Re: PAPY: Please read

I would pay double at least and not blink an eye, if it were of GPL standards, Well said Harjan Jeff Harjan Brand <[email hidden]> wrote in message news:7ti94d$76q$[email hidden]... > I write this message because I'm so afraid GPL will be the last true > simulator coming out of your hands. And the GPL engine is just too great.I > fully understand that for the big gaming market the engine is toodifficult, > so from here on there are two ways you can go in order to make profit. The > first option is too make the engine easier and include more 'game'options. > It's an option, but I think a bad one. Because you'll be entering a market > where you'll have to fight against the giants of gaming. > So out of marketing perception the 2nd option is much more interesting.Why > not have a group of people focus totally on designing the best simspossible > (real true simulation, just like in GPL, where everything just breathes > simulation). And focus yourself on this niche market. If you think theniche > market is too small, think again. You could cut all promotional andallmost > all distributional costs. Since the niche market already knows you and > they'll just have to be kept informed through a simple informativewebsite. > The distribution costs could be cut by only selling through your website. > Why would you spread your sim all over the world while it will onlycollect

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> dust on the shops shelves or be brought back after a couple of days? > Costs could be saved on package, as long as the sim quality is there just > the sent sim on a non-printed CDROM and distribute your excellent manuals > through your site. > A last point is that when you can promise us true sim racers that you'll > keep your level of sim quality we'll be prepared to pay double maybe even > triple the regular price. That should make quite a significant impact on > your turn over. > > Please consider my thoughts, and bring us good CART, OLD F1, Modern F1 and > Nascar sims. > Please don't waste your talents. > > > > > > >

I agree with this post, however I don't beleive this premise will ever be a reality. I also fear that we are not going to see this level of hardcore sim again for awhile. It sucks but the bottom line is profit and a limited appeal hard core simulation isn't going to get a lot of push in the meeting rooms. The hardest part is that we have tasted it. If GPL never existed Nascar 3 would look great from a sim standpoint but next to GPL it's like a toy. I'm hoping that Papy will try to recoup some of GPL revenue by releaseing various add ons, Maybe new car sets, new "track Packs", different eras as add ons, maybe an editor they could sell, all based on the current engine so R&D would be minimal and we would be happier as well. I don't know if we will ever see any of these things but at least we have GPL. Chris

I dont mind the hard to drive part someone of us just don't like that type of racing, Stockcar racing is the only racing sim I will buy, not because gpl is hard to drive but because its not as close racing as stockcar racing is. I think stockcar racing is more exciting side by side racing

Go for it. Make your web site and I'll sign the petition. Will we get 10,000 names ? Hum...not sure unfortunatelly =:-( Robert In article <1J2L3.28$[email hidden]>, "Dean Williams" <[email hidden]> wrote: > > Harjan, > > An excellent Post. And one that I am in complete agreement with. I amin > software development and I know how much a piece of software can cost. I > would suspect the a Nascar with the physics engine would cost millionsto > produce. > > If there were 10,000 hardcore SIMmers out there, that were willing topay > $150 US for it, it would be sales of 1.5 Million dollars. My questionis: > "Is that enough?". > > I have an idea. I would like to make a web site that is an "electonic > petition" that says something like, by adding your name here, you are > telling Papyrus that you would purchase Nascar/CART/F1 SIMS which usethe > GPL physics engine for up to ???? dollars. > > What do you think. I'd like to see if we could get over 10,000 nameson > it. > > Dean > > Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/ Before you buy.

