rec.autos.simulators

   Note that not all of these tracks are present in the current FIA
   calendar, and most of the ones that are have been changed somewhat.
   Still, after getting familiar with the ones that are still raced at, you
   should feel quite at home riding with Michael Schumacher or Damon Hill
   via their in-car cameras.

   This section is biased towards the PC version. The track descriptions
   are mostly valid for the Amiga and ST too, but the replays won't work
   and there are minor differences in the track layouts.

            1. PHOENIX GRAND PRIX CIRCUIT, PHOENIX, ARIZONA, USA

   Moving down Jefferson Street, you brake for a right-hander into Madison
   Street, then for a left-hander onto Jackson Street. Then comes another
   left-hander, a right-hander, and a short straight down to the hairpin.
   Then there's a right hander leading to a very fast right-left
   combination, exiting onto the back straight, Washington Street, followed
   by a right-left combination onto Adam(s?) Street. Then comes another
   left-right, then a long, accelerating left-hander leading back onto
   Jefferson.

              2. AUTODROMO JOS  CARLOS PACE, INTERLAGOS, BRAZIL

   Moving across the start/finish line, you brake into the left/right
   Descida do Sol (now renamed the Senna S). This is a great place to try
   an outbraking maneuver, but care should be taken not to tangle with
   anyone leaving the pits, before entering the long left-hander Curva do
   Solthat leads onto the Rete Oposta, a very long straight where there's
   plenty of scope for slipstreaming. At the end of the Rete Oposta, you
   brake for the Subida da Lago left-hander. You can try outbraking an
   opponent into here but often they will simply drive into you. This
   corner is followed by another left-hander taken at full speed, followed
   by a short straight where you might be able to draft a car, before Ferra
   Dura, a totally evil fast extended right-hander. This is followed by
   Laranji, a slow right hander which is made tricky both by the AI cars,
   who brake ridiculously early for it, and by the fact that there are no
   brake markers, which will typically result in the inexperienced driver
   under-braking and ending up mowing the grass. Immediately after comes
   Pinheirinho, a slow left-hander where you may just be able to slip past
   an opponenet, especially on the exit where you may be able to blast
   through on the left before they move over for Bico de Pato, a right-hand
   hairpin where late-brakers are again liable to end up on the grass. Then
   comes Mergulho, a left-hander which with a light fuel load (or a
   high-downforce setup) can be taken flat out. After a short straight you
   come to Jun ao, a left-hander which exits onto Subida dos Boxes, the
   segmented curves which form the start/finish straight.

        3. AUTODROMO ENZO AND DINO FERRARI, IMOLA, ITALY (SAN MARINO)

   After crossing the line you sweep left into Tamburello, a full-speed
   left-hander. Then comes Rettifiolo, a right hand flick, and Tosa, a slow
   left-hander. A right-hand flick leads into Piratella, a fast left,
   followed by another left leading downhill to Acque Minerale, a
   left-right-left combination. Moving back up the hill you flick left,
   then pass through the fast right-left Variante Alfa chicane. Then comes
   a full-speed right hander, another left-hander, before going back
   downhill into Rivazza, a pair of medium-slow left-handers. Then comes a
   short straight before Variante Bassa, a fast right-left chicane,
   followed by Traguardo, a slow left-right chicane leading back onto the
   start/finish straight.

                  4. CIRCUIT DE MONACO, MONTE CARLO, MONACO

   The first corner is Ste Devote, a medium speed right-hander, followed by
   a "straight", Montee de Baue Rivage, which winds left-right uphill, past
   Roses Bar and into the Massenet left-hander, followed immediately by
   Casino, a slower right-hander. Then comes a short straight leading down
   to Mirabeau, a right-hander, followed Loews, the very slow left-hand
   hairpin. Then comes a right-hander followed by another, Portier, which
   exits into the tunnel, a long sweeping right hander. After that comes
   Nouvelle Chicane, a left-right followed by a faster right-left, exiting
   onto a short straight before reaching Tabac, a fast left-hander which
   tightens suddenly into the swimming pool complex, where you weave right,
   left, left, right, before sweeping left into the Rascasse double
   right-hander. A tiny straight leads to Antony Noghes, a right hander
   which exits onto the right-hand sweeping start-finish straight.

