rec.autos.simulators

    Hey Scott! Long time no see :-)  bummer you didn't have anything to add
to the post,  it would be interesting to find out what everyone thinks it
would take to make SimRacing a Sport worthy of TV, or Radio, or ....et..

Scott,

I don't usually comment on this, but did you *have* to copy Tom's entire
post + Mike's html post just to ask this?

Jan.
=---
"Pay attention when I'm talking to you boy!" -Foghorn Leghorn.

Speaking of which... you are in Albany aren't you?!?    ;)

<SNIP>

I've raced FFord Zetec 1800 at Brands Hatch and FFord 1600 at
Silverstone... Racing is racing, whether it's F1, NASCAR, FFord, Sim
Racing.. you're still tring to control a high powered car and drive it
faster to beat the other guy, imo.

Sure doing a lap in a FFord and a lap in GPL is an altogether different
kettle of fish. But when it's you and him braking for the last corner on
the last lap... it's RACING in any shape or form. I think that the skill
that requires in sim racing should be respected.

Doesn't mean he can pass judgement on sim racing based on a few laps of
a Playstation GAME...

Rob

Yeah! I 2nd that!!

Mike, You know damn right!

I've been a sim racer since the original Indy 500 was released in the late 80's
and I have been enthralled ever since. After "500" I invested in World Circuit,
and it's graphics and physics were unlike anything I could have imagined. Then
on to Nascar and ICR, Racer Heaven!
My brother Timothy and I would race for hours in the multi-player mode. Dicing
back and forth at Talladega and Milwaukee until, lo' and behold, word came that
an online beta service was coming into play.

NIRVANA!

It was named the Hawaii Network and was brought to us by the people at Papyrus.
I first read about it in the back of the aftermarket Nascar sim guide, and it
was a dream come true.

We scoured the net until we found the software and immediately signed up. It
was explained that we would have to wait for an Email from Papy to log on. A
few days passed and nothing happened. Finally on a bright and cheery Saturday
morning I logged on. Nope, I had not received my Email, but I figured the worst
that could happen would be a disconnect (which never came.)

I went into the driver's room and it was as if I had been transported to a
private club under the stands of some faraway racetrack. Guys were discussing
their setups and other drivers, who they could draft with and who to stay away
from. The races that were available were at the top of the screen like a
bookie's tote board.

It was ***ic.

I selected a race and pressed enter. The screen burped and flashed and then
there I was, sitting in the pits at Dega'! My hands were sweating on my
Thrustmaster wheel and as silly as it seems, my breathing was a little shallow
and my heart was pounding out a staccato rhythm. As I stared out over the dash,
the car in front of me moved out and down pit road! On the track, at the same
time, two cars barreled by me, nose to tail, engines redlined as they screamed
their way across the start finish line. Two more cars rumbled by me on pit
road. Four more in quick succession ripped past on the track.
And each one of them a real person! It was mind-boggling!

I cautiously engaged first gear and made my way down pit road as cars continued
to whiz by on the banked tarmac to my right. Up through second, then third as I
stayed low on the course through turn one and finally into fourth and up into
the racing groove as the stands flashed by on the back straight.

After a few laps of white knuckled practice the screen switched to qualifying
mode. I again moved down pit road and out onto the track. Three laps later I
had turned in a best speed of just over 190-mph. Not so good, but not so bad
for my first time.
As I recall, I was in the back of the field. No pace lap. No cautions. Damage
on. The green flagged dropped and I tromped down on the accelerator. My car
sprang forward and I kept in line, following the car in front of me. Suddenly
the car behind me jumped unexpectedly to my left and began to pass me. I could
hear him shift and I knew he had geared first, second and third very steep so
that he could get a good jump. He went by me below the white line as we turned
into turn one.

I lifted and let him in; he was inches in front of me. Then he shifted to
fourth and of course the car fell flat on its face. I lifted hard as his car
stopped accelerating and promptly got booted up the rear end. Cars started
spinning and I was immediately sitting in the middle of a classic sim melee.

