Dean or anyone,
I have a Velocity 128 card on a P166 w/ 64MB RAM. The program looks
good and seems to drive good, but I can just about forget about racing
with other cars on the track. Besides the fact that I only get about 8
FPS when going down the front stretch with other cars in the pits, every
time I get near a car, the sim pauses for about a quarter-second. I
would assume this would be to draw the graphics on the car, but
none-the-less, I still go from 200 mph to a standstill while this is
happening, completely screwing up my timing. Add to that the screwy
things that car may do, and I have about a 40 percent chance of dying
(which brings another point, stated below). Put me at the start of a
race with all of the cars on the track, and it's a certified slide
show. If I do happen to survive the start (done only once in about
three dozen attempts), then I cruise around Miami with cars averaging
about 120 MPH. Since the crispness of the sim is not great (640 x 480)
I usually see them one frame and, after the pregnant pause for
rendering, blast them the next. Now, ICR2 had idiot AI too, but at
least I could see them in time to slow down and avoid shoving their
gearbox up their...anyway, my point is the pausing is killing me. I
have the polling thingamajig on the joystick off, hardware accel on,
full screen, window reduced (and I forgot how to get it back to the
normal size, so now I can't see my mirrors), rendering distances
anywhere from min to max, with no apparent impact on framerate or
flicker. I don't have an odd setup, and have obtained the latest
drivers for the graphics card and D3D, with no change.
Another point I touched on above. Let me put it this way. I bumped
the wall a couple of times and it seemed nothing real bad happened... I
was curious, so I started at the end of one of Australia's long
straights, got the car up to about 180, and drove it straight into the
wall at the end of the straight. The nose popped off. I drove away.
Had I done the same thing in ICR2, there would be parts scattered all
the way to Sydney. What gives? Are we stuck with indestructable cars?
No matter how hard I hit the wall, the pit crew always manages to fix my
car right up (usually in under 30 seconds). Almost made me reach for
another quarter in my pocket, waiting for the "Game Over" message to
spin up from the background! Please tell me I forgot to set some
realism flag somewhere? Cars that go airborne are all fine and good,
but to be able to drive away from a crash that would send real drivers
to see God is not my idea of a simulation.
Contrary to popular belief, I think MS has some outstanding
programmers out there. Here's to hoping that the patch won't make a
liar out of me. Let's try to get it right this time. Great idea,
decent effort, but please don't forget the funamentals here. You can
make the hottest sim in the world, but not one person alive is going to
be able to play it with a 5 frame per second rate. It's not fun trying
to drive with people who's sole purpose is to kill you. Sim first, eye
candy later. Please.
P.
------>>>SPAM me not, for tho shalt face the reign of.....well, it will
end up badly for you....or something...
