Formula 1 Racing Simulation

Driver's Log

1/19/98: After a marathon session of setup tweaking and online racing this weekend, my feelings are a mingling of frustration and intense satisfaction. My satisfaction comes from the experience of driving a wonderful race car, and the sensations that come with having honed my skills enough to do it fairly well. My frustration comes from the problems in trying to link up more than two players in an online multiplayer session, and the overall awkwardness of F1RS' networking implementation. It's hard to understand how the company who designed POD's excellent networking interface could have taken such a big step backwards with F1RS in this regard.

I spent many hours online in the last few days, and probably spent as much time trying to link up with people in a race as I did actually racing. Once in a race, passing proved to be a hazardous proposition indeed, because warping could cause a car several car lengths away to suddenly jump into your face and whack you off the track. There are rumors of another patch from Ubi Soft, and speculation that this patch will address networking issues, as well as an update from Kali that includes F1RS as a supported game. I'm hoping these rumors and speculations are true, and that online racing with F1RS improves.

Until then, see my updated F1RS on Kali Tips page for more information on improving the probability of getting a good connection with other racers.

I've found that racing online with skilled drivers provides an incredible degree of motivation, and my skills have improved enormously under the pressure of not wanting to look like a total dufus out there on the Internet in full view of the world!

I'm not a natural racing talent, and my racing skills are hard-won, at the cost of a great deal of practice and a lot of frustration until endless repetiton finally beats the proper responses into my poor slow little cerebral cortex. F1RS has given me an experience immensely satisfying because of the way that it rewards dedicated practice and the development of smooth, precise driving habits.

As Jackie Stewart says, you've got to slow down the experience, and make everything flow, to get the best lap times and produce the best race results. As my skills have grown so that I can begin to do that, so has the joy in the experience - and so has my speed around the courses.

1/16/98: Awesome! Today on Kali I met up with a fellow from Germany and another fellow from Boston, and we had a bunch of three-way races! We had good ping times between the three of us, and warping was minimal. Another racer from Belgium tried to join us for a four-way race, but that race got aborted by a networking glitch.

Still, I had a fantastic time! I even won one race after the very quick German missed the first turn at Interlagos and incurred a penalty for shortcutting. I got ahead of the Bostonian when he spun and I was able to stay in front till the end despite some intense pressure. I think they could hear my shouts of joy all the way over in Europe!

If you'd like to try racing F1RS online, see my new F1RS on Kali Tips page. I'll see you at the track!

F1RS is hard to get in the US right now. You can call 1-800-UBI-SOFT and see if they have restocked yet. Or you might be able to order from overseas. I came across a posting on rec.autos.simulators recently from a person in the US who got F1RS directly from a British company. Here's what he said:

"I ordered my copy from Gameplay UK. Received it in about 1 week. Their phone number is 011-44-113-234-0999. If I remember correctly, the final cost after exchange was $52 or so."

1/15/98: I have done some racing in F1RS over the internet, meeting people at Kali's "Where to Race" server. We're still in the very early stages of this; Kali have yet to release a version of their software that incorporates specific F1RS functionality. With aggressive packet management settings intended reduce warping, there are problems with people getting dropped from races, or failing to get to the start. Hopefully a future release of Kali software and perhaps a future patch of F1RS will improve things in this regard.

In the meantime, with conservative packet management settings in Kali's launcher, my brother Nate and I successfully completed several races in F1RS, at several different tracks. Online play in this sim really rocks! We had some warping, but it was manageable, and it's hard to describe the thrill of blasting by my little brother while he sat helplessly at the chicane at Monaco, having spun out on a track where he usually whups my butt in GP2. The fact that he clobbered me several times in a row at Melbourne did little to diminsh my enthusiasm.

Later I met up with some real hotshoes who blew me into the weeds. Consequently, I'm now focusing on learning how to set up the car in F1RS and hopefully getting my driving fast and consistent enough to not embarrass myself when I go back online.

Regarding the task of learning setups, I've recently discovered John Wallace's priceless setup guide for GP2 , published by Sim Racing News. Although specific numbers and characteristics differ between F1RS and GP2, the basic principles apply, and John's superb article is the most lucid and informative discussion of racing sim car setup I have ever seen. I highly recommend it! Note: The setup guide is a large (45kb) HTML file. I found this site to be painfully slow, but was able to successfully grab the HTML file using GetRight in about 10 minutes.

I've written a brief comparison of the vehicle dynamics of F1RS and CPR. This page actually contains a fair amount of information on how to set up F1RS to play, which will probably eventually evolve into a Tips page.

1/6/98: This sim rocks! I'm working on a review as well as a "tips" page, but it's still pretty hard to tear myself away from the wheel. I know I can pull out another second at Monza if I can just find a bit more traction at the rear... [Sounds of frantic tinkering.]

Meanwhile, here are some links to F1RS-related sites:

  • Richard's F1 Racing Sims
  • The Unofficial F1 Racing Sim Page
  • Formula 1 Online Racing
  • Ubi Soft France (in English)
  • US Ubi Soft
  • Both Richard's site and The Unofficial F1RS Page have setups which are much better than the stock setup, as well as ghost laps. Watch out, though; the latter site in particular is very graphics-intensive and takes a long time to load over a modem.

