimcentral.net/~keeper/toons.html - Animaniacs, P&TB, F!, etc. files
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