F1 Racing Simulator The menu system and choices...gotta go...gotta go gotta go.

I would not hope that they check ICR2 too much. After all, Papyrus sims are notorious for lack of save games. Be lucky you can restore a race at all. And be a man, go to the next race in the championship after screwing up :-) I'll bet many would be fortunate to even finish one race in their first season if they played the game straight up. After I get familiar with all the tracks, I'll probably do a 25% race length Championship season. I figure I will be fortunate to get any points at all my first season... -- Header address intentionally scrambled to ward off the spamming hordes. >Pierre >Pierre PAPA DOC Legrand >Infamous >Pink Flamingo Pilot...

Ok one extremely irratating item about F1 in an otherwise brilliant simulator is the inability to immediatly start races over. On expert realistic championship season its required that you exit the race and reload the saved game...wha...??? I see that they are trying to make the race much more important to force you to not***up...but sorry this just isnt any fun. Again both Geoff and the Ubisoft Crew need to buy and drive ICR2 around for a bit to see just what a brilliant menu system consists of...cause neither of them get it. Pierre Pierre PAPA DOC Legrand Infamous Pink Flamingo Pilot...

Eh? Besides N2's initial release (now fixed), what other Papy sims do you mean? =| Cheers! Marc

Grrrrrrrrrr...this damn menu/save ***is as stupid as it gets...Geoff couldnt do this if he tried....its come to a head at Spa when I tried to race....well of course the first turn is a mess...and since Im in seventh spot Im in the middle of the mess. So then I get hit, stop, decide whether I want to watch it on camera or see results...(wha...? hey any of those Ubisoft geniuses ask themselves whether I might want to immediatly start again...) then get to select abandon race...then go to results page and watch those results roll in...THANK GOD IM IN A 25%length race or I might buy tickets to France to kill someone now cause you cannot get out of the results screen UNTIL ITS OVER...WHAT THE HELL maybe someone could design something dumber than that in a game but I would be hardpressed to describe it.....then I get to abandon race once more...then load up my game...and no its not a good idea to change the game configuration yet since some genius thought it might be a good idea to NOT have that global...had to go thru one of these complete cycles to find that out when I saw that my selection of no rearview mirrors had been forgotton because after changing game configs I had loaded up my Spa race game...Then load up the setup...because its forgotten my setup...wha..?? Then go back to the starting line....get almost thru the first corner and have some Eddie Ervine Wanna be run into me again do this COMPLETE GODDAMN CYCLE AGAIN...WHA....!!!!!!! I did this complete cycle around 10 times before saying to myself this isnt fun. Now also part of the problem of the first corner was the framerate...it absolutely was terrible. Fine I say...I have a 166 with only 32 mb of Ram I shouldnt expect miracles. So I go to turn down the graphics...(yes this is when I discovered the cute little trick of it not being global...great idea someone...now go do something else)...bad idea...first off the damn config screen forgets my settings.. Then if you turn down the draw distance you get these really cute BLUE TEXTURES....WHAT THE HELL IS THAT...geez the guy that came up with the menu designed the graphics options. Talk about MUCKING UP the suspension of disbelief...try staring at EAU ROUGE thats blue....BRIGHT BLUE. Ok so turning down the draw distance was obviously not an option..so I turned off the rearview mirrors...great little white squares were substituted for my view....nice. When I turn down the draw distance I refuse to believe that substituting blue polygons was the only option to the designers. The game configuration options ie Graphics, Sound, controllers should be GLOBAL nother words when I change something it stays changed until I unchange it....and it stays changed no matter what game I load up. I should have a shortcut key for nearly everything substantial in the game...nother words Im on the track in practice I wanna go to the pits...press F7 poof....Im in the race wanna restart press F8 poof....and hey people wanna experience racing without those cheats then DONT USE THEM...but GODDAMN IT DEVELOPERS GIVE US A CHOICE....LET ME CONFIGURE THE GAME THE WAY I WANT IT ...for reference buy Longbow/FPK, or Longbow2 and see how a great developer allows a person to make choices about their game. I happen to really think this game is brilliant on so much..but this menu system and game system is dumber than dumb. CHOICES...games are about CHOICES...give us CHOICES to have FUN the WAY each one of us wants to have fun. I dont take anything away from someone who NEVER restarts a race...why should I suffer for them in a game I PAID FOR...GODDAMN IT CHOICES thats a great word in Flight sims and its a great word in Car Sims...dammit developers LEARN THE WORD. RANT MODE OFF....SORRY BOUT THAT.... Pierre PAPA DOC Legrand

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>Ok one extremely irratating item about F1 in an otherwise brilliant >simulator is the inability to immediatly start races over. On expert >realistic championship season its required that you exit the race and >reload the saved game...wha...??? I see that they are trying to make >the race much more important to force you to not***up...but sorry >this just isnt any fun. Again both Geoff and the Ubisoft Crew need to >buy and drive ICR2 around for a bit to see just what a brilliant menu >system consists of...cause neither of them get it. >Pierre >Pierre PAPA DOC Legrand >Infamous >Pink Flamingo Pilot...

