Need For Speed Prostreet

Suspension dampening and rebound can be fully tailored to the gamer's specifications to match any track and driving conditions ranging from technical courses like Infineon Speedway to larger, high speed courses like Willow Springs International Motorsport Park. All too often you find yourself asking the same questions millions have come across when playing a race game: "I bought all this stuff for my car and threw them on...now what the hell do I do? Did it even manage to make more horsepower?" Fear not performance-orientated freaks! A physics sim continually recalculates numbers while keeping tabs on all the changes made on the vehicle and displaying numerous parameters ranging from stats on how the new suspension settings improved the vehicle's lateral g's, how fast the vehicles 100-0 foot braking distance has improved or diminished, and even 0-60 mph times when looking to improve your quarter-mile drag race settings. Peak horsepower and peak torque is monitored and listed with every turbo upgrade or intercooler upgrade installed on your engine.

"In developing the physics aspect of Pro Street, we went above and beyond any of our previous games," says Jacques Kerner, software engineer (Physics). "Spending over a year developing the new physics software, we used state-of-the-art machines to recorded tire response and slip angle, among many other characteristics that you find in a real car, and designed them into the game. When you lock up the tires through a turn or do a burnout, it is similar to real world conditions in what you would expect from a car." Not thoroughly convinced, we quickly grabbed hold of the controller and booted up the demo game. We found ourselves murmuring on how controllable the vehicles were through the turns, even under full and partial throttle, a feature that we've never experienced with other race games on the market. Hammering through tight chicanes in a modified STI Impreza, the vehicle showed instability as the undulations resulting from riding on the rumble strips showed the reaction of the suspension and amazing similarities to a real life car. Also known to exist in the WRX, and obvious in the game, was the presence of understeer through the turns. Blasting through the track, we quickly came into a turn too hot and hammered down on the brakes, finding ourselves yanking on the joystick to recover but to no avail as the vehicle straight-lined head-on into the wall, eerily similar to a real world scenario as you lock up the brakes and try to make a turn. We were thoroughly impressed.

Dave Elton, producer of NFS physics says, "The cool thing about Pro Street is, let's say for example you purchase an all-wheel-drive EVO X. We spent countless hours analyzing and recording data on the vehicle and its physics. We used all this information to create a game that changes the vehicles handling characteristics as we tune the front and rear differentials as well as the center differentials. Weight distribution and of course specific types of vehicles play an important part into how each one handles." Track and street driving realism come in the form of numerous vehicle telemetry machines and photos taken by EA game engineers, while numerous cars driven by professional and race car drivers gave the NFS physics team all the data needed to create the unique characteristics and even flaws relevant with vehicles. Small, minute details that even consisted of how the glare of the track reflects off the windshield when cresting a hill are some of the factors put into creating Pro Street.

By Scott Tsuneishi

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