Ok, but I still don't see how any of us can say good or bad things about NetKar Pro. We know NOTHING about it. Namie is not even slightly representative of Pro as far as I'm aware. Absolutely everything, from the graphics engine to the physics engine to the sound engine to the netcode [engine] has been completely 100% rewritten.

Comparing Namie to Pro is like comparing a rotten clementine to a fresh clementine. Same species and family, but nothing is the same in either one.

Yeah, I said NKP wants to simulate race cars first and foremost, not that it can't do road cars. I am basing this solely on interviews, where I gather only race cars will be included at first, but I have no other sources that any of you.

As I have maintained, I will try NKP. And I actually believe it will be incredibly good. But whether it feels right or has the LFS je ne se quois. Time will tell. Discussing made up facts here won't.

@apj71 - the point I'm trying to make is that you are trying to instantly discard LFS physics as less accurate than nKPro without ever having driven nKPro.

Hm I think he is reasonable, though a bit biased just as we do.

@tweak: I think what Nuse is saying is that all the text are textures stick on a face of a polygon (which might be invisible), so the menu is actually rendering several invisible polygons with textures on it instead of being real 2D graphics.

@ajp71: I don't think menu design really affect the purity of a sim, since the only moment you engage in the simulation part is by driving, all the things outside is just packaging and designs for ergonomics. All we have is big clear buttons with a background pic, that's not really something flashy, and imo is actually more practical than having to open several windows at a time - say consistentcy in natvigation. While if it take it to the extreme some graphics can be excluded in NK's menu as well, hey why make a banner just for the word "track day"?

But then if we push it to that extent i think the point of argument is lost because we lost sight of what is the core value in a simulator, and nobody says simulators should look dull and boring, it's a commerical product afterall not an experiment tool.

I'll give a second thought on the ramps though, if a little sense of humour equals a game not being serious enough.

Quote from AndroidXP :

No, he's right. In a D3D game, all text and seemingly "2D" elements are rendered as a texture on two polygons (2 triagles forming the shape of a rectangle, to be exactly). That's why the text display in LFS, or 3D games in common is relatively slow.

But he was making it sound as if it takes up a huge amount of your memory, that changing a few polygons would save you loads of FPS???? illepall Maybe like 6 years ago... as of now, that stuff hardly affects us at all.

And the text in LFS is not slow, and I don't see how it impacts our performance by huge amounts. If you want a truly intensive 3D menu (or just crazy textures and animations), go play an EA game, they are fascinated about awesome, takes-forever-to-load memory hog menus

@ajp71: Yeah I think the FF in netKar is pretty informative, like understeer and when the car is transfering weight, but it is different from all other sims. It feels to me like it is missing a few things that give the car a 'ridgid' feel, or something that is on the road. It feels more like a washy interaction with the wheel, rather than with the track itself. The car gives some feedback to the car, but not everything... I guess I am trying to say that you feel little or no road feedback through the forces. It is more emphasized on feeling oversteer and understeer rather than the other 'connected' vibrations. Which is why LFS is the complete opposite.

You DO feel those vibrations in LFS, but hardly any understeer feedback (many people have noted they want this in LFS). Oversteer feedback is there, but not as extreme as netKar's. Example: Basically force a spin in the Modena and try to correct it in netKar, it is a lot harder because the FF swings your hands forcefully in wild directions. In LFS you have a much better chance to save a spin in a road car as it is not so extreme. I still think LFS feels better though just for overall feedback of the car, netKar still feels very empty when pushing a car to the limit.