When the dust had settled, my hood was scrunched up and the car wouldn't turn.
The chat board went crazy with people screaming at each other.
"Oh for Christ's sake"
"Idiots!"
"Again?"
"Sorry."
"Who is 17?"
"It wasn't my fault!"
"Can't you guys drive?"
"Someone hit me from behind!"
"I'm sending in this replay to Papy!"
"Oh go ahead"
"Moron!"

I hit escape and went back to the driver's room. Little did I know that no
matter where I raced from there on in, whether it was Hawaii, NROS, Ten or GPL,
nothing would ever change as far as first lap crashes and stupid mid race moves
were concerned.
It was also an expensive lesson to learn, for although the Hawaii service was
free, you still had to foot the bill for the long distance phone charges, and
seeing that the server was in Watertown Massachusetts and that I was in Chicago
Illinois, it wasn't cheap. With a lot of calls to different long distance
companies, it was possible to get rates in the $.08 to $.10 range, but you were
still looking at $4.80 to $6.00 and hour. OUCH! If you were married, double
OUCH! (The second ouch was when your spouse hit you in the head with a baseball
bat after seeing the telephone bill.)

At every level of online sim racing I have found people I could run with. In
Hawaii my favorite guys to draft with had names like FRATEDOG, CMONE, SHELL and
my brother AXELTIM. If you qualified up front you might actually have a
respectable race from time to time and when it all went right, when everyone
raced as if it was for real, it could be a heart stopping, sweat on the
forehead experience.

But unfortunately, for those of us who have a little pride and want to be known
as someone you can race with, the good races are few and far between. If the
drivers in GPL spent half as much time working on their starts as they do
trying to impress us with hot laps, the sim-racing world would be a better
place.

I, in all honesty, cannot recall the last time I was the cause of a starting
line crash. For those of you who believe you are doing well - 'I only***up
one out of every 20 starts!' - you're probably not. One in 20 is not good. If
everyone in a race has that accident to start ratio, then every race will have
a starting line crash. 20 drivers across 20 races. Every one of them will crash
once on the start. Each race will have a start line fiasco. Simple math.

So where do we go from here? How can we change that? First you must identify
the cause, and that would be two words.

NO FEAR.

If you don't have fear, you do stupid things. Not afraid of fire? You'll put
your hand in the flame. Not afraid of electricity? You're the guy who walks
with an open umbrella above his head during a lightning storm. Not afraid of
getting hurt when you're going side by side into Curva Grande? You won't lift
and you and some other poor chump will end up in the fencing while four other
cars get caught up in the mess.

What is the answer? It would seem to me that the answer would lie in the
software. If the software can decide just how much damage to assess to your
vehicle when you crash, why can't it assess whether or not you were injured? Or
act as the "Commissioner" and suspend the driver?

Here's an example. Your racing down the main straight at Kylami and another
driver goes underneath you into the first turn. He can't hold his line and you
both slide across the grass and crash into the fencing. Hard. The software
could read the accident and decide that, along with a busted suspension and
lost wheels, one or both of you should be injured or suspended. At that point
your GPL software would shut down. Period.
The software would decide how long the sim was down. Maybe an hour or two for a
minor injury. Maybe two days for a major. And this part of the sim would only
be activated in the multi-player mode; maybe an option in pro-races only.
The downside is you might be an innocent bystander in the crash and have to pay
a price.

So what. It happens in real racing.

The upside is you would be forced to take care while racing online. Not only
would you not want to injure yourself, you surely wouldn't want to injure
another driver. Or worse yet, injure another driver while you walked away
Scot-free.

How would you like to go back to the chat room after that? Especially when the
other driver, although not able to race, would still be able to go into the
chat room while waiting out his suspension/injury.

Could something like this be circumvented? Sure. But do you want to keep a
second version of the sim on your computer ready to go with all your setups
installed and up to date? Do you want to have to re-install the sim, including
patches and updates, to beat the suspension? Turn your computers time/date
forward to get around it? And of course I'm sure a quick thinking programmer
could block all of those scenarios. Maybe even have the online server read the
suspension. Go ahead and reload the sim, but the server would recognize the
name and not allow access to races.