Excellent post. IMHO, they made a mistake when they did not allow, by default, the possibility of racing against the trainer and advanced trainer cars. We could only lap alone (boring) until later when it was made public through R.A.S. and SpyBoy (thanks to the Barlow's and Seery's and others ) that by a simple editing of a file, you could race off or online against a field full of trainer (F3) and advanced trainer (F2), which were , for me anyway, much easier to grasp and learn from. Racing from the start the F1's made me frustrated. But since I'm an avid F1 fan, I stuck to it. Many did not, hence GPL's false reputation that it is too hard. Its not too hard, just more advanced than the N3's and others. My fear with having the GPL engine used for other era or genre of autoracing is that we could dilute a product that's already in need of more fans. Just look at races on Spy; lots of servers but not many racers in them. Have a nice day GPL'ing and thanks for reading my post. Robert =:-D In article <7ti94d$76q$[email hidden]>, "Harjan Brand" <[email hidden]> wrote: > I write this message because I'm so afraid GPL will be the last true > simulator coming out of your hands. And the GPL engine is just toogreat. I > fully understand that for the big gaming market the engine is toodifficult, > so from here on there are two ways you can go in order to make profit.The > first option is too make the engine easier and include more 'game'options. > It's an option, but I think a bad one. Because you'll be entering amarket > where you'll have to fight against the giants of gaming. > So out of marketing perception the 2nd option is much moreinteresting. Why > not have a group of people focus totally on designing the best simspossible > (real true simulation, just like in GPL, where everything justbreathes > simulation). And focus yourself on this niche market. If you think theniche > market is too small, think again. You could cut all promotional andallmost > all distributional costs. Since the niche market already knows you and > they'll just have to be kept informed through a simple informativewebsite. > The distribution costs could be cut by only selling through yourwebsite. > Why would you spread your sim all over the world while it will onlycollect > dust on the shops shelves or be brought back after a couple of days? > Costs could be saved on package, as long as the sim quality is therejust > the sent sim on a non-printed CDROM and distribute your excellentmanuals > through your site. > A last point is that when you can promise us true sim racers thatyou'll > keep your level of sim quality we'll be prepared to pay double maybeeven > triple the regular price. That should make quite a significant impacton > your turn over. > > Please consider my thoughts, and bring us good CART, OLD F1, Modern F1and > Nascar sims. > Please don't waste your talents. > > Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/ Before you buy.

Not an....... Oh forget it, why do I even bother.

I write this message because I'm so afraid GPL will be the last true simulator coming out of your hands. And the GPL engine is just too great. I fully understand that for the big gaming market the engine is too difficult, so from here on there are two ways you can go in order to make profit. The first option is too make the engine easier and include more 'game' options. It's an option, but I think a bad one. Because you'll be entering a market where you'll have to fight against the giants of gaming. So out of marketing perception the 2nd option is much more interesting. Why not have a group of people focus totally on designing the best sims possible (real true simulation, just like in GPL, where everything just breathes simulation). And focus yourself on this niche market. If you think the niche market is too small, think again. You could cut all promotional and allmost all distributional costs. Since the niche market already knows you and they'll just have to be kept informed through a simple informative website. The distribution costs could be cut by only selling through your website. Why would you spread your sim all over the world while it will only collect dust on the shops shelves or be brought back after a couple of days? Costs could be saved on package, as long as the sim quality is there just the sent sim on a non-printed CDROM and distribute your excellent manuals through your site. A last point is that when you can promise us true sim racers that you'll keep your level of sim quality we'll be prepared to pay double maybe even triple the regular price. That should make quite a significant impact on your turn over. Please consider my thoughts, and bring us good CART, OLD F1, Modern F1 and Nascar sims. Please don't waste your talents.

Why go for the small niche market? Kaemmer and Cassidy should be looking at the huge market that is formular 1. Thats were the the money is, surely the teams must have some interests in simulators. From the inside it would be much easier to get the licences needed and a commercial product would just be a by product without the need to appeal to the masses to pay for itself. Todd.

I agree, and I will add that I would be willing to pay $100.00 US for each title if they were of GPL caliber. Harjan Brand <[email hidden]> wrote in message news:7ti94d$76q$[email hidden]... > I write this message because I'm so afraid GPL will be the last true > simulator coming out of your hands. And the GPL engine is just too great.I > fully understand that for the big gaming market the engine is toodifficult, > so from here on there are two ways you can go in order to make profit. The > first option is too make the engine easier and include more 'game'options. > It's an option, but I think a bad one. Because you'll be entering a market > where you'll have to fight against the giants of gaming. > So out of marketing perception the 2nd option is much more interesting.Why > not have a group of people focus totally on designing the best simspossible > (real true simulation, just like in GPL, where everything just breathes > simulation). And focus yourself on this niche market. If you think theniche > market is too small, think again. You could cut all promotional andallmost > all distributional costs. Since the niche market already knows you and > they'll just have to be kept informed through a simple informativewebsite. > The distribution costs could be cut by only selling through your website. > Why would you spread your sim all over the world while it will onlycollect

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> dust on the shops shelves or be brought back after a couple of days? > Costs could be saved on package, as long as the sim quality is there just > the sent sim on a non-printed CDROM and distribute your excellent manuals > through your site. > A last point is that when you can promise us true sim racers that you'll > keep your level of sim quality we'll be prepared to pay double maybe even > triple the regular price. That should make quite a significant impact on > your turn over. > > Please consider my thoughts, and bring us good CART, OLD F1, Modern F1 and > Nascar sims. > Please don't waste your talents. > > > > > > >

