there. But lately they've gotten pretty stale, and for some random reason
last week I decided to fire up GPL (I bought it about a year ago when it
started disappearing off the shelves, knowing it was pretty much the high
point of racing sims, just in case I ever decided to get into racing) and
see how it went. Well, needless to say I'm enjoying it a ton, as it has
many of the things I enjoy in flight sims (feeling of speed, competition,)
but I found that all of that was concentrated to the nth degree.
So anyway, I found out Papy's new sim was coming out soon, so I dl'ed the
demo and had some fun with it, and decided I'd pick up N4 on release,
figuring that between it and GPL I'd have pretty much everything I need to
decide if I want to jump into this genre with both feet.
Well now, after running N4 for about an hour, I'm HOOKED! Framerates on my
system (P3-933, 128 MB, V5) are 18 - 25 in***pit, 25 - 33 on the nose at
Daytona at 800 X 600 with full graphics and with a full field of cars drawn
ahead, and 10 in the mirrors. This is everything I love about flying
(except for avionics mastery,) but without the boring 30 minutes of flying
for every 1 minute of action.
Incidentally, firing up N4 made me remember what a blessing FSAA on the V5
is, as I initially fired it up in OpenGl (which isn't FSAA'd,) and was
struck by how terribly pixelated everything was. So I switched to D3D at
800* 600 with FSAA, and MY GOD, that looks almost real! Great job to Papy
for giving us such detailed tracks, and to 3dfx (RIP) for giving us FSAA.
Now I've just got to decide on a wheel (I'm using a Wingman RumblePad for
now...don't laugh) and spend some time practicing so I can test out the MP
without ruining someone else's race by spinning all over the track!
Anyway, that turned out to be a bit more of a rave about my newfound hobby
than an informative post about N4, but I'm so ecstatic right now that I just
had to share it with someone. Thanks for listening!
Tex