rec.autos.simulators

--
Sean Higgins

"HigPup"
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that be concluded that GPL failed because it was too difficult.

Bingo.  The immersion factor of the original F1GP hooked me because I
could drive the track before watching it on TV during a GP weekend.  The
in-car shots were "exactly" what I saw in the game (okay, our expectations
were all a little bit lower in 1992).  After each race, I would then go
back and race the whole thing again (yeah, life was good back in the
pre-PhD days when I could play racing simulations into the wee hours of
the night instead of coding biological simulations well past the witching
hour).

GPL works for me because I can still identify with the drivers.  I was
born in 1968, so I'm one step removed from the handful of people in this
group who watched them race, but you can bet all my Corgi cars had J.
Stewart and N. Lauda on the side.  I have a hard time seeing the average
gamer (ie. not a R.A.S. reader) getting very e***d about the concept,
but I can see them dropping dollars for Driver.  My girlfriend has a 20
year old brother.  The GPL demo went over like a lead balloon.  Monaco
Grand Prix, on the other hand, keeps his HD spinning on race weekends.
And he keeps asking when Driver is coming for the PC.

Papyrus mis-read the market.
Stephen

Ugly!?!?  This is obviously a matter of taste, but I think the '67-'70
cars were the most beautiful F1 cars ever.

Sure. it's nice to be able to do that, but for me, I can drive the cars
I grew up with and race against (none too successfully!) against
boyhood heros.

I'd love to see a modern F1 sim with the GPL physics engine too,
but I think the choice of the 67 season was truly inspired.

steven fellini wrote

Inspired by what, that  is the question. Racing against Jim Clark  must have
been some kind of childhood fantasy of one of the higher ups at Papy. Now
the same brilliant minds are releasing a NASCAR legends sim. That might be a
tempting add on for an existing sim, but as a stand alone product no way.

   It wasn't at all inspired from the point of view of selling units
which is what a software company is in business to do.  If GPL had been
written to be a simulator of more modern machines such as F1 or CART
cars then it would undoubtedly have sold many more copies and introduced
many more people to 'real' racing.  They could have released the
'legends' angle as an add-on pack for those interested in the era and
those looking for a new challenge.

   A lot of people looked at the game and thought 'who wants to race 30
year old cars?'.  Its one thing having a great physics engine but if
nobody buys the game,  then whats the point?

Gavan
--
There can be only one.............

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  I really doubt that was anything to do with it.  GPL "requires":

  1) One of a limited range of graphics cards
  2) Reasonably high end machine
  3) Steering wheel or dual joystick set up.
  4) Incredible amounts of patience

  The first three (especially number 3) have already limited the
potential sales of the product so much that I don't think the 30 year
old cars are going to be that much of a difference.  Compare with flight
sims.  WWII sims and WWI sims can sell just as well as the modern stuff.
The real problems that GPL had was that not many people had the system
to run it (particularly not that many people have a steering wheel) and
if they did have the system to run it, it had no "novice" mode where it
was easy to do well and therefore people were put off.  I have various
friends who love racing games (one friend in particular who has run a
full length championship in GP2 running full length races) who won't
consider GPL because it requires a steering wheel or at the very least
dual joysticks.

  It's incomprehensible to me that GPL didn't have options to allow a
novice mode where it is MUCH easier to drive and at least the option to
have clear instrumentation and a speedometer.  There seems to have been
an attitude in the creation of GPL that it is _meant_ to be user hostile.  
Fair enough - that makes for a challenging and exciting game for those
of us who can be bothered - but, unsurprisingly, most people can't.

--
Richard G. Clegg     Only the mind is waving
Dept. of Mathematics (Network Control group) Uni. of York.

www: http://manor.york.ac.uk/top.html

Maybe, assuming that the aim was to produce an accurate simulation of
motorsports at the highest level, the choice of 1967 was as much a pragmatic
decision as a romantic one?

I bought it. I liked it. That's point enough for me :-)

--
JG

: 1967 was the last year of F1 (or pretty well any other top tier series)
: racing without widespread use of aerodynamic devices to provide downforce.
: Now, I don't _know_ how easy it is to model and efficiently code the effects
: of wings, ground effects, etc accurately (in particular the effects when
: cars are running close together), but I'd guess that it would increase the
: complexity of the model considerably.

