News from SimBin

eccentric

yep, I am an eccentric old crank, hehe. Honestly, it's mainly a work tool, games (three race sims) take up about 5% of use, no sense in investing much in that.

GRATE!!

I'm in the process of building a new PC, when I am done it will be bad a**. I'm some what new to Sim racing but I am here to stay. I love this sport..
with this news, how will I brake it to my wife I need to buy a console, after just spent a bunch of $$$ on my new rig...

Good news from Sim-Bin.

WRT a current BTCC game IMO that would be a bit dare I say it, boring, due to not enough variety of car makes in it to make it interesting. If its not a SEAT or a BMW you don't have much choice.

Now, if it was based on the old TOCA2 format with the bigger choice of factory teams that raced around those years ie. Nissans, Audi's, Volvo's, Peugeot's etc it would be one helluva sim, again, IMO.

I am still using a single core AMD athlon 64 3000+ with a GIG Ram, MSI Platinum SLI series mainboard. I have just bought a second hand Nvidia 8800GTS graphics card and it has made such a difference to the performance that i am trying to find another one to run them in SLI. If I can find another one I will certainly keep the pc for another year, maybe just add a GIG memory.

They have good deals for video cards here. I think I have a used 320mb 8800 GTS. I'll check when I get home. Is yours a 320mb, 512mb or 640?

NCIX - Nvidia Geforce video card

Hi Mark
I have the 320m. where are you from??

Hope

I hope the new lizard engine will eliminate the framerate slowdown when someone is connecting to the host. NR2003 of papyrus and gpl did solve that problem a long time ago.

grid babes that sounds good jarrod.:thumb:

Not if they put you off your driving :woot: :flame:

great news, i am also happy to hear f1 mod in the works it should boost moral for all f1 enthusiast :amen:

Yeah, the will probably get you thinking of someting you should not, just befor a raceound:

Me too, the actual netcode is very poor

Eheh...just a little

going back to the whole modding issue, what is MMG going to do with their F1 08 mod, cos surely thats based off rfactor? i think SimBin should understand that conversions from other games can open up new possibilities for the new game, and not all should be overlooked, anyway isnt part of their games (GDB PLR files etc.) taken from ISI's games. and im sure the FIA GT Game must have many elements of GT Racing 2002 for F1 2002 which simbin develpoed.

MMG made the content themselves (that's what they claim?), so they will do what they want with their stuff :wink:

The issue is with people ripping stuff that they have no rights to.

Simbin licensed the ISI engine.

oh yes, so simbin are complaining about modders converting their stuff for other games, rather than ppl converting from other games to GTR-E for example.

So much of this goes over my IT iliterate head, but certain points stood out to me in that open letter (take a seat as this may take some time ):

Modding:
Piracy is piracy, end of story. It happens, it is wrong. People will still do it and people will then complain when they have to suffer the consequences. I therefore don't really have a lot to say about the modding issue.

Moving to consoles:
Now this got my attention and I definitely have a few thoughts on this. I get the thinly veiled and subtle subtones that Simbin see the console market as lucrative and would like their piece of the pie (fine - capitalism is still alive and kicking - barely ). However - I don't think it is necessary to make the statement that this is the futue if piracy of their content does not stop on PC's.

Simbin will build their business strategy based on where they see developing markets and potential profit, gain and opportunities to expand brand 'Simbin.' These decisions will not be shelved tomorrow if modding is eradicated from the face of the earth.

Are we to believe that Simbin will not decamp to consoles if a) modding stopped tomorrow, whilst b) the size of the simracing community remains as it is currently, c) the console market continues to expand, d) Microsoft and Sony continue to develop next generation consoles? I don't think so.

One has nothing to do with the other. I am not saying that neither are valid arguments, as they both are completely justified. I am just saying, don't dress one up in the clothes of the other.

The sim racing community (developers not end users) really needs to catch up with the flight sim community. Both are niche markets but one is light years ahead of the other when it comes to originality.

Microsoft Flight Simulator is the modders dream of dreams when it comes to Flight Sims. You buy the universe with some stock planes and then other companies sell you the planes. They also have live weather (imagine that ). You either use the built in weather generator, the option to have MFS download the weather from the internet or you buy an external programme that will do it for you. What do you get? Live weather for any location on the planet. Imagine if you will, you turn up to your chosen track and experience the weather conditions that are there right now1 (Not likely to see this in a racing sim any time soon ).

The product:
Simbin, as part of this community, could do well to look at their product. I love sim racing and I love collecting new titles that offer something 'new.' Simbin are currently hell bent on adding content to the Race07 framework. I bought GTL (stand alone product) and it was great, new and innovative. I bought GTR (stand alone product) and it was great, new and innovative. I bought GTR2 (stand alone product) and it was great and an evolution.

I then bought Race07 (stand alone product) and to me it was new and innovative. Now we have GTR Evo (packaged into Race07), new (???), innovative (???). I waited and waited for Evo because I was piqued by the word 'Evo.' To me it seems more Devo than Evo because it doesn't appear to have added anything new to GTR2. You will point out that I made a mistake, as it is an Evo of Race07 and not GTR2 (stupid me ). Does this mean we may one day see GTR3? (not holding my breath ).

STCC? (packaged into Race07). Race07 is looking more like rFactor each and every day as it is a one stop shop for multiple variants of the same product (different cars on the same tracks).

Conclusion:
Simbin have every right to look after their content and make decisions about the future of their company. It is just a shame that they appear to be following the same model as many governments around the world - make the end user, who is mostly honest and forthright, responsible instead of leading the change yourself. What do I mean? How many of you drive and are being taxed out of your skin to make you pick a cleaner car, smaller car, energy efficient car? How many car makers are being legislated to build smaller cars, cleaner cars, energy efficient cars?

End :skywalker:.