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- Jan 24, 2000
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This is my first posting back after the show and right away I want to tell you about the wheel.
But first, why were we doing what we were doing?
The Xbox 360 is the first easy to use and (soon to be) readily available HD source in the UK. We wanted to kill two birds by both having a cool HD source and also a competition to spice things up. I think our games theme was maybe a first at the Bristol Show and I hope it demonstrated that gaming has a role to play in what we all enjoy as part of our 'sound and vision'
home entertainment.
We chose PGR3 because it's a firm favourite with folks of all ages and an obvious competition.
We chose the Atom because it has better grip than our favourite the F50. Using the Ferrari would mean some people would be doing doughnuts 4 minutes into their lap and waste too much time.
Also we had to choose a car with an engine sound tollerable for 7 hours a day for 3 days!!
We chose the Big Apple Loop because it has interesting scenery, a great subwoofer moment after turn 4 and is relatively short.
We thought it was a great idea and a real scoop to have 1 of only 4 Joytech 360 wheels in existance available for you guys to try. I also hoped that it would even the competition up.
When we tried the wheel on Thursday we were really unhappy with the dead spot and considered not using it because we didn't want people to come away from our stand with a negative experience.
But we decided to persevere for two reasons. First, we said we'd be using the wheel and second because with the dead spot it actually made it an interesting challenge.
The problem came when a manic little man thought that by bashing the wheel into it's end stop, he could shove the armco out of the way. And the wheel died there and then. There were a couple of guys waiting for a lap who witnessed it. By that time we had quite a lot of people who had used the wheel.
Since we didn't have a back up wheel, our only option was to continue with exactly the same setup but with the joypad.
We're going to subtract the difference between the average times with and without the wheel from the times with the wheel to remove the handicap.
(We kept the entries with the wheel separate from those without).
I can only apologise to those people who raced with the wheel who might feel aggrieved, but I think doing the maths adjustment will be a fair and accurate representation of your skill.
We tried hard to make sure you enjoyed your laps while getting as many in as possible. To that end we (for nearly all of the time) had one person handing out the racing forms and ushering folks into the room (so that we wouldn't upset our neighbour); we had one person instructing on how to do the lap and getting it going, and we had one person noting the lap times down (and giving away pens and keyrings).
The traffic in the room was just about right. Most of the time we had a steady stream of people through. Any more and the queue would have become unmanageable.
I don't have exact numbers for the throughput, yet, but I think we had well over 300 people race.
Over all I'm very happy with the way things went. I'm proud of how Lee, Mandy and Vicki helped run a smooth operation and I hope we impressed punters, other exhibitors and the organisers alike.
Thanks to <a href="http://www.toshiba.co.uk/" target="_blank">Toshiba</a>, <a href="http://www.hyundaiq.com/" target="_blank">Hyundai</a>, <a href="http://www.yamaha-uk.com/" target="_blank">Yamaha</a>, <a href="http://www.av-sales.co.uk/" target="_blank">AV Sales</a>, <a href="http://www.play.com/" target="_blank">Play.com</a> and <a href="http://www.chord.co.uk/" target="_blank">Chord</a> for donating these fantastic prizes. Their help and support made the stand what it was.
But first, why were we doing what we were doing?
The Xbox 360 is the first easy to use and (soon to be) readily available HD source in the UK. We wanted to kill two birds by both having a cool HD source and also a competition to spice things up. I think our games theme was maybe a first at the Bristol Show and I hope it demonstrated that gaming has a role to play in what we all enjoy as part of our 'sound and vision'
home entertainment.
We chose PGR3 because it's a firm favourite with folks of all ages and an obvious competition.
We chose the Atom because it has better grip than our favourite the F50. Using the Ferrari would mean some people would be doing doughnuts 4 minutes into their lap and waste too much time.
Also we had to choose a car with an engine sound tollerable for 7 hours a day for 3 days!!
We chose the Big Apple Loop because it has interesting scenery, a great subwoofer moment after turn 4 and is relatively short.
We thought it was a great idea and a real scoop to have 1 of only 4 Joytech 360 wheels in existance available for you guys to try. I also hoped that it would even the competition up.
When we tried the wheel on Thursday we were really unhappy with the dead spot and considered not using it because we didn't want people to come away from our stand with a negative experience.
But we decided to persevere for two reasons. First, we said we'd be using the wheel and second because with the dead spot it actually made it an interesting challenge.
The problem came when a manic little man thought that by bashing the wheel into it's end stop, he could shove the armco out of the way. And the wheel died there and then. There were a couple of guys waiting for a lap who witnessed it. By that time we had quite a lot of people who had used the wheel.
Since we didn't have a back up wheel, our only option was to continue with exactly the same setup but with the joypad.
We're going to subtract the difference between the average times with and without the wheel from the times with the wheel to remove the handicap.
(We kept the entries with the wheel separate from those without).
I can only apologise to those people who raced with the wheel who might feel aggrieved, but I think doing the maths adjustment will be a fair and accurate representation of your skill.
We tried hard to make sure you enjoyed your laps while getting as many in as possible. To that end we (for nearly all of the time) had one person handing out the racing forms and ushering folks into the room (so that we wouldn't upset our neighbour); we had one person instructing on how to do the lap and getting it going, and we had one person noting the lap times down (and giving away pens and keyrings).
The traffic in the room was just about right. Most of the time we had a steady stream of people through. Any more and the queue would have become unmanageable.
I don't have exact numbers for the throughput, yet, but I think we had well over 300 people race.
Over all I'm very happy with the way things went. I'm proud of how Lee, Mandy and Vicki helped run a smooth operation and I hope we impressed punters, other exhibitors and the organisers alike.
Thanks to <a href="http://www.toshiba.co.uk/" target="_blank">Toshiba</a>, <a href="http://www.hyundaiq.com/" target="_blank">Hyundai</a>, <a href="http://www.yamaha-uk.com/" target="_blank">Yamaha</a>, <a href="http://www.av-sales.co.uk/" target="_blank">AV Sales</a>, <a href="http://www.play.com/" target="_blank">Play.com</a> and <a href="http://www.chord.co.uk/" target="_blank">Chord</a> for donating these fantastic prizes. Their help and support made the stand what it was.