For sim racing to evolve, to be more realistic, something has to change. The
drivers won't, so the software will have to.
Michael Loos
Gasoline Alley...The Fastest Show In Radio!
Nationwide Saturdays at 10:00 pm Eastern - 7:00 pm Pacific
Find your local affiliate at
www.GasolineAlleyOnline.net

Hi Jan,

why, did you read it again by mistake? ;-)

Achim

Hi Rob,

that's true!

Achim

Sorry for the double post guys, I hit the send button before I was ready.
(sheepish grin).
I wrote this for Tim Wheatley's Legends Central Racing View more than a year
ago.  With the way Nascar 4 online racing has been going, it may be time to
take another look at it.

Remember, this would be an OPTION in the software, one I would love to have.
To my thinking it would place the responsibility squarely on the driver.

This is what I wrote...
I've been a sim racer since the original Indy 500 was released in the late 80's
and I have been enthralled ever since. After "500" I invested in World Circuit,
and it's graphics and physics were unlike anything I could have imagined. Then
on to Nascar and ICR, Racer Heaven!
My brother Timothy and I would race for hours in the multi-player mode. Dicing
back and forth at Talladega and Milwaukee until, lo' and behold, word came that
an online beta service was coming into play.

NIRVANA!

It was named the Hawaii Network and was brought to us by the people at Papyrus.
I first read about it in the back of the aftermarket Nascar sim guide, and it
was a dream come true.

We scoured the net until we found the software and immediately signed up. It
was explained that we would have to wait for an Email from Papy to log on. A
few days passed and nothing happened. Finally on a bright and cheery Saturday
morning I logged on. Nope, I had not received my Email, but I figured the worst
that could happen would be a disconnect (which never came.)

I went into the driver's room and it was as if I had been transported to a
private club under the stands of some faraway racetrack. Guys were discussing
their setups and other drivers, who they could draft with and who to stay away
from. The races that were available were at the top of the screen like a
bookie's tote board.

It was orgasmic.

I selected a race and pressed enter. The screen burped and flashed and then
there I was, sitting in the pits at Dega'! My hands were sweating on my
Thrustmaster wheel and as silly as it seems, my breathing was a little shallow
and my heart was pounding out a staccato rhythm. As I stared out over the dash,
the car in front of me moved out and down pit road! On the track, at the same
time, two cars barreled by me, nose to tail, engines redlined as they screamed
their way across the start finish line. Two more cars rumbled by me on pit
road. Four more in quick succession ripped past on the track.
And each one of them a real person! It was mind-boggling!

I cautiously engaged first gear and made my way down pit road as cars continued
to whiz by on the banked tarmac to my right. Up through second, then third as I
stayed low on the course through turn one and finally into fourth and up into
the racing groove as the stands flashed by on the back straight.

After a few laps of white knuckled practice the screen switched to qualifying
mode. I again moved down pit road and out onto the track. Three laps later I
had turned in a best speed of just over 190-mph. Not so good, but not so bad
for my first time.
As I recall, I was in the back of the field. No pace lap. No cautions. Damage
on. The green flagged dropped and I tromped down on the accelerator. My car
sprang forward and I kept in line, following the car in front of me. Suddenly
the car behind me jumped unexpectedly to my left and began to pass me. I could
hear him shift and I knew he had geared first, second and third very steep so
that he could get a good jump. He went by me below the white line as we turned
into turn one.

I lifted and let him in; he was inches in front of me. Then he shifted to
fourth and of course the car fell flat on its face. I lifted hard as his car
stopped accelerating and promptly got booted up the rear end. Cars started
spinning and I was immediately sitting in the middle of a classic melee.

When the dust had settled, my hood was scrunched up and the car wouldn't turn.
The chat board went crazy with people screaming at each other.
"Oh for Christ's sake"
"Idiots!"
"Again?"
"Sorry."
"Who is 17?"
"It wasn't my fault!"
"Can't you guys drive?"
"Someone hit me from behind!"
"I'm sending in this replay to Papy!"
"Oh go ahead"
"Moron!"

