2002.02_The Real Driving Simulator.pdf

ON TEST

Racer

REAL DRIVING

SIMULATORS

“Real driving”

simulators have been

all the rage on the

consoles over the

past few years, but

there’s a new

contender coming up

on the outside.

Simon Naish takes

the Linux version of

the real driving

simulator, Racer, for

a test drive

simulators over the past few years, the best

known of which being the Gran Turismo series

on the PSX and PS2. However these games aren’t

really all they’re cracked up to be – after all, what

good would a flight simulator be if the planes bounced

when they hit the ground at 200mph?

Back in 1998, Sierra released Grand Prix Legends

(GPL), a driving simulator based upon the 1967

Formula 1 season. 1967 was the last year that the cars

didn’t have wings or the associated downforce and the

science of race tyre technology was still in its infancy.

The result of this was very fast cars on very dangerous

tracks with no downforce and hardly any grip.

Needless to say the driver’s skill was enormous, the

racing extraordinary and frequently lethal. The problem

Sierra, and designer Papyrys, faced was that in 1998

no-one had a home computer that even came close to

the power needed to do the concept justice.

Nevertheless, GPL was exactly what a few very

dedicated petrol heads were looking for, and

innumerable Internet leagues formed. What’s more,

people started to make new graphics for the cars as

machines became powerful enough to run them.

New or more historically accurate reworkings of the

original tracks were made, as were track conversion

utilities. In short, the game prospered and still does,

thanks to a huge Internet community constantly

working to improve it.

Enter Racer

That’s all well and good, you may be saying, but

nothing on these lines runs on Linux. Nothing except

Racer, that is – a Free driving simulator written by

Ruud van Gaal. His vision was to create a new GPL-

style racer that would also enable people to add their

own cars and tracks, whilst modelling the physics of

the real machines as closely as possible. Luckily for us,

he decided to make it cross-platform from the outset.

Although much of the development is progressing

quicker on the Windows version (features such as

force feedback aren’t handled by Linux yet), the Linux

version is definitely keeping up.

The initial Racer download is two files; a data

tar.gz and an executable tar.gz. The executable was

compiled on ‘Best Linux’ with kernel 2.2.16-24 and

XFree86 4.0.1 with the nVidia OpenGL drivers. You

can download and compile the source code yourself,

get it at http://www.linuxracer.racesim.net .

The download also includes a track editor, car

modeller and tyre modeller. Unfortunately, these

aren’t stable on our test Linux box, though the

Windows versions seem fine.

The real beauty of this type of game/simulator and

LINUX MAGAZINE

Issue 17 • 2002

T here have been many so-called “real driving”

ON TEST

undrivable, and it feels like a lot of these would

remain pretty undrivable even with a steering wheel.

Maybe I’m just being pessimistic, but I’ll only know

for sure once I buy a force feedback wheel.

Racer

Supplier Racer

Price Free

Web http://www.linuxracer.

racesim.net

For For Very impressive

and expandable

Against Hard to control with

a gamepad

Fine tuning

Putting aside my poor choice in controller, you’ll find

that a lot of what you’ll find in Racer is very good

indeed. The physics model seems excellent, though

the tyres could grip a little more, for us mere mortals.

The superior car models also move in a very

convincing fashion and drifting is possible after some

practice. Of course, a lot seems to depend on your

choice of car and track.

Comparisons between the Windows and Linux

versions are inevitable, and in this case worthwhile.

Under Linux I got consistently higher frame rates,

with more graphics options on than in Windows.

However importing cars and tracks proved more

problematic under Linux. As the track editor wouldn’t

work I couldn’t add track cameras, and all tracks now

require at least one.

A lot of the additional cars were designed on

Windows, which doesn’t have a case sensitive

filesystem. As such, it’s often necessary to change the

case of some of the filenames. Check for QLOG.txt in

the car directory. This will list any errors and tell you

the name of the files Racer was looking for but

couldn’t find.

It’s also well worth fiddling with the audio.ini file. I

didn’t realise that the sounds were playing incorrectly

until I tried the program under Windows, whereupon

it became clear that the horrible skid sound was

actually a nice sound played back incorrectly – a

problem that was quickly fixed. Lastly playing with

the settings in gfx.ini can improve the look of the

game a lot with fog, mipmapping and motion blur

on the menu to name just a few of the options. Of

course you have to have a graphics card capable of

delivering the goods.

Racer is very impressive and it isn’t anywhere near

finished yet. There is no damage model or four-wheel

drive yet, and multiplayer racing isn’t fully

implemented as cars can’t crash into each other, but

these things will come. As development continues,

the car models and tracks will inevitably become

more refined, especially the physics and handling

side, and we have all this to look forward to.

rating

its community is the wealth of add-ons: so far we’ve

found 26 cars and 21 tracks. As you might expect,

these vary hugely in terms of quality, stability and

drivability, but that’s half the fun of downloading

them. Our advice would be to stick to the cars and

tracks on the linuxracer Web site to begin with. We

especially like the Celicas, which are very fast and

look amazing. If these aren’t to your taste there are

models of new Minis, Ferraris (lots of Ferraris), F1

cars, a Volvo estate, GT cars and rally cars.

All about control

The first thing to get set up is joystick input. Linux

will readily cope with a huge array of

joysticks/steering wheels or whatever other input

device you’d prefer to use. Whether or not they are

any good in a driving simulator is a different matter.

There are tips for setting up a joystick configuration

file if, like me, you want to try something with an

inordinate number of buttons. I successfully

configured a gamepad using the same buttons as I

would use in Gran Turismo in a very short time. If you

don’t have a joystick or steering wheel the game

defaults at start up to mouse control.

The problems inherent in using a gamepad become

evident as soon as you try to play. To generate full

lock in a real car, you must turn the wheel at least

one and a half times in either direction. In a racing

car this is often reduced to under half a turn. The

brake foot must deliver a sizeable thrust to lock the

brakes and the accelerator may be depressed several

inches. On a gamepad you can normally achieve full

look in about two centimetres of travel in either

direction; maximum breaking may be achieved in the

same distance, as can acceleration. All this means the

cars can be impossible to drive.

If you were to almost instantly apply full lock in a

car travelling at say, 80mph, it won’t turn, as you will

have exceeded the limit of the tyre’s grip. Instead

you’ll simply skid forwards in a straight line. Breaking

and accelerating with a gamepad generally provides

equally disastrous results. This is all faithfully

modelled in Racer and the results are rarely pretty.

Some cars are very forgiving, but other are rendered

Info

Linux Input Drivers homepage (for more

information on joysticks and driver)

http://atrey.karlin.mff.cuni.cz/~vojtech/input

Racer homepage

http://www.marketgraph.nl/gallery/racer

Issue 17 • 2002

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