A plea for civility

Well, congrats Usenet belligerents...you've run off yet another company rep and undoubtedly those reps that don't participate here but were contemplating it have now iced their decision. Proud of yourselves? I don't care that we criticize the products, but some of this is just getting out of hand and abusive. If you guys care about sims nearly as much as you say you do, perhaps you'd come to your senses and realize: a) you get more with a carrot than a stick. b) nowhere in your license agreement is there a commitment from the company to sit here and listen to your abusive comments c) most of you would not talk the way you do face to face or on the telephone. But for some reason you get behind a keyboard and manners and civility are lost. This is sort of an open call for people who have engaged in this activity to drop Dean an e-mail and apologize for being such jerks (and you know who you are). I'd far rather have someone here we can negotiate features and enhancements with than sit here and get the GP2 treatment. But thanks to the flamers, we lose another rep and those of us who weren't hostile and immature get to suffer the consequences of your actions. If you think this is somehow justified because it was a Microsoft rep, think again. Whatever your opinion of Microsoft the corporation, Dean is just doing his job (actually probably more than his job) putting himself out here and dealing with all the abuse hurled his way. He doesn't deserve a lot of the ***that's being thrown his way. Learn to criticize without being personal or abusive, or we'll all long for the good ole days when reps used to show up here and discuss their products. Randy Randy Magruder Staff Writer Digital Sportspage [link lost in import]

Randy, Very well said !! Scott B. Husted [link lost in import: /~sbhusted]

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> Well, congrats Usenet belligerents...you've run off yet another company rep and > undoubtedly those reps that don't participate here but were contemplating it > have now iced their decision. > Proud of yourselves? > I don't care that we criticize the products, but some of this is just getting > out of hand and abusive. If you guys care about sims nearly as much as you say > you do, perhaps you'd come to your senses and realize: > a) you get more with a carrot than a stick. > b) nowhere in your license agreement is there a commitment from the company to > sit here and listen to your abusive comments > c) most of you would not talk the way you do face to face or on the telephone. > But for some reason you get behind a keyboard and manners and civility are > lost. > This is sort of an open call for people who have engaged in this activity to > drop Dean an e-mail and apologize for being such jerks (and you know who you > are). I'd far rather have someone here we can negotiate features and > enhancements with than sit here and get the GP2 treatment. But thanks to the > flamers, we lose another rep and those of us who weren't hostile and immature > get to suffer the consequences of your actions. > If you think this is somehow justified because it was a Microsoft rep, think > again. Whatever your opinion of Microsoft the corporation, Dean is just doing > his job (actually probably more than his job) putting himself out here and > dealing with all the abuse hurled his way. He doesn't deserve a lot of the > ***that's being thrown his way. > Learn to criticize without being personal or abusive, or we'll all long for > the good ole days when reps used to show up here and discuss their products. > Randy > Randy Magruder > Staff Writer > Digital Sportspage > [link lost in import]

>Well, congrats Usenet belligerents...you've run off yet another company rep BS. A company rep chose to leave of his own free will because he was upset by a negative review. That is 100% his own choice and responsibility. 95%+ of the people here do just that. Expecting any more than that from any public forum is totally unrealistic (and some forums, like games.action, certinaly have much lower percentages of reasonable posters). Game developer's like MS can either live with the reality, and ignore the occasional flame (just like the rest of us do) or they can wall themselves away like EA and hope that their isolationist stance doesn't damage CPR too much. That will be the sole result of this you know - the one CPR bright spot, good support here, is no longer, and that only hurts MS. MS also loses the valuable feedback of the vast majority of experienced and civil auto racing gamers here. Lose-lose for MS. Doesn't seem like a really smart decision, but perhaps Dean will reconsider when he cools down. I find it's best not to make ultimatum "I'm never coming back" statements when you're mad, because it makes you feel like an ass if you *do* want to come back. Best just to turn off the forum for a few days until you cool down. Joe

