1/14/98: I am feeling considerably less apologetic towards the folks at TRI and Microsoft at this point. In fact, I'm rather angry about all the time I wasted on this dreadful product.
I believe software companies have a responsibility towards their customers to release products which are well implemented, with a reasonable level of freedom from bugs, and with functionality which reasonably approximates the functionality represented in their advertising. I also believe these products should be at least as capable as products which have been on the market for a year or more at the time of their release.
I still believe the people at TRI and Microsoft are hardworking, honest folks who care about the product that they've created. However, I also believe they didn't do their homework. Perhaps they can be forgiven for CPR's not measuring up to F1RS, for it was released almost simultaneously with CPR. But I cannot believe that any developer or producer who had spent any amount of time racing on GP2 and ICR2 could have imagined that they had delivered a serious and contemporary racing sim in CPR.
I must express my appreciation to the many readers in the rec.autos.simulators newsgroup who responded to my initial review, including those who offered constructive criticism as well as those who responded with positive feedback. This is a great forum, with a lot of knowledge and expertise, and I'm really grateful for it. The comments and suggestions here - even some of the negative ones - encouraged me to keep looking for solutions to the problems I experienced, and allowed me to see more clearly the potential of CPR.
I would like to apologize to the people at Terminal Reality Inc and Microsoft for the incendiary tone of the initial version of my review of CPR. I'm afraid that in my frustration at trying so hard and not being able to get the game to work, I lost sight of the fact that there are a lot of very dedicated human beings who worked hard to create CART Precision Racing, who care about it very much, and are working hard to make it better. The harshness of my initial review certainly did nothing to make their job easier. I'm sorry!