>I fully understand that for the big gaming market the engine is toodifficult. Are you sure? We haven't seen it in any other Papyrus simulation, so its hard to judge how hard or not it is for the general gaming market. > so from here on there are two ways you can go in order to make profit. The > first option is too make the engine easier and include more 'game'options. > It's an option, but I think a bad one. Because you'll be entering a market > where you'll have to fight against the giants of gaming. Don't now that you have to make the underlying physics engine easier. However, adding to the game the ability to make it more scalable would be a good benefit in the market because then its more approachable by the general gaming mass [the game also has to be of an era/racing genere that appeals to the general gaming mass too...F1, Nascar, CART, dirt track, go-karts, Trans-Am. Anything thats highly visible or highly recongized or participated in by many in the gaming market] but yet still quite challenging for those who want it. > So out of marketing perception the 2nd option is much more interesting.Why > not have a group of people focus totally on designing the best simspossible > (real true simulation, just like in GPL, where everything just breathes > simulation). Everything maybe but the collision detection system. ;) > And focus yourself on this niche market. If you think the niche > market is too small, think again. You could cut all promotional andallmost > all distributional costs. Since the niche market already knows you and > they'll just have to be kept informed through a simple informativewebsite. > The distribution costs could be cut by only selling through your website. > Why would you spread your sim all over the world while it will onlycollect > dust on the shops shelves or be brought back after a couple of days? > Costs could be saved on package, as long as the sim quality is there just > the sent sim on a non-printed CDROM and distribute your excellent manuals > through your site. Again, thats not really Papyrus' call. You'd have to convince the Sierra brass that the niche market would buy enough copies to offset the development costs of the game. GPL spent approx. 3 years in the making and I have no idea on the figures of the development costs. But nonetheless, games are in the millions of dollars for development costs and Sierra wants to recoup those dollars and make money to fund additional games, line their pockets, etc. They, nor Papyrus are not a non-profit organization. > A last point is that when you can promise us true sim racers that you'll > keep your level of sim quality we'll be prepared to pay double maybe even > triple the regular price. That should make quite a significant impact on > your turn over. True sim racer? Being elitist? Heh. However, there is a point. I know many folks would be more than willing to pay a higher price for a high quality product. But then again, that product would really have to be outstanding and be upgradeable with a much longer life span than current crops of games. > Please consider my thoughts, and bring us good CART, OLD F1, Modern F1 and > Nascar sims. Again, it has to appeal to the mass market, even if it is hard. CART, F1, Nascar, sports cars, Muscle car era would be more appropriate in the US, etc. GPL era cars won't cut it, except for a niche group of folks.

Harjan, An excellent Post. And one that I am in complete agreement with. I am in software development and I know how much a piece of software can cost. I would suspect the a Nascar with the physics engine would cost millions to produce. If there were 10,000 hardcore SIMmers out there, that were willing to pay $150 US for it, it would be sales of 1.5 Million dollars. My question is: "Is that enough?". I have an idea. I would like to make a web site that is an "electonic petition" that says something like, by adding your name here, you are telling Papyrus that you would purchase Nascar/CART/F1 SIMS which use the GPL physics engine for up to ???? dollars. What do you think. I'd like to see if we could get over 10,000 names on it. Dean

>A last point is that when you can promise us true sim racers that you'll >keep your level of sim quality we'll be prepared to pay double maybe even >triple the regular price. That should make quite a significant impact on >your turn over. Not an....... Oh forget it, why do I even bother.

Harjan Brand <[email hidden]> wrote: [...] I hate to break it to you, but Papyrus lost the ability to self publish titles when they were acquired by Sierra in 1995 and then integrated into Sierra Sports. 'Papyrus' is nothing more than a design group in a large multinational corporation, Papyrus answers to Sierra Sports, Sierra Sports answers to Sierra Core Games, Sierra Core Games answers to Sierra which in turn reports to Havas Interactive which in turn is part of Vivendi Communications. They have some measure of independence but I'm afraid that doesn't extend to the type of suggestions you make and given the ongoing refocus on profitability at Sierra I don't see your ideas being meet with much enthusiasm. From a purely business point of view the market has spoken. Lastly, posting your opinion on what direction the company should go next on a public newsgroup is pretty much a waste of time, they have mechanisms set up for that type of thing and I suggest you use them. In other words cut, paste and email to mailto:[email hidden] - George

