There are also a few new shadow effects. You can now see shadows cast on the cars from other cars. Another addition is that shadows can now be cast from buildings to inside your cockpit. This looks quite cool, when for example you're driving close to the outside wall the shadows from the trackside fence are cast in your cockpit. And it doesn't effect the frame rate much at all on my system. Another thing you'll notice especially in long races is windscreen build-up. When you drive behind other cars the windscreen gets dirtier and dirtier the longer you drive. You can get a clear screen by visiting the pit lane. If you blow your engine or drive through a wreck with lots of smoke (or dirt) your windscreen will get really dirty very quickly. As you can see there are quite a few new improvements to the graphics and these together make you feel much more involved in the action than before. I'm also happy with the frame rate on my system compared to the demo. I switched from Direct3D rasterizer to OpenGL and gained about 5-10 fps. I'm getting about 30-60 fps in races depending on the track and cars visible. I reduced drawing distance to 40% and this seemed to help the frame rate nicely. I've got most of the graphics options on (at 1152x864x16, no FSAA), although I have stuff like mirror quality at medium. I'm satisfied on how it runs on my system, but if you want to turn everything on and run FSAA at high resolution you better have a P4 3 GHz with an ATI Radeon 9700 Pro. I also noticed that the feeling of speed is slightly better than in N2002, but I'm not quite sure why. The lighting and shadows probably have an effect on that.

The sounds are also improved slightly. With most of the sounds I can't find much difference to N2002 but the engine sound sounds cool. The cars rev a bit higher than in N2002 and at the end of the straights you can really hear the engine working hard. And as you get off the throttle and start slowing down to a turn the sound really changes as the revs drop. Then you slowly start getting back on the throttle in the middle of a turn and the engine revs start to rise slowly - it sounds really good. If you've seen in-car footage on the TV that's almost exactly how it sounds. Like I mentioned before, the other sounds aren't that different but the engine sound is the most important and again like some of the new graphics effects it's very well done and adds to the feeling of being there. There are some new sounds like the sound of a helicopter when you're viewing a replay from the helicopter view and a few new announcer sounds when you start a race. I don't really like the engine sounds much in replays, when viewing the race from the TV or spectator cameras. The cars don't sound powerful enough for my liking from these views.

The replays are excellent in N2003 like they have been before in Papyrus sims. There are 15 different views you can watch the action from, including TV, spectator and helicopter cameras and few different views from the car. You can save a short clip, or an entire race if you wish. You can watch the other cars go around the track when you're in the pits in practice or happy hour. By downloading a replay from another player you can watch his throttle and brake position to get a better idea on how he's driving the track. The new graphics effects look really great in replays, the reflections and shadows on the track and cars and the lens flare on the cameras. Thanks to the new physics and bump modelling the cars look much more alive than before. They're moving up and down over the bumps; looks much closer to the action you see on TV. Like N2002, there's a replay editor which you can use to add sounds and artwork to your replays. You can basically use this feature to create a video of your online race for example. The little I've used the editor it seems a bit awkward to use, but if you have the patience you can do some nice things with it. The N2003 replays are easily the best in any sim but I would have liked to see more special effects with the TV cameras. For example a camera close to the wall could shake a bit when the cars drive past; this would create a nice sensation of speed. The TV cameras are also fixed to the center point of each car. I would like to see a camera which would "move around" a bit when following the cars. But like I said, the N2003 replay features are the best you can find in racing sims.

According to the manual the AI has also received a lot of attention. I didn't spend much time racing the AI in N2002, but it's still clear that the N2003 AI is much improved. I've raced a few short races against it, and haven't seen any really silly moves yet. There's been a couple of crashes but the way they happened was realistic. The AI cars also seem better in avoiding spinning cars. The real improvement, though, is in the way they race. They don't just follow a pre-designated path like what seemed to be the case in N2002; now they move around a bit more, looking for the best lane to be in. You can race side by side with them, or 3-wide if you've got the balls. You can also bump with them a little more without immediately losing control. In N2002 you needed to be really careful and avoid contact because it sent you to a spin very quickly. It's been a long while since I enjoyed racing the AI this much. It's still not anywhere as enjoyable as racing against real humans, but it's a good way to practice as now you can actually enjoy it. I've done races at the super speedways and also short tracks like Martinsville, where the AI had problems before. I haven't encountered any big problems so far so it looks like Papyrus did a really good job on this part of the game, too. There's also a few new options for the AI. Before a race you can set the AI strength to "auto" and after completing the race this value will be adjusted according to how well you did in the race. There's also "Adaptive Speed Control" which adjusts the AI speed during the race. Let's say you build up a 2-second lead. In this case the AI would speed up and catch up back to you. If you spin and drop back they will slow down and wait for you. This isn't a realistic option and not interesting to me, but some drivers might find it fun.

I mentioned the improved physics engine before, but I'll try to describe the differences to N2002 in a little more detail, because this is in my opinion the area where N2003 has improved the most compared to the previous versions. Papyrus worked with Jasper Motorsports and Goodyear to really improve the handling of the car, and they have succeeded in doing just that. You have a bit more power now and the grip seems so much better on all tracks. You have a much better feel for the car than before; it feels like there's actually four tyres under the car. The "gliding" effect which was evident in N4 and still in N2002 is pretty much gone completely. You can drive the car harder into the corners without the rearend sliding all over the place like it did in N2002. You need to be careful with the throttle though, because there's more horsepower. You can't just mash the throttle down like you could with N2002. Overall, the car is easier to drive and you have a better feel when the tyres are reaching their limit. It still gets tricky if you go over the limit; you need to be quick to catch the car with opposite lock but it works better than in N2002. I noticed that you can still save a spin by turning more into the corner when the car gets loose, or by applying the brakes. Fortunately it doesn't work as well as in N2002 and will have a bigger effect on your tyre wear, too.