rec.autos.simulators

However

Where does the money come from?

Q3 has ENORMOUS public fan base - running into the 10's, if not 100's of
millions.

GPL, and N4 combined - probably less than 1% of that.

Till there is a fanbase and product caperble of becoming equally popular and
well known - there is little or no chance of elevating sim racing to any
level higher than what it is now - a load of guys - racing down the net.

Doug

--
--------------------------------------------
From the mind of Douglas Ellison
http://www.racesimcentral.net/

ICQ:- 127619558

--------------------------------------------

<blah snip>

but I'm drunk again.  :)

--
Gunnar
    #31 SUCKS#015 Tupperware MC#002 DoD#0x1B DoDRT#003 DoD:CT#4,8 Kibo: 2
                    to err is human -- to forgive is bovine.

If I was currently running a league that above statement and the prophetic
title of this post may make me reluctant to join the FILSCA.  You paint a
pretty bleak picture of the current state of the sim racing community but I
think it's as strong as it needs to be.

I consider myself a pretty serious sim racer buy your Ideal doesn't mesh
with mine, except for the "enjoyable" part :)
BTW.  I really like the idea of the drivers school.  Maybe you could get
some of the better drivers to volunteer to review newbie replays and give
feedback.

Good Luck,
        Kirk House

Thank you very much for your positive attitude towards FILSCA. FILSCA
was conceptualized and started by sim racers, league managers, and
webmasters and hosts who for years have been involved with the sim
community. Surely these crucial questions are raised by many, and their
answer, apart from that a white paper is not the right place to address them in
full detail, would have put the first publication beyond readability.

Full details, such as the legal documents, the business plans, the
sporting code will be available soon  at the homepage
http://www.filsca.com. Also a forum for discussion will be opened.
However, discussion in other forums, newsgroups, chatroom is strongly
encouraged.

The concept of FILSCA will be presented this Saturday at the EURO-LAN in Zeist
(for URL, look up http://www.filsca.com/filscawhite.html, please). There I and
other members of the board will be present.

There seem to be some possible misunderstanding as to what FILSCA is meant to
be, re. to leagues. The L in FILSCA represents ligues, the french word for
leagues. Actually, FILSCA is not a competitor of leagues, but on the contrary
the world association of leagues. I am very happy to say that two of the
founding members are the Dutch national league of simracers, as well as the
informal Danish national sim racing association (simracing.dk) - both have
representants in the board that prepared and prepares the legal foundation, with
Herko ter Horst, and Mikkel Gram-Hansen - and just yesterday,  a French National
club was announced to be founded soon and to join FILSCA. All these national
association cover more series, and more than one simulation.
The name of the success of FILSCA is called team work. FILSCA is not a
company but will be founded as a club of equal members, providing an
organizational, presentational and lobbying platform for leagues to join forces.

Although there is a non-paid management handling all general businesses
and representing the members towards third parties, as well as taking care of
the exploitation of the rights of the leagues (the management BTW will be
elected yearly by the members, i.e. by the leagues), the actual
operations - organizing championships, racing series, is undertaken by
the single members which are leagues as we know them know. Leagues will stay
independant and autonomous. This approach
is the result of an analysis of the meager success of the splintered
leagues, both in public acceptance and sponsorships or other sorts of
turnover that could cover the running costs and provide prizes for
drivers.

The possible "downside" of this is: there is no company filsca that does the job
for the leagues, or the drivers. The leagues own FILSCA, and the leagues need
either to do or delegate the necessary work, or pay for it :-) In any case, the
synergy effects and the infrastructure will pay off within 2 seconds.

The FILSCA website will have two major applications: the filsca management
interface (FMI, TM) and the FILSCA content management system (FCMS).
Both strictly separate layout from content. The FMI includes a global database
where all results from all FILSCA member series are dumped into by one (or  a
few more) clicks. Also the FILSCA licences are regulated over this. The results
are all published on the FILSCA websites, but can also be taken by the series
from the database for output on their own web sites. The advantage will be all
the possible ripp-offs, ranging from life time driver career statistics over all
sims, all leagues, the same for teams, for universal track records statistics,
comparisons between car models in various leagues, or any statistical output you
can imagine or cant even think of yet. The database includes already real-life
data, and BTW:

Volunteers for feeding the database (e.g. with tracks from the sims, chassis
from the sims, real life data about tracks, car makes, car models, etc.) are
very welcome, just send a mail to C.Schir...@filsca.com or webmas...@filsca.com
(Herko ter Horst).

