rec.autos.simulators

So, you can't accept people with different opinion than yours ? Your immune
to any criticisms ? Bollocks.

GPL is the most accurate racing simulator ever, the patch is NOT even
needed, it's one of the few *** software ever that can stand
out-of-the-box by itself to any product patched.  The GPL testers were
incredible from what I have seen, since the product on the shelves was
almost bug-free.  If you look at the readme.txt of the GPL1.1 patch you will
see that the fixes are very minor.

--
-- Fran?ois Mnard <ymenard/Nas-Frank>
-- NROS Nascar sanctioned Guide http://www.racesimcentral.net/
-- SimRacing Online http://www.racesimcentral.net/
-- Official mentally retarded guy of r.a.s.
-- May the Downforce be with you...

"People think it must be fun to be a super genius, but they don't realise
how hard it is to put up with all the idiots in the world."

What about the driving physics ?
The 3D track model ?
That Ferrari sound ?
The Nurburgring ?
The turning wheels ? sorry make that just wheels :)
No canned spins
Realtime racing !!
and GPL runs on current equipment, I'm still waiting for a PC that can run
GP2 well <G>

Oh yeah and the soon to be released force feedback, the reason I want the
patch :)

GP2 was good in it's time, but times change !!

Just my opinion :)

--
Ian Parker

UKGPL League
http://start.at/greenflag
--

GPL is fairly bug free, period.  Mostly the patch is when it comes out
fixing things for new hardware, tweaking things, etc.  Until you get the
software out and hammered out by thousands of users, no matter how much
testing you do in-house will never get all the problems out of software.
Not to mention, Papyrus seems to have taken a lot of user feedback in and is
adding, expanding, etc some of the features of the game through the patch.

Now, lots of companies SAY they do testing and then just frankly dont and
come out with bad products with lots of bugs.

Thats fine, your opinion of course.  Can't think of any other racing
simulation for the PC on the market today or in previous years that matches
it though.

Randy

First of all, please know that i agree with you, bu if you want to
convince others, then your arguments should really be better than
this.

Counterargument:

The fact that we're here still playing version 1.0 of GPL, almost a
year after it's initial release, to me stands as a towering monument
to just how LITTLE work and effort  they have done to put out a patch.

When Unreal took forever to release a workable patch, i'm sure noone
thought that it was because the game was perfect !?

A dedicated GPL fan who couldn't give a hoot about the patch

Lars Gaarde

<snip>

: GPL is fairly bug free, period.  

  Um... it doesn't work on the Voodoo Banshee without a patch (there is
no official patch).  It requires you to reset controls when you change
cars or it will revert to auto gears.  It occasionally puts you in your
qualifying set up during the race.  "Clock smashes" mean that some
people find the AI putting in unreasonably fast laps.  I'm sure people
can think of other bugs.  

  It's only _fairly_ bug free - better than some and worse than some -
about average for this day and age.  I find it a bit inexcusable that the
game will not work as it was intended on my machine so many months after
release.  It's not like the Banshee is a particularly rare video card.
[In fact I bought it specifically because it was so popular figuring
that the more popular a card was the less likely there were to be
"quirks" for that particular card.]  If it wasn't for a user created
patch, I couldn't play the game at all.  (Or rather I could if I didn't
mind being completely distracted by the texture corruption).

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

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

This is why it's not possible to produce bug-free code first time out -
no matter how much you test it before release, some b*gger is going to
release a new graphics board / steering wheel / whatever that breaks it
in a way that you couldn't possibly have foreseen.

Thank goodness for the internet - without it I wouldn't have been able
to play *any* of the three driving games I bought - and all the stuff I
downloaded was new drivers for the graphics card, steering wheel,
Direct3D, DUN, WinSock, ActiveMovie etc. - not patches for the games!

Sounds like Voodoo's bug to me, GPL works with the Voodoo2 which was out when
GPL was finalized.  Banshee is supposed to be compatable with Voodoo2.

I've never even heard of this one, and I change cars a lot.

I'll give you this one, it does that IF you're racing on a restored practice
session.

This is a problem with the limits of racing over the internet, hardly Papyrus'
fault.

Don McCorkle
Libertarian Motorsports

:>  Um... it doesn't work on the Voodoo Banshee without a patch (there is
:>no official patch).  

: Sounds like Voodoo's bug to me, GPL works with the Voodoo2 which was out when
: GPL was finalized.  Banshee is supposed to be compatable with Voodoo2.

  'taint the point is it?  It's not very satisfactory to the paying
public to say "ooh, it isn't our fault, bug in your hardware guvner".
I'm sure it is a bug with the Voodoo Banshee hardware.  Every other
software company takes the view "better get it to work on all of the
most popular hardware".  (Admittedly many of them do***that up
still but that's beside the point...) Clearly it is possible for GPL to
work around the Banshee bug - indeed I believe (hope) that if patch 1.1
ever comes out it will solve this.  I'm just a bit pissed off that it
has taken so long to do this.

:>It requires you to reset controls when you change
:>cars or it will revert to auto gears.  

: I've never even heard of this one, and I change cars a lot.

  Happens to a lot of people not just me.

:>"Clock smashes" mean that some people find the AI putting in unreasonably
:>fast laps.  I'm sure people can think of other bugs.

: This is a problem with the limits of racing over the internet, hardly
: Papyrus' fault.

  Hold on - it's damn easy to say either:

  1) Laps below a certain time are just unfeasable and discounted.
or
  2) Internet laps don't affect the speed of AI cars.

  Which would fix it straight away.

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

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

And I bet you don't have a banshee?

ASince getting GPL I have had to use try every driver, patch, and what ever
to get GPL running, after 6 months its finally running, ok but not perfect,
the graphics are completely screwed up really.

Just cause its fine for you dosen't mean its fine for us all, differnt
machinse react differently to different programs,

And in general gameplay: its damn godd, but I wouldn't go as far as saying
its the est game EVER.

I had the same problem with ALL the games I bought, and they are all now
working after I updated drivers for just about everything I could think
of (most of them produced by Microsoft)!

I get the distinct impression that the "early adopters" (that's us) are
playing a huge part in the development and testing of all the bits and
pieces that need to be plugged into a PC to play decent games.

And we have to pay for the privilege!  :-0

PS: I have a Voodoo Banshee and it works fine with GPL(!).

Is this an intermittent error, and I've just been lucky(so far)?  I finally
took the plung and tried manual shifting.  I've changed back and forth from the
Eagle to the Ferarri(AH's setups) and it hasn't shifted back(pun intended).

Also, to those drivers still using auto-gears - don't play the game for a
while(a week, two weeks, whatever).  When you come back, you can learn the
manual shifting without having to 'unlearn' the auto - and your times will
likely drop.  I dropped about 3-4 seconds at Kyalami using manual shift after
running about 20 laps.  I started out using Alison's Ferarri setup, but went
back to the Eagle afterward and was in the same time range.  Maybe Alison's
setups just gave me more confidence?

Eldred

__

Put your message in a modem, and throw it in the ***-sea...
remove SPAM-OFF to reply.

If you have more than one player defined on your machine, and they have
different settings for auto-shift, etc., then the problem can occur.
If all your players use the same auto-shift/traction control/anti-lock
braking settings, you probably won't see the problem.  In any event,
the patch addresses this issue.

Randy

Don McCorkle
Libertarian Motorsports