PC1 Empty Box not longer covering a game

[David Ignjatovic]

edit: videos go here http://www.racedepartment.com/media/

No more pcars video's from Empty.

 

[Damage Inc]

My god David, yes we get it....you hate Project cars. Bejaysus, give it a rest. Just go off and back to your love nest with Empty box and make more "true" sim players. Sheesh.......unbelievable LOL!

The only place I see more "Epeen" stroking is in the Elite Dangerous forums!!

 

[Dyrgl]

So if they made the cars slower would it help?

Yes, it would help a lot, because that would mean the grip levels would not be nonsense anymore.

I know when I got and update for AC all the cars were several seconds slower, sure they handled better, slower around corners means better handling.

You don´t know what you´re talking about. If you HAVE TO go slower around a corner, it is because there is less grip available. And if there´s less grip available, the car can´t handle "better".

If you are slower than you were before around corners, and you find the handling "better", that´s because you´re driving further away from the grip limits.

 

[samuelw]

Regarding car games are not sims. Race car simulation has 2 components. The first component (response) requires the virtual race car to respond realistically to input from wheel, pedals, and shifter. For example whether in real or virtual car I expect both to react the same if I slam on the brakes. I expect both real and virtual car to react similarly if I overcook a corner. The second component of simulation is feedback from the virtual car communicating car behavior. Feedback from the virtual world is limited to force feedback through your steering wheel, visual cues (are you facing sideways to your direction of travel), and tire squeal and other auditory clues. A few of us may also employ sim vibe and motion rigs.

Developers have closed the gap to reality with respect to response and to my untutored eye 99.99% fidelity is possible wrt response,but not always achieved. Feedback is more problematical being incomplete to communicate virtual car behavior perfectly. Sometimes its hard to tell the back end is coming around in a timely manner. Never-the-less there's enough feedback to drive, though we're all looking for more.

Finally, the term sim is aspirational. What was considered a sim a decade ago would not be so considered today. Developers should at least be trying to produce sims with greater fidelity to real life. Without mentioning names I believe some sims are designed with relaxed physics to convince us we're better than we are. Presumably relaxed physics are employed to increase sales. Relaxed physics are usually attributed to "simcades". Unfortunately the sim applelation is more marketable than simcade because everybody wants to pretend they too could be Senna or Hamilton or whatever. But sims don't sell because a simulation of say a F1 car is too hard to drive. As Agostini Manetta said in Grand Prix to Pete Aaron, "thereare only 20 people in the world qualified to drive grand prix cars currently I don't think you're one of them." As an example from an earlier era Grand Prix Legends had poor sales because, among other reasons, it had a steep learning curve. Its hard to sell a sim but maybe easier to sell a simcade masquerading as a sim.

WRT to Empty Box. As I posted on the ISI forum its good for people to both state likes and dislikes concerning sims. As evidenced by the occasional response from developers these forums are read by developers, and, thus criticism can provide feedback concerning what the market wants. Initially, we think negative criticism about a sim the development tean put their heart and soul into is rude and hurtful. On the otherhand its hard to be objective about a project you've put your heart and soul into. Without criticism things cannot move forwards. Of course there's difference between constructive criticism and just being hateful.

 

[Lars Hansen]

Presumably relaxed physics are employed to increase sales. Relaxed physics are usually attributed to "simcades". Unfortunately the sim applelation is more marketable than simcade because everybody wants to pretend they too could be Senna or Hamilton or whatever. But sims don't sell because a simulation of say a F1 car is too hard to drive. As Agostini Manetta said in Grand Prix to Pete Aaron, "thereare only 20 people in the world qualified to drive grand prix cars currently I don't think you're one of them." As an example from an earlier era Grand Prix Legends had poor sales because, among other reasons, it had a steep learning curve. Its hard to sell a sim but maybe easier to sell a simcade masquerading as a sim.

This is a lot more common than people might think.
One of the best examples I know of is from the flight-sim world where Aerosoft made an almost perfect copy of the F-16. I mean, they had the rotational-rate down to the millisecond, and they used real-life test-pilots to get proper feedback.
Which is great, since this is a sim, right?
Well, what happened was that none of the beta-testers could fly it........
One (1!) of them actually got it off the ground and crashed after 20 seconds, the rest never got it off the ground. They simply didn't have the reflexes to fly something this twitchy.
So they had to 'dumb it down' in order for mere mortals to be able to fly it.
Which makes sense, since the average user isn't 1-in-50,000 applicants and hasn't trained for 5 years. Nor do most fighter-pilots do combat-missions after a hard days work, while relaxing with a pint.
So I suspect that there's a lot of smoothing out going on behind the scenes, no matter what sim we're talking about.
"As real as it gets" might only be "As real as you can handle"

And there's nothing wrong with that. Sims are, in the end, a means of entertainment, and there is very little realism in putting me into a GT3 car in the first place.

