My NFSCarbon PC Demo Screenshots

[Zpectre]

Side question, does anyone have a link to a tried and true method of getting PU or HS to work in XP?

Visit //www.hsscoring.com, click on "Overview" (on the top of the page) and download the Stock Pack Installer. This is for NFS4. I haven't been able to make NFS5 work flawlessly on XP, but the community at //www.needforbetterspeed.com may help you out.

[Remko]

Ronin: what kind of trouble do you have with PU on XP? I guess that I am lucky myself that I don't seem to have any issues with it so far, only thing I have seen posted by others is that they've been getting texture errors (looking low-res and ugly, especially in dash view), but I don't think it's been determined exactly what the cause is, be it XP, or modern video acceleratotrs, or simply the current version of Direct X. So I'm afraid there aren't any good tips I can give you on PU.

On the subject of the Carbon Demo, I found it severely underwhelming. I started playing it yesterday evening at 19:30 and stopped at around 20:00 with the idea that I had seen everything it had to offer. Maybe I've been spoiled by last year's MW demo, that I kept playing for days, this demo just didn't offer any of the things in Carbon that I was looking for such as pursuit mode, online play (with be the cop mode) or the photomode - the only thing that saved it somewhat IMO was the inclusion of the '67 Camaro.
Aside from the game modes, I was not at all impressed with the graphics either, and I'm surprised why many people on other forums are wooing its looks. Details on the cars and environment don't look more impressive to me than they did in MW, and there was nothing about the Circuit tracks scenery or atmosphere that made it stand out. Plus, I'm just not a fan of night racing, I've done enough of that in both Underground games.
Then there's the fact that it just won't run at a decent framerate for me, which in combination with the fact that my graphics don't look nearly as nice as those posted by Revolution leads me to believe that perhaps this demo has some issues with 6600 cards or something, although I should look more into this before stating this as a fact.
I've seen on NFScars that Revolution runs on better hardware than me, but with settings on medium/high, my Athlon64 3200 with 1 gig ram and a 256 pci-e 6600gt card is barely able to keep the fps above 20 (res 1024, 2x AA), even in the Autosculpt menus. Lowering graphic options barely seems to have any effect.
Minor disappointment is that it won't remember my control settings, yet it remembers my graphic prefs. Oh, and it's already crashed a few times.

On the positive side, lowering the hood edge on the Camaro to make it look more menacing was cool, hopefully all the muscle car mod options will be fitting like this, the canyon duel was pretty exciting to do (If a bit easy) and I didn't mind the drift physics that much - I was put off at first, but just like in the UG games, it can be fun once you get the feel for it.

Maybe I've just been lucky in the past with demos, and was this year my turn to have the unlucky hardware combination that keeps NFS from running smoothly. In the end, I had my doubts about this game for a while, and this demo far from convinced me of the opposite.  
Harsh as it may sound, I haven't been this unimpressed with an NFS demo since Hot Pursuit 2. :dunno:

[HiFi]

Try turning down Shader detail, that seems to be what makes it lag the most.
It's like the shadow and rain splatter options in MW, they are the biggest performance hitters, and don't look very perty either

I like the game a bit, but it doesn't feel like Need for Speed. I've had much more fun with Hot Pursuit than these newer games. I still remember when I would come across the street to my friends house to play HP2 on his gamecube, it was so fun

Now it feels like a rancid soap opera.

[Remko]

Thanks HiFi, you are correct, after looking around a bit I found out I had Shader quality to maximum, and switching to medium quality instantly bumped my average fps to around 30, which feels a lot better than low 20s.

I found out another tip that may be useful for people with the same problem. The reflection update on the cars looked really slow and stuttering in my demo, and according to this therad on EA's official board, I'm not the only one: http://forums.ea.com/mboards/thread.jspa?threadID=140689 but the tip halfway down this thread worked pretty well for me:

I had the same problem, but managed to fix it, if you go to regedit and the nfs carbon demo section, if you change the value of g_CarEnvironmentMapEnable from its original value to 3 it makes the reflections silky smooth,(well for me at least) so its worth a shot!

