rec.autos.simulators

I've been trying N-2003 (see separate message to Tony), but while it's
good I've never been sooooo much of a NASCAR fan. Driving GPL is great
(asp with today's PCs), but I must say I find it difficult to put the
effort into GPL to be "fast" again. Sort of "been there, done that"
feeling, and all I feel like doing is racing rather than lots of
practice.

GTR-2002 is interesting for me, mainly because it's new, and I like
the cars etc. A TransAm mod might be excellent for that reason - Papy
physics and quality, (relatively) light and responsive cars), and fun
to race online.

When and where do you fly Il2-FB? I tried that briefly and thought it
was superb! I'm a pretty awful pilot, but I was a very good gunner (a
legacy of waaaaay too much Quake in my younger days I think!). I liked
the online collaboration (several guys in one place), and have some
friends here who are really into it. Hope to join you some day.

How are things with you? Still living overseas?

Cheers!
John

I'm trying to track down Marc as well. I have fond memories of working
with him on so many projects, especially Sim Racing News. Most of the
sites I see now make SRN look pretty old (well okay, it was!), but it
was really good fun making that, and it certainly wouldn't have
happened without Marc's push.

Cheers!
John

Cheers
John

Actually, it is all about setups. One of the main reasons why Ferrari has
been so *** in F1 for the last few years is because their recent cars
have been so accomodating to changes in the setup at each race. The blend
between understeer and oversteer is long and flat, so the drivers know
exactly what effect any given change is going to have, and can accurately
measure the effect on balance it will have. Compare that to Williams, whose
cars for the last few years have been stuck with touches of understeer for
the most part, or Arrows, whose cars only needed just a slight alteration in
setup to switch from wild understeer to mild oversteer.

Of course, power, tyres and drivers all make a huge difference too, but a
driver in a badly setup car will struggle the whole race, whereas the same
driver in a perfectly setup car will be able to run fastest laps without
thinking about it, which leaves him able to think about strategy/overtaking
etc.

Rubens at Silverstone? Why was he so ***? Why was he overtaking
everybody? He had no more power, grip or ability than usual, but he managed
to find that perfect setup, which meant he could put his car in any
situation on the track and know what it was going to do.

All good points. I'm not trying to claim that the roof view is realistic.
I'm trying to claim that it's just as unrealistic as the***pit view <g>

It took a while to set them up for my eyes, but once I hit the sweet spot, I
found that it made such a difference in being able to look down the track, I
could focus much further into the screen and get much better depth percepion
on things further away from the car, which is what you have to do in real
life. On road courses it make a massive difference, on ovals not so much. I
found also that I could run alongside a car and *know* how close we were
from the***pit view, instead of guessing to some extent based on previous
experiences.

They also work very well on two things where one is near and the other is
far away, for example, the net in the window of cup cars and other things
like seeing nazis hiding in bushes in Medal of Honor. Instead of these
moments being an exercise in picking out the oddly coloured pixel or two,
they allow you to focus through the near objects to see the far ones more
clearly. YMMV.

Yes, the Ferrari, overall, is the best car in F1 at the moment. Like every
other racing car since Dr. Porsche's Audis back in the 1930's, however, it
has been designed and built to exploit the physics of *** meeting asfalt
to the best of the theoretical knowledge at the time. This means an
assumption is made as to how the car is going to be driven at design time.

This basic assumption is present throughout every racing design, from karts
through Formula Ford, Formula 3 and F3000 to F1 (or any other motorsport
ladder you care to mention). Every aspiring young driver had better learn
how to drive these cars in a way as to extract the maximum of their
performance and he'd better do it quick or his racing career will be very
short lived. The real world is not like the sim world, the car arrives at
the track with a theorethical optimum based on the circuit characteristics
and experience, possibly with some give tuned in if the driver is unfamiliar
with the track. Through practise and qualifying it's then tweaked to suit
the driver's preferences, but he's basically got to drive it as is. There is
simply no time to try 3 different wing configurations, 7 sets of springs and
5 sets of bars as is done in the sim world. The range of adjustment the
simdriver enjoys is simply not available, even to F1 teams. That said, the
default setups are a lot better. <g>

Yes, the times when a very good driver could carry an inferior car are long
gone, true, but that does not make setup a determining factor. It simply
means that amongst those of equal ability those who work the hardest and the
smartest in getting the most out of their package come out on top in the
long run. Ferrari don't have a secret download location where they get
setups that give them an edge over the competition. They're just very good
at interpreting the data from the car and the feedback from the driver and
translating that into a settings change. Having a design which responds to
change very predictably and having the means and manpower to develop the car
in between races is a big bonus, off course. That's what it is about,
knowing and doing what it takes to be the fastest, setup is an important
factor in the driver being able to extract the most from the car, but it's
just a requirement to be successfull. Jordan and Minardi are not struggling
because they've got bad setups, they're doing badly on all fronts

