Racing Sim companies should take note of Falcon 4.0!!

The title says it all. ALL of the companies who are currently working on, or planning new racing sims; should take note of the amount of effort and hard work that Microprose has put into Falcon 4.0. In my opinion there are no current race sims that have even half the effort that was put into Falcon 4. I'm a huge Papy fan, and I think we'd all be playing lots of hookey if we had a racing sim that was 4 years in the making. Falcon 4 is how a sim, or any game for that matter should be done. Just my opinion, what do you guys think?

Hmm well too bad PC Gamer is gonna give Falcom 4.0 probably a 70% rating cause its "too realistic and difficult." We will have a racing sim thats 4 or more years in the making, funny its by Microprose too LOL Arthur Stealth Racing http://www.***sys.com/stealthracing.html >The title says it all. ALL of the companies who are currently working on, or >planning new racing sims; should take note of the amount of effort and hard >work that Microprose has put into Falcon 4.0. In my opinion there are no >current race sims that have even half the effort that was put into Falcon 4. >I'm a huge Papy fan, and I think we'd all be playing lots of hookey if we had a >racing sim that was 4 years in the making. Falcon 4 is how a sim, or any game >for that matter should be done. Just my opinion, what do you guys think?

>Hmm well too bad PC Gamer is gonna give Falcom 4.0 probably a 70% rating >cause its "too realistic and difficult." >We will have a racing sim thats 4 or more years in the making, funny its by >Microprose too LOL Yeah and then it will be another 4 years till they make a machine that can run it at a decent frame rate.

I don't have F4 yet, but I wouldn't agree. F4 will surely have it's problems...and if you have been following the Falcon circus over the years, I think you would agree that it has been quite the farce. Now that it is finally here, how can you argue that there was more "effort and hard work" put in then what is found in a racing sim? On what do you base this conclusion? Mike

>The title says it all. ALL of the companies who are currently working on, or >planning new racing sims; should take note of the amount of effort and hard >work that Microprose has put into Falcon 4.0. In my opinion there are no >current race sims that have even half the effort that was put into Falcon 4. >I'm a huge Papy fan, and I think we'd all be playing lots of hookey if we had a >racing sim that was 4 years in the making. Falcon 4 is how a sim, or any game >for that matter should be done. Just my opinion, what do you guys think? Just like I didn't (and wouldn't) wait 4 years for F4, I'm not ABOUT to wait 4 years for Nascar 3!! While N99 has a lot of expandability (add-on cars, tracks, TPCC patch, etc.), I for one, would rather have N3 than wait ANOTHER 3 years. I'm in the "I'd-rather-have-incremental-improvements" camp. Don Hancock "Gunner"

PHendrix27 wrote Apples and oranges. Im extremely happy that the airsim industry has great software (most of the Jane's sim, F4.0, etc..). But do understand that there is : 1) Bigger market for serious hard-core sims 2) More past titles in the evolution than racing Hard-core racing sims have a smaller market than hard-core airsims. We understand that. That won't change. So in a certain way it's normal that airsims are more evolved than on our side. But who cares ? They have hard-core air sims since like the early 1980's, when here the first serious titles were Indy500 and F1GP (maybe Revs). - Fran?ois Mnard <ymenard> Good race at the Brickyard! - Official Mentally retarded guy of r.a.s. - Excuse me for my English (I'm French speaking) - NROS Nascar sanctioned Guide <NAS-Frank> http://www.nros.com/ - "People think it must be fun to be a super genius, but they don't realise how hard it is to put up with all the idiots in the world."--

>The title says it all. ALL of the companies who are currently working on, or >planning new racing sims; should take note of the amount of effort and hard >work that Microprose has put into Falcon 4.0. In my opinion there are no >current race sims that have even half the effort that was put into Falcon 4. >I'm a huge Papy fan, and I think we'd all be playing lots of hookey if we had a >racing sim that was 4 years in the making. Falcon 4 is how a sim, or any game >for that matter should be done. Just my opinion, what do you guys think? I agree with you... but... F3 was released in 1991. F4 is 7 years later. Indy 500 was released in 1989... the developers did other things for a while and then started coding ICR1. Then in 1998 (9 years later), GPL was released. I'd say the difference between F3 and F4, and Indy 500 and GPL is about the same in terms of technological advancements. What you have to realise is to build a sim like F4 requires almost an entirely different development focus than a real-time racing sim. For example, F4 doesn't have to deal with absolute perfection in the physics model (you'd never notice minor glitches), and in F4 how many times are you wing-tip to wing-tip with 20 other planes such as you are with cars in GPL... and the first time one of those cars does something wrong in GPL, there'd be numerous posts rubbishing the AI. In F4, are you really going to notice when a tank drives across a lake 400 miles away?? No, but you'd notice a bad AI move 6 inches away! I'm not saying you're wrong - in fact until GPL I was thinking the same thing, but don't forget that the demands of the two games really couldn't be more apart. GPL makes great strides in closing the gap perceived between the two technologies. I think what most people see is the shear depth of a game like F4 and make parallels to the racing arena. Well, yes you'll see deeper, more complex racing sims to come (team and pit management, realistic weather modeling etc), but everything has a price and the price is you'll need to keep upgrading your hardware... now that must sound familiar to F4 pilots :-) Mike.

