Hi,
It's great fun to read all the posts about all the different games here.
I own most of them and have formed opinions about most of them, but
sometimes effusive praise for a game or an aspect of a game I hadn't
explored causes me to go back and look at it in a new light, etc.
I think I have a good perspective on what constitutes a 'sim' as opposed
to an arcade game and I don't confuse the two. For instance, NFS3 is an
arcade game, and I enjoy it that way for that reason. It's pretty and easy
and a blast to get in and drive like a lunatic at the drop of a hat without
a lot of twiddling. N2 is a game I have enjoyed tremendously and that is
obviously much more of a sim, but all I have ever done is choose 'ace' from
the setup menu. I liked ICR2, but I have never gotten really tied up with
it because it is just too hard to drive fast. I guess that makes me a wimp.
Maybe if I spent a lot of time setting up my car, I could drive faster more
easily. GPII has always just bored me for whatever reason and my eyes just
glaze over at the car setup screens. VR is fun and I may be able to find a
way to combat that cursed wiggly tail if I spent enough time in the car
setup area, but I don't want to. TOCA is a blast (though obviously arcade
oriented) and has no setup info at all!
My point is, I want to simulate being a driver. I don't want to be a
crew chief or any of the members of the crew. Very few of the great race
drivers in any flavor of the sport (possibly excluding drag racing) spend a
whole lot of time setting up their cars themselves. They give the crew
chief feedback about the car and the crew chief deals with it and lets the
driver drive.
That's all just a matter of preference, I guess, some people really
enjoy setting up the car and tweaking it to the Nth degree between test
sessions and racing, but to me it's just a nuisance that cuts into driving
time. I was wondering what you all thought a possible alternative could be.
Here's a suggestion:
The sim/game watches you drive a test lap or two or three and analyzes
the car's reaction to your driving style and compensates for it by changing
the setup with an AI crew chief. Optionally, you could have this AI guy
tell you what he's done and why. This would keep you from having to worry
about air pressure and tire compound and spring rates and shock damping and
gear ratios and spoiler angles and.. and....
It would really make it a more accurate sim because you are simulating
being just a driver, not a whole team. Arguably, it would improve your
driving because you had less extraneous stuff to worry about. Most games
come with some predefined setups, but to get the maximum speed you have to
tweak these setups. What if you just don't want to deal with that? Why
should you be penalized with a terminally slower car? Some other person who
has the inclination to endlessly tweak their setup can beat you, NOT because
they are a better driver, but because they are a better crew chief. Jeff
Gordon would win far fewer races if he had to juggle the air pressure and
wedge himself.
Getting setups from 3rd parties is akin to what I am describing, but I
think it would be fun to have the game help you more with setups. I know
the built-in setups are compromises and won't work perfectly for everyone's
driving style, but AI developing as it is should make this a small hurdle
what with the diagnostic info that is generated/available in some games
anyway. Of course, full manual control of the setups could be retained
easily with this kind of thing. Heck..you could even be JUST the Crew Chief
and let the sim/game do the driving and give YOU feedback!
It would be great to have among the opening screens and setup options
check boxes that say; Do you want to be:
A) Driver
B) Driver and Crew Chief
C) Crew Chief
That would make some games more accessible and fun for me. Any
opinions?
daxe (trying to be thought-provoking but usually just pissing people off)
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Microsoft's CART Precision Racing made an attempt at this. It asked you
some basic questions about the handling of the car then offered one or more
"solutions". May want to try it out. It got a bad rap in this group (and
others) but all in all you'll need to be the judge.
Glenn
Excelent post Dave. You've made some valid points. I'm a pitiful man in the
garage myself, I could spend hours in the garage and not get anything useful
done. I still enjoy it though. (most of the time) Here's to the future and a
sim that gives us a choice...
Cheers,
-Cota
For Nascar2 and N1999 try the N2 Crew Chief program available from some
of the internet sites. If you have trouble finding it email me and i'll
send it to you.
-JH-
From the replies to your posting that I have seen so far, sounds like the
sim vendors are on your wavelength.
I personally couldn't imagine a driver getting out of the car after a test
and saying nothing to his engineers, leaving them to sort out the data and
make any necessary changes.
I think there should be some level of feedback from the driver in a sim and
the setup screens are a GUI for just that. Maybe its the GUI thats the
problem. I series of questions from the engineers about the handling and
then recommending some setting changes (based on the responses) might be a
more realistic blend.
cheers
Adrian.
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