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Driving model: You have two choices of physics; standard and pro. I have been driving exclusively in pro.

The driving model is arcade but surprisingly I find that it fits the game near perfectly. FlatOut is not intended as a very serious driving simulation. The emphasis is rather on racing the other cars and racing the tracks. Good driving habits like choosing the right line and maximizing exit speed will definitely help you, but the cars are easy to control and to throw around. I've tried modding the physics with one of the tweaks that are available on the net, to make the handling more sim-like but must confess to preferring the default pro-handling mode.

The game is developed around the Rally Trophy engine so the basic physics like tire- and suspension modeling are pretty accurate, it's just that the driving model has been tweaked to offer a more "arcadey" or relaxed driving model.

The force feedback is good, perhaps not exceptionally sublime but certainly more than adequate.

Mods are already appearing on the net so soon we could have several options to choose from. I'm on the lookout for a mod that gives just a bit more of a drifting experience while not sacrificing the derivability or fun-factor of the original model.

Damage model: The damage model is quite spectacular as the cars will resemble complete wrecks after they have been rolling, flying, turning, and banging into each other. Parts like doors and panels come unstuck and then they start flapping from your car until they are completely torn off, and the body of the car will deform convincingly with each blow that is dealt to it. Judged by FlatOut's damage model, this is definitely one of the "simmiest" sims.

Ragdoll sports: These ragdoll sports. Some say they are a gimmick, some think they are hilariously good fun. As hinted earlier, if your car is hitting something, or being hit by another car sufficiently hard, your driver may be thrown out of the car. The effect on me is that short moment of shock as it happens.

In Ragdoll sports, the object is in fact to let the driver be thrown out, preferably as high or as long as possible.

You control the point of ejection by pushing the nitro button a while before actually ejecting, and when you release the button the ragdoll will shoot from the car. I'll admit that my skills are sadly lacking.

When reading about such a feature it may sound very silly, which, in fact, it is - but at the same time it really is a fascinating activity. Take the car down the ramp, accelerate, punch and then release the button and see if you can score a strike in the bowling alley, or place the driver into one of the holes in the face of a giant clown.

Go on! Let the inner looney in you get out for 15 minutes, it's only a game so thank goodness nobody gets hurt.

The Sounds

Engine sounds seem a bit weak but I suspect it might be my onboard AC97 soundcard that muffles the sounds a bit. Or the fact that the developers have tuned the engines down a bit to better mix with the music soundtracks. Basically the engine sounds seem to be pretty close to my expectations of what the real thing should sound like.

The Mods

As mentioned earlier, the game does not include an in car driving view however, you can have a very nice in car view, as well as roof and bonnet views with some of the mods that are already available. When using the modded in car view you can even get blinded by your own bonnet as it will obstruct your view ahead if it is knocked loose until it is knocked completely off. The windscreen shatters as well.

The in car modded view can be seen on the following screenshot:

The built-in LAN multiplayer function has been enhanced by a utility that let's you chat with other racers, join and host Internet multiplayer sessions.

The way to get these mods to work might at first seem a bit tricky, but once learned it's very easy to add these mods.

First, get "bfsunpack" from Blackhole Motorsports. Unzip the bfsunpack.exe to your FlatOut directory.

Open the DOS command-line box and type CD.. until you get the root directory where your copy of FlatOut is installed. If you installed FlatOut to your C drive, the root directory will be C:\

Now type (assuming you have installed the game to the default directory): CD programs\empire interactive\flatout.

Now type: "bfsunpack.exe common1.bfs" and watch as the common1.bfs file gets extracted.

Then type: "bfsunpack.exe common2.bfs" and wait for the common2.bfs file to get extracted.

Finallly type: "bfsunpack.exe europe.bfs" and let the europe.bfs file get extracted.

Now rename the file "filesystem.ini" to "old_filesystem.ini".

This ensures that the game will use the files that will later be extracted into the data folder.

At this time, as a precaution you should back up the folders in the data directory that you plan to mod. If you are about to install the new driving views, back up your cars folder before installing the new views. This way you can easily revert to default if you regret the results.

The rest of the process is simply to extract the modded files to their respective folders. Using the driving views as an example, just extract the files to your cars folder. That's it!

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