rec.autos.simulators

David, physics are physics.  The laws of physics are not changed
because you get into a more powerful car.  And the sense of what a car
feels like when it's changing pitch, sliding, etc is all carried right
up through the top series.

I interviewed Christian Fittipaldi at Laguna Seca this September and
was struck by how little regard he had for racing sims of ANY quality.
His claim was that you feel the car in the small of your back, and
until they simulate that, a race car simulation won't do anything for
him.   Consider, in addition, to this, that many notorious racing
drivers have participated in the design of what turned out to be
horrible racing games.  How about EA's Andretti racing?  Where the
Andretti's, mostly Jeff, actually did a LOT of feedback on the game
and praised its realism?   Psygnosis' F1 was playtested by several F1
drivers.  How does that make it compare to UbiSoft's work?  On a par?
Please.  In talking with Christian and his agent, it was also stated
to me that many of the drivers who do play with racing games want it
to be super-realistic.  I don't mean Super as in "Very" but as in
"Extra" -- that is, speeds FASTER than reality, with all kinds of
unrealistic stuff in it to make it FUN.  Hey, these guys race for a
living, and they aren't getting the sensation of speed from sims they
get in real life (common sense would help you reach this conclusion).
I even asked Christian about the value of using a sim to LEARN a
track, and his comment was "a sim is one thing, but it's totally
different to get on the course and FEEL it".

And finally, how about Mark Blundell and Mauricio Gugelmin endorsing
the physics of CART Precision Racing as "perfect", only to see
Microsoft radically mess up the physics engine in a patch, and then
still have the same quote on the site -- which physics were perfect?
The original's? Or the patch's?  

The truth is, that Christian Fittipaldi and guys like Bobby Labonte,
Dale Earnhardt, Jr., and Jacques Villeneuve are all right, but each
person's take on sims is based upon their ability to create that
illusion around themselves that they are really driving.  The latter
bunch is able to, and they appreciate the game and its realism.
Others, including those who have endorsed or helped with games, such
as Christian, cannot.  Their inability to get into the illusion of
real driving means that their feedback is of relatively little use.
They can describe the what the car in real life does, but they haven't
developed the senses necessary to evaluate the 'virtual' version of
that car.  Hence, to them, an arcade sim might be more fun that a
'realistic' sim such as GPL.  

It is no disrespect to the drivers that don't get into realistic sims
or even racing games at all, but often their endor***t of a product
means little, even if they added their thoughts.  This became all too
painfully clear with me during the time I talked with Christian about
Newman-Haas Racing (Psygnosis).  He supplied his feedback, but he
wasn't enough of a sim-head to really say more than that, in general,
a sim cannot capture what he feels in the car, so he doesn't have much
interest in sims.

Some are,. some aren't.   Neither are right, or wrong.

Funny, how the racing instructor at Laguna Seca seems to feel that
being delicate and having a feather touch on the wheel were important
aspects of going fast.

I repeat what I said earlier in the post.  Physics are physics.  How
much experience sending men to the surface of the moon did we have
before we did it successfully?  We had simulated it, we had mapped out
the physics for it, but we'd never actually done it.  By your
reasoning, there was no way NASA should have been able to pull it off,
because they hadn't actually DONE it, or had anyone around who had
telling them how to do it.  Physics are physics.

Randy
Randy Magruder
http://www.racesimcentral.net/

Come on...get real. Car physics are car physics....(somewhat
simplified for your cranial capacity here but...) you have so
much weight with a center of gravity at x, a polar moment of
inertia at....etc. Tires with a diameter of d, with a width of w
and with a compound of c and have a durometer of x will have a
coefficient of grip equal to z on such and such a surface,
figuring in a working temperature of f, etc. Add in the camber or
crown of the road surface so the grip varies depending on where
you are on the track, etc. Become a programmer and buy a
calculator and a copy of "Race Car Vehicle Dynamics" and you too
could write a fairly accurate physics model for any type of car.
The calculations are the same for every type of car out there,
"race" or not...you just change the values to fit the vehicle.
Even "amateurs" like the guys at the US Pits did a pretty
commendable job in taking the much simplified physics model in N2
and adapting it to the touring cars for TPTCC. Think of how much
better they could have modeled it with a better physics engine.

