rec.autos.simulators

    I'd like them to add some rear tires with traction.  The
near-uncontrollable fishtailing/spinning at part throttle when you are going
20 mph is not only annoying, it is very unrealistic.  I have driven several
400+ HP cars (though not a Viper) 'enthusiastically' and even the 1970 LS-6
Chevelle I drove got better traction with bias-ply 60 series tires and
dark-ages 1970 passenger car suspension than the Viper does in VR.

    I hope it isn't getting to a point with sims that to seem 'realistic',
the cars have to be nearly uncontrollable.  In the 'real world', high-buck
***s and extreme muscle cars are distinguished by their EXCELLENT control
and traction, not lack of it. Driving this kind of car is supposed to be
confidence-inspiring at speed, not terror-inducing, always on the verge of
losing control. It is understandable in GPL, the real cars weighed nothing
and had plenty of power.  The tires were a joke compared to even the most
pedestrian passenger car radials of today.  A Viper has the greatest
suspension technology Chrysler can muster and the best radial tire
technology you can get.  The tires are hugely wide and stick to the road
like glue.  In VR, even the slightest tickle on the throttle with the wheel
turned sets you into a ridiculous tail-happy pendulum spin that is
practically impossible to drive out of without completely lifting off the
throttle and coming to a stop.  Sliding sideways in the grass at 100+ MPH,
yeah, there no control in the real world either, but this wild spinning at
20, 30 or 40 mph is nonsense.

    I think maybe the game designers have seen fit to include the
possibility of doing doughnuts so as to entertain the crowd that thinks that
sort of thing is 'kewl'.  They may have even biased the physics to make it
easier than reality to do it.  I mean, think of Alex Zanardi or even Jeff
Gordon, doing donuts at the end of races to celebrate and show off.  Don't
you think they would want to be spinning as wildly as possible?  Their cars
have more power than a Viper, but the Viper 'realistically' spins easier?
Hello?  Maybe you can chalk it up to the racing tires on the race cars, but
they do have twice the power of the Viper...

Just my useless opinion.  Now everyone can tell me what a fat loser I am,
and I how I have no clue what I'm talking about.

daxe (who drives 100,000+ miles per year, for a living, not in a semi)

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I've seen both and driven a Cobra replica.  They will 'boil the balonies'
for sure, but modulating the throttle, even somewhat indelicately, and
sawing the wheel around a little, allows you to tuck the tail in and smoke
'em up in a straight line.

I had a '70 SS 396 Chevelle with a cam that was way too hot and an 850
double pumper it didn't need on an edelbrock Torker.  It had an Automatic
(yuck!)  The thing wouldn't idle below about 2200 rpms.  Trying to use the
brake to hold it at a light in drive was a messy (and smelly) affair.  I
usually put it in neutral and let my poor Ujoints suffer the pain of popping
it into drive when the light turned green.  That also resulted in some
..uhh...noise.
  Heck, everything the car did was pretty noisy.

I got pulled over for something similar.  The cop had seen me pull out of
my driveway, chirping in reverse then pull away chirping (actually a bit
more than a chirp).  I wasn't even trying to be obnoxious (for a change).
When he caught up to me he just gave me a ration of sh*t and stalked back to
his car.  He left his hand held radio on my hood, too.  I almost drove away
with it  but figured giving it back to him was a better bet in the long run.

I have a T2.  I use my MSFF wheel and pedals instead.  The computer is a
P2/450 with 256 MEG and a Diamond MOnsterII 12 MEG/ATI AllinWonder AGP 8
MEG.  I think the gear is up to it, must be my heavy foot.  I actually had
better luck trying to use my MS sidewinder 3D driving it.

It is enjoyable, it just seems a little bit too touchy.  A matter of taste,
perhaps.

daxe

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I think part of your problem may be with your controller/calibration.  
Make sure you go to the TUNE area and adjust your throttle so it gives
you nice smooth response throughout its entire range of motion.

