Review: netKar Pro v1.0.3

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Enabling H-shifter

Firstly, the gears I found to be operated by the paddle shifters by default . I had forgotten how to enable the gated H-shifter of my G-25, so here’s a quick “how-to”.

In your netKar PRO directory you should find a folder called cfg and inside that folder a file called actlabs. Open this file with notepad and make sure you have activated the shifter support, which for my Logitech G-25 looks like this:

[SHIFTER]
ACTIVE=1
GEAR_R=14
GEAR_1=8
GEAR_2=9
GEAR_3=10
GEAR_4=11
GEAR_5=12
GEAR_6=13
JOY=0

Secondly, I couldn’t find where to select the skins I had made and downloaded earlier and I searched for the right tab in the front end interface until I was struck by the thought that since set ups are now loaded from within the sim, not in the Interface, perhaps the right place for me to find those skins would be in the sim. Bingo! When in the garage, go to the “files” tab and you can click through all the available skins.

Manual

While looking around in the folders and files, one of the biggest and most welcome surprises is that there is now a 144 page manual shipped with the sim, detailing everything from purchasing, installing and setting up netKar PRO. This manual also takes you through the procedures for starting your car, how to capture the AIM files so that they will be available for analysis in the telemetry viewer, and every other imaginable step until you have become familiar with all aspects of netKar PRO — including the keyboard shortcuts.

Connect your printer and load some fresh cartridges because this manual by Jaap Wagenvoort is very well done and is a must-read, in the bus, in the train and as bed time reading.

You may even wish to have it bound in leather, but that is up to you as this is not a merchandise item.

On launching the newest version of netKar PRO everything else looks pretty much as we’ve become used to.

The front end and menu’s are still not the most intuitive and the best in the business, but you get used to them.

Another pleasant surprise is that on my rig, frame rates are higher and much more solid than in the previous version. This appears to be the case in single-player and in on-line race modes.

On the downside, the replays are still controlled by the use of your keyboard; “f” for fast forward, “s” for slow, “d” for rewind, so this is where I will remind myself of the opening statement that this patch is primarily focused towards fixing issues, not introducing new features or functionality.

In the following, I will try to address each of the improvements in more detail and determine if indeed more stability and performance has been added.

Formula Target

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