 The physics acting on a Formula Ford are *exactly* the same
physics acting on a Modern day F1 car, a 1967 F1 car, or even a
city bus being driven through town by your friendly driver. The
only difference is in the values plugged into the equations.

<snip>

I guess we cannot simulate gravity without Sir Isaac Newton's
opinion and testing or the explosive power of an H-Bomb without
Edmund Tellier telling us we have it right. It's all in numbers
and calculations...physics, and those laws are rather set in
stone. As long as the variables plugged into the formula are
correct then the results likewise should be.

Yes, and the only thing is that controller technology hasn't
caught up with the physics of the model. We can (and sometimes
do) alter our interface so we feel more comfortable.

 If you remember, not too long ago when Darrell Waltrip showed up
at NASCAR short tracks with power steering everyone thought he
was nuts...until he lapped the field at a place like Bristol.
Now, many of those same drivers wouldn't think of racing without
it. We do much the same thing with our wheels and
pedals...modifying them to our preferences, and usually making
them easier to operate than their real-life counterparts.

 You've never seen me make a lap at Zandvoort, have you? Believe
me, after 20 laps, even with "easier to turn than the real thing"
steering, I'm worn out. I'm using almost 180 deg. of wheel
travel, even with the steering ratio set to 13:1 and a small
"dead zone".

 And neither do you...at least they have been in real racing
cars, so how is your opinion somehow more relevant? I've driven
racing cars, though not F1 nor CART, and I have "driven" F1RS and
MGPRS2 and GPL, and GPL is head and shoulders above anything else
in it's sense of "realism". 'Nuff said.

 Regards,

Doc
phRed '95 - CSP #25
Team Monster Miata Stereo
--
Never a late apex, never a dull moment.                                                                                                                                                                                                                        

I played high school football and I played college football.  I played with
and against guys that went on to play in the NFL, and I can give you a very
simple and accurate assessment of what it's like to play in the NFL.

High School = The game is slow, not particularly ***, the coaching is poor
(well intentioned but poor), only about 1 or 2 guys per team can actually play
the game.

College = The game is fast, it is ***, the coaching is excellent, and
everybody on the field and on the bench can play the game.

Pro = The game is exceptionally fast, extremely ***, the coaching is the
best money can buy, and everybody on the field and on the bench is a
superstar.

Of course whether or not you choose to believe it coming from me is your
problem.  If Brett Favre says that everybody ought to do Methamphetamine are
you going to run out and buy an 8 ball?  Endor***ts from the Pro's are
probably the least believable because they are simply business transactions.  
An endor***t from some lowly (in your eyes) instructor at say the Russell
Racing School would stand a much better chance of being an accurate
assessment.  But it probably wouldn't sell many copies of the game would it?

R.a.s. is insignificant. I  beta test for two companies and have been
contacted by sim developers but it had nothing to do with r.a.s.

I know people want to be involved in sim developement but r.a.s. is
considered a joke, because, like most newsgroups, there is a sh**load of
nonsense, emotion, and cheerleading.

David G Fisher

We may not be be a large slice of the market, but

Gee, really Dave?

What's your fun of coming here, David ?

p.s.: Im searching for a better representation of the hard-core simracing
market.

- Fran?ois Mnard <ymenard> Good race at the Brickyard!
- Official Mentally retarded guy of r.a.s.
- Excuse me for my English (I'm French speaking)
- NROS Nascar sanctioned Guide <NAS-Frank> http://www.nros.com/
- "People think it must be fun to be a super genius, but they don't realise
how hard it is to put up with all the idiots in the world."--

The difference between me and many of the Papyrus/GPL cheerleaders is that
I, like Fittipaldi, see these sims for what they are at this point in time.
I would say that sim developement is at 7 on a scale of 1-10. GPL, MGPRS2,
CPR, N2/3, Viper Racing, and surely the upcoming PSCR are all close together
at that 7 spot. When sims reach the 10 point then that's when guys like
Schumacher and Fittipaldi will be impressed by them. I still love sims but
none of them is so much better than the other that I will come on r.a.s.
every day and act like a jer* off to anyone who doesn't think my sim of
choice is "the best".

