LM24H. It's just a bit hard to find.
The previous version (was it late 1999?) was just appalling. This new
one is much better. Heck, it might even help us through that awful
winter called "Waiting for WSC"!
First of all, the controls are a disgrace. This is the worst part of
the game. MUCH to unresponsive, and no amount of tweaking the settings
will help. Negotiating chicanes is a nightmare and as you all know, Le
Mans circuit has several. Steering is so unresponsive that once the
front has even _started_ to move into the chicane, you have to fling
the wheel full over to be able to get out. And even then you might not
be able to make it. It's not that the speed is too high, it's that the
slow response of the front wheels make for a BIG turning radius.
Exiting corners isn't just a matter of centering the wheel when the
nose points in the right direction. Nooo, you'll have to release much
earlier or the car will continue to pull you to the inside of the
track for a bit. Scary and annoying.
Throttle/brake is very hard to modulate. Throttle suffers from the
"ketchup effect" and breaking is very hard to modulate and you often
lock up the front wheels.
All is not gloom and doom however. If you learn to compensate for the
atrocious steering and the unforgiving pedals, the driving/racing can
be tight and some exciting racing can finally happen. Yay!
*Graphics* are both up and down. Cars are poorly modeled and poorly
textured. Tracks and surroundings are OTOH quite good. There are
several types of off-track surfaces and curbs, and weather effects
(rain and gray skies) and the poor visibility during rain is very
nicely done. Cars also pull up a mist from the wet road that looks
very good. Raindrops look just silly but I guess they're good on the
framerate. Tiresmoke and dust are your standard fare, just colored
puffs. And you'll see LOTS of smoke in sharp corners. AI cars seem to
have the same problem controlling breaking as you have. Skidmarks stay
throughout the race (but I've only ran 10 laps, 15 mins yet). Pit crew
are animated, to say the least. They're all over your car during stops
and work like mad! No in-car view during pitstops, you get a birdseye
view.
Driving views are behind, high-behind, in car (no dash!) and in car
with hood (and no dash). So, no***pit for the true sim fans. To
bad...
*Sounds* are great! Engine sounds are different for different type of
cars and have some very nice artifacts such as metallic "ringing" and
subdued high pitch whining. Idle throttle = thinner sound, full
throttle = throaty roar! Wind noise is also present.
*Handling* is again so-so. See above about the braindead wheel
support. Other than that there are some surprising details.
Going over curbs can get rough. Good FF support there. And rear wheel
can lose grip and spin right there if you floor it too early. You can
also easily feel when the front "goes light" if you go to fast and
happen to fly over said curb.
Should you happen to venture off the track and wind up in the grass
you don't get the "ship anchor effect" you get in some others sims.
You'll notice the loose grip but you can keep on driving and
eventually make it back to track without losing too much time if you
just keep an egg under the throttle. Sand however will get you more
stuck.
Tight cornering is interesting. "Fluttering/skipping" inner front
wheel can happen and you hear it by the sound, a "woobly tweet" :-)
Break too hard and lock up the front wheels and the wheel gets a loose
feel and the front might wander to either side a tiny bit, much as it
should. High speed corners are often no problem with these winged cars
if you keep a good line, but in slow 180's you'll have to be more
careful with break/throttle. There aren't much in the way of "load
transfers" (heck if I know the correct british term) when you
break/stomp it, but these cars are very stiff. You _can_ get the car
into a controlled slip with the throttle (especially if the rear
wheels are a bit worn), but considering the unresponsive controls (see
above, again) I'd advise against it. Spins aren't "canned" in any way.
I've had many partial spins but don't expect them to last more than
180 degrees though, unless you really mess it up.
Tirewear is modeled. In the shorter (10 laps) races this is
accelerated so expect to pit in for fuel and new tires after just
five-six laps!
*Setups* are very limited. High-med-low downforce can be chosen, as
can fuel amount, short-med-long gearbox, AT or MT gearbox,
sprint-balanced-endurance engine output, and of course,
wet-intermed-soft-hard tires.
*Cars* are in three classes. GT, open prototypes and closed
prototypes. There are supposed to be 70 cars total in the game but I
suspect several of these are just repaints. I won a #11 Panoz and a
#12 Panoz. Identical apart from the numbers.
*Tracks*, there are seven tracks proper but twelve circuits in all.
http://www.racesimcentral.net/
The *AI* at normal is a push-over. I've yet to lose a championship
race against normal AI. Expert AI is something completely different
however! But I plan to go thru a full normal championship before I
tackle the experts.
Well, I could go on and on but I'll spare you all the details.
But is it a good game or is it pants? I'd say the former.
And I'd love to hear input from others who've tried it.
Here's hoping for a patch from Infogrames!
/petern