dukestah’s gtr blog

beside gtr and gtr2 i am always attracted by other so called racing games as well. so i have played several ‘need for speed’ games (starting with the very first demo of nfs), especially the underground series (i really like those ‘fast’n’furious’ cars), i spent a lot of my time on forza motorsport and i am really a fan of the burnout series. since i have to life in two flats due my job i was missing my x-box over the week and i had no chance to play my racing games. the release of ‘need for speed carbon’ was a chance to change this. to empty my pockets completely i went for the collectors edition which comes with some additional cars, tracks, whatsoever and a dvd with the trailer, short clips about tracks and cars, some material about the production of the game and some audio/visual mixes. i haven’t checked the whole dvd since i was more keen on testing the game. the installation was kind of flawless but very slow. i am not sure if it is really necessary to copy 5 gb on the harddisc because the game-dvd is always required to start the game and even from the harddisc most of the videos are very shaky. load time is ok, would be a little bit slower from dvd maybe but copying of 5gb takes some time as well. nethertheless, the installation is necessary just once, so no more complaining about it (there are just 3 or 4 different pics during installation, played in a loop….)
the game:
the overall impression is stylish, even if i don’t know for what are all the x’s stand. the introduction is quite nice and the first look and feel is like nfsu2. welcome back i thought. after some minutes of video i came to the main screen and this screen unleashed my repressed memories about nsf most wanted. the navigation is simply horrible. a fluid handling of the game is neither with a controller nor with mouse and keyboard possible. i can imagine that this is a little bit easier on a console with a standard controller but not on a pc with a steering wheel. to have a mouse/trackball AND a keyboard in range is absolutely required and this mixture of wheel/mouse/keyboard is comparable with a flight simulator and not with an arcade racing game. the good thing, maybe based on the 5 gb on my harddisc, is the load time, this is at an acceptable level and does not interrupt the game play.
graphics:
this is always a difficult part. playing games on the old xbox changes the sense for graphics a lot. the limitation of memory makes xbox games always a little bit wahsy but i tend to like this look more than the super sharp 3d look of most pc games. so my expectation was not really disappointed and tuning some options within the game gave me an acceptable level of details and sharpness even the textures are still not razerblade sharp. the level of details in geometry is quite nice and really enough for a fast pace racing game. the mood is great and some parts of the city reminds me of nfsu2 or older nfs parts. there are better games in term of graphics available but this wasn’t my requirement. the cars are well designed and with lot’s of details. the effects on the car are sometimes a little bit strange and the reflection of lights are more like jumping white dots which can be a little bit irritating (reflection update rate at high). what i don’t understand, and with this i mean this is more than inacceptable, is the lack of wide-sreen support. what the bloody hell is going on here? didn’t recognize ea that wide-screens are some kind of common? every damn old console games (from ea as well) comes with wide-screen support. do they want to force me to buy console stuff instead of pc-games? i really like console gaming and beside gtr and gtr2, nfsc is the only racing game i bought for pc the last 5 years (i am still playing q3 and q4 on pc but that’s another story) i think buying pc games from ea is indeed a worst idea. fortunately, there is a workaround for this. the widescreen patcher for nfsu2 works for nfsc as well. but to get this you have to crack the game (remove cd protection) and then you can patch your own resolution into the game. from a buyers point of view, this is really a hit in the face.
sound:
the soundtrack i’ve heard so far is not bad and better than nfsu2. the style for the import racers is more like pumping trance/dance music, very electronic and fits well to the game and the cars. if you go for a muscle or exotic car, the soundtrack is different. unfortunately, the whole soundtrack is much shorter than for nsfu or nfsu2. the first thing i really miss, like the wide-screen support, is 5.1 sound. coming from the xbox were this is some kind of standard this is quite inacceptable for me as well. just a cheap surround effect kills a lot of the feeling of being inside a car. the engine sound is kind of thin and not as impressive as you expect it from a tuned car with custom exhaust system. the overall effects are not bad at all, the response of the engine, shifts, environment, opponents/crew and the tires are quite well sampled and far away from synthesized sounds. after playing the game for some hours, the tire squeak is a little bit anyoing, every steering action is followed by the squeak which is a little bit too much.