Quote from ajp71 :

I'm not going to accept that an open car has no handling disadvantage or that stiffness shouldn't be simulated in LFS because that is simply not true.

a) as i and others have said it very much depends on the type of car and on wether the uf1 is actually an open roofed car with a hardtop rather than a closed roofed car with a sawed off roof
b) nobody ever said stiffness shouldnt be simulated in lfs ... its just that lfs doesnt simulate stiffness atm
but as far as i can tell scawen plans on putting carts into lfs whos handling is very dependend on chassis flex so on that basis sooner or later lfs will very likely simulate chassis flex
but lfs is just at the second stage of a three stage physics development process and it isnt even remotely finished with that stage ... so give it some time
and its also that simulating chassis flex should be utter hell to code

Quote from durbster :

I hate it when this happens on forums. A ridiculous discussion starts about something that has no basis in fact.

For what it's worth, nobody said the model only "works" with race cars and considering nKPro will be moddable, I suspect they will have considered road cars somewhere along the line. On top of that, the outdated Namie is evidence enough that road cars can be simulated on a par with LFS.

Ok, maybe I didn't find the right words for what I wanted to express.

I just wanted to say that for a true sim you build a base model that ideally only needs car parameters added to accurately simulate any car class you want. Apparently, or atleast that's what I understood, namie is only convincing on openwheelers, which for me means that it's base model is still not ideal, or too specifically developed to just fit "race cars".
LFS on the other hand is IMO quite close to it, with the only real problems in the base car model being low speed grip and aero.

I just got fed up hearing all that glory of how uncompromising Stefano is about realism and yet what we did see from him until now is only "working" on race cars. No, actually I got fed up on judging anything that is about to come in nkPro from namie.

Also I don't quite get how namie is "evidence enough that road cars can be simulated on a par with LFS"? Do you mean namie shows the potential that nkPro may be on par with LFS? Nah, that would be judging from namie again. Let me rephrase that. Do you mean that namie shows that Stefano has the potential of creating a sim that will one day be able to be on par with LFS? Because namie surely isn't on par with LFS in that aspect.

Quote from axus :

@apj71 - the point I'm trying to make is that you are trying to instantly discard LFS physics as less accurate than nKPro without ever having driven nKPro.

@ Tristan/Axus - I am basic my comments on namie, forget Pro, IMO whilst dated and lacking in certain areas namie feels more realisitic than LFS IMO. There are huge wholes in LFS physics atm, and ffs. the UF1 is a mini stop this 'it might be an open top car with a removable roof' crap, it is a mini and with the roof on it drives like a mini does IRL.

Lets drop the menu from this disscusion, I prefer the NK/GEM style some of you don't thats fine by me, it's not going to make the racing experience any different.

Quote from Android XP :

I just got fed up hearing all that glory of how uncompromising Stefano is about realism and yet what we did see from him until now is only "working" on race cars. No, actually I got fed up on judging anything that is about to come in nkPro from namie.

I personally find it fairly annoying as well, Scawen would never make a sim where you can't see replays from the cockpit, Stefano would because IRL there is no way of seeing what the driver sees on TV. I personally think the ramps make a fun diversion from racing. If NK had an autocross editor it wouldn't include jumps. I like the way Scawen will listen to the community and is prepared to change his product to suit. As far as I see Stefano wouldn't do this, people asked for external cams but Stefano replied by saying they were not necesary and cut these people out of his community.

It would be interesting to see what Scawen's opinion is on this, but I feel he would say he is not such a purist (nothing at all wrong with that).

Quote from ajp71 :

I personally find it fairly annoying as well, Scawen would never make a sim where you can't see replays from the cockpit, Stefano would because IRL there is no way of seeing what the driver sees on TV.

What??

Well not through the eyes of the racer, but yes, you can see driving action from inside the car in reallife replays & recordings...... Even Champ Car has helmet cams that are are RIGHT next to the drivers eyes, how close could you get to that? Perfectly fine to have incar views in replays.

Quote from Tweaker :

What??

Well not through the eyes of the racer, but yes, you can see driving action from inside the car in reallife replays & recordings...... Even Champ Car has helmet cams that are are RIGHT next to the drivers eyes, how close could you get to that? Perfectly fine to have incar views in replays.

Don't have a go at me I would like a cockpit view in replays as well.

