rec.autos.simulators

I loaded it up this morning and went for a spin in Eddie's Shaguar. Came
back to the pits, made some changes to the controller settings (do half of
these sliders even do anything??) and after half an hour or so of tweaking
those, managed to make the car halfway driveable and went for a drive
instead of a spin.

Admittedly this was a very limited try of the game, but it's okay, no GPL,
but better than Rally Trophy. The force feedback seems to want me to know
about every little bit of gravel in my path but has little interest in
actually telling me what the car is doing. There's loads of settings to
change the ff, all of which do exactly the same except for one, so I ended
up using that. The 'off' setting.

I had started with all the aids on, since this is the default, but quickly
got irritated by brake assist, steering assist, traction control, the list
is seemingly endless. With them all on you can more or less plant it & watch
the scenery it's that easy, so I did what any decent gpl'er would do and
switched every last one of them off.

It got harder, a bit. Judging the braking points was the hardest part, I
kept braking waaay too early, but at least that's better than the
alternative I guess ;-)

I got bored lapping Silverstone after an hour or so, but I'd familiarised
myself with the circuit at least, so after a quick try in Schumi's Fezza
(felt exactly the same to me) I had a look for the exit button and managed
to get
back to the desktop after a mere 5 minutes or so.

I'd downloaded the GTR mod already (265Mb, took about 3 hours) so I double
clicked the file & waited.
Has it crashed?
Oh *** was the download corrupted?
No, I checked on the task manager and it was definitely doing something. I
had a look in the temp folder and sure enough it was filling up with mas
files and the like.

I scanned over the Readme.txt from the temp folder while it was extracting,
which rather thoughtfully explained that the apparent lack of anything
happening after running the exe was perfectly normal.

I followed the instructions, pointed the install to my fresh F1 2002 folder
and it all painlessly put itself in the right places. When it was done, I
started F1 2002 again and had a look around the menus to see what had
changed.

Nothing. ***, I've done something wrong.

The Readme file had gone from the temp folder by now, so I had a look in the
game folder & reopened it, read it properly this time and discovered that
there's a separate exe for the GTR mod, so I dragged a shortcut onto my
desktop & ran it.

It immediately crashed and I had to end task on the game to get out of it.
ZoneAlarm had popped up asking for internet access in the background, but
fortunately it was just the GTR exe file wanting access to the 127.0.0.1
loopback adapter, so it was okay to allow it.

I re-ran GTR & this time it worked fine. I had to set up another driver
despite my having just spend quite a while setting up controller assignments
etc in the F1 game, but after 10 minutes or so of opening F1, checking
settings, closing it, opening GTR, altering the setting, going back to F1
and so on, I had a copy of the original driver settings in the GTR mod.

I had a look at the cars available and picked the black Lamborghini, just
because it looked cool, and took it to Silverstone again because I'd spent
the morning there in the Jag & knew the track.

Now this was more like it ;-) The engine noise was glorious, none of that
busy bee F1 stuff, but real Italian engineering rubbing itself vigorously
against other bits of Italian engineering in that special way that only
Italian engineers can manage ;-)

No real grip to speak of, brakes were awful, I loved it.

I did a few laps & thought I was really improving until I realised that the
tyres & brakes had just taken a while to warm up, and found I could now
smear on the brakes, dive into corners and go much, much harder than I had
been.

I went back to the pits & changed the brake bias back a bit (default was
65%!) to 55%, then remembered I'd seen an option to assign buttons for
changing the brake bias in-car, so I set the buttons & went back out again.

I took it fairly easy for the first few laps 'till it was all warmed up,
then gave the Lambo some wellie.

Fantastic fun, tail all squirmy accelerating out of the new Abbey, adjusted
the bias a few times to improve the feel & felt right at home.

I haven't tried any of the other cars or tracks yet, but for me, it was
worth 20 just for the Lambo and a track to drive it on.

If Racing Legends ever comes out it'll have to be pretty damned amazing to
beat this. The GTR mod, imo is right up there with gpl, no question.

If you haven't got this yet, go get it. Believe me, you'll love it ;-)

Malc.

Of course you would only look for it half heartedly, after all, it's not
GPL.

Of course not. Why can't they make a controller configuration setup like
Papy's....blah....blah....blah......

Of ***ing course not.

Onme thing that's different, it doesn't have GPL's crappy tire model which
gives an arcade like driving experience.

Sure.

Good choice. Genius.

