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Welcome to my Review of NASCAR Racing 3 from Sierra Sports. By now you have probably read at least one review of N3 from another site or source. I did not want to rush out my review, as I wanted to take my time to experience as many aspects of the simulation as I could. Whether that was bugs, nuances, or features, I wanted to have a good feel for this release before I wrote the review. I tried to write this review with enough detail for the serious sim racer, but not overbearing to the newcomer.
FEATURES:
- Windows95/98
- Lets you compete in the 1999 NASCAR Winston Cup and NASCAR Busch Grand National Series Season
- New higher resolutions supporting Direct3D and Glide (3dfx) (A software rendering mode is also available).
- 640X480, 800X600, and 1024X768 resolutions are available with specular highlighting, translucent smoke and dirt effect, shaded groove, dynamic skid marks, and a new 3D car model
- 28 licensed NASCAR tracks from the NASCAR Winston Cup and NASCAR Busch Grand National Series
- 45 licensed drivers and cars
- 3D sound with A3D 2.0 (Aureal) and DirectSound3D lets you hear your opponent moving inside your left rear quarter panel
- Enhanced, aggressive Artificial Intelligence will fight you for every position on the track
- Support for Force Feedback devices
- Free Internet multiplayer via a Papyrus matching server
- Animated flaggers and track caution lights
- Enhanced car setup options including sway bars and grill tape
MY SETUP:
- Open AX6BC motherboard
- Intel Slot 1 Celeron 400 running at 450 MHz (75 X 6)
- 96 MB of Non-PC100 SDRAM
- Windows98 SE with DirectX 6.1
- 3dfx Voodoo3 2000 PCI (Very slightly overclocked to 150mhz)
- SoundBlaster PCI128 soundcard with 2 Altec Lansing speakers
- 6 GB WD hard drive
- Creative Modem BLASTER Flash 56K external modem with speakerphone and answering machine
- LS-120 SuperDisk HP CD-Writer Plus
- Generic 3 ΒΌ floppy drive
- Mitsumi 12X/16X IDE CDROM drive
- ProView PRO-900 19inch monitor .26mm
- ACT-LABS Force RS wheel (Primary Wheel)
- Thrustmater NASCAR Pro steering wheel (Backup Wheel)
MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS:
- Pentium 166
- 32 MB RAM
- 2x CD-ROM
- SVGA 800x600 w/64k colors
- Windows compatible soundcard.
PREFERRED:
- Pentium II
- 64 MB RAM
- Glide or Direct3D supported 3D hardware
- Joystick or Steering Wheel and Pedals
- A3D 2.0 compatible soundcard.
After playing around with many of the graphic and sound settings, I have developed what I believe is the minimum system required to run NASCAR Racing 3 at an acceptable level. Please be advised that this is MY OPINION on what I feel is necessary. This is highly subjective and what I consider "acceptable" may not agree with your or someone else's definition of such.
I believe you would want at least a P2-350 or above processor with 64mb of ram and a 12mb Voodoo2 video card. This will deliver decent performance at 640X480 resolution and perhaps even at 800X600 with some adjustments to the graphic settings.
This is based on my perception of performance on my PC and an 'educated guess' to what would be needed to run N3 with satisfactory frames per second. Again, my definition of 'acceptable performance' may very well differ from yours. I prefer a high level of "eye candy" and as close to 30 frames per second as possible to be satisfied with performance. However, I know many sim racers who sacrifice all the pretty textures and graphics for pure framerate. N3 is frame rate locked in respects to maximum framerate, much like GPL.
GRAPHICS:
This is the one giant leap forward for NASCAR Racing from Papyrus. The Graphics are by far superior to any of the previous releases of NASCAR Racing. The graphics are very appealing at 800X600 resolutions and above. They may not be state of the art or earth shattering, but they are most definitely improved and help with the immersion effect of racing.
I personally run N3 at 800X600 with all eye candy turned up to the max. I do hit 32 fps occasionally, but most of the time I'm at 28 - 30fps on my system. I personally feel you do not lose a lot of graphics quality by using the 800X600 resolution instead of the 1024X768 resolution. This helps in maximizing your framerates. Those of you who are die-hard graphic junkies will notice the difference, but most of us will be happy to give up a tick of quality for framerate. The 'draw ahead' setting has a dramatic effect on framerates. Setting it to 6 will make the sim draw ahead so you do not have any "pop up" of the scenery ahead. However, this places a hit on framerate on lower end machines. I prefer at least a 4 setting or above.