The Content Management System will enable each person (also drivers, sponsors
etc.)  (with different rights) to submit content for the FILSCA site, without
caring for html. Leagues can of course syndicate this content, and publish the
same content on their own home pages, in another layout or the same. This system
also allows selling content to third party medias, like traditional press,
internet papers etc.

No league ever is likely to face any success unless it takes money from
the community itself (aka entry fees from the drivers), or is run as a
game portal. Both approaches are contradictious to what sim racing at
the level of gpl, or nascar 4 is: sport, as they are not open to anyone
who wants to compete and as there are no regulations to ensure the
quality of the races and the racers.

One of the initial motivations for this was that gold diggers might contribute
to selling out the sim racing community once a killer application like wsc is on
the market. We have the knowledge, we  are part of the community, so why just
build it up ourselves in order to have control over it?

So, FILSCA is meant to be democratic (a club of equal members, leagues),
it is open source, its infrastructure (databases, the filsca management
interface, the filsca content management system) is programmed by
founding member leagues, and by other members of the start-up board,
using open source software.
This allows FILSCA to be completely independant, and allows the sim
racing community to grow by working together. Thus the members of FILSCA
have all agreed to emphasize sport over business. FILSCA can start slow,
and can grow by the time. What members receive, is that joining forces
the spread sim racing community can become a serious partner for sim
producers, but also for other sponsors far beyond of what we may imagine
now. Being a member of this world organization has a quality stamp: it
stands for high level racing that are fair, where cheaters have no
chance and are excluded for a life-time.

Along with an infrastructure that makes sim racing public aware by
enabling the members to present the highlights on a central site and by
promoting the cultural values the sim racing community stands for (via
broadcasts of the best races, web tv, sum-ups, content syndication, i.e.
major events will be announced over many sites, and press releases will
be sent to the international press agencies, via the database with its
multiple outputs), the market potential is beyond the usual game market.
This way, the races of the members of FILSCA will mid- to long-term be
able become attractive to the average racing fan.

So the board members who conceptualized FILSCA have set a completely
different approach than putting up yet another game portal. Game portals
are a dying market, and it speaks for the perspectives of sim racers
that yet they have not really contributed to the success of portals.
Game portals would not care about a proper infrastructure and
organizational setup that emphasizes the quality of the sport over the
sheer no. of "users".

Cheers,
Christoph Schirmer
Head of the Central Coordination Unit of the FILSCA working groups

Thank you very much for your positive attitude towards FILSCA. FILSCA
was conceptualized and started by sim racers, league managers, and
webmasters and hosts who for years have been involved with the sim
community. Surely these crucial questions are raised by many, and their
answer, apart from that a white paper is not the right place to address them in
full detail, would have put the first publication beyond readability.

Full details, such as the legal documents, the business plans, the
sporting code will be available soon  at the homepage
http://www.filsca.com. Also a forum for discussion will be opened.
However, discussion in other forums, newsgroups, chatroom is strongly
encouraged.

The concept of FILSCA will be presented this Saturday at the EURO-LAN in Zeist
(for URL, look up http://www.filsca.com/filscawhite.html, please). There I and
other members of the board will be present.

There seem to be some possible misunderstanding as to what FILSCA is meant to
be, re. to leagues. The L in FILSCA represents ligues, the french word for
leagues. Actually, FILSCA is not a competitor of leagues, but on the contrary
the world association of leagues. I am very happy to say that two of the
founding members are the Dutch national league of simracers, as well as the
informal Danish national sim racing association (simracing.dk) - both have
representants in the board that prepared and prepares the legal foundation, with

Herko ter Horst, and Mikkel Gram-Hansen - and just yesterday,  a French National

club was announced to be founded soon and to join FILSCA. All these national
association cover more series, and more than one simulation.
The name of the success of FILSCA is called team work. FILSCA is not a
company but will be founded as a club of equal members, providing an
organizational, presentational and lobbying platform for leagues to join forces.