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> Well, congrats Usenet belligerents...you've run off yet another company rep and > undoubtedly those reps that don't participate here but were contemplating it > have now iced their decision. > Proud of yourselves? > I don't care that we criticize the products, but some of this is just getting > out of hand and abusive. If you guys care about sims nearly as much as you say > you do, perhaps you'd come to your senses and realize: > a) you get more with a carrot than a stick. > b) nowhere in your license agreement is there a commitment from the company to > sit here and listen to your abusive comments > c) most of you would not talk the way you do face to face or on the telephone. > But for some reason you get behind a keyboard and manners and civility are > lost. > This is sort of an open call for people who have engaged in this activity to > drop Dean an e-mail and apologize for being such jerks (and you know who you > are). I'd far rather have someone here we can negotiate features and > enhancements with than sit here and get the GP2 treatment. But thanks to the > flamers, we lose another rep and those of us who weren't hostile and immature > get to suffer the consequences of your actions. > If you think this is somehow justified because it was a Microsoft rep, think > again. Whatever your opinion of Microsoft the corporation, Dean is just doing > his job (actually probably more than his job) putting himself out here and > dealing with all the abuse hurled his way. He doesn't deserve a lot of the > ***that's being thrown his way. > Learn to criticize without being personal or abusive, or we'll all long for > the good ole days when reps used to show up here and discuss their products. > Randy > Randy Magruder > Staff Writer > Digital Sportspage > [link lost in import]

Agreed to the 100% mark. Matt. -- ------------------------------ Matthew Birger Patrick Knutsen (http://sofus.hiof.no/~matthebk "Racing cars is like dancing with a chainsaw" -Cale Yarborough Cheek Racing Cars (http://home.sn.no/~kareknut/ Please Remove "NoSpam" from my E-mail adress when replying! -------------------------------

Duh. This is bull. I've seen a lot of people say a lot of negative things about CPR here in the last few months and Dean has answered most of them in a constructive and helpful manner. He's not adverse to a "negative review", but some of the statements just flat out crossed the line from a "negative review" to just plain rude. If you think it was because Dean can't handle a negative review you're either new here are you're deluding yourself. That doesn't excuse the actions of those on this forum who cannot figure out how to be civil. public forum is totally unrealistic (and some forums, like games.action, certinaly have much lower percentages of reasonable posters). >> perhaps if other people would pitch in and criticize the abusive types instead of just being silent, Dean wouldn't be of the opinion that the percentage of flak is too high. good support here, is no longer, and that only hurts MS. >> I seriously doubt Bill Gates is losing any sleep over what is written in this forum. The only people that are REALLY going to suffer are those of us that are waiting for a decent CART Sim. Bill isn't going to live or die based upon how this title succeeds. majority of experienced and civil auto racing gamers here. Lose-lose for MS. >> if you don't think we lose here, you're wrong. when you're mad, because it makes you feel like an ass if you *do* want to come back. Best just to turn off the forum for a few days until you cool down.>> The only thing you've written I agree with. Randy Joe Randy Magruder Staff Writer Digital Sportspage http://www.digitalsports.com/

>What was abusive? Give specifics, please. Do a Dejanews search in this newsgroup for M$ (yes with the dollar sign). Those are turn up hits for people with an axe to grind. Some of the stuff was incredibly accusatory "are you calling me a liar?!", and "Microsoft doesn't answer any criticism or cries for help", various posts about Microsoft's Greed, and a lot more I didn't think to record when I read them. Some of them were just cynical *** toned posts. Dean says they did a Glide port and didn't get any performance improvement, and out come the flamethrowers, followed by various accusations of a *** by Microsoft to discredit Glide,and so on. You don't have to call someone a foul name to cross the line, you know. I consider abusive to be posts which have no other point other than to attack/flame someone else, and there've been quite a lot of posts addressed to Dean which have done just that. Who hit with you a stick to force you to buy CPR? I was unaware Microsoft had that much power these days. See my definition of abusive, above. There are worse things that people could have said to Dean, sure, but I do consider it abusive when post after post is nothing more than attack to which there can be no reasonable reply because there is no "right" answer. Dean doesn't talk about the Glide patch, he and Microsoft are damned to hell for not doing it and accuse them of having an anti-3DFX agenda. Then he says they did 3 weeks of work porting it to Glide and didn't get the desired results, and again he's attacked and the same kind of *** theories come up. I know I got tired of reading the same old anti-MS attacks, and I wasn't even the one who was being attacked! Perhaps Alison could have tried to get real technical support from MS with her problems before blasting them to kingdom-come publicly, but what the heck. Its undoubtedly been recorded up at MS and engineers are looking at it, particularly the OS-corruption problem she says she saw. But for all we know Dean isn't even aware of that. Quite often the engineers leave the PR people deal with the users while they just soak up the feedback and try to apply what they see for fixes/patches etc. I for one would like to see even one other user come up and honestly say that CPR has corrupted their OS. In all the time since its been released, she's the only one, and I have to wonder about a review that paints a product as an OS-corrupter, when no one else has had that problem?! Might she have done something else when installing the game or run into some one in a million configuration problem that could not have been forseen and that no one else will likely ever see? Nothing wrong with her reporting what happened to her, but it sounds like (I'd have to hear this confirmed from her) that she made no effort to resolve technical problems with MS before blasting 'em publicly. WHen you do that sort of thing publicly, what do you expect the company rep to say? Did he refuse to help her? On what grounds do you say that? If you're truly interested, I can go into Dejanews and e-mail you a nice sampling of some of the salvos fired Dean's way. I'm surprised you would even need to ask. Believe whatever you want to believe. If that's the way you want to act because I disagree with what you say, you simply confirm the things I was saying about some people on Usenet. I would have hoped you could come up with something more than a personal cheap shot with no corroborating evidence, but apparently that was expecting a bit much from you. I'll lower my standards accordingly when reading your replies. Randy