That said, let me tell you that a Viper is by no means an *** sports
car.  A Viper is a MUSCLE CAR.  It is designed to put huge loads of horse
power at your fingerti...err toe tips.  We are talking about a car with
over TWICE the horsepower of classic muscle car of the late 60's.  Sure
you can light the tires in first gear (and second and third), but the
smart racer doesn't give full throttle, he uses as much as he can without
pealing out.

It take practice, but you learn to ride the edge!

Depends on what car your talking about.  Sure a car with traction
control(an option in VR BTW) won't light up the tires, but let me tell
you that if you dump the clutch in a non traction controlled *** car,
your going for a spin.

Drive the Viper at 100 mph around one of the more curvy tracks for a few
laps.  Now take your real car out and drive 55 through similar turns,
then you'll see the difference.

The ONLY way your spinning at 30-40 mph is if you have the throttle
FLOORED.  I can take the stock car in the game, drive yanking the wheel
hard as I can in all directions and NEVER lose traction.  Losing traction
because you give to much throttle isn't a flaw its a fact of life.

Ummm, no

Thats how you wreck.

How do you justify your assertion that the viper spins more easily?  
Exactly what are you basing these statements on?  I can tell you one
reason that they don't spin forever, its called blowing an engine.

Tires has nothing to do with it.  Any car with over 500 hp is more than
capable of lighting up racing tires.

8^)

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That could be why I said this:

In the 'real world', high-buck
***s and extreme muscle cars are distinguished by their EXCELLENT control
and traction, not lack of it.

Umm..which "classic muscle car of the late 60's" sported fewer than 225
horsepower?  I think you may need to reexamine your 'facts' on this one.

Yes.

A spin you can have some control over by steering.  Thats my point.

Actually my real car is a Neon ACR Coupe, the SCCA club racing car sold by
Dodge dealers and adverrtised as the 2nd quickest car Dodge sells (behind
the Viper).  With BFG R1s it will out-corner a Viper on a tight road course
all day long.  That's not my boast, those are tested facts.  I wouldn't have
any trouble going around the same course at 100, but I get your point,
anyway.

True, but I stand by what I said.  With the throttle barely depressed, after
breaking traction for whatever reason, the car is totally tail happy.

The same way you compare driving a Viper in a racing sim and then driving my
street car on the same tracks.  BY making assertions about reality vs.
simulated reality.  I hear the  enignes in the cars on TV revving higher
than the one in the sim to achieve less effect.

It was in the paragraph I wrote to begin with.  Showing off seems to dictate
putting on a show.  If their more powerful cars were capable of fishtailing
and spinning wildly at part throttle (which will not blow your engine) , as
is the simluated car in VR, then they would, to show off.  The car in VR
does this.  I don't think it's realistic.  That's my opinion, it's where my
statements are based.   (And who said anything about doing it forever?  )

A car with 100 hp is capable of it, depending on the tires and the weight of
the car and a bunch of other factors.  Actually, torque has a lot more to do
with it than horsepower.

daxe

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There probably aren't any, but being the best is not the same as being
perfect.

I tend to agree with you, but I still hold all my opinions to be true.  I
never said it wasn't good, I never said anything else was any better, I just
said the traction isn't very good and I doubted it was accurate.  There are
lots of things about it that can be improved, like more tracks, much better
graphics (after NFS3, everything else is ugly), a better paintkit (though
the ease of exporting/importing to/from an external graphics program is
nice) an interface that doesn't have you switching from mouse to keyboard to
controller, more AI cars, etc.

It's great start.  I hope there's a VR2 in the future and they make the
traction a little more realistic.  It is also a great value for the price
and everyone should own a copy.

daxe

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Andre

The multiplayer car is a lot slower though, my best race lap is
1:01.00.

Well  in all cases I will defer to the voice of experience.  So if it is not
totally wrong, then it is at least a TAD too slippy?

True in any car and it beats the heck outta me how you would go about
simulating that short of a zillion dollar hydraulic contraption...

True.  I am aware of the tendency and try to compensate for it, but in the
end it comes down to how well the sim can visually or audibly deliver this
sensation.