Yes, the Ferrari was very good at Silverstone, which is also one of
Barichello's favourites and, indeed, he was able to pass several
competitors. Notice those who he passed had a similar approach to the track
and played the game fairly. Both Ralf and Kimi just did their thing and,
when Barichello got a run on them, defended to the best of their ability.
Neither made it his life mission to keep Barichello behind, though. Compare
to Villeneuve/Button vs Michael Schumacher. The BARs were set up for top
speed and, for their respective reasons, neither was prepared to lose a
position. Michael lost a lot of time there in a car which was just as good
as Barichello's.

Another reason I think why Barichello was able to pull off those is that F1
drivers don't get a lot of practise at actually battling for position. The
cars are not designed and set up to run in eachother's proximity / off-line
either. E.g. Kimi fell for the ouside fake and then skated off the road on
the marbles. A combination of inexperience and the state of F1, IMO.

Regardless, the setup was nothing that dropped out of the sky and blessed
Barichello, it was a result of effort Barichello and Ferrari put in to win
the race. The same setup would not have allowed anyone but Barichello to
have total confidence in that car.

If you take this to the sim realm and RASCAR in particular, a lot of the
real life variance is reduced. In fact, the situation is reversed: instead
of the drivers being roughly equal (both in ability and style) and the
cars/setups different, it's the cars and setups which are absolutely equal
and the drivers show big differences.

Here's the rub. If you aspire to have a good result in these races you're
going to have to put in the practise to learn how to extract the most out of
the given setup. Whether it conveines to your style or not just determines
how far you'll get in a fixed number of practise laps. If you're
uncomfortable you're going to have to come to terms with having to run below
your *true speed* in order to have the spare attention to keep on top of the
car and maybe gamble on fuel or tyres to gain an edge in the race. So you
see, as far as racing is concerned it's all about the driver, the amount of
effort he puts in and the strategy he employs. The setup is part of the
challenge, but it's not the be all and end all.

Jan.
=---

http://magnust.d2g.com/

Achim

...

The GTR2002 mod is indeed a blast. But since its online capability is very
limited when compared to N2k3's, it just didn't keep me hooked for very
long.

Doug was btw deeply involved with the GTR2002 mod, and I think he still is
working on other mods together with that team. We 'talk' from time to time.
Same goes for Alison and Steve, with whom I talk quite frequently. I've even
visited him and Alison a few years ago. We had a great time LAN racing in
Steve's house :-) and I am still deeply grateful for the hospitality and
friendly reception I've received from them over there.

Nate and Alison have been building a Cobra replica a few years ago, but I
haven't talked to Nate in quite a while. JohnO - I don't know what he's
doing.

Georg has left the Legends community almost entirely and only posts from
time to time. I think he'd given up racing as well for the most part, and is
into one of this big online space opera games, I don't know what it's
called, but it seems to be extremely immersive and fascinating to him. He's
probably good at it, I think he would be :-)

As for IL2, we fly this from our GPL league's private chatroom within
WinVROC, usually around 9pm British time. For voice comms we use Roger
Wilco. I can send you the data if you like (and your email is valid), if you
don't have them anymore. Currently we're taking it a bit easy with everybody
being on vacation, but we used to fly pretty frequently, almost every
evening, for a while, with between 3 and 6 pilots. Usually we fly Coop, i.e.
on the same side, and sometimes we man a bomber on all positions and fly
that, which is also a blast in IL2-FB. None of us is very good, neither as a
pilot (except for one guy, Neill) nor as a gunner, but that doesn't reduce
the fun in the least :-)

We'd be more than glad if you'd join us!!

I live in Belgium now. Have lived in Spain for a few years before that.
Quite a difference <g> but at least, Belgium is very much in the center of
Europe, so I can get everywhere easily and quickly (London is a completely
relaxed 3 hour trip using the Eurostar, it ends right in the middle of
London at Waterloo station).

And you? Where are you living, and how's life going, apart from the
generally somewhat tighter business situation we all seem to be
experiencing?

Achim

...

    Pete

You could say 'How could you be sure people are going to tell the
truth?'.  Well, why would they want to lie?  Unless, of course, deep
down, they feel a little guilty about the whole idea of how they drive.