> Well, congrats Usenet belligerents...you've run off yet another company rep and > undoubtedly those reps that don't participate here but were contemplating it > have now iced their decision. > Proud of yourselves? I understand your viewpoint but to be honest I am fed up with companies puting out products that are simply faulty. It's not at all hard to find sim racers that know what their talking about. No sympathies to any company that won't go out and pay a real good sim racer to advise them on what is critical, what is desirable and what is not really all that important at all. I personaly take note of companies that "get it out for Xmas" and "get it out before the other guys" and I stray away where at all possible. At the moment CPR seems to be very easy for me to stray away from. I will be watching this NG for news on the patch. It has potential but that's it. I don't want a game that has potential. I want a quality sim that is well FINISHED. Full sympathies to all the UNPAID BETA TESTERS. I say GIVE THEM HELL. Of course I am not saying be rude to those in this NG that are here to get feedback. The point is that this feedback should have been got from a good sim racer in the first place and he should have been fully paid for it as well. Just another reason to give it to Bill!

> >> A company rep chose to leave of his own free will >> > Duh. More like he could no longer handle the embarassment! I hear that some of the AI cars simply crawl at times on ovals. I would call it rude to put a product like that on the shelves.

> I understand your viewpoint but to be honest I am fed up with >companies puting out products that are simply faulty. It's not at all >hard to find sim racers that know what their talking about. I find it hard not to giggle here. If you open the manual for ABC's Indy Racing, you'll find: "Virtual Racing Advisor: Nim Cross". Nim is no slouch, having won online NASCAR championships, and yet look at how Indy Racing has been treated here! Just having a great sim racer around is obviously not enough :) I think the problem is that the voices of those people that say that are often drowned out by.... from the people making the business decisions. I'm sure many a purchaser has exercised their right to a refund, as it should be. I also think that MS/TR knows they screwed up in releasing this one in its current state, but from a PR standpoint I don't seriously expect them to say anything of the sort. In any event, its water under the bridge, and I'd just like to work WITH them to get the missing features and bug fixes in there so that hopefully some months from now we'll have something which finally causes us all to remove ICR2 from our hard drives...CPR is not nearly at that point yet. Give WHAT to Bill, exactly? <G> Randy

To an extent I agree with you Randy, and what I fully agree with is that neither Dean nor anyone else should have to accept some of what has been coming his way. That said, the fact that it does shouldn't exactly come as a surprise to anyone who has done the recommended lurking before joining. You've been flamed, I've been flamed, you even write reviews purely for the benefit of the buying public, without pay, and get flamed for that too. So why are you still here? Why am I still here? I've been in meetings and exchanged communications with representatives of the top semiconductor companies in the world as a part of my job, and been shouted at, called a liar, told I was talking utter BS, hammering on the table, you name it. What do you do? You were hired to act and react in a professional manner and put in a situation where you are expected to do just that - you deal with it and you get the job done. You certainly don't start turning up the heat on yourself by bringing up other sensitive issues. If Dean decides to act on his impulse then I have to say that it'll be a shame not to have his input here, since he has brought a lot of good information on what is happening with CPR. It is, IMO, totally his decision though, and I see nothing to suggest that the newsgroup is any different now in behaviour or character to what it was one week, one month, one year ago. It is also somewhat ironic considering how often Dean has pointed out that MS in general and he in particular are "still posting on r.a.s.", with the implication that they are somehow better than others for that reason. I for one would certainly like Dean to remain on r.a.s., but only the most wild-eyed optimist would expect that some of the posts questioning people's findings and comparing MS' D3D and Glide could be made without drawing flames alongside the critical comment. From reading your own review of CPR it's very apparent that you of all people know how carefully something of that nature needs to be worded. Cheers! John

