Well after having a trouble free download and install, and have spent
some time practicing and even getting in a multi-player race with 9
cars. On the graphics side I have to say they have the potential to
be sweet as long as you have the proper video card. Using a voodoo 3
on my PIII 733, 128MB RAM, I ran into several stutters during multi
player (could be having an ultra33 drive). Sure its great running
around by yourself, but in multi-player I did hit a few snags. I
would suggest to anyone that if your going to take N4 seriously I
would purchase a geforce2 GTS or even mx. Sometimes the cars appears
as a block heading down the track when behind, sometimes its hard to
see the details of the wheels.
The physics, actually I have to admit to turning off all assists
(except clutch), I want to learn to drive the car without traction
control etc., with the default setup and the GPL engine, I've had to
get use to putting the car in gear and taking it easy putting the
power down (no more N3 starts), its pretty amazing, and I have to tell
you I found it very driveable, though it takes a while to get use to
the new cockpit. One thing I could really "feel" was the rear end
wanting to come around, a very cool feeling. It does take a while
to get use to turning the wheel left due to the stagger, but I'm
thinking the amount will be reduced once the game ships.
One thing that really concerns me, and I played a little GPL, was I
think the cars are "flip-happy". It doesn't take a lot for the cars
to go flipping. At the same time it rarely happens in actual nascar
events. I don't want the cars to become "air-happy", i mean even on
the pace lap i saw cars get airborne. Sure its cool, but without the
damage model in the demo , its fairly useless.
Papy definitely has a few things to work on, but on the whole its a
very good demo, probably great with a geforce card using open gl, t&l
and fsaa.
Ex
