Just over a year ago a small demo of a driving simulator was released by three developers, Scawen Roberts, Eric Bailey and Victor van Vlaardingen, since then it has been downloaded thousands of times, this title is known as Live For Speed.

The demo was just a preview of things to come, last month the first part of three was released to the public at a price of only �12, titled �S1� it has a multitude of track variations and quite a few cars. S1 is an online racing simulator with cars mirroring real life production cars.

After downloading the 140mb zip file and extracting it to a new folder (pity it didn�t have an installer for those who aren�t pc savvy), I proceeded to the website and paid the small �12 charge. Upon registration you receive three �keys� which are necessary to unlock the game. Though you don�t need all three keys at first you can have to spare in case of reformatting, if you use these ones up you can just send an email to the developers explain the situation and more than likely they will send you another.

Once installed I eagerly started up, firstly I had to create a player, it was a nice touch to see male and female drivers to cater for all. I then proceeded to the controller setup screen, S1 really comes into its own here with a wealth of options to adjust, this is often overlooked by other developers and I was pleasantly surprised at the ease in which I configured my BRD Wheel and Speed 7 Pedals. I was now ready to rock!!

So what should I try first, well there are three modes, single race, hotlapping and multiplayer, seeing as I wasn�t ready to show off my skills to the online crowd I decided to go for the single race option. The single race option lets you race against the AI, having seen several racing titles fail in this department my hopes were high that S1 would overcome, having heard that the AI actually learn!...First things first I had to setup the car, I could see that there are 7 cars to choose from ultimately though these have to be gained via a points system so I stuck with the default XF GTI, the setup options were incredible!...from adjusting caster to wheel track settings, anything you need to change you can. Another cool feature is the ability to see what changes you are making directly with the car on the screen, if you soften suspension the car will move accordingly, I guess it�s superficial but it adds to the immersion. I would prefer a different method of saving setups more like NASCAR 2003 by papyrus with folders for each track variation, but each to his own.

Finally I am on track, with 11 AI cars, immediately I noticed that my system is struggling I have a 1700XP Athlon, Geforce 3 ti200, 512 ddr ram running at 1024x768 getting 15 frames per second, however the frame rate picks up once less cars are on the screen, also the graphics option which are extensive allow you to disable several features which can vastly improve your fps. Reality kicked in racing with the AI, you cant afford to pussyfoot around, instead it�s a real hard battle with door scraping and blocking to stay ahead and yes at first it felt like I had a magnetic rear bumper with lots of ramming and control freak manoeuvres! The experience reminded me greatly of watching saloons on TV, I was hooked. Speaking of TV the replays are very good, reminding me of Gran Turismo, you can see every bump on the suspension and a lot more. The in car graphics weren�t as good as I had hoped, NASCAR 2003 is the benchmark here and S1 is quite far off, one feature I really liked was the ability to change the field of view dynamically. Anyway several races later (and I mean several!) I managed to accrue enough points to get all the cars, you have a good choice of cars from FWD, RWD and 4WD all behaving like a real car should.