NASCAR Racing 3 comes with the familiar paintshop that is in N2/N99. If you take 4 columns X 37 rows, you get 148 available colors. This paintshop functions in the same way as N2/N99 racers are use to. However, if you export .pcx files to paint using a 3rd party graphics program, expect to see some differences. The car templates are different as N3 gives you more areas of the car to paint or customize including the rear deck lid. N3 templates are larger than the older N2/N99 templates so its extremely difficult to simply 'cut and paste' your paintjobs from N2/N99 into a N3 .pcx file. As you would expect, individuals have already begun painting car kits for N3 and there are some very fine car painters in the sim racing community.
The cockpit has been given a makeover. Its more appealing and much more realistic, however it is still a static 2D overlay, not a 3D cockpit such as that found in GPL. The mirrors in N3 have the familiar 3 sections, which allow you to see around you. The mirror settings are still adjustable and the latest patch from Papyrus makes it much easier to select which mirror version you wish to use. There is still no real level of detail in the mirrors though.
Two major additions to the graphics area are dynamic skid marks and smoke effects. The dynamic skid marks will leave remnants of accidents and spins in the form of skid marks on the pavement. These skid marks remain on the track (This too is adjustable to help save system memory) to add to the realism of the sim.
The smoke is a major addition to N3. The smoke will disperse with the direction and speed of the wind. It is really quite a site to drive through a plume of smoke and have no idea whether there is a disabled car sitting in the middle of the track waiting for you to hit it. There are times where you are literally staring at a total white out condition where you can see nothing. There are also brown dust clouds if you venture into the grass area.
ARTIFICIAL INTELIGENCE:
The guys at Papyrus improved the AI so it is at least enjoyable to race solo offline. No longer do the AI cars automatically back out of a corner because you stuck your nose underneath them. You can also frequently see 3 wide at Talladega. You do still occasionally see the 'confusion' of the AI when there is a major incident involving several AI and they are blocking the track. You may also see some 'car within a car' while racing, however it is far less frequent than in N2/N99.
The area that has been improved quite a bit is the realistic racing lines and braking points. No longer will you be able to pass 15 cars going into the corner like you could in N2/N99. It's not perfect, but it is greatly improved racing with the AI. There are actually times where you have to plan out a strategic move to complete a pass because the AI in front of you are going it in a dog fight for position. It does not compare to racing online against others, but it's at least acceptable.
INTERFACE:
The overall interface of N3 is a bit improved over the previous versions. All input needs to be performed using the mouse as usual. The menu will be familiar to those who used N2/N99. The garage has a bit of a new feel to it as the old "setup sheet" has been replaced with a more modern feel to it. The replay section is a basic carry over from Grand Prix Legends. If you are not familiar with GPL, it allows you to view your replays from many camera angles, different cars, etc along with the normal cut and save features found in the previous version.
The controls setup is basically the same except now N3 accepts digital and force feedback devices. N3 is still limited to two axis which will prevent users from using a Digital wheel with their favorite analog pedal set due to not having enough axis to configure the inputs. This will definitely annoying for those of you out there who want to use the FF effects in N3 but don't like the pedal unit that came with your wheel and would prefer to use your old trusty Thrustmaster pedal bases.
FORCE FEEDBACK:
I currently use the ACT LABS Force RS wheel, as it is my personal favorite steering device. The first thing you will need to do is go to the N3.ini file and enable the FF settings. The instructions on how to do this are located in the Readme file in your N3 directory. However, here are the two variables you need to set in your N3.ini file and the directions quoted from the Readme file:
FORCE_SCALE_PERCENT "N"
FORCE_DAMPING_PERCENT "N"
Both can be set to the range of 0-200 and will scale the existing parameters accordingly. Force Scale is used to determine how strong a force is, and can be used to try to adjust the amount of force the game provides. Force Damping is a factor in determining how much resistance the wheel provides to turning. It would primarily be used to decrease the tendency of a wheel to oscillate under certain conditions.
Each person will have to decide for him or herself how strong they want the effects to be. This will also be dependent on which wheel a person is using as each wheel has its own strength of effects. I personally like both set to 100.
I was a Force Feedback skeptic until I actually started using my ACT LABS Force RS. At first, my times were slower. However, within a few weeks I started to feel the setup of a car more by how the wheel input interacted with the FF effects. This has allowed me to lower my times quite a bit in N3. Force Feedback as progressed and is no longer just a vibrating wheel when you run into something. It is now a tool you can utilize to add more immersion into your sim racing experience. It takes some time, but experiment with the settings until which you find a point where the input and the forces work together to provide you with enough feedback to improve you driving without being disruptive to your racing line.
