No, creating an account and playing with the scripting and content creation tools is in no way, shape, or form applying to be a developer. You seem to know exactly what the problem is, so apply for a job (it's on their web site) and fix it because it you do know what the problem is I can just about 100% promise you will get a very good paying job there. Hint, you do not do this in world.
"I also couldn't find much to do as a newb (who presumably would learn much less about the interface, culture, or search capabilities than I would) so I didn't think the game was really "going" anywhere."
This is pretty much all you have to read in your post to figure out where you're coming from... and it is quite condescending at that. I'm very sorry to bust your bubble, but I have contact with new newbs (the vast majority NOT techies) every single day, and most of them have exactly 0 problem figuring out the interface, culture or search capabilities. If it's not for you, well that's fine, but that is no reason to throw something down and spit on it and the people who do "get it". I'm not even going to waste my time telling you all the wrong things your friend is doing. Basic newbie mistakes. "If it was done like this, if it was done like that" doesn't fix anything. You have to learn to make the most of what you have.. thought that was a basic life lesson.
Ah, another person that can think *past* "OMG!HAxoRz!!1!" and realize that copybot is, and always was, essentially a non-issue. Cool.:)
It really didn't hurt that all the whiners that went screaming to shut down their shops for a number of days really increased the exposure of those of us that saw no reason whatsoever to do so. I know my sales doubled overnight after that and have been on a steady climb ever since. So thanks.. I guess. LOL!
And I'm not saying you're wrong, just that this is how it is right now, and that all we can do is take their word on it that they're working to bring us a better experience all around. It's not thier fault that all the sheeple go running to buy up all their stuff when they announce they are raising prices because they are bringing in higher end servers for the sims. I don't see anything as fraud, any more than hype about anything else is fraud as long as it is backed up by the specified action and not hand waving and incantations. I know that they can make as much land as they want, just as you do, everytime they bring in the pallet load of servers to host it. I am simply trying to discuss (and I will not bash LL in my discussions.. they are experiencing serious growing pains, if that's not obvious to you let me know and I'll toss a pebble your way to wake you up;) ). They might not be doing things "the best way possible", but we can't say that they're not at least trying to figure out what that is. Regardless of anything else, I would hope you could agree that, while land is not a finite thing, that at the growth rate we're going at, the grid is on the verge of implosion atm, and I can understand not bringing land online to meet demand until they get their scaling problem in check. The poor asset server falls on it's face when we hit the 20k login *every single time*. I can feel when that happens every day. All of a sudden things start failing to rez, or rezzing very, very slowly. I would guess that is a higher priority than making sure noobs get their 512.
As far as the content available there being limited to what you say, let me suggest you look a bit further than the popular places listings (yuk). I think I have been to casino/club/*ingo type places about 3 times, and I have never had reason to go to any sexualy oriented places. There are plenty of good places and good content to spend time on. I know this because I do it all the time. Granted I may not be "average Jane" expecting to be amused and catered to, but I spend a lot of time building and creating (and no, copybot did not even register on my radar.. I scoffed at those who shut down their shops), when I'm not doing that I socialize and wander some of the more inspirational places such as Svarga, the particle lab (the occasional fireworks show is quite stress relieving) and Isle of Wyrms (likely the best community in SL) with the occasion stop in to play a bit of Darklife.
Here's an idea or two for you. Apply to LL to become a dev, and get them to implement your ideas, or get yourself a copy of Havok and show us all how it's done, because I can assure you, if it's done right you'll have a userbase to make you more than profitable:)... but when you get rich doing it, just make sure you IM me so that you can thank me properly;).
You mean tp has actually been working reliably for you the last few days?!? Congrats hehe. Heres to hoping for a better update this week (I think it's this week...).
It is tiresome to have to relog just to type in the sim you want to get to on the login page in order to go somewhere. The things I do for the love of the platform. Sigh.
