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DOES EVERYTHING LOOK RIGHT?
I went into the Settings menu to set my options for racing. At the Difficulty screen, I was introduced to several assist options to aid in controlling the car:
- Steering Help - sets the level of power steering assist in the game
- Opposite Lock - an option for overriding the speed sensitive steering during spins.
- Braking Help - an option for over-zealous newcomers to help with over-driving corner entries. It won't completely slow your car for the turn, but it will help slow you down if you get in too hot.
- Stability Control - just as the name implies, this is to help manage loose conditions without having to master driving the car.
- Spin Recovery - helps turn your car in the right direction after a spin.
- Damage - if turned off prevents your car from becoming affected by collisions.
- Auto Shifting - turns the automatic transmission on and off.
- Auto Pace Lap - allows the computer to control your vehicle during pace and caution laps.
- Traction Control - prevents your tires from losing grip.
- Anti-Lock Brakes - prevents brake locking during heavy braking.
- Auto Pit - allows the computer to control your vehicle during pitting.
- Auto Clutch - the clutch is automatically applied to prevent the car from stalling.
- AI Ability - to set a strength level of the computer controlled cars.
- AI Aggression - sets a value for the level of competitiveness of the computer opponents.
- Damage Multiplier - sets a percentage on how much affect a collision has on damage. You can set this at 100% for real-world damage, or set lower or higher.
The next screen presented Rules for races. From here you can adjust the use of flags to no flags, full flags, or black flags only. Fuel Usage, Tire Wear and Mechanical Failures can be adjusted here to create pit strategy and tire conservation in shorter races. The number of opponents in each race, from 1 to 42, can also be selected, as well as the temperature and race length percentage of all races.
Controller setup was very simple, and single or dual-axis controllers can be used, although there are some known issues with some dual-axis controllers. My TSW2 could not be assigned in dual-axis mode, but once I re-configured it as a single axis, there was no problem within the game. Using a single-axis for gas and brake does prevent you from doing such things as trail brake and tapping the brake at plate tracks, but I soon found that it didn't make that much of a difference. Also note that within the controller setup, there are several options for controller rates, dead zones and force feedback effects. Image Space has done a very thorough job in allowing a high level of input customization, so that each individual can calibrate their controller to their liking.
The Graphics setup screen had options for turning on and off and setting several levels of detail for items such as Track Detail, Player Car Detail, Lighting, Shadows and Image Quality. Special Effects could be adjusted to allow slower machines to leave out skid marks, smoke and dust, and several other options for default views (cockpit, nose, broadcast TV) and broadcast overlays, which make the game resemble a television broadcast. The number of options given for increasing or decreasing what is displayed was helpful, and made the game run well on my current machine, an AMD XP2700, and my secondary machine an AMD 1.2Ghz.
Audio options were minimal, with sliders to adjust volume levels for music, sound effects, player's engine level and spotter level. The default levels that came with the game were found to be acceptable.
Next I went into the replay system where you have the option to turn on the replay for recording entire races and/or hot laps. You can also turn on an Instant Replay system, which is a feature available for offline races. You simply press 'R' (or whatever hotkey you assign it to) and see the most recent event in the practice or race. From within the replay setup you have the option to set the amount of time, from 10 to 180 seconds, for the instant replay to run. If you want to see an entire lap or two while in a practice session, you will either have to set the instant replay to an adequate amount of time or you will have to leave the track to view it, and then return to the track later.
Once all the options were set, it was time to hit the track...
  
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