Hi guys,
So I decided to download and install the 1.1 Beta today. I also fiddled with some graphics settings (in the "cfg"-folder) and, lo and behold, it performs MUCH better than 1.03 ever did..! I don't know exactly what made the difference, but I don't care. :D I get ~ 90 FPS in the "worst" parts with pretty high graphics settings, which means I can even use vSync! Silky smooth. :yahoo:
So now I'm debating whether I should take advantage of the limited offer (45% price reduction) which expires in a few days.. :g: I'm hoping to get to test the demo with my new wheel before the offer expires, but in any case I would appreciate some opinions:
How active are you guys in nKP? Does most of the action happen in R2P or GPC these days? I hear regular pick-up racing is pretty dead still..
Do you think nKP will still exist in a year or two? Frankly I was kind of surprised that the new Beta saw the light of day..! I thought the whole project was pretty much cancelled. (Stefano has been working on other projects, such as an arcade racer whose name I've forgotten)
Bah, it's only €20 anyway, but I would like to get a little "status update" if possible. :)
The more there are of us playing nKP the more will play. Get it, it's cheap and it getting better all the while. You will also learn what patience is! :lmfao:
Seriously, it's not money wasted. For the price of one iRacing car....?
Status? Stefano IS working on it, we have a man on the inside who sends us communiques every so often. He's told us for example that he's found the clutch not working bug etc.
There's no reason whatsoever that netKar shouldn't exist in 2-3 years time.. It's made it past 3 years already in the state it was in. It's only just starting to get a lot better and new content is coming. Kunos has already got plans for netKar PRO 2 and has just set up new offices for the netKar team. There's no doubt in my mind that this is an ongoing project.
Kunos hasn't been working on any 'arcade racer' He just sold the devs the engine.
I imagine that netKar will continue to be mainly league based, though there has been pickup races going in in v1.1 every time I've looked. By the time the complete 1.1 package is released i can see a lot more pickup racing going on (a lot in netKar terms that is ;) ) the netcode is far better, collision detection is a lot better, and he's solved the 'invisible object' bug apparently. I think a lot more people will be playing it, especially when the Abarth is released.
It costs less than 1 iRacing track+car. nuff said :sideways:
EDIT...beaten by Doors. Not often that happens :narnar:
Thanks for the replies! Good points. What really nails it is....
Quote from: The Moose;287523netcode is far better, collision detection is a lot better, and he's solved the 'invisible object' bug apparently.
and
Quote from: The MooseIt costs less than 1 iRacing track+car. nuff said
:D
Quote from: doorzYou will also learn what patience is! :lmfao:
Don't confuse me for Obsolum! :narnar:
Ok, that settles it, by the weekend I'll have joined the club! :racing: I've got very little experience with formula cars (or any cars with downforce, for that matter) from any sim, so this will be a totally new experience for me. :) F2000 looks pretty cool from the youtube videos!
For me personally I don't think it's worth it at the moment, but if you've got the money to spare and you're planning on sticking with nKP for a considerable amount of time then go for it :)
And I do have patience! :sideways:
For some reason I always get really impatient when I know that the stuff I'm waiting for is on its way. Before I get the shipping notification I don't mind too much.. :lmfao:
Stu, which one was your favourite in nKP again, is it the F2000 or FTarget? I can't remember..
See, he IS coding 'n' stuff! (http://forum.racesimcentral.com/showpost.php?p=3992454&postcount=157) Buy it Oliver, buy it while it's cheap
Quote from: Doorman;287551See, he IS coding 'n' stuff! (http://forum.racesimcentral.com/showpost.php?p=3992454&postcount=157) Buy it Oliver, buy it while it's cheap
Yes but he is coding Netbike!
http://forum.racesimcentral.com/showpost.php?p=3992453&postcount=340
Quote from: vobler;287577Yes but he is coding Netbike!
http://forum.racesimcentral.com/showpost.php?p=3992453&postcount=340
:eyebrow: Isn't that what they call "selective quoting"? He had a play with netbike whilst not at the office (where he is spending all his time on netKar 1.1)
He's coding v1.1 of netKar. End of.
http://forum.racesimcentral.com/showpost.php?p=3992480&postcount=343
Quote from: Doorman;287551Buy it Oliver, buy it while it's cheap
I said I don't think it's worth it, so why would I buy it even if it's cheap? :) I don't like downforce cars so for me they don't add much - if anything - to the game. I'm happy enough doing the F1600 series on R2P and I don't need the full game to do that.
