Sim games

Whizzer

Whizzer

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Not sure where to post this but am comfortable moderators will place it in the appropriate category.

Which sim racing games are the best these days? I have an Sierra game from early 2000 or maybe late '90s. It is loaded on a ms 98 system and sitting in the garage. Wondered if this is still one of the best or what the newest and best sim might be. When replying, please consider my computer knowledge base is slightly above finding the off/on button (located at the right rear of the computer) and figuring out how to play music through itunes. Beyond that, a compass would not help.

Seriously though, anybody got any suggestions?
 
It depends on your computer. NASCAR Racing 2003 Season by Sierra is one of the best mods ever produced and runs very smooth on old computers. NASCAR Sim Racing 2005 by EA Sports is also fairly decent. I've also heard good things about ARCA Sim Racing but I haven't tried it yet.

Right now, I'm running rFactor. Some people call it a poor man's iRacing but rFactor's the only simulator with dirt racing mods and rally cars. You can get everything from NASCAR to F1 to Aussie V8s for it and there is a plethora of tracks.

iRacing is the best one out there graphically and realistically but it gets costly. You have to actually buy every car and track you run whereas every other sim, you can just get add ons online. Also, rFactor 2 is coming out soon and it's looking like it'll be rocking.

I'd look at NR2003 or rFactor first.
 
iRacing.

Haven't touched NR2003 since I signed up @ iRacing. Arca Sim racing is pretty good, but any mods take years to be released. So, if not iRacing, then NR2003 would be a good choice (for stock cars).
 
I agree with dpk and Speedy. You can find copies of all the Papyrus/Sierra games free online. NR2003 is still a good mod and people release updates everyday.
 
whizzer, correct me if i'm wrong but don't you have an apple machine? windows pc games don't run on appl os's last time i checked.
 
I don't think anyone ever topped Nascar Racing 2003 they just started adding stupid gimmicks, iRacing can be good if you get in with a good group one screwball ruins it.
 
AndyMarquisLive said:
You can put Windows on Apple computers now. The supposedly superior hardware in Apple computers is the exact same hardware that's in my IBM.
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Since the switch to Intel, Apple is just an over priced PC without the open architecture. Wait a minute, it always was. All the Apple clones I know were ****tin their pants over how much power they gained, then got depressed when I explained why. All those years of chirping about how good the IBM chips were at math, they missed the big picture.
 
FenderBumper said:
Since the switch to Intel, Apple is just an over priced PC without the open architecture. Wait a minute, it always was. All the Apple clones I know were ****tin their pants over how much power they gained, then got depressed when I explained why. All those years of chirping about how good the IBM chips were at math, they missed the big picture.
Click to expand...

IBM is Lenovo now. I've always thought IBM had the best laptops for the money.
 
AndyMarquisLive said:
IBM is Lenovo now. I've always thought IBM had the best laptops for the money.
Click to expand...

I buy Lenovo, mainly because you pick spec your laptop and the extended warranty is cheaper and far better than the rest. I don't need much power in my laptop, so I went with the i5 560, which has some specific routines on the chip to speed up certain tasks.

When I spoke of IBM before, I was refering to their chip designs and fab, which is what Apple used to use. There is a very interesting story behind the switch. Basically, IBM was too busy co-designing the cell processor AND the Xbox 360 processor to give Apple the new CPU they had been asking for, so they went to Intel, who had lost Xbox as a major customer. IBM and ATI came up with a very unique design that put the GPU in charge of memory and the southbridge, with the CPU on the same package. This makes sense, since GPU's are WAY faster at in-order processing than an out of order CPU will ever be, and IRQ's and memory swaps aren't branch intensive. Xbox 360 eventually went to a GPU-CPU on a single die.

What did we start seeing in Intels i-series? Same exact design, and the new 4 digit i series chips are faster and more energy efficient mainly because it's all on one die, but they are virtually the same circuitry as the original i series.
 
FenderBumper said:
I buy Lenovo, mainly because you pick spec your laptop and the extended warranty is cheaper and far better than the rest. I don't need much power in my laptop, so I went with the i5 560, which has some specific routines on the chip to speed up certain tasks.
Click to expand...

I bought my Lenovo at OfficeDepot because I had to buy something ASAP. I buy Lenovo because I know what's inside and I know what I'm buying. I had to go to Baltimore and sit through a Lenovo seminar for work once. I know what I'm buying.
 
The only problem I have with NR2003 is that finding a good NR003 online league is kinda hard.
 
It's a shame that someone can't come up with a good 'out of the box' NASCAR sim these days. Was NR2003 that far ahead of its time? Seriously, I've bought just about every one of the console based NASCAR sims and nothing comes close. The most recent, 'NASCAR The Game 2011', was at best one of the biggest P'sOS ever released. It was delayed by more than a month of the start of the season. It was almost entirely unplayable against online opponents. And..... it was created by a company that had no idea what NASCAR was even about, Eutechnyx. I tried to give them the benefit of the doubt, as they continued to promise fixes to the game, but very little was ever done to correct the massive flaws with their release. Personally I don't think that I'll ever live long enough to see another NASCAR sim released that will ever be up to the standards of NR2003. /rantoff

Time to blow the dust off and go fire up that old PC!
 