"Harjan Brand" <[email hidden]> wrote: >The >first option is too make the engine easier and include more 'game' options. >It's an option, but I think a bad one. Because you'll be entering a market >where you'll have to fight against the giants of gaming. Papy can play with the big boys. These are the guys that made N2/N3 remember? >simulation). And focus yourself on this niche market. If you think the niche >market is too small, think again. You could cut all promotional and allmost >all distributional costs. Since the niche market already knows you and >they'll just have to be kept informed through a simple informative website. I think the only way to make this niche market large enough to be worthwhile is with an "open architecture" sim. That is, like Quake 2, where users are free to create new cars/tracks and so on. >The distribution costs could be cut by only selling through your website. Big mistake there. You need shelf space on retail stores. There aren't that many people purchasing from the web yet (compared to retail). Joe McGinn ========================================== Staff Writer for the Sports Gaming Network http://www.sports-gaming.com/ ==========================================

"Dean Williams" <[email hidden]> wrote: >If there were 10,000 hardcore SIMmers out there, that were willing to pay >$150 US for it, it would be sales of 1.5 Million dollars. My question is: >"Is that enough?". Doesn't seem like it. Hard to imagine producing the game for less than that. Remember, a successful video game sells anywhere from 100,000 to 1 million copies, at $40-$40 a pop. That means the LOW end of successful retail sales is $5 million. A hit big hit (like Half-Life for example) sells from $50 million upwards (only about half of which the developer ever sees of course). Joe McGinn ========================================== Staff Writer for the Sports Gaming Network http://www.sports-gaming.com/ ==========================================

[email hidden] wrote: >IMHO, they made a mistake when they did not allow, by default, the >possibility of racing against the trainer and advanced trainer cars. True, but I'm not sure that would have been enough. The arcade crowd that didn't like GPL wants it to be relatively easy, but no way will they settle for driving less powerful, slower cars. You need a slightly dumbed-down physics model on the fast cars. Joe McGinn ========================================== Staff Writer for the Sports Gaming Network http://www.sports-gaming.com/ ==========================================

T.Galvin <[email hidden]> wrote > Why go for the small niche market? Kaemmer and Cassidy should be lookingat > the huge market that is formular 1. Thats were the the money is, surelythe > teams must have some interests in simulators. Professional racing simulations exist since many years and are already much more accurate than the Papyrus game engine. Those units almost cost in the million dollars, and are much more accurate than the GPL game engine will ever be. I've personally seen articles on this, and those simulators run on SUN Microsystem computers and feature incredible telemetry and aerodynamic physics. I doubt there is a place for Papyrus in this market, but I wouldn't be surprised neither if the company did non-public projects sometime in their history. -- -- Fran�ois M�nard <ymenard> -- 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."

Richard G Clegg wrote (regarding ymenard's postulation of the irrefutable existence of multi-million-dollar military-grade "professional" racing simulations): > > Where do you get your information from on this? Now THERE'S the mystery of the ages! If you ever find out, let the rest of us know! BB

George M. Smiley wrote in message

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> > Lastly, posting your opinion on what direction the > company should go next on a public newsgroup > is pretty much a waste of time, they have > mechanisms set up for that type of thing and > I suggest you use them. In other words cut, > paste and email to mailto:[email hidden] >

A bit harsh, George. Although written as a "Dear Papyrus" post, it was to my mind designed as discussion topic for the group. I don't believe Harjan intended it to be the definitive suggestion, but a collection of ideas that perhaps could be developed within the newsgroup. Otherwise an awful lot of posts to this group could be regarded as "pretty much a waste of time" Cheers Tony

