This page contains comments posted on the rec.autos.simulations newsgroup by sim racers who have reviewed the demo version of Microsoft CART Precision Racing. Also review a dissenting opinion by John of the Apex, who makes many excellent points about CPR's good qualities.
First is an excellent overall review by John Wallace:
Mon Nov 03 08:27:29 1997
At first glance MS-CART gives the impression of being a great sim struggling to get out, but having spent some time with it I think that it flatters to deceive. By that I mean that the realism of the game feels contrived, as though the outcomes are predetermined somewhat. While driving I have the distinct feeling that my car is the Airbus of Indycar - five computers are voting on everything I try to do and deciding if I'm going to be allowed to do it or not.
My own thoughts on this game overall would depend upon the judging criteria. Taken as a sim I think it's a valiant first effort but fatally flawed. Too many things not only wrong, but fundamentally wrong - issues which are intertwined with the game engine and beyond the reach of a "quick fix". That said, I really don't think this is a full-blown "simulator" in the manner of GP2, ICR2, NASCAR etc. - if it is then it has managed to drag itself out of the primordial ooze a rung or two down the evolutionary ladder from the current crop.
Issues like automatically steering away from CCs before you hit them, getting smoke from your rears when you slow down to a crawl, front wheelspin when in neutral(!), extremely strange relationship (if any) between what your engine sounds like it is doing compared to what it's actually doing (and the same can be said for the braking sounds). These (and a plethora of others I haven't mentioned) are pretty damning for a sim, but in the contest of a hugely entertaining piece of multi-player fun they aren't too important.
That's pretty much how I see CPR, as an extremely fun multiplayer racer. It certainly WOWs you the first time out with the graphics and sound, and it gives a great feeling of being there, with the car jumping around under braking and tires chirping as the rear breaks loose. Many of these and other things seem to be exaggerated for effect, excessive suspension movements, exciting sounds, easily caught slides, I even have the impression that halfway through the season Alex Zanardi starting cutting doughnuts and these were levered into the sim so people could do them - no harm in that (they are fun after all!), I'm just making the distinction between an engine that genuinely allows you to do doughnuts through realistic modelling and an engine which has a "doughnuts" feature added onto it (like GP2's spin turn for example). Delving deeper into it I find that something feels disconnected between me and the car. In ICR2 I know whether I am on a better lap than my previous one, even if the difference is half a second or less - since the control is so precise and the engine note closely linked with the speed and gearing, you know instantly whether the car was placed more precisely than the last lap, whether you carried more speed or whether that error cost you any time. At first in CPR I found myself constantly adjusting gear ratios in the garage since the engine sounded like it was dropping out of the power band in fifth and sixth. To my surprise it always sounded like that, regardless of the changes I made. That, in conjunction with the slightly "woolly" steering makes it difficult to follow your lap, how consistently you are running. Braking into the Corkscrew is an exercise in luck for me, the car refusing to turn to an early apex even when the brakes aren't locked and the speed is down. It seems I'm "not allowed" to do that for some reason, and I can't fathom why.
All that aside I am having lots of fun with CPR and will undoubtedly buy the full thing if only for racing on the Zone and hotlapping. I had two races on the Zone last night to try it out and thoroughly enjoyed it. I don't think the above comments are related to speed, my best lap is now sub 1:07 and race laps are consistently 1:10 or below (this is on Pro and with all help off of course), but I still have the impression that something else is pulling the strings with me as the advisor. It has certainly set a new standard in auto-sims for features, for presentation and for sound, and any future sims should take a good look at the crew chief, racing school, configurability, ease of multiplayer, hall of fame and such features. Perhaps not the next-step that I was looking for, but a very enjoyable game nonetheless.
I'll see you all on the Zone :) Senna_McNailz is my new sign-up since I forgot my previous password :) I'll be the one doing 140mph out of the gravel at T5 ;-)
Cheers!
John
PS - I didn't mention the AI, and that's probably for the best. "Needs attention" I should say.
John's subsequent comments both on rec.autos.simulations and in private correspondence indicate that while his disillusionment with CPR is unchanged after further extensive testing, he is hoping for the eventual release of "the patch" that will make it playable.
Some comments on the AI and other problems, from Luke Phillips:
Fri Nov 07 06:44:40 1997
I downladed CART Precision Racing off the Internet, 35x1.44meg disks. It's the full packaged version, minus the movies. This is what I noticed:
Surfers Paradise, which is right outside my front door step, has got this horrid 3rd chicane which is lined with walls, and almost 90degree turns, and straights in the middle.
When you are lapped, the computer cars slow down, so you can get your lap back
Graphics are great, but you need a Ninja computer.
Cars flip unrealistically, almost like they did in stunts.
Damage is so unrealistic that if you have a headon at Michigan, you can continue the race, but if you slightly hit the wall, your wing falls off.
When you spin out at 200mph, it takes about 3 secconds before you stop.
If you are going at top speed, and shift into first, it stops alot faster than using brakes, etc., like you normally would.
If you just miss the pits, the game gets confused, and you drive the rest of the session in autopilot.
If you rub the walls, you get stuck on them easily on the speedways.
First corner on the non oval tracks is mayhem, cars crash off everywhere.
Computer cars crash all the time.
If a computer car crashes, and loses a wheel, it tries to continue, but having 3 wheels causes the car to do donuts, doing this it takes out the whole field eventually. Even at Michigan when it happened, the 3 wheeled car got hit several times, but recieved no further damage, and the cars that hit it suffered minor damage like a wing or something. (is this supposed to be a sim, Microsoft??)
