Is Forumula 1: Beyond the Limit really that bad?

[Barone]

Also, I've heard that F1 Circus CD (coincidentally also by a Japanese company) is even worse.

F1 Circus CD is a broken POS. Please, do not compare it to F1 Beyond the Limits again... Ever.

[M4R14NO94]

Wasn't comparing it. Just brought it up since many people say that Beyond the Limit's crap.

[Barone]

I know, I was kidding with you.
By the way, people say a lot of shit.

[M4R14NO94]

Nah, that's okay.

And honestly seeing this thread now I'm realizing that Beyond the Limit was a quite realistic sim for its time, unlike F1 Circus CD which was basically a crappy Super Monaco GP ripoff like Ferrari Grand Prix Challenge/F1 Hero MD but even worse.

For the record, I haven't played any of those games (except for Ferrari GP/F1 Hero MD)

[sheath]

Hey, I thought F1 Circus were all overhead racers. I might have to pick up the CD game if it's anything like Super Monaco GP.

[M4R14NO94]

Yeah, with the exception of CD they were all overhead. Still, F1C-CD is kinda crappy.

[sheath]

Is there a first or third person perspective PCE-CD racer that is worth writing home about? All of the recommendations I've gotten over at PCenginefx.com were HuCards.

[Barone]

Yeah, with the exception of CD they were all overhead. Still, F1C-CD is kinda crappy.

The overhead ones actually are far better but still bad, ahahah.

Is there a first or third person perspective PCE-CD racer that is worth writing home about? All of the recommendations I've gotten over at PCenginefx.com were HuCards.

Only Rally Championship IMO.

[RedRaider]

IMHO, this game is horrible.

[oldskool]

I always liked Super Monaco GP so for those reasons I really liked this one. Control is similar but more detailed graphics, better music, more depth.

[bultje112]

super monaco gp is much more arcade. this is, as good a simulation as possible given the limits of the hardware.

[VERONICA5555]

Best Formula 1 game I have played is on N64, but I will have to be on the lookout for this one because I really love racing games.

My Sig speaks for itself. N64 didn't have this " controller" . Oh I forgot! F1 sucked.

[kool kitty89]

Wow, these videos are really showing off how much attention to detail Beyond the Limit really had. I'm also a lot more impressed with the use of the Graphics Coprocessor than I was. For some reason I thought there was no elevation, like in a Mode 7 game, but man these tracks go every direction the real tracks do. Very cool. I'm going to have to see if I can't get into this, I love 16-bit racers.

That's not the ASIC handling the "elevation" but just simple linescroll/raster effects as seen in cart games on the Genesis/SNES (among others -including Amiga).
However, the difference is with F1, Batman Returns, Batman And Robin, etc, that the ASIC does texture mapped ground that the MD VDP then performs the hill/curve effects on. (some Jaguar games use this too, including Atari Karts)

Mode 7 can do this as well, and this topic came up before (I think Tomaitheous mentioned it), and several people commented how odd it was that no SNES games seemed to take advantage of that.
However, I later found Speed Racer on the SNES, which appears to use that effect, but the framerate is terrible. (not sure why this is)

Sheath, no way!

1st: There's no way for the Genesis or the Sega CD CPU or both together do such a smooth scaling as you see on the trackside objects using software scaling. Find me a single game on the Genesis doing a scaling with similar amount of resized sprites/frame ratio.

2nd: You must be kidding about Road Rash. All games on the Genesis and the Sega CD one are an ugly mess, poorly programmed engines that scale like crap at a crawling framerate, using HORRIBLE colors and choppy as hell animation. Lotus II shows far superior software sprite scaling with much better framerate, at least in the single player mode. OutRun 2019 also shows much better trackside objects scaling and far superior framerate (despite of the western publisher fucking the original game by changing the speedometer to show stupid nonsense high speeds). In terms of color usage, speed sensation and multiplayer framerate none of them can even touch Street Racer. However, it has very simplified and sparse trackside ojects.

OTOH Skitchin' has pretty decent/smooth software scaling by comparison. Seems like an enhancement of techniques used in Road Rash. Better SFX too. (and 4 PCM channels mixed, and scaled note playback . . . too bad it just used that one guitar sample -not great and strains too much to reach certain notes)
The soundtrack is also a good deal better than Genesis Road Rash games IMO.

From comments from programmers in previous discussions, those EA games probably don't use raw realtime scaling (ie scaling objects to the screen in real time), but they do scale on the fly nevertheless. It's most likely that the game has the CPU continuously rendering scaled animation ahead of time and then DMAing it to VRAM as needed. (not unlike how games with compressed graphics decompress ahead of time into work RAM and then update VRAM as needed)

[Team Andromeda]

However, the difference is with F1, Batman Returns, Batman And Robin, etc, that the ASIC does texture mapped ground that the MD VDP then performs the hill/curve effects on

Cliffhanger uses the ASIC chip to tilt the floor I belive and there's no way Mode 7 could handle the water effect in the sewers

OTOH Skitchin' has pretty decent/smooth software scaling by comparison

No even a fair comparison. Given what F1 BTL is having to process in the background in terms of a full F1 grid line up of F1 car's, Dynamic weather, real time retirements ,Tire/engine wear and so on

From comments from programmers in previous discussions, those EA games probably don't use raw realtime scaling

No they don't . EA also planned to use their own ASIC chip for scaling in planned Mega Drive port of Wing Commander II - but was dropped due to costs - I believe

[A Black Falcon]

Cannondale Cup is another SNES game with "hill" effects; it's a Mode 7 bike racing game, and it's not flat! It also has a poor framerate though... way too hard, too.