Its weird how this more than anything makes me think "has it really been
that 3 years have passed since then?"
Cheers,
Tim
Are you serious???? I have been away from sim racing for 3 years and i am
just finding my feet again with whats on the market...rFactor was an idea
when i last heard now it seems established...but oh my god has that West
Brothers concept not happend at all..? They took money donations and all
sorts didnt they ? Im quite speechless !! They surely havent done the same
things twice and still retained any standing with people? Wow...thats
shocked me
Aid
1000 years is only about 12.5 average lifespans laid end to end, and 3
years is nothing; gone in the blink of an eye (if you blink slowly,
anyway).
I wonder if the Wests have had to get a proper job yet? I hope not.
Proper jobs are bad for the creative soul.
Andrew McP
> Its weird how this more than anything makes me think "has it really been
> that 3 years have passed since then?"
> Cheers,
> Tim
I thought this was long gone and dead..?
I spent four days at Gregor Veble's house a few weeks ago and we spent
quite a bit of time driving the physics engine from RL. Chris sends me
little bits and pieces now and then to look at and all of us chat on a
nearly daily basis. A little something I'm working on will be used in
it as well, so I'm counting on it :-)
Three years is nothing in sim development for a group of two or three
guys, by the way. I spent over four years on the physics and AI for
Virtual RC Racing alone. Had I had to write the graphics engine,
online aspect, game engine, GUI, etc., etc., it easily could have added
another couple of years. Wasn't LFS in development for 5 years or
something before the first demo came out?
Todd Wasson
Interesting. Did he also mention something about release of RL?
Martin Knud
Martin Knud
No, but he did mention that t-shirts are available and donations are
welcome.
>> RL is not dead, folks. It's been in development all along. They just
>> stopped updating the web site with news, that's all.
>> I spent four days at Gregor Veble's house a few weeks ago and we spent
>> quite a bit of time driving the physics engine from RL. Chris sends me
>> little bits and pieces now and then to look at and all of us chat on a
>> nearly daily basis. A little something I'm working on will be used in
>> it as well, so I'm counting on it :-)
>> Three years is nothing in sim development for a group of two or three
>> guys, by the way. I spent over four years on the physics and AI for
>> Virtual RC Racing alone. Had I had to write the graphics engine,
>> online aspect, game engine, GUI, etc., etc., it easily could have added
>> another couple of years. Wasn't LFS in development for 5 years or
>> something before the first demo came out?
>> Todd Wasson
> Interesting. Did he also mention something about release of RL?
> Martin Knud
> I spent four days at Gregor Veble's house a few weeks ago and we spent
> quite a bit of time driving the physics engine from RL. Chris sends me
> little bits and pieces now and then to look at and all of us chat on a
> nearly daily basis. A little something I'm working on will be used in
> it as well, so I'm counting on it :-)
> Three years is nothing in sim development for a group of two or three
> guys, by the way. I spent over four years on the physics and AI for
> Virtual RC Racing alone. Had I had to write the graphics engine,
> online aspect, game engine, GUI, etc., etc., it easily could have added
> another couple of years. Wasn't LFS in development for 5 years or
> something before the first demo came out?
> Todd Wasson
> Three years is actually a long time in sim development.
Three years might be long for a company that employs a lot of programmers
and has a lot of money, but for a couple/few hobbyists, it's not long at
all.
With the plethora of driving sims out over the past few years though, it
might be questioned whether it is worth those two/three guys spending their
time on RL.
With the
Your own development experience backs this up?
Anyway, I disagree. A system I wrote recently won't be able to run on
PC's in a game environment for many years to come. But it's sitting
there ready to go when the CPU horsepower arrives. In game development
you ALWAYS plan things for future hardware that will be out when you
think the project will be finished. Just par for the course and very
routine.
Besides, RL has
The transporter took Tony probably a week or two to model. This
delayed RL absolutely zero. You need to code the engine to a certain
point before you need to worry about artwork at all. The artist can
not go into any serious production mode during this period.