  The best answer to this is "Ummm errrr".  The GPL cars while they do
not have aero grip would be significantly affected by aero performance.
The drag on the cars will depend heavily on the frontal area, whether
they are turning, the rotation of the wheels and whether they are
running behind other cars.  GPL must (and indeed does) model this to
some extent - if you don't believe it then drive down the straight
behind another car - your speed with pick up if you're directly behind.

  Now I'm willing to believe that there's some major frigs in the
physics to model this.  In fact, for all I know they've included a
straight coefficient of drag and reduced if if you're behind someone.  

  Aero modelling is no _less_ necessary for a GPL car since the cars of
the era would have been significantly affected by the aero.  Effects
like the slope of the nose for example would have significantly come
into play.  I don't know what (if anything) Papy did about all this.
Certainly the effects would have to be canned - I can't imagine they're
doing real time CFD modelling of the aero effects of the different body
shapes.  

  My guess would be that they made simple assumptions about the drag and
downforce (or even lift) effects of various body shapes at various
speeds and then reduced the drag/downforce as you get behind someone.
Canned sure but the only really practical way to do it.

--
Richard G. Clegg     Only the mind is waving
Dept. of Mathematics (Network Control group) Uni. of York.

www: http://manor.york.ac.uk/top.html

I don't think I'm giving away any trade secrets in saying that the sales
were actually pretty similar to those of GPL, but since it was written
by one guy on his own (Geoff Crammond) it was considered very much a
commercial success at the time.

In those days there wasn't a worldwide market, because no one platform
had emerged to become the standard - there were less than a million BBC
Micros in existence, and they were all in the UK (oh, and some of our
colonies ;-) ).

These days the stakes are much higher, which is reflected in the huge
amounts of development work that goes into the games, but fundamentally
the tradeoff between sim and arcade hasn't changed - there is definitely
still a big market for detailed and accurate simulations (but it's
harder to satisfy the customers!).

I agree that the sim needs to have good gameplay though, and that
includes appealing to the newbie - in theory that should be much easier
than appealing to the hardened simracer, but the criteria are quite
different.

Personally I would have loved to have a "training" mode where an AI car
trundles along just ahead of you and lets you have a go at overtaking
him.  If you get too far behind it will wait for you to catch up and
have another go.

For hotlapping a ghost car would be excellent too - it works really well
in MGPRS2.

Those are the kind of "gameplay" options that appeal to newbies, IMHO.

: I don't think I'm giving away any trade secrets in saying that the sales
: were actually pretty similar to those of GPL, but since it was written
: by one guy on his own (Geoff Crammond) it was considered very much a
: commercial success at the time.

  Hold on - the sales were similar?  Revs (IIRC) ran on a BBC Micro - a
pretty obscure machine really.  Few people outside the UK have heard of
it.  If it sold as many as GPL it must have reached the majority of its
possible market.  (Or have I misunderstood you)?

--
Richard G. Clegg     Only the mind is waving
Dept. of Mathematics (Network Control group) Uni. of York.

www: http://manor.york.ac.uk/top.html

I don't know who said this initially (might have been Doug Arnao or
Mike Lescault one year ago), but one of the reasons for doing a
historic sim was this: in order not to overtax the existing hardware
(even more), the sampling rate of GPL's physics engine was limited to
(IIRC) 188 Hz, i.e. all car parameters are calculated 188 times per
second.

That sounds like a lot (and it is), but it is not sufficient to
calculate and simulate the behavior of modern stiff suspensions. A
stiff spring will "resonate" (I don't know if this is the right word)
at a higher frequency, whereas a comparatively soft spring - such as
modelled in GPL - will resonate at a lower frequency.

You can imagine it like this: if you take a modern racecar spring and
hit it with a wrench, the sound will be "biiinnnngg". If you do the
same with an old, soft spring, it will go "boooooiiiiiinnnnngggg" -
lower frequency.

The problem now is this: if you sample a GPL-era suspension at 188 Hz,
you can accurately describe what the spring does between the samples -
not much. A modern, stiff suspension, OTOH, might have contracted and
expanded in less than 1/188 seconds, and you wouldn't even have
noticed it. This is one of the reasons why 1967 GP racing was chosen
for the first appearance of the new physics engine.

