Gameplay Capture and Posting

In my recent experiences with running this game, it's been a doozy of a time trying to get this game to capture. To save you some time and effort, allow me a couple minutes to give you some instruction for how to capture your records.

Firstly, go ahead and download OBS. OBS is a software available for FREE to help people like you and me Stream and Record gameplay at a far easier rate than other services *cough* *cough* Shadowplay... Aside from that, setting up what you want to record and how you want it to be recorded are far easier. When running OBS, set your scene; comprise it of Game Capture (set to the window of the game you're playing) and an Audio Output (either Stereo Mix, headphones, whatever you have hooked up). All you need then is to start the game.

Secondly, ASSUMING you have installed the modern patch for NFS3 (or installed the already torrented game) you would then need to press Alt+Enter to run the game in windowed version to allow for the recording software to capture your screen. Fear not, the menu will appear small, but the game will be ran in fullscreen.

Thirdly, upon completing your run with any records you broke, SAVE THE VIDEO. The number of times it pays to have original footage saves efforts on so many people. Edit what you need to (trim video to approx. 5 seconds before the lap begins and approx. 5 seconds after the lap is completed) and post it to YouTube for safe keeping. Since ANYONE can make a YouTube account, it should be pretty straight forward and simple to make an account and begin uploading. Remember, your video should include the following.

     A. Proof of lap time completion
     B. Information of track, conditions, etc.
     C. (Optional) Provide details on tuning such as a screenshot

Installation, running & recording/streaming

This guide is for PC platform only. You shouldn't have any problems running this game on PS and if you do, I can't help you :P

Since NFSIII installer is 16-bit only, you won't be able to install the game on 64-bit systems without a help. Fortunately there is a fan patch by VEG, which you should use. Go to Resources to download it.

The game has several renderers which slightly differ.

D3D - lags for first few minutes, doesn't support windowed mode, and main menu scales with set resolution.
Glide - lags for first few minutes, but less than D3D. Supports windowed mode, but main menu is fixed to 640x480. It's recommended to use windowed mode for streaming and just upscale the output in OBS. You shoul use game capture as other modes will cripple your framerate.
DgVoodoo - lags for me a lot.
Software - Best mode for speedrunning as it has pretty much instant loading screens. It also almost never lags, doesn't support windowed mode, and main menu is fixed to 640x480. You need to use monitor capture in OBS to record this mode.

PC & PSX Assist & Tuning compare information

This information are based on my knowing for the PSX copy. It compare the information between the PC english manual

PSX pal german copy, the manual has no information for any tuning options !

Categories for PSX are 2, arcade and simulation (tuning).

PSX Tuning:

style: arcade / simulation
works only on Simulation !

(arcade is different to simulation mode, driving differences)


01: Engine Tuning - low end, stock, high end
game information:
Set the engine tuning to 'high end' for 
more top-end power on fast tracks, 
or set to 'low end' for low RPM power 
appropriate on slow, twisting courses.

PC Manual information:
Tune toward the low end for faster
acceleration or to the high end for more
top speed.


02: Brake Balance - front, stock, rear
game information:
Move brake balance towards the front
for more predictable braking. Set the
balance towards the rear to induce 
slides in turns through wheel lock up.

PC Manual information:
Tuning to the front creates an
understeering car by transferring weight
to the rear during braking.
Tune to the rear for an oversteering car.


03: Steering Speed - slow, stock, quick
game information: 
Slower steering results in wider but more 
stable turns, whereas quicker steering 
permits sharper turns with a possible 
compromise in handling predictability.

PC Manual information:
Set this option slower for more gradual
tuning or quicker for fast steering.


04: Gear Ratios - high, stock, low
game information:
Higher gear ratios will tend to increase
acceleration but may lower top speeds.
Lower gear ratios will tend to slow
acceleration for improved top speed.

PC Manual information:
High gear ratios let your car climb
through the gears quickly, spending
less time in the slower gears. Low gear
ratios trade sluggish starts for top speed.


05: Suspension Stiffness - soft, stock, stiff
game information:
A stiffer suspension will provide more
stable cornering. Softer settings can
allow drifting the tail around corners for
sharper turn-in, but with less precision.

PC Manual information:
A car with a soft suspension rolls into
the turns. A car with a stiff suspension
fights the road but gives you a better
feel for it.


06: Aerodynamics - low, stock, high
game information:
Low drag allows for higher speeds but
without as much grip at top speed. High
downforce improves grip at high speeds
at the sacrifice of a faster top speed.

PC Manual information:
Tune higher for more downforce,
increasing handling but reducing speed,
or lower for less wind resistance.


07: Tires - rain, stock, race
game information:
Select race tires for the best grip in
dry weather. Rain tires give the best
grip in rain or snow and stock tires are
the best for mixed conditions.