RACING FEEL:
The physics in NASCAR Racing 3 are new to the degree that there are two new handling adjustments introduced. It is not a new physics engine, but it is more refined. Driving in N3 is still by far the best representation of racing a true NASCAR available to consumers.
In fact, it is the only NASCAR product on the market I would consider a simulation versus a game. You can now see the cars lean as you enter corners. At times it seems that the cars have a little too much lean and 'jumpiness' to them as you watch them race around you. However, it is still an improvement over the previous releases of this title.
The two new adjustments available are sway bars and grille tape. The sway bars let you choose larger or small diameter to stiffen up or loosen the front or rear wheels grip. The grille tape allows you to place tape in 5% increments to increase or decrease the down force at the front of the car. The penalty for too much grille tape is overheating and your engine will not last long. However, just as in real NASCAR racing, a lot of grille tape is used during qualifying.
MULTIPLAYER:
Well, what can I really say? The multiplayer capability built into NASCAR Racing 3 is less than ideal. In fact, compared to what we had with TEN, its downright bad. NASCAR Racing 3 at this time does not have a "pay to play" service available. The closing of TEN (Total Entertainment Network) to the NASCARTM Racing 2 sim, marked an end to online racing as we knew it.
I am sure the folks at Papyrus anticipated this change as they implemented Internet connectivity with N3. This is by no means a solid replacement for TEN, however with a bit of tweaking and common sense your online racing can be enjoyable. The one nice addition is that even if you only have a 56K line to support yourself and a friend, you can add a full field of AI cars to race along with you.
The implementation of the WON Network into N3 gives you the option to race up to 32 of your friends in a single race. The speed and available bandwidth of your connection will be the deciding factor as to how many racers you can host in a race and maintain a "raceable" environment.
If your connecting with a 56K connection or lower, you will be hard pressed to get 5 racers into a race and still be able to run side by side as the warp will be very noticeable. If you have a cable connection you will be in much better shape and can get 20 drivers (give or take a few) into a race while maintaining a raceable environment. If you are just a client (IE - someone else hosts and you just join their race), you will be fine with 33.6 or above in terms of bandwidth needs).
The multiplayer layout in N3 leaves a lot to be desired. A current beta patch is addressing some issues, yet the patch has a way to go before it solves these issues. An alternative solution is Kali. Kali https://www.kali.net has implemented several features into their current release, which solves most of the N3 multi player issues. We once again have a general meeting place to chat and organize a race prior to launching. Kali also allows you to see ALL the races being hosted on a single screen, no more jumping from arena to arenas in the N3 multiplayer screen just to find a race. Kali will also allow you to check the N3 races posted as well as the NASCAR TM Legends races by simply clicking a button once setup.
Perhaps the biggest disappointment in N3 was the lack of a dedicated server front-end that allows you to setup races from a remote server. Well our prayers have been answered as Papyrus is now beta testing a front-end and a few people from the racing community have also developed their own version. You can download the latest version created by Karen White here.
CONCLUSION:
The overall interface of N3 is a bit improved over the previous versions. All input needs to be performed using the mouse as usual. The menu will be familiar to those who used N2/N99. The garage has a bit of a new feel to it as the old "setup sheet" has been replaced with a more modern feel to it.
The replay section is a basic carry over from Grand Prix Legends. If you are not familiar with GPL, it allows you to view your replays from many camera angles, different cars, etc along with the normal cut and save features found in the previous version.
The controls setup is basically the same except now N3 accepts digital and force feedback devices. N3 is still limited to two axis which will prevent users from using a Digital wheel with their favorite analog pedal set due to not having enough axis to configure the inputs. This will definitely annoying for those of you out there who want to use the FF effects in N3 but don't like the pedal unit that came with your wheel and would prefer to use your old trusty Thrustmaster pedal bases.
PROS:
- Improved graphics
- Improved sound
- 2 new chassis adjustments
- Improved AI
- Force Feedback capabilities
- Only true NASCAR simulation available
CONS:
- Multiplayer capability is poor (But being worked on!)
- No Pocono track
- No car manufacturer included
- Multiplayer interface could be improved.
- NASCAR Racing 3 is not perfect, but it is by far the best NASCAR racing product on the market.
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