ymenard <[email hidden]> wrote: : T.Galvin <[email hidden]> wrote :> Why go for the small niche market? Kaemmer and Cassidy should be looking : at :> the huge market that is formular 1. Thats were the the money is, surely : the :> teams must have some interests in simulators. : Professional racing simulations exist since many years and are already much : more accurate than the Papyrus game engine. Those units almost cost in the : million dollars, and are much more accurate than the GPL game engine will : ever be. I've personally seen articles on this, and those simulators run on : SUN Microsystem computers and feature incredible telemetry and aerodynamic : physics. Where do you get your information from on this? I really doubt the existance of such things. In two of the best funded forms of motorsport, F1 and CART we know that drivers _don't_ use such things because they actually use game products to learn tracks. I expect NASCAR drivers would try to chew the computer or something so which form of motor sport is actually building these simulators? Are you sure you're not confusing their CFD simulations and strategy simulations with race simulations? These are very different things. When your GP commentator talks about GP teams running "race simulations" he doesn't mean they've got some super GPL game and drive round - they just have a model which estimates fuel consumption, tyre wear and so on to work out the good pit stop strategies. -- Richard G. Clegg Only the mind is waving Dept. of Mathematics (Network Control group) Uni. of York. email: [email hidden] www: http://manor.york.ac.uk/top.html

Bernhard Deininger <[email hidden]> wrote: : They do exist and there are quite a number of millitairy/commercial : simulator companys around. Means nothing - the budget for a military jet is much larger than the budget for an F1 team. The military has top notch sims to train pilots. If the F1 world has them then it doesn't use them to train drivers. (You ever heard a driver talk about it? Me either - I've heard drivers talking about using play station games to learn tracks though). : One thing though. Graphics dont mean a lot to : these guys, ive seen an accurate f1 sim and the cars had less polys than : world grand prix. What _exactly_ have you seen? I suspect that you've seen some old print out of the design modelling. I really don't believe that F1 companies develop sit in sims for their cars. I think you're confusing a whole lot of reasons that race teams have to develop computer models of their cars with the idea that they are designing actual sims of racing - a very different proposal. -- Richard G. Clegg Only the mind is waving Dept. of Mathematics (Network Control group) Uni. of York. email: [email hidden] www: http://manor.york.ac.uk/top.html

But Im talking about Formula 1 here. You can agree that the step in technology and surrounding material is much, much larger. A F1 budget for the top teams is over a hundred million dollars almost, compared to a CART Team (basing my facts on the Players team) who is around 5-6million per car. I know personally that the Players Team in CART has a very powerfull simulation for telemetry and they use it to test their new chassis during the season. And this was in their press release information from 1999. Not at all. There was a show in Discovery Canada about this. It included even an interview with a Papyrus person, it was around 2years ago, I think it was "Beyond 2000" it was called. They showed at this time the Tyrell team (I think?) hard working on their telemetry output from the newest version of the chassis they modeled in their simulator to know how it would react in racing conditions. It is more a tool that is used by the engineers than the drivers. Not to say the Papyrus game engine is not good, au contraire, but there is in existence professional telemetry simulations that are incredibly accurate and will never be released to the public. -- -- Fran?ois Mnard <ymenard> -- 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."

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> [...] > I hate to break it to you, but Papyrus lost the ability to > self publish titles when they were acquired by Sierra > in 1995 and then integrated into Sierra Sports... > ...Lastly, posting your opinion on what direction the > company should go next on a public newsgroup > is pretty much a waste of time, they have > mechanisms set up for that type of thing and > I suggest you use them. In other words cut, > - George

George, Thanks for finally shedding some intelligent light on this topic. I've been following this thread from the beginning,and one can see from the various posts who has business experience and who is still taking business 101. I believe it was Harjan who said that he and most of us would be more than willing to pay 2 to 3 times the going rate for a sim the quality of GPL. Well,that wouldn't come close to the numbers that Sierra is looking for. I believe Nas2 sold more than a million copes as did GP2. So at $50 per sim that comes to $50,000,000. GPL only sold 40,000 copies,so each person would have to pay $1250 per copy,not $150 per copy. Big difference. At $150 for 40,000 copies they would have only grossed $6,000,000,so they would be in the red by $42,000,000. Then there was a post suggesting that we all sign a up at a web site to demonstrate to Sierra our commitment. And he was only looking for 10,000 signatures. Well,what about the other 30,000 who purchased gal. Show them 500,000 legit signatures,and maybe you might be getting somewhere. So lets just drop this silly dumb ass thread and move on. Joel Willstein

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> > Although written as a "Dear Papyrus" post, it was to my mind > > designed as discussion topic for the group. > That is an assumption that isn't supported by the content of > the post. Since I'm not in the habit of dealving into the mind > of every person who posts to r.a.s I'll stick with what he > wrote and not what you think he may or may not have > meant.

