While covering the U.S. Grand Prix for the SBK World Superbike Series
this weekend, I met Marc Portugal, marketing director for Motorsims.
I asked him if the Can-Am racing sim they're now starting work on will
be just the modern era, or also include the classics. He said they are
focusing on the modern cars at the moment, as that is the easiest to do
in terms of getting rights and so forth from the SCCA. However, he said
they do indend to simulate the classic cars as well at a later time.
In the media center, when nothing was happening on track, often video
from the EA Sports World Superbike game was playing (EA Sports was one
of the sponsors of the event). I mentioned having downloaded the .avi
file of GP500 recently, and wondered if there were any movies that would
be available of Motorsims' AMA Superbike game soon. He took out his
laptop to show me the opening video for the game, but unfortunately by
the time his machine booted up, the podium finishers from the first
race arrived so I had to go pay attention to that and couldn't see the
movie, but apparently it should be on their web site soon.
After that press conference, I commented that with all the good motorcycle
racing sims coming out, I was wondering if anyone would come out with a
controller for them. "We're working on that," he said. They're talking
to manufacturers of game controllers and trying to work out some kind of
profit sharing scheme.
I wonder if a bike racing game could fully support a controller that
would both turn and rotate (turning the handlebars, and leaning the
bike). Force feedback on something like that could be quite interesting,
if you step the rear wheel out and it catches... simulating that wobble...
It'd be fun!
--
http://www2.cruzio.com/~keeper/toons.html - Animaniacs, P&TB, F!, etc. files
http://www.armory.com/~keeper/midi.html - My own MIDI files - Updated 5 Dec.
How'd you like our press release from yesterday?
One can. It will be. Stay tuned.
-MSM
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__________________________________________________________________________
Mark S. Miller "Be regular and orderly in your life,
Director of Design that you may be *** and original
Motorsport Simulations in your work."
[link lost in import]
: How'd you like our press release from yesterday?
Very good news. You have my dollars. When I read all the people you have
lined up, I am amazed. I trust your business sense, as you certainly
don't come from a lightweight background, so I think all these products
will fly.
When I am not up to my neck in my PhD, I do some "sim" programming out of
academic curiosity - ie. make things that almost look like cars do
interesting bouncy things in ADAMS. But now there is no point anymore.
Somehow I have resisted GPL for the last year, but now that the thesis is
winding down, it may be time to "reward" myself, and your products are
popping up at just the right time. If you're tracking demographics,
put a bullseye right in the middle of the "sketical engineer" category.
Stephen