It would be fun to add a tiny track where you could work on, say, 0-60 times
with a computer stopwatch.  Maybe that would help you develop a feel for the
simulated acceleration and grip using your controller.

Heck...riding in the right seat of my wife's Subaru Legacy is
terror-inducing if SHE'S driving.

OK..maybe not technology, but they didn't put ***under there.  It is
simple old tech, but tuned well.

This is true in any car to a degree.  Even my silly 150HP Neon spins the
front wheels madly if I am atttempting to make a quick getaway from a
traffic light and my tires are on the crosswalk paint.

Now I have something to shoot for!  A real Viper driver gets a little over a
minute in the sim..what can I do??  AS for the horn?  Never tried it.
What's the point of a horn in a sim?

daxe

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I was referring to the 650+ HP Viper that you build in career mode.  Also
note that HP ratings for the 60s are not comparable to current HP ratings
because of the way the HP is/was determined.  

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I am aware of that.  They used to be rated gross and now are rated net.
Whatever the small points, a Hemi Cuda (just as an example) does not have
less than 1/2 the power of a Viper, even a 650HP modified one.  Besides all
this, the stock Viper in the sim (before the mods) spins the tires more
easily than the modded one, anyway.  At least to the level I have gotten it.

Beating a dead horse,

dx

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'64 Pontiac GTO, 389 CI, 325 HP
'67 Chevy Chevelle SS396, 396 CI, 325 HP
'67 Pontiac Firebird 400, 400 CI, 325 HP
'69 Chevy Camaro Z28, 302 CI, 290 HP
'69 Ford Mustang Boss 302, 302 CI, 290 HP
'70 AMC Javelin Trans-Am, 390 CI, 325 HP

   So 650 today is a fair bit more than 2X those listed above.  

   And 650 today is probably just about 2X the biggest and badest big
block monsters of the era.

"But in a way, fear is a big part of racing, because if there was
nothing to be frightened of, and no limit, any fool could get into
a motor car and racing would not exist as a sport." ---- Jim Clark

I said "big block.."

It seems slightly unfair in this ad hoc comparo that we are  comparing an
imaginary 650 horse Viper to real stock muscle cars.  To make the playing
field even, why don't we either compare heavily modded 60s performance cars
with the 650hp Viper, or compare the 60s cars to the stock Viper, 450hp?  IN
the cases you mentioned, you didnt even use the highest hp versions of some
of those motors.

A figure generically used is to discount the old hp ratings by 20%, so we
take the 450hp stock Viper/2 to get 225hp  (if you follow the thread back,
you will discover no mention of using the modded car until after the initial
challenge to the 2X claim)  then adjust that with the 20% figure, you get
270hp.  A stock 60s car would have to sport less than 270hp to be half as
powerful as a stock Viper.

The comparison I made was to driving my 1970 Chevelle SS 396, which started
with 375hp, not 325, and was modified with a much hotter cam, torker intake,
and Holley 850dp.  I didn't have a dyno handy, but it wasn't 375hp any more,
I assure you.

My contention was that that car had better traction and catchability than
the Viper in VR, even given its narrow (relatively) bias-ply tires and
unmodded passenger car suspension.  I STILL think that is the case and
nobody has said anything to change my OPINION.  If I put huge Viper wheels
and tires on that Chevelle, do you think it would suddenly have LESS
traction?

 A Chrysler Hemi at the time was rated "conservatively" at 425hp.  That was
widely known to be a severe underestimation, a number softened to decrease
insurance premiums.  Even if it was accurate:

425 x .8 = 340
2 x 340 = 680

yes, that's about equal....to a modified Viper engine.

unmodified?  680 > 450

There 435 and 450 horse versions of GM big blocks, too.

I have read all the tests in the car mags about how the Viper is faster than
any 60s/70s performance car and handles better.  I don't disagree with that
assessment.  I just want to know why the car in the sim gets worse traction
and has sloppier low-speed handling than one of those 60s/70s cars I have
actually owned and driven.

daxe

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