 

[samuelw]

In real life nobody starts out in an F16 or a formula one car. I think the best way to dumb down sims is to offer lower formulas with less power and downforce but accurate physics. For rF2 I understand both the Clio's and historic formula 3's are popular online. Currently the F2 mod is popular in the ongoing GPL community. There is a series for each of us.

 

[HypoToad]

"As real as it gets" might only be "As real as you can handle"

I couldn't have said it better, I remember when Richard Hammond "drove" a F1 car on Top Gear, he couldn't even get it out of the pits for a long while and took a long time to be able to complete one lap albeit at a snails pace compared to a real F1 driver. And I think his skills would be higher than someone off the street.

Some sim racing games are less simcade than others but still some way off the real thing.

 

[samuelw]

Still, I want them with as great a fidelity as possible. If I can't handle the F1 cars, then I'll have a go with the Lotus type 51.

 

[HypoToad]

Still, I want them with as great a fidelity as possible. If I can't handle the F1 cars, then I'll have a go with the Lotus type 51.

Like I said it's horses for courses, you can have it as hard as you like, that's the beauty of computers, you can change things on the fly.

 

[ears]

I play pCARS a lot at the moment. I've never driven a racing car, I don't know what's realistic and what isn't. All I want from a game is enjoyment. And I'm enjoying pCARS.

I've played over 150 hours on AC and I love it too. But the online community disappoints me and I don't get many good races. I get a lot of good, close races in pCARS and surprisingly get banged around a lot less than I ever did in AC.

I own rF2, GSCE and (some of) R3E but as a total Rift convert I can't bring myself to play a racing game on a monitor, no matter how good that game may be.

 

[David Ignjatovic]

Finally, the term sim is aspirational. What was considered a sim a decade ago would not be so considered today..

Lol, so PCARS/SHIFT3 is superior to GTL/RACE07.

 

[David Ignjatovic]

My god David, yes we get it....you hate Project cars. Bejaysus, give it a rest. Just go off and back to your love nest with Empty box and make more "true" sim players. Sheesh.......unbelievable LOL!

The only place I see more "Epeen" stroking is in the Elite Dangerous forums!!

I'm not here to be instructed/controlled by pcars investors.
Btw, theres a great article on PRC about the Cult of pcars, <SNIP>

 

[Rob Every]

Fascinating stuff.

I was unaware of Matt's videos until over the Xmas break when for some reason I was drawn to a few of his length online races in Iracing and was very taken by the cool way he could talk and comment on what was going on and also be funny.

His approach to WMD is exactly what I expected it would be, and sadly the title and everything to do with WMD has been in his eyes tainted by the venom directed by fans and people involved towards ANY criticism of the game. He says it as it is, and his word means a lot for thousands of race fans and he DONT LIKE IT.

Regardless of if it is a sim or not, regardless of if it for consoles or not, simply any kind of criticism is leapt on by fan boys or WMD people.

I know this to my cost and was happy to engage in a type of experiment with them in the early days, and was also kicked from nogrip as a result, a place I used for RF downloads and had actually never posted much about WMD other than the awful initial experiences I had with the game years back.

They sabotaged VR, and nogrip with tainted opinion, kicked people from both sites for being critical and managed to drop mods in there who worked for them. Rather ruthless I say. And indicative of the Overlords heavy handed approach that has done him no favours.

The game is what it is, I think those of us who knew expected it to be what it is and are happy to have been proved right.

Sadly some people made a lot of money and that rankles me to this day that so many people were sucked in by a relentless betting company style PR machine.

People really are that gullible it seems.

 

[David Ignjatovic]

Great post rob, and this is something that some might forget, ie, people with talent/knowledge were dumped, so the ones who could've genuinely helped were banned,abused and mocked.....yet look at the final product.

<Mod Edit: No need for that. Mutual respect is needed between the people using the RaceDepartment.com website(s) and forums.>

 

[samuelw]

David Ingjatovic said:
"Lol, so PCARS/SHIFT3 is superior to GTL/RACE07"

I don't believe that is what I said or at least meant. What I ever so clumsily tried to say that with the passage of time newer sims, in geberal, have a higher fidelity to reality but likely never achieving %100. For example when GPL was released it was state of the art in sim software. Today most, even diehard GPL fans, would admit glaring handling issues.

With respect to the titles mentioned, I believe they were designed for and marketed to different audiences. GTL and Race07 were I understand considered no compromise simulations. Shift I believe presented as an accessible fun to drive simulation. There is considerable agrument as to which camp PCars fits into. Understand I am merely reporting what I understand to be their reputations. Of the titles you mention I don't own and have never driven Shift3 or Race07. Project Cars I just purchased 30 minutes ago and have yet to complete a lap. GTL I did drive some. Love the period represented, but GTL did not float my boat. Just didn't like the feel but do acknowledge GTL as a serious sim.