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> Well, congrats Usenet belligerents...you've run off yet another company rep and > undoubtedly those reps that don't participate here but were contemplating it > have now iced their decision. > Proud of yourselves? > I don't care that we criticize the products, but some of this is just getting > out of hand and abusive. If you guys care about sims nearly as much as you say > you do, perhaps you'd come to your senses and realize: > a) you get more with a carrot than a stick. > b) nowhere in your license agreement is there a commitment from the company to > sit here and listen to your abusive comments > c) most of you would not talk the way you do face to face or on the telephone. > But for some reason you get behind a keyboard and manners and civility are > lost. > This is sort of an open call for people who have engaged in this activity to > drop Dean an e-mail and apologize for being such jerks (and you know who you > are). I'd far rather have someone here we can negotiate features and > enhancements with than sit here and get the GP2 treatment. But thanks to the > flamers, we lose another rep and those of us who weren't hostile and immature > get to suffer the consequences of your actions. > If you think this is somehow justified because it was a Microsoft rep, think > again. Whatever your opinion of Microsoft the corporation, Dean is just doing > his job (actually probably more than his job) putting himself out here and > dealing with all the abuse hurled his way. He doesn't deserve a lot of the > ***that's being thrown his way. > Learn to criticize without being personal or abusive, or we'll all long for > the good ole days when reps used to show up here and discuss their products. > Randy > Randy Magruder > Staff Writer > Digital Sportspage > [link lost in import]

Randy, I agree with you 100% on this issue, its rare when you have good representation from a software company here in RAS and now we can plainly see why :( These ***s who continously flame these guys with thier stupid comments and in general rip the hell out of them, just ruin it for the rest of us. I for one am really sorry to see Dean leave but I sure dont blame him one bit, if I had to listen to this same shit day after day, I'd be gone too :(! Trev

% See my definition of abusive, above. There are worse things that % people could have said to Dean, sure, but I do consider it abusive % when post after post is nothing more than attack to which there can be % no reasonable reply because there is no "right" answer. Dean doesn't % talk about the Glide patch, he and Microsoft are damned to hell for % not doing it and accuse them of having an anti-3DFX agenda. Then he % says they did 3 weeks of work porting it to Glide and didn't get the % desired results, and again he's attacked and the same kind of % *** theories come up. I know I got tired of reading the same % old anti-MS attacks, and I wasn't even the one who was being attacked! Okay, let's talk about the Glide port.... I don't for a moment doubt Dean's report on their efforts and the results of their port. However, it is 'extremely' likely that the basic graphical coding in CPR made it impossible to port to GLIDE without a major overhaul of the code. Maybe, must maybe, the way the graphic coding was done in CPR was crippled due to its dependance on D3D. The fact that they couldn't get the performance via Glide over D3D, does not support the fact that D3D is equal to or superior to Glide. That is the point people were trying to make. As long as Microsoft (not Dean) insists on "controlling" the market on how Win95 programs access hardware, there will be this kind of debate. And there will be those who question findings from a representitive of a company who is widley believed to be mega-monopolistic. I suppose the Justice Department is just making up their findings on the business practices of Microsoft. It comes with the territory. % >I guess it would depend on what I witnessed as to how I would % >respond in person. For example, if I (in person) had seen a % >Microsoft representative talk to a purchaser of their product % >as Dean talked to Alison, I would have said or acted no differently. % Perhaps Alison could have tried to get real technical support from MS % with her problems before blasting them to kingdom-come publicly, but % what the heck. That doesn't matter, Dean had no right to treat her postings as he did. You complain loudly about how others treated Dean. Well, the same goes for how Dean dis-missed some people's concerns and problems. You can't have it both ways. -- **************************** Michael E. Carver ************************* Upside out, or inside down...False alarm the only game in town. =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=<[ /./. [- < ]>=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