               5. CIRCUIT GILLES VILLENEUVE, MONTREAL, CANADA

   Accelerating across the start line, you sweep left round T1 at full
   speed (unleess you see computer cars trying to draft each other),
   braking just for the Island Hairpin, a tight right-hander which is a
   good place for outbraking. A short straight follows where you might be
   able to pass, then you flick through T3 and T4, which form the first
   chicane, a very fast right-left comination, followed shortly by T5, a
   right hand flick. Brake into T6, slowish left-hander, followed
   immediately by T7, a faster right hander. It is possible to outbrake
   someone into T6, but a better plan is to wait until the straight that
   follows T7 and slipstream past them, or outbrake them into T8, a
   right-hander which, with the left-hander T9, forms the second chicane;
   watch out for the computer cars trying to outbrake each other here, as
   one of them usually ends up on the grass. The next straight has a
   left-hand flick, after which you can get a tow and outbrake opponents
   into the Pits Hairpin, a slow right-hander. If you're still stuck behind
   someone, now is a good time to try to out-drag them because the track
   narrows and sweeps at full speed through the rapid right-left-right
   combination of T11, Casino Bend, and T12, before coming up on the pit
   entrance. Finally you fly through the tricky final chicance, T14/T15;
   watch out for computer cars trying to slipstream each other here, as it
   invariably ends up with one spinning.

            6. AUTODROMO HERMANOS RODRIGEUZ, MEXICO CITY, MEXICO

   You fly down the very long main straight before coming into a medium
   speed left-right-left combination where with skill you can outbrake
   other cars. If you are still behind someone upon exiting, you can get a
   tow and pass them on the subsequent short straight, and perhaps try
   another outbraking move as you enter the nasty fast right, slow left
   combination waiting at the end. Then there's another short straight
   followed by a slow right-hander, which leads into the Esses, a series of
   increasingly fast turns going left, right, left, right, left, right,
   left before exiting onto the back straight, to move past the
   pit-entrance and into Peralta, a terrifyingly fast right-hander which
   leads back onto the main straight.

                  7. CIRCUIT DE NEVERS, MAGNY COURS, FRANCE

   Moving across the start/finish straight, you sweep left at high speed
   round Grand Courbe, where it's not advisable to try and get alongside an
   AI car as they're likely to move over into you. Then comes Estoril, a
   right-hander which leads onto the main straight, Golf, which is divided
   by two slight right-hand kinks where you do not want to be alongside an
   AI car. At the end of Golf you come to Adelaide, a very sharp right-hand
   hairpin where it's easy to outbrake a whole load of AI cars at once. A
   brief burst of acceleration must be curtailed whilst you pick your way
   through a right-left-right combination called Esse. A short straight
   leads to N rburing, a right-left chicane taken at full speed, followed
   by the unimaginatively titled 180 Degrees, a left-hand hairpin. Next is
   another straight where it's possible to do some more slipstreaming, but
   be careful to get back over to the left of the track before Imola, a
   high speed right-left chicane followed by Ch teau d'Eau, a moderately
   slow right-hander where you may be able to outbrake one or two cars
   before exiting onto a short straight which leads to Chicane, a
   right-left chicane just before Lyc e, the very sharp right-hander which
   leads onto the start/finish straight.

               8. SILVERSTONE, NORTHAMPTONSHIRE, GREAT BRITAIN

   Crossing the starting line you approach the famous Copse, an extremely
   fast right right-hand bend followed by a short straight. Weave through
   the Maggots/Becketts right-left-right combination. The Becketts
   right-hander is followed by Chapel, which leads to the long Hangar
   straight. Coming next, sitting atop a rise, is Stowe Corner, a double
   apex right-hander followed by the Vale complex (a short straight and a
   fast left-hander and slow right-hander), then by Club corner, a fast
   left-hander, onto Abbey straight, followed by a left kink onto Farm
   Straight and a very fast right called Bridge. Then there's a slow
   left-hander, Priory, followed by another, Brooklands, then an anonymous
   right hander, and Luffield, a second right-hander leading onto Woodcote,
   a flat-out right hander which forms the grid and leads back onto the
   start/finish straight.

                   9. HOCKENHEIMRING, HEIDELBERG, GERMANY

   The start line is followed by a flat-out right-hand flick onto a long
   straight leading to Schikane 1, a slow right-left chicane followed by a
   sweeping right hander leading round to the second chicane, a medium-fast
   left-right followed by the Ost Kurke, a fast sweeping right-hander. Then
   another straight leads to Schikane 2, a very fast left-right chicane and
   a left-hand flick at the exit. Another straight leads down to the
   Agipkurve, a fast right-hander, followed by Sachskurve, a slow
   left-hander. Then you wind through the Stadium complex, right, right,
   and right through the Opelkurve and back over the
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                     WHAT MACHINES IS IT AVAILABLE FOR?

   The game was first released on the Amiga and ST with the PC version
   following around a year later. The Amiga and ST versions can both be run
   of disk and do not need hard drive installation.