Really, the only thing I can figure out about what you're saying is, is that you don't like the way they have the platform configured. Hey, if you don't like it, you're free to find something that better suits you. I like it. It's as comfortable as a raggy pair of blue jeans for me. Maybe, if they open source it some day, and allow people to run sims with truly custom configurations you can have your outer space sim. Until then, it's their baby, and I have no problem with how they are raising it (even if it has been running around with a bit of fever and runny nose for a little while now).
BTW, I've had the same neighbors and commercial sim mates for 6+ months now, and don't see that changing in the forseeable future. We all like where we are, we like each other, and we enjoy being around together and seeing what everyone is doing all the time. We do feed off of one anothers creative fires.
The servers and land are relative in that one sim (65k square meters) runs on one cpu on (at least in the last series of servers) quad cpu servers.
Does this help with whatever it is you're trying to figure out? I've not quite figured out exactly what these "artificial restrictions" you talk about are. When you buy webspace you get your 10GB of transfer, to do with what you will, when you buy land in SL you get your 114 prims, to do with what you will. I don't really see the difference in that, you simply buy what you need in both cases.
Because it's less expensive, and you have a nicer environment to call your virtual home.
To buy land from LL you have to look at this breakdown.. first off you have to have a premium membership, which is $9.95 a month if you pay monthly - $7.50 month quarterly or $6.00 month anually, which is offset somewhat by a weekly stipend of (currently) 300L which equates to aprox $57 a year. With a premium membership, you recieve free tier of 512 sq meters of land which will support 114 prims. This means you only have to buy the land, which if you're lucky first land (land which can only be bought by an av as it's first purchase of land) will come available to you for L$512 (512 lots will normally be seen going for L$5k-9k). Note that first land has been really scarce nowadays, and the landbarons are using every trick in the book to obtain them. So, the first piece of land seems cheap enough, and maintenance is free on it, but there is still the money you are paying every month to have the privelege of "owning" this very, very tiny, peice of land. Sooooo... you buy more (cuz it's hard to make anything nice with only 114 prim allowance) paying some very outrageous prices for land right now as we are in the midst of a serious land bubble. Ok, you've spent 10's or 100's of thousands of Linden (or equivelant cash) for your spot of land that is large enough to support a nice build for yourself. Here come the maintenance fees (known as tier)... $5 a month for an extra 512, up to pretty much whatever you want to pay. A relevent example.. an extra 4096 is $25 tier, which in addition to the free 512 give you aproximately the same prim allowance I have on the land I rent, right around 1k prims. I pay the equiveland of around $18 rent for my place, instead of the $26.5 to $35 a month fees plus purchase of land outright. Now.. if you're not a land baron, why would you buy land instead of renting?
I would certainly like to hear ideas about how to get a similar result differently. Please, do tell! I'm always up for a better thing.
I will certainly agree with you that there is *something* very broken in SL, though I don't know what it is.. if it's a bandwidth bottleneck or what somewhere. In spite of that I have no probs about paying what is asked of me for what I use. My shops do good, the money flows the correct direction.
I will, though, answer your questions literaly, just to give you my data point...
"why do people have this broken property metaphor?"
My best guess is that people are more comfortable with familiar surroundings. Having property is an easily understandable metaphor in our society.
"Virtual space is infinite, why buy into a system where it's artificially limited."
I must admit that I'm no too sure I really understand this question. From what I have experienced so far it seems there are some very challenging technical hurdles which limit how much each server can handle given the engine used (or possibly the way the engine is being used). So.. unless somebody is willing to provide unlimited servers and bandwidth for free I just don't understand what you are saying about infinite. I'm probably just incapable of thinking out of that box, or are you saying for everyone to run their own servers/sims (which may be possible some day, but today is not that day).
"Why "rent" a tiny plot from some virtual landlord who thereby controls your server resources?"
Because the only other choice is buying land from LL, who thereby control your server resources, not to mention that renting is more economical. I have almost as much control over "my" land as the owner, and the difference in the controls are nothing that I care about. The only REAL difference is that I can't re-sell the land. This is of exactly 0 concern to me.
"Why are acreage and CPU power linked?"
