rec.autos.simulators

This won't be for everyone but here goes.

If you have a multiplayer situation and you have more pc's than drivers or you
like this so much you purposely use a pc just for this.

Ok before I let it loose I've been dreaming about how cool it would be if you
can have for example 4 humans racing and have another system be able to watch
the race like on TV, with different camera angles and such. How neat that
would be.

Well yesterday I for whatever reason tried this out. And it does it already.
You can actually watch the race realtime from the server and at the same time
switch camera angles, cars and go back and forth from replay to realtime. You
could have a group watch it like TV and have a moderator immediately tell who
was really at fualt in that latest tangle, no more after the race fact.

It really works well, I recommend full screen, but in that mode it does take
some hp to move all the gfx real smooth. I noticed no performance loss with
the racers which is most critical. In full screen you need to use the
keystorkes for the replays, I found out that (I or Shift I) doesn't work like
advertised, which is supposed to take you back and forward on incidents. Also
there seems to be no keystroke for end of race or begginning of race.

Like everything though there could be some add-ons for this awesome feature.
Since you can only go back and forth to different cars and all the viewing is
done manually. IT WOULD BE KILLER, if there was an auto view mode. This mode
would keep a*** the leaders and pan the whole group every so often. Also it
would randomly do inside car views and such cars. When a crash happens the
auto mode would go to it immediatley and then replay it automatically as well.
The funny thing is N2 is SO CLOSE to doing this it's all right now it's
unbelievable, we could actually have 7 humans racing on IPX and have one setup
as a TV viewing of it will all the t***s you get on ESPN less audio, which
would be added I guess. Check it out if you haven't done so. I belive this
feature is completely undocumented. I wonder if PAPY knows? Also in full
screen mode there needs to be text added on who's car your viewing from.

Also I would like to state the awesome effects you get with full screen and a
partly cloudy day. Like the narrow angle roof shot, it makes gorgeous sky
motions that are really neat. Also a while back a guy mentioned how
dissapointed he was with N2's clouds he stated 1 style. Well I've at least
seen 5 or 6 different patterns that are very very nice, he musta raced on
constant 70 and sunny.

Another thing I noticed yesterday is when the Server press a keystroke while
racing F1 for example the remote cpu's cars blink off screan for a brief
moment.

Q.B.M.

This sounds interesting, but I wonder how thorough Papyrus will be with
it.  I personally would rather they put more work into adding various
race formats, like multi-segment races with field reversals (Clash and
Select), and adding double file restarts, etc., you know things that
have to do with racing.

David Martin

The next/prev incident only notices when damage is involved; it should
notice incidents which cause damage, but won't catch spinouts (or
damage-off racing incidents).

There are a couple of keystrokes which will take you to the beginning or
end of replay (live action) - the END key takes you to live action, and
HOME takes you to the start of the replay.  You might need to add SHIFT to
either command, though I think that just changes the focus car to your
player car.

We've put some thought into some of the other extensions you came up with -
the "live commentary" mode in which the camera would follow interesting
action, such as following race leader or focusing on close contention ...
the hooks are in place to take viewing up to the next level, though I can't
say if/when they might be used.  Till then, enjoy the undocumented features
you found (-:

Charlie Heath
Papyrus

I tried this on kali today.  It seems to work ok, but I wasn't able
to switch cars.  That is, I could only watch my car and the "v" key
didn't move the focus to another car.  This feature isn't much good
without being able to switch to other cars.  So how do you do it?

--
Pat Dotson

                Mickey-POPS-Kerkes

It's supposed to be the "v" key...works fine on my system, but I
haven't tried it on the 'net...I seem to remember it working fine in
modem play...I'll give it another look.

FWIW, the "c" key works as it does in N1, where you can switch
between camera angles.

Best Regards,

Marc

Marc J. Nelson
Sim Racing News - USA
http://members.aol.com/simracing

BEFORE:

AFTER:

Did this yesterday some more and it definatley is a crowd favorite, you get a
lot of ohhs and ahhs. Once you get comfortable with the keys in full screen
mode you can be pretty efficient moving around the field. It works great on
reviewing crashes and to really harass some drivers when they make bonehead
decisions right then and there.

Still though the "I" button (incidents) isn't working for me.

Also I'm hopping papy considers raising the IPX limit of 8 players to 12 or
16.

Q.B.M.

From my experience, the 'v' key doesn't work for the client (dialup)
machine, it only works on the server. It will work okay on a saved replay,
but not during live play.

Dave Sparks
IWCCCARS Project: http://www.theuspits.com/iwcccars
Late Night League: http://www.sequoia-dev.com/Hawaii/latenite.html
Hawaii Handle: davids