--
Wolfgang Preiss   \ E-mail copies of replies to this posting are welcome.

Ooooh yes! It only takes a single race at Monza to realise that
slipstreaming effects have been modelled. The only people who know the
answer to this one are the chaps at Papyrus, but I would be very surprised
if the aerodynamics were modelled in real detail. It would be interesting to
do some experiments to see whether the BRM or Honda give a "better" tow than
than the Brabham or Lotus. My gut feeling is that they're unlikely to have
done anything more sophisticated than putting a frig factor in for the
relative aerodynamic efficiency of the different cars.

True, but the effects are going to be a lot less significant (and there's a
lot les scope for variation with car setup) than those for a winged car, and
I suspect it's going to be easier to produce something plausible,

Now you've done it. I think I may have to go home and do a few hundred laps
of Monza with setups using radically different front/rear ride heights and
see what (if anything) the effect of pitch on high/low speed behaviour is
(first experiment: Can I get a car to take off by setting rear ride height
to *** all and front ride height to max!). If I don't get any sleep
tonight it's _all_ your fault!

--
JG

:>  The best answer to this is "Ummm errrr".

: Good answer :-)

  Well...  I don't like to be too specific.

: > (On aero effects)

: True, but the effects are going to be a lot less significant (and there's a
: lot les scope for variation with car setup) than those for a winged car, and
: I suspect it's going to be easier to produce something plausible,

  Hmm... I guess you're right - but look at the raised nose vs lowered
nose in modern F1 and the change in the cars between 94 (pretty much
all lowered nose) and 97 (almost all raised nose).  The aero effects
from a huge blunt nose with grille from a 67 car are going to be pretty
significant - I just wouldn't like to say what they are.  Maybe some of
the cars are "accidentally" generating downforce and maybe some are
"accidentally" generating lift.  Whichever they're doing, at 200mph
don't assume it's going to be insignificant.  The bodywork variance
between modern F1 cars is comparatively small but enough to generate big
difference in drag and lift.  Don't know what (if any) of this
Papy is modelling.

: Now you've done it. I think I may have to go home and do a few hundred laps
: of Monza with setups using radically different front/rear ride heights and
: see what (if anything) the effect of pitch on high/low speed behaviour is
: (first experiment: Can I get a car to take off by setting rear ride height
: to *** all and front ride height to max!). If I don't get any sleep
: tonight it's _all_ your fault!

  Hehehe.  If you manage to get the BRM to do a wheelie as the wind gets
under the nose then do let me know.  [Now if you can do that then I
really really _am_ impressed with their physics model] :-)

  Actually, I seem to remember four wheel drift strongly recommending
that front ride height is always lower than rear?  

--
Richard G. Clegg     Only the mind is waving
Dept. of Mathematics (Network Control group) Uni. of York.

www: http://www.racesimcentral.net/

In those days 30,000 or so was very good, although Elite did shatter
those figures by a huge margin (over 100,000 on the Beeb I believe).

At the time there was a lot of piracy about (no change there then!) and
the advantage of Elite was that it came with nice extras like a book and
poster (as did Revs, in fact) and you wouldn't get that if you pirated
the game.

Oh, and it had much better software protection as well, AFAIR.

(That and the fact that it was a ground-breaking 3D game for the time,
and had a lot more hype than we normally reserved for games - it was
even advertised in cinemas and on TV!  Not sure most people in the
cinema understood what it was though!).

I sold about 30,000 copies of Planetoid, by comparison, but it's a fair
bet that many times that number were in circulation (the first release
had no software protection at all).

I remember when I gave a free copy to a local computer shop so they'd
have something to demo on their BBC Micro, when I came back the next day
they weren't running it, and when I asked the guy said someone had taken
it home "to make some copies for his friends"!

Unbelievable - it just shows how naive we were back then!

Well, I used to play Revs on my Commodore 64. I even remember waiting for
it impatiently after a respected Finnish computer mag had given it a rave
review.

---
Antti Markus Peteri

       15 miles. your dim light shines from so far away

                                 - Soul Asylum, Promises Broken