rec.autos.simulators

http://www.racesimcentral.net/

Note the way the car is been driven really well in the first section, taking
advantage of the camber. The way it moves on its suspension and against the
camber appears spot on.

There is another, more subtle thing. The physics model appears to model
tyre/soil interaction well. The tyres are actually digging into the road and
resiting the lateral movement against the gravel, just like in real life.
This is the one thing I'm looking forward to more than anything else. The
problem with every rally based game/sim that I've tried, is that the gravel
surface is moddeled 2 dimensionally, and feels more like wet tarmac than
gravel.

Oh man, I can't WAIT for RBR to come out. Any word on a possible release
date?

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Todd Walker
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Andi.

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Remove only one zero to reply.

Suuuuucked.

At least as far as I could tell.   I only played a tarmac stage, and to
be honest, I'm not even sure what car I was using.   That being said, I
couldn't tell at all from the handling whether it was supposed to be
FWD, RWD, or 4WD.   Hitting the throttle hard enough to spin the tires
(or at least I assume spin the tires, as the sound of tires squealing
blasted forth from the speakers) did nothing to the handling.   No
rear-end snapping out, no front-end washing out, nothing.   Admittedly,
you could slam on the brakes and get the car to wash out, though
trail-braking seemed nearly impossible.

Part of this may be due to the wheel that was hooked up to it.   The
force feedback could be conservatively described as "notchy", with a
deadzone that probably took up about 20 degrees either direction on the
wheel.   It literally was impossible to get a smooth correction on a
straight out of the car, and the wheel wanted to leap to each of its
notches when the FF kicked in, so a smooth turn was also out of the
question.

To go back on topic, bring on Richard Burns Rally.   It has to be better
than Xpand.

Uggg, this is bad news. Was it at least as good or fun as Rally Trophy?
How were the gfx? What hardware was it being shown on at what res?

We rally sim dudes want info!!!! :)

The graphics were excellent.   The viewpoint it was set to was like the
TRD2 psuedo-in-car-cam, so it wasn't a true***pit view, so that I
can't comment on.   The track graphics were amazing though, it was very,
very pretty.   The little bit where a small animal went darting across
the road in front of me was a nice touch too.   I have no complaints as
far as the video games.

The audio was decent, though it sounds like the exhaust note was a
little too echo-ey to me.   It sounded fine at first, but it got really,
really irritating as time went on.   I felt bad for the girl manning the
booth, having to hear that noise for a few days straight.   It was
turned up very loud as well, so that might just be them trying to
impress with the subwoofer, so it might have been drowning out other noises.

I wish I could compare it to Rally Trophy, but I've never had the
pleasure of playing that game, I haven't been able to track down a copy.
  Know where I can get one?

Again, some of this may have been due to the wheel it was setup with.
The wheel probably travelled a good 8-9 degrees between notches in the
force feedback, so it was absolutely impossible to actually get a good
turn out of the thing.   I imagine if I had had a chance to play with
the deadzones and such, it might have gotten better.   (The Wheel was
the latest Logitech PS2-aimed GT3 wheel, with the little back and forth
sequential shift lever on the right side).   The biggest thing that
really caught me was the way the car behaved when you gave it too much
throttle.   The audio was clearly telling me that I was spinning the
tires with a loud shriek, but nothing through the force feedback and I
could crank the wheel into a turn all while my foot was to the floor and
the tires howling and it drive like I was coasting.

Hopefully it was just bad equipment (the Thrustmaster wheel I tried out
at TM's booth was in horrid shape, as is, the d-pad thing wouldn't
register down or left, so it was obviously abused), but it struck me as
very arcade-y.   Is there an arcade mode to the game vs. a sim mode?   I
had no chance to go through any of the interface, it was just sit down,
drive, finish, get up.

I want to give the game a chance, since it and Richard Burns' Rally seem
to be our only hopes with CMR being such a painful mess, so I hope I'm
giving it a fair shake.   I was just so e***d to try this, but it
ended up really disappointing me.   It was no GTR, at any rate.

Much thanks for the write up.