rec.autos.simulators

OK PHYSICS model sucks period,no matter what everyone says it sucks,why
u ask?
heres why........the steering feesl like go cart steering,you are
supposed to be driving a road car in mud ffs,way to responsive
regardless of sensitivity setting..car feels like it has no
inertia.....you are flying flat chat 160mph on wet dirt and it brakes to
stopping in a few seconds(LOL)sad........running over grass is almost as
good as hitting the brakes,,you should go faster over grass cause you
lose traction....BIG FLAW.....the car DOESNT SLIDE OR GO SIDEWAYS..if
you watch really rally footage the drivers are always flicking the cars
left to right around corners etc,sorta like colin mcrae rally where it
was a bit eggagerated but still heaps more realistic.

Iin rc2000 you can fly into corners in wet gravel ice whatever and it
will just understeer off even when u jab the brakes ,when u hit the hand
brake to get it sideways,it gets into the tinyest sideways which my
grandma could correct,,
all u need is to flick the wheel for a milli second and it snaps back
into shape with,no sight of overcorrection.....

Basically the car handles like its on rails no matter what you do to
it..and it stops like a F1 car,i cant beleive they shipped the game with
this physics model OMG....

Colin mrae feels 50 times better and its heaps more fun,the car actually
SLIDES and it feels like you have momentem and inertia,mcrae is a little
arcady but rc2000 feels like shit
not like a sim not arcade just crap. feels like you are driving a 10
pound car with slicks
what a joke a rally game where a car doesnt slide or go sideways
......Vrally kills this game in the driving model stakes and that came
out years ago..these guys should feel ashames to release this
crap,anyone who says the driving m,odel is good doesnt know shit and
cant drive in real life.

I have some of the fastest GPL  times on the net so i know what im
talking about,this game is great apart from the physics model which is
the most important factor.

Dont waste your cash if you want a sim,dont even waste it if you want
arcade game,play colin mcrae or v rally,im gonna laugh so hard when a
patch(LOL) comes out to fix the physics model,which will happen.

Jeroen

Uh, it's pretty enough, but the car has no "weight" if you know what I
mean, braking and steering happens instantly, just like you'd expect a
"video game" to do, but a "sim" is supposed to give you a "feel" for the
car, and this one don't

I was doing 100mph or so down a straight bit, then I put 2 wheels on the
grass, and the car instantly slows down like you're on the brakes,
mmmmm, no thx

Too bad really, the stages look like they could be a lot of fun with a
decent physics model, Colin McCrae Rally beats this one hands down in my
opinion, is this really the game "everyone" here has been waiting for, I
have this feeling that I've gotten ot mixed up with another title
somehow ?

Oh, and what's up with the incredible hardware demands, here's an
excerpt from the readme:

MINIMUM REQUIRED SPECIFICATION
 ------------------------------
 Windows 95 or 98
 Intel Pentium II 266MHz or AMD K6-2 350MHz
 64Mb of memory
 20Mb of hard disk space
 8Mb PCI fast 3D video card
 Sound card
 4x speed CD-ROM drive
 DirectX 5
 DirectX Media

 RECOMMENDED SPECIFICATION
 -------------------------
 Windows 95 or 98
 Intel Pentium III 500MHz or AMD K7/Athlon 500MHz
 128Mb of memory
 650Mb of hard disk space
 16Mb+ AGP fast 3D video card
 Hardware-accelerated 3D sound card
 32x speed CD-ROM drive
 DirectX 6.1
 DirectX Media

Uhhhh...........

Beers and cheers
(uncle) Goy

Very definitive analysis.

David G Fisher

How do I reduce the steering sensitivity ?

I played it a little more, and on tarmac this COULD be a bit fun, with a
less sensitive steering that is, I've played around with those settings
for an hour now, but as soon as I move the steering wheel just a
fraction (unless I put on dead-zone of course, but that's not right
either) the car darts to one side, even on tarmac a rally car don't act
like this, not to mention on gravel, I don't think I've but on more than
5 degrees of lock yet, except for the hairpins...

Oh, and don't tell me that putting 2 wheels on the grass in a 250-300 HP
car would slow you down like you were standing on the brakes, THAT part
they got wrong, I'm trying to keep an open mind here, at least for a
little while longer :-)

Beers and cheers
(uncle) Goy

Intel Pentium III 500MHz or AMD K7/Athlon 500MHz
 128Mb of memory
 650Mb of hard disk space

Shit you've gotta be kidding me right?