One thing I have to say Randy is that I fully expect to be shouted down in
this thread for the simple reason that the people who will respond will be
the same familiar names who have 100, 300, 500+ hours in GPL and will NEVER
agree with me after investing so many hours into their sim. Their inability
to be objective is because of this time investment. They know who they are.
There are other people who I've been familiar with in sim racing for a long
time now who love GPL but DO NOT act like the people who I just described.

Exactly. That's why I find the GPL comments by the main core of cheerleaders
so damn silly. These sims are too far away from being taken seriously by
Fittipaldi so how the hell can I act like many of these GPL fans?
Fittipaldi, Schumacher, Hill, and the rest would laugh at me if they heard
me act like some (not all) here. I love sims but some perspective is needed
when discussing how realistic they are.

The truth is that a simulator's goal is to recreate the feeling and
experience of driving that Fittipaldi, Schumacher, and Earnhardt know. If
and when a sim can do that (10 level), all the drivers will be able to hop
in the sim and feel like they are driving their cars without having to
create the illusion that they are driving. The sim will do that for them.
That's the type of simulators NASA and the aviation industry are currently
using.

As of now, the sims we use on our desktop can't do what we want. Not GPL or
any of the others mentioned so the constant bickering and attacks by the GPL
zealots against the other sims and their developers is ridiculous. I
constantly have had the same 10 Papyrus fans responding to my posts for more
than a year. Same guys always responding to my posts because for some reason
they don't like the fact that I enjoy more than one sim from more than one
developer. It has to be Papyrus.

"cannot capture"

Again, this is the state of sims so the hairsplitting about physics models
and the arguing about which sim is the best ever is silly when looked at
objectively.

It's relative. The feather touch the racing instructor is referring to is
nowhere near the same type of feather touch needed for GPL. The GPL cars are
also 30 years old and if you watch some old film of them, the drivers are
working hard.

You're not comparing going to the moon for the first time to the development
of a car sim for our desktop computers, are you?

People have been arguing the realism of GPL since the demo was released, but
no one is going to convince me that the GPL cars handle incredibally
realistic. The straight line instability, the touchy braking, the steering
input, and the general way even the most practiced drivers are still
drifting all over the track is not realistic. You even commented on the
drifting and the ability to drive wild for fast laps in your interview with
Doug Arnao. If the lack of real life feedback isn't compensated for
properly,  an accurate physics model can deliver an unrealistic driving
experience. I'll continue to encourage people to enjoy MGPRS2, Viper Racing,
PSCR, N3, GPL, and any other new or recent sim/racing game that is in the
same class as the one's mentioned in this post. If the GPL cheerleaders
don't like that,***'em. If they can actually get upset by a post on
r.a.s. they need to get out a little more often.

Cheers!
John

It depends upon your viewpoint. If one is able to separate the sense
from the nonsense then you can have good discussions and make good
contacts. If you can't then you will be blinded by cheerleading and
hype in which case it probably will be a joke.

I know many developers who spend time on r.a.s., but the cheerleading
stops them only from posting, not from listening. Why pop your head
above the parapet after all? I'm sure if I had something to lose I
wouldn't bother.

Cheers!
John

Johnny Herbert tells you his F1 game is accurate.
Mark Blundell tells you CPR is accurate.
Rubens Barrichello tells you Psygnosis F1 is accurate.
Williams Renault tells you GP2 is accurate
Frentzen and Alesi tell you Ubisoft F1 is accurate.

Knowing how different all of those sims of modern open-wheelers are
it's obvious that, interesting though their opinions may be, they
cannot be said to be accurate. On top of that, Damon Hill recently
tried an old F1 car and commented how utterly, utterly different it
was from anything he had tried until then. Given your above statement
I guess you would rank the opinion of Pedro Diniz higher than that of
Doug Arnao, yet although Pedro has driven at higher level Doug has
more and broader experience as well as a lifetime of racing, building
and tuning cars.

Such an approach is too simplistic.

Driving any car will give you more experience to fall back on than
someone who is a non-driver, and similarly someone who has driven a
Formula Ford will know more than you (assuming you haven't). You can't
say that someone who has a PhD in chemistry knows no more than you,
just because you prefer to hear a comment from a professor.