> >What was abusive? Give specifics, please. > Do a Dejanews search in this newsgroup for M$ (yes with the dollar > sign). Those are turn up hits for people with an axe to grind. Some > of the stuff was incredibly accusatory "are you calling me a liar?!", That particular line (and just about everything Alison posted) was perfectly civil when read in context which was: --Begin Quote-- Dean: Alison: Are you calling me a liar, or just saying I'm stupid? My machine was running fine; I installed CPR, ran it once, powered down normally after exiting the game, and when I powered up again a day or two later, I could not get into Windows. I had to restore the registry and configuration files from a backup to get the machine to enter Windows. --End Quote-- Dean claimed that the problem wasn't real, and Alison responded appropriately. I can hardly see support for your claim that her post was "incredibly accusatory". Personally, I'm inclined to side with Dean on this particular (technical) issue. I've seen Win95 machines fail to boot for a variety of reasons, just like I've seen Linux machines, Suns, DOS machines, and Macs. I doubt that there's much that CPR had to do with it, but Alison is free to report the factual account of what happened to her... On Dean leaving: The quote that Dean cites as his "reason" for leaving was from rrevved, and while it was a bit inflammatory, that's one nature of the medium and everyone with appreciable UseNet or even e-mail experience knows that tone is not well conveyed by text, and occasional grandstanding is to be expected. I neither fault nor credit Dean for leaving; that's his own business. If he leaves becauses he doesn't like the tone of posts, or the volume, or because of a solar flare, it's certainly not cause for a witch-hunt of everyone who's every participated in a thread with the characters 'M' and '$' next to each other... (There, see how cleverly I've excluded this post from the witch-hunt Deja-News search.) ---Jim So, if I have good experiences with any product, I should feel free to (publicly) write a review, but bad results, and whoah! boy, I better check all my facts and call tech support, and inform the White House before posting. (See, there's some grandstanding like I was talking about before. :-) ) If that were the case, would people be able to get an honest appraisal of a new product? No! And no more than they can currently by reading NextGen and the like. When's the last time you saw NextGen slam a major product from an advertiser of theirs? When's the last time you saw a major product that deserved to get slammed? I'd wager the latter is WAY more frequent than the former! Money talks... (but I'm sure you know that) I don't intend to spend much time on tech support from any game company. I'll make sure my drivers are updated, think carefully about the problem, and if I can't get it to work, I'm not going to waste much of my time on it; back to EB it goes. (It helps that I have a pretty reasonable technical background, and if I can't figure it out, it's not likely that I'll get a good result after waiting in a tech support call queue.) See the quoted section above. 'If <your problem> "was for real"...' doesn't feel like helping her to me. (Then again, tone isn't well conveyed... :-) ) ---Jim

your post is very cute...I enjoyed it a lot. Calling me a jerk was very creative, productive, and you really turned the tables on me. Possibly I didn't make myself clear enough to you last time, so I will restate in small words what I ment. HE WASN'T ACCUSING YOU OF MAKING THOSE POSTS, HE WAS MERELY GIVING YOU EXAMPLES OF WHAT YOU WANTED....HOSTILITY. Therefore, I don't think it was necessary for you to jump down his throught about it.....I kinda thought maybe you were just having a bad day and were taking it out on RAS, but you seem to just be here for the flaming now. I admit you have made some good posts in the past, but for the last day or so your goal seems to make everyone miserable.....I'm just curious as to why. You yourself stated that "You are repeating yourself, over and over, but hey, that's your right, just like it's my right to speak what's on my mind. See how it works?" People here are just trying to speak their mind, as you are, but it is very non productive to call people "JERK" whenever they say something you don't agree with. As in the last letter, I'm not trying to start a flame war or anything, but if you wanna call me "JERK" again, go right ahead if it would make you feel better......just please let us all know what we did to*** you off so much. Mike McCloskey C.P.R. Playground >><note: I am not attempting to be hostile here....just calling it like I see >>it> >>In your post to Randy, you asked (as seen below) "What was abusive? Give >>specifics, please." In his response, he gave specific examples as you had >>asked.....I realize that you were probably expecting him to pull things that

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>>only you had posted, but instead he pulled abusive things that several >>people posted, and you ended up saying "Hey jerk. I didn't make post after >>post before Dean left". I just think that it's unnecessary to attack >>someone and call them "jerk" when all they really did was make a calm and >>thought out post in response to yours. >Hey, JERK, his post was not very "WELL THOUGHT OUT" if he is accusing me >OVER and OVER of making posts that I did not make? What's well thought out >about that? >> I think we'd all appreciate it if >>those using this newsgroup would remain at least slightly polite. >How about slightly ACCURATE? Does that count? Tell you what... >Watch close now.... >. >. >. >. >. >. >. >. >. >. >. >. >. >' >' >' >' >[PLONK] >-- >* rrevved at mindspring dot com - {unit.26 s.p.u.t.u.m.} >* [link lost in import] - [link lost in import]

<< Hey, JERK, his post was not very "WELL THOUGHT OUT" if he is accusing me OVER and OVER of making posts that I did not make? What's well thought out about that?>> Going for a record on the # of people you can say "Hey jerk" to if they don't agree with you? Oh well, you only make yourself look bad. And if you actually READ my post, not once did I accuse YOU of saying those things. Randy Randy Magruder Staff Writer Digital Sportspage http://www.digitalsports.com/