It wasn't an in-depth analysis - why else would someone post what is apparently directed to Papyrus to the newgroup at large? The point is collaboration - either Harjan writes a lone post to Sierra or if he can stir up enough interest that a significant group of people do so then the potential influence is much higher. I do think we are agreed that there probably isn't sufficient numbers to make a difference - but that doesn't invalidate asking the question in the first place. Out of this thead came the suggestion of setting up a web site to collect names & suggestions & then go to Sierra. Some form of user group that perhaps could be recognised by Sierra as a positive step rather than having a collection of individual mails to do something with would be beneficial. If it could be run by someone known to us & to Sierra - all the better, then we could have respect on both sides. Cheers Tony

> I believe it was Harjan who said that he and most of us would be more >than willing to pay 2 to 3 times the going rate for a sim the quality of >GPL. Well,that wouldn't come close to the numbers that Sierra is looking >for. I believe Nas2 sold more than a million copes as did GP2. So at $50 per >sim that comes to $50,000,000. GPL only sold 40,000 copies,so each person >would have to pay $1250 per copy,not $150 per copy. Big difference. At $150 >for 40,000 copies they would have only grossed $6,000,000,so they would be >in the red by $42,000,000. So GPL cost $48,000,000 to develop? That must be why it's so good. Or are you saying that $6,000,000 would leave them $42,000,000 short of what they made on N2? Oh no, that can't be it, as 50 mil - 6 mil = 44 mil. Where's that business 101 class? ;-) OK Mark Reading, UK

> It wasn't an in-depth analysis - why else would someone post > what is apparently directed to Papyrus to the newgroup at large? Ignorance (fancy that). The misplaced belief that when a member of Papyrus frequents this newsgroup they do so in an completely official capacity. The equally misplaced belief that Papyrus alone is master of their destiny. In other words don't go attaching your logic to what another person writes. I wrote that posting messages directed towards companies on R.A.S is a waste of time unless you also send those messages through the appropriate company managed channels. You seem to think that was being too harsh since a message entitled "PAPY: Please read" wasn't really directed towards Papyrus. Am I missing something here? - George

After checking out a demo of the same depth as GPL's, with an accurate description of all features on a web page, I too will be willing to pay upwards of 100USD. If the sim happened to be the 1990 Formula 1 season my wallet would become *very* hard to contain. I get a lot of manuals for gear in PDF form. It works quite well. PS Hire Geoff Crammond and I'd double my outlay. :-) -- Mark Jeangerard www.soundchaserweb.com New Mexico USA

George M. Smiley wrote

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> > It wasn't an in-depth analysis - why else would someone post > > what is apparently directed to Papyrus to the newgroup at large? > Ignorance (fancy that). The misplaced belief that when a member > of Papyrus frequents this newsgroup they do so in an completely > official capacity. The equally misplaced belief that Papyrus alone > is master of their destiny.

Agreed. Sierra need to informed rather than either Papyrus or even (as you suggest) a member of Papyrus scanning the group for hiw own interest. Ok George, at a literal level you are quite right. Maybe I read more into the intention & felt maybe something positive came out of the thread. This may of course have been more by good luck than intention. I still believe some form of co-ordinated group has more to offer than a collection of individuals. Go on Harjan, tell me you mailed this to Papy & copied it to the group - otherwise I just have to stand up & say I was wrong (gulp) :) Cheers Tony

Forgive me for being a completely ignorant of business but, are you saying it would cost $50,000,000 to produce the game? Or would that be the ol' greed sneakin' in? If it's unbusinesslike to let your commercial profits pad your racing interests then who needs business? Agreed. BTW Let's say, just for the sake of exploration, you were assigned to have your team create one smoking sim biannually. One that wouldn't take a loss necessarily, but wasn't focused on profit. How would you go about it? So far, I've learned from this thread that a sim is not going to take place on it's own. The only people with resources to create one would be a large company. Which brings me back to the original post. -- Mark Jeangerard www.soundchaserweb.com New Mexico USA

