rec.autos.simulators

Actually, online racing isn't new at all. ICR2 and GP2 didn't provide for
it, but others have. F1RS would have, but licensing issues prevented it.

This has been discussed before here at r.a.s. I certainly hope that all sim
developers make online racing a priority. I personally will have little
interest in any racing sim that doesn't have online play.

The seed was planted long ago actually. N2 has a very large online community
although it's a differnet setup and you have to pay to play. The first
racing game I played online was POD by Ubi Soft. Not great performance
compared to today, but it was impressive (and fun) at the time (year and a
half ago). MS released CPR a year ago and that was the first sim to provide
convenient, free, online TCP/IP racing. MTM2 was released 6 months later and
the quality improved. There has been a very large online racing community
for the MTM titles for almost 2 years. MCM was the latest racing game
released by MS and also has online racing. MS has made internet racing a top
priority in their racing software, and the Zone makes it convenient to find
and set up races.

Ubi Soft would have had online play with F1RS, but like I said, licensing
issues prevented it. Soon, MGP will have online play with a game service.
I'm sure they will be drawing on their experience with POD.

To be honest, I really don't think TOO many conclusions about sims can be
drawn from what you read on r.a.s. It's such a small sample. A sim can sell
a half million copies, but the same 200 names appear here at r.a.s. month
after month. It's surprising how many familiar names I see when doing
anything sim related, online. Even in beta testing, most of the names have
been familiar.

One thing that's kind of interesting for me is that I see some of the same
*** online sim racers while moving form one sim to another. There are a
number of guys that raced CPR who are now in GPL. I looked at the qualifying
results for Zandvoort at Randy Magruder's league web page and the top two
guys (Art and Sandman) were also the top racers in CPR. There were a few
others from CPR there too. Art is someone who I also remember from POD.
Actually, if I were asked who I thought were the best online sim drivers,
I'd pick Sandman and Art.

What I've always felt is that online racing and internet play go perfectly
together. After all, real car racing is all about going head to head with a
human competitor on the track. One thing you can see on r.a.s. with regards
to GPL and online play is that there are some people who are experiencing
online racing for the first time and really enjoying it. When MGP releases
their online service, you'll see more of the same. Once people try online
racing, it quickly becomes ***ing.  :-) So while the seed was planted
awhile back, I do agree with you that it will grow quickly form here on out.

David G Fisher

Note:  I have had over 1,000+ online sim stock car races and our team has over
5,000 of experience.

Bill / Amish on TEN

Mark, I must say --- I do like this idea.  One thing that I feel that
will be important to any online sim-racing community will be stat
tracking.  On NROS, there are STAT junkies.  I feel it really adds
something to the enviroment.  Some good and some bad, but I think it
definately attracts and retains peoples interest.  With that being said,
I would imagine a ghost mode probably would be defined as a non-points
race etc.  Currently, on NROS we can set up LONG practice sessions that
a "newbie" could join and learn a few things.  BUT, if they are like me,
they will want to see how they do in "real" races.  On the other hand,
you could be on to something if for the "lower" ranked races they would
still count and also be "ghost" races.   Hmmmmmmm DEFINATELY a good
idea.... Great work

Bill / Amish on TEN

Well check out some of the quake2, descent2, diablo, etc etc
"communties"...take a look at all of the successful ladders,
tournaments for other games.  And guess what....no pay.  Again
pay-4-play will doom racing games.

On Kali, I can easily block out newbies and/or lamers from any game I
host...so again I dont see the benefits of pay-4-play. Further, TEN,
MPlayer and other pay-4-play services also tried the "elitist" spin,
ie "no lamers here..just true gamers" and they also tried having
"exclusive" games (yawn).  MPlayer saw that was pure BS and went
"free" (note quotes ;-))

The guys at TEN tried to use a similar excuse back when quake, duke3d,
etc were first released:  "if you want the best online ***
environment, you must pay 2 play".  It wasnt true then, and it isnt
now.  What really helped the FPS games, was that the *developers* woke
up and coded their games so that they play better over the net.  Take
a look at the drastic improvement in gameplay from quake1 to quake2,
descent to descent2, etc.  The sad thing is that most racing game
developers, *still* havent taken the necessary steps, ie EA with the
pathetic net performing NFS series.

The reason why FPS games have gotten so popular is mainly due to the
better gameplay over the net due to better coding.  Overall it has been
the opposite for racing games.  If racing gamers complained to game
companies more, then something will be done.  But if u go the
pay-4-play route, you are only losing more money thus making the
situation worse.  A few racing games are improving tho: MTM2, viper
demo, etc play very well via the net.

Let me close with this example on the effect of gamers on companiers,
back when 3dfx, verite, etc were competing for games, it were the 3dfx
owners who complained most about the lack of support of games.  I saw
posts *everywhere*, on the net, magazines, etc...saying that they
would not buy a game if it did not support 3dfx.  And look at how
popular 3dfx is now.....