   GB: As far as I know there are two version of the game for the PC, F1GP
   on floppies, which is supplied on 4 high density disks with optional
   upgrade disks, and F1GP on CD, which is EXACTLY the same game but on a
   silver disk. Do not buy this unless you don't have a floppy drive, since
   it costs more and has no extra features. Quite what MicroProse is
   playing at is unknown, but the CD version represents bad value for your
   money.

   The game is now reissued by Digital Integration on the PowerPlus budget
   label.

   DG: Having played both the Amiga and PC versions, I noticed some
   important differences. First, some of the tracks are physically
   different, Monaco and Imola at least. Second, perhaps because of the low
   frame rate or different control routines, the car is much, much harder
   to set up on the Amiga than the PC; it's very hard to feel whether the
   car has any under- or oversteer. It's also much harder to time the
   turn-in points properly, as Ivanhoe's explanation of frame rates above
   predicts.

               WHAT SORT OF PERFORMANCE CAN I EXPECT ON MY PC?

   Here is a rough table of machine against performance:

 Machine Memory Detail Process Speed
 -----------------------------------
  P90      8mb   4d  T   35%  25fps  (DG's tower of power w/ PCI K64)
  486dx266 8mb   4d  T   70%  25fps
  486dx266 4mb   4d  T   60%  25fps
  486dx266 32mb  4d  T   53%  25fps  (Pete F's Dan4Win w/ Spea V7 VLB)
  486dx266 16mb  4d NT   35%  25fps  (Nigel Bovey's)
  486dx266 ?     4d  T   70%  25fps  (MBP's under OS/2)
  486dx33  ?     4d  T   90%  25fps  (Graham A's)
  486sx33  4mb   4d NT   66%  25fps
  486dx250 24mb  4d NT   95%  25fps  (Paul Smyth's w/ ISA ET4000-W32)
  486sx25  4mb   4d NT  100%  25fps  (a DELL)
  486sx25  ?     4d NT   80%  25fps  (Nightshade's oldie)
  486sx25  4mb   4d NT  100%  23fps  (Ben Lester's)
  486sx25  2mb   4d NT  100%  21fps
  386dx40  4mb   4d NT  100%  20fps
  386dx40  2mb   4d NT  100%  20fps  (possibly optimistic)
  486dx250 24mb  4d NT  100%  18fps  (Paul Smyth's w/ ISA S3-924)
  386dx33  8mb   4d NT  100%  17fps  (DG's old faithful w/ T8900CL)
  386sx20  2mb   1d NT  100%  15fps  (Max Behara's)
  386sx25  2mb   4d NT  100%  14fps  (Stingray's)
  386sx20  2mb   4d NT  100%   8fps  (Max Behara's)

   It appears that as long as you have at least 2mb of RAM, the actual
   amount makes absolutely no difference. The difference between the two
   DX2/66s above is attributable to graphics card alone; see the difference
   between Paul Smyth's machine with two difference graphics cards
   installed. DG: IMHO if you have a 486SX/25 or better with a VLB or PCI
   graphics card you should be able to crank the frame rate right up
   without texture; a 486DX2/50 or better will add texture without any
   penalty.

   The details level is shown by the amount of detail around the track, 1d
   being the lowest level and 4d the highest, the other detail option is
   the track shading, this is shown by T (track shading on), NT (no track
   shading). The process column show the average processor occupancy as you
   go around any track. This is just a rough estimate, but really shouldn't
   go above 100% very much. The final column show the speed in frames per
   pecond that this set-up allows.

   Even on similar machines, several things will affect speed. A machine
   with some external cache will outperform one without; the actual amount
   of cache is probably not going to make much difference. Graphics card
   performance also makes a big difference; a local bus card will run much
   faster that an ISA card, and some cards have better DOS performance than
   others (Cirrus Logic based cards are good, ET4000 and derivatives are
   even better).

   The general consensus seem to be that people would rather have it
   running smoother, but with less detail, this shows one of the main
   advantages of F1GP over IndyCar, in that it runs quickly on a slow
   machine and smooth graphics are possible quite easily.

   The Amiga version runs at a similar speed regardless of the machine's
   capacity, about 3-5 fps, depending on circuit, even in the fastest 68060
   system.

   Does the performance vary on an ST? Mail me if it does.

So how does this affect lap times?

   Short answer: it doesn't.

