Well, after installing and running cpr for a while today, thought I would
share my thoughts. Again, my system is a Dell xps 233 mmx, 32 mb sdram,
sierra screamin 3d rendition card, w/ Thrustmaster T2 wheel and pedals. I
am mainly a Nascar enthusiast, and constantly play Nascar2, I also have
Icr2 rendition version.
Installation of direct x 5.0 and cpr trial version went flawlessly. I think
one of the main things that helped me out with direct x 5 was knowing to
change my video adapter back to the screamin 3d adapter before rebooting my
pc. Calibrating and setting the controls on my T2 in the game went
flawlessly as well, very pleased to see that.
I loaded up CPR with all textures on, and foward visibility set to 21.
While gameplay seemed reasonably smooth, my frame rate counter only showed
14-16. I turned off sky textures, and reduced foward visibility to 18, and
my framerate went up to 19-22 fps. All of this was in full screen. I was
somewhat dissapointed in the frame rate shown, as I would have guessed it
was higher based on what I was seeing. The graphics are very good, as is
the sound. I think the ai cars are too dark, and need to be brightened up.
The realism seems very good as well, as it is pretty tough driving and
competing at Laguna. I think they have come closer to Papyrus than anyone
to date, not bad for a first attempt.
Personally, in my opinion, Microsoft is missing the boat by not porting
this to 3dfx or rendition, or better yet both. I know they are committed to
direct x ***, but I think it is taxing the systems too heavily. They
recommend a p90 or up, with a p166 being highly recommended. I used to run
Nascar 2 on an older p90 with my same rendition card, with excellent
results with all graphics on. I can't imagine running CPR on a p90, or
anything less than a p166 mmx for that matter. Perhaps it will be tuned and
tweaked before the final release to help this.
I think Microsoft has made a pretty good first attempt at a racing
simulation here, but they really need to consider porting this thing to a
3d graphics accelerator. I think there would be a lot of dissapointed folks
that bought this sim based on the box requirements, there is still a lot of
low end pentiums out there.
--
Don Burnette
Music City Racing