PC Manual information:
Rain tires grip the road under wet
conditions. Racing tires have smooth
surfaces that stick to dry roads.


#

Driving Assists



PC Manual
Driving Assists Menu
(manual, only in Single Race and Hot Pursuit mode, Ghost Car different option)

01: Braking
With braking assist ON, if you are
driving too fast to negotiate a turn, the
computer slows your car.

02: Collision Recovery
Set collision recovery ON for faster
accident recovery.

03: Traction
Traction assist keeps your tires from
spinning when you generate excessive
torque. This enables the car to hug the
road for faster cornering and quicker
starts.

04: Best Line
Pylons mark the fastest racing line
around the track. Try to stay between
the pylons, then check your success
rate at the end of the race.

05: Navigator
When ON, colour-coded arrows and the
NFS3 announcer help you navigate the turns.

06: Pursuit
Available in Hot Pursuit mode only.
When ON, as soon as you make a bust,
your car teleports up to the leader, so
you have a good chance of busting him
too.

Extra note: Ghost car
PC, save ghost car replay file and send it to a friend 
and he can race with your ghost car.




PSX PAL 
Driving Assists Menu (no informations in german Manual and in-game !)
(only in Practice race mode ! practice mode has no music !)

01: Ghost Car
02: Braking Assist
03: Traction Assist
04: Best Line
05: Tutor

(PSX copy miss Collision Recovery and Pursuit assist)

PSX unlock cars and track

No password option for Tournament and Knockout ! You need a Memory Card to save the game file. (NFSII psx works with password option)

This list do not include the 'Secret Tracks' or 'Easter Eggs'.

PSX track list:

01 Hometown
02 Redrock Ridge
03 Atlantica
04 Rocky Pass
05 Country Woods
06 Lost Canyons
07 Aquatica
08 The Summit
09 Empire City

Empire City is not available on 'New Game+'.


PSX car list:

01 355 F1
02 Corvette
03 Countach
04 Nazca C2
05 550 Maranello
06 Diablo SV
07 XJR-15
08 CLK-GTR
09 El Nino


Start the game on 'New Game+', you can only select 3 cars.

01 355 F1
02 Corvette
03 Countach

Play Tournament on beginner difficulty, the first 4 tracks unlock 3 cars.

04 Nazca C2
05 550 Maranello
06 Diablo SV

Play Tournament on beginner difficulty, complete all tracks this unlock 1 car.

07 XJR-15

Play Tournament on expert difficulty, complete all tracks this unlock 1 car.

08 CLK-GTR

Play Knockout on expert difficulty, win the race this unlock 1 car.

09 El Nino

Play Knockout on beginner difficulty, this unlock 1 track.

09 Empire City

Tips & Tricks for driving

This guide is for PC only, but some of these tricks should work on PS as well.

Instant steering - PC only. This trick requires either a gamepad that supports Dinput (usually Logitech) or a steering wheel that you plug into your computer before starting the game. You can also just install vJoy program and it should work as well. Once you're in the game, go to controls and restore default settings. You should now see that all of the movement keys are bound to your gamepad/wheel. Start any race, open up main menu via ESC and bind your steering keys to digital inputs (either on gamepad or your keyboard). You should get a warning message about switching from analog to digital, but you can just ignore it. From now on, whenever you press a steering key, the wheels will instantly steer to maximum lock, which allows you to attack corners more agressively, but it makes the car a bit sensitive and twitchy, especially with traction on. The trick works till you exit the game.

Manual transmission - You always want to use manual transmission as you will get better control over the speed during cornering. Automatic often doesn't downshift and if it does so when you're going out of a corner, it's too late and you loose time.

Gearing - Some cars have "broken" gears, which means that the upper gear is actually faster, even though it doesn't make sense, so it's actually faster to just skip that broken gear when upshifting. I have prepared a document with details: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1E5rRL_mNaOXXnojDRQBNLmDa40wkpz3d5LB62R1pV6g

Downshift braking - This is a trick I found simply from experience. I use it instead of braking, which is a bit unreliable. Basically, you downshift from 6th to 4th, which overrevs the engine (don't try that in your real car) and the car quickly starts to decelerate just as you would use brakes.

Brake steering - In NFSIII, you almost never want to let go of gas. It's unreliable and you'll only loose speed. Instead, use brakes to steer! That's right. When you brake and accelerate at the same time, the car slightly drifts (with brake balance set to -100%) and loses a bit of speed. So if you're attacking a corner and you see you won't make it without crashing, you just slightly tap your brakes a bit and you should go through that corner at maximum speed unless you're going too fast in which case you have to either tap the brakes more or use downshift braking.

