rec.autos.simulators

They must be doing something to earn a crust. 3 or 4 years with no
discernable income would be a tough situation for even the most hardened
benefit scrounger.
Perhaps they won the lottery .

http://www.racesimcentral.net/

By the way, I started the VRC physics engine in April of 2000.  Took
five years for two programmers to release what we did end of Nov 29 (oh
yeah, there was an artist there too in the final year).  I'll refrain
from saying, "bite me, you have no ***ing idea what you're talking
about."  :-)

Edit:  "End of Nov 29" was in 2004 :-)

Let's see...  We'll very soon be pushing the end of November 2005.
That'd be 5 years (5 1/2+ for me, and actually well over 10, no shit,
for the entire project; Lothar Pantel (the lead programmer; big story
behind him that you'll never hear) released a title called "Virtual RC
'98" before, which took a couple of years; the story behind all this is
so long and involved and stretches over so much time you'd swear we
were a bunch of lazy bastards).  Oh yeah, we still don't have
multiplayer going aside from a dual player LAN version for RC shows and
so on.  Ooops, it obviously took a few years longer than planned and
promised because Tony went and made a special 3D model of ___ whatever
over the course of a couple of weeks that threw our release date back
from Nov 2003 to Nov 2005.  Damn him.  Screwed up the whole schedule
doing that and forced us all into bankruptcy.  Oh well, he'll learn, I
guess, but we all ought to as a community make sure he never does that
kind of silly thing again!  (By the way, Tony and Chris prior to all
this "RL stuff"  owned matching Ferraris, which they sold, along with
their house, and passed up an offer to develop a sim for somebody else
that paid an *** amount of money.  And I mean really ***...
Take an educated guess and multiply it a few times, you'll be getting
in the ballpark.)

Anyway, two programmers on that little VRC game, one on physics, one on
the graphics engine and everything else (lots more; you wouldn't
understand actually, no shit, you have no ***ing clue, my friend.  But
I bet nevertheless we'd get schooled in a meeting about it all with ya
and shave many months off our development time as a result.  DUH, why
didn't WE think of that??  Thank goodness for RedTed coming along to
save the day!!!  WOOHOO!!!)  We never will be in that spot of course,
because you somehow will not find yourself in that position ever, I
suspect, even though you know everything about sim development, the
business, and so on.   (You don't want it anyway, I know.)

Five years for VRC to come out.  We didn't even have AI cars in it.
That came out something like six months later.  (AI cars are not all
that easy to make, believe it or not, although I'm sure in a chat with
you for about ten minutes I could have shaved off a couple of months,
agree?).

RedTed, if you can do any of this quicker yourself, send me your
resume, bro :-)  You'll make a lot of money, and if you don't care
about that, well, fantastic, because I didn't either (until spending
5+years of my life on it; then I started to wonder what I was doing
because it sure as hell wasn't going to be a great "thanks" at ras that
made age 25-31's main activities worthwhile; as great as you guys are
and have been, the motivation to make what you all want has got to be
bigger/different than that, look at this thread), you'll make the sim
that the rest of the idiots like me have so far failed to make ;-)
Gee...  Maybe we are just missing the brilliant "idea guy" to make it
all happen ;-)

In the mean time, the boys (meaning Chris, Tony, and Gregor) are right
on track.  Check your timeline and compare.  If you try to tie in WSC
and that timeline into it after the discussions about that that you've
partaken in here with me recently, then I'll be forced to slap you,
RedTed.

At some point a guy has to just say to himself, "it doesn't matter,
folks are just going to say and think whatever they say and think,
regardless of, well, anything :-) "

And the more you're around it the more you see people "knowing" things,
somehow, that are simply wrong and not true.  (In the sense that
someone would argue what my birthday was or something;  I mean really
obviously wrong, way out stuff, yet they'll sit there and argue with
your mother/best friend about it).  It really becomes a big comedy
sketch after awhile, although I still have not been able to resist the
very strong urge to chide in once in awhile, as <cough> some others
perhaps have.  I'm still new, learning...

Todd

I don't think I'm pissed but this "rant" is total gibberish.
As it is, the project *I* was referring to was RACING LEGENDS, not some
comedy value remote control crap.
Slap away, tough guy:)

Dude, are you on crack or something?

Here ya go dude, a 3DSMax rendered model of a pink elephant.

Hopefully there will be a track for it to run its exquisitely modelled
skates on one day.

http://www.turbosquid.com/FullPreview/Index.cfm/ID/124103

;)

MRSisson
--
LOAD "GPL",8

SEARCHING FOR GPL
LOADING
READY.
RUN

  hmmm maybe you should get drunk more often,  It made a-lot of sense.
dave henrie

  Are you SURE about that shade of Pink?

dave henrie

I figured something was amiss :) No problem.
Whatever is going on with RL, please can it be done before I'm over the
hill.

