NASCAR Racing 2003 Season

NASCAR Racing 2003 Season
Developer(s)	Papyrus Design Group
Publisher(s)	Sierra Entertainment
Platform(s)	Windows, Mac
Genre(s)	Driving Racing Simulation
Mode(s)	Singleplayer, Multiplayer

NASCAR Racing 2003 Season, or NR2003 for short, is a computer racing simulator released in February 2003 by Papyrus for PC and Mac OS X. The game was the last to be released by the company before EA Sports bought the NASCAR license from NASCAR. The game included all of the 2003 NASCAR season tracks and many of the drivers. The game box featured the cars of Jimmie Johnson and Kevin Harvick on the front cover.

The game features a popular multiplayer interface, used by up to 2500 drivers at any one time. This can result in fields of up to 43 human drivers driving simultaneously in online races. There are several online leagues still running, even with the release of countless other stock car sims. Although the Sierra online multiplayer aspect of the game has decreased, many private companies have been started to fulfill the need for professional-grade multiplayer servers and league management software for this game. In addition, downloading of new mods, updated cars, tracks and templates have allowed users to give the program a fresh look and keep up with real-life racing.

Drivers

While 42 real drivers are present in the Winston Cup Series in NASCAR Racing 2003 Season, fantasy drivers are still present, sponsored by fictional or unused sponsors. Painters in the sim racing community also use programs such as Paint Shop Pro, GIMP and Adobe Photoshop to design and create fictional cars. There are numerous paint shops on the internet, such as MasGrafx, that paint for various series.

Popularity

NASCAR driving superstars Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Martin Truex Jr. are noted players of the game, and many professional drivers use the game's online multiplayer mode to practice tracks before races. These include 2006 Rookie of the Year Denny Hamlin, who used the game to train for the Pocono 500 at Pocono Raceway, going on to win the race at a track notoriously tough for rookies.

Motorsports Image used PCs running NR2003 as the central component of their NASCAR simulator products. These included several show-cars and repurposed race vehicles refitted as simulators, and a line of single-seat open models with pitch/roll motion bases. The Coca-Cola Company operated a set of them as mobile promotional events relating to their numerous NASCAR sponsorships; one-to-three day stops at Wal-Mart stores and some other retailers in the Midwestern United States were the most common venues.

In July 2006, the game itself began commanding prices of $150 and above on eBay, as the game is no longer available in stores.

Painting Community

A NR2003 car painted to resemble Jeff Gordon's 2007 Daytona 500 race car, rendered in 3ds Max 7.

The ability to paint cars using an in-game design tool and professional tools like Adobe Photoshop and Paint Shop Pro created a community devoted to recreating paint schemes, and a rendering community designed to showcase these paint schemes. A render is a more graphically pleasing view of a paint scheme than an in-game screenshot. This is because programs such as Autodesk's 3ds Max use an advanced rendering system to properly generate realistic lighting, materials, and the ability to add more detailed parts to a scene. This has led to creative placement of paint schemes in realistic environments.

See also

• Comparison of racing simulators

External links

• Sierra Publisher of NASCAR Racing 2003 Season
• iRacing Company headed by John Henry and David Kaemmer (founder of Papyrus Design Group) and current owners of the NR2003 code