| Racing Simulation 3 Facts : | ||
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After many laps in various modes we completed our review of the long awaited RS3. Many of you guys will have doubts or questions about Ubisoft's latest racing simulation and we hope that this review will give you a better insight in this game. GENERAL Racing Simulation 3 is the follow-up of F1 Racing Championship, but this time without the FIA license. It makes 3rd party updates much easier and Ubisoft and supporting websites don't have to be affraid anymore of any legal action. Until F1RC, Ubisoft always patched their F1 simulations and I expect them the same to do with RS3 once again. In the game you will find fantasy names for drivers,teams and even names of racetracks. At this very moment (even before RS3 will be officially released) we (and some specialists) are working on editing and updating RS3. We'll keep you updated ofcours. Installing RS3 is as easy as installing F1RC. It only takes less time as RS3 requires only 393 Mb of your HD. The whole structure of RS3, in regards to file names etc, is exactly the same as F1RC. GRAPHICS Graphics are beautiful, a bit better than F1RC. Cockpits are still simple (the way they should be), but more modern to look at. Because of the whole FIA license issue, car shapes have been altered into CART like shapes. Also, every building that is characteristic for a race-track has been removed or changed into something it's not. For example, some houses at the Spa track just dissapeared, the big stand at the Malysian track suddenly lacks its famous roof. Track textures have been changed and give you a better impression of speed. Using the cockpit view, you will actually see the front suspension and disc brakes. It makes it more realistic. Pitstops are still animated and look the same as in F1RC. The menus have the same lay-out as in F1RC, but look a bit more modern through the use of other colours. TRACKS RS3 offers 16 tracks. Names of the countries hosting the tracks have been altered for reasons mentioned above: New Zealand is Albert Park Australia, Morocco is Barcelona Spain and so on and so on. New is the Indianapolis track. A track which we wanted to drive on for a long time. Monza has been changed with the new fist chicane and also the pit entrances of Silverstone and Suzuka are modified. I can hear you count 16 tracks in F1RC plus 1 new Indy track makes 17, which track had to make room for Indianapolis? Well, I suspect that Ubisoft thought Monaco to be so characteristic for Formula One that they got rid of the entire track. It never was one of my favourites (to say the least) but F1 without Monaco is just incomplete IMHO. But we are working on a solution. There is room for two more tracks in the track menu. SOUND The menu sounds are exactly the same as in F1RC. Radio messages also didn't change, the same dull pit radio mentions that your front wing has broken. After having heard EA's 2002 engines I expected Ubisoft to change their engine sound dramatically, but unfortunately it looks like F1RC's original sound just has been tweaked. Personally I don't dislike it that much, but I always used Hudson's sound pack for F1RC. I tried replacing the original sound file by Hudson's sound, but it didn't work as you'll get thrown back to your desktop. Also Hudson's pitvoices for F1RC don't work anymore. But I'm sure these sounds will be edited pretty soon. I experienced an annoying "clicking" sound on both my computers. At first I thought it had something to do with shifting up and down the gears, but it appeared that the clicking remained, even when not shifting at all. Setting back the car's volume to 70% got rid of that problem. CAR PHYSICS Driving physics can be compared with F1RC. Cars tend to be a bit more oversteered. Although you can load F1RC's setups, the car will respond a bit differently. In F1RC you could easily drive around a track with default setups, in RS3 you will loose the back end of your car a lot faster.We all got the impression that the cars accelerated a bit slower. Most guys that experienced driving physics of RS3 sofar really liked the physics. ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE Perhaps the most worrying part for some guys, as many of you drive a lot of offline races. (Visit Relay some time and join us in an exciting online community). The AI has improved a lot in RS3, but still isn't what it should have been. Instead of slamming your back end all the time and causing massive pile-ups, AI cars in RS3 are way more careful. I even have to say too careful! If they drive ahead of you, they are reasonably fast. As soon as you have passed them, you can slow down as they hesitate to pass you. Agressive racing is totally strange to them. When you are about to be lapped, you receive a blue flag, but you can still see them hesitating a lot causing traffic jams. In one of our testing sessions, we parked our car at the side of the track with the nose heading in the wrong way, causing a yellow flag situation. The AI cars actually stopped, hesitated for a few seconds before driving by very very slowly.GAME MODES You can divide RS3 into two main categories: Single player and Multiplayer. I'll talk about Multiplayer in the next chapter. Single player offers various modes:
MULTIPLAYER We tried several multiplayer sessions, through the use of direct IP (internet) and a couple of races using a LAN at race-simulator's private testcenter. From what we experienced here, we can easily assume that Ubisoft didn't change anything in the online code. We had the same experience like we did racing online with F1RC. Ofcourse we couldn't test it with that many players as not that many people have the review version. We tested it with 5 players max. Pings were fairly good (from 35 to 177) but we got a bit of ghosting now and then nonetheless. Looking at our experiences with F1RC in combination with Relay, we think that RS3 offers a good platform for a next online championship. PROBLEM AREAS Anyone having played F1RC a lot, will definetly have suffered from game bugs a lot. The main bug for most guys, the AI undoubtedly, has turned into something competely different, improved in many ways, but still far from what it should have been. In F1RC laptimes were much faster than F1 laptimes in reality. Because the cars accelerate slower than in F1RC, laptimes are far more realistic than in