I have just bought this game ( 10 quid in Game here in UK at the mo :)
and have immediately set it to in-car with all aids turned off, except
auto clutch, because that's how I like to drive.  If someone beats me
online using hood cam, or whatever, and all aids on, then that's fine
with me as long as I know how they're driving.
--
Peter Ives (AKA Pete Ivington)
Remove ALL_STRESS before replying via email
If you know what's good for you, don't listen to me :)
GPLRank Joystick -50.63 Wheel -21.77

Not for me.  If I felt that the only way I could get round the track was
to go to a different view from in-car then it would be time to give up.
It may well be more difficult, but I don't feel comfortable driving any
other way.  If others are happy with that, then fine.

I still remember my first experiences with GPL.  I couldn't last a lap
without spinning off and removed the game from my HD on at least 3
occasions because of this over a period of 6 months or so.  I didn't
give up though and eventually, after subscribing to ras, realised that
what was making GPL a frustrationfest was that my framerate was too low
(at about 24fps).  After that, GPL has never left my drive since.  Yes,
I could probably have tried using one of the external views to have
raced, but I just wouldn't have enjoyed it anywhere near as much and so
it was better to just put the game away until another time.  If it had
turned out that I was just incapable of driving in car, then I would
eventually have given up.
--
Peter Ives (AKA Pete Ivington)
Remove ALL_STRESS before replying via email
If you know what's good for you, don't listen to me :)
GPLRank Joystick -50.63 Wheel -21.77

Well, hope you make it there sometime, if that's where your path is
taking you. There's some truly awesome golfing down there (try
Dunaverty and of course Machrihanish), seafood that make me want to
drive there right now, and fantastic scenery. No shopping, few
amenities, but friendly people.

The one aspect that is changing are the communities themselves - the
younger people want to leave (as few jobs or things to do), and more
affluent people leaving the cities tend to by up the houses to retire
or escape the rat-race. Not so much in that neck of the woods, since
it's quite off the beaten track, but in those communities in general.

Thanks for testing my M3 - let me know how she is! :-)  I finally got
my hands on an M-Coupe the other day, which really made me hanker
after a shot of the new CSL version!

John

I mean, even Bron-y-Glyn in Carmarthen has a pub, it's placed a bit
awkward being the very last house in a very long and narrow village, we
were of course staying at the other end of the village, but other than
that it was quite nice, closing time was when everybody went home as a
friend of mine so eloquently put it

Beers and cheers
(uncle) Goy
"goyl at nettx dot no"

http://www.theuspits.com

"A man is only as old as the woman he feels........"
--Groucho Marx--

(I can feel a sympathy hangover coming on....)

Funny in those situations the walk TO the pub takes a while, but the
beer taxi that gets you back home through the village seems really
quick!

Cheers!
John

Yes, but the top teams spend hours and hours at test tracks testing out
every possible combination of settings, so that when they get to the circuit
in question, not only do they have a pretty decent basic setup, they can
also disregard 90% of the possible changes straight off. It's the most
boring job in the world, but most races are won at test tracks in F1 (a fact
never appreciated by the viewing public).

That's exactly it. Just having a great car is not enough, you need to be
able to make that car work at Monza as well as Monaco. If the car does what
you expect it to on the track (with any setup), and does what you want it to
when you do make a setup change, it all suddenly becomes very easy.

Indeed. A great setup would allow the drivers to extract the maximum from
the car, but if the car is rubbish, there's not much a driver can do.

That's kind of my point (although I could have made it a bit better). Rubens
and Ferrari worked hard at Silverstone, and he managed to hit that sweet
spot with the setup which meant he could outrace everybody else without
worrying about pitching it into the barriers, chewing tyres or any of the
other problems a bad setup creates. The reason Michael is Ferrari number 1
and 5-times world champion, is because he can extract more out of a 'bad'
car than any other driver on the grid in F1.

The question still remains that if a driver is constantly worrying about
what the car is upto underneath him, is running slower than he possibly
could with a better balance on the car, and is also wearing the car out
quicker than he would be with a better setup, will he be able to win a world
championship?

In sim racing, setup is nothing. We don't have the feel for the car required
to fine tune the cars to that extent, so learning how to drive the car as-is
is much more important than pretending that altering the camber by a quart
will gain us a tenth per lap. As the speeds and forces increase, setup
becomes more important. In club motorsport, setup is not too important. In
the WRC, tyre choice and diff settings are paramount, but the exact
suspension setup is not required.

In F1, the only thing separating team-mates outright pace is setup and
ability. Can anybody honestly say that Webber was better than Yoong, or
Justin is better than Antonio at driving a F1 car, or are they just better
at setting up a relatively bad car to their style? If I was coming around a
corner like 130R that fast and I didn't know if it was going to oversteer or
understeer, I'd sure as hell back off, but if the setup meant that I knew
what it was going to do, I could take that confidence in there and maybe
save 3 tenths at that corner alone.