All right, I'm taking the plunge... maybe!

Doorman · August 30, 2009, 11:54:10 PM

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.

Incidently, which car?

vobler · September 12, 2011, 11:00:01 AM

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?

vobler · September 13, 2011, 09:54:22 PM

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)

Jamin · September 13, 2011, 10:33:54 PM

Downloading now :thumb:

Lameduck · September 14, 2011, 10:24:26 AM

Downloaded and tested vobler's server this morning and everything works OK.
Just need to learn how to drive

vobler · September 14, 2011, 11:08:41 AM

Quote from: Lameduck;332846Downloaded and tested vobler's server this morning and everything works OK.
Just need to learn how to drive

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.

Lameduck · September 14, 2011, 11:33:10 AM

Plunge taken. Seems a reasonable buy @ Â£13.28

Just tried the E-Type

:D and the FIAT Abarth

:D:D

vobler · September 14, 2011, 11:57:09 AM

Quote from: Lameduck;332848Plunge taken. Seems a reasonable buy @ Â£13.28

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)

Seany · September 14, 2011, 07:25:49 PM

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.

vobler · September 26, 2011, 09:03:55 AM

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.