Pierre PAPA DOC Legrand Infamous Pink Flamingo Pilot...

Finished venting your spleen now? :-) I found very early on that the fastest way to get out of a race and then back into the game is:- Hit Ctrl + Esc. When Windows95 desktop appears hit Ctrl + Alt + Del and terminate F1RS. Fire the game up again. Hit esc as the two .AVIs are loading and, WHAMMO!.......you're at the front Single Player/Multi Player screen. Works every time! Ande remember.....all these little ecentricities stem from the fact that it's designed by the French..........they have ways of making you frustrated!! :-) -- Bruce. (At home)

(snip) Papyrus sims are notorious for lack of save games (unsnip) Notorius, Greg?!! How so? The only games that I know of that didn't offer any save was the original Indianapolis 500 and the first edition of NASCAR 2. Hardly something to be filed under "notorious"!! -- Bruce. (At home)

I don't recall savegame & races in ICR or ICR2. It seems quite impossible to save a weekend in N2, in the same way that World Circuit & GP2 does. I haven't played ICR2 for quite osme time so perhaps I am wrong here. But I don't think I am. Are you telling me that there are now complete save game/race/weekend in N2? -- Header address intentionally scrambled to ward off the spamming hordes.

I agree about global settings. What the heck is the design problem with that anyway? I think that they had no plans for reducing graphic detail on a 3dfx board. So this is what you get. When I am on the track practicing and want to go back to the pits, I hit Escape. Then I choose "Go to pits" or whatever the obvious choice is. I agree, that re-starting a race should be easier than it is. I guess I will have to try a race and qualify (instead of starting from the last spot all the time) and see for myself how screwed it is. I really thought the AI was better than you describe. I wonder if the bad framerate could cause you to put your car where you don't want it? -- Header address intentionally scrambled to ward off the spamming hordes.

You can save an ICR/ICR2 race in the middle of a race and continue later? In the middle of a weekend? I can qualify on Friday or Saturday and have several days to work on my setup before I actually race? -- Header address intentionally scrambled to ward off the spamming hordes. >(snip) >Papyrus sims are notorious for lack of save games >(unsnip) >Notorius, Greg?!! >How so? >The only games that I know of that didn't offer any save was the >original Indianapolis 500 and the first edition of NASCAR 2. >Hardly something to be filed under "notorious"!! >-- >Bruce. >(At home)

Oooh my, twas a bad day to quit crack..... I guess Im not being clear about this..but to me when you go to the configuration screen to set graphic options then it should naturally assume that I want this for all of my playing and if I dont I can go back and reset it.....the KISS principle, for the french its an elegant acronym...KEEP IT SIMPLE STUPID...I think it originally came from the military.....odd eh. Well either make plans and fix this or up the minimum requirements to P-5 233 64mb Voodoo2....cause first turn at SPA is slow enough to count frames...even with rear view mirrors off, second highest draw distancs selected, No Replay, No detailed cars the framerate is chunka chunka chunka... Well its easy to see what they were trying to achieve. They were trying to make it important to do well in the race...you know sort of a motivation....cause I think this only happens if you race championship/expert/realistic. If you are doing that it WILL NOT give you the option to restart...stupid real stupid. You MUST exit the championship (after watching the entire race run without you ooooh thats so ***ing stupid its hard to type this and consider that Im running the 25% race if I were forced to wait thru an entire 2 hours I would buy a ticket and go shoot someone in France) and reload your championship then reload your setup. Now truly I have no complaints with the AI to me its THE best AI in F1 simulations...by far, Indeed I think this sim is for the most part Brilliant. To me its shifted my entire expectation of a Formula 1 sim...But the framerate into the first corner of SPA is so chunky as to make getting thru an exercise in luck....possibly realistic and indeed if I had an easy way to restart I probably wouldnt mind...so the Restart MUST BE FIXED... Pierre PAPA DOC Legrand >-- >Header address intentionally scrambled to ward off the spamming hordes. Pierre PAPA DOC Legrand Infamous Pink Flamingo Pilot...

> Well either make plans and fix this or up the minimum requirements to > P-5 233 64mb Voodoo2....cause first turn at SPA is slow enough to > count frames...even with rear view mirrors off, second highest draw > distancs selected, No Replay, No detailed cars the framerate is chunka > chunka chunka... Don't need a Voodoo 2, just a PII-300 + Righteous (My friend's setup - mine's a P200 + Righteous). Wow. This first corner stuff is definately a processor bottleneck. You're right, reducing graphic detail does nothing (I refuse to reduce no. of opps). What you need is more MHz - simple as that :( Now what's the number of that loan company... You could think of it this way - When GP2 came out, no PC could run it full detail. My P200 hadn't been invented yet and is still a lame GP2 machine. F1RS comes out and plays flawlessly on my mate's (existing) PII300. Progress? Cheers Mark Reading, UK

Well I ran a race at Buenos Airesto test starts. My opponants were *** Amateur's. I figured I could qualify near the front. As it turns out I got the pole by 3 seconds with the stock setup, so I tried again and got 5th starting place, right in the pack. Then I saved the game and did several re-starts. At least the starts are good at Buenos Aires. No problems. Maybe for the time being it wouldn't be a bad idea to turn the damage off, until you get the hang of it :-) OTOH, maybe if I tried it on expert level I would get creamed like you :-) Actually I think if you are racing and hit ESCAPE, you will get the pause screen which does indeed have the option to restart. The only problem is that it is deactivated. I tried going to the EASY racing mode to see if you could restart then. You can't. I will bet this will be in a patch. I guess I will try this and see what the deal is... -- Header address intentionally scrambled to ward off the spamming hordes.

