Le Mans 24 Hours

[Aysedasi]

Loading the tracks can be a bit tricky when you first start. You need to carefully read the readme files included with the zips. Once you've done one or two, it becomes second nature. There's also a lot of editing programmes available for download as well which make the process easier. You just need a little bit of patience, that's all. (You want to look out for one or two of the fictional tracks - there's one awesome one with incredibly long straights - trouble is I can't remember what it's called!!).

As far as I know, there is only a beta version of the full Le Mans track - and it is VERY much a beta version! (So beta that you can barely recognise it! I downloaded it and gave up). What you do need to remember with some of the downloaded tracks and cars is that some of them have what the experts term high poly-counts, which means that you need more processing or graphics power to cope with them than the standard cars and tracks which come with the game. My system has struggled on occasion with grids full of the downloaded cars and certain of the tracks.

By the way, I saw SCGT being sold today in Virgin for £6.99 - that is an absolute steal!!

By the way #2, I think I have said this before - if you are after a full Le Mans track, get yourself a copy of GPL and download the 1967 version of the Le Mans circuit. Granted you can't drive sportscars round it in the game (which is, I accept, a bit of a shame), but once you've driven a '67 Ferrari or Lotus down the full chicane-less Mulsanne, you will definitely have a very big smile on your face.

[Dr. Austin]

Originally posted by Aysedasi
(Better late than never!). The PC game is absolutely awful. Lots of promise with the cars and so on, but terrible handling and no tunability whatsoever.

Will someone PLEASE bring out a decent sim for Le Mans!!!!

If we are talking about the PC game that shows the Locktite McLaren when it first boots up, there is a fix for the drivability. Just turn the freeplay in the steering wheel axis down to zero. Brand new game. Still not great, but it is so much better and I kind of like it. Not as much as Sportscar GT, but it is ok.

Try it and let me know how it works. It worked for me.

[Aysedasi]

Thanks for that Doc. I uninstalled the game months ago, but perhaps I will give it another try some day. The problem is that after playing the game for a while I discovered SCGT and RS2 which, in terms of the driving "experience" are very much better.

In all honesty, I will admit to playing the game for quite a long time. It was the lure of driving Le Mans in real-time which got me going! I was about 13 hours in when Windows decided to interrupt my game by dying on me. Obviously, I lost the save! It always bugged me that you couldn't save the game at any time, only during a pit stop - seemed a fairly crucial omission to me - or did I miss something somewhere?

(By the way, if anyone is still playing the game, I presume you have all the cheats for access to the decent cars? They're freely available on the usual "cheat" sites).