We have about 2 or 3 sim cars and maybe up to a dozen sim pods on the road.

They all have the NR2003 on them.

Just happy that I don't have to do the updates every year.
 
Whizzer, are you looking for a nascar sim, or any form of racing? I have played SODA off road by Sierra, and that was fun. Rallysport challenge and Forza were real good too. Those were made for game console, which are cheaper than buying a new gaming PC. I haven't played any games in about 5 years, so I'm not up on the new titles.
 
I'm truly impressed that so many took the time to reply. Here's what I have and what I do not know. Well, some of what I do not know since it would take a lifetime to categorize that!

I have an older Dell computer, circa 1998 w/Windows 98 o.s. and upgrades. The sim installed is NASCAR 3 by Sierra and Logitec controller, steering wheel and pedals. My recollection of playing this sim, the last time most likely six or seven years ago, was that it would hang up and mean starting over, making it more than annoying. But now, I am looking to give something a try. Whatever is recommended should have a percentage selection of competency due to the age factor. My reaction time at age 75 is a little slower than it was fifty years ago.

My current computer is an iMac, Mac OS 10.6.8; processor 2.16 Intel core 2.16 duo; 1GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM.

Now, I know nothing of what this means. So, might this pc be used to install a Microsoft sim or the one mentioned? Would it be better to use upgrades on the older Dell pc? Again, any and all comments appreciated.
 
That setup is a little skimpy for todays games. I'm not sure how good the gaming selection is for the Mac OS, but it's probably much thinner than for an MS system.

I would HIGHLY recommend getting a game console. It's so much cheaper than upgrading a PC. The games are designed for that hardware, so they get twice as much performance out of the hardware. You can pick up a console for $200, a steering wheel with foot pedals for $60 - $80. Games are usually $60, or half that for used. Then you can sit on your couch and play on the big screen. If you're looking to play online, Xbox 360 is the best choice. You'll pay about $4 a month for a good gaming experience and you'll be able to chat with other gamers as you play.

IMO, you can't beat the low cost of console gaming with any PC setup, and you wont have to deal with people messing with the code to gain an advantage. There's nothing worse than getting beat by a guy with a flying car.
 
dpkimmel2001 said:
It's a shame that someone can't come up with a good 'out of the box' NASCAR sim these days. Was NR2003 that far ahead of its time? Seriously, I've bought just about every one of the console based NASCAR sims and nothing comes close. The most recent, 'NASCAR The Game 2011', was at best one of the biggest P'sOS ever released. It was delayed by more than a month of the start of the season. It was almost entirely unplayable against online opponents. And..... it was created by a company that had no idea what NASCAR was even about, Eutechnyx. I tried to give them the benefit of the doubt, as they continued to promise fixes to the game, but very little was ever done to correct the massive flaws with their release. Personally I don't think that I'll ever live long enough to see another NASCAR sim released that will ever be up to the standards of NR2003. /rantoff

Time to blow the dust off and go fire up that old PC!
Click to expand...


Well the story goes that when Sierra canned the crew that did Nr2003 after EA got the exclusive rights to using the NASCAR name, The lead designer went out and started his own thing iRacing. They built that up for years until EA finally lost the NASCAR license. Soon as they lost it iRacing was talking to NASCAR again and sure enough the top 3 Nascar series came out on iRacing and they have the license now. So basically iRacing is the latest verison of Nr2003. I agree the subscription service sucks, but I have had more good races online with iRacing than I ever had on Nr2003 or RFactor. You get the idiot every now and then but for the most part everybody races. I think its mostly cause everybody gets punished the same with ratings and such and they are paying for the experience that they seem to take it more seriously. Its fun though I have had some great side by side racing for wins on there in the Legend cars and the Late models.
 
i'd recommend getting an xbox 360. it came with a good racing game called gran turismo when we bought ours. you can download demo's of tons of games and buy those you like. that's nice because you can't buy software in a store and return it if you don't like it. my wife and i aren't into gaming that much and gave the xbox 360 to our son. he loves it. i can tell you right now that dell isn't worth upgrading. you could buy a new pc for what it would take to get it suitable to play intensive graphics games (more ram, newer gpu, newer cpu and a heat sink at a minimum) you'd probably want a heavier load power supply also.. i do remember you can install windows on macs now. thanks for jogging my memory andy. :) to do this though would require buying windows as well as any software you want to install on it. i'm sure once it's installed, if you go this way, you would boot up to a menu selection for going into os 10.6.8 or windows.

 
iracing looks so cool but it's so expensive. I can't even afford the steering wheel online cause I don't make that big of purchase online.. I really want to try it though..It would be cool to run on Thompson apeedway, one of my local tracks..
 
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