FORCE FEEDBACK:

Force feedback is supported in GP3, although there aren't that many effects in the game. You can't feel anything when you drive over a kerb or hit a wall. But more importantly, the "driving feel" is pretty well done as you can feel when the back end starts to step away. Especially in the wet when you get on the throttle too hard and the back end does a little twitch, you can feel this really nicely through the steering wheel. With my Guillemot Ferrari FF wheel the effects seemed to be a little weak even with the FF scaling slider set to 100%. Overall, the force feedback is well done, and it's much better than in many other simulations, although its not up there with Grand Prix Legend's FF-implementation.

RACE WEEKEND AT HUNGARORING:

I did a 50% (39 laps) race with all aids off and with Ace difficulty at Hungaroring and decided to write a small report of the events to give you a better view of some of the features in GP3.

I skipped both Friday and Saturdays free practice sessions because I had done quite a few laps on this track before. So off to qualifying and the forecast showed dry weather for the next two hours. I loaded my setup that I had created before and chose hard compound tyres. The compound you choose for qualifying is the one you have to do the race with and I wanted to be sure that the tyres would last in the race, because Hungaroring is quite hard on tyres. Off I went to the track and I was the first car out. I immediately did a 1:14.616 lap and went back to pits. I accelerated the time to see what times the other drivers were posting. They were almost 3 seconds behind so it looked likely that I wouldn't have to do another lap. When the session ended Coulthard was 2nd 2.5 seconds behind, with Schumacher and Hakkinen right behind.

Then it was time for the warmup to test my race setup. This time it was raining and that was predicted to continue for the whole 30-minute session. I made some modifications to my setup, like raising the ride height so the plank wouldn't wear too much in the race. Then I went to the track with intermediate tyres. This was the wrong decision as the track was too wet for intermediate tyres and I was slower than a few other drivers and I even had one of the faster corners. I went back to the pits to change to proper wet tyres. They were hard compounds as that's what I chose in qualifying. Now I was much faster and the car handled very well, now it was time to head to the race.

Weather forecast now predicted dry weather for the whole race. I had created a dry race setup before so I just loaded that. Before the race you can make changes to your pit stop strategy, you can change your setup or choose your tyre compounds if it's raining. Now I was ready for the race. There's no warmup lap so you are placed immediately on the grid. As the red lights went out I got a good start and lead the race out of the first corner. The first laps were quite boring and by the 8th lap I had already built up a 12 second gap over Hakkinen, who was in 2nd place. On the same lap Barrichello had a transmission problem and as he slowed down Panis rear ended him. Both lost a wheel and they were out of the race. On lap 11 I lapped Rosset, who didn't really give me room to overtake. On lap 14 there were more slower cars ahead and this time some of them actually moved over to let me by. On the next lap the car was starting to get loose and as a result I spun in the penultimate corner. I had a gap of over 20 seconds so I didn't lose any positions. For the next few laps everything went well. On lap 18 I saw smoke in my mirrors, my engine had blown. I coasted a few hundred meters until the car came to a stop.

I decided to watch the AI cars race for the last 21 laps. On the same lap that I retired some of the drivers went to the pits to change tyres and refuel. GP3 offers a "director's view", which is like a TV feed from the real F1 races. It changes views, shows retirements and other moments in the race although sometimes it misses some important action on the track. There was lots of passing going on, including Ralf passing his older brother, who seemed to be in trouble as he dropped back and eventually finished in 9th place. Many drivers were blocking the inside line into turn 1 and the racing looked really impressive. Hakkinen won the race 1.5 seconds ahead of Coulthard. Rest of the top 6 were R. Schumacher, Irvine, Fisichella and Hill.

I had saved the race on lap 16 and after the race had ended I tried re-loading it to see if the engine would blow up in the same place. It did, so it seems that the game decides before the race if there will be any mechanical failures..

CONCLUSION:

Overall GP3 is a bit of a disappointment as some of the features are the same as they were in GP2 four years ago. Some important features, like Internet multiplay, are completely missing. Dynamic weather is GP3's strongest point, and this coupled with good driving feel along with playability makes it the best modern F1 simulation, just beating out F1 2000.

PROS:

• Dynamic weather
• Driving feel
• Car setups and telemetry
• AI is aggressive
• Force Feedback

CONS:

• No Internet multiplay
• Replay system
• Damage modelling
• Missing sound from other cars
• Missing rules, like stop & go

Back

: 8.6

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