My gripe is the marketing of simcades and arcades as simulations. Money is a little tight in these hard economic times and I am looking for simulations that recreate the experience of racing cars as much as possible. I do not want software that is designed to make me believe I am better than I am. Unfortunately even the Shift3's are marketed as simulations because nobody wants to drive arcade games. Perhaps we should let the arcaders have the simulation nomenclature and start referring to our simulations as harder than Hades simulations.

 

[HypoToad]

My gripe is the marketing of simcades and arcades as simulations. Money is a little tight in these hard economic times and I am looking for simulations that recreate the experience of racing cars as much as possible. I do not want software that is designed to make me believe I am better than I am. Unfortunately even the Shift3's are marketed as simulations because nobody wants to drive arcade games. Perhaps we should let the arcaders have the simulation nomenclature and start referring to our simulations as harder than Hades simulations.

Arcade games are those games found in arcades like these:

You won't find any of the racing games discussed here in one of these so that's out.

Simulation is something that is made to look, feel, or behave like something else especially so that it can be studied or used to train people.

Now to me no racing game in the AC, PC, rFactor2 etc genre comes under this either, but that's my opinion, so it's either all or nothing here, they are either all sims or their not.

So maybe we need a new term to describe racing games, and the most obvious is "Racing Game".

Also if you are a fan boy of something good on you, but it doesn't mean you have to be a hater of something else, we live in a free society where we can choose what we want to buy, no one forces us to buy something. There is advertising hype associated to every product, I have never seen an advertising slogan that says don't buy this it's no good. It's "caveat emptor" let the buyer beware.

If I don't care for a game I don't go on it's forum and tell people not to buy it, it's okay to criticize if you're not happy with it, but don't spend all your time being a hater, it's not good for you and serves no purpose.

 

[David Cordell]

I think what most mean by "sim" is a racing game that is very close to realistic in the physical handling of the vehicle.

sim = very close to real handling and could fool most people, even very experienced drivers/racers

simcade = kinda close to real handling and can fool a good portion of the population that has little real life experience at high speed, on or off the track.

arcade = handling so far from reality it is laughable and wouldn't fool anyone.

Arcade games are those games found in arcades like these:


You won't find any of the racing games discussed here in one of these so that's out.

Simulation is something that is made to look, feel, or behave like something else especially so that it can be studied or used to train people.

Now to me no racing game in the AC, PC, rFactor2 etc genre comes under this either, but that's my opinion, so it's either all or nothing here, they are either all sims or their not.

So maybe we need a new term to describe racing games, and the most obvious is "Racing Game".

Also if you are a fan boy of something good on you, but it doesn't mean you have to be a hater of something else, we live in a free society where we can choose what we want to buy, no one forces us to buy something. There is advertising hype associated to every product, I have never seen an advertising slogan that says don't buy this it's no good. It's "caveat emptor" let the buyer beware.

If I don't care for a game I don't go on it's forum and tell people not to buy it, it's okay to criticize if you're not happy with it, but don't spend all your time being a hater, it's not good for you and serves no purpose.

 

[CCL71]

My uncle used to be a French professor at a university. He once took his class to France to learn about the culture first hand and in particular, their wines. At the end of the trip a student stated that he never really told them what determined if a wine was good or not....His reply was simple..."If you taste it and you like it, it's a good wine".

I've been into driving games for only a few years now so I"m not familiar with the classic game vs new game argument. But having participated in several posts like this, I tend to go back to my Uncle's story...I have stopped caring about what is a sim, or arcade game. The only thing that matters to me is that it puts a smile on my face when I play it. I don't look for any game/sim to make me a better driver. That can only be done in a real car with a real instructor. I use my games as a pleasant diversion from work. Some provide more enjoyment than others, for different reason. But none of them can replace reality. Period.

 

[DayGlow]

But it's not enough to enjoy their game for some people. They need to feel superior by looking down on others.

You like that game? Then you aren't a true sim-God like me.

 

[Birddogg66]

The ultimate insult to SMS and their fanboys. Empty box does not feel that Pcars is worthy of any more race sim reviews or videos. A bit like Grid or Ridgeracer. But I get his meaning, they (SMS) and their (few over the top maniacal investors) fans have really caused the septic atmosphere.

Personally I like it, it works for me. Playing it tonight actually. Love Oulton Park and the GT3 class.
ps, I just realised that's the only bit I like. Ah well...........that's life.
Having said that, I enjoy the new Renault pack. It's real good.

<mod-edit: Mutual respect between the people using the RaceDepartment.com website(s) and forums. This means you may not personally attack other forum users. malicious behaviour and bullying will not be tolerated. If there is a problem report it to the staff.>

 

[David Cordell]

<mod-edit: Mutual respect between the people using the RaceDepartment.com website(s) and forums. This means you may not personally attack other forum users. malicious behaviour and bullying will not be tolerated. If there is a problem report it to the staff.>

Well......you know what they say about assumptions........