netKar Pro

Woot! Didn't realise GH was gonna get first host to this. Been eagerly waiting on netKar Pro all day! Promises to be very cool, the next in uber-detailed race sims! And made by the absolute legend that is Stefano Casillo. B)

This is the demo that's unlockable to the full version right?

I'll be back with impressions..

But will it be better than GTR2? We'll see my lil racing buddy

Ok so I've been playing the unlocked version of netKar Pro for a while and it's....*checks time* 6am now! Evidently I like the game!

It's definitely not as polished as GTR2 will be, there's no fancy presentation or anything, but the feel of the sim is superb. Best bits are the graphics, car models, track models, physics, force feedback, silky frame rate and all the tiny details. You have to start the car manually which takes upto 3 switches in some cars! There's a 'doom mode' where you can get out of the car and wander about the pits in 1st person, which is interesting because things like camber setup and tire wear are all changes you can see visibley. Outside of multiplayer its not that useful though and you wish you had a rocket launcher or BFG9000 instead. :P

The other cool thing was the damage model. You can see bent/broken axels and even if you knock your wheel slightly, you'll still feel it in the performance of the car and through the force feedback. Force feedback even goes as far as vibrating when you flat-spot your tires after locking your wheels. Body work remains undamaged, but you see details like tire wear and tires picking up dust/grass etc.

It did take me a good hour to work out a sound problem though. Engine sounds were distorting and cutting out, but after tweaking the options they sounded better. Still the sounds are very 'staticy' and could be a bit smoother imo. Online started off a bit dodgy too, with lots of hiccups, and disconnections, but after a while I managed to get onto a stable server in Australia with a ping of 200 (which is good considering Im in the UK!). I had a decent race with one other guy, and one collision which felt fairly convincing! So I'm pretty sure online will be better after some time too.

The demo only has 1 car, 1 track, no online and a few features missing like the funky steering wheel mounted display. The car and the track aren't the best ones either so the demo doesn't really do the full game justice. The full version has 4 cars and 4 tracks which isn't much more, but the faster cars are a lot more responsive and fun to drive than the F1600 in the demo.

All in all though, I thought netKar Pro was worth the wait. It won't be worth the money to buy if you're not really into sim racing or you hated the demo. There are no frills or fancy presentation to ease you in. Just straight up sim racing, online and moddability. I'll definitely be playing more after I get some sleep! So congrats to Stefano and his team for creating such a fine sim.