3. How long have you been working on the 2004 mod?

Work on the 2004 mod started when the first 2004 cars started being unveiled. As soon as the 2003 mod was out, we were already working on the 2004 mod. Since we are trying to mod nearly the whole game, and where possible do a completely new thing instead of giving it a makeover, work has taken a long time. Apart from that, the more things one adds, the higher the chance that a bug will appear, however, we managed to iron out all of them using one way or another, and the beta testers are doing a very good job in spotting bugs, so we can fix them.

4. What have you done to the 2004 mod to ensure it surpasses your 2003 mod (what new features are there)?

Well practically we tried to make everything better. Improved carshapes, improved textures, reduce fps reduction to the least amount possible (all
I can say is that on my Geforce FX5200 which is considered a bad card, I don't get any stuttering with 1280X1024 and everything maxed out with hud and mirrors selected. Our beta testers also seem to have become happy with the amount of FPS they are getting which is quite good and most importantly consistent), new physics which the public got to beta test, new team specific rims with motion blur effect and emap, new tyreshapes, new steering wheels for the majority of the cars, new 3d driver specific helmet shapes (Arai, Bell, Sparco, Schubert), new damage and lots of other stuff...

However, we think the new feature that people are going to like the most is the totally redone menu, which we reprogrammed so as to give a new feeling to the game, and I think we're on the right track...

5. Which part or feature of the mod are you most proud of?

We are proud of the whole mod... however probably we are mostly proud of the new menus and new tracks (that will follow in the future)

(check out the screenshots of the new menu!)

6. What level of realism are you looking for in the 2004 mod? Have you had to make any compromises for playability and accessibility?

We are trying to achieve the highest realism we can. However, since we don't have any contacts with real teams, physics for example, are the best compromise we could get after thoroughly reading driver comments, and watching videos closely, and that is one of the reasons why we gave the general public a chance to try the physics out and give us their comments and feedback, however all I can say is that since the last beta released for the general public there have been lots of improvements.

Other compromises we have to make are things which are beyond our control i.e. hardcoded in the game's exe. Since we don't have our own game engine we can't edit everything so things like 2004 rules, with 1 engine per weekend rule, 2 qualifying sessions with 1 hotlap without any traffic, more realistic penalties (drive-through), and other extra stuff like 3d marshals, safety car, and so on. However, we've done our best to keep these compromises as small as possible.

7. Have you taken into consideration those drivers without the fastest computers? Is the mod relatively framerate friendly?

Well, one of the issues we had thought about with the development of the mod was framerate. There was a time when with quite a powerful Pc and a powerful graphics card, from the back of the grid, one would get no more than 7 fps... however LODs started coming along, improved .GEN files too, and as I said above, on a Geforce FX5200 which is put with those medium-low cards, I can play everything maxed out with no compromises and get 30fps throughout the whole race, apart from the start, where from the back of the grid I get 27fps and that is with some LODs missing, so I don't think that people without the fastest computers will struggle as much as they think...

For example, one of our members with a Ti4600 gets 40 to 45 fps during race, all this with 4x antistrophic filtering, with all game details maxed out. Another one gets 30-40 fps in race on a Geforce FX Go 5600 64mb (laptop)! So I think that overall, there shouldn't be any fps problems.