In a single seater, anything but cockpit view is unnecessary, yes. BUT, in a road car, it can be kind of annoying to have 50% of your 15" viewing space (that's how much it is on a 17" CRT) chopped off by interior so that you see this tiny area, smaller than the area of your wheel representing what IRL would be about 20x bigger. Nice 'simulation'. IF I had a motion simulator so that I could feel the road the way I would in a real car and I didn't have to use the wheels view to do this and IF I had a 50" screen to make it as big as the cockpit of a car, I would indeed use the in-car view but as it stands I don't and nor do ~99% of the community. So you cut that out of the community and you have a real nice 'online racing simulator'.

@ Axus - I don't share Stefano's view at all, I personally use cockpit view but I think it is just pointlessly slashing away at the potential market if you force it. I would far rather race against a full grid of drivers using wheel cam than just a few using cockpit view.

I'm not having a go at you, I'm having a go at Stefano's flawed 'purist' logic.

Quote from ajp71 :

the fact that LFS is controllable with keys says it all

no it doesnt. i can explain.
if u know how they work and what they actually do. its not left for left and right for right. if it was like that cars would be uncontrolable and if u were here around keyboard-code type testing you would know dat. keys in lfs arent a 5 min coding job. its a whole program that if a real car maker was forced to control its cars irl with keys, they would prolly code a assisted system like in lfs. after the system maturity it was even tweaked at later stage by keyboarders in the community. key code in lfs had many iterations and its spot on imho after all the tweaks over 2years.

btw nkpro also supports keys and mouse and also aims at broadning its spectrum. funny how those posts the no-compromise dev made a couple years ago about that theme look now eh?
follower at the very least.

Also note that a lot of flight simulators (expensive/professional ones) also support keys for control. So that doesn't mean it is bad, the keyboard is afterall control hardware.

Quote :

Kunos

PHYSICS

099 had 2 main flaws on the chassis physic: one was in the anti-roll bars code, and it is easy to exploit hitting a curb hard; this will throw the car into a roll on itself. The second flaw was in the reaction torques at the differential generating a couple on the body moving too much weight back and forward as function of engine torque.

The entire software structure was changed and what was a modular software solution in netKar 099 is now a monolithic structure driven by scripts and databases. In nK099 there was a main simulation program (nks.exe) that connected to a client module for multiplayer (nkClient.dll) and cars' modules (f3000.dll, mini.dll ecc..). In netKar PRO everything is easier and held into the nks.exe file.

The change was made to support what we call the nK|dK (netKar Development Kit), which will allow the community to create additional cars for the simulator and it was the main element that got me busy during this year.

One important element with the creation of nK|dK is the possibility to deeply analyze the car's behaviour in an engineering-like environment and compare it with theorical and experimental data from books and other sources. In netKar PRO nothing is "cheated" and you can check the formulas from your car dynamics book with the simulator and find the same results, the manual for the future nK|dK will be most enlighting about this matter.

DRIVETRAIN
The drivetrain was also rewritten at the beginning of the netKar PRO adventure. The main aim for the new code was to support 4WD cars with 3 differential connected.

TIRES
The main element of any simulation was also the subject of a total rewrite. The model is now a Pacejka 96 full model with integrations for temperature and pressure changes plus some integration for dynamic behaviour for the quick spinning on the Y axis of the tire. (quick steer).
What I really love about this Pacejika's model is the incredible control it gives on the relationship between longitudinal and lateral forces plus the ability to reproduce a tire with 3 different "zones": a linear zone, a sliding zone, and a frictional zone once the tire lost the grip. I find the linear zone often missing generating a tire that is in "sliding" mode all the time.. giving a sort of "floating" feel to it. In netKar PRO, you get a clear linear zone that gives the tires an incredible amount of "bite".. you really need to push the car to get into the "sliding" mode of the tire and makes driving fast with netKar PRO a very different experience where you literally throw the car into a corner at speeds that most of the time you won't believe and then you'll handle her on the edge of the limit. Driving is more "physical", after 20 laps with the powerful stiff cars you really feel your head shaking.
I turned off the automatic surface smoothing featured in nK099, and this makes the ride really scary on the stiff lower cars and you'll often find yourself bottoming around shaking like crazy. The fact of driving directly on the triangles of the track also gives meaning to the idea of "fast bump and rebound" settings.. mostly unusued before, you'll need these badly to set up the attitude of the car on bumps. I was able to turn off the smoothing because the new tire model is so good to handle the contact/no contact situations, much better than the old one. As you can tell, I am quite happy and excited by the results.