PII 500 and 650MB of HD space!!! Not to mention the RAM (although I've just
upgraded to that amount)

I wonder how this game would run on my PII 266 ???

And 650 Mb of HD space, yikes! I'm scrounging to free up drive space as it
is... I can deal with the recommended 20 meg's of HD space, but how poor
will it run if I only install at that level?

One question that I haven't seen addressed.. How many different Rallies are
there?

In CMR there were only 8, (Love CMR and play it weekly BTW) and how accurate
are they ???

Most Rally games have very short straight-aways, with lots of turns and
hairpins, yet if you watch the WRC coverage on TV most Rallies don't seem to
be as twisting and winding as you find with video games....

JJ

But you still fail to answer the questions about rally cars the slow down
when you drop a wheel on the grass and how it is possible to slam into a
tree and drive away, and the difficulty in sliding and etc etc etc
...........

If we want arcade games we would buy arcade games.... we want realism
nothing more nothing less.

Peter Cook

One can only guess I'm afraid.....

Not sure, I've seen 6 different rallies in "Single Rally" mode though,
but there could me more....

I don't know the British stages first hand, but I'm going to give this
game credit for the stages, they are at least very believable (at least
from what I've seen on TV) and absolutely gorgeous looking, and good
sense of speed as well

I reached 6th gear in the SEAT Cupra on several occasions, although I
really expect a 1000 kg car with 260 (?) HP to pull better, as soon as
there's an uphill or something, it really slows the progress down

Beers and cheers
(uncle) Goy

You can reduce the steering sensivity in the options/controller menu as well
as on the car setup screen. If you turn the slider nearly to the left,
steering is quite similar to Colin MacRae Rally...

If we could only find the slider, that adds a few hundred kilos to the car's
weight...
And BTW: Why does nobody complain about missing tire squeal???

CU
Zolli

But still, one wonders what all that brute power is needed for, and
before you say physics calculations, let me say that it doesn't look
like it, Gfx stuff, yes...

Beers and cheers
(uncle) Goy

Exactly, the car is way too responsive on the steering and brakes

There is a tiny bit just as you take off on tarmac, I think the SEAT
managed to spin it's wheels for a full 10 yards in 1st gear, those that
have seen Jesus Pureira, Francois Delecour and Philippe Bugalski in
their F2 cars on the Corsica Rally this year will know that these F2
cars will spin their tires at least in 3rd gear, maybe even 4th gear
corners..

Beers and cheers
(uncle) Goy

David G Fisher

--
Ian Parker

UKGPL League
http://members.xoom.com/ukgpl/index.html
http://www.ukgpl.com
--

Also, I prefer the drtiving model in RC2000 tyo CMR. ... it's no GPL, but it
feels more realistic thatn CMR .. .CRM feels like Sega Rally to me while
RC2000 feels more like a sim. If's not perfect but as far as rally games go I
haven't come accross a better one.

Rerads,
David Mocnay

I'm wondering if the damage has at least something to do with
licensing.  Official F1 presented cars that could only lose wheels, and I
read somewhere it was because the FIA is getting a bit shy about showing
total carnage in racing sims.  The same thing happened initially with
SCGT, and GPL is also quite sanitized in this respect.

Sticky grass has also plagued more than a few sims lately.  It's
disappointing, but on the other hand it makes for quite honest offline
competitions.  Perhaps I would move the border back a bit, though, and
allow us to drop one or two wheels off, but then again, having seen a lot
of WRC coverage this year, there really is *no* room to drop a wheel off
in rallying.  The line between a fast stage and a DNF is very fine.

As for the show-stopper crashes; we could always practise a little
self-discipline.  Hit a tree?  Take yourself out and start over.  People
are getting really passionate about this game, which I suppose is good,
but it's become yet another of those polarized arguments.  I'm going to
sit on the fence for a while; I admit to running seasons with the damage
switched off in most sims, because I bought the thing to race.  One of the
pleasures of a racing sim (for some) is that you can have the good
(fabulous racing) without the bad( mechanical DNFs, brain fades).  The
time I lose recovering from a spin in GPL is more than enough to get my
*** boiling, but at least with damage turned off I get a chance to drive
my ass off trying tomake up the time.  The experience is much more
satisfying than to DNF.  Of course, this is all just an opinion.

Still waiting for the release here, but when it comes out, I'll offer a
review from "the average, semi-serious sim guy, who just happens to be a
rabid rally fan, grew up racing little RWDs and FWDs in icy northern
Ontario, and is also a mechanical engineer who dabbles in dynamic
simulations".  Whew.  There's a mouthfull.

Stephen