While this has no effect on the actual framerate, it does give an impression that's a lot smoother, I was a little surprised myself what a difference this made.
So I feel I have to correct my long rant from a few hours ago, with these tweaks the game runs pretty much as well as MW did for me, so that makes it somewhat more appealing to re-play now and then.

[HiFi]

Thanks for the tip!
There's alot of other values there too that I think I'll experiment with.
Those beginning with g_ usually mean something to do with graphics...aha.

You should spend 20 bucks on a solid gamepad, I use a Saitek p2500 and it makes carbon much more fun. I can rack up 100,000+ drifts with it, using the Camaro, and it's much easier to drive than with a keyboard.

Steering wheels don't give you a quick enough response. This is an arcade game rather than a sim.

[Ronin]

Ronin: what kind of trouble do you have with PU on XP?

It's been a long time since I had it installed (don't even have a copy any more, but I combo pack is pretty cheap), but I remember it just freezing on the load screen when you first start the game.

Thanks for the advice Zpectre!

[Revolution]

Well, once I saw Arushan's hack for the unlocked cars, I had to try'em out. Enjoy!

[Remko]

:eek3: Oh man, I need to try that out for myself, I want to drive that DB9 and Charger...

[RevveR]

the graphics are absolutely amazing :eek3:. But look at the last pic of the Charger, there's that old crappy scratch damage of MW and the Us :squint:

[Revolution]

Well, you know that the Charger is an AI car for the demo, ie we were never supposed to be able to use it. Maybe the playable cars have better scratch textures, I haven't checked.
@Remko - Heh, they're not that special. As aru said. no engine sounds, but they sure do look pretty. Whereas the premade cars in the demo are already performance tuned, these two and the Mazdaspeed 3 feel pretty stock, and hence not overly quick. Not half bad for drift mode though.

[Ronin]

The fact that you used Mazdaspeed 3 and drift in the same sentence is yet another reason to boycott this game.  I know they did this in the Us, but come on, you'd think they'd learn.  The freakin car is FWD, it can't drift!!!!  Sigh.

[Revolution]

Zikes! I should have made my meaning clearer.. when I said drift, I was thinking of the DB9 and the Charger. I didn't attempt to drift the 3!

[SLP Firehawk]

ill just say this... if i wanted a realistic game with damages and physics and shite, id buy GTR2 or smth. Is there no one out there who'd like to have a little arcade fun once in a while?

Sure, things like the catchup and drift helper are absolutely worthless... but i dont need a complete simulation in every goddamn game i buy. Ill buy Carbon for the car list and open world racing, because im a converting nutcase and like to free roam around large cities. Autosculpt feature is nice, but would be better if it didnt fuck the normals up if you didnt want to autosculpt something. Tuning is fine as long as it isnt disgusting crap like what has been used since ug1.

[RiCkT]

EA always fucks the normals up, at least since NFS6 there has always been errors...considering that i dont know any other game than NFS where you can be lucky to see normal / mesh errors of the original content!

its arcade, that is to say...and that means its for the fun

[Zpectre]

Aside from the game modes, I was not at all impressed with the graphics either, and I'm surprised why many people on other forums are wooing its looks. Details on the cars and environment don't look more impressive to me than they did in MW, and there was nothing about the Circuit tracks scenery or atmosphere that made it stand out.

Well I see this as a good thing... Means the cars aren't so detailed and converting to NFS4 is again possible. Anyways, I don't even need to buy the game, just someone to get the meshes and the textures for me. I can't wait to lay my hands on the Challenger Concept.

Ronin: what kind of trouble do you have with PU on XP?

It's been a long time since I had it installed (don't even have a copy any more, but I combo pack is pretty cheap), but I remember it just freezing on the load screen when you first start the game.

Thanks for the advice Zpectre!

You're welcome.