F1RC. Pitbugs were very common in F1RC. Especially those guys who race through LAN or participate in Relay's championship have had their share of pitbugs. It looks as if the pitbug where you got 120 litres instead of the planned amount has vanished. But the pit speed limit bug seems to be more present then ever! Using the fully automated pit guidance and entering the pitlane slowly, we still got a lot of pit speed limit penalties. It also seems that this bug shows up on various tracks. While the Malaysian track was bugfree, we got penalties more then enough on the Spanish track. CONCLUSION We all waited a long long time for RS3 to be released. Does it meet with our expectations? Some parts of RS3 have improved, like driving physics, graphics, a new scenario mode, the new Indy track. Other parts are more like a step backwards instead of forward. Many of these negative things, like carshapes, names and photos of drivers, will be updated pretty soon. But things like the missing of Monaco track and the presence of most known F1RC bugs are simply bad. RS3 is one of the most beautiful racing games to look at and will be even more beautiful when updated to this season's standards (with complete stands). Racing with RS3 ofers you a good sensation of speed, is exciting when played against human competitors. Though we think that RS3 is a good platform to update and has lots of possibilities, it still needs a lot of tweaking. At a suggested retail price of � 29,95 the choice is yours. Credits for this review go to: Casper "CasH" Hueting, Harrie "de Kreute" Gilissen, Peter " The Sherrif" Romer, Bo " The Bandit" Hansen, Craig "Pedantic" Dixon and Mark "Mrk" Janssen. |
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Comments : |
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| Author: Monaco | 13-11-2002 |
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Where is Monaco ?????????????? |
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| Author: rieks | 18-11-2002 |
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There sounds a lot of dissapointment in your comment....I think that gp 4 is the standard for formula 1. It can not even stand in his shadow.. Back to work gentlemen!!!!!!!!!! |
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| Author: xmas seller? | 19-11-2002 |
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no reason to buy that one? old engine - no license - no outstanding improvements. if they patches RS3�s AI and netcode, it could be worth a try. Remembering the catastrophe with F1 Racing Championship this is not gonna happen very soon. I agree with "Monaco": BACK TO WORK! |
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| Author: sachoben | 19-11-2002 |
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F1RC has always been my favorite (more than GP4 and F12002!), so this one will surely be my favorite again! |
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| Author: GP4 vs F12002 vs RS3 | 20-11-2002 |
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I�m afraid RS3 can�t compete with GP4 and F12002. To xmas seller: You intended to agree with rieks, didnt ya? Cause I do to: BACK TO WORK! |
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| Author: Toma� | 02-12-2002 |
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This "game" is just a game. It does not represent the quality which "simulation" game should be. It is just disappoint all us who were believe in this simulation.You still got much to work then you can sell this game.I wish you more racing spirit. |
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| Author: WhiteDog | 05-12-2002 |
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RS3 is not about Racing Simulation, it's about wasting peoples time. This game is absolut in the low grade of true simulation. |
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| Author: d | 05-12-2002 |
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hehehe |
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| Author: SinneD | 07-12-2002 |
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Rc 3 sucks |
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| Author: Scope | 07-12-2002 |
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I've just tried RS3 - and I must say it is a great game. Old engine - but improved - why build it over if it works. RS3 is not like F1-2002 where you can drive the car as if it was a rally car. In RS3 you get penalties for making rally-moves - like cheating over the grass and so. Try Rs3 and let's hope that lot's of creative persons out there will build great patches and great websites. Btw check out: https://www.jgb.dk/hybris/forum |
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| Author: ulf norlinger | 19-02-2004 |
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A very good review. However, you can simulate the season 2004 with drivers, cars, tracks and sounds. Drivers & car names: Update the names with the RS3 CustomTool (installed with the game) Tracks: Update their names in the two GLOBAL.TXT files (Compare the track in Telemetry graph with the real tracks, to find out the correspondence). Real Car, Helm, Pit crew textures and sounds: Go to the download section for RS3 at https://f1rc.racingmag.de/ |
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| Author: the salty D-O-G | 27-03-2005 |
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I actually like this game quite a lot, i run an offline championship for it, but i have two problems: I cant find a way to extract the liveries so that i can edit them with paint shop pro or something. Also, i cant find a way to run the game with equal AI; Galileo and Evolution usually run away with the race. Can someone PLEASE help me?!?!?!?!?!?!?!? |
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| Author: Senninha25 | 31-07-2007 |
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I usually don't like non-licensed games like this... And without Monaco things got even worse... I'll only try this game if they have a Real Carskin pack... |
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| Author: Senninha25 | 24-09-2007 |
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I have played F1RC before I started playing this game, and it looks like RS3 has the F1RC track tarmac and steering wheels. |
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