The Abarth could
possibly get me more interested but it remains to be seen how that will turn out. There would have to be a proper Abarth series over at R2P before I would consider buying a license. Pick up racing won't do it.
And even if there were an Abarth series I still would not have the money. That's right, I don't have €20 to spare. In fact I'm about €100 short every month. I don't even have money to put fuel in my bike to go for a ride. And there is a
ton of other stuff that I would very much like to buy for my personal entertainment, so NKP will have to compete with those on my priority list.
And then I haven't even mentioned that we're living in a house that's only half finished, with very little luxury and comfort and even less space, due to us not having the money to continue renovating it.
You're welcome to make a donation, of course :flirty:
That's told me! :lmfao:
Some superb F2000 racing at Snetterton tonight. I'm not generally a 'downforce' fan but I'm coming to terms with the principal of going round a corner quicker than common sense tells me is right. Another thing I discovered, is that The Moose (Oooo!) is a closet wrecker. :roflmao:
Yeah! That was great last night. It's the first time I've really spent some time with the F2000 in v1.1
Once I'd got used to it and tweaked the setup to something acceptable i really started to like it. It feels a lot different now, but when you get used to attacking corners a lot harder than you feel you should it's very rewarding. You really get the feel of the downforce working like it should, and the tyres are a lot better now..very grippy but you really feel it as you just go over the limit. A big improvement on previous versions.
They don't work very well when you get on the grass though:roflmao: Sorry for that amateur moment :doh: I watched the replay and the collision detection was very good:lmfao:
Quote from: The Moose;287721I watched the replay and the collision detection was very good:lmfao:
Funny enough, I detected it too. :rolleyes:
OK, I'm in!! I just had an absolute blast racing online against some other dudes at Aviano Short, which convinved me 100%.
Actually I had never driven that config before..! Man, that felt great!! There's such an incredible fidelity to the FFB, far far better than anything I experienced in 1.03 with the old wheel. For example, as you go over the hill after T1 you can really really feel when you're on the verge of loosing traction on the rear tyres. It just tells you exactly how the car is behaving! Makes it a breeze to respond with proper throttle modulation.
Man, that felt rewarding! :yahoo:
Quote from: Gnomie;287963OK, I'm in!! I just had an absolute blast racing online against some other dudes at Aviano Short, which convinved me 100%.
Actually I had never driven that config before..! Man, that felt great!! There's such an incredible fidelity to the FFB, far far better than anything I experienced in 1.03 with the old wheel. For example, as you go over the hill after T1 you can really really feel when you're on the verge of loosing traction on the rear tyres. It just tells you exactly how the car is behaving! Makes it a breeze to respond with proper throttle modulation.
Man, that felt rewarding! :yahoo:
Now you can see why people have such faith in the sim, despite being jerked around for so long. :D Incidently, which car?
Lots of time has passed, Where do I begin?
As some of you know I've had Netkar Pro since just about day one. The first version had losts of problems, but soon we had a version we could use. 1.03? I was in GPChampionship at one point but I was not fast enough, so I never got to race. Slowly Netkar got better, but at some point I was not able to use it anymore. It would not start on my computer. Maybe it was because I had gotten a new machine with Vista 64, I don't know, but it would not start the sim.
Then I got a new graphics card and suddenly the sim started, but the old Netkar feel was gone. I felt they had done something with the FF for the front and it was more like a bad iRacing copy. 1.1 or 1.2 something?
Fast forward to 1.3 beta, Now with 3 screens tried it again but was put of by shimmering and triple screen support. So I stopped using it again.
Last week a the 1.3 Final was released, Kegetys found a way around the shimmering and FOV problems. Still unable to use proper triple screen settings in game, but I could really test it this time.
