rec.autos.simulators

highest difficulty levels and getting a negative GPL rank I finally
dared to try my hand at online VROC racin'.

Nice stuff for sure, won 6 F1 races my first week (mostly by avoiding
the T1 crashes), and lost a lot more of course.

...but it's Monza, Spa, Glen & Silverstone a lot of the time, and I'd
like to drive some other tracks as well sometimes.  A lot of those races
seem to be passworded though.

So, um, could I humbly ask some nice admins to email me some passwords
for servers up weekly/daily on Vroc?  Or is there a mailing list for
this stuff?

I can't promise I won't accidentally punt off some poor sod sometimes,
unfortunately  ;)
But at least I try to avoid it  (note though: the Eagle has poor brakes
and mine in particular - and some people try to stay right behind when I
*have* to get on the binders, with predictable consequences   :)

...But i got a neg GPLrank these days, I hope that almost qualifies to
compete from the back with you race gods    ;)

Oh, and um, my main car is the Eagle and GPL defaults to that, but how
can I start an online race in, say, the Coop sometimes? Changing the
default every time seems a bit of a bother.

Regards, Rudy (aka "Rudy Eagle" on Vroc)
(GPLRank -0.89)

"And to think, ten years ago, we thought we were racing fast cars" (Juan
Manuel Fangio, at the German GP 1967)

"Don't touch that please, your primitive intellect wouldn't understand
alloys and compositions and,......things with molecular structures,....and
the....." - Ash

If you haven't already loaded up winvroc, drop by http://www.vroc.net/ and
read though the whole site.

Once you've got past the richedit error & updated the vroc server ip, you
should be able to get a racelist.

Each server has a coloured box to the left:

Green is an open (unpassworded race) that hasn't started yet. You can join
any of them, but try to get the best latency you can find.

Orange usually just means the server is running a firewall & you can't ping
it, but it may also mean the latency is too high if you have a poor
connection.

Blue are passworded races, you will need to join the appropriate league to
race on these, or at least know the host. Passwords, as a rule, are there to
stop strangers from joining, and are never usually just given out in chat,
that's what the green races are for ;-)

Red usually means the race is in progress, so you can no longer join, but it
may also be because you don't have that track installed.

I recommend that you just pick a server with a few drivers already in, and
just watch the first time. Once you feel confident enough, go out on track
but watch your mirrors and keep out of everyone's way. After a few races
you'll get the hang of racing real people (it's a hell of alot more
intimidating than racing the AI).

You WILL make mistakes, and you WILL take someone out. Everyone does ;-)
How you deal with that just depends on how thick skinned you are, but the
vast majority of drivers are extremely polite, and as long as you are too,
you'll fit in just fine ;-)

Malc.

along with malc's info, there is a neat thing about the WinVroc program...
you can pick your car, just as you join the server...  where it is
acceptable, you can pick the class of car too.    the little ap is d*m well
worth the trouble to get it running...

"I'm a GPL offline racer, but (..) I finally dared to try my hand at
online VROC racin'.

So, um, I've already did some VROC races this week and got to know
WinVroc (still waiting for MacVROC and MacGPL though ;).

Ah (relieved) - thank goodness, I almost thought I was a subconscious
wrecker or something    ;)

Me? After being punted by stupid AI (who seem to think you're not there

  for a coupla seconds, then move on  ;)

Um, does making my car's ass reaaaally wide when I'm in front count?   ;)

(In reality, if someone's clearly faster I'm quite easy about letting
him/her pass though, since a collision is the likely result if I don't.
I've made a few mistakes because the brake distances on my Eagle are
abysmally long though ;)

Regards, Rudy
(GPLRank -0.89)

One league I'd highly recommend is the VOR-GPL league -- this is the
first GPL league that I've been involved in, and they are a GREAT,
SUPER bunch of guys.  Check them out:

http://www.gplvor.speedgeezers.com/Virtual_Online_Racers/GPL/main.htm

Our current season is coming to and end this week, but we will be
running some LONG "fun" races, and a new season will begin soon, so
now's a good time to check them out.

Tell 'em jbodin sent you -- if you're lucky, they might overlook that
and let you join anyway . . .

;-)

Enjoy!

-- JCB

Find yourself a beginer friendly league (most are to some degree) and
jump in.

http://forum.racesimcentral.com/forumdisplay.php?s=&forumid=80

-Greg

BTW, Just a Day RULEZ - my brother's favorite GPL movie too and he isn't
even really into GPL   ;)

Regards, Rudy
(GPLRank -0.89)

New movie coming VERY soon. Keep your eyes peeled.

Kev