Sim Racing Design

It's been three years and as far as i can tell NR2003 is still going strong. There's the new superspeedway.net models and a car of tommorrow mod that are both in their early stages of development. This all but ensures it will last another two years or so. Then came several attempts to dethrone NR2003.

First there was EA and their exclusive Nascar licence.

Next came First and their aggressive attempts to ban all modding.

And now there's rfactor, and all of it's mods.

Not too mention the outrageous prices for NR2003 on ebay.

And finally someday First will release it's next gen racer, but even they will not have the Nascar license... so NR2003 will probably live on.

But just how long can NR2003 last? Forever?

Simply put, NR2003 will last as long as the community allows it to last. It's by far the best racing sim on the market today and has a huge following. There are so many carsets and mods to cater to just about anybody that likes racing in general. Trucks, Open Wheels, Trans-Am, IROC, Late Models, '88 Cup cars, an early 90's mod and I can't remember what else. We've got carsets for every Cup year since 1998 and gobs of others.

As far as the competition goes, IMO, there really isn't any right now. EA is just catering to the kiddie arcade market and I seriously doubt they'll ever win over the die-hard Papyrus/sim racers market. Draft meters? C'mon! The closest thing to competition to NR2003 would be rFactor and their physics engine and oval AI isn't up to the par. They have NR2003 beat in terms of mod-ability and the multiplayer code. It'll be later on down the road before they can top Papy with their AI. As far as First & iRacing go, seems like they're in it to make money, which every company should do, but they way they went about it in the beginning by threatening to sue modders has pi$$ed off just about all of the sim community and most probably wouldn't touch their product with somebody else's 40 foot pole.

I belive this game has at least 5 more years ahead mainly because of the Superspeedway and Car of Tomorrow mods that are coming out. Plus you have sites like O'Racing, SimCarGrafx and MasGrafx that continue to pump out paint jobs for the current Nextel Cup, Busch and Truck Series cars and trucks. Top all that off with a mostly great bunch of people that I've been around for the past 5 years and you'll have a sim that could last for many, many more years.

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Painter/Administrator for Sim Racing Design.

Driver of the #02 Kleenex Dodge Charger
"I believe that Liberalism is a mental disorder."
"I believe that stupidity is the leading cause of death in America today."

Can't have said it better JasonRSC! Hey, another benefit for us that only run N2003 is we don't have to upgrade our PC's until something else beats it!

Long live N2003!

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Silverado13 aka Mr. Restrictor
Proud member of
F.O.G Racing Inc.

Amen to the no need to upgrade computers... but i kinda like draft meters. Wow, did it just get real quiet in here all of a sudden... ah... on second thought maybe draft meters aren't so cool.

Itll last forever, no doubt in my mind. Nothing even comes close to NR2003. EA is a joke, and i dont think rfactors stock car mod comes close to NR2003, so yeah, itll be around for ever.

Agreed it's not going away for a long time, its just that good and no one, I mean no one as caught up fully with the Papy code. imo.

It will be interesting what happens when the EA ownership runs out on NASCAR. I am willing to bet we would spend all the dough on a Sim that can top NR2003.

unless someone really comes up with some firepower(Dale Earnhardt Jr. !!!!!)to convince the gamemakers that its time for a real nascar sim,with real physics and all the stuff we are looking for then we are going to be playing NR2003 till the sun burns out

Simply put, NR2003 will last until something comes along that is better. That means EA either needs to lose the rights to Nascar, actually come up with a decent Nascar sim (which I think we all agree, EA included, that this is not going to happen) or one of the other simulators has to be so good that NR2003 just isn't worth playing anymore. I agree though, it's nice to not have to worry every year whether I'm going to have to upgrade to play the new game. haha.

I agree. Until something better comes along this will be it. People still race GPL, oddly enough a Papy sim, and I think it came out in 1998. I might be wrong but I think it's that old.

nr2003 will never die