Although there is a non-paid management handling all general businesses
and representing the members towards third parties, as well as taking care of
the exploitation of the rights of the leagues (the management BTW will be
elected yearly by the members, i.e. by the leagues), the actual
operations - organizing championships, racing series, is undertaken by
the single members which are leagues as we know them know. Leagues will stay
independant and autonomous. This approach
is the result of an analysis of the meager success of the splintered
leagues, both in public acceptance and sponsorships or other sorts of
turnover that could cover the running costs and provide prizes for
drivers.

The possible "downside" of this is: there is no company filsca that does the job

for the leagues, or the drivers. The leagues own FILSCA, and the leagues need
either to do or delegate the necessary work, or pay for it :-) In any case, the
synergy effects and the infrastructure will pay off within 2 seconds.

The FILSCA website will have two major applications: the filsca management
interface (FMI, TM) and the FILSCA content management system (FCMS).
Both strictly separate layout from content. The FMI includes a global database
where all results from all FILSCA member series are dumped into by one (or  a
few more) clicks. Also the FILSCA licences are regulated over this. The results
are all published on the FILSCA websites, but can also be taken by the series
from the database for output on their own web sites. The advantage will be all
the possible ripp-offs, ranging from life time driver career statistics over all

sims, all leagues, the same for teams, for universal track records statistics,
comparisons between car models in various leagues, or any statistical output you

can imagine or cant even think of yet. The database includes already real-life
data, and BTW:

Volunteers for feeding the database (e.g. with tracks from the sims, chassis
from the sims, real life data about tracks, car makes, car models, etc.) are
very welcome, just send a mail to C.Schir...@filsca.com or webmas...@filsca.com
(Herko ter Horst).

The Content Management System will enable each person (also drivers, sponsors
etc.)  (with different rights) to submit content for the FILSCA site, without
caring for html. Leagues can of course syndicate this content, and publish the
same content on their own home pages, in another layout or the same. This system

also allows selling content to third party medias, like traditional press,
internet papers etc.

No league ever is likely to face any success unless it takes money from
the community itself (aka entry fees from the drivers), or is run as a
game portal. Both approaches are contradictious to what sim racing at
the level of gpl, or nascar 4 is: sport, as they are not open to anyone
who wants to compete and as there are no regulations to ensure the
quality of the races and the racers.

One of the initial motivations for this was that gold diggers might contribute
to selling out the sim racing community once a killer application like wsc is on

the market. We have the knowledge, we  are part of the community, so why just
build it up ourselves in order to have control over it?

So, FILSCA is meant to be democratic (a club of equal members, leagues),
it is open source, its infrastructure (databases, the filsca management
interface, the filsca content management system) is programmed by
founding member leagues, and by other members of the start-up board,
using open source software.
This allows FILSCA to be completely independant, and allows the sim
racing community to grow by working together. Thus the members of FILSCA
have all agreed to emphasize sport over business. FILSCA can start slow,
and can grow by the time. What members receive, is that joining forces
the spread sim racing community can become a serious partner for sim
producers, but also for other sponsors far beyond of what we may imagine
now. Being a member of this world organization has a quality stamp: it
stands for high level racing that are fair, where cheaters have no
chance and are excluded for a life-time.

Along with an infrastructure that makes sim racing public aware by
enabling the members to present the highlights on a central site and by
promoting the cultural values the sim racing community stands for (via
broadcasts of the best races, web tv, sum-ups, content syndication, i.e.
major events will be announced over many sites, and press releases will
be sent to the international press agencies, via the database with its
multiple outputs), the market potential is beyond the usual game market.
This way, the races of the members of FILSCA will mid- to long-term be
able become attractive to the average racing fan.