One of the street tracks I tried was Elkhart Lake. The lowest gear I whent through any corner was 3rd, the sharp turns at the end of the long straight, which in indycar2 is taken in 1st, can be taken in 4th at high revs, hardly realistic.
I am running a P-66, Orchid Righteous 3D, 48mb SDRAM, and found it hard, even without smoothing on, to have a decent framerate throughout the whole game.
These are some of the things I have observed after only a few hours that I have played it. I found it hard to find things I liked (apart from the graphics).To me this game is a great disappointment. If it wasn't for the extremely poor AI and little bugs, it would have been an ICR2 or GP2 beater. I know a lot of you will not believe me, but you will see it when the game is released and you buy it... on the shelves is where this one belongs.
Luke Phillips
Here are comments from another sim racer about CPR's vehicle dynamics engine:
As in my last post I asked if, "CART PR: Is it real?" Well, it is pretty close in my opinion. You can feel rearend start to break "loose" and catch it in time. You can also tell if you are going into an "understeer". Same old things as in our "other" sims.
John Wallace responds:
Undoubtedly you can feel those things, but don't they seem "canned" to you? My own impression is that there's some decision making processes between what I'm doing with the wheel and what that translates to on-screen. Other stuff like being able to dougnut by flooring the gas at high steering angles, yet when you do that with little or no steering angle you get no wheelspin - why is that? There is no relationship between the sound of your engine and exactly what it is doing, and similarly with the braking. Also, try redlining in neutral then putting into first - wheels spin like crazy yes? So why does the rpm show the speed of the car rather than the speed of the engine as it should be doing? Take a look at SODA for an example of how it should be done - when you take off and keep your foot on the gas the engine instantly redlines - the wheels are spinning freely. As you land this fluctuates as the wheels scrabble for grip and then stabilises once you are back under control.
I put my full thoughts on this in another message, and since you seem to be bang on the pace (our fast laps are almost identical!) I'd be interested to hear your comments on my impressions. So far it seems like a whole lot of fun for on-line multiplayer, but lacking the precision required for hotlapping (and lacking the AI for off-line racing!).
Here is a list of issues from Grant Reeve:
Sun Nov 02 21:10:58 1997
I've just been doing some races at professional level, and having actually managed to sort out a controller setup where I can point the car in about the right direction, the game's playability has just upped a lot. However there are still a few hiccups I am sure aren't right:
* in a replay, the lap counter continues to increment from whereever it left off, instead of showing the correct lap. like when I go into a replay after a race the lap counter on the dash is still at 5 and counts up even higher as the replay progresses, which is a bug for sure:)
* in a replay when you're scanning through looking for the best laptime you did, by dragging the slider, the lap counter and the lap time do NOT update according to where in the replay the current frame is. this makes it really difficult to quickly find your best lap in the replay to take a look at.
* neutral MUST be fixed. no car I have ever heard of has behaviour like a CPR car does in neutral. unless indycar's actually do act real weird like that? -when revving in neutral, all 4 wheels visibly spin. WRONG. -when revving in neutral, you get a kind of violent stuttering of the skid noise and the car kind of moves forwards a small amount as if neutral is just 1st gear with brakes on. WRONG. well, I think they're wrong anyway:)
* free rolling at low speeds (ie: no accelerator) is not correct either, there is that weird stuttering of the skid noise which really screws up the "feel" of slow speeds. and I've noticed when the car is free rolling right down to a halt just as you get under 10 kph or so the rear wheels start throwing out a whole ton of smoke. may I say "huh???" and look really confused?
* wheel spin in 1st gear isn't right, according to me. Have you ever driven GP2? I believe that is how wheel spin in 1st should be, having never driven a real car that powerful:) ie: you hear the rpms maxing out because the engine is producing so much power and torque that the friction from the tyres cannot slow the rpm down much at all, and thus you're wheelspinning so much from the moment you drop the car into first with your foot flat up to the moment the car's speed finally matches the speed that the wheels are spinning at that the rpm never drops below the redline unless you ease off on the accelerator. In CPR when I drop into 1st, the rpm's instantly drop to match the car speed. sure, you get a fair bit of smoke but why doesn't the rpm stay at maximum? I know the car's powerful enough to do this. Unless the tyres have one hell of an incredible amount of grip? I DO have traction control off. Unless having the "traction control" option deselected really means it's on? I'm in professional mode so I thought it couldn't be on, anyway.
* something that really drives me wild is what appears to be auto-steering-to-avoid-other-cars. start a race, then while driving beside another car slowly move towards it. just as you get close to the car you'll find yourself suddenly swerving off the road!!!! watch the replay, you'll see your car doing some really violent steering you never did yourself. I HATE this, is there an option to turn it off somewhere? if not, well, I hope there will be in a patch later! I won't do races if that's on because each time it happens I get thrown off the track. real indycars don't have this, do they?
* speaking of AI, these computer cars are a bit blind. they like to just drive into me at full speed if i'm sitting on one side of the track. and they are quite fond of smashing into my rear end if I go into a corner before them. I know I brake a little early though :)
* I can't find those "skilltrack" settings in the cartx.ini file, I wanted to try speeding up the slower idiotic drivers at professional mode. Does the demo support this facility?
* and yet again, the game really really does need to be modified so it won't trash my icon positions. so irritating :(