MULTIPLAYER

Here's a mode that you can race with your fellow humans and you get the option of adding AI in the foray also! NH supports LAN and TCP/IP. Depending on your bandwidth, you can have up to 16 opponents on the track. Now what's missing is the modem to modem connect, you know when you dial your buddy's house and it's just you, him and probably some AI but I don't see this as a problem since most simracers race on the Internet. Also, the lack of this feature could tell the bandwidth requirements needed to run a multiplayer successfully. You can also chat with other people during the online racing or when you and your comrades are just sitting there waiting for everyone to click in and start.

When hosting a game, you will have control of what you want to do during your time. You have the ability to set a password, set race length, IROC style racing, amount of wear, amount of AI, driving mode, and what track. You also have the ability to kick someone out of the game if they were bad or was lagging during gameplay.

If are joining a game, you need the IP address and state the connection that you are using. Once you connect, you will see the host's name and the ping time to them from you.

After every online race, you will see a race summary of how the race went and who did what in the race. Once that is completed, you will be given an option to save or watch the replay of the race, which I feel that this should be an option on the enable. If you choose not to watch or save the replay then the race standings are shown with the overall race time and race speed.

Overall the performance of online play is a mixed bag since it's really how clean everyone connects and that ever-important bandwidth that the host can provide especially on the upstream side. Having connected to a host with a ADSL line of 1Mb/128Kb, the performance was great for five or six cars although pushing past this can be quite a task since warping, flying cars or ghost cars will be evident at either at the start of race or during. During the start of race there will be the race intro showing what's the starting line up, this feature will constantly be shown until everyone is synchronized and at times, you will see some cars lag back for some distance. These cars seem to gain ground when the green flag drops, which sometimes they ram the cars that are in front of them. This phenomenon practically occurs at big tracks like Daytona and Talladega. I have had several experiences racing with 16 human drivers, which wasn't that bad but it could be better. In this area, NH needs a bit of work. Lastly, there are no yellow flags implemented.


ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

To date, NH seems have the best AI out there during racing conditions as they are somewhat aggressive and times relentless if you pass them or want to. At the PRO, the AIs are somewhat slow in qualifying speeds as I find myself taking the pole about 97% of the time. Their races aren't too far off from the qualifying speeds and during a long run; their speeds seem to fall off a couple of tenths. In the early beta builds of July, the AI race speeds were in fact more realistic as they are in real life yet the clock being used to time the laps was way off. I hope in the future of NH that there would be fix or a new version to slow the AI and human driver down during the race. For example at Lowe's, in real life the WC drivers race at 176-182MPH and in NH, you can expect to go a great deal higher than that. In fact, even all the Papyrus NASCAR sims exhibit this behavior hopefully soon someone out there will get this right.

One of the major sore spots of the AI are their actions during a caution or yellow flag, as they seem too inconsistent with your speeds during the caution laps, which in turn can cause damage to your if physical contact is involved. Plus, they seem to ram into you when they are going onto pitroad for some service. You can think of these scenarios of playing tag or chicken with the AI. It's actually fun at time but quite aggravating most of the time. I did find a trick to prevent these scenarios and that was to enable the Auto Pit. So not only do I have the luxury of relaxing during the caution laps but also the time to think which adjustments to do the car.

Bringing out a caution can be quite a task especially if you have been on a long green run and you need fresh rubber. Cautions seem to be a rarity in the retail version of the game as the early builds had the AI causing cautions easily. I have seen several times when there was several AI in an accident and the yellow wasn't even thrown.