I have no idea what the technical limitations are as far as acreage and CPU.. the closest thing I can come up with for an answer is, each sim supports 15k+ prims, and depending on the sim settings between 40-100 people on the sim simultaneously. I can bear witness to the server falling over on many occasions while at or near this limit and lots of times, nowhere near the limit but caused by heavy activity such as greifing elsewhere on the grid. As weird as it may seem to some, you can be somewhere on a private sim, and "feel" something serious is happening on the mainland. This is when you make sure you take a copy of whatever it is you're building to inventory as a backup... just in case.
I'm also curious about what you mean when you say "have people paying maintenance fees on their creations when they total a few K in a database". Noone pays any fees for "their creations". The only fees paid are premium membership, and land maintenance (and I can assure you that using any land is entirely an option). My guess is that most of the land mantenance goes towards bandwidth. I can't begin to imagine how much bw a sim uses in a month, but I can assure you it's a LOT. I have cleared my cache, then looked after a day or 2 and have my 1 gig cache full. This is a world that is 100% streamed.
"However, what happened was that someone else humiliated her in public. *She did nothing wrong*."
Umm.. she might not have done anything wrong *at the event*, but let me be the first (evidently) to enlighten you that it doesn't take a whole lot of looking to find a whole lot of people that do not like a whole lot of things that she has done in her quest to accumulate a whole lot of land and make a whole lot of money.
There is more than one reason that people buy virtual propery. A couple of the most common reasons are...
People spend real money buying property because the propery makes them real money in return. People want a place to do with as they please, and having your own land gives you that freedom.
I myself, rent the space that I need. I get what I need for the least $$ output (though I have never put any money in other than like, buying $5 or so worth of L$ just to become payment verified). I do not have to pay a monthly fee, and I have many more resources at my disposal than having a premium membership + land cost + monthly maintenance on what would be an equivelant amount of land. The on caveat is that I have a landlord (no, it is NOT Anshe as I will not do business with her) to consider, which is really not a downside at all. We are very like-minded about what is to be on the land, and I do not feel it a restriction to myself, but protection in that I know I will not wake up one morning, log on and find a stripjoint next door, or a mall/club filled up with camping/dancing zombies sucking the server resouces dry to the point I can't even walk in my own yard.
There are some constraints you need to be aware of concerning the second life building tools. The main one that is relevant in this case is that when using flexprims, as was witnessed here by the umm.. flexing of the members.. only one end can appear to be solidly attached to any other prim. I say appear to be, because any prim attached to the flexible end will stay in it's inert position while the flexprim does it's own little dance in the wind. This would result, in this case, in the base of the member wagging about, while the testicles would remain solidly in place. You can use your imagination to see how this would not quite have the desired effect:).
It might well require more processing power to render the cars differently.. but this has been no hurdle to games which do indeed show car damage.
I really wish it would penalize people who do things like utilize "rolling guardrails" to get around corners, as it is there have to be way too many checks and balances for online competitions (which does seem strange for a game that has historically had no online head to head ability, but which I can assure you does happen on a regular basis). So many rules.. 2 tires on track at all times, no touching other cars or guardrails, replays required for verification, etc.. etc. Makes for a WHOLE lot of work for the people manning the events.
Correction.. I have Gran Prix Legends.. not GT Legends. Looks like I will have to look into getting my FIRST piece of Simbin's software hehe. Was looking on their home page and thought.. "I have that" then hit submit and realized.. "no I don't". Brain glitch.
Hmm. Might have to spring for a ff wheel and check it out then. I did try other wheels, just didn't have the patience to get used to it after so many years at the analog sticks. Then again, I may not, 'cause Forza 2 is upcoming =D. As far as PGR goes.. I've kinda fallen in love with it's drifting style.. addicted to the Kudos hehe. PGR is not really a sim so I know I'm comparing apples to carrots, but it is smooth as butter, just too much freakin fun.
I have GT Legends. I need to look into getting more of Simbin's software.
Out of curiosity.. if you read this reply, what are your thoughts on SCGT(pc)?
