rec.autos.simulators

It means..... if you  'bad mouth' GPL!!!!
Dave Hawnt (UK)

<<<<<<Actually even if it's not shown on the screen it has to be modeled. The
same
goes for your rear suspension. Even if you don't "see" it it's modeled of
course.. the same will happen with N3. That's why with AI in GPL it almost
exponentially takes your CPU. Because it has to model it even if you don't
see it "somehow" (I won't go in the prediction code and so...).

The visual effects you see on the screen are just the answer to the
mathematical calculations of the game engine.

I don't see any difference between modeling a stock-car than a 67 F1 "in
general".  They are both a race car with real life physics.. they act with
the same laws of gravity and forces.  They have 4wheels that have weight
shifting depending on the actions of the car.  The only differences are in
the various differences in chassis, aerodynamics, tyre grip, shock/spring
settings, etc.>>>.

   Thanks for clearing this up for me. I'm not a programmer, and dont have a
clue. I guess the old saying is true, ya learn somethin new every day <G>

T_K

No way, only gamers need a P2-450 with 12MB graphics cards, the usual
desktop user would be very well happy with a P233MMX. But in many cases
daddy buys the big one because junior wants to play his games on the
system, too...

l8er
ronny

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Excuse my ignorance (I really don't know for sure), but I think
NASCARs have rigid rear axles, don't they? This should make physics
calculations much easier, at least for the rear end. No camber, toe
in, independent movement of the rear wheels. Do those cars have
differentials? I seem to remember that you had to add stagger in N1,
which would suggest they do not. Another point that would cause less
headaches, I think (no ramp angles or clutches to calculate).

The graphics of N3/2000 should be a bit less demanding than those of
GPL (only the moving***pit has to be drawn, but there aren't any
visible wheels and suspension parts - unless you lost your hood and
fenders :) But since the limiting factor in modern 3D sims is CPU
horsepower rather than video speed, this won't make a lot of a
difference - provided N3/2000 supports D3D, which I sincerely hope for
Papy's sake.

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

Right, I'll see everyone's 0.02 and raise you 0.05:

I realise that my PC is out of date, any PC is as soon as you've bought it
and mine's a year old now. And I realise that I'd be missing out to some
extent if I did have a dumbed-down version of GPL. But although I want to
"drive" the same car as Jim Clark I have to admit to not being a complete
sim fanatic (despite running them all since Revs on my BBC Micro). I'm just
not prepared to update my PC to run a game, no matter how good it is, and I
know a number of people of the same opinion who have not bought GPL simply
because it will not run on their otherwise adequate PCs. This means that
Papyrus are cutting themselves off from potential sales.

I'm quite prepared to admit to not being able to keep up with the AI - even
using "AI Tweak" to slow them right down. This may be because I am a lousy
sim driver (although I had no trouble with GP and GP2) or it may be my
PC/wheel/gamecard/monitor. Suppose I shell out for an upgrade and then find
that it's me that's not good enough? I guess I could advertise on r.a.s :-)

Thanks for everyone's replies. I don't think I found anything there that I
really disagreed with - I just don't agree with the same force that many of
you obviously feel.

Tony Whitley
(Benchmark: Watkins Glen 1"07 in practice. With all graphics off)

Quite apart from that, there are a lot more stock cars on the track
than there are F1 cars....

Cheers!
John

On Thu, 14 Jan 1999 09:03:58 -0000, "Tony Whitley"

Because it would be _massively_ complicated to do so. Making a physics
engine of the complexity for a sim is a huge undertaking, two
obviously more so, and a variable one would almost undoubtedly cost
far more than you could ever hope to recover.

Why so hard to believe? Pentiums are running at 504,000,000hz, so
asking a game to run at 288hz is well within the realms of
possibility. All it needs is someone to decide that they want their
sim to run at that level of detail and code it to be so.

Cooling effects, realism.

Ideally the physics engine of the AI should be identical to that of
the player, hardware constraints aside.

Both of the above would a) Cost a lot of money to implement that would
need to be passed onto the consumer or written off by the developers,
b) undermine the purpose of GPL, and c) be a total waste of time,
money and a really good product when you can achieve the same thing
for the cost of a K6-2 ($100 or so?).

It probably would have done, and I'm sure that releasing a Quake clone
would probably have achieved the same thing. There are enough products
around which attend to the sector of the market that truly wants the
attributes you described above, and while I would like to have
something which caters to all I far prefer to have a master of one
genre than the "Jack of all trades" approach that tries and, almost
invariably, fails in producing something worthwhile.

Cheers!
John

Sorry I could not tell who wrote this originally.

-snip-

I can see that if you turn all of the driving aids off that the cars are
hard to drive.  But we just had family over last night and my mother in law
likes the driving games on hers sons playstation.  She is about 45.  She had
a slight gleam in her eye when she saw my MS wheel.  So I fired up GPL for
her and reset the game to have all the driving aids on and toned down the
steering response a bit.  In no time flat she was braking before the turns &
accelertating out (and not spinning out) & loving flooring it down the
straights.  When she was done she talked about it for about 20 minutes.
"Ohh that was just great fun, thank you".  Draw your own conclusions here ;)

-snip-

    While I agree with you about an added-on extra graphics card, you are
wrong about Daddy buying a P2/450 just for junior's games.  By saying the
hardware bar is raised by the mainstream buyer, I don't mean that they NEED
it, I mean that they are the ones buying the faster computers in numbers
sufficient to justify the processor speed increases.  Though in this
microcosm it may seem like the world is full of rabid gamers, it isn't.  The
*** gamer segment is very small compared to the number of homes and
businesses that own and operate computers for more ordinary things.  If
NOBODY but people who play GPL and Falcon 4 bought the newest, fastest
processors, the chipmakers would feel like they hit a brick wall in sales
and would figure the hunger for speed had stopped dead in it's tracks.
Conversely, if the same gamers did NOT buy the latest chip, it would barely
register on the sales charts.  When the chipmakers see the faster processors
moving (via plentiful mainstream sales), they make even faster processors.
We gamers benefit because the game companies see sufficient sales of faster
processors to think that there are enough machines out there to run their
newest release if they gear it higher.  Am I making sense?  The game
companies are in the business to make money selling their products.  If a
product manager said "Let's write a game that people will have to buy a new
computer to run", they wouldn't be a product manager very long.  The game
software arena is competitive enough without essentially making a game cost
1000$ more than the price on the box.