If I recall correctly, in Virtual RC Racing we were coding for four or
five years before Tony came along and did all our models. He did the
artwork so fast we were still coding when he was finished with all the
game content. We have ten or twelve tracks included in VRC that were
done in no time. By the time we released it he had another ten or so
ready to go for expansion packs and so on. I think he's got something
like 25 or 30 tracks finished for us now. He could have done 100
transporters in that time and it would not have effected our release
date (or RL's for that matter) one minute.
Argue with me if you want. Let's see what you've personally done in
sim development first though ;-)
I know that GTR, GTR2, rF, GTL and LFS has
Me too :-) Fun stuff for sure. My personal favorites are LFS and GTL
:-)
> Martin Knud
That being said, it could be a couple more years yet for all I know.
They're in no hurry.
> > Three years is actually a long time in sim development.
> For a company like Simbin or ISI that is using a ready made engine and
> has a team of nearly 50 people involved, yes. RL is a three man show
> and they use no existing engines at all. Like I said, I spent a lot
> longer than three years just on my physics engine. In fact, I'm at the
> six and a half year mark right now and am still working on things.
> IIRC, LFS was in development for 5 years before they put out the very
> first demo, and it didn't go on sale for some time after that. If S3
> is their "final, finished product" that they set out to make, well,
> you're looking at something like 10 years total. It cracks me up when
> folks that have never written a sim before argue with me over how long
> development tasks should take <bg>
> With the
> > development of hardware (processors, gpu's, physics cards, etc) always
> > evolving, it's very difficult to create a sim today that will still be
> > considered "state of the art" three years from now.
> Your own development experience backs this up?
> Anyway, I disagree. A system I wrote recently won't be able to run on
> PC's in a game environment for many years to come. But it's sitting
> there ready to go when the CPU horsepower arrives. In game development
> you ALWAYS plan things for future hardware that will be out when you
> think the project will be finished. Just par for the course and very
> routine.
> Besides, RL has
> > supposedly "been in development" for more than three years -- it's
> > simply been three years since the transport was "showcased" on the
> > website. I would have assumed that the sim was pretty close to
> > completion three years ago if the developers had time for details such
> > as that!
> The transporter took Tony probably a week or two to model. This
> delayed RL absolutely zero. You need to code the engine to a certain
> point before you need to worry about artwork at all. The artist can
> not go into any serious production mode during this period.
> If I recall correctly, in Virtual RC Racing we were coding for four or
> five years before Tony came along and did all our models. He did the
> artwork so fast we were still coding when he was finished with all the
> game content. We have ten or twelve tracks included in VRC that were
> done in no time. By the time we released it he had another ten or so
> ready to go for expansion packs and so on. I think he's got something
> like 25 or 30 tracks finished for us now. He could have done 100
> transporters in that time and it would not have effected our release
> date (or RL's for that matter) one minute.
> Argue with me if you want. Let's see what you've personally done in
> sim development first though ;-)
> I know that GTR, GTR2, rF, GTL and LFS has
> > kept me plenty busy during that time!
> Me too :-) Fun stuff for sure. My personal favorites are LFS and GTL
> :-)
Most of what you write is true, but I still have seen no evidence that
RL will ever actually be completed and available to the public. I'd
love to be proven wrong though...
I agree that developers have to code for "future" hardware, but there
is a practical limit to that, since it would be difficult to predict
what hardware advances will be available 5-10 years from now. Should
you code for faster processors or multi-multi-core? How many poly's
will our graphics cards be pushing in 5-10 years? What new physics
card technology will be available? etc...
Anyway, I'm not saying a 3 man team "should" be able to create a
state-of-the-art sim in three years or less. I believe it could take
many more years than that. I just don't think it is a wise business
move for the reasons I stated above. Now if they are doing it just for
fun or a learning experience, then I say more power to em!
Regards,
CK
