SimHQ.com - Motorsports Zone - Review: TOCA Race Driver 3

After a race you can save a replay of the entire race for later viewing. As far as I can tell, only races can be saved, so you won’t be able to save a practice session and critique your driving afterwards. Basic functions such as fast forward and change between limited camera views are supported, but that is about it.

The Racing

With the staggering amount of cars and tracks, and the DVD packed to the brim with different motorsports series, on paper the proposition looks very good.

Sadly, the sheer amount of cartypes also means that no one series is totally convincing. The rules are more or less generic, as exemplified by the IRL series where the Indy 500 race is lacking the entire ritual known to be in use when qualifying for that particular race.

Driving physics

With Race Driver 2, Codemasters introduced a significant update to their physics-engine. The central pivot point physics were enhanced to include calculations for the four contact patches in contact with the road, i.e. the tires of the car.

In RD3 on the default settings which I will describe as being pure arcade, it is almost impossible to spin out. You can take corners with unrealistically high speeds and brake extremely late and light. I feel a lot of assistance from the software which will take good care of the very inexperienced driver.

The pro-handling physics are slightly less forgiving but imo, still not close enough to warrant receiving the simulator stamp approval. The dirt track racing reveals that the throttle is automatically cut, when the driving wheels are in the air. The difficulty seems to come primarily from keeping up with the sheer speed that RD3 automatically bestows upon you when you take to the track.

While some cars like the vintage Mercedes Benz Silver Arrows are quite fun to chuck around and send into slides while sawing at the steering wheel, the driving physics loose a lot of credibility when driving cars such as the Dodge Chargers or Indy Racing League cars. They are decidedly ill-handling on shorter tracks, throwing out the tail constantly; and on speedways and superspeedways you can fish-crab down the straight at Indianapolis under full throttle, go sideways through the turns with ease, and save huge slides while eating a sandwich and reading a book at the same time.

The oval racing also completely lacks a spotter to tell you if there are cars on your inside or outside, if you’re going three wide etc. In a multiplayer race at Indy , ”Rick” — in his Scottish accent – just offers the the advice that I should ”stay focused — there is only one lap left”.

As the central pivot point still constitutes a main part of the physics engine employed by RD3, all cars to a greater or lesser extent exhibit these central pivot point characteristics, but somehow it seems more pronounced in this latest installment of the Race Driver Series, than in the predecessor.

All this doesn't mean that Race Driver 3 is an easy game to beat. Bump up the AI to the maximum difficulty level, drive the pro-sim physics and you will probably have a difficult time to consistently win races. Unfortunately you'll be relying heavily on lightening quick reactions, a good portion of luck, and you'll have to employ some driving techniques that really wouldn't work in the real world.

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