     I work out of a hospital which employs LOTS of people and I travel all
day to HMOs that also employ lots of people.  For the most part I am
regarded as the person to ask when buying a first computer or upgrading to a
new one.  Far and away, the questions I get regard which computer to buy so
as not to be obsolete "6 months down the line".  First I try to establish
what the person needs the computer for, which is usually either "I don't
know" or "to keep track of my bills and get online".   I always tell those
people that they don't need the newest and fastest computer to do that
stuff, and they almost always say they don't care, they want something as a
hedge against obsolescence, and end up buying a P350~P450. They rarely say
they want the computer so their kid can play video games.  Parents usually
spring for the 150$ for a PSX or N64 if their kids ae whining about wanting
video games rather than buying their kids a 2500$ computer.

     I also do a little consulting/tutoring on the side, and a plumbing
business with a standalone P60 (remember those?) just wanted a new computer
to run Windows98 (won't install on <66 Mhz).  The only thing they do with it
is email and run QuickBooks Pro.   I told them they could save some serious
$ with a P233MMX and re-use their old 72 pin SIMMS, etc. and they didn't
care.  They wanted a P2/450.  That machine will never even have solitaire
played on it.  In the last month, I tried on 3 separate occasions to talk
hospital employees (and my mother in law) interested in new computers into
getting P2/333s, and one got a P2/350, the other 3 got P2/450s.  Not a one
of these people is ever going to play any kind of simulator on their
computer other than maybe a golf simulator.

    So, back to the original point.  A p200MMX is not completely outdated
for more mundane tasks like getting online and word processing and bill
tracking.  There are lots of sims out that will run fine on that machine,
too.  Simply, if you want the latest and greatest sim, you need the latest
and greatest hardware.  That's the way it should be and it isn't going to
change anytime soon.

OK, everyone can yell at me now.  :)

~daxe
"religion is remedial spirituality"

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At work I'm on a P5/75, but at home my P2/333 does all the fun stuff :)
At least I have a  20" monitor at work that makes up for the slow computer.

Jason.

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--------
Jason Monds
"My other car is a Ferrari"
http://members.home.net/gpl.mondsj/gpl - For my combined gas/brake setups
(Please remove 'no extra spork' when replying)

Yup.

But, they've got camber, and the suspension can move to point the
tires slightly left or right of centerline depending on load. They, of
course, don't move independently.

Yes, they generally run "Detroit lockers" on short tracks and some run
open diffs, some lockers on longer tracks. A Detroit locker is a
locked diff under power and unlocks (becoming an open diff) when
back-driven.

---Jim

Tony Whitley wrote

Yes of course I do understand your point. This isn't the first time that it
happened, still.  Let's remember that Grand Prix 2 by Mr. Crammond STILL
can't run any situation under 100%. Im sure there's a case using the
side-car view with heavy smoke with 15cars in front of you + all the
graphics that NO current PC can have a Processor occupancy under 36fps.  And
GP2 is not new ;)     . Same goes for Nascar1.  Any of you had fun with
nascar.exe -h ??? Heheh the fun of hearing Ned Jarrett at normal speed in
the intro but those cars going at 1fps at Marty ? LOL :)

It was always a fact that the current racing simulator companies push the
software so that the hardware will not really be fully compatible at the
release date for it.  The same goes for Air sims as well.  Im not saying
it's bad or not.  There is some companies who decide to make it MORE
apparent (Papyrus with GPL) and others, less (I would say MonacoGP).

But be 100% sure they know it.  Papyrus knows that they are not reaching the
casual PC gamer or the arcade-style racer.   They understand that 100%.  Who
here said it's bad ? The same goes for any "hard-core" type games on the
market.  FPS, RPG's, Adventure, Sport, racing, Airsims, etc...

I often compare a game to a piece of art. Especially to a movie.  Sure there
is many differences, but there is also many similarities.  While Nascar 2 is
what we call a "blockbuster", Grand Prix Legends is more of a "director's
test movie" as I would call.  There is many of them.  They are movies were
the only point of doing it is to let the director (who is normally under
contract for a number of movies) have a complete control on the aspect of
it.  He can do whatever he wants.  I feel this was the case with GPL.  Many
action movie makers will do such movies (especially in Asia) to test new
technologies, techniques, etc..

-= Fran?ois Mnard <ymenard/Nas-Frank>
-= NROS Nascar sanctioned Guide http://www.nros.com/
-= SimRacing Online http://www.simracing.com/
-= 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."

Just modeling the suspension (that usually oscillates at 1 to 2 times per
second in a normal street car) you want to have the simulation run
at 10 to 100 times faster than that to be numerically stable.
Race cars are often stiffer than stereet cars. So we are already up
to 200 to 300 times a second range.

If you include tire modes around 10 cycles per second,
you are already courting trouble even at 300 cycles per second...

- Matt