Just some more info about the upcoming NKPro directly from Kunos...(in english)
http://www.drivingitalia.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=24201

Another link to the unofficial FAQ (italian... sorry!)
http://www.drivingitalia.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=24390

flyby3d, interesting read, but I find the whole "a linear zone, a sliding zone, and a frictional zone" thing a bit fishy - surely it should be a seamless graph relating slip angle and grip, no?

I don't pretend to know about tyre coding or modelling or whatever you want to call it, but:
COLLABORAZIONI E PARTNERSHIP:
AiM
Avon
Brembo
Sparco
Riccardo Azzoli e Andrea Quintarelli, rispettivamente pilota e ingegnere di pista della Target Racing.

Collaboration and partnership with Avon tyres. That can only be a good thing, access to real data and tyre experts.

I'm not sold on nKpro yet, I haven't tried it, but the ingredients are good, the potential is good, and I'm looking forward to seeing what has been made of it.

These threads are very unproductive, people arguing about an as yet unreleased title. It just pushes people to the extremes as the argument grows, more and more is "at stake" as more and more time is "invested" in the argument.....which leads to people really not wanting to be wrong, and usually totally influences their "unbiased" opinions when the actual product is released.

Nk Pro looks very good, but i wanna know what it sounds like with the choice of samples or synth sounds


Why do threads about other games always turn out to be a competition of what game's best?
If you want to argue over the better game start a new thread and leave this one alone!

Quote from KiDCoDEa :

key code in lfs had many iterations and its spot on imho after all the tweaks over 2years.

I'm well aware the physics in LFS are far too acurate to use genuine digital inputs but from the previous stance that NK took this time would not have been spent designing a computer to drive the cars but instead to make the physics even better. From what you said this view may have changed for Pro, all my comments about NK have come from the 3 year old namie (which IMO is much more realistic than LFS).

Quote from ajp71 :

(which IMO is much more realistic than LFS).

sure it is. thats why u can drive the car upside down (yes wheels to the air), with fuxxored cambers and arbs coupled with some magneto balls acting as wheels and bang.
you have a wr.
gimme a break.

i hope nkpro rules indeed. but it can only do that if it has redone the physics. judging from updates i dont see much about that, but we'll see.

this is not what i call better than lfs http://70gtmod.no-ip.com/index ... amp;type=post&id=2417

its ridiculous magnetic and stupid wipeout behaviour.
how is dat better than lfs tyre code? its not even close.

Quote from KiDCoDEa :

this is not what i call better than lfs http://70gtmod.no-ip.com/index ... amp;type=post&id=2417

its ridiculous magnetic and stupid wipeout behaviour.
how is dat better than lfs tyre code? its not even close.

The one thing I did not like about netKar is how funky the cars look 'in action' from the outside. Take the Modena or any other road car for that matter, and try to focus on how the suspension acts, how the car performs... it looks far too high and 'solid', and fluidity comes into play when braking, and it looks as if the car is floating when infact the car should really be playful. Just like it shows in the video KiD has there.

Watch a road car in LFS, and I'd have to say it is very believable... suspension, tire deformation, it all is in action, and doesn't look so floaty like in that video.

That video almost reminds me of those typical first stage development simulations you get from various people as a personal project -- Where it is a simple track, detailed car, and WIP physics... where it may be in the progress of having some pretty nifty realistic detailed physics and calculations, but things just don't look right.

