V-Rally 3 Impressions

I dunno if someone has posted about this before, but I dont remember seeing anything. I just rented V-Rally 3 from the Vid Shop, these are my first impressions. Nice layout etc, season mode means you have to earn your place in a team, then progress through by being recognised and moving onto better teams etc until you reach number 1 ranking. Graphics are impressive, good draw distance and no pop-up from what I have noticed. Some slowdown in places, I have noticed strange \'lines\' (dont know how else to describe them) when slowdown occurs flashing across the screen, not sure what thats about, realistic car damage, you actually see parts fall off the car. The sound is ok, no music from what I have seen. The handling seems quite good, could do with being a little more sensitive, but I\'m sure there is an option to change this somewhere. I think rally fans will like it, but I seem to have less enthusiasm for the genre than I used to. Personally I wouldnt buy this game, but I never planned to. The only rally game I may consider buying is CM3, but we\'ll see how that is when its released. I\'m off to play a little more, I\'ll post more opinions later.

EDIT: Its annoying that you need 2000kb for saving too, grrrrrrrrrr, me needs new memory card.

I find the car models look very unrealistic.IMO they arent as realistic as GT3\'s or CM3\'s or as good looking as WRC\'s although VR3\'s models are made of more polys.

Yeah, I agree, although I havent played it that much, so have only seen a few cars

Originally posted by Rick
I have noticed strange \'lines\' (dont know how else to describe them) when slowdown occurs flashing across the screen, not sure what thats about

That is what we call V-Sync. it\'s turned off so the screen updates before it\'s drawn all of the previous screen.
you end up getting a \'tearing\' effect looks bloody awful to me. why didnt they turn the V-Sync on.

V-Sync = Virtical Sync Refresh. it basically waits until the whole screen is drawn (from top to bottom)
before it starts to draw the next frame (from top to bottom). without it turned on it just blasts
images onto the screen without waiting for the last one to be fully drawn.

You\'ll notice it when you turn more.

Yeah, I thought thats what it was, read it somewhere before. It looks shocking, hardly played V-Rally 3, wasnt anywhere near what I was expecting, guess CM3 will be the only rally game to save my boredom with the genre now

well, thats not exactly how v-synch works, but yer on the right path more or less

Originally posted by mm
well, thats not exactly how v-synch works, but yer on the right path more or less

Thanks mm.. maybee you would like to enlighten me. i\'m allways interested in these sort of things.

v-synch means that the GPU will send the same number of screens as the monitor/TV refresh rate

lets say its a NTSC TV, the GPU would send 60 FPS exactly to match the TV\'s refresh rate

if v-synch was off, the GPU would send screens as fast as it could spit them out, and and the monitor/tv would display what it could, skipping frames,  thus producing tearing

Originally posted by mm
if v-synch was off, the GPU would send screens as fast as it could spit them out, and and the monitor/tv would display what it could, skipping frames,  thus producing tearing

But the tearing effect also happens in slowdown.Or when there are too many things on screen.Example is MGS2 in the Holds try first person view and move th ecamera horizontaly.

Thanks mm.. Unicron, i think that once mgs2 dips below the 50hz(pal) or 60hz(ntsc) framerate,
the programmers opted to turn off the vsync to try to display as many screen updates as possible.
once the screen could get back upto 60fps then i suppose they turn it back on again. it basically
stops the game from physically slowing down

by physically slowing down, i mean that it would probably take a longer time to run the same distance with v-sync
enabled in those slower (tearing) areas, than it would to run the same distance in the areas that are smooth (50/60hz).

Now if that doesnt confuse you, nothing will.

thanks:)

I was sent my copy from Infrograms a couple of days ago to review but I aint had much time, but from what Ive seen it looks great, my uncle has played it more than me as he\'s a massive racing fan and he had nothing but good to say about it

I didn\'t get this one and don\'t plan to, because it doesn\'t support the GTForce Wheel. Oh well... guess I\'ll have to wait for CMR3 or WRX2002...