Hi Trev, I have to agree with you here, but.... .... Dane came into the group in a blaze of "we're here to help, please feel free to post all criticisms" posts. But before long he appeared to be taking all the posts personally. I'm not talking about stupid "it sux" type posts, but genuine thought out observations, often accompanied by suggestions on how to improve things. All too often these were either dismissed or plain ignored :( I've invited Dean to come & join us on SPRTSIMS where we are capable of discussing sims in a pleasantly flame free environment. I hope he takes me up on this. CPR has a lot of good things going for it but appears to be lacking in some key aspects. Without the input of top sim racers it will not achieve its very considerable potential :( Don't forget that Dean came here putting himself forward in an offcial "MS / CPR" representative role. I can't believe he is so naive that he didn't expect a fair amount of knee jerk anti-MS flaming. So if he came here knowing the score as part of his job.... Cheers, Richard

>and you get the job done. You certainly don't start turning up the >heat on yourself by bringing up other sensitive issues. Very true - and Dean certainly did turn up the heat in the last few days with some posts that can only be called "D3D vs. Glide spin doctoring". Joe

<snipped great observations and comments> % I neither fault nor credit Dean for leaving; that's his own % business. If he leaves becauses he doesn't like the tone of posts, or % the volume, or because of a solar flare, it's certainly not cause for % a witch-hunt of everyone who's every participated in a thread with the % characters 'M' and '$' next to each other... (There, see how cleverly % I've excluded this post from the witch-hunt Deja-News search.) % ---Jim ROTFL Leave it to the one and only ex-"business rep" who seemed to have had the temperament to weather the good and bad of usenet to post a perfect example of the level headedness required to wade through this cesspool of r.a.s.. Though I sometimes wonder if even Jim could have stood the tide had he stayed with Papyrus. But if someone were taking odds, my money would be on him*** around. -- **************************** Michael E. Carver ************************* Upside out, or inside down...False alarm the only game in town. =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=<[ /./. [- < ]>=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Jim Sokoloff said: Amen, brother! I think some of us old timers are stuck in a mind set of "having" to make something work --dates back to the years when there just wasn't that much around. These days there's several shows in town, and when one doesn't suit you, simply go to another one. If the product stinks, take it back and hit 'em in the pocketbook. I spend most of my time here and in flight sims, and it's been my observation in both groups that products that deserve praise get it, and those that deserve flames get them. Like Jim, I'm not going to waste my time creating a special config just to try to make one game work, and I'm not going to spend an awful lot of time crying about something that doesn't do what it's supposed to do, either. If it doesn't do pretty much what it's supposed to do right out of the box with a minimum of difficulty, back it goes. Pretty soon if enough do this those that don't do it right won't have the money to do it at all. Jerry Morelock BTW, I know this is ras, but I've just got to say in this vein that the best example I've seen of doing it right in years and years is Jane's Longbow 2. It's simply amazing!

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> Hi Trev, > >These ***s who continously flame these guys with > >thier stupid comments and in general rip the hell out of them, just ruin > >it for the rest of us. > I have to agree with you here, but.... > .... Dane came into the group in a blaze of "we're here to help, please > feel free to post all criticisms" posts. But before long he appeared to > be taking all the posts personally. I'm not talking about stupid "it sux" > type posts, but genuine thought out observations, often accompanied by > suggestions on how to improve things. All too often these were either > dismissed or plain ignored :( > I've invited Dean to come & join us on SPRTSIMS where we are capable of > discussing sims in a pleasantly flame free environment. I hope he takes > me up on this. CPR has a lot of good things going for it but appears to > be lacking in some key aspects. Without the input of top sim racers it > will not achieve its very considerable potential :( > >I for one am really sorry to see Dean leave but I sure dont blame him > >one bit, if I had to listen to this same shit day after day, I'd be gone > >too :(! > Don't forget that Dean came here putting himself forward in an offcial > "MS / CPR" representative role. I can't believe he is so naive that he > didn't expect a fair amount of knee jerk anti-MS flaming. So if he came > here knowing the score as part of his job.... > Cheers, > Richard

Hi Rich, you are of course correct, one must accept critisism in order to be a forum rep no matter who or what its for. I should have made my post more detailed but it hacked me off to see the only way we had of communicating on CART PR chased off by senseless flames. I was not reffering to the thoughtful genuine postings, only the truly idiotic flames directed at Dean and calling him an idiot and other names, no one should have to put up with this kind of treatment. I still dont blame Dean one bit for bailing, I just regret that he felt he had to go to stop these personal attacks. Like you I hope he does come to CSI, at least we know how to act in a civilized manner :). Trev

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> >> Why did you take your .SIG file off this time? Afraid to let > people see that you are a writer for a Computer Games Magazine? >> > Lord, I just love it when people do their damndest to create > ulterior motives. The fact is that on my AOL account I have a .SIG > file that's auto-inserted at the end of messages. I didn't set up a > .SIG for my Internet account using Free Agent. (never bothered to > learn how), so as a result, when I'm on my local ISP, my messages > are missing the Digital Sports moniker and the internet address is > too simple and common sense of answer for you? Does that fail to > satisfy your need to vilify me? If you have an iota of decency, > you'll do some checking in Dejanews for messages posted by > true, and apologize to me for this baseless cheapshot (I'm not > holding my breath, but you may surprise me).