   Long answer: it doesn't... directly. DG is in the fortunate position of
   having both a P90 and a 386DX/33 on his desk (well, okay, the 386 is
   under the desk...), and loaded identical copies of the game up on both
   machines. The first and most obvious difference was that the game does
   not do a good job of matching "real time" (measured on a stopwatch
   during laps on qualifying tyres at Monaco). The first tests were done on
   the 386. With 100% to 130% occupancy, the game's timer runs slow, being
   about three seconds behind reality. With all the detail turned off and
   the occupancy down to about 70% to 110%, it was about three seconds
   ahead of reality. With the frame rate reduced and occupancy between 45%
   and 75%, it was about 4 seconds behind. Then testing moved to the P90.
   With maximum detail and about 33% to 44% occupancy, the timer was about
   4 seconds fast.

   Now, here's the crunch. Despite these differences, the lap times
   reported by the game were very close, all in the 1:14.4 range. The game
   was noticeably easier to play at higher frame rates and lower
   occupancies. However, with very high occupancies (more than 200%, such
   as on the 386 with texture turned on), the difference from real time
   becomes very noticeable; the whole game runs in slow motion, and is
   potentially easier to play as you get much longer to react. Ivanhoe
   Vasiljevich came up with the superb (and very lightly edited)
   explanation below.

     [...] a high frame rate [as opposed to occupancy] may have its
     advantages (my opinion, not proven!):

     Using a frame rate of 25 fps means that you have 25 possibilities to
     perform an action (eg. braking, accelerating) every second, whereas
     driving with 16 fps only allows you 16 `slots' per second, to brake,
     for example.

     Assuming that a typical braking maneuver begins at 300 km/h (188
     mph), this equals a speed of 83 m/s, so that at 25 fps you can take
     action (brake) every 3.3 m as opposed to every 5.2 m when using 16
     fps. (Using an even lower frame rate naturally worsens the
     situation. At 8 fps the distance between two points of action is
     10.3 m!) During a normal lap including many braking maneuvers, this
     may affect the overall performance, not to mention techniques like
     pulsing the throttle.

     In my opinion it would be best to turn off as much detail as
     necessary and increase the frame rate as high as possible. (It may
     not look as cool, but honestly, who has got the time to enjoy the
     beautiful panorama when chasing a new lap record?)

                  WHY DOES THE INSTALLATION FAIL ON THE PC?

   When installing the game unpacks some large files. On a fragmented hard
   disk there might not be a large enough free block for them and the
   Installation will crash with a very unhelpful message. Just run a
   defragmenter on the hard drive, such as Norton Speed Disk or the one
   supplied with MS-DOS 6, the game should then install no problem.

   Another potential problem pointed out to me is that the game copies all
   the Data files onto hard disk before decompressing them, and this
   effectively doubles the amount of space it uses at installation time, so
   make sure you have plenty of free hard disk space, as this will cure
   both this problem and the one above.

               WHY DOES THE FADE BETWEEN SCREENS TAKE SO LONG?

   We don't know, but it's awful isn't it? DG: On the Amiga I believe there
   is a patch to help cure this; on the PC I run from a Windows DOS box
   with the Exclusive option selected, which for some reason speeds it up.
   I think it must have something to do with timer emulation because under
   Windows NT I have Hardware Timer Emulation turned on and it fades slowly
   again. Version 1.03 and earlier on the PC seem to use a different fading
   technique to later versions (bitmapped rather than palette) which is
   faster on faster machines. The Technical FAQ has some C source to remove
   the fading on the PC.

                   WHY DOES THE GAME SOMETIMES SLOW DOWN?

   The graphics for generating the pit-lane are quit complex and so your
   occupancy will always rise when in the pits, though this isn't usually
   too much of a problem. The only other place where the game seems to slow
   is the back straight at Phoenix and the second straight at Hockenheim.
   The slow down at Phoenix is probably due to the large buildings it has
   to draw, the one at Hockenheim because of the number of trees. Turn down
   the detail if you notice a slowdown and don't like it.

                WHO DOESN'T IT SAVE MY LAP RECORDS & SETUPS?

   Qualifying records are only saved after a complete event; if you aren't
   interested in the race, you must still go to it, then immediately press
   escape and accelerate time. After a quick race, you must wait wait until
   it says "race over" and goes to the post-race menu. In both cases you
   will be able to select the "lap records" option and should see
   "(Record)" in yellow under any new records. Race records set in races
   shorter than 100% distance will not count. To actually save them for
   posterity, you must exit to the main menu, go to "load/save game", and
   select "save track records". On the Amiga, you must load them by hand
   every time you start the game; on the PC, there is an option called
   "startup files" which
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You can do this with WCLAUNCH.  Each person can have their own preference
file (f1prefs.dat) and load it before playing.

You just can't do it from within the game.