I hit escape and went back to the driver's room. Little did I know that no
matter where I raced from there on in, whether it was Hawaii, NROS, Ten or GPL,
nothing would ever change as far as first lap crashes and stupid mid race moves
were concerned.
It was also an expensive lesson to learn, for although the Hawaii service was
free, you still had to foot the bill for the long distance phone charges, and
seeing that the server was in Watertown Massachusetts and that I was in Chicago
Illinois, it wasn't cheap. With a lot of calls to different long distance
companies, it was possible to get rates in the $.08 to $.10 range, but you were
still looking at $4.80 to $6.00 and hour. OUCH! If you were married, double
OUCH! (The second ouch was when your spouse hit you in the head with a baseball
bat after seeing the telephone bill.)

At every level of online sim racing I have found people I could run with. In
Hawaii my favorite guys to draft with had names like FRATEDOG, CMONE, SHELL and
my brother AXELTIM. If you qualified up front you might actually have a
respectable race from time to time and when it all went right, when everyone
raced as if it was for real, it could be a heart stopping, sweat on the
forehead experience.

But unfortunately, for those of us who have a little pride and want to be known
as someone you can race with, the good races are few and far between. If the
drivers in GPL spent half as much time working on their starts as they do
trying to impress us with hot laps, the sim-racing world would be a better
place.

I, in all honesty, cannot recall the last time I was the cause of a starting
line crash. For those of you who believe you are doing well - 'I only screw up
one out of every 20 starts!' - you're probably not. One in 20 is not good. If
everyone in a race has that accident to start ratio, then every race will have
a starting line crash. 20 drivers across 20 races. Every one of them will crash
once on the start. Each race will have a start line fiasco. Simple math.

So where do we go from here? How can we change that? First you must identify
the cause, and that would be two words.

NO FEAR.

If you don't have fear, you do stupid things. Not afraid of fire? You'll put
your hand in the flame. Not afraid of electricity? You're the guy who walks
with an open umbrella above his head during a lightning storm. Not afraid of
getting hurt when you're going side by side into Curva Grande? You won't lift
and you and some other poor chump will end up in the fencing while four other
cars get caught up in the mess.

What is the answer? It would seem to me that the answer would lie in the
software. If the software can decide just how much damage to assess to your
vehicle when you crash, why can't it assess whether or not you were injured? Or
act as the "Commissioner" and suspend the driver?

Here's an example. Your racing down the main straight at Kylami and another
driver goes underneath you into the first turn. He can't hold his line and you
both slide across the grass and crash into the fencing. Hard. The software
could read the accident and decide that, along with a busted suspension and
lost wheels, one or both of you should be injured or suspended. At that point
your GPL software would shut down. Period.
The software would decide how long the sim was down. Maybe an hour or two for a
minor injury. Maybe two days for a major. And this part of the sim would only
be activated in the multi-player mode; maybe an option in pro-races only.
The downside is you might be an innocent bystander in the crash and have to pay
a price.

So what. It happens in real racing.

The upside is you would be forced to take care while racing online. Not only
would you not want to injure yourself, you surely wouldn't want to injure
another driver. Or worse yet, injure another driver while you walked away
Scot-free.

How would you like to go back to the chat room after that? Especially when the
other driver, although not able to race, would still be able to go into the
chat room while waiting out his suspension/injury.

Could something like this be circumvented? Sure. But do you want to keep a
second version of the sim on your computer ready to go with all your setups
installed and up to date? Do you want to have to re-install the sim, including
patches and updates, to beat the suspension? Turn your computers time/date
forward to get around it? And of course I'm sure a quick thinking programmer
could block all of those scenarios. Maybe even have the online server read the
suspension. Go ahead and reload the sim, but the server would recognize the
name and not allow access to races.

For sim racing to evolve, to be more realistic, something has to change. The
drivers won't, so the software will have to.

Well, that was my thought over a year ago, and now that Nascar 4 is online, it
becomes an even more compelling idea to me.  Imagine running in a league with
this option on.
 I, for one, would relish the reality of someone who cuts down on you even
though you are up beside him at the turn entrance having to serve a two day
online suspension.  Even if I have to pay the price also, at least I know when
I come back that the idiot might have a better idea of what he should be doing,
especially as far as online manners are concerned.

Then again, maybe nothing would change. :(
Michael Loos
Gasoline Alley...The Fastest Show In Radio!
Nationwide Saturdays at 10:00 pm Eastern - 7:00 pm Pacific
Find your local affiliate at
www.GasolineAlleyOnline.net

Sort of: something got screwed up so Scott's reply was blacked out... so I
scrolled through the whole thing again to find it... didn't and went through
it more carefully. Then finally I got smart and looked at the message
source.

