rec.autos.simulators

Nick Piquito

I saw F1GP2 at the South African Computer Faire. The local
distributors had it running on a big screen connected to their PC.

According to the spotty youth working for the local distributors, the
version they had was the version that would be released on 28th June,
barring a few bug-fixes.

Right here are my impressions of the game.

On the positive side first:

1. The sound is amazing. The car I had a go in was Damon Hill's
Williams, and I recognised the car ( I took over in mid-lap from
another chap) from the distinctive Renault V-10 sound. Some of the
other sounds, such as the crashes were not 100% accurate (what does a
crash really sound like?), but close enough.

2. The simulation seems to be very accurate, loads of throttle off the
line will leave you standing in a cloud of your own tyre smoke.
Touching wheels with your opponents will launch one of you into the
air. The kitty litter in the sandtraps will bog the car down unless
you have some speed, but heading through the sandtrap at high speed
will have your view bouncing all over the place (something I did a
couple of times)

3. The car setup (what I saw of it) was extensive. A lot of thought
will have to go into setting your car up correctly.

On the negative side:

You need a serious machine to run F1GP2. Don't let anyone tell you
otherwise. According to the representative, they were running the game
in SVGA (640 x 480) with MOST features enabled. The hardware consisted
of a Packard-Bell P133 with 32Mb RAM. Even with this sort of
horsepower, the passing scenery seemed a bit jerky, especially when
taking a corner. Things got a lot worse when there were a lot of other
cars in view. The first corner at Monza, after the start was confusing
as the picture seems to jump around as the game tried to keep up with
the task of drawing all those cars, and coping with your input.

Would I buy it? Of course, but I don't expect I will be able to run it
with everything turned on in SVGA mode on my P120. I have yet to see a
game that beats The Need for Speed when it comes to smooth graphics in
SVGA mode.

Cliff

------------------------------------------------
Clifford Smith, Johannesburg South Africa

WWW: http://www.global.co.za/~csmith/default.htm
------------------------------------------------

Did you ask MPS about what kind of system one need to run GP2 perfectly?
Does P166 with 32MB EDO RAM, stealth 2MB VRAM and pipeline burst cache
good enough? If not, I am going to wait a bit longer to replace my P60.

On 09 May 1996, Clifford Smith wrote...

I was thinking of waiting for the P5-200 mhz to come out before buying
a new system. I *hope* that at 200 mhz, GP2 will be able to run with
ALL details on in SVGA mode at a smooth frame rate! From what I've
heard and read in this newsgroup and elsewhere, a 166 is not going to
cut it.

                                                                    --

          "Adventure...e***ment...a Jedi craves not these things..."
                                                                 -Yoda

Given that you can't actually get anything better without being utterly
ripped off by Intel, I think a P-166 with 32Mb EDO would be the one to
buy. Skip the 2Mb VRAM though - remember that although GP2 will work
under Win95, it is NOT a Win95 program. It is optimised for DOS, and
therefore DRAM cards will work best. Best ones are the Stealth 64 and
Hercules, based upon the Ark2000 chipset.

Happy shopping ;)

John

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 >>Did you ask MPS about what kind of system one need to run GP2 perfectly?
 >>Does P166 with 32MB EDO RAM, stealth 2MB VRAM and pipeline burst cache
 >>good enough? If not, I am going to wait a bit longer to replace my P60.
 >
 >Given that you can't actually get anything better without being utterly
 >ripped off by Intel, I think a P-166 with 32Mb EDO would be the one to
 >buy. Skip the 2Mb VRAM though - remember that although GP2 will work
 >under Win95, it is NOT a Win95 program. It is optimised for DOS, and
 >therefore DRAM cards will work best. Best ones are the Stealth 64 and
 >Hercules, based upon the Ark2000 chipset.
 >
 >Happy shopping ;)
 >
 >John

The Hercules gets my thumbs up there, too!  But the Stealth64 isn't really
that great.  I just replaced mine and have seen about a 2 fps increase to
30/27 max/min.  I turn off track texture (which sucks anyway), and grass and
leave everything else set to auto.  The only time that anything drops out is
when I'm leaving the pits (all those cars to draw) and at some tracks, such as
Michigan, I lose the crowd when I have up one of the info windows such as tire
temps and there are a few cars in sight.  And this from a P-150!

Clark

I don't know about you guys, but I don't like the way things are going
with the latest games. I bought my P-120 six months ago, and already
the processor (the rest of my machine is OK) is obsolete.

I don't enjoy having to upgrade my processor to run a $70 (?) game.
Where is it going to end?

Cliff

-----------------------------------------
Clifford Smith, Johannesburg South Africa


-----------------------------------------

No, I did'nt ask, but I still have my doubts as to the real merits of
the new Pentium Pros (the new Pentiums running above 133Mhz). As to
the video card, I have a Diamond Stealth 64 Video VRAM, and I am VERY
impressed by it.

Cliff

-----------------------------------------
Clifford Smith, Johannesburg South Africa


-----------------------------------------

On Sun, 12 May 1996 16:30:18 +0100, John Wallace

Cliff

-----------------------------------------
Clifford Smith, Johannesburg South Africa


-----------------------------------------

________

Eldred Pickett

I am NOT paranoid.  And why are you always watching me?!?

The Stealth 64 comes in both DRAM and VRAM flavours. BOTH are good, but
for reasons too long and boring to go into here, the DRAM will perform
better under DOS and the VRAM under Windows. Since GP2 is a DOS prog,
the VRAM will be good, but the DRAM will be better.

Cheers!
John

PS - If you want to know the reason why, it's explained in the hardware
section of Sim Racing News at the URL below :)

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Remember the Stealth 64 only recently adopted the Ark2000 chipset - you
may have an older one. Check the chip on your board for confirmation, it
IS a really good card with DRAM, the difference from the Herc is
measured in 1/10 frames per second - not much!

Have you tried overclocking to 166Mhz? A P-150 is not a good chip since
it uses 60Mhz bus and 30Mhz PCI bus - P-166 uses 66/33 respectively and
is consequently much faster. P-150 is still a helluva processor, just
that it is only a little faster than a 133, whereas a 166 is a lot
faster than a 150.

Cheers!
John
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Too right, just wait till Win95 games become the norm..... :(((( P-Pro
200Mhz all round I think.

It's all a big ***....

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Joe