Playtesting

After arriving at the GoKart Racer facility, we sat down and had lunch as we waited for the rest of the group to arrive and for two more wheels to be installed for the test systems (pic). This gave us a chance to reflect on the presentation we had seen earlier and most agreed that the goals of the project were headed in the right direction.

Once we got behind the wheel, James suggested that we start out with California, as the default setup for that track had been tweaked more than the others in preparation for the event in California. Clicking through the options screens, it was very apparent that the development team had studied the other sim titles quite a bit, as all the familiar options were there, and the menu styles were very similar in layout and feel.

The sim starts up with the typical splash screens, music, and finally arrives at the main menu, where you can select from Practice, Career, Race, Options and Multiplayer. Browsing through the options (pic) to make sure that all the driving aids are off and to check the wheel and pedal calibration, it appeared that there was alot of flexibility, particularly in the binding of commands to wheel buttons and keys. There was also an option to bind keys to adjust brake bias while driving the car.

I chose to start out in Race, and was presented with a track menu. The track selection appears to be restricted to Cup tracks at this time, and I have not heard any mention of tracks being added before release. I certainly hope that the tracks unique to BGN and CTS are added at or soon after release. After selecting the track and waiting about 15-20 seconds for it to load up, I was at the race screen. I chose to go straight out onto the track for a few laps in the Practice session.

Sitting in the cockpit, everything looked great.(pic) The dash, roll bars and gauges all looked right, and the pair of hands on the steering wheel was a surprise. There is an option to display a HUD with your tach, speed, gear and other gauges (pic), and you can select how much of the HUD you want to display. The shadows cast by the roll bars and other objects are dynamic, and change as the lighting changes, and the window net flaps in the wind. Pit road looked crowded and busy, as it should, and the track textures were authentic. Starting down pit road, the first thing that hit me was the sound. They really did a good job of recreating the engine noise of the cars, and the car vibrates as the engine comes up the RPMs.

Getting onto the track, the car feels quite tight and lacking grip on the cold tires. After a lap, the temps come up and the car has a very good balance to it. One thing that bit me right from the start is the safer barrier off of turn 2. These will definitely require some driving line adjustments, just as it has for Nascar drivers. The feel of the seemed natural and very responsive, and the car seemed to have alot of grip. Smooth steering inputs made for smooth cornering, and jerky steering resulted in a sloppy turn and upset the car quite a bit. Getting the car loose wasn't a big event, a little counter steer and backing off the throttle gathered it back up.

Scraping the walls in the turns seems pretty natural. I neither bounces you straight back down the track, nor does it make your car stick to the wall. It's very subtle, and bounces you off just enough to get you off of it, provided you are trying to steer away from it. The damage inflicted from heavy contact seems to be about right. If you hit something hard, your car is going to be trashed. However, in my testing, slight bouncing off the walls didn't produce any noticeable damage to the side or right front corner, which may need to be addressed both to prevent "wall-riding" and to enhance the realism.

The game allows for several different views, cockpit, roof, hood, and chase (pic). You can also select a view outside of the car while you're still in it. Although I wouldn't recommend you try this at race speed, it would come in handy for checking your car for damage on caution flag laps. On the subject of pace laps, the sim gives the driver complete control of the car at all times, from start to finish and on pit road, a departure from previous EA titles. The pace car is a non-collision object, and pace speed can be adjusted as necessary prior to the race. Racing alone, however, you are given the option to bypass the initial pace lap and are given control of the car as the green flag drops.

After a few laps, I decided to go to another track, and ended up driving about 20 laps at Lowes, to see how the car reacted as the tires wore. The default setup drove fairly well, a little tight in the center of the turn, but comfortable other wise. During the run, I began fiddling with the stackable information screens (pic), monitoring my lap times, tire temps and wear all simultaneously. The right rear seemed to be taking the bulk of the load, and the car began to fall off slightly and tighten up after about 15 laps. I also got to run around with some AI, which were a little bit faster than I was running that setup. The AI seemed pretty intelligent, modifying their lines and adjusting their speed to avoid a collision, and didn't have any suicidal tendencies at all.

I also tested ran Bristol for just a few laps, and found that wheel spin is alot more common in this sim if you punch the gas pedal coming off the turns. I then ran about 10 laps at Richmond, which felt very much the same as I was accustomed to, with the braking and throttle work almost identical. I next ran a couple of laps of a full field race at Daytona, starting in the back of the pack. The car felt solid on the track, though it did wobble a bit in the turns, which seemed realistic to me. The pull of the draft was very noticeable right from the start, and I was able to turn a little faster laps in the high line with the default setup, indicating that the gears might have been just a bit too tall. The AI reacted well to bump drafting and slight contact, no drastic moves and no "stonewall" blocking either. They seemed to acknowledge you were there, and give you a little space.

I finally wrapped up my testing at Homestead, opting to try to work with some of the setup options and see how the car responded. The car felt really tight, so I went and made some pretty hefty changes in the garage, which resulted in a loose racecar. Backing off the changes got the car closer to neutral, but I finally surrendered my seat to another tester after about an hour or so of testing.

One thing that I really didn't pick up on until speaking with another tester later in the day, was that the car did not have the typical pull to the left on the banked straights. Without knowing how the front end geometry of the setups were configured, I can't be sure if this was a setup issue or a design issue.

Unfortunately, a network issue was preventing us from seeing servers on the LAN, so we were not able to do any multiplayer testing. While this was a disappointment, getting a feel for the game and the physics was my primary interest, so not being able to race against humans wasn't that big of a loss.

Overall, the sim felt very familiar. Having not played any of the EA Nascar titles in the past few years, the Papyrus sims are all I have to compare Nascar Sim Racing to, and it stacks up very well. All of the features I have come to know and love appear to be there, and work as expected. The build we were testing was very stable and performance was good at high details on the systems we were provided with from Nvidia. It's very tough to say whether or not the sim racing community will welcome this title with open arms, but I came away from the experience with the feeling that they set out to produce a quality sim, and have succeeded.

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