Verdict on F1RS

So, after all this time a-waitin', is it worth a purchase or not? Note: I'm in to SIMS, not GAMES!!! I'd like to know before I drop 60 bucks. Thanks PC

Yes, absolutely!! If you like sims it is a must-have!! Ken The Game Pad http://gamepad.org/

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> So, after all this time a-waitin', is it worth a purchase or not? Note: > I'm in to SIMS, not GAMES!!! > I'd like to know before I drop 60 bucks. > Thanks > PC

Hi! Since I used the word "Suck", I'll try to write down some decent reasons:(I put the good thing below) The bad things: Driving Model: 1.Cars are partly front-wheel driven. Try to race some cars in real life and you'll notice that cars with engine in the back feel like driving on ice. The car will slide much quicker. 2.Steering 'lock' is not reduced by speed. It's totaly the same stereeing behavout when at 10mph or at 100mph. Not in real life. 3.Driving in the wet is even more unrealistic. I admit that it is not easy, but it's not realistic. Graphics: 1.Tracks are foolishly wrong: a.Monaco; Tunnel and start/fin too small. It's twice as wide as ***. tunnel is too dark. Cerbs are too low wich makes it easy to cutoff corner. b.Japan; Too flat, which ruins the build of circuit. elevation is needed c.San Marino; Historic track, but only the start/fin is ok. wrong elevations, and unknown half-high walls. Looks like park of Monza, but SM is in a farmers land. (not much trees) d.Monza; Parabolica is 30% too small, it's alomst a pit entance. etc,etc,etc 2.***pits are too unclear. Can't read displays at bottom. 3. Pitradio is terrible. It shouts in your ears. Ruins my concentration. Should me controlable from cokcpit (like in real-life) Others: 1. Returning to garage form track takes toooooo long(certainly for minor adjustments. 2. Menus are too slow because of "music" 3. Slowdown is 1st corner, with anything less than a p2 with 64 mb Not everyone has got a p2 !!! 4. Too many patches, too much to download for a full priced game. 5. Some patches don't work witout the previous. 6. twice as much diskspace needed as everyother game 100mb -> 200mb 7. Weak AI for easier levels(easy,etc) 8. It costs a $15 more than other games. GOOD THING: 1. Great feel of being there 2. Beatiful smoke,etc. 3. Great bumps in Buenos Aires,etc. But I didn't want to offend any of you!!! With kind regards,

> So, after all this time a-waitin', is it worth a purchase or not? Note: > I'm in to SIMS, not GAMES!!! You know that feeling of driving your car close to it's limit on a twisty road? F1RS captures that feeling better than any sim I've ever driven. Only instead of your car, we're talking about a machine that blows out the performance envelope of your car in every way, by a very large margin. What I love about F1RS is that I drive it like I've driven Sprites, Alfas, Volvos and SAABS, only it gets to the end of straights very fast, and corners much better than any of those cars. But an F1 car is 12 or 14 hundred pounds, fat slicks, wings and 7 or 8 hundred horsepower. Some argue that such a machine wouldn't be just a better version of your car. They feel it would be as *** as GP2. I loved GP2, but nothing I learned from 30 years of driving applied to getting those cars around a lap. That might be exactly the way it should be. Some find F1RS to be bug infested and to slow for their systems. With a full install on a PPro/200, 1/4Gig of memory, and Pure 3d(Voodoo 1), I have no performance problems. Pentiums seem to need to be 233MHz for this title. One bug I have seen is being tossed to an outside view of the car after leaving the pits. Sometimes I have time to "F2" myself behind the wheel, sometimes I crash or loose time by slowing down. I have seen the game freeze. I deal with these problems by regularly saving the game. This only takes a second, and can be done at the start of a straight. So, if F1 cars handle like distant relatives of the cars we drive, F1RS is the best sim out there. If F1 cars are nothing like what we drive, then it's just arcade eye candy. I love balancing the F1RS cars on the edge of control and a spin. John Wallace might argue that in real F1 cars, that edge is too thin to dance on. Larry

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> So, after all this time a-waitin', is it worth a purchase or not? Note: > I'm in to SIMS, not GAMES!!! > I'd like to know before I drop 60 bucks. > Thanks > PC

Apart from the off track (ie on grass, etc) modelling (very exaggerated slowdown) and it's uselessness as an online/offline competition platform it's not too bad. Pity about these things though :((