Yea, why even bother including options in a game for anyone who isn't
*** like, oh, I don't know, a GPL'er? We're the hardest of the hard
core hardy hard hard mother *** hard asses. Of course you didn't have to
use them.

Like I said. GPL'ers are like one, great, big ***.

:-o

Yea, these new "go kart" circuits suck (had to say it, it's required GPL'er
speak).

Uh, all the cars feel different but since your a GPL'er we'll just say
you're right anyway.

And there we have it. Yet ANOTHER GPL'er who gives a sim a few minutes and
pronounces it "no GPL".

What a surprise. 2003 is almost upon us and we still have to read this same
old shit. Everyone does those dumb end of the year awards. I'd like to
nominate a new award that can be given on one of the auto sim web sites. How
about we give GPL'ers an award for "The group of auto simmers who thinks
they know more than anyone, but actually dont know shit award"? We can also
give them three posthumous awards for the previous years' work.

How do I get GPL to run on my P7 - 5.9 Thz beast with 64gigs of RAM?
Is it a compatibility issue with my Centri-Force9 vidcard with 2 gig?
It wont load.
And my glass of warm milk is getting cold waiting.
Besides, if I cant get it running by 7:30, im off to bed anyway.

Honey could you please bring my slippers and the photo album of me at Lemans
in 1958.

I just dont understand these young kids nowdays....

Looks like I hit a nerve ;-)

I actually liked the standard game, I thought it was pretty good even though
I only tried one car & one track for a few hours, and every new game has
it's own menu system to battle with, not just your baby. I had the same
problem with gpl when I first tried that.

It's just not my type of game. I don't like FPS's either but I don't doubt
that UT2003 is great for those that like that sort of game.

The crux of what I wrote was that if the reader is the type of person that
likes gpl, they might appreciate a fellow gpl'ers recommendation for another
sim.

Is that so hard to understand?

Malc.

Maybe as more time passes, I'll figure out how to do setups and that
will probably help, but if you think GPL has a steep learning curve,
this game's curve is completely perpendicular from what I can tell.

Get a friggin' life mate. And while you're at it, get one for me... can't
believe I'm going to send this and contribute to another pointless RAS
"debate". Next thing you know I'll be spouting racist towelheadisms in the
flight-sim ng!

Andrew McP

If OTOH you really want to trail brake into turns there are two simple
changes you can try.  First move the brake bias a bit rearward.  On the
360 I found that just moving it back from 58% to 57% made a huge
difference in feel.  If it still feels like it is pushing too much as
you come off the brake, then increase the rear slow bump damping to be
the same as or slightly higher than the front.  That will decrease both
brake release understeer and throttle on understeer, so be careful.

For me the point of the original poster was to explain how F1-2002 can be
transformed by the GTR2002 into something that a fan of a sim like GPL would
appreciate.

If you look through some of the posts from the "GPL ***" on here you will
see that GTR2002 appears to sit quite nicely alongside GPL on their hard drives.

Your (at times well meaning) stance to enlighten this group that there are other
racing sims out there does mean that *just* maybe you have missed out on some
GPL fun. It is quite a different looking sim nowadays and if you don't worry
about the tyre model and consider it a sprint race there are enough consistent
racers out there on VROC to have a blast.

Just in case you are interested at how GPL has evolved check out:

http://www.racesimcentral.net/

If nothing else it shows how alongside with the GTR2002 mod and others the
strength of the racing sim community and how much ability now sits with us as a
collective group of racing sim enthusiasts rather than being totally reliant
upon the game makers.

Cheers

Tony

David G Fisher

Maybe we'll see you on VROC after all :)

About DGF

Oh, thats what he's all about is it? - I thought he was just some
foul-mouthed bigot who had nothing better to do than half-read
posts and jump on anyone who didn't appear to share his views.

I appreciated the original post and it was clear from the subject
header that this was a GPL'ers opinion on GTR2002, so
comparisons with GPL have a strong likelyhood of being made.

I respect anyones right to disagree with others, and to state
their own views but there is no need to be rude about it. OK,
so I've been a little rude back, but I think anyone reading DGF's
reply would have to make the same conclusions.

Maxx

If you had read the readme a little more carefully you would have note the
distribution includes a utility to export your F1 2k2 player(s) to a format
compatible with the GTR mod.

GTR mod requires two specific settings, however. Make sure you have pitcrew
animations set to "low" and your quickrace grid position to "random".

Glad you enjoy the mod too, though.

Jan.
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