Jan.
=---
"Pay attention when I'm talking to you boy!" -Foghorn Leghorn.

Hi Achim! ;)

Tru. Just havin' a bud!

lol....Rob....I'm really beginning to like you a lot!  ("Besides...MS is a
***er!")  ROFL.

Thanks for the support.....

Tom

"Sure doing a lap in a FFord and a lap in GPL is an altogether different
kettle of fish. But when it's you and him braking for the last corner on
the last lap... it's RACING in any shape or form. I think that the skill
that requires in sim racing should be respected."

There's a growing number of people in real-world racing that are beginning
to agree with you, Rob.  They are growing in ranks at a far more rapid rate
than most of the members of this sim community realize....or can understand,
unless they spend a lot of time interfacing with the inside members of the
real-world racing community (I'm not talking about being a race fan...I'm
talking about being down in the trenches of real-world racing....which is
where I try to do my work and efforts....every day).  Today, I spend half my
time trying to overcome the perception that what I do is "play games on my
computer."  Three years ago....I spend 95% of my time doing that.  That's
progress!  I take it as such....only **progress**.......but I'm encouraged
by the pace.....so far at least.

I decided to "stand up and be counted" about this stupid "hot-lapping" thing
because it is hurting the "progress" I'm talking about above.  Do you know
that I can find "quotes" and references as far back as Bob Bondurant's book
(forgot the title...its over at a friends house at the moment) written
around 1975....where he says (paraphrased), "We encourage our students to
play video games as much as possible.  It sharpens their senses and develops
faster decision making skills and reaction times."  He's talking about video
games....of his time....that where mostly about banging a little square of
pixels.....over a line....on a black and white TV screen!  If that impressed
him as having the ability to help a young, aspiring race car driver become a
better driver......what would he say today about GPL or N4?  Every single
one of the racing schools around the world.....RIGHT NOW.....are looking
into what racing simulators can add to their driver development programs!

Here's what I'm ultimately working towards.....this is my philosophy....my
"motivation" for quitting my full-time job 3 years ago and pursuing this
effort 12 hours a day....7-days a week:

"All that is necessary for simulated computer racing to **explode** onto the
scene of real-world racing......is for one team, during one race at a
high-visibility race venue......to be **perceived** by their
competitors...... to have had an advantage because they used racing
simulators.....then almost instantly.....every other team will seek to use
them!" - quote: Tom Pabst, Pabst-Racing.

Every single day.....I get up....and plan something to do that day that
might help to make that happen sooner!

Tom

<msg length edited for Jan>  ;)

I was just curious Mike.  I figured with it being so close and all. ;)

 I was thinking of "crashing" it this weekend, but I had a few things to do
in the office this morning (I hate virtual private networks when they don't
work <G>) and have a few things I have to get done tonight.  I hope you are
having fun, racing well, and tell everyone I said hello!

Oh yeah... Try to keep Ramsden out of prison!

--
Scott B. Husted
ICQ# 4395450
http://www.Husted.cc

Hasn't this already happened? JV got pole position his first time
out at Spa in '96, which he attributed partly to learning the track
successfully with a computer game (GP2).

I think I could hurt myself trying to figure that one out.  <G>  (and yes,
it has been awhile bud!)

Quite honestly, I think events such as LikeReal racing can definitely help
the situation.  Dave McCall is definitely a great "ambassador."  Even though
Tom and I have had our differences, I think he has the right approach, or
perhaps "ideology" is the right word? - even if it takes him 12 hours of
typing and then 6 hours of reading on our parts to see it!  <VBG>  (That was
a joke Tom!)

For it to happen with "online" racing... there would have to be some form of
sanctioning body that kept track of rules, statistics, results, and also had
race officials to monitor activitied during EVERY sanctioned online event.

Flame me if you want, but I see it as this "goal" has taken 10 steps
backwards since the collapse of TEN.  *shrugs*   =)

--
Scott B. Husted
ICQ# 4395450
http://www.Husted.cc