NHRA Sim

Since I haven't seen a post about this, since the weekend, I'll ask: Did anyone here attend the Route 66 Nationals at Joliet, last weekend? I'm curious about whether the NHRA sim really was on display there, as promised on NHRA Online. Thanks, Rick -- Rick

>Did anyone here attend the Route 66 Nationals at Joliet, last weekend? >I'm curious about whether the NHRA sim really was on display there, as >promised on NHRA Online. I did and yes, it was on display. I watched a kid (10-13 years old) play it for 3-5 minutes while I talked with a guy from Tantrum. Here's my opinions: Adjustability: There are, in fact, only eight possible adjustments. The guy from Tantrum claimed that these are the "important" ones that Dale Armstrong reccomended they put in the game. What they are and their merits are well documented in other threads. Sound: Good but not great. It's a pretty good representation of a fuel motor but nothing you'd want to totally crank-up for effect. They were using a small-ish sub/sattelite speaker system. Graphics Quality: Stunning. The smoke still looks like typical 3DFx smoke, but the track & cars are very well done. Graphics Speed: One word: SLOW! By my estimation, the framerate for a full-speed non-smoke***pit views was no greater than 20 fps. What's that? 20 fps is respectible you say? Consider that I was watching the game run on an Intergraph TDZ workstation! Gameplay: Hard to judge as I only watched a kid play it & had no idea of his skill level. I can tell you that he could not complete any of the three T/F runs he attempted. Stability: The kid nosed the car into the wall really hard at about the 1000' mark on the last run I saw. The guy from Tantrum hit some key to bring up a replay at which point the game promptly quit and returned him to the Windows desktop. At that time I heard the first run of Ferderal Mogul dragsters firing up and left the booth. Overall Opinion (stess OPINION): I went and bought Burnout Monday morning. -- Bill Mette | "The Latin word for 'Close your eyes and open your MCSNet, Chicago | mouth' is 'Prospectus.'"

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> >Did anyone here attend the Route 66 Nationals at Joliet, last weekend? > >I'm curious about whether the NHRA sim really was on display there, as > >promised on NHRA Online. > I did and yes, it was on display. I watched a kid (10-13 years old) > play it for 3-5 minutes while I talked with a guy from Tantrum. Here's my > opinions: > Sound: > Good but not great. It's a pretty good representation of a fuel motor but > nothing you'd want to totally crank-up for effect. They were using a > small-ish sub/sattelite speaker system.

Bill, too bad you didnt get to hear it through a good sound system, it really rocks with a 200 watt RMS system with a subwoofer :)! I agree 100% per cent there :)! Runs decent on my machine, course I only have a beta. Maybe the code wasnt fully optimized? There are three different stages of difficulty, I dont think it'll be a problem to find a playable level and one can always move up, FCs arent supposed to be easy to drive, just ask Ron Capps<g>! Sure wish I'd have been there<g>! You didnt make a mistake, there is not much wrong with Burnout either, I think you'll be buying both once you get to run a finished version of NHRA though :)! As one who races in real life, I enjoy both sims and cant wait til I have a full finished version of NHRA and the same with Burnout, drag race heaven I'd say :)! Trev

Thanks to Bill and Trev for the followups to my original post. I guess I should have asked this other question at the same time: When will the product be available to the public? Does Tantrum have a ship date yet? (If the rep caused it to crash, trying to show a replay, sounds to me like there's work to be done before it's ready!) Thanks again. -- Rick

> <snip> > Sound: > Good but not great. It's a pretty good representation of a fuel motor but > nothing you'd want to totally crank-up for effect. They were using a > small-ish sub/sattelite speaker system. different soundcard/speakers can make a big difference. ehhhh, whazat? How fast is a Inter. TDZ.? did they use a 3Dfx card? Did they show you the full release version or a beta or maybe even an alpha?What are other specs of the game? etc, etc. Anyway thanks for your input so far. It reveals a little bit more about a sim that seems to need some more tweaking....... Thanks, Harald

I called today and they said the ship date is June 15th.