Still not finished with my testing but here is my impressions so far:
Some has stated many times that nothing can match this in car feel, I think they are right. The feel in these cars is simply fantastic. I generally don't like fast cars, but the feel now lets me race both the F2000, Osella and FTarget with confidence. The GP2 car is still too violent for me. I can relax, trust my instincts, and let the car do its stuff. I'm totaly in shocked of the feel these cars have when pushed, hitting curbs and bumps. They have such a natural feel to them that it is amacing. If you spin here you know why. I'm not sure if I'm going to be fast enough in Netkar this time either, but I did several 54s on Newbury 06 in the Osella. Imagine if the iRacing Radical felt like the Osella!
One other thing there is no soft mid spot in the FFB on my G27. How Kunos does that is beyond me. It feels totaly connected. There still is that sharp FFB kicks like in the iRacing Skippy, but only on some curbs. That may be track related, but very natural indeed. The FFB can be described as something between LFS and iRacing.
I have tested the Fiat (some), the F1600, F1800, F2000, FTarget (some), the Osella and the new Vintage Replica. All have a feel even better than I remember from the earlier versions. If this feel is new, please do your self a favour and try it.
Online:
I have tried a few online races in the Vintage R, The F1600 and the Osella. Some races was on a server with over 300 ping. I saw some lag (zig-zag'ing and pullbacks) but nothing big. On the 50 ping servers the racing could be close. I had one lap an Newbury side by side in the Osella and it was great.
The competition was very variable as one could expect on open servers. On some servers you would win if you could stay on track, on others everyone finished within a second. (Osella@Newbury 5 laps)
I saw that a few bugs is still there, shadows of disconnected cars still on track, not loading models, etc., but it may not be a show stopper this time. Time will tell, Kunos has a natural talent for making bugs, but maybe it will be different this time? In my opinion Netkar has never been better.
All in all a very positive "reunion".
So has anyone else tried it?
If anyone here want to check this out, I'm running a temporary server this week with demo content.
You should be able to connect with the Netkar Pro demo to:
Server : Sea View
Password: mine
Find the demo sim here: http://www.netkar-pro.com/main/
(Gray button upper right, not the red one... yet)
Downloading now :thumb:
Downloaded and tested vobler's server this morning and everything works OK.
Just need to learn how to drive :rolleyes:
Quote from: Lameduck;332846Downloaded and tested vobler's server this morning and everything works OK.
Just need to learn how to drive :rolleyes:
Good, it is a lot to learn, both tracks,cars and sim. Some bugs are still there, but we already have had two autoupdates to this version now so it looks promising that Kunos is on it trying to iron stuff out. The actual sim environment is not up to the best standards, but the driving and multiplayer seems to work well now. Had 15 people on yesterday and we had some pretty close racing.
Someone said that the demo could connect to any track online, but only use prato&crema offline. Only in the FF1600 of course. We have to check that in this version as I think he was referring to en earlier release. We may test something like Newbury (fictional British track) later on.
You are all welcome this evening.
Plunge taken. Seems a reasonable buy @ £13.28 :D
Just tried the E-Type :D:D and the FIAT Abarth :D:D:D
Quote from: Lameduck;332848Plunge taken. Seems a reasonable buy @ £13.28 :D
Wehey!
There is a couple more things I wanted to mention.
Rain! Its even got puddles and aquaplaning. (slider to 5 notch to get rain tires)
Tracks! There is loads of third party tracks out there. Even the Blackwood track from LFS (I heard they got Scawens blessing)
Interesting, sounds like a good time as any to give it a try again. I did enjoy it, when I tried it before.
Cheers Vobler.
NetKar Pro Testing
I have finished my testing of NetKar for the moment.
There are still some big issues, I can't get the server to change sessions as I want. A lot of people have issues like flying cars and not able to race some of them. Others report not able to start it at all.
I also feel that the car selection is too sparse to be able to use NetKar as a primary sim, unless you just want to ride one specific car they have.
Other than that, NetKar offers a feel and joy of driving like no other. Pity they always seem to make more bugs everytime they fix something.