I'll only make a few comments here. Since I don't know much about how a Formula 1 car should drive, I can't say a thing about the driving model. Neither do I know much about how life-like the tracks are. I've notice that the menus are slow, but am not sure if they are any faster without music. There is a file that you can get that will disable all menu music. This must be your system. I've heard of others saying that this happens to them, too. How much memory do you have? I have 64RAM but only have a p200. This may be memory related. It is certainly not processor related. This is a weak complaint. Would you have rather downloaded the 8 meg patch file for Quake II? I'm not too sure that this is the case. I know that when I got the game I installed the 1.08 patch and that was all that I needed. More tediousness here, I think. Really? Refering again to Quake II, how about 400 meg? The way that I see it, 100-200 meg is pretty good. This certainly makes sense. Play at the higher levels if you want a stronger AI. I've never played under "easy" nor have I ever used any aids. I suppose that you want someone to drive the car for you, also? Your arguments get weaker as you progress. I payed $44 for my copy. If you paid $60, then you'd better think about looker elsewhere for a better bargain. Indeed. I know this much, I would've turned right around and returned my copy of F1RS if the smoke turned out to be not as good as it should have been. Smoke means fire; and fire means, it's a good buy. Are you the person who asked how one could increase the memory allowed for skid marks? I think that person-- or you, if it was you-- wanted to skid all around the track once and then take another lap just to look at what he had done. I'm just kidding about the above, so don't take offense. But I don't think that some of the arguments that you made are valid arguments. F1RS is a great racing simulator, period. Alanb

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>Hi! >Since I used the word "Suck", I'll try to write down some decent >reasons:(I put the good thing below) >The bad things: >Driving Model: >1.Cars are partly front-wheel driven. Try to race some cars in real life >and you'll notice that cars with engine in the back feel like driving on >ice. The car will slide much quicker.

It has a little bit too much underseer dialid in for my liking, but it is possible to iron it out with good setup. I beg to differ. No car I know reduces lock wiyth speed. If I turn the wheel 30 degrees when stationary, they will point in the same direction as when doing 200 and the wheel is at 30 degrees. What does change is the "wight" of the wheel.... though for that we'll need a good force-feedback wheel (and good software support). Again, I beg to differ.To me this feels like wet road, unlike other car-sims it doesn't just reduce traction but gives the car a lot more "foatty" feel... just like real cars :-) Deffinately wrong here. I was in Monaco barelly a year ago and spent about a month there. I tell you that looking at the track in F1RS, I have not seen anything as close to the real thing as what they've done here. I would go as far as saing as that even the bumps are in the right place. Trust me, the width is spot on.... if anything not thin enough; you wouldn't believe how thin the Monaco track is in real life. You're probably right here, though TV is all I have to comapare against. Same as above... can't comment. I don't bother reading the cocpit (just like real drivers) but it look crystal clear to me.... I don't know where you're seen a ":clearer"***pit. You can turn down the volume of this in the options. I have it all the way at the bottom 'cos it anoys me as well. I agree.... also, I hate how it takes over driving of the car when you're in a tip lane. That's not right. Same with pulling out of the pits. They are slow, but not because of the music. You can get a "patch" to stop the music but it doesen't make the menus quicker. Full install makes them barable. Agree. Giving us an otion to set how many oponemts you "see in front and behind" would have solved this. Shame they didn't put that in. Anything to improve the game. I agree that it should better out of the box though. The pathes are independent, you don't need the previous patches. That's for a full install. I'm sure that full installs on other games will not do much better. TRhough, you can decrease the required space by dowloading "substitute" AVIs from the web to replace the originals. Don't know.... Expart AI is good though a percentage dificultry would have been much nicer for everyone thatn the 3 setting Ubisoft gave us. Depends what shop you're looking at. Not offended at all, because I can list an pagefull of things that could be better of are not right. but a lot of the things you comment on just are not right. Good luck with it all, and have fun racing, David Mocnay

Hi there, I read about your first corner problems... If it happens only in race mode just after starting the race, it might be your sound settings. Some guy told me to change the values in the snd_cpa.ini file in the dll directory of F1RS. If I remember things right you should change snd_fade= and snd_satur= The recommended values are about 15 for the higher number and 5 for the other. This changes the ratio of sound volume and distance to the cars. I'll check the exact file name and settings on the weekend. Joerg