    The Online Rading site has some excellent tips, including how to turn down the deafening cacophony made by the competitors' cars. According to this site, you actually can race F1RS over the internet using Kali or Khan.

    The Ubi Soft site in France has much more info than the US site. The latter is mainly for ordering, while the French site has interesting background info on the creation of the sim, among other things.

    Note: While you can't yet order F1RS from the Ubi Soft Web site, you can reach them at 1-800-UBI-SOFT. As of this writing they are out of stock, but expect to have more by the end of next week.

    I must modify my comments below about the D3D version. It seems that many people with really serious non-3Dfx cards (such as those with Riva 128 chipsets) are getting excellent results with D3D. My 2D card is based on the Rendition 1000 chipset, and on that the D3D version of F1RS is not good.

    12/29/97: I really should be working on my F1RS review by now, but I am having so much fun racing it, I am having a hard time pulling myself away from it long enough to do a review.

    I'll break long enough to say a few things about it. First of all, if you can't swing the cost of a real 3Dfx Voodoo Graphics card, forget it. I tried the Direct 3D version on a AMD K6/200 with Screamin' 3D video card, and found it generated a frame rate barely out of the single numbers, totally unplayable. If the frame rate doesn't make you give up, the Incredible Montreal Nightmare Subway Sound will quickly drive you insane. Also, my brother and I had endless headaches trying to get it to run on a Voodoo Rush card, and ultimately gave up on that.

    But on a Voodoo Graphics card (I'm using a Diamond Monster 3D) it is simply fantastic. Graphics are gorgeous, attention to detail is stunning, frame rate is awesome. With everything turned on when I'm the only car on the track, I get probably close to 30 fps on an AMD K6/200 with 32 mb SDRAM on an Asus TX-97E motherboard. If I turn off the sky and run against about 15 opponents, I get about the same frame rate for racing.

    One major annoyance in F1RS has turned out to be a blessing. With other driver aids (traction control, ABS) turned off, the automatic shifting is so bad that I've been forced to learn to shift manually. At first this was quite distracting, and things happen so quickly that it required incredible concentration to both shift with one hand and steer smoothly with the other. After only a few hours, however, it's coming so automatically that I hardly notice that I'm doing it. With the very peaky power curve of a 3-liter V-10 Formula One engine, it's a big advantage to do your own shifting, because you can avoid first gear except for starts (as they do in real F1 cars) and generally do a better job of choosing the right gear for any given moment.

    I've spent enough time with F1RS now to get an idea of how good the vehicle dynamics are, and absolutely I love it. The F1RS cars are much more "tossable" than the cars in GP2, as might be expected due to the FIA rules change that required a change from flat bottoms to stepped bottoms for the 96 season. As a result, you're not on such a razor edge; I find I can push the car, lean on it a little, and it will work with me. I can "talk" to it, too, using dabs of brake, or lift throttle, to steer the car at the limit. But push it too hard, or get a little jerky, and it will bite. The more I drive it, the more I like it. It's fantastic!

    Other good things stand out. An extensive garage supplies all the essential chassis tuning options (though it doesn't differentiate between slow and fast damping), and even allows you to trade horsepower for reliability. More importantly, it provides tire temperatures, crucial for chassis development. There is a reasonably well implemented telemetry as well. Even the AI is good, at least in Amateur mode, which is all I've run against so far. I just now stomped the Amateur-level AI at Imola, so I will try running against the Pro level soon.

    Alas, nothing is perfect. I find I am evolving a rule of thumb about racing sims: the better the menus, the worse the game plays; the worse the menus, the better it plays. F1RS does nothing but confirm this rule. The menus are awful, even worse than the non-Windy ICR2/Papyrus CART menus. The user interface in general is ridiculously cumbersome, non-intuitive, and generally very unhelpful, as well as being dreadfully slow unless you opt for a 175 mb full install. And the sim plays better than anything else I've played, including - dare I say it - my former number one favorite, ICR2.

    There's a new top dog in the racing sim world, and it comes from France.

    12/18/97: I awaited the arrival of Ubi Soft's highly-rated F1RS with great anticipation. When it arrived late Tuesday afternoon, I was ecstatic.

    However, I find it severely lacking in configurability, to the point that I simply cannot turn off enough detail on my machine - a P-166 with 32 mb of RAM and a Rendition-based Screamin' 3D video card - to get a playable frame rate.

    The graphics in F1RS certainly are beautiful, with lush, tree lined scenery laying beautiful shadows across the track.Tire smoke hangs in the air, dust comes off the front tires as you go through gravel traps, and the tires leave skid marks when you peel out.

    The sounds are less satisfying, however, and the menu system seems awkward, non-intuitive, and painfully slow. It also is the first sim I've driven whose automatic shift option works so poorly that I prefer manual shifting - odd, in a sim featuring cars which now use automatic gearboxes!

    F1RS has convinced me that I must buy a 3Dfx card, and I ordered one yesterday. I look forward to being able to present a complete review within a few days.