Holy shit! In looking over this group, I've often wondered, how could Randy BORL and Randy Magruder possibly have so much to time to post? (Assuming they were two different people.) Now that I know they're the same person, I really can't figure it out. You must be one hell of a typist! (Not a flame, just an expression of utter amazement.) ---Jim

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> > I understand your viewpoint but to be honest I am fed up with > >companies puting out products that are simply faulty. It's not at all > >hard to find sim racers that know what their talking about. > I find it hard not to giggle here. If you open the manual for ABC's > Indy Racing, you'll find: "Virtual Racing Advisor: Nim Cross". Nim > is no slouch, having won online NASCAR championships, and yet look at > how Indy Racing has been treated here! Just having a great sim racer > around is obviously not enough :)

Have not paid much attention to ABC but a sim racer cannot assist in the overall design of a software product. But he can assist with the AI and controls. Don't forget about them bragging about Blundell equaling his laps at Seca with 1.07s. Now there's something for you to giggle about. I'm sure most of us know that the 1 minute barrier is probably broken by the time you read this.

>Holy shit! In looking over this group, I've often wondered, how could >Randy BORL and Randy Magruder possibly have so much to time to post? >(Assuming they were two different people.) Now that I know they're the >same person, I really can't figure it out. You must be one hell of a >typist! Guilty as charged I guess. I used to type about 120 wpm but now its down to 80 or 90 since I got spoiled by the backspace key :) Randy

>>and you get the job done. You certainly don't start turning up the >>heat on yourself by bringing up other sensitive issues. >Very true - and Dean certainly did turn up the heat in the last few >days with some posts that can only be called "D3D vs. Glide spin >doctoring". That's one of the issues to which I was referring, but I didn't want to turn up the heat on myself :) Cheers! John (who has just turned up the heat on himself <gulp>!)

Following this gentleman's own example, I will raise the level of civilty in my personal copy of RAS by putting RREVVED in my killfile for 60 days. Sometimes, people become calmer with age after a while - it even worked with ymenard (to a degree...)

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>><note: I am not attempting to be hostile here....just calling it like I see >>it> >>In your post to Randy, you asked (as seen below) "What was abusive? Give >>specifics, please." In his response, he gave specific examples as you had >>asked.....I realize that you were probably expecting him to pull things that >>only you had posted, but instead he pulled abusive things that several >>people posted, and you ended up saying "Hey jerk. I didn't make post after >>post before Dean left". I just think that it's unnecessary to attack >>someone and call them "jerk" when all they really did was make a calm and >>thought out post in response to yours. >Hey, JERK, his post was not very "WELL THOUGHT OUT" if he is accusing me >OVER and OVER of making posts that I did not make? What's well thought out >about that? >> I think we'd all appreciate it if >>those using this newsgroup would remain at least slightly polite. >How about slightly ACCURATE? Does that count? Tell you what... >Watch close now.... >. >. >. >. >. >. >. >. >. >. >. >. >. >' >' >' >' >[PLONK]

-- Wolfgang Preiss \ E-mail copies of replies to this posting are welcome. wopr"at"stud.uni-sb.de \ There is no "2" in my real e-mail address. Uni des Saarlands \ Sorry for the inconvenience. You know why.