The difference between F3/F3000 and F1 is in the details and the speed
things happen, the fundamentals are very much the same. Beyond that
though, ANY racing is very far removed from driving on the road.

And look how good GPL turned out. Johnny Herbert has many hundreds of
hours experience in F1 cars and the product sucked, as did Prost Grand
Prix, Nigel Mansell's etc. There is no correlation between the two.

See above.

See above.

This is nonsense. Simulations are not accurate, there is ALWAYS a
compromise. The major compromise that real drivers cannot get beyond
is the lack of seat of the pants feel and the lack of depth
perception. How to convincingly convey these things by other means is
a computer problem, not something an F1 driver can help with. I agree
that it would certainly help to have someone consulting (as Papyrus
did with several drivers, mechanics, and people who drive these cars
nowadays) but it doesn't make it impossible. What should also be clear
is that HAVING an experienced driver on the team is no guarantee of
accurately simulating anything.

Alesi and Frentzen were two of them. As for who worked with Papyrus,
if those people had wanted their names to be known they would have
been in the manual or announced by now. There seems to be an
"emperor's new clothes" feeling about this. Having never tried an F1
car you will accept that F1RS is realistic because Alesi, Frentzen and
Verstappen say so - this despite the fact that Alain Prost says the
same about PGP and Johnny Herbert about JHGP. Now you think that GPL
can't be realistic because no "qualified" driver worked on it - I know
that they did. If, for example, I was to tell you that Dan Gurney had
consulted with Papyrus from day one and was thoroughly delighted with
the product, would GPL suddenly become realistic? The sim itself
wouldn't have changed, only your perception. How about if Frentzen and
Alesi worked on F1RS but didn't want their names known, would IT still
be considered realistic, since as far as we were concerened only some
coding types had created it? If your opinion is defined by others you
hear then so be it, but sims are created for us and are a suspension
of disbelief allowing YOU to drive what you believe an F1 car to be.
For someone buying JHGP that's what an F1 car is, for someone buying
GPL that's what it is. They're supposed to allow us to have fun and
enjoy ourselves, not bring us face to face with our inadequacies by
showing us just how badly we would actually drive one of these cars.
It's a fine line between being fun and being frustrating.

Which do you think comes closest to reality in that regard?
</rhetoric>

No driver would ever tell you that since at most a sim can be used to
teach you track layout and approximate speeds. You will never learn to
drive a racecar competitively by using a sim, at least IMHO. You could
use it to reach a certain level of competence (and automate some
reflexes if the car models things correctly - we have seen this in
GPL) but if you don't have a certain level of competence no-one will
let you in their racecar anyway.

Not so - $1,000 will buy you a drive in an F1 car, at least here in
Europe.

Change your controller settings if you want realism of that nature. In
any formula I've raced in I have sweated buckets, and often my
forearms are sore, my legs cramped (esp when left foot braking) and
often bruised ribs if the seat is at all ill fitting. It's not an
element of realism I find attractive in a sim.

Not too different. The only time you ever see an F1 driver cross their
arms is at Loews. I have to do so much more than that, but it's just
down to controller settings.

Each company does, however, know exactly what they are simulating, and
they know also what they should be for ultimate accuracy - in short
they know the compromises they made. They are making products for
people who also do not have a '67 or '98 F1 car at their home and who
have often never been to a race, never mind driven at Monza daily. I
don't see that we are really in a position to put down their efforts.

Cheers!
John

Their inability to agree with you is because they think you're wrong
or overstating your case - as is the reason you describe their
counterpoints as "cheerleading" to demean it.

No. The goal of a simulator is to recreate what YOU BELIEVE
Fittipaldi, Schumacher and Earnhardt feel. It took Michael Schumacher
twenty years to drive the way he does, and I expect that most people
would be able to drive his car but be around 10% seconds or so off his
pace. Now take away seat of the pants feeling, depth perception and a
whole crew helping you with the setup and you've got a "perfect sim",
lacking only that which a computer can't provide, and which shoves
reality brutally in your face - You suck compared to Michael
Schumacher and you can't drive an F1 car. Not really a big seller. A
simulator is compromised according to what the system is capable of
running and also what the market expects and is capable of. It is more
important that the target market is convinced of it's accuracy than
that the real drivers are, since for the majority of us our sim
"reality" comes from driving our road cars and from other sims, and
therefore our expectations differ from those for whom reality is a
given.

