Forgive the snipping of the bulk of your post because it was a great description of what F1 & 2 is.

Speaking for myself, I actually don't mind Fallout 3, taken for what it is. If it had been called something else, been a different or alternate IP, it wouldn't have bugged me so much. It's a fine open world exploratory shooter with an ok story (for a shooter). Fallout 1 and 2 had *entirely* different gameplay that a fair number of people liked just fine as-is, so when Fallout 3 went the direction it did, keeping essentially only the theme and some sound assets intact, it irked folks like myself. When I got done with Fallout 2, I wanted more of the same. What I got was not what I wanted but what made Bethesda money. That's why I post whenever possible in a butthurt manner in threads with this topic.

Fallout 1 was a technically antiquated VGA (that's right, 640x480, 256 colours) post-apocalyptic turn-based tactical RPG where you could not control you team mates during combat. It was a bit buggy (and so was F2). It was Mad Max, without cars.

And yet.

Fallout is arguably the best world-building work in the history of video games. People are probably going to dispute that, but most other games are built on pre-existing lore or works, or do not have that scope*. Fallout built its world pretty much from scratch, conflating a pre-war 1950's, golden-era, overly-optimistic world-view with the bleak desolation of the nuclear holocaust that ensued (to clarify for those who really know nothing about Fallout: in this universe a nuclear war happened in the 50s**. all that's left is from that era). Beside its content which was plentiful in and of itself, this created a contrasted, yet highly coherent and mature world (and by mature I don't just mean killing friendly NPC, I mean doing Morally Very Bad Things that don't necessarily result in graphic scenes). An open world that you could roam freely, be surprised by a new discovery that you made, and at the same time find these discoveries to fit perfectly with the game's logic. In most large games you just access new areas or are carried by the story, in Fallout you would go "Holy shit I'm in the middle of a city populated by centenarian ghouls!", shortly followed by "ho, of course it's full of ghouls, that's perfectly normal". There are not many games that have this mix of unexpected/logical and dark/humorous content.

Fallout 2 had the same ho-my-God-how-could-they-get-away-with-it VGA engine (so next to zero evolution there), but quadrupled the world map (with a minimum overlap with the one from F1) and brought it fifty or so years forward, expanding the world greatly (there are now rival quasi-city-states, and your action may influence their future), while also building on the first one: some antagonists 'classes' from F1 have now grown their own identity and became NPC, and some characters are still around -- a young character you saved in F1 went back to her settlement, became its leader, built it into a town, and is now in the process of expanding it into a new state...So Fallout 2 is basically the same game, except they did that one important thing: push the game world's boundaries even more. You could never guess what next city would be like, but you could bet it would have some crazy shit in it, and yet somehow still make sense.

That's why many people don't like Fallout 3. It is not in itself a bad game, but comparatively, it's kind of coasting. Also it's too damn easy.

I'm sorry, I got carried away, you were asking if you should play the previous ones? No, you 'should' not. But you could, and for F1 & F2 you would certainly not lose your time if you know what you're getting into. And if you don't, at least go and watch their intro on Youtube, they'll give you the feel of the world.

* Possible contenders in terms of "original video game world": Elder Scrolls (vast, but less original), Deus ex (not as large), Bioshock (same), Final Fantasy (original and vast, but not as complex). Any other idea?
** Technically not the 1950s, but in practice the 50s + a bunch of high tech gizmo.

Well, yes, but it's not unusual for racing drivers to be uncomfortable when other people are driving.

What Max was actually saying in the tunnel was how fast he would go in his F1 car, and where he would brake.

I scrolled to the bottom of that page, and what did I see? Listings of WOMAN'S bantam weight, and bantam weight! It seems they DO have 'woman's divisions' separately after all.
From the ufc.com page

Women's Strawweight Joanna Jedrzejczyk March 14, 2015 (UFC 185: Pettis vs Dos Anjos) 0
Flyweight Demetrious Johnson September 23, 2012 (UFC 152) 5
Bantamweight TJ Dillashaw May 24, 2014 (UFC 173: Barao VS. Dillashaw) 1
Women's Bantamweight Ronda Rousey December 6, 2012 4
Featherweight Jose Aldo f1 April 30, 2011 (UFC 129)

etc.......

