SimHQ.com - Motorsports Zone - F1 2002 Mods

I have tested these mods using my P3 1GHz, XP Home, 512MB RAM, with a Ti4200, 128MB NVIDIA video card and all settings mentioned below produced the screenshots in this article. Be sure to always configure the F1 2002 "3d setup" selected from the Program Group menu for the sim. Select "Advanced" and ensure you pick the right FSAA setting (I run at 2x) then be sure to pick the right resolution. Mine is 1024x768 32-bit at a 85Hz refresh rate. That matches my monitor setting and gives me a very fluid image. The fps meter almost being totally irrelevant. Inside the game, I pick "medium" track detail, 7-10 cars visible, "high" car detail, "high" image quality, "medium" shadows, "low" smoke and other similar settings. All screenshots were made using game and video settings that allowed me to race competitively with an absolute minimum of 30 fps on a Pentium 3 1GHz. In other words, these are not nearly the highest settings or graphical quality you can expect from a brand new system.

Driving fast

Maintaining a relatively neutral posture with your car is very much like the real world. In fact, I found that the Viper in the game handles suspiciously similar to my Nissan 240!!...albeit missing some 500hp. The car's handling and physics mean that you can tighten a corner through careful use of throttle steering, simply by adding a SLIGHT extra amount of power, rotating the rear by way of slight loss of grip compared to the front. Some of the cars and some of the tracks require an "on-off" throttle control where others require an endless "feathering" to achieve the correct race line at a decent clip.

For the first time in any game I found the Porsches to be quite a handful, but I bet that they will be quite fast once I get used to them. The one overriding feeling that this particular game gives me, that NO other racing game I have seen, is a sense of weight and momentum of these cars. You NEED to be very smooth with your inputs when going through a corner. Just a little too much input to correct, can result in flying off the track.

How good are the physics? Very good! Think GPL's Lotus at the Nurburgring...they handle like you might expect these race cars would...not like some arcade player that would thrash about. A nice touch in the game was the loud tire scrubbing/squealing sounds, and the tranny shifting and the turbo blow-off sound is quite prominent and appropriate. Don't be too hard on the throttle — if a gear change happens halfway through a corner the back will likely come around and bite you! Kept me thinking Darth Vader was sitting in the back of my GT-2R 993 Porsche!

Since the physics model is very realistic I wondered whether that would make a game too hard to play for many people. Now I tend to think it should be fine, particularly with the easy-to-handle M3's — it's fun as heck! It's also more fun than "work" partly because you see that the behavior of the cars correlates closely with the real world, instead of we sim drivers having to drive for the first few hours just to understand how the game handles the car physics. In this sim you just think, "how does MY car handle, if I had 333 (M3 Challenge) or 450 (N class in GT Racing) or 618 horsepower? What if the engine were in the rear? What if it had a stiffer suspension?"

I can use curbs and bumps just like in real life without having the car whip around uncontrollably as seen in most other sims. Some might see that as being unchallenging, but seriously, when was the last time on Speedvision you saw a car swap ends because they went up on the rumble strip striped curbs? Michael Schumacher and other pro drivers use them probably more than 50% of the curbs on a track. That's not to say that using a curb can't upset the car in these sims — it can. But you basically can count on not spinning unless you do something stupid. Use the curbs...real competition drivers do.

Front and rear momentum is often over-modeled in most other sims. As if you have a huge weight in the front and rear bumpers but nothing in the middle. Or worse, just one big brick that understeers right off the track, or the easiest powerslides ever, like most racing "GAMES" give us. If you have the front-end turn hard into a corner the back-end does it's own thing and spins you out. This seems to have a much more realistic value to it in both these new mods/sims. It can and does happen, but it's a much less pronounced effect than I've seen in other sims.

The AI seems to have a pretty good collision avoidance routine most of the time. That's something I rarely see in other race game/sims. This pays big dividends in single player races because the AI that keep crashing into me becomes very old, very fast in my experience.

Back to the "Prancing Horses" again...

The 360 Challenge mod itself is an add-on to GT Racing 2002 and adds the ability to create other single-make series. For instance, if you just wanted to race Porsche 996 Turbos against each other, it's much easier to set up than creating your own mod. As mentioned earlier, with this particular series there is little you can change in setting up the car. For the most part, it's simply a case of getting out onto the track and blasting out the best lap time for a decent starting position. While you are out there, it quickly becomes apparent that you aren't going to get a competitive lap until perhaps your fourth time 'round because the first lap is simply getting back around to the start line, the second is to warm-up the tires and brakes, and only on your fourth have you now got a handle on the corner braking points and turn-in points. You've got more grip to speak of and the brakes are now working optimally.

Because these cars have virtually no significant downforce, there is a lot less grip for these cars than you might be expecting based on your experiences in other racing sims/games. We must remember that there is a very wide gap in the cornering capability between your stock Mustang or Civic verses a Formula or GT car. So much so that the two experiences have barely anything in common. Simply adding a roll bar and racing slicks transforms a simple (though fast) production sports car into a beast capable of track speeds and cornering levels that would frighten the majority of passengers — without even adding any power to the engine. If you picture these cars as having much more grip and easier handling than the GPL cars, you will find them easier and fun to drive! One thing is for certain though: neither the 360's, nor the GT cars should be driven like a modern Formula car.

"Real" settings

With the 360 Challenge the realistic setting for brakes is to have ABS set to "low", not high or off, because the sim/mod was made with this setting in mind, and the real series use ABS (unlike most racing, for instance the GT's and BPR you won't use ABS or Traction Control). This makes for a situation where you don't have to worry about wheel lockup, meaning you can turn while doing maximum braking. That said, it also means that it's more difficult to late out-brake your opponents, because they have the same advantage as you. Their new Laguna Seca track is very nice visually, and is quite a bit tighter and cramped than it's depicted in other sims. The Corkscrew, a very well known corner that plunges you four stories after a left turn, is much more challenging in this version than in others, especially with the transition after exiting, to do the left turning sweeper just before the pits. The challenge of this makes the track a natural companion to the 360 Challenge mod, and you will quickly feel the physics of the car's behavior.

"This is the fruit of what 360 Challenge is....Pure racing, not half-racing / half-setup champion."

- Mungo

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