cars:
i’m just jumped in and so i wasn’t able to check all the cars and possibilities of modifications. but what i’ve seen so far doesn’t look bad. the cars are detailed, the mods are wide spreaded and the autosculp feature is a nice way to modify (or to spoil) the cars. quite funny to customize customized parts as usuall, tons of vynils, logos, colors, wings, rims, exhausts and so on. the sounds are different for the cars and the handling as well. it is also nice to have the categories of muscles, imports and exotic (european) models, this provides enough material for every mood and everybody. what i dislike is the limitation to tuning parts by progress steps. even with the start capital of 15000 $ it is not possible to spend all the money at once at the car because most of the parts are looked. so you have to drive around with a ‘close to stock’ car for the first races and this is a little bit stupid for this budget.
tracks:
the mixture of tracks is nice and also the different locations are well designed. some parts of the city and it’s surrounding are taken from former parts of nfs but i am happy to see this. i feel kind of familar driving around in the different territories and it is far away from being repeating or boring. the canyon parts are very close to fast’n’furious tokyo drift so if you like the movie, especially the last race, you will enjoy those tracks.
story:
even if the story is as usual quite linear and given, it is a nice plot and to have some buddies on the streets eliminates this one-against-all feeling. the different types of racing require different setups and sometimes different cars and so you will get the chance to build up different cars not just for the sake of it.
conclusion:
at this point of progress i have done so far, the game provides what i was looking for. it is good for short races, it is good for tuning and styling and there is enough room to spend some hours on it without getting bored. the lag of the suv’s is not really a problem, i was never really enjoying the races with the suv’s in nfsu2. what i really miss are the tuner shops and painters in free roam modus. you have to do all the tuning, modification and painting in your own garage. so roaming around is not as funny as in nfsu2 were i was often just driving through the city to get a special part in a shop or for repainting my car. coming home was ‘undergroundish’ as well, now you just have to get close to the save house and that’s all. the races are very obviously placed on the streets, so no hidden races anymore. the opponents are a little bit better than on other parts of the nfs-serie and especially the canyon races are challenging due the breakable barriers and guiderails. i can not say if they are fair and i haven’t tested if the crew is usefull or not. my 2 cents, nfsu2 was cooler than carbon for me and i will try to get a used version somewhere which doesn’t mean that nfsc is crap.

the game:
the intro is nice, good music, nice line. the menu is the same like in the demo version, which is not a surprise but i still dislike it. the setup of the game works like a charm, lots of different settings for graphics, audio, controller and realism. nice to see that depending on the difficulty (arcade, semi, sim) some of the aids are disabled by default.
the tracks:
well, the game covers the fia gt tracks only, means, only tracks on which a fia gt race took place in 2004/2005 are included in the game. as an european, it is a pity that the vln long distance series is not included. this means no Nordschleife for example. the other tracks are not bad but i found a major disbalance for the frame rate for different tracks. this depends mostly on the scenery. if you are running a system which is a little bit ‘on the edge’ you have to change the graphic settings for each track and this is quite anoying. the details of the tracks are fine and especially with the new lighting system it is really impressive to watch races on certain tracks. for driving, it is very helpfull for finding brake points and turn in points, especially if it is not daytime.
the sound:
the sound is not very different to the first version of GTR. still no 5.1, still a little bit flat and liveless and i miss the incar feeling. compared to other sims like nascar, where you can feel the brutality of the engine, GTR2 is not really a reference. and i want to hear the engine where it is, means, for a mid engine or rear engine, the sound has to be placed in the back not in the front. and i also miss the sound of the tires, it is so great in richard burns rallye if you can hear which of the tires are scrubbing.
the cars:
the anouncement of 140 cars is a little bit strange, since there are less cars, just different skins. if you start a race with 60 cars (like spa) then you’ll get the warning that not enough cars available (red number close to the slider) even if i understand the concept of the different skins (driver, season, event) i don’t understand the promotion of 140 cars. the good think, or better, the very good point is, all cars are not encrypted. even if i dislike to mod or to change everything nor i want to drive a 1000 horsepower car, this is really a good decision to put the files non crypted on the disc. this will make things a lot easier (vln series, other privateer cars etc) and it gave me the possibility to add my modified exige to GTR2 as well. due the different seasons and cars, new tires are available, so i have to go for my tire test again ;). the quality of the cars is great, even at low detail and low textures, they look brilliant, especially in dusk or dawn.