Those simulators are still not totally accurate, and in any case a
'plane going through the air is not "on edge" the way a racecar is. To
accurately model a racecar you would need to simulate bumps, grooves
and ruts on the track, marbles and how they react with your tire and
are scattered with your slipstream, ground effects, tire wear,
basically everything a plane needs (aero stuff) then add ground
effect, road contact patches, wear and effect from other cars.
Massively more complicated, and not only that but the importance is in
the details, since that's where the performance difference comes from.

I'd love to see it, but it's a TALL order.

I agree with that, although primarily it's because the statement of
fact that "GPL has a long way to go before being perfect" is heard as
"I think GPL sucks" - strange but true. I personally believe GPL to be
pretty much head and shoulders above the competition, at least in the
areas that are important to me, but that certainly isn't intended to
disparage other products all of which I've enjoyed to greater or
lesser extent (SODA for example, which I loved despite having awful
graphics and sound, and others hated for precisely the same reason).

Pretty much - the only opinion that counts is yours, and if you enjoy
it then it really doesn't matter whether the physics model is top
notch or not. Recently I really liked Powerslide and Speed Busters,
neither of which could be claimed to be massively accurate. So what?

Cheers!
John

David G Fisher wrote

Since this is targeted to me...

I probably passed more time in other sims than in GPL.  Probably 3-4 more
times in Nascar Racing 2 (from the whole NROS issue) and at least double
time in Icr2, Gp2, F1RS, SODA than in GPL.  Mostly because I have other
things to do since it's release, and the time issue is lacking for me.  I
even enjoyed SpeedBusters last week ! What a joy ! Very refreshing !

So, can you please at least try to get your facts with me when you want to
point fingers on me OK ?

Errrrrr, even those type of simulators don't recreate the "Feeling the car
with you pants" that a real race-car does, or a real aircraft does. Thus
your contradicting yourself (and btw, I -know- this because one of the
biggest simulator company in the world is here in Montreal).

I attacked F1RS way before GPL was out.  Just check out dejanes and type
something like "F1RS track innacuracies" or "F1RS front tyres".  Get your
facts David !

Im not "just" a Papyrus fan.  I enjoy any type of racing simulator.  VIPER
Racing was incredebly fun, as with Colin McRae racing (thus a little arcade,
but still the "sim" of Rallye-type racing).  I enjoyed TOCA and SODA.  Gp2
is still IMHO the best overall sim that was ever produced (Heh a little
surprised here David ?).  I know your "another" time targeting me. Get your
FACTS David !

Errrr, if your wheel pushed back and forth like crazy under braking or into
the apex, with the G-Forces and steering axes who wants to rip your arms in
GPL, I would understand. Thus this is the joy of Virtual racing.  The
physical effort is diminished (sp?).  Still, it is not absent.  After a 75%
Hickory on the NROS or a 100% Dover, you will be physically and mentally
drained.

I can understand your point.  You want the Perfect sim while we all know the
current limits of racing simulators.  Thus this DIFFERENT from your early
points.  You can't accept the fact that GPL is presently the most
sophisticated racing simulator on the market.  That's not hard to
understand.

- Fran?ois Mnard <ymenard> Good race at the Brickyard!
- Official Mentally retarded guy of r.a.s.
- Excuse me for my English (I'm French speaking)
- NROS Nascar sanctioned Guide <NAS-Frank> http://www.racesimcentral.net/
- "People think it must be fun to be a super genius, but they don't realise
how hard it is to put up with all the idiots in the world."--

Paul, who isn't directly related to sim development, is a MS employee,
and has posted on here alot.  I've also talked with him quite a bit
via email.

Are you in a coma?  Ubisoft has been recruiting focus groups
directly from r.a.s.  There have been at least two, and I
participated in one.

He has posted a lot.  Almost daily for a while.  Haven't seen
him here for a while though, so I forget his name, but he's
located in Iowa

You really want to debate the qualifications of Doug
Milliken?

Open you eyes - maybe you'll be able to see.

Truth hurts.

Why do you even bother to participate in such a worthless
forum?

--
Pat Dotson