Hmmm.. one would think so, but how many others do simulate clutch usage? I know SRS has a clutch button, but I think it's more for popping into a drift than actually being used as a clutch.. and I also would not consider labeling it a simulator as it's a rather average arcade racer.
I can state that I would take PGR or Forza (or TOCA, Collin McRae, Rallisport, SegaGT etc) over GT any day (and do hehe).
Indeed using the ball and side of your foot is a common way to do it, but I was taught from an early age (started driving at 12.. egads.. driving for 30 years now) to always use the upper part of your foot for braking as you have more control over modulation that way.. not to mention I've been in many cars, but none with the pedal placement to allow reaching the gas while your heel is on the brake. I've only run 4 cars on track, so you've seen many more setups than I, but I've never known anybody that said they used their heel.. then again it was never a huge topic of conversation.
I think it's more an issue of how many cars are in each game, and the licensing of each model. It may be more cost efficient to pay for the luxury of busting up a few dozen models than for several hundred. I do not know the specific legalities of this, or if there have been updates in their stance on this, but I have run a reasonable well known GT forum for 5+ years and this is the commonly stated thing about damage, even from the game devs years ago on the official Sony forums (the old, now defunct ones).
Your problem with racers seems to me to stem from the fact that you try to talk like you know what you're talking about without actually KNOWING what you're talking about. Previous posters are correct, heel/toe.. as known by the terminology of heel/toe (or heel-toe.. or whatever combination of syntax you care to use) is a shifting technique. And yes, I *have* been on a few tracks in my days. I also know many racers and not ONE of them would refer to what you do as heel/toe. That would be called trail braking, which you do to shift the weight of the vehicle.
Wannabees are notorious for talking the talk without knowing the walk. This applies to many areas of expertise.
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No, creating an account and playing with the scripting and content creation tools is in no way, shape, or form applying to be a developer. You seem to know exactly what the problem is, so apply for a job (it's on their web site) and fix it because it you do know what the problem is I can just about 100% promise you will get a very good paying job there. Hint, you do not do this in world.
"I also couldn't find much to do as a newb (who presumably would learn much less about the interface, culture, or search capabilities than I would) so I didn't think the game was really "going" anywhere."
This is pretty much all you have to read in your post to figure out where you're coming from... and it is quite condescending at that. I'm very sorry to bust your bubble, but I have contact with new newbs (the vast majority NOT techies) every single day, and most of them have exactly 0 problem figuring out the interface, culture or search capabilities. If it's not for you, well that's fine, but that is no reason to throw something down and spit on it and the people who do "get it". I'm not even going to waste my time telling you all the wrong things your friend is doing. Basic newbie mistakes. "If it was done like this, if it was done like that" doesn't fix anything. You have to learn to make the most of what you have.. thought that was a basic life lesson.
Kinda like this?
http://www.knowprose.com/node/17268
Ah, another person that can think *past* "OMG!HAxoRz!!1!" and realize that copybot is, and always was, essentially a non-issue. Cool. :)
It really didn't hurt that all the whiners that went screaming to shut down their shops for a number of days really increased the exposure of those of us that saw no reason whatsoever to do so. I know my sales doubled overnight after that and have been on a steady climb ever since. So thanks.. I guess. LOL!
There are MANY of us that "get PAID (real money) to do THAT (virtual world stuff)". Every day, all day long. I'll take it.
And I'm not saying you're wrong, just that this is how it is right now, and that all we can do is take their word on it that they're working to bring us a better experience all around. It's not thier fault that all the sheeple go running to buy up all their stuff when they announce they are raising prices because they are bringing in higher end servers for the sims. I don't see anything as fraud, any more than hype about anything else is fraud as long as it is backed up by the specified action and not hand waving and incantations. I know that they can make as much land as they want, just as you do, everytime they bring in the pallet load of servers to host it. I am simply trying to discuss (and I will not bash LL in my discussions.. they are experiencing serious growing pains, if that's not obvious to you let me know and I'll toss a pebble your way to wake you up ;) ). They might not be doing things "the best way possible", but we can't say that they're not at least trying to figure out what that is. Regardless of anything else, I would hope you could agree that, while land is not a finite thing, that at the growth rate we're going at, the grid is on the verge of implosion atm, and I can understand not bringing land online to meet demand until they get their scaling problem in check. The poor asset server falls on it's face when we hit the 20k login *every single time*. I can feel when that happens every day. All of a sudden things start failing to rez, or rezzing very, very slowly. I would guess that is a higher priority than making sure noobs get their 512.