"Wiggle glitch" - If you're using the instant steering trick, you can use this glitch to accelerate faster in a straight line. What you do is to rapidly press left and right steering keys between each other to make the car "wiggle". You need to have consistent timing, otherwise the car will just steer off the track.

Jumps - You always want to avoid jumping, especially on PC, because for some reason you're losing speed when you're flying AND you lose another 10-20kph when you land. This is not the case on PS, however. You can avoid some of the jumps by simply avoiding them, but some you can't, so what can you do? If you steer over some of the small jumps, you fool the game into thinking you're actually on the ground and it lets you go over that jump without actually jumping. You can sometimes notice the car sort of hovers over the jump, but it won't jump. This trick is unfortunately quite random and not useful at every small jump, because you need space and you also loose some speed since you have to slightly steer.

Perfect landing - Perfect landing is when your car doesn't "stumble" upon landing. If this happens, you don't lose 10-20kph in the process. It's quite rare, random and only works on some jumps, usually those that are not perfectly horizontal. The chance of getting it varies.

"S" technique - Not sure if guys over HOSS have different name for this trick, but this is how I call it. The idea is to rapidly change your direction to quickly slow down the car while driving over a jump OR slow down the car as fast as possible if you have enough space to do so. This trick is used in only three specific places (CW, SU and EC) and what you do looks like "S". Drive straight, do a hard brakesteer to one side, then quickly to the other. The trick itself is not that hard, it's hard to time it correctly.

Surface - I don't exactly know the numbers, but snow seems to affect your handling in a similar way weather does, thus it's recommended not to cut corners across snow. Gravel or sand has some effect too, but it's way less significant. However, if you drive with half of the car on tarmac, it won't be affected by any surface. Driving straight on a snow/dirt has no effect on acceleration.

Software - I am not sure if this is just placebo or if this is really true, but from my testing, I was always a bit faster in software mode and it felt like the car is a little bit less sensitive to steering inputs.

Traction - You can find this setting in Driving Assists. It basically increases your grip, so the car steers better and faster. The downside is that it will be harder to precisely control the car. It's recommended not to use this with combination of Gofast/tuning as the car will have so much grip that it will spin out during hard brakesteering or just steering on a lose surface.

Tournament and Knockout runs

Graphics/audio settings:

-Vertex light is recommended as it allows you to see more.	
-Alpha intensity should be set to 0% to turn off on-screen effects like rain or snow.
-Fog should be turned off.
-Special effects should be turned off.
-It's recommended to turn off rear-view mirror since it's useless, unless you are really bad and AI opponents can keep up with you :)
-"Night-vision" mode - Go to your graphic's card control panel and set gamma to maximum for green color. This sort of simulates night-vision and basically makes driving at night almost as easy as in a daylight. However, this trick only works in windowed mode.
-Engine is limited to 64fps, so it's recommended to stream/record this game at 64fps. I also do not recommend V-sync and tripple buffering as they tend to make the game lag.
-Turning off music gets rid of the short delay between pressing the "Race" button and loading screen.

Tricks:

-The game has a 5 second delay between it goes to race results after you cross a finish line, but you can avoid that. When a track is loaded, position your mouse cursor to right lower corner so when you press Esc to open up a menu, your mouse cursor will be right on Quit button. Then after you cross a finish line, just press Esc to open up a menu, click on Quit button with your mouse and navigate to Race results using your keyboard (it's faster than using mouse).

Tracks:

-Hometown - HT
-Redrock Ridge - RR
-Atlantica - AT
-Rocky Pass - RP
-Country Woods - CW
-Lost Canyons - LC
-Aquatica - AQ
-Summit - SU
-Empire City - EC

Conditions:

-Forward/backward direction

	Time difference is based on hot laps. First laps are usually even slower.

	CLK-GTR:

	-HT: Backward is easier, but about 1 second slower.
	-RR: Backward is much more difficult, therefore you will probably lose at least 1 second.
	-AT: Roughly same.
	-RP: Backward is about 0.5 second faster.
	-CW: Backward is much more difficult, but about 2-4 seconds faster.
	-LC: Backward is more difficult and about 0.5 seconds slower.
	-AQ: Backward is more difficult and about 2-4 seconds slower.
	-SU: Backward is about 0.5 seconds faster.
	-EC: Backward is easier, but about 2-4 seconds slower.

	Lister Storm:

	-HT: Backward is easier, but about 1 second slower.
	-RR: Backward is much more difficult, but about 1 second faster.
	-AT: Roughly same.
	-RP: Backward is about 0.5 second faster.
	-CW: Backward is a bit more difficult, but about 2 seconds faster.
	-LC: Backward is more difficult and about 0.5 second faster.
	-AQ: Backward is more difficult and about 2 seconds slower.
	-SU: Backward is about 1 second faster.
	-EC: Backward is easier, but about 2 seconds slower.