So the board members who conceptualized FILSCA have set a completely
different approach than putting up yet another game portal. Game portals
are a dying market, and it speaks for the perspectives of sim racers
that yet they have not really contributed to the success of portals.
Game portals would not care about a proper infrastructure and
organizational setup that emphasizes the quality of the sport over the
sheer no. of "users".

Cheers,
Christoph Schirmer
Head of the Central Coordination Unit of the FILSCA working groups

read more »

Matt

Right.
And for latency, well, as the stuff is bounding box anyway, there's a
margin of error ofcourse. Don't know how incredibly bad it will be
with modem connections. Perhaps I'd reduce the bounding boxes a little
bit so you collide relatively late.

Ruud van Gaal, GPL Rank +53.25
Pencil art    : http://www.marketgraph.nl/gallery/
Free car sim  : http://www.marketgraph.nl/gallery/racer/

Why can't we all get along, not collide with eachother's cars, and I
can get away with secretly not implementing it until v0.8 when the
first online crash happens when some ex-N4 onliners try Racer? ;-)

Ruud van Gaal, GPL Rank +53.25
Pencil art    : http://www.marketgraph.nl/gallery/
Free car sim  : http://www.marketgraph.nl/gallery/racer/

| What about Europeans. Do we get 240v?
|
| Matt

| >Ok how bout after the explosion you get a 110v of current shot
| >into you via your FF or even non-FF wheel? huh? huh??huh?? :)

---
Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free.
Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com).
Version: 6.0.273 / Virus Database: 143 - Release Date: 8/16/2001

Occurred to me just recently...

I race R/C model cars at club and regional level.  This, I would
argue, is comparable to simracing: it's not the real thing but it's
very close in many respects.

In R/C there are national as well as world championships, supported by
national governing bodies (such as the BRCA, www.brca.org) which have
quite a significant following - but only within the sport.  The BRCA,
at least, is run by volunteers AFAIK.

Most drivers at my level and above are sponsored by the myriad of
companies making products for R/C cars, as are several of the major
race series.  *However*, to the best of my knowledge there is
little-to-no financial involvement from sources which do not have a
direct interest.

I suspect that this is fundamentally the same for simracing.  The
general public are not going to follow this type of racing, and until
they do there is no reason for the major sponsors to become involved.
It may also be that there is less of a sponsorship market for
simmers - probably limited to wheel/pedal manufacturers, and possibly
video card & processor companies and the like.  Compare this to car,
motor, battery, radio gear, speed control, 'hop-up', bodyshell mfrs in
R/C all of whom are getting significant income every time we crash
heavily or whenever they release an 'improved' product...

Not wishing to put a downer on people's ideas and ambitions, but my
suspicion is that both hobbies will remain as just that.

Jonny

Eldred
--
Dale Earnhardt, Sr. R.I.P. 1951-2001
Homepage - http://www.umich.edu/~epickett
F1 hcp. +16.36...Monster +366.59...

Never argue with an idiot.  He brings you down to his level, then beats you
with experience...
Remove SPAM-OFF to reply.

Sounds great!

 Scott Johnson
 "Science suggests that beer and 98 degree heat do not enhance your
  swimming ability, but I think it's a really, really good idea for
  people to test that theory as often as possible.  What are you, a
  ***?  You can do it, champ."
   -- Rev. Syd Midnight

It still is a lot easier than writing AI, though, especially if you drop
modem support.  Plus, LAN play is a good place to start, as you can get away
with pretty brain-dead approaches in this environment...
Good luck--your Racer program looks pretty impressive already!

-Dave Pollatsek
 MGI

<snip>

Very interesting. It certainly wouldn't be for me - I race for fun and
fun alone - but I don't see why those who do want something a little
more serious shouldn't have it... so long as they don't then try to
impose their values on everyone else (cue comments about every GPL-er
doing that already!).

The driving school is a great idea, provided that it has genuine
credibility. Assuming you'll be issuing creedits or licences, they have
to carry weight or they'll be useless. That means you'll need
instructors of high standing, who can commit themselves totally. If you
can find that, you could do well.

--
"After all, a mere thousand yards - such a harmless little knoll,
really" - Raymond Mays on Shelsley Walsh.
Nominations for the rest of this sig are currently being accepted...