:)... but when you get rich doing it, just make sure you IM me so that you can thank me properly ;).
As far as the content available there being limited to what you say, let me suggest you look a bit further than the popular places listings (yuk). I think I have been to casino/club/*ingo type places about 3 times, and I have never had reason to go to any sexualy oriented places. There are plenty of good places and good content to spend time on. I know this because I do it all the time. Granted I may not be "average Jane" expecting to be amused and catered to, but I spend a lot of time building and creating (and no, copybot did not even register on my radar.. I scoffed at those who shut down their shops), when I'm not doing that I socialize and wander some of the more inspirational places such as Svarga, the particle lab (the occasional fireworks show is quite stress relieving) and Isle of Wyrms (likely the best community in SL) with the occasion stop in to play a bit of Darklife.
Here's an idea or two for you. Apply to LL to become a dev, and get them to implement your ideas, or get yourself a copy of Havok and show us all how it's done, because I can assure you, if it's done right you'll have a userbase to make you more than profitable
You mean tp has actually been working reliably for you the last few days?!? Congrats hehe. Heres to hoping for a better update this week (I think it's this week...).
It is tiresome to have to relog just to type in the sim you want to get to on the login page in order to go somewhere. The things I do for the love of the platform. Sigh.
Really, the only thing I can figure out about what you're saying is, is that you don't like the way they have the platform configured. Hey, if you don't like it, you're free to find something that better suits you. I like it. It's as comfortable as a raggy pair of blue jeans for me. Maybe, if they open source it some day, and allow people to run sims with truly custom configurations you can have your outer space sim. Until then, it's their baby, and I have no problem with how they are raising it (even if it has been running around with a bit of fever and runny nose for a little while now).
BTW, I've had the same neighbors and commercial sim mates for 6+ months now, and don't see that changing in the forseeable future. We all like where we are, we like each other, and we enjoy being around together and seeing what everyone is doing all the time. We do feed off of one anothers creative fires.
The servers and land are relative in that one sim (65k square meters) runs on one cpu on (at least in the last series of servers) quad cpu servers.
Does this help with whatever it is you're trying to figure out? I've not quite figured out exactly what these "artificial restrictions" you talk about are. When you buy webspace you get your 10GB of transfer, to do with what you will, when you buy land in SL you get your 114 prims, to do with what you will. I don't really see the difference in that, you simply buy what you need in both cases.
Because it's less expensive, and you have a nicer environment to call your virtual home.
To buy land from LL you have to look at this breakdown.. first off you have to have a premium membership, which is $9.95 a month if you pay monthly - $7.50 month quarterly or $6.00 month anually, which is offset somewhat by a weekly stipend of (currently) 300L which equates to aprox $57 a year. With a premium membership, you recieve free tier of 512 sq meters of land which will support 114 prims. This means you only have to buy the land, which if you're lucky first land (land which can only be bought by an av as it's first purchase of land) will come available to you for L$512 (512 lots will normally be seen going for L$5k-9k). Note that first land has been really scarce nowadays, and the landbarons are using every trick in the book to obtain them. So, the first piece of land seems cheap enough, and maintenance is free on it, but there is still the money you are paying every month to have the privelege of "owning" this very, very tiny, peice of land. Sooooo... you buy more (cuz it's hard to make anything nice with only 114 prim allowance) paying some very outrageous prices for land right now as we are in the midst of a serious land bubble. Ok, you've spent 10's or 100's of thousands of Linden (or equivelant cash) for your spot of land that is large enough to support a nice build for yourself. Here come the maintenance fees (known as tier)... $5 a month for an extra 512, up to pretty much whatever you want to pay. A relevent example.. an extra 4096 is $25 tier, which in addition to the free 512 give you aproximately the same prim allowance I have on the land I rent, right around 1k prims. I pay the equiveland of around $18 rent for my place, instead of the $26.5 to $35 a month fees plus purchase of land outright. Now.. if you're not a land baron, why would you buy land instead of renting?