-Mirrored - Theoretically you shouldn't loose any time with this condition, but since majority of players don't play this track layout, you'll probably loose at least 1 second per lap. If you practice enough, the difference should be none.

-Night - If you use the night-vision trick, you shouldn't really see any difference.

-Weather - Contrary to belief, weather doesn't slow your car as much as you'd think. It's mostly about 1-2 seconds per lap. The biggest problem you'll get from this is slightly different handling.

Cars:

-NG subcategory - Lister Storm (check resources to download this car)
	-3rd gear - 100-150kph
	-4th gear - 150-200kph, but it's fine to go as low as 130kph.
	-5th gear - I found this gear to be pretty much useless, unless you need just a bit more top speed and 4th is too short.
	-6th gear - 200-300+ kph. The game will signalize you to downshift to 5th or even 4th, but you can ignore it. This gear has the same acceleration as 5th, maybe even slightly better, therefore using it for 200kph is fine (you simply don't downshift if you go below 250kph in a corner). Keeping the car in 6th as much as possible saves roughly about 1 second per lap.

-NG+ subcategory - CLK-GTR
	-3rd gear - 100-150kph.
	-4th gear - 120-220kph, but if you can, shift up to 6th around 200kph
	-5th gear - This gear is actually slower than 6th, so only use it if 4th is too short and on short straights. Otherwise skip right to 6th. The reason for still using 5th in some situations is that double-shifting up from 4th to 6th makes the car stop accelerating for a short time.
	-6th gear - 180-320+ kph. It's fine to go as low as 180.

Beginner tournament:

-4 laps of 8 tracks.
-Starts with HT and ends with SU.
-Tracks are always in forward direction.

Patterns: You don't need any patterns for this mode.

Expert tournament:

-4 laps of 8 tracks.
-Starts with HT and ends with SU.
-Each track has its own random conditions. It's recommended to start HT in forward direction and no weather.

Patterns:
	NG: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1CYbDOjdfHrnpx1kFHjwPZ46cuhONAJoCFYc0iveute8
	NG+: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/15k9wojYddMTOlu1-p3oq1cfOhOeiM_R8ewiPawLCZOg

Beginner knockout:

-2 laps of 7 tracks
-Starts with HT, RR, AT and RP.
-HT, RR, AT, RP and EC are always in the track pool.
-After RP, you want CW as 5th and then AQ as 6th. Do not continue the run if you get different tracks or different order.
-Tracks are always in forward direction.

Patterns:
	NG: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/16Mdi5KUFM5F8gZrRq1x5X79PADc5tO7QZBgqSk7c0bg
	NG+: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ElBHVnpk2h79sZGIzRLcTeTf_8j9zdKICzPzq-VcVtc

Expert knockout:

-2 laps of 7 tracks
-Starts with either HT, RR or AT and ends with EC.
-CW, LC, AQ, SU and EC are always in the track pool.
-You always want HT as 1st and AT as 2nd track. Do not continue the run if you get different tracks or different order. 

Patterns:
	NG: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Z4INBEEry_jd8RfAZOwxwZNTlwUthVY_Pu_XYvd9bh8
	NG+: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1dYbY5Ov38xk61HHXt9wXZSAEjmqQ4UCrrioVKbKnC4E

Tuning

This guide is for PC platform only. PS could be same, but I've never played it, so I don't know.

Engine: +100% - More power in high rpm is exactly what we want.
Brake balance: -100% - Tooltip says you should set this to +100% (Rear) in order to drift, but it's actually the opposite. You always want -100%. The only exception is RR with its sharp hairpin shortcut, where -100% makes the car spin if you use tuning and traction, so use +100% instead.
Steering speed: +100% - This is pretty much pointless if you use instant steering trick, but if you don't, you need +100%.
Gearbox ratio: -100% - Stock top speed of CLK-GTR is 324kph and you can tune it up to 387kph. Only RP and SU use -60% due to the track layout and 5th gear skip.
Aerodynamics: +100% - Since NFSIII has tracks with a lot of jumps, you always want to keep the "flight-time" to minimum. Plus the car corners a bit better. It seems like only Hometown benefits from less aerodynamics, otherwise keep it +100%.
Suspension: +100% - Soft settings clearly makes the car steer better, but you loose a lot of speed during cornering, that's why stiff settings is better, because you can keep more speed. However -100% is better if you play with gofast.
Tyres: +100% - Best setting if you drive without weather, otherwise use -100%

Name	Author
Gameplay Capture and Posting	Scorched 7 years ago
Installation, running & recording/streaming	