I guess I have been living under a rock all these years. I always heard of this game and the extensive community mods available, but I never tried it until yesterday.
Was watching some old nascar races on tv late thursday night while up with the baby, got to thinking maybe I need a nascar game to play again and this came up while digging around google.
So far I've got it setup and running great with a PS3 controller, have the Aero88 mod and 1990 cup mods installed, figured out how to make my own paint with some templates. Downloaded a few additional tracks to play with, including Slinger Speedway, "the world's fastest 1/4 mile" (33 deg banking, super fun) that my Aunt and Uncle used to work at when I was a kid, and another local to me short track.
Next step is getting the Fanatec setup. I dont know if ill get into any online racing but i like the idea of some long races with a huge field of cars.
I use to race that on PC. Is the PC version still sported?
That's what I installed. Seems like people still play it and are creating updates for it. Pretty great for what is essentially a free game now with nearly limitless mods available and it's old enough to run great on any recent computer.
Here is what got me up and running. Some links are dead in the first link so you may have to google for certain files. I have everything working great, been running it with the Fanatec wheel for about a week. Also worked pretty nice with a PS3 controller. I might have to install this on my wife's laptop too for when I am away from home.
http://www.reddit.com/r/Nr2003/comments/24jq84/updated_primer_for_getting_started_with_nascar/
http://nr2k3.weebly.com/mods.html
So Ive just been over here playing with myself. Messing around with making skins and learning photoshop.
These first 2 fantasy skins I made for the Aero88 mod. One is an Archer themed skin, the other is just some random decals i pulled from racingrafix.com. Renders by Andy1 @ simracingdesign.com
For the Cup90 mod I just created a photoshop template for an R32 Skyline, and a Calsonic Skyline skin. Renders by The Iceman @ simracingdesign.com
I should be starting a skin soon for the 2015 Gen 6 Mod, want to paint Mark Winterbottom's V8 supercar scheme on the Ford Fusion template.
Also have plans to make a C110 Skyline template for the GN69 mod.
not a bad looking game for 13 years old. Many more recent mods include higher-res textures. The AI is pretty darn good and makes for some excellent single player racing.
It's wild how some games develop a huge cult following and live for so long online. I used to play monster truck madness 2 and we were modding it up until a few years ago. If it wasn't for rigs of rods, they'd still be using mtm2.
Never played 2003 but always heard great things about it. Rumor has it the guy that was behind Papyrus (NASCAR 2003 developer) is the guy responsible for iRacing.
Not sure, but I do know that iRacing owns the rights to NR2003, and iRacing physics have been developed from those in NR2003.
Its exactly why every single mod out for the game uses 1 of the 3 or 4 physics models in the game. It sounds like if you alter the core coding of the game to create a mod, iRacing will go after you. So I guess you could say that most of the mods like carsets and tracks are only visual. But it still changes the feel of the game quite a bit. I have something like 10 different series and almost 200 tracks right now.
at the bottom of this page there are more details
http://www.iracing.com/membership/faqs/
How about that exploding star photo from the Hubble Space Telescope last week?
