Another Drew

Anybody out there play Gran Turismo 2 and also driven at the real Laguna Seca?

I was just wondering if driving through GT2's Laguna Seca is any good for getting familiar with real Laguna Seca.

Andrew Lee<p>00 S4
APR chip
MTM catback
18X8.5 Fikse FM/5
APR's coilover (on order)
Shopping for brakes

s4wood

I have driven both....it probably helps in some small way...<p><a href="http://registry.audiworld.com/audi/registry/details.asp?car=3821"><br><br>
<img SRC="http://pictureposter.audiworld.com/AudiWorldPics/2000/ss_s4sig1.jpg"<br><br>
Steve S.
00 Nogaro S4
NorCal Audi Club
http://www.norcalaudiclub.org

Corey S

...I remember something about the lap times being a little short for some of the cars I've driven in GT2. I can't remember any examples off the top of my head, but I think there were up to 15 second discrepancies.<p>Corey S
00 Nogaro S4

Cameron

I was at a graphics & video simulation dinner a few months ago at Il Fornaio (someone from Sun's server group was the keynote and did an impressive on-the-fly render demo, was hoping Sharon would stop by with the Sun folks) in Palo Alto with two of the consultants who helped with the Laguna Seca course and the Seattle road course. Here are some interesting comments that came up during the discussion:

The main problem with Laguna Seca is that the elevation changes cannot be simulated properly and even the basic tire is better than what is available for most of the cars in the GT2 inventory. Hence, while elevation changes affect acceleration, they do not affect revs realistically - making for that feeling that fourth must be the ultimate gear in the S4 whereas at the track you'd likely be in third for half of those situations. The lengths of the last two short straights were redesigned for the simulation, and the pitch was toned-down in a number of places so that you wouldn't keep seeing the masked underside of stiff cars on the replay (you still see a good bit of the GT1 cars' bellies).

As you can probably tell (at least if you've lived in Seattle), the circuit was designed to be a very free-flowing roadway where none exists. This is why the entrance at the Y to the left appears to go right through where a bank building would be in real life, etc.

In general, changes were made to improve gameplay where the simulation aspect would not be affected in any meaningful way. The net length of Laguna is identical to real life, allegedly, so in theory the times should be similar.

As good a driver as Corey is, I have a feeling that in addition to the slightly different course and amazingly good digitized tires he might push his car a bit harder when it's six inches long and can be reset afterward than he would if it were real gravel against his real S4...

For what it's worth, my dad's best times in a stock Elan come within three seconds of my best times in a stock MkI Elan S2 in GT2...

Cameron

Cameron

If anyone knows know, the person who showed up was replaying an on-the-fly render demo from a major show (COMDEX?) on a laptop and the medium was apparently DVD (played from a CD/DVD drive).

Any idea how to write video (from a standard editor like Premiere, hopefully) to DVD and what video houses could do something like this? I presume this was a many-example demo given to an entire sales group, but I'm looking to write a video I've been working on to DVD in a run of maybe thirty or forty discs... ?

No one seems willing to do a DVD run of less than 200 copies.

Out of luck so far,
Cameron

SIR VBall

If your "DVD" movie is less than 600MB and you only play it on computers with DVD players, then you can press your DVD movie to a CDR or CDRW.

Cameron

... currently on a RAID5 array, needs to be dumped onto a DVD. In Premiere format but could converted...

Somebody's gotta have an answer??

fastm3

Play the game but don't think you have mastered Laguna Seca after playing the game. There is nothing similar to actually driving on that track.

britoki (Brian T)

DivX and DIVX are two different things. DivX is the hack that was assembled by mixing MPEG4 video codec with MP3 sound codec. DIVX is the failed pay-to-play DVD.

DivX is becoming really popular among hacker circles due to its size and quality. People say the quality for DivX exceeds video CD but falls way short of true DVD. You need a computer to play it, and you need to use hacked software to use it (which is why I won't use it, who knows what the software really does), but people are getting full movies into single CDs using it.

For more real-world applications, you can try DVD-RAM. I haven't heard much testing going on about the DVD-RAMs although I did see some blurbs that it is now available. Not very cost effective though since I think that each blank was circa $30.

Audiboy

but as Corey mentioned, the time it takes to go around Laguna Seca is much faster on the video game. It could be because you don't care about crashing so you drive a bit faster. I took a stock A4 2.8 around GT2 at like 1:45, but I have not seen any of the A4ers get past 2:00 for real. Corey's S4 done it in like 1:55.