rec.autos.simulators

All this talk about how the UbiSoft setups leave at lot to be desired
is so true. Anybody fancy sending me some, the menus take
such a time to go back and forward in the setup screens its
driving me mad.

Hopefully with decent setups i'll not think i've just wasted 35
on a 'loads of show but no *** go' type of game.

Cheers

Mark Elliott

While the default setups are not perfect I'm getting around the
track quite okay.

I hope you're not expecting to get setups that allow you to beat
the track records after a few laps. Then F1RS would hardly be
a sim...

For me there has to be hard (enjoyable) work to get close to
the real track records.

l8er
ronny

-- =

          |\      _,,,---,,_        I want to die like my Grandfather,
   ZZZzz /,`.-'`'    -.  ;-;;,_              in his sleep.
        |,4-  ) )-,_. ,\ (  `'-'     Not like the people in his car,
       '---''(_/--'  `-'\_)            screaming their heads off!

No I don't want setups that allow me to drive the course with ease
just ones that mean I spend more time on the track than facing the
wrong way (and on the grass, gravel etc.). Those menus need a
serious looking at, even looking at the CD for them there is no
excuse for it to be THAT SLOOOOOOOWWW. It might look
very nice but that is not the part of the game I want to look nice,
just functional.

Cheers,

Mark Elliott

Gripe: I think John Wallace mentioned something about the controls being
too sudden (i.e. full on or full off like a digital gamepad) and I tend to
agree. There is some semblance of analogue control but the dead zone is too
big. I use a T2 btw. It's not a bad game but I'm not so sure that GP2 is
dead yet. Has anybody had their wheels lock under braking? Does anybody
find it hard to feather the throttle in corners because the dead zone's too
big? Or is it just me....

Ta,

Yusseri

--

Centre for Vision, Speech and Signal Processing
School of Electronic Engineering,
  Information Technology and Mathematics
University of Surrey
Guildford GU2 5XH

 Mind you, I'm not one to say really because I've only done the

Hi !

About wheel locks, I disabled the ABS option in the setups of the game,
and now I can lock my wheels.

About the "too sudden controls", I fixed this by setting the steering
axis sensitivity to 50% instead of 100% as you did. Now, the car
handling is much smoother and far from a gamepad !

Many people have bad first impressions with F1RS because the game's
menus and setup options look like GP2, and so they are expecting the
same reactions to their changes as in GP2. That's wrong. GP2 solutions
are not working with F1RS, you have to find new ones instead of trying
to reproduce the ones you were used to.

The main mistake Ubisoft did is not providing basic setups for all
tracks. So, the car handling is deceiving when you first try the game.
Work a little with the car setups and you will discover a very
interesting driving sim, with a car handling as good as GP2, even better
on some points.

If you want to setup a decent car when you discover the game, first
modify the chassis height at front and rear. Try 25 or 30mm higher at
the rear than at the front. This will give you immediate results, and
the driving will be greatly improved. Then you may continue with the
other setups.

About game crashing too often (and low FPS at starts), I fixed this by
disabling the crappy replay option. No more crashes for me now... but no
more replays ! Ubi must patch this ASAP !

I've got an AMD K6 200 MMX, 32 Mo, a Matrox Mystique, and a Diamond
3DFX. With this, I was not running GP2 with full graphic options (had to
disable the sky). F1RS is smooth with the same hardware.

I say it again : you will never appreciate F1RS if you set it up (both
the game and your car) like GP2. I guess that's why some people are so
unhappy with this game.

To me, one strong point of F1RS (compared to GP2) is that you can drive
without the equivalent of GP2's "steering help" without loosing 2 secs
bys lap ! So, you can choose your own line in curves, and this is far
more realistic.

So, be patient and try the game a little more to discover all its
advantages : your efforts will be rewarded by some very good surprises !

Thierry Cailleteau.

You need to turn _off_ the ABS and traction control. It took me a
while to work out how to do this. Be prepared for a shock once you
turn traction control off. I managed to melt my tyres at Monza about
10 seconds after I found you could do proper doughnuts. Not canned
180s or 360s, proper round, round, round, round, smoke everywhere and
screaming motors. Like a NASCAR race but more exciting.... <g,d & r!>

I do find it hard to feather though, at least as far as the sound is
concerned. The car seems to respond properly to the lift and
reapplication of the throttle, but the sound sample for the engine
doesn't build up gradualy in the same way. As soon as you touch the
throttle the revs are just there, and that aural feedback upsets the
way you drive the car since it sounds wrong.

Go find those options (you have to press the down arrow on one of the
configuration screens) and try without ABS and traction control. It's
really fun.

