rec.autos.simulators

Good point about having different people with different skill levels review
the same game.  Here in town (Nampa, ID) the local paper reviews games every
once in a while.  They have three people do the review, one that has little
experience in playing games on a PC,  one that would be considered one of
your average game player and finaly a *** game player.  Overall you get
a better review of the game/program. You know where it is coming from.  My
brother and I have completely different tastes in what we like for computer
games.  Would expect him to like GPL.  Just like he wouldn't expect me to
like Railroad Tycoon.

For me, If certain people/mags gives it a bad review, then I know that I am
going to just absolutely love the game. Others, I will take their word for
it.  Kinda like movie reviews....

Oh, the best way to see if your going to like a game or not is demo it
yourself.  Or, ask question?

Thad

If he have trouble completing a lap without spinning out or launching your
car into orbit, what makes him think that he would be able to do with his
wheel shaking and vibrating all over the place?  This sim is demanding
enough without a shaking wheel.  I probably wouldn't make it through the
first turn.  If Mr. McDonald thinks the game is too hard as it is, FF would
make it virtually impossible for him.

Tracy Dean
tdean

Just to mention something mentioned earlier, would you have rather waited
until July to get this sim?  Yeah papy could have thrown together a quick FF
support (at the time of release there were very few FF wheels on teh market
anyways) but papy wouldnt do that.  What if papy had done that, everyone
would be bi..i mean complaining about how bad the FF is and how much it
sucks or how it doesnt give you a full feel of the car, so papy would have
had to waste another year of development to implement perfect FF support
which is what papy does, they make things perfect.  Personally im glad that
they didnt include it cause i wouldnt have wanted to wait another year for
FF to be implemented.  Now if they come out with a patch in a year after N3
is released then it could be worth it and im not bashing FF at all, just
rather they release it now and maybe support it later with a patch.

Jesse

What wheel do you use?

Jerry Morelock

Hi Tracy,

I think you may have a misconception of what FF tech really does
offer.  Done correctly, it can offer much more than "shaking and
vibrating."  Done correctly, it can help you react to the car, because
it *feels* very much like a real car.  I'll take any useful sensory
input i can get in a sim, to supplement visual and auditory.  FF tech
done correctly is definitely useful, and a sim like GPL could
definitely benefit from it.

Viper Racing has proven this to me.

Brett

When the spec decisions for GPL were made, FF really wasn't that good.
It's been only within the last few months that a variety of decent FF
wheels has come into the market. Therefore, the "FF isn't good, so
we're not doing it" explanation wasn't completely wrong.

Having said that, I don't think it is the whole reason why there isn't
FF support in GPL. I believe the main reason it isn't there is tha
same reason why GPL doesn't have variable weather: both are features
that are quite difficult to do properly, and quite easy to leave out
completely. You can't say "let's not model the physics for the left
rear wheel, so we can finish this program sooner" but you can easily
say "let's leave out FF support / rain". You still get a good sim
without them. You might get a *better* sim with those features in it,
but it would take longer and might not work the way you want / the
customers expect it.

--
Wolfgang Preiss   \ E-mail copies of replies to this posting are welcome.

I wonder what Mr. MacDonald would have to say about a sim like Falcon
4.0... People that play this sim want it to be the most realistic
experience. That's why a 200 pages BINDER is included. You have to take
a class just to learn how to use the radar. What about landing? 9 times
out of ten, you destroy the landing gear and crash the plane. The game
took 4 years to make and it's still full of bugs, and needs a super
system to run it. Yet, with all that, it still got 3 stars and a half
(out of 4) from Computer *** world....

I don't understand. Is it ok for a flight sim to be super realistic and
hard to play? Racing sims always have to be designed with arcarde
physics... Come on! just like our flight sims colleagues, we like our
sims to be as realistic as possible even if it means it's hard to use
them. After all, people that find Falcon 4.0 too hard can play Top Gun
Hornet's nest instead, just like people that find GPL to hard should
stick to Speed buster. No offense to Speed buster lovers.

It just too much when I see those comments ("it's too hard, so it's not
a good game).

Philster

I think that you are missing part of the arguement here.  Of course it is OK
for a Flight Sim to be super realistic, and it is OK for GPL to be super
realistic as well...

but...

A Falcon 4.0 or other top flight sims allow the user to turn off (or down)
most of the physics/difficulty settings so that almost anyone can pick up
and enjoy the sim.  As they get better they can choose to increase the
difficulty level (If they choose).  GPL doesn't fail at the "top end", it
fails at the "low end", to allow the rest of us to enjoy the riches of this
sim/time in the world of racing as well (Heck, I'm old enough to actually
remember the '67 season!)

It wouldn't hurt the *** racer for them to include options for the rest
of us...

My $.02

-tom

        <Snip>

From my point of view it's more that the approach of gamers between air sims
and racing sims is different.  It's a psychological aspect that makes the
gamers think like that... Let's just think about real-life situations here.

Go to the arcade mall.  Count the numbers of arcade style racing games on
the floor.  I say about 10% of the total arcade are racing games.  Now count
the numbers of arcade air games there ? Normally 0, maybe 1or 2.  And those
ones are normally those 2$ simulators that are extremely realistic.  Just
here you can see the main difference.  Because every guy like driving fast.
But not every guy likes to "fly in an arcade way".  If you understand my
point of view.