I heard an article on the BBC radio news about 2 years ago. Somebody (Very wealthy I'd assume :) ) approached a company to make a true F1 simulator complete with motion***pit using hydraulics. The rumoured cost was approaching 1 million UK and apparently it was that difficult / realistic that nearly everytime the driver left the pits the engine stalled. So if that was true, a full blown F1 simulator does indeed exist. I can't verify the accuracy of this report, but it sounded plausible at the time :) -- Ian Parker UKGPL League http://www.btinternet.com/~ukgpl/index.html [address restored] -- > :> Why go for the small niche market? Kaemmer and Cassidy should be looking > : at > :> the huge market that is formular 1. Thats were the the money is, surely > : the > :> teams must have some interests in simulators. > : Professional racing simulations exist since many years and are already much > : more accurate than the Papyrus game engine. Those units almost cost in the > : million dollars, and are much more accurate than the GPL game engine will > : ever be. I've personally seen articles on this, and those simulators run on > : SUN Microsystem computers and feature incredible telemetry and aerodynamic > : physics. > Where do you get your information from on this? I really doubt the > existance of such things. In two of the best funded forms of > motorsport, F1 and CART we know that drivers _don't_ use such things > because they actually use game products to learn tracks. I expect > NASCAR drivers would try to chew the computer or something so which > form of motor sport is actually building these simulators? > Are you sure you're not confusing their CFD simulations and > strategy simulations with race simulations? These are very different > things. When your GP commentator talks about GP teams running "race > simulations" he doesn't mean they've got some super GPL game and drive > round - they just have a model which estimates fuel consumption, tyre > wear and so on to work out the good pit stop strategies. > -- > 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

Very well said. Maybe release a 'core' engine, and have add-in packs that include everything you need for that car/era (and some things could be shared, like certain tracks). Really, GPL isn't that hard - once you get to a point where you can drive a car well and have a consistent feel from track-to-track (i.e. using Alison Hine's Red Candy on an Eagle :) it changes from hard yet fun to an absolute blast. Then you just treat each track like a rally and learn how to drive each type of curve, until you eventually memorize every track, from The Glen to The Ring... *sigh* -- Kirk Lane ICQ: 28171652 BRT #187 "It goes down the same as a thousand before No one's gettin' smarter, no one's learnin the score The never ending spree of death and *** and hate Is gonna tie your own rope" -'Come Out And Play', The Offspring

"Tony Rickard" <[email hidden]> wrote: > Although written as a "Dear Papyrus" post, it was to my mind > designed as discussion topic for the group. That is an assumption that isn't supported by the content of the post. Since I'm not in the habit of dealving into the mind of every person who posts to r.a.s I'll stick with what he wrote and not what you think he may or may not have meant. > I don't believe Harjan intended it to be the definitive suggestion, > but a collection of ideas that perhaps could be developed within > the newsgroup. What is to be developed? We have been down this road many times, we want GPL engine based games, most of us are willing to pay extra to get it. End of story, now go tell Sierra. > Otherwise an awful lot of posts to this group could be regarded > as "pretty much a waste of time" If half of the posts on this forum (or any other forum) that dealt with GPL2, ICR3, N4 or any other future Papyrus game were actually directed to Sierra through the proper channels we might actually see some results. Commiserating with one another is fine, but if you never take that additional step of asking Sierra to give you what you want then you don't really have a leg to stand on when you never get it. Buy another copy of GPL, send Sierra email, volunteer to become a beta tester of motorsport games and work in lack of realistic physics in your feedback, volunteer your time to a GPL addon project! - George

They do exist and there are quite a number of millitairy/commercial simulator companys around. One thing though. Graphics dont mean a lot to these guys, ive seen an accurate f1 sim and the cars had less polys than world grand prix. I seriously doubt that would sell much in the games market. -ilmore

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> > Are you sure you're not confusing their CFD simulations and >strategy simulations with race simulations? These are very different >things. When your GP commentator talks about GP teams running "race >simulations" he doesn't mean they've got some super GPL game and drive >round - they just have a model which estimates fuel consumption, tyre >wear and so on to work out the good pit stop strategies. > >-- >Richard G. Clegg Only the mind is waving >Dept. of Mathematics (Network Control group) Uni. of York. >email: [email hidden] >www: http://manor.york.ac.uk/top.html

Well said... NO SELL OUT!! Jan. ----

>Forgive me for being a completely ignorant of business but, are you saying >it would cost $50,000,000 to produce the game? No, he's saying a successful retail game takes in $25-$50 million at retail. Maybe half of which the developer sees. It costs at LEAST a couple million to develop, often more ... and there's the risk of a poor performer like GPL (though Papy may feel that particular title will pay off as long-term R&D). Joe McGinn ========================================== Staff Writer for the Sports *** Network http://www.sports-gaming.com/ ==========================================

