Nascar 2001 (PlayStation 1) - Las Vegas Carsdirect Com 400 | Duckstation | i7 14700F + RTX 4060

The successor to Nascar 2000, Nascar 2001! Released in 2000 for the PlayStation 1, the game introduced a plethora of improvements, both visual and gameplay related. Following in its predecessor’s footsteps, it expanded the track list to 19 official circuits, including the long awaited Daytona International Speedway. It was also the first console entry in EA’s Nascar series to feature official car manufacturer branding.

Other improvements include refinements to the game engine, offering more realistic drafting, smarter opponent behavior, and much more advanced car damage modeling. While vehicles don’t lose individual parts as they did in Papyrus’s ’96 title, they can now suffer detailed and advanced deformation across the front, rear, and sides.

Graphically, it’s a major improvement over Nascar 2000. Vehicle models now look far more distinct and differentiated from one another, featuring environment maps across the entire bodywork, including the windows. Textures are of impeccable quality, with stunningly sharp detail for a 32bit console.

For the first time on the aging PlayStation hardware, interiors have been modeled. When playing in third-person view, you can clearly see through the windows, and rival cars maintain this same level of detail when close to the camera.

Even more impressive, the engine can handle up to three high quality LOD cars on screen at once, dropping only slightly in detail when the action gets too heavy, a fascinating technical feat. Lower LODs blend well too, and it’s only at the very lowest level that cars revert to their more opaque, simplified look.

On top of all that, the scenery no longer suffers from the blurry, low-quality distant textures seen in Nascar 2000. In 2001, the game manages to maintain high resolution textures consistently, no matter the distance, which, combined with all the other improvements, is truly astonishing for the hardware.

Even better, Nascar 2001 introduces a brand new sun glare and lens flare effect that looks ultra realistic, almost blinding when it shines across the screen. The glare spreads naturally in colorful, whitish yellow tones, and while it’s unlikely the PlayStation hardware is truly simulating dynamic lighting, it genuinely appears to illuminate the asphalt in real time, something you’d normally only expect from the next console generation.

The cockpit view has been completely rebuilt from the ground up and is now fully modeled in 3D! For a PlayStation 1, this is definitely a welcome effort, making the experience feel much more immersive and visually striking.

However, the cockpit does not support dynamic Gouraud Shading. Instead, this shading is pre baked into the model, so, lighting does not affects the shadows dynamically. Dynamic shadow casting from previous entries is now static in cockpit view.

It seems some corners were cut to achieve a fully 3D interior, but despite these limitations, it’s a solid sidegrade compared to what was available in earlier entries.

The only true downgrade in the game is the dynamic soft shadows cast by vehicles. While the shadows no longer wobble up and down like before (they seemed to be attached to the car model itself in 2000, which no longer appears to be the case), their models are much more simplified compared to Nascar 2000. It seems this compromise was made to allow for the massive visual upgrades elsewhere, and overall, the game still looks spectacular.