Most of the gamers understand that most of the air sims are made to be
realistic, compared to those racing games.  There's soo many of them on the
market.

And it's just 1 example.  I will say the shifting of the gamers mentality
started way back with Pole Position, but consolidated it's position when
Daytona USA and Sega Rally appeared at the arcade males, PC's and ***
consoles.

I will say that in about 2-3years the difference between arcade-style and
realistic racing simulators will be enough high that *** magazines and
websites will really show the difference by making them two different
categories. I already see this on websites that will rate GPL in the
"Simulation" field with air sims but include NFS3 in the "action" section.

-= Fran?ois Mnard <ymenard/Nas-Frank>
-= NROS Nascar sanctioned Guide http://www.racesimcentral.net/
-= SimRacing Online http://www.racesimcentral.net/
-= Official mentally retarded guy of r.a.s.
-= May the Downforce be with you...

"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."

FF would not take nearly a year to develop.   I'm not a
programmer so can't make an informed estimate on how long
it would take.  But, I do know that GPL already calculates
all the information needed to tell the wheel what to do.
It would only be a matter of translating those parameters
to the FF wheel.  I-Force already provides an API to do
just that.

My WAG would be that you could have some FF working
with the program in less than a week, and
have it tweaked in less than a month.  Given the loooong
development time of GPL, that could have been worked into
the schedule without pushing the release date back.

--
Pat Dotson
IMPACT Motorsports
http://www.impactmotorsports.com/pd.html

The basics for how FF works have been around for a lot
longer, though.  Prototype hardware has been around for
a long time too.  I know that proto wheels from a
particular company were went to Papy early on, but
that company never got ANY response back from Papy.

Whereas weather is a pervasive factor in all aspects
of the sim, it is complex to implement.  GPL already
calculates the parameters needed to control a FF
wheel.  FF support is more of a superficial layer
on top of the main program, and it's far less complex.

I just find Papy's attitude toward new hardware
difficult to understand.  They push the envelope
in terms of software, but drag their feet on
adapting to new hardware (FF and 3d acceleration).

--
Pat Dotson
IMPACT Motorsports
http://www.impactmotorsports.com/pd.html

There have been 2 stated reasons why Papyrus did not include Force
Feedback in GPL:

1)  At the time, the designers did not feel the technology was up to
their (Papy's) standards for providing "real" driver/car feedback.

2)  For FF that use gameport or serial connections, there's a
significant latency hit.  Whether this is true for USB I do not know.  
But, you have to consider that the game engine is already pushing the
frequency envolope.  So even if there isn't a "hardware" latency issue
with USB, there would still be a software latency issue.

--
**************************** Michael E. Carver *************************
     Upside out, or inside down...False alarm the only game in town.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=<[ /./.  [-  < ]>=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

I only have the demo for Viper ( Full game not out in the UK yet :( ), but
the FF is first rate with my MS FF wheel :)

--
Ian Parker

ICQ   21772592

    I really don't agree with you, or Mr McDonald for that matter, ( a
separate e-mail is on the way to him). 1st you can drive races with the
trainers. For a complete explaination,go to Alison Hines Eagle Women
site;gpl section. There you will also be able to download a driver slow
file and the instructions to slow the AIs down as much as you want.

    Now that you can race any track in a trainer with modified AIs,add
auto brake,auto accelerator,and auto shift,you can win your 1st race out
of the box. Just how much easier to you want to make it?

    This is not a flame. by the above statement,I'm referring to the
fact that every auto racing sim to date is based on the current racing
technology,while gpl deals with 1967. It has to be harder,simply because
it was a lot harder to drive those cars back then.

    Papyrus goal was to produce the most accurate racing sim period. And
to that end they succeeded.

Joel Willstien

 I was gonna' stay away from this thread but..........
 Falcon 4.0 has 161 keystroke variables that you use to fly with (this
does not include the basic "steering" and throttle controls) I think
some scaleability is in order. GPL has 10 input variables that I can
think of. It DOES have training cars and "help" for the shifting ,
braking, and throttle. I don't know what else anyone would want.
   That having been said : T. Liam McDonald was spot on with the
comment about GPL trying to recreate a 3d activity in a 2d world and
about how it was probably more difficult than driving the real thing.
I have felt this way about all of the driving sims that I have tried.
In other words if you put a real 67 Cooper GP car on a real  track and
then set GPL on a computer right next to it (and also assume I have
never seen/used either of them) I bet you I would be better ,at least
initially ,at driving the real GP car around the circuit. (if anyone
has a 67 cooper and would like to test this theory , I am available  <
G>) Now there is no way I could ever do  laps as fast as I do in GPL (
I'd be long dead by now)  There just isn't the same level of feed back
in a simulation. Try racing GPL without the sound on and you'll see
what I mean.
  So to me all of the argument about realism  is silly.(see the "what
about rain "thread for example , geeesh!)  There IS a level of realism
that is just too high given the environment that we are currently
using too create simulations in. GPL is a good compromise of realism
and usability but ,only if you are complete racing "hack". If you are
not there is always F1RS.
 (Daisy slips on the Nomex suit and awaits his punishment)