Well Tony I first have to say that you understood my posting just the way I had it intented it. But I have to say that I waited to send it to Papyrus and Sierra until I had seen some of the reactions on my posting. After I a few days I've sent it to the both of them just because nobody could really convince me that I was wrong. I have to say that Georges reaction wasn't quite constructive to what I was trying to achieve. He's right when he says that Papy and Sierra don't decide there business strategics by reading the newsgroup. So why did I name it PAPY: Please read. Well we all know that there are people within Papy who read this newsgroup, I think if somebody like that would understand my idea it would be much more powerfull than only sending it to them. Because I'm quite sure that they'll not be very keen on receiving ideas through there support address, and so they'll not spent very much time reading it. By doing it this way I was trying to really achieve the optimum effect. Maybe I was wrong, I hope tell time will tell I'm not.

end thread...... :] Skotty Flynn webmaster - http://www.nascar-racing-sims.com "skotty" on TEN and WON

> Because I'm quite sure that they'll not be very keen on > receiving ideas through there support address, and so > they'll not spent very much time reading it. address. It may be popular to dismiss such addresses as nothing more than links to /dev/null but as someone who has seen how much market research actually costs I can pretty much assure you every reasonable email to that address is given more than a passing glance. something different. As for constructive ideas, I think someone needs to license the GPL engine from Sierra and form their own motorsport simulations company. That is about the only way we will see packageless GPL engine based games for two to three times the standard price. Any stock option millionaires out there looking for a change of pace? - George

> >Forgive me for being a completely ignorant of business but, are you saying

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> >it would cost $50,000,000 to produce the game? > No, he's saying a successful retail game takes in $25-$50 million at > retail. Maybe half of which the developer sees. It costs at LEAST a > couple million to develop, often more ... and there's the risk of a > poor performer like GPL (though Papy may feel that particular title > will pay off as long-term R&D). > Joe McGinn

Joe, Thanks for being one of the few to see my point,and explaining it better then I did. Joel Willstein

In article <[email hidden]>, [email hidden] (Ed Bain) writes: >Don, what is an F-20? I am a flight combat simmer and I need to know >these things.. :) An F-5 with two engines. Originally a trainer, T-38 maybe? It was developed as an sffordable fighter for sale to other countries without much money. The fact that it's completely outclassed comes in handy if we decide next week that the poor country is now a bad guy. Don McCorkle Vote Libertarian Pro-choice on everything

Err, I think you will find that the cost of a single jet is larger than ALL the F1 team budgets put together.

Did you get out of the bed the wrong side George, or are you just having a bad day?

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> > It wasn't an in-depth analysis - why else would someone post > > what is apparently directed to Papyrus to the newgroup at large? > Ignorance (fancy that). The misplaced belief that when a member > of Papyrus frequents this newsgroup they do so in an completely > official capacity. The equally misplaced belief that Papyrus alone > is master of their destiny. > In other words don't go attaching your logic to what another > person writes. I wrote that posting messages directed towards > companies on R.A.S is a waste of time unless you also send > those messages through the appropriate company managed > channels. You seem to think that was being too harsh since > a message entitled "PAPY: Please read" wasn't really directed > towards Papyrus. Am I missing something here? > - George

>Err, I think you will find that the cost of a single jet is larger than ALL >the F1 team budgets put together. Depends on the jet fighter in question, but I'd say as long as there's not much "stealth" technology involved, you can easily come in under the F1 total. The big guys in F1 are spending over $100 million, so the total is probably around one billion. Most of the fighters in use today are far below that, and the simple ones like the F-16 and F-20 are in the low millions. Warning, if you're defending your country with F-20's you're in danger of being conquered by San Marino. Don McCorkle Libertarian Motorsports

I think the game industry is getting a lot like the music industry, unfortunately :( The developers that do all the work (musicians) get little, while the distributers (music companies) make most of the profits. -larry "Joe" <[email hidden]> wrote in message news:[email hidden]... > "mark jeangerard" <[email hidden]> wrote: > > >Forgive me for being a completely ignorant of business but, are yousaying

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> >it would cost $50,000,000 to produce the game? > > No, he's saying a successful retail game takes in $25-$50 million at > retail. Maybe half of which the developer sees. It costs at LEAST a > couple million to develop, often more ... and there's the risk of a > poor performer like GPL (though Papy may feel that particular title > will pay off as long-term R&D). > > Joe McGinn > ========================================== > Staff Writer for the Sports Gaming Network > http://www.sports-gaming.com/ > ==========================================