That game looks awesome. I am not sure how well it would run, even on my new PC with an Athlon Dual Core 4200+ and GeForce 6600.

And there is always something to be said for playing racing games in 480i or 1080i on a 65" big screen TV.

I ordered the game direct, but its on back-order right now :(

Anyway, I've been playing the demo and is quite fun. Unfortunately, it only gives you 3 cars and 3 tracks.

BTW, I have a Athlon XP 3200+ and a GeForce 6800GT OC and the graphics are pretty damn good.

Maybe I will download the demo here at work and take it home since I am not cool enough to live in a part of Gardnerville that even offers DSL or Cable Modems :(

I bought the game for PS2 and it kicks ass.

That is all.

How are the graphics compared to the PC screen shots?

Well, it's on PS2, so the aliasing is nonexistent, but I actually think it looks pretty damn good. Only weird stuff I've seen is some of the car dashes are out of focus and look like 8 bit Nintendo graphics, but you've got to make changes somewhere to let it run on a PS2.

Overall, the look is a hair more "arcadey", brighter and slightly less detailed in-game than GT4, but it's about comparable. The damage modeling is pretty slick, and the collision models for all the different types of cars (Formula fords, 30's Mercedes, monster trucks, Supertrucks, etc) are pretty dialed; when running the open wheel cars, you get guys coming up and putting wheels into your bodywork, then catapulting over when their wheels hit yours as you'd expect to see in real life, instead of a rectangle of space that envelops the car for impact modeling. In supertrucks, while watching a replay, I saw a wheel that had come loose from another truck bounce up and into the front-center of the driver's door, and it buckled the door at that point instead of jsut a generic "door:perfect - door:damaged - door:gone" that I'm used to seeing.

Yeah, the damage modeling looks to be very impressive. And I know what effect you're talking about with regards to the "fuzzy" interior... that's actually the reason GT* doesn't do interiors, they have to reduce the polygon count and texture maps too much... to the point that the graphics engine starts blurring things out to make them look "better".

this game looks great. i hella need to beat Toca 2 first. arg. :( think i'm 62% complete . on a diff thread i belive someone said toca 2 was a 4 of 10 for realism . what does Toca 3 get ?

TOCA 3 gets a 'wierd deadspot' out of ten in the steering. Despite that, 4-5/10 probably. I think its okay, but nowhere near as realistic as GTR or rFactor (still haven't played, but from what I hear).

I've heard a lot about those games. okay i'll have to buy one (or both ) of them. i plan to buy richard burns rally also. arg. need to do my taxes, and get some sidework done.. ah the life of a webmonkey is never done. :) well mostly its gaming ;) lol
think toca3 would run on a Geforce FX5500 ? 128 megs of 128 bit ram :( only like a 500 mhz ram speed rate though (crappy eh)

I can't remember, is the FX5500 better or worse then the 6800GT?

I'm running fine on a 6800GT OC.

Toca3 gets a 2/10 from me until/if they patch the input handling routines to treat a wheel like a wheel instead of a thumb-pad, then I'd bump it to a 7/10. Not because it's even remotely realistic, but because it'll be plain old fun.

the 5500 FX is definatly worse. i used to have a TI 4800 which was quite a bit better. (it died) :( found my current card for $50
2/10 ? ouch . did you try switching the steering from dig to analog ? (er vice versa) i had that problem with toca2. i found 1 thing that made a HUGE difference in playability / wheel feel. don't recall what now though .. doh :lol:

time for a needless drive to del taco ;) lol 40 mile round trip ;)

I've tried everything. The sim message boards are all in an uproar over how shitty the input handling is... anyone that's ever played a decent sim, or tracked a car, would notice how *awful* and unrealist the controls are.

Now I'm not bitching about the physics, since they're supposed to be fun, not a simulation (like GT4 for example), this is just an issue w/ the way the turning of the wheel is mapped to the front tires in the game. The input handling is designed for a control pad or stick (think xBox controller) where you press it a little, then release, then press it some more to adjust the direction of the car. The problem is, with a wheel that means you have to saw the wheel back and forth just to maintain a straight line! Gimme a break.

All they needed to do was spend 2 minutes testing the game on a PC w/ a decent wheel and they would have noticed how awful it is. And then they just had to write a "wheel mode" input handler that maps the angle of the wheel directly to the angle of the tires in the game and it would have been a million times better. Shit, if I had the source code, it would take me a weekend to fix it and release a patch. :roll: