SimHQ.com - Motorsports Zone - Feature: Race for the Chase

With the race for the chase heating-up in this year's NASCAR NEXTEL Cup Series we see drivers who were strong during the first half of the season struggling a bit, and the "Smoke" of drivers who are extremely fast and furious right now. We thought it would be interesting to take a comparative look at three NASCAR titles for the PC.

This feature is intended as a bit of mid-season summer fun, and we won't be applying the strictest of benchmarks but just take each sim out for a drive and reporting on the strengths and weaknesses of each sim.

The contestants for the chase are:

NASCAR Racing 2003 Season (NR2003) by Papyrus, with legal 2005 graphical add-ons
EA's NASCAR Sim Racing (NSR) where we will attempt to locate relevant 2005 add-ons
the Dark Horse in this race, we'll look at a NASCAR sim from the year 2000 — NASCAR Heat (NH) by Hasbro/MGI.

Road racing mods are in existence for NH and NR2003 and will probably also become available for NSR, but in this article we'll use these sims as they were originally meant to be used and that means we'll almost exclusively be turning left.

In many ways this comparison is completely unfair as the recommended system requirements range from a 266 MHz (NH) to over 800 MHz (NR2003) and 1 GHz (NSR). NASCAR Racing 2003 Season has recently been benefited with support of TrackIR with 6 DoF, which is part of the NSR retail package.

I seem to remember barely getting away with running NR2003 on an old 500 MHz and 1.5 GHz seems a more realistic figure, as that sim is heavy on the CPU as you add more cars. The 1 GHz stated on the box for NSR is the only figure mentioned. NSR does not inform you whether that figure applies to a minimum or a recommended system specification. 2 GHz seems more realistic if you wish to run with an acceptable number of opponents and a decent amount of eye-candy.

The latest official patches have been applied to all contestants. For NR2003 v1.2.0.1, for NSR v1.025, and NH v1.80.

The screenshots you see were taken using 1600x1200x32 resolution in NASCAR Heat, 1152x864x32 for NASCAR Racing 2003 Season and NASCAR Sim Racing. No AA/FSAA was used.

So much in the way of pre-race ceremonies. And now for those famous words in motor racing; "Gentlemen, start your engines!"

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