% A good example of this was on my CPR review. I couldn't see more than 100 % yards ahead of me with the Stealth II I was using. The distance clipping % didn't work. I could have written a review blasting Microsoft for this 'bug', % but by doing some research beforehand I found out that it in fact was a driver % bug and isn't exhibited in non-accelerated CPR or in CPR using other boards % such as 3DFX and Riva 128, so it wasn't the core software that exhibited the % problem but the video board. By checking this out and getting a board that had % drivers that worked as they should, I was able to write a better, more % informative review. That's all. Its one thing to have an opinion and share % it, but I do think that as reviewers, we have a responsibility to our readers % to ensure that they are getting all the facts we can supply them to help them % make the most informed purchase (or non-purchase) possible. I know that I am going to be branded a *** nut, but, I have my doubts about some of this "video card driver fault". I am very sure that it is quite possible to fix this with video card driver fixes. However, I find it odd that some of the problems attributed to video card drivers affect more than one or two video cards. You mean to tell me that during CPR's development and testing they weren't aware of this problem? That the video card manufacturers weren't informed that their Win95 certified drivers were broken? This is were the *** part comes in to play. I think that it is "possible" that the CPR team were using code hooks that were un-documented in D3D. Therefore many of the video card drivers were fine until this hook got used. Or it is very possible that there is a flaw in the way CPR's graphical engine is coded. Then again, it could just be that there are alot of people out there that have crappy video drivers from crappy video card manufacturers. It could happen, it's happened before. BTW: While we are on the topic of "reviews". At times I think Alison's "review" was considered just that. It was not, nor do I think it was intended to be a "balanced" review in the normal sense we are talking about. I think her reason behind her post and web-site "review" was to add balance to the "balanced reviews" already posted and present at various web sites. I think this is were some of the problems have arisen over her "findings". That's actually more like what I saw her "review", a detailed list of "findings" that seem to have been "glossed" over in the "official reviews". And for simply saying that the emporer (while dressed) seemed to have forgotten to put on his pants, she has been crucified and vilified. Yeah, she forgot to say that he had on a beautiful blouse and jacket, but that was already a known fact. -- **************************** Michael E. Carver ************************* Upside out, or inside down...False alarm the only game in town. =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=<[ /./. [- < ]>=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

about some of this "video card driver fault". I am very sure that it is quite possible to fix this with video card driver fixes. >> I spoke with Rendition's head of development myself about this one. I still believe this is a problem with the Rendition drivers, though it might also have something to do with the way Microsoft is using the clipping plane features on the board. drivers affect more than one or two video cards. You mean to tell me that during CPR's development and testing they weren't aware of this problem? >> Oh, they were aware of it. See their readme.txt file for a list a mile long of "driver" problems :) Win95 certified drivers were broken? This is were the *** part comes in to play. >> Being informed and responding to it quickly are two different things. STB knows about the problem with the Riva's and have known for several weeks but no driver updates are up on their board. The same is true for Rendition. I spoke to their head of development a month ago and gave him the complete lowdown on the product, yet no new drivers are available yet. Obviously these developers release drivers more slowly than we'd like. were un-documented in D3D. Therefore many of the video card drivers were fine until this hook got used. >> that's very possible. is coded. Then again, it could just be that there are alot of people out there that have crappy video drivers from crappy video card manufacturers. It could happen, it's happened before.>> I think both scenarios are possible. I've got a bunch of Direct3D games that look fine. CART flickers. Randy Randy Magruder Staff Writer Digital Sportspage [link lost in import]

>I know that I am going to be branded a *** nut, but, I have my You're such a *** nut... :-) same chipset check the README They are made aware. Diamond came in on Nov 11th to fix their driver. I don't know about STB. Bingo. My life is drivers (how pathetic) and I support the companies that are writing device drivers. I don't work on video drivers so my comments are generic to all drivers. There are a lot of poorly written device drivers out there. It has gotten so bad that Bill Gates has requested that the Systems group do whatever it takes to educate/help/whatever third party device driver writers. I could ramble on and on from here, but the main point is that a poorly written driver makes everything suck. The Viper driver affected both CPR and FS98 (total lockup). The patch eliminated this. Diamond had something wrong, but I don't know what. I haven't bought FU2 yet (asked for it for Christmas - I still like toys at 44), but i read the other day that FU2 is D3D, but only works with 3DFX. Huh????? -Paul Mike, are you new to this group?????? :-) :-) :-) <joke flag>

>The Viper driver affected both CPR and FS98 (total lockup). The patch >eliminated this. Diamond had something wrong, but I don't know what. I >haven't bought FU2 yet (asked for it for Christmas - I still like toys at >44), but i read the other day that FU2 is D3D, but only works with 3DFX. >Huh????? If this is true (and I know of no reason why it isn't) it could be the same rationale that Rowan used for Flying Corps 3D. Yes they claim that Flying Corps is Direct3D and not just a 3dfx patch. However the Direct3D calls that are made, are usable by a 3dfx but not usable by other chipsets. So while they are doing Direct3D, they are using calls which the 3dfx does well and is not supported by *every* video board with Direct3D drivers. I think you know what I am talking about. You should since you work for Microsoft :-) -- Header address intentionally scrambled to ward off the spamming hordes.

These are after months or years of play - Blundell's "record" with CPR was dropped within hours of the demo being released. That takes nothing away from Mark, and I don't believe anyone is suggesting that for a second. It does question the validity of using a "real-life" sim driver to test and thereby promote the sims, because they really don't know what a sim should be capable of. We will always have more time, more laps, more "money" to repair the car and less fear than the real drivers could ever have. Cheers! John