rec.autos.simulators

it's not just the games. Maybe even a couple more than just GPL would work
under Wine.

But there's no sufficient support yet for FF wheels and joysticks,
soundcards, 3d graphics cards, and also the self-installation packages often
don't work for all the distros.

On my system, the situation currently is:

3D - no joy with the Radeon as I'm using a version of Xfree86 newer than
4.2.0.

Audio - my Audigy doesn't work with either the drivers supplied with my
distro, nor with those developed by the open source community. Creative
doesn't seem to write Linux drivers at all.

FF wheel - the Wingmanteam site has a page with Linux drivers - but without
FF. A private guy seems to be writing drivers supporting FF for some of the
Logitech devices, but I am not under the impression that it's fully working
yet.

Sensible installation - self-installing packages usually don't exist for all
distros, and if this happens, installing drivers becomes pretty complex,
it's nothing I'm willing to go through frequently.

IMHO, as great as Linux is if everything you need works and is
supported, Linux still has some distance to go before it will become as
suitable for everyday use as Windows is today.

Achim

...
...

Name a racing or flight sim pre-Quake that allowed you to code in your own
modifications to the game source? I think you miss my argument that *from a
technical perspective* Quake was amazing. The game maybe wasn't so good, but
that's not what I'm talking about.

Reply 2:

Oh I see. You played it a few times? Wow. And yes, Air Quake *is* a flight
sim because it *simulates flight*. It doesn't matter how anal/arcade it is,
it's still a flight sim. NR2003 is a racing sim, but so is Daytona USA.
Obviously the former is a hell of a lot better than the latter, but they are
both still racing sims.

The point was that a corridor FPS shooter 3D engine was capable of doing
racing/flight sims as an example of just how good it was. And id made
probably *the* most important decision in PC *** history when they
allowed the fanbase to modify their code, making mods as diverse as the ones
above possible.

I think the rocket 'smoke' was actually a sprite, one of the 3 non-3D
elements in the entire Quake engine (another was the bubbles coming from
submerged players, but I can't remember the third). I'm pretty sure the
original Quake didn't have a particle engine, but they had to stop somewhere
<g>.

I didn't, you said that it's quality engineering, not technology which is
important, and I said that IMO they go hand in hand.

300km.

Sorry, that's what I meant, but I was tired and had a temporary units slip
<g>

Nick

You just lost your argument right there I reckon.

And you were doing so well... ;-)

Malc.

None of which are improvements. :-P

You can add Elite to that list of olde games as well - the original
BBC Micro version, I might add.

--
Above address *is* valid - but snip spamtrap to get me to *read*!

Support the world's oldest motorsport venue!
http://www.shelsley-walsh.co.uk/future.html

A touched up Elite with some basic story line in the background, was
good fun for a couple of evenings and have now been put on the shelf for
the time being, yet to try MP though

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

http://www.racesimcentral.net/

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

I prefer to think that NR2003, GTR2002, GPL and Sega Rally, Daytona USA are
all racing simulators (of varying quality of simulation), whereas Doom 3 and
Age of Empires are not racing simulators. If you stuck somebody down in
front of any car-based game on any platform, they would still recognise that
it was about driving, rather than flying or controlling a giant robot, so
whatever game it is can be classed as a racing simulation, regardless of
quality IMO.

Of course. I have done some small scale 3D editing, like stencil shadows,
per-pixel collision detection, and (following on from that) dynamic damage
meshes for players/monsters etc.

 > If you are curious, check out the file r_part.c

I stand corrected. The *** effects, slipgates and rocket *trails* are all
particle effects. I haven't played Quake in a little while! The rocket
*explosion* is a sprite though <g>

Wow, chalk another one up to the good guys at id for that one fantastic
technological breakthrough game!

Cheers,

Nick

In much the same way, your character in a game like Quake or Doom will
happily continue to run around like nothing happened even if they receive
several direct hits, until the health bar reaches zero. This is not a
simulation of reality either, it is a game, with it's own specific rules.

Some games, or arcade games as you describe them, are very good in their own
right, but the reason why they are good has nothing to do with how well they
simulate reality. They are good because they are FUN ;-)

Something which attempts to simulate reality is also judged by the community
on how much fun it is, but in the main, it is judged by how accurately it
simulates whatever it is trying to simulate. There is a grey area between
the definitions for sim and game, but it's not as big an overlap as you
suggest.

So some games/sims are more fun than others, and some sims are more accurate
than others. 'fun' is very much a matter of opinion, but whether something
is a sim or not isn't.

For example, NR2003 is a better sim than gpl, and Motorhead, as good as it
may be, is not a sim. These are quantifiable facts, and difficult to argue
with. However, imo gpl is more fun, because I prefer Grand Prix cars to
NASCAR cars. This is very much a personal opinion, and one that can be
debated endlessly ;-)

The 'simness' of something is not a matter of debate (grey area excepted),
it's just a matter of knowing what the word 'sim' means in this newsgroup
;-)

Malc.

Eldred
--
Help find missing child: Tatianna Ashley Chillcutt from Michigan(info on my
homepage)
Homepage - http://www.umich.edu/~epickett

Remove SPAM-OFF to reply.

Too much.