Grand Prix Legends - A little taster

Hi guys, For those of you woho don't have access to CompuServe, this was recently posted by Steve Smith, long time auto writer and fellow sim fan. He has had the good fotune to not only see but to drive Papyrus' forthcoming Grand Prix Legends, and Papy gave him the okay to tell us some snippets and whet our appetites. That's not to say this is a "Papyrus sanctioned press release", just Steve's thoughts and impressions of the sim.. Over to you Steve... ----------------------------- << [Mike Lescault]...the legendary Steve Smith has tried the game. Maybe he could offer his own insight.>> Indeed, I could and will, and thank you again for the couple of hours you let me spend with GPL. If I were writing a for-publication review, what could the lead be but, "For those cry-baby critics who complained that IndyCar and NASCAR Racing were too hard to drive, Papyrus has finally crafted the perfect rejoinder: a sim that's just plum impossible to drive." Seriously, ladies and germs, GPL is quite a handful. Or four: you get to see not only your own hands flailing away ineffectually at the steering wheel, you also get to see a second pair of somewhat more seasoned hands working a second, on-screen wheel. Like when we all thought we were Sierra Hotel (now_there's_a title) when we mastered Indy 500...and then along came IndyCar 1. And just when we thought we were Michael Andretti, it turns out we needed to be_John_Andretti to prevail at NASCAR 1. That is, it's another quantum leap in requisite manual dexterity...but surely no worse than any agonizing reprogramming exercise we've already been through before. The momentous increase in skill requirements is, of course, equalled only by another generational leap in the physics model, which is now almost as complicated as everything we knew about particle physics up to four weeks ago. Papy has done their usual overengineered perfection and modeled everything but the rotating mass of the faucets in the kitchen sink. (I'm kidding: of_course_Papy has modeled the inertia in the kitchen sink--who do you think they are? Psygnosis?) To all extents and purposes, the car you see on your screen is a_real_car: you can pick it up, sense its heft, drop it (it bounces exactly as a real chassis would), fire up its tiny scale-model engine, and scare yourself silly with 400 scale-model horsepower...at 200 scale mph. (The way it "swims" is_not_like a scale model, which would be stiff with internal friction, but a full 18/18ths. This puppy rolls, pitches, and yaws just like the real thing.) Of course, you have to realize what's being modeled here. This is a 30-year-old Grand Prix car (actually, several of them in the sim; all different, with different engines, chassis, looks, sounds, etc.), which was about as close to your father's Oldsmobile as any F1 car ever got (Brabham's engine started life as a B-O-P V8). That is: no wings, no tunnels, no ground effects, no aero at all. Moreover, Papy's done their homework on the tires, too: in those days, the granite-like *** compounds were measured in Rockwell hardness, like chrome-moly. They even had--holy deja vu!--treads! Thus, cars of the era were not glued to the road like their modern counterparts, but only loosely connected to the earth, and then only when the soft, willowy suspension allowed the car to momentarily touch down on all four wheels. Net result: of the maybe 100 laps I completed of Zandvoort (a medium-slow circuit), only two of them were uninterrupted by spins. And this was with a detuned "training wheels" car. As one of the faithful, however, I know competence will come--as always--from practice, practice, practice. I got a peek at two other tracks: an older, twice-as-long (8 miles-to-the-lap) Spa, and a Monza without chicanes, and they are almost as impressive as the sim's physics model. The old Spa is about as wide as the meandering country lane it actually was (bordered by houses right on the edge of the road), and punctuated with 200-mph sweeping turns on high-crowned local roads. The old Monza (after the banking and before the chicanes) is so much faster as to resemble an altogether different race track--kind of like the Indianapolis Motor Speedway with a really scary right-hand kink. You will come away with a deep appreciation for the men (and occasional Ur-babe) who drove the cars of that era. Thank heavens (and/or the CUC megalith) we get to do it again! --Steve --------------------- Discussion has already raged on CompuServe on whether or not Zandvoort is a "medium-slow" track, so no need to make the point :) Cheers! John

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>Hi guys, >For those of you woho don't have access to CompuServe, this was >recently posted by Steve Smith, long time auto writer and fellow sim >fan. He has had the good fotune to not only see but to drive Papyrus' >forthcoming Grand Prix Legends, and Papy gave him the okay to tell us >some snippets and whet our appetites. That's not to say this is a >"Papyrus sanctioned press release", just Steve's thoughts and >impressions of the sim.. >Over to you Steve... >Seriously, ladies and germs, GPL is quite a handful. Or four: you get >to see not only your own hands flailing away ineffectually at the >steering wheel, you also get to see a second pair of somewhat more >seasoned hands working a second, on-screen wheel.

Whuzzat? You mean GPL will have animated hands working a wheel on the screen? Ewww. The rest sounds real cool though.

Say it ain't so!!!! Double ewwww! Please Sierra/Papyrus, no 'test drive' animated hands!! MW

it will probably be an option