Cheers!
John

Simple question - does the car you drive make a difference to performance
(like Psygnosis F1) in F1Rs or is it like GP2?

I haven't dabbled with this yet.

Cheers

Tony

On Wed, 26 Nov 1997 15:55:04 +0100, Thierry Cailleteau

Actually I found the setups to work in very similar manner to GP2's,
at least with respect to spring, damper and ride heights. Of course we
are missing the slow/fast damping, but it still works very well and
you can feel the changes you are making.

What were the differences you found in setup (he said, looking to
imporve his time by stealing someone's ideas)...? (Can you imagine
Jacques Villeneuve asking Michael Schumacher this while they are
standing in the pits together?!).

Cheers!
John

John, it's time to throw down. If I'm going to have one new sim under my
tree in a few weeks, which one do I want it to be? And no waffling, just
gimme the straight poop.

Thanks,

Glen

Oh heck yes. The Williams I am using pulls 213mph before having to
brake into the first chicane, but the same setup on a Tyrrell
struggles to break 200mph. Nice touch, and great for handicapping
drivers of different abilities.

Cheers!
John

        <snipped the things I said>

Thanks, I'll give that a try.

That's really odd because I actually set up the sensitivity to 0 and that's
when the controls began to really feel like a gamepad. I'll go back and
give it a try.

Nah, I didn't think that it was anything like GP2. I fully expected a
different beast. It's like ICR2 and GP2 ain't the same either. OK, so one's
for CART and the other is F1 but I think that the essential difference is
that they were from different programmers. I did buy F1RS with an open
mind. I knew that I would be reasonably happy with (at least initially) so
long as it wasn't like Eidos' Power F1 or Psygnosis' F1. I tried the demo
before buying this game and I felt that it wasn't going to disappoint me.

Well, I mentioned that I'm not sure whether GP2 is dead yet but again, I
didn't say that I didn't like F1RS. I actually like it quite a bit, in
fact. As for the setups, not putting myself down or anything like that but
I'm usually ***anyway so even if there were brilliant default setups it
wouldn't do me much good. That's why I said that I didn't really mind the
setups Ubi provided. In ICR2 for e.g. I couldn't use any of the setups when
I first bought the game, even the EASY ones. This after being rather
competent in ICR1 as well. In GP2, ALL the default setups were the same...

Yep, I did the lowering bit first thing even before my first try on the
realistic settings.

I'll try the disable replay thing, thanks. Apparently, in one of the
threads, someone mailed Ubi and asked them about the ***fps during replay
and the Ubi bloke said that it was because the replay is all done in
software (Duh!) but they might make a patch for it.

I've got a K6 200, 64 MB, Herc Dynamite/128, Flash 3D. Used to overclock
the K6 to 225 but too many lockups with POD and then with F1RS so now
reverted back to 200. Seems a bit better.

No, no, no, I'm not unhappy with it at all (except for the .Driver X
thingy).

Agreed. Though I did get used to GP2's steering 'anomaly' after some time.

Ta,

Yusseri.

--

Centre for Vision, Speech and Signal Processing
School of Electronic Engineering,
  Information Technology and Mathematics
University of Surrey
Guildford GU2 5XH

On Wed, 26 Nov 1997 15:40:37 GMT, John Wallace

Yep, I've tried turning off the ABS and traction control. MUCH more
exciting now. It's definitely starting to feel more real now.

That's interesting. I didn't realise that the input was being read even
though there was no engine sound build-up. Maybe that was really why I felt
that the controls were too on-off. I tend to listen to the aural feedback
as well for feathering the throttle.

Thanks,

Yusseri

--

Centre for Vision, Speech and Signal Processing
School of Electronic Engineering,
  Information Technology and Mathematics
University of Surrey
Guildford GU2 5XH

Certainly adds to the life of the game - no need for utils to tweak the AI
if  you can keep choosing slower cars.

Stuck a Jordan on pole at Hungary at the max level with no aids - so John's
news makes me feel good - for now (no doubt someone will do it in a Forti
given time!)

I do like this game!!!! (bar the menus & replay of course)

Tony

I'm not saying your input _is_ being read, just "IMO" since I don't
know for sure. The car doesn't seem to "jump" when the power comes
back, despite the sound suggesting that it should. So I imagine that
it's the sound that's wrong rather than the car itself.

Any other opinions welcome of course.

Cheers!
John

The menus are not installed on your hard drive if you don't install the
full version, that's why it is so slow when accessing the CD-ROM.
The replay mode is supposed to be fixed in the patch they announce for
next week on Ubi's european sites (www.ubisoft.fr, for example).

Thierry