Ummm, but you want all the features AND stunning performance? Mike. > Yeah and then it will be another 4 years till they make a machine that can >run it at a decent frame rate.

That's what I was talking about "incremental improvements" earlier: Papy didn't go STRAIGHT from Indy500 to GPL, I assure you... A very good point, indeed... But take a look at WWIIF where there are MORE than 20 aircraft rubbing noses (though, admittedly not as close, they ARE visible and tracked). I seriously doubt there's any real "slack" in the physics for either genre. The computer's only problem may be with rounding, but I doubt it's much of an issue for either program. That is pretty much exactly what I've been getting at: we'll see deeper sims (just like the flyboys), but it WILL require heftier hardware to operate satisfactorily. Ohhhh... the price we pay..... the burden we bear.... Those with less than a P233MMX should get nervous about N3... Don Hancock "Gunner"

A war is just so much more complex than a race, and a fighter jet is so much more complex than a car. rob. >The title says it all. ALL of the companies who are currently working on, or >planning new racing sims; should take note of the amount of effort and hard >work that Microprose has put into Falcon 4.0. In my opinion there are no >current race sims that have even half the effort that was put into Falcon 4. >I'm a huge Papy fan, and I think we'd all be playing lots of hookey if we had a >racing sim that was 4 years in the making. Falcon 4 is how a sim, or any game >for that matter should be done. Just my opinion, what do you guys think?

Your comments are kinda interesting, cuz about a month ago, the Flight simmers were all over their newsgroups telling everyone how good GPL was and even tho it wasn't a flight sim it ranked up there with the best sims ever.... dave henrie

Quoted text (8 lines)

>Hmm well too bad PC Gamer is gonna give Falcom 4.0 probably a 70% rating >cause its "too realistic and difficult." >We will have a racing sim thats 4 or more years in the making, funny its by >Microprose too LOL >Arthur >Stealth Racing >http://www.***sys.com/stealthracing.html

I have this flight sim called "1942: The Pacific Air War". This not only has planes but ships too all being tracked. However they arent detailed but tracked none the less. Would you belive i still have that game on my HD. I keep it simply cause its like GPL by now. Indy cars from the 80s!! Actually pretty cool if you think about it. But i mean i got that thing like the day it came out, and i still have it. Its great if you have a laptop and want to play a game on an airplane or something. However some laptops now could run ICR1 or N1 pretty easily.

I'm not trying to pick an arguement YMenard, but which early '80s sims were '***'? Mike

On Tue, 15 Dec 1998 21:08:06 -0000, "Mike Laskey" >I'd say the difference between F3 and F4, and Indy 500 and GPL is about the >same in terms of technological advancements. What you have to realise is to >build a sim like F4 requires almost an entirely different development focus >than a real-time racing sim. For example, F4 doesn't have to deal with >absolute perfection in the physics model (you'd never notice minor >glitches), I agree with your post except for this. You obviously have never witnessed us CFTEs ripping apart a sim because it's FM is not perfect :). Perfection in FMs is what MMSCs are trying to achieve...it is our holy grail. Mike

Micheal Smith wrote Well, I was more trying to say "Games that were targeted as simulations". When you people had the early Microsoft FS (From 1.0 (still it's [sic] a sim) to 4.0), we were stuck with titles like Pole Position ;-) Especially if you check out the end of the 80's/early 90's. We had somehow Indy 500 in 89 and Revs on the C64 (F1GP was out in 91 IIRC). At that date military airsims were already complex and you had early airsims such as Red Baron, AW and some early Jane's sim that were very successfull and IMHO accurate for this period of time. Even LucasArt had more developed game engines than racing simulator, with it's Space Sims (X-Wing is still one heck of a product even if produced in the early 90's) and also AirSims (Secret Missions of the Lutwaffe (not sure if this is the real title, but close). Im not saying they were very accurate, just more "advanced" at that time IMHO. - Fran?ois Mnard <ymenard> Good race at the Brickyard! - Official Mentally retarded guy of r.a.s. - Excuse me for my English (I'm French speaking) - NROS Nascar sanctioned Guide <NAS-Frank> http://www.nros.com/ - "People think it must be fun to be a super genius, but they don't realise how hard it is to put up with all the idiots in the world."--

> A war is just so much more complex than a race, and a fighter jet > is so much more complex than a car. I've found ground vehicles more complicated than flying aircraft to simulate, at least in real time. (And the last aircraft simulation I used had several hundred aerodynamic tables to model aerodynamic changes with flexible wings.) "More complicated" because the most important dynamic modes in ground vehicles are usually much faster (2 to 10 and 20 cycles per second) for various suspension and tire modes where as for airplanes you can do very well concentrating on modes at just a few cycles per sec. This can make things very tricky to get working. High fidelity aircraft simulations that model ground dynamics have the worst of both worlds ;) - Matt

>Would you belive i still have that game on my HD. I keep it simply cause its >like GPL by now. Indy cars from the 80s!! Actually pretty cool if you think Me too! Always great entertainment value when the friends come round :-) Mike.