Having watched the video I'd have to agree that it doesn't look real. LFS simulates road cars better, but TBH the attempt at single seaters is rather WIP when compared to NK or the N2003 GTP mod. The video doesn't really do the track justice, as Falkenberg looks way better than any LFS track on my computer, it may be that it's a GPL convert that just gives it that feel, but I have never really been that impressed with any of the tracks made in full 3D as opposed to the Papyrus system, not saying the LFS tracks are bad at all, just on my system they suffer a bit from the overly simple graphics style, whereas GTR/GTL suffer from trying to be overly flashy and photorealistic, and god knows what rFactors on, it won't work on my PC, but from the screenshots it looks like a cartoon.

NK may produce super sharp screenshots but those who have seen it in motion (video doesn't do it justice) will probably agree that it doesn't feel overdone like most new sims.

Another thing that seems pleasing about netkar is that looking through the hotlap forums higher downforce actually produces faster laps (on most circuits), no one has this made desire to produce cars that are completely undrivable. I feel there is something majorly wrong, as IRL no one drives with a car setup remotely like in LFS. There may be some people here who have experience in bigger single seaters to correct me, but thats what I know from small single seaters.

Quote from KiDCoDEa :

sure it is. thats why u can drive the car upside down (yes wheels to the air),

Hahahaha! That still bothers you, after all this time!? Didn't you ever wonder why you were the only person who had an issue with it? :spin:

Incomplete software tends to have incomplete elements in it, that's what defines it as incomplete. Slating it for that is beyond ridiculous.

Meanwhile, I agree that LFS does look a hell of a lot better on replays. The way the cars move around on external views is better than anything else around. The problems with LFS are in the subtlety of the physics engine, which wouldn't show up on a replay too well.

Quote from durbster :

Hahahaha! That still bothers you, after all this time!? Didn't you ever wonder why you were the only person who had an issue with it? :spin:

What is this driving upside down bug?

Like LFS netkar has some parts of tracks where one can fall through, the NK tracks are 3rd party addons for a free, very WIP sim. The LFS tracks are produced by a profesional, virtually finished product. I think this thread is turning into mindless slating.

As for the replays, I personally think NK looks stunning with the F3000 as it gets out of shape, it really looks like a real car wriggling about, whereas in LFS it looks like it's just a completely controled slide, and in NK replays the sound is fantastic (every other sim on the planet seems incapable of producing replays where one can here the engine, including my favourite N2003) and the cameras are not actually completely locked onto the centre of the car.

Quote from ajp71 :

The video doesn't really do the track justice, as Falkenberg looks way better than any LFS track on my computer

.....

it may be that it's a GPL convert that just gives it that feel, but I have never really been that impressed with any of the tracks made in full 3D as opposed to the Papyrus system, not saying the LFS tracks are bad at all, just on my system they suffer a bit from the overly simple graphics style, whereas GTR/GTL suffer from trying to be overly flashy and photorealistic, and god knows what rFactors on, it won't work on my PC, but from the screenshots it looks like a cartoon.

NK may produce super sharp screenshots but those who have seen it in motion (video doesn't do it justice) will probably agree that it doesn't feel overdone like most new sims.

You really think Netkar's track are better than LFS's, or other driving games? :zombie:

I mean... even GPL's age old track graphics look better than Netkar's. How is Netkar's tracks 'not overdone'... if anything, they are halfdone. I would call an overdone track with fancy uneeded special effects such as blink lights, kids playing in a nearby playground, and maybe some dolphins jumping in the ocean on the horizon...... but name a driving game that has that, not even LFS. I guess a really nice track must be a flat textured driving surface, plain grass, plain sky, simple trees and maybe throw in some spectators? illepall

Come on now... what else are you going to try and find about this current Netkar that is actually not that great at all? Amongst most serious sim-racers here, you have the strangest definition and expectation of a simulation.