to spend a good half an hour playing, prodding and poking gp2 on the
MPS stand.
This is the first time I have seen the game running and it totally
blew my socks off. This is leagues ahead of anything Papyrus have ever
produced and appears to be playable on half-decent hardware.
The most amazing thing that initially struck me was the way that cars
can get airborne, and even roll in this game. I was following Berger's
Ferrari at Silverstone when he locked wheels with a Benetton going
into Stowe I think. His car was launched into the air and at one point
was ten foot off the ground, standing on it's rear wing. In a later
incident I watched someone on the Thrustmaster stand barrel roll
their car five times before coming to rest.
This is all very spectacular, and unusual in a serious racing game,
but there is a more serious side. KERBS ARE BACK!!!!! Papyrus take
note. We have kerbs here that can be cut across. Take them too fast
and one side of your car will lift off the ground briefly. Straight
line a chicane and you become a jet fighter for a couple of seconds
before hitting the wall.
The sand traps are difficult and slow to get out off and there are
great effects in the rear mirrors showing gravel flying.
I found it very difficult to get off the line without tonnes of wheel
spin. This is now visible as smoke in the rear mirror.
As we chased around the first lap at Silverstone, in SVGA in the
distance I could see smoke pouring from the back of another car. You
can adjust the range of car mechanical failures that you wish to
allow.
The depth to which the cars can be tuned is frightening. There are
setup screens which extend about five deep for tuning things up. The
graphics option screen has about two dozen settings including a nifty
ESTIMATED FRAME RATE feature where the system tells you roughly what
frame rate you should get with the options chosen, without you having
to race. You can also set up the 'target' frame rate as with the
Papyrus sims.
There is a data logger which will record and save performance data
while practicing which you can then load back in to examine later (I
did not see this running but could see all the buttons and headings).
But, WHAT IS THE FRAME RATE LIKE? I can hear you all shouting.
MPS had a P120 on their stand. In VGA with everything on the game was
VERY rapid, even at Monaco which places the greatest graphic load on
the system. This was running as a dos session under Win95, which would
slow the frame rate a fair bit anyway.
Their P133 ran SVGA which was well playable for practicing and racing
(with few cars in front) with all textures except sky on. It wasn't
flying but it was definitely raceable by us 'serious' racers. Turn off
a few more textures and I reckon it would be perfect.
There was an Acer P90 on the SC & T stand (they make steering wheels,
www.platinumsound.com if interested, and no, I don't own one) which
ran VGA with everything on and was VERY playable.
Thrustmaster had a P166 on their stand with a T2 attached. They seemed
to have switched off some of the textures and objects and were running
in SVGA. This was quick. We are talking arcade frame rates here.
Crystal clear and moving like sh1t off a hot shovel.
It seems clear that a Pentium is obviously needed to run the game with
any sort of graphic level, but I think that 486s will achieve
something usable as well, similar to the way us Pentium owners have
had to play Nascar SVGA with compromises on the detail. Frankly, when
VGA looks as gorgeous as this does, I don't need to worry too much
about maybe not being able to run SVGA comfortably on my P100.
If anybody has any questions, add them to the thread or e-mail me, if
I can help I will.
The bad news is that all the MPS staff I spoke to were quoting June as
the release date - I guess that's it for April 26th then :-(
Oh and I saw Nascar running on a P90 in SVGA with all cars and all
textures on running at Bristol (the heaviest track for graphics) and
it was sh1t QUICK. This was using a ukp270 3d Blaster card though:-)
Sorry to have gone on so long.
-
Gary
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