Ever since the Hulk opted to do both F1 and Le Mans this season I've been meaning to take a closer look at Le Mans and see what it's all about. I keep hearing Alan McNish compare current generation F1 cars with Le Mans cars and it's made me curious...

I'm pretty sure you do need fitness to drive an F1 race, if not muscle strength to resist the forces you're undergoing then at least to reduce body weight. However this video is not in the remotest bit impressive as a feat of fitness for a number of reasons. He was walking in many of the shots, the video is edited a number of times so we don't know whether he was resting or not between, and his headband is gone in the final shot which means there was at least a small period of rest before the final moment at the top. It's also night time when he reaches the top but evening when he's at the bottom, so we can at least assume that it didn't take a small amount of time.

The fact that he doesn't look puffed at the top is wholly unremarkable.

I guess you need a lot of leg strength to press the brake pedal thousands of times in a race. Or is F1 like Mario Cart (where you never take your finger off the accelerator)? Probably it's like Mario Cart.

The thumbnail image for this video has been updated - thumbnail added by blackfox42.

It's wind resistance, it makes a massive difference. When they're really far apart the rear driver is just driving better and shaving time off the lead, so he catches up, but once there it's down to drafting to get the little burst of speed to get alongside. The carts are probably approximately equal in power, so he reaches level from the draft position easily enough, but can't keep the momentum to get a lead with the new air resistance on him, just draw level. So they're level, but obviously there's only one sweet racing line to take to keep your speed up and lap time down. You can either pass on the outside (in which case you have to go faster into the turn to stay ahead) or the inside (in which case you have to turn sharper at speed to stay ahead) both of which are risky, or you can return safely to the racing line - i.e. not by swerving into him, but by conceding the lead to him and dropping in behind him. If you do that, you take less risk and give yourself the chance to try again because you're in draft position again. He needs to stay as close as he can and find the right place to overtake so that his superior driving can give him the lead into the racing line of the next corner, at which point he gets right of way and the position advantage the lead gives. Sometimes that's not even possible and lead to what some would call boring races (Monaco Grand Prix) where the leader is decided on the first corner and doesn't change unless they crash out.

I'll draw two parallels:
1. DRS in F1 racing, where a tiny part of the tail opens up for a small part of the track, which drastically increases speed and allows for more interesting races because it almost ensures overtaking. You can also see the same application of the racing line and people conceding position or trying to take different lines and spinning out or locking up.
2. In cycling, the commonly quoted figure is that you can save 40% of your energy by drafting behind a leading cyclist. The Tour de France and every other cycling road race is defined by drafting, cos no lone cyclist would ever be able to keep pace with the peloton which 'cycles' riders in and out of the wind-protected bunch throughout a day. This should convince you more as cyclists are not streamlined objects but still offer significant gains. Go and watch a cycling sprint finish - it's a case of whoever gets behind the fastest guy wins by conserving energy in his wake until it's time to burst out alongside and pass.

It could be, although it's exceedingly difficult to find any meaningful numbers for distances that aren't terribly vague, and what you do find is almost always for something other than karts (semis, F1 racecars and bikes).

I still think that the open, small, only semi-streamlined form of the karts would tend to make the effective distance less than what we saw in most of this video. The lower speeds than F1 cars would tend to improve the slingshot tactic, since the effect of wind resistance increases with the cube of velocity. Which again, doesn't seem to explain the drastic slowdowns when they're not at top speed anyway.

4:30 mark - Fernando Alonso gave up F1 to be a flight engineer.

He mostly hates the stupid questions reporter have to ask, the ones where the answer is already in the question. Or questions that have only one real answer without any speculation: "It is the same for everybody". Like asking about tires or weather.. Of course there is a reputation he got when he joined F1 and he is totally milking that.. He is not the only Finnish driver to do so, Kankkunen gave a beautiful answer once when asked about what tires he chose: "black round Pirellis" It is a bit of a tradition here. But when it comes to Kimi, if you make him comfortable, he is just a regular guy.

edit: Kankkunen, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eS0sT9P4ZQg

This is a few years old, since refueling has been eliminated the pitstops now get down to only a few seconds... 10 seconds would count as disasterously slow.

See this one from last year for instance *related=http://videosift.com/video/F1-Pit-Stop-Perfection

F1 Pit Stop Explained has been added as a related post - related requested by oritteropo on that post.

F1 Pit Stop Perfection has been added as a related post - related requested by oritteropo.