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[Supermercado]

Wow, what a track. I just raced a 2-lap race around the track and it took me nearly 15 minutes. My best lap was 7:10, and that was with a major spinout in one of the tricky early turns. 15 minutes... that's amazing. For two laps. And that's in the Ferrari Enzo.

For those who don't know, the Nurburgring is a 13-mile, 147-turn (I think) racetrack in Germany and is home to the final race in Project Gotham 2. I've been working for several days to open it up and let me tell you, it did not disappoint. There's several places on the track where you can top 200 and going down the front straight, if you're not doing 215, you need to get off the track. Heh, there's also a spot about 3/4 of the way through where you're going so fast over a slight rise in the track where you almost catch enough air to flip the car over. It's amazing.

Someone posted a Gran Turismo 4 video of someone running the track over at AT. If I can find it, I'll repost it here so you guys can witness the wonder that is the Nurburgring.

Oh, btw, the nearest car behind me was a Mercedes CLK-GTR and I beat it by 35 seconds. The 8th place car (aka, last) was a Koenigsegg CC V8S and I beat it by 1:13. Crazy.

Edit: Apparently, it has 176 turns, my bad.

[Catfish]

That sounds beyond leet.  Though I suppose I need to play PG before I can really appreciate it (but I'm a classic NFS whore, especially High Stakes so I can at least gather half an idea).  Btw, Virtua Racing owns you.  Fear the 32X.

[Supermercado]

Oh, I'm a fan of NFS, too, but my favorite games have always been the more sim-oriented games. While PGR is definitely not a sim racer, it's much more so than any NFS game. It's a good blend of sim/arcade racing that leans a little more towards the sim side. Main examples are the speeds and RWD cars.

1) There's no way a Civic will go 180mph like they do in NFSU. Sure, it's fun, but terribly unrealistic. In PGR, the Enzo is the fastest car (I think, the TVR Speed 12 might be faster) and on the long straight at Nurburg, it tops out at 216. NFSU would have cars going down that straight at like 275-300, haha.

2) RWD cars are beasts to drive if you don't know how or are unfamiliar with them or are driving in bad conditions. The hardest scenario I can come up with is driving the Skyline in the rain. Oi. The Skyline's a slippery car to begin with but get it in the rain. Yikes.

With all that said, I'm still waiting for Forza to come out. They announced the car list a few days ago. There's some excellent vehicles on there that I'm greatly anticipating taking out for a few laps.

[Catfish]

lol... son, I used to drive a 6-cylinder Monte Carlo in NJ winters... I get the idea w/the RWD car

That's a really nice touch though, for the designers... lots of times it seems as though all cars are FWD and are pulled through the corners.  Nice to see someone doing something to improve the behavior.

<3

[Supermercado]

Yeah. There's some huge differences in how the cars handle in PGR and I'm sure it's even more apparent in a true sim game like Gran Turismo or Forza. It's been a while since I've played GT2 and I didn't know as much about driving then as I do now, so I can't really say how the physics model was. But it's definitely present in PGR. Gas it in a RWD car while turning and... well, you know what happens next. Unless you're in the Corvette Stingray (late 60s vintage if I'm correct), in which case you begin a monster powerslide and end up going through the turn totally sideways. That's fun.

[Supermercado]

I finally found a sweet video of a car taking a lap at Nurburgring and I've hosted it on the site so you guys can check it out. It's a BMW M3 GTR taking a full lap of the track. I think it's part of the 24 Hours of Le Mans or something, so there's other cars on the track. What I don't understand is how the M3 blows by what looks to be 911 GT2s like they're standing still.

At any rate, here's the video. Be warned, though, it's somewhat big (53.5MB) so it may take a few minutes to download, but trust me, it's worth every second of the wait. And make sure you crank it up to hear that V8 wailing. *faints*

Edit: btw, pay attention at just after 5:30. The carousel is coming up after that and it's sweet.

Edit2: Just found out... this is a qualifying lap.

Way late edit just in case someone reads this in the future: I just took down the video to snag a few extra MB of space on the server, so the above link is dead. Just a heads up.

[elmono311]

That's a heck of a track if it takes 8 1/2 minutes to complete a single lap...

[Supermercado]

Indeed it is. One of the most demanding circuits in the world.

[Wosco]

One of the most demanding circuits in the world.

It's cake.  The most difficult tracks are the short ones where any monkey can figure out how to go fast.

 

Yeah that's right.  The elitist known as Jesse has found his way to the forum.

[Supermercado]

I was wondering how long before you'd come along and join us

With practice, hopefully it won't be demanding for me, either.