Have you actually changed the sound settings for the other cars?? A number of people have said that that makes a massive difference to smoothness through the first corner. On my computer it is perfectly smooth in at least "single race" mode through the first corner at Spa.

Ive turned off other sounds...also have reduced the two settings in the snd.ini file to 1 and 5 respectively....much better but still framey....at least now I can make it thru the first corner...by making sure to go outside. Overall though the framerate at SPA is bad. Maybe they can optimize it a bit more....or provide better ways of turning down options. Currently the drawdistance option for Voodoo is not usuable beyond the first click down because of the blue textures. Pierre

This statement that anything below a P200 is useless is absolute garbage. I have a bog-standard (i.e., no overclocking or tweaks or magic wands waved) P166, 32Mb RAM, 3Dfx video card. By adjusting three items in the .INI file that control the sound I have stuff-all dramas with any starts/first corner slowdowns. I am running the second-greatest depth of field, sky 'on', pit messages 'on' and replays 'off'. I could improve the setup slightly by choosing to have the pit messages 'off'...which I may do as they are becoming annoying (now I know how a real driver must feel at times!). But the changes to the sound lines in the .INI file have the greatest effect on the first corner slowdown improvement. -- Bruce (at work) "Laziness is nothing more than the habit of resting before you get tired." (Jules Renard)

Hi in large part I agree with you...but I have been having problems with the Championship Race at SPA Expert/Realistic....very framey even with the modifications to the sound.ini. So I gave up because control was so impossible with the low FPS...sort of resigned myself to racing ghosts when I went back and tried a single race...the key was I lowered the amount of cars participating to 11....OOOH MY thats the ticket for people with slow framerate. This made the first corner and Eau Rouge good enough to drive....competively. This is with the draw distance at max (which I find useful) rear view and all sounds but the sound ini the same....nother words I turned everything on in the config screen but left my mods to the ini alone. Now this is excellent....very very driveable....(I really need a spell check for freeagent might be time for Agent)..... Anyway now I need to see if I can set the amount of cars in the championship....as this seems to be my solution to the low FPS...I hope so. If not then this should be fixed in a patch and allowed...as this will open up this sim to lots more people. Pierre

I simply can't relate to your comments! I've run a Championship race (i.e., full-field) at Spa with no more hassles than I have experienced at any of the other circuits. Fewer, in fact, than the more densely populated (trackside graphics) circuits. I'm not implying that I don't believe what you are saying.....not for one instant.....but it's almost as if there are two different games out there with the one name!! :-) Or is my P166 CPU really a 200MMX in dusguise?!!! -- Bruce (at work) "Laziness is nothing more than the habit of resting before you get tired." (Jules Renard)

> But the changes to the sound lines in the .INI file have the greatest > effect on the first corner slowdown improvement. Hmmmmm. My finding is that replays off has the biggest effect. All that ***y HD activity. They should have given Papy a call about how to do this part of the game. Those TV views are a little silly with the unrealistic zooms. I have 64 megs of ram and here is one of the latest sims using the HD frequently just for replays - stuffing things up royally I might add. And all this pain for a lousy 5 min max - better than GP2 but still not a pincha poop on Papy's replays. Do Papy have some type of patent or what? One of the biggest and few gripes I have about F1RS. Also, I know they have ghosts but it strikes me as silly I cant have replays when in Time Attack mode. ????????????

Okay....I think I get what you are talking about! Is it the read/write (swap file) that is causing it? I have experienced this staccato-like effect also, and every time it has occurred the HDD has been working like a banshee!! I have never seen a game cause as much HDD activity as F1RS does. What I now do is save my game occassionally and, when the thing gets the flutters, go to the trusty Ctrl+Esc routine, exit the game, exit Win95 and re-start. This appears to clear the swap file of data and when I fire up the game again all is okay....sometimes for a whole race, sometimes not. -- Bruce. (At home)

It is saving the game, it just doesn't look like it. As a test, start a race, do a lap or two and and press escape. Select save and press return. Exit the race, go back to the menu's and select load. You should see the saved game there. It works for me and I really like the idea of being able to save in a race without having to type out a file name, like it was in GP2. Tony

Joerg.... I think someone would have answered your query by now but, YES, you can save and it does save even when it appears to you that nothing happens. The saved file is called something like "Saved during race" and each save such as this writes over the previous one for that circuit. -- Bruce. (At home)