GPL difficulty

Lots of people have been complaining that GPL requires far too much effort to keep the car on the track and is therefore not real. With the qualifying for the Argentinian Grand Prix yesterday, I decided to watch very closely, and not one driver could get the car round the track without constantly playing on the steering, and the faster cars were fishtailing around a lot under both braking and acceleration. This is in 1998 F1 cars with absolutely huge amounts of grip, and (if I'm not mistaken - which I very well maybe) only a similar amount of Horsepower to the '67 3 litre cars. Imagine taking the wings off them and putting crappy little tires on they would be far worse to drive. As for the arcadish throwing cars around the track being slow - Eddie Irvine was doing this on one lap in his Ferrari and took nearly half a second off Schumacher in the first sector (I think it was 0.4 seconds faster in a 37 second sector!), before he eventually locked the wheels and went off - this I feel proves the point that this is the fast way round the track, but the real drivers don't do it because they can't afford to trash their race car in qualifying and have to drive the spare (nor do they want to kill themselves, which is pretty difficult in a computer simulation :) ). Anyways, back to some more "arcade" driving with GPL :-) Steve

With regard to the GP, the track was damp which was why the drivers were having problems. Only a few completed free practise and qualifying without at least one spin. Damp track and the new grooved tyres obviously didn't mix too well.

I agree, and to those that are whining and complaining.....Don't BUY it when it comes out. -- Kevin Anderson ICQ # 6769389 Oscar FB Div. 10

Oops, I did say I wasn't sure :) Steve

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> Lots of people have been complaining that GPL requires far too much effort > to keep the car on the track and is therefore not real. With the qualifying > for the Argentinian Grand Prix yesterday, I decided to watch very closely, > and not one driver could get the car round the track without constantly > playing on the steering, and the faster cars were fishtailing around a lot > under both braking and acceleration. This is in 1998 F1 cars with > absolutely huge amounts of grip, and (if I'm not mistaken - which I very > well maybe) only a similar amount of Horsepower to the '67 3 litre cars. > Imagine taking the wings off them and putting crappy little tires on they > would be far worse to drive. As for the arcadish throwing cars around the > track being slow - Eddie Irvine was doing this on one lap in his Ferrari > and took nearly half a second off Schumacher in the first sector (I think > it was 0.4 seconds faster in a 37 second sector!), before he eventually > locked the wheels and went off - this I feel proves the point that this is > the fast way round the track, but the real drivers don't do it because they > can't afford to trash their race car in qualifying and have to drive the > spare (nor do they want to kill themselves, which is pretty difficult in a > computer simulation :) ). > Anyways, back to some more "arcade" driving with GPL :-) > Steve

You hit the nail on the head except for 1 thing. Modern F1 cars have about double the HP of the 67 cars.

There has been some talk about the steering in GPL needing some sort of reduce with speed steering ratio, but I think Papyrus has it perfect. This is the only sim from Papyrus or any other that I can run with the steering on full linear. I have a custom built steering wheel with about 270 degrees of lock and the pot is set up on gear reduction as well, but I have also played it with a thrustmaster T2 as well and I have no trouble. Watching the Argentina GP Sunday I was amazed at how much the cars seemed to twitch from side to side down the straights there definitely was a lot of correcting going on by the drivers. I think Papyrus has it right, but I will also agree that not everybody has the best controls and a % slider like GP2 would help some people. I aslo would like to use the roll bar camera view as a driving view if Papyrus is listening. P.s. Anybody know how much caster modern F1 cars use, I know they use negative camber, but do they use positve caster for self centering steering? Jerry

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> There has been some talk about the steering in GPL needing some sort of reduce > with speed steering ratio, but I think Papyrus has it perfect. This is the > only sim from Papyrus or any other that I can run with the steering on full > linear. I have a custom built steering wheel with about 270 degrees of lock > and the pot is set up on gear reduction as well, but I have also played it with > a thrustmaster T2 as well and I have no trouble. Watching the Argentina GP > Sunday I was amazed at how much the cars seemed to twitch from side to side > down the straights there definitely was a lot of correcting going on by the > drivers. I think Papyrus has it right, but I will also agree that not > everybody has the best controls and a % slider like GP2 would help some people. > I aslo would like to use the roll bar camera view as a driving view if Papyrus > is listening. > P.s. Anybody know how much caster modern F1 cars use, I know they use negative > camber, but do they use positve caster for self centering steering?

Well, I've already made my views clear on this ie that it's a step in the arcade direction to have reduce with speed stuff. It's also just another thing to drive you up the wall wondering if you have it right.