rec.autos.simulators

I bought CPR today (actually I took Andretti back ... and traded it for
CPR) ... and I don't own a decent joystick or a wheel ... so I am left
to play CPR with the keyboard ...

And I"m not doing very well.  Has anyone gotten what they feel is
reasonable good handling w/the keyboard ?

Thanks,
Doug

 No racing simulation can be played competitively with a keyboard.  You
cannot ease the car into the turns and thereby you will always squeal the
tires and scrub of speed in the turns.  Also, you cannot get on the gas easy
or on the brakews easy and you therefore spin the tires existing the corners
and upset the car entering the corners.   /TomH

GP2 is perfectly playable with the keyboard. I'm having a LOT of fun driving it
(AND very competitively, thank you!)

JoH
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...

driving it (AND very competitively, thank you!) <<

When you play Gp2 with a keyboard you get an special kind of steering help
to assist you - whether or not you select the steering helps aids in the
control setup. Therefore with keyboards in Gp2 you are never really doing
all the driving yourself. This is of course very necessary because of the
limitations of keyboard control. But I think its a bit unfair then to try
to compare keyboard driven results with analog results.

Phillip McNelley

The GRANDprix 2 Unoffical Manual
http://www.powerup.com.au/~philmak/GP2MAN/

The situation is a bit more complex. In fact, when we go to the faster times I
value the keyboard times HIGHER than comparable analogue times. When you keep an
eye on various hotlap competitions, you'll notice that:

- bad players or players without enough time to practice produce ***times with
the wheel (steering help on), and are faster with the keyboard (traction control
on). They have a hard time keeping the car on the road without the steering help
<g>

- an above-average player will start to exploit the advantages of analogue
control and driving without steering help. Yes: steering help makes driving
_easier_ (or even: _possible_ in case of keyboard), but it lowers the limits of
what can be reached. A good player is able to use the wheel and no steering help
to go faster than he could do with the keyboard.

- then there are the FASTEST guys, keyboard or wheel. Top keyboard drivers turn
off traction help (yep!) and go as close to the limit as possible. At the moment
we're talking about times like 1m12.6 at Brazil, 1m14.5 at Monaco, 1m17.5 at
Imola, 1m20.1 at Monza (that last one with a bit of chicane-cutting.. :-)  )
Those are about the times produced by the "very good" wheel drivers. But it's
still 1.5-2s under the worldrecords and upto 3s under the supposed slow-mo
records.

My point is: a top keyboard time is as difficult to achieve as a fast wheel
time. They are different disciplines, but to challenge the records you have to
go to the limit in both cases. Try driving the car with keyboard and _without_
traction control, for instance. There are still (fast) wheel people out there
who don't believe that it's possible at all!

The relationship between wheel drivers and keyboard drivers is very similar to
the one between tennis players and table-tennis players, I guess  ;-)

BTW: I once tried a third-party util to turn off steering help and opposite lock
help even when driving keyboard. Conclusion: Crammond did the right thing
providing them :-)  

Have fun driving,

JoH
Please remove *anti-spam* from the email when replying.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
When everything else failed, we can still become im-
mortal by making an enormous blunder....

                             John Kenneth Galbraith
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=