I would certainly like to hear ideas about how to get a similar result differently. Please, do tell! I'm always up for a better thing.
I will certainly agree with you that there is *something* very broken in SL, though I don't know what it is.. if it's a bandwidth bottleneck or what somewhere. In spite of that I have no probs about paying what is asked of me for what I use. My shops do good, the money flows the correct direction.
I will, though, answer your questions literaly, just to give you my data point...
"why do people have this broken property metaphor?"
My best guess is that people are more comfortable with familiar surroundings. Having property is an easily understandable metaphor in our society.
"Virtual space is infinite, why buy into a system where it's artificially limited."
I must admit that I'm no too sure I really understand this question. From what I have experienced so far it seems there are some very challenging technical hurdles which limit how much each server can handle given the engine used (or possibly the way the engine is being used). So.. unless somebody is willing to provide unlimited servers and bandwidth for free I just don't understand what you are saying about infinite. I'm probably just incapable of thinking out of that box, or are you saying for everyone to run their own servers/sims (which may be possible some day, but today is not that day).
"Why "rent" a tiny plot from some virtual landlord who thereby controls your server resources?"
Because the only other choice is buying land from LL, who thereby control your server resources, not to mention that renting is more economical. I have almost as much control over "my" land as the owner, and the difference in the controls are nothing that I care about. The only REAL difference is that I can't re-sell the land. This is of exactly 0 concern to me.
"Why are acreage and CPU power linked?"
I have no idea what the technical limitations are as far as acreage and CPU.. the closest thing I can come up with for an answer is, each sim supports 15k+ prims, and depending on the sim settings between 40-100 people on the sim simultaneously. I can bear witness to the server falling over on many occasions while at or near this limit and lots of times, nowhere near the limit but caused by heavy activity such as greifing elsewhere on the grid. As weird as it may seem to some, you can be somewhere on a private sim, and "feel" something serious is happening on the mainland. This is when you make sure you take a copy of whatever it is you're building to inventory as a backup... just in case.
I'm also curious about what you mean when you say "have people paying maintenance fees on their creations when they total a few K in a database". Noone pays any fees for "their creations". The only fees paid are premium membership, and land maintenance (and I can assure you that using any land is entirely an option). My guess is that most of the land mantenance goes towards bandwidth. I can't begin to imagine how much bw a sim uses in a month, but I can assure you it's a LOT. I have cleared my cache, then looked after a day or 2 and have my 1 gig cache full. This is a world that is 100% streamed.
Too true.
"However, what happened was that someone else humiliated her in public. *She did nothing wrong*."
Umm.. she might not have done anything wrong *at the event*, but let me be the first (evidently) to enlighten you that it doesn't take a whole lot of looking to find a whole lot of people that do not like a whole lot of things that she has done in her quest to accumulate a whole lot of land and make a whole lot of money.
Just checking to see if you realize that this person.. whom you are so concerned about the dignity of.. started her SL career as a hooker.
There is more than one reason that people buy virtual propery. A couple of the most common reasons are...
People spend real money buying property because the propery makes them real money in return.
People want a place to do with as they please, and having your own land gives you that freedom.
I myself, rent the space that I need. I get what I need for the least $$ output (though I have never put any money in other than like, buying $5 or so worth of L$ just to become payment verified). I do not have to pay a monthly fee, and I have many more resources at my disposal than having a premium membership + land cost + monthly maintenance on what would be an equivelant amount of land. The on caveat is that I have a landlord (no, it is NOT Anshe as I will not do business with her) to consider, which is really not a downside at all. We are very like-minded about what is to be on the land, and I do not feel it a restriction to myself, but protection in that I know I will not wake up one morning, log on and find a stripjoint next door, or a mall/club filled up with camping/dancing zombies sucking the server resouces dry to the point I can't even walk in my own yard.