Note:  I'm saying this next drunken rant not specifically to you (yeah,
I'm loaded again), RedTed, but just sort of in general to all five or
ten people that are interested in this.  So when I ask a sharp question
here I'm not really aiming it at you personally, ok?  Just preaching to
anyone reading and really just making a big speech that's not directed
at you personally.  Got to get it out and hopefully I won't be such
jerk this time.

RL is indeed a very serious thing and has been all along.  Chris and
Tony West's dream is very well alive and has been the whole time.  It's
still cooking; nobody has left, lost interest, changed priorities, or
decided that hey, maybe they can make some more money somewhere else so
let's forget about this silly little concept (refer to previous post
about an offer they received shortly after they 'screwed up WSC' or
whatever some people heard; ugh..  I'll turn green here soon :-D  ).
To say the least, and say it as I'd normally try to with their
typically polite, charming, wonderfully British way, they're quite
passionate about it still.  My words, not theirs.  (As is all of this
silliness of course; I do not speak for them :-)  ).

Perhaps only the communication policy has changed, and in this
situation, however it was arrived upon, is (imo and yours (preaching to
any interested masses, not you specifically, RedTed) too probably) the
best choice.  As in the end of my drunken, inappropriate, abusive rant
(sorry again), maybe at some point given how things turn out sometimes
the best thing to do at some point would be to shush up and just
produce whatever you dreamed up in the first place; something you
wanted, and then later found out some other folks would maybe think
would be a cool thing too.  Mere speculation of course.

But at some point in there with everything that's happened it wouldn't
be entirely impossible to unintentionally find yourself in a situation,
whether or not it was your fault (the general public will NOT bother to
find out what happened before passing judgement; they don't really care
that much, even the diehard, *** fans, nor should they), where you
might just one day buck up, look over the whole thing, and rightly
realize, "Oops..  <insert what happened here that of course can not be
discussed publically without a lawsuit; if this was me (seriously, this
is real) it would be five figures **per day** and **per violation** at
the minimum liability, dig?  I.e., every day your web site is
displaying this information I'm liable for that amount legally.  Could
ruin your day/week/life pretty quick if things ever got ugly and a real
fight broke out.  We're talking several hundred thousand dollars per
day here, kiddos, for saying the wrong thing or making certain things
public that are not to be made public.  No blackmailing me, please.  Be
kind to your drunk ras lurkers!>.  Lesson learned.  Let's just shut up
and make it :-)"

Anyway, silence does not mean "vapourware," contrary to popular belief.
 There's a lot of other stuff that can happen in this business, just
like in any other, that comes as a complete shock and surprise, and
(pretty much?) forces you to change your plans of action and public
policy with the heft of a few hundred grand per day liability to help
motivate you in the right direction.

And for the love of goodness, please don't tell anyone that and link my
name to it, because I'd be liable for that all just for saying I was
liable for that, no kidding.  It gets really crazy, guys....  Maybe
there are some rational explanations for what C&T did there and how it
all turned out that maybe the fans of sim racing don't quite
understand, and due to the wrangling that goes on between publishers
and developers will not ever know?  Is it possible that there might be
a bit more behind the story than, "C&T said they'd release WSC and it
didn't happen, so they're just big, fat liars and they're duping us
again with RL? :-D "

I suspect Chris and Tony were involved in the same sort of business and
chose to leave it and pursue the project they intended on making all
along, which would originally have been WSC, then to become RL, to get
out from under equally "happy sim developer" circumstances that we'd
all surely love to find ourselves in some day (smell the sarcasm again)
:-D

Silence does not equal vaporware.  There is silence indeed.  RL is not
vapourware :-)

For what it's worth, RL is indeed still being developed very seriously
as it always has been (personally, I want to see them kick some asses
around here and say "I told 'ya so" to a lot of people).  They have not
taken off and forgotten about all this by any stretch of the
imagination.  Yes, it's taking time.

I have some issues with some of the things people say, but really, I
ought to not perhaps be too concerned I guess..  The transporter...
What effect did that really have?  We all at ras and everywhere else
hear about it a year and a half later.  In reality that really didn't
effect the development time, so another portion of my drunken, abusive
post last night was sarcastically illustrating (because it would be
obvious to any sim developer, at least, I'd hope!) that it didn't make
a damn bit of difference on dev time at all.  Yet a year and a half
later that is still being brought up.  A year and a half is a long
time, guys, do you know how long it actually took Tony to make that
model?  How long of a delay did that put into RL's release?

Really, I suspect nobody really cares all that much when it comes down
to it.  The whole shindig (the whole sim racing hobby) is just a big
fun deal for everone, not to be taken too seriously, as it should be
:-)

In the meantime, GTL should show up tomorrow at my door.  Something new
and fun.  I'm e***d about it :-D

-Toddster

BTW - I don't claim to know whether RL is still a viable project or
not...  I don't even care.  If the West's want to take 10 years to
develop a PC racing sim, that's fine by me.  Of course, I don't hold
out much hope that it could ever be a great product compared to other
currently available sims (GTL, rFactor, etc...) since these long-term
projects tend to not take advantage of modern hardware for obvious
reasons.