Hi guys,
For those of you woho don't have access to CompuServe, this was
recently posted by Steve Smith, long time auto writer and fellow sim
fan. He has had the good fotune to not only see but to drive Papyrus'
forthcoming Grand Prix Legends, and Papy gave him the okay to tell us
some snippets and whet our appetites. That's not to say this is a
"Papyrus sanctioned press release", just Steve's thoughts and
impressions of the sim..
Over to you Steve...
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<< [Mike Lescault]...the legendary Steve Smith has tried the game.
Maybe he could offer his own insight.>>
Indeed, I could and will, and thank you again for the couple of hours
you let me spend with GPL.
If I were writing a for-publication review, what could the lead be
but, "For those cry-baby critics who complained that IndyCar and
NASCAR Racing were too hard to drive, Papyrus has finally crafted the
perfect rejoinder: a sim that's just plum impossible to drive."
Seriously, ladies and germs, GPL is quite a handful. Or four: you get
to see not only your own hands flailing away ineffectually at the
steering wheel, you also get to see a second pair of somewhat more
seasoned hands working a second, on-screen wheel. Like when we all
thought we were Sierra Hotel (now_there's_a title) when we mastered
Indy 500...and then along came IndyCar 1. And just when we thought we
were Michael Andretti, it turns out we needed to be_John_Andretti to
prevail at NASCAR 1. That is, it's another quantum leap in requisite
manual dexterity...but surely no worse than any agonizing
reprogramming exercise we've already been through before.
The momentous increase in skill requirements is, of course, equalled
only by another generational leap in the physics model, which is now
almost as complicated as everything we knew about particle physics up
to four weeks ago. Papy has done their usual overengineered
perfection and modeled everything but the rotating mass of the faucets
in the kitchen sink. (I'm kidding: of_course_Papy has modeled the
inertia in the kitchen sink--who do you think they are? Psygnosis?)
To all extents and purposes, the car you see on your screen is
a_real_car: you can pick it up, sense its heft, drop it (it bounces
exactly as a real chassis would), fire up its tiny scale-model engine,
and scare yourself silly with 400 scale-model horsepower...at 200
scale mph. (The way it "swims" is_not_like a scale model, which would
be stiff with internal friction, but a full 18/18ths. This puppy
rolls, pitches, and yaws just like the real thing.)
Of course, you have to realize what's being modeled here. This is a
30-year-old Grand Prix car (actually, several of them in the sim; all
different, with different engines, chassis, looks, sounds, etc.),
which was about as close to your father's Oldsmobile as any F1 car
ever got (Brabham's engine started life as a B-O-P V8). That is: no
wings, no tunnels, no ground effects, no aero at all. Moreover,
Papy's done their homework on the tires, too: in those days, the
granite-like *** compounds were measured in Rockwell hardness, like
chrome-moly. They even had--holy deja vu!--treads! Thus, cars of the
era were not glued to the road like their modern counterparts, but
only loosely connected to the earth, and then only when the soft,
willowy suspension allowed the car to momentarily touch down on all
four wheels.
Net result: of the maybe 100 laps I completed of Zandvoort (a
medium-slow circuit), only two of them were uninterrupted by spins.
And this was with a detuned "training wheels" car. As one of the
faithful, however, I know competence will come--as always--from
practice, practice, practice.
I got a peek at two other tracks: an older, twice-as-long (8
miles-to-the-lap) Spa, and a Monza without chicanes, and they are
almost as impressive as the sim's physics model. The old Spa is about
as wide as the meandering country lane it actually was (bordered by
houses right on the edge of the road), and punctuated with 200-mph
sweeping turns on high-crowned local roads. The old Monza (after the
banking and before the chicanes) is so much faster as to resemble an
altogether different race track--kind of like the Indianapolis Motor
Speedway with a really scary right-hand kink. You will come away with
a deep appreciation for the men (and occasional Ur-babe) who drove the
cars of that era.
Thank heavens (and/or the CUC megalith) we get to do it again!
--Steve
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Discussion has already raged on CompuServe on whether or not Zandvoort
is a "medium-slow" track, so no need to make the point :)
Cheers!
John