There are some constraints you need to be aware of concerning the second life building tools. The main one that is relevant in this case is that when using flexprims, as was witnessed here by the umm.. flexing of the members.. only one end can appear to be solidly attached to any other prim. I say appear to be, because any prim attached to the flexible end will stay in it's inert position while the flexprim does it's own little dance in the wind. This would result, in this case, in the base of the member wagging about, while the testicles would remain solidly in place. You can use your imagination to see how this would not quite have the desired effect :).
It might well require more processing power to render the cars differently.. but this has been no hurdle to games which do indeed show car damage.
I really wish it would penalize people who do things like utilize "rolling guardrails" to get around corners, as it is there have to be way too many checks and balances for online competitions (which does seem strange for a game that has historically had no online head to head ability, but which I can assure you does happen on a regular basis). So many rules.. 2 tires on track at all times, no touching other cars or guardrails, replays required for verification, etc.. etc. Makes for a WHOLE lot of work for the people manning the events.
Interesting. Will have to look into that. I have GPL already.
Correction.. I have Gran Prix Legends.. not GT Legends. Looks like I will have to look into getting my FIRST piece of Simbin's software hehe. Was looking on their home page and thought.. "I have that" then hit submit and realized.. "no I don't". Brain glitch.
Hmm. Might have to spring for a ff wheel and check it out then. I did try other wheels, just didn't have the patience to get used to it after so many years at the analog sticks. Then again, I may not, 'cause Forza 2 is upcoming =D. As far as PGR goes.. I've kinda fallen in love with it's drifting style.. addicted to the Kudos hehe. PGR is not really a sim so I know I'm comparing apples to carrots, but it is smooth as butter, just too much freakin fun.
I have GT Legends. I need to look into getting more of Simbin's software.
Out of curiosity.. if you read this reply, what are your thoughts on SCGT(pc)?
Hmmm.. one would think so, but how many others do simulate clutch usage? I know SRS has a clutch button, but I think it's more for popping into a drift than actually being used as a clutch.. and I also would not consider labeling it a simulator as it's a rather average arcade racer.
I can state that I would take PGR or Forza (or TOCA, Collin McRae, Rallisport, SegaGT etc) over GT any day (and do hehe).
Indeed using the ball and side of your foot is a common way to do it, but I was taught from an early age (started driving at 12.. egads.. driving for 30 years now) to always use the upper part of your foot for braking as you have more control over modulation that way.. not to mention I've been in many cars, but none with the pedal placement to allow reaching the gas while your heel is on the brake. I've only run 4 cars on track, so you've seen many more setups than I, but I've never known anybody that said they used their heel.. then again it was never a huge topic of conversation.
Not nearly enough.. but I did get a mild thrill out of it. :D
I think it's more an issue of how many cars are in each game, and the licensing of each model. It may be more cost efficient to pay for the luxury of busting up a few dozen models than for several hundred. I do not know the specific legalities of this, or if there have been updates in their stance on this, but I have run a reasonable well known GT forum for 5+ years and this is the commonly stated thing about damage, even from the game devs years ago on the official Sony forums (the old, now defunct ones).
There will be no damage system in GT until the car manufacturers allow their cars to be shown all broke'd up.
Your problem with racers seems to me to stem from the fact that you try to talk like you know what you're talking about without actually KNOWING what you're talking about. Previous posters are correct, heel/toe.. as known by the terminology of heel/toe (or heel-toe.. or whatever combination of syntax you care to use) is a shifting technique. And yes, I *have* been on a few tracks in my days. I also know many racers and not ONE of them would refer to what you do as heel/toe. That would be called trail braking, which you do to shift the weight of the vehicle.
Wannabees are notorious for talking the talk without knowing the walk. This applies to many areas of expertise.