the performance:
as i have said above, the performance depends on the track. the overall performance is much better than GTR. on my sony vaio 2 GHz, 2 GB, Ati 700, Soundblaster Audigy PCMCIA the game is running at about 30 fps without many hacks on graphics. if i go back to directx7 shaders (or no shaders i would say, it looks quite close to GTR then) i get 60 fps easily, even with 60 cars on the track and full scene antialiasing. rain is really demanding and also with full shadows at high quality i got frame drops to 10 on spa or other complex tracks. rain is good to handle without fsaa, which is not really necessary due the fog. the shadow problem (if you want to call it like this) can be fixed by decreasing quality and setting it to medium. but the shadow issue hardly depends on the track, a complex pit building cuts off about 30 fps easily while a flat track like china is no problem at all. motec eats up to 10 fps as well and like in GTR, outside the cockpit, the frame rate is much better and more consistent. overall, it is acceptable and still driveable on low spec systems if you can life with less details on cars and tracks.
the realism:
this is the most important part of a simulation, isn’t it? i’ve already tested the conversion of the Nordschleife from GTL and brakesmann has released a kind of official version for GTR2, so no editing and renaming necessary. now, with the final release of GTR2 i am able to use my former exige. so i can compare GTR and GTR2 side by side with the same car on the same track.
my first impression was – easy. my second impression was – more like a real car, and my third impression – great. GTR was often some kind of too predictable, means, i know befor a curve this will be a disaster because there was often no chance to catch a spinning car. from real life i know that there is a border on which everything is lost but in GTR this border is reached earlier than in real life due the handling of the cars. in GTR2 i think this border is set properly and, and this is a very good thing, the cars are able to slide more than in GTR. so if you throw a car into a bend and you know you are a way off the line for the current speed, you will be able to force the car into a more sideway motion and with some luck, this will rescue the situation. i do not talk about ‘need for speed underground’ drifting, i just talk about exceeding the tire grip a little bit without loosing the car completely. especially on tracks like Nordschleife, where you have a lot of places where you can not look ‘around’ the corner it is quite important to have at least a chance to avoid crahses initiated by spinning cars or whatsoever, especially for 24 hours races.
to test the physics a little bit in depth, i took my exige and went out for a couple of laps on Nordschleife. with a base setup (short gears, too much rear wing, wrong caster) i was able to drive a 7:55, which is not bad for this car. after getting my old settings from GTR i was able to get a 7:44. this is about 9 seconds faster than my best time in GTR. my first idea was, more grip on the track. so i went to motec and compared speeds and g-forces at certain sections of the track. surprisely, they are quite close together, so it is not only related to the grip of the track. so i started to dig a little bit deeper and i found that i was braking a little bit later and i was accelerating a little bit earlier than in GTR. i have no idea what is the major reason for this but i would say it is a better ‘feeling’. handling the car on the edge seems a little bit easier than in GTR and i’ve got the impression that the force feedback is different to GTR (i have modified the force feedback settings to get rid of this raddling feedback, maybe i have spoiled the feedback in GTR). i will spend some more time on this issue to get the reason for this improvement.
the analysis:
for me as a statistican, it is very important to analyse my driving. GTR2 requires the new Motec version I2. At a first look, this version looks very different to the well known Motec Interpreter. But at a second look, the new version is more flexible and provides better output. Handling multiple graphs, adding and removing channels, everything works like a charm, there are lots of detailed settings like filter, scale and color. handling different sessions is as easy as eating icecream, so jumping between different runs is very handy. a major improvement is the new selection of channels. the tire temperatures for example, this provides a great opportunity to adjust the caster settings in a more sophisticated manner than in GTR. what i miss is the brake temperature, especially for cars with non-motec displays or with the small motec display (there is no brake nor tire temp available while driving). to find the optimal brake cooling setting is more a shot in the dark.
overall:
GTR2 is definitely a great sequel to GTR. if you are into sim racing and if you like to get a complete package of gt racing, this is your choice. it is not without minor problems and bugs but it is a good game with lots of features like full seasons, driving school and time attack. hardcore sim freaks may not enjoy every option but i think this game offers a lot of different features to fullfil a wide spectrum of needs without the need to use every option. the non encrypted files offers great opportunity for modders or for people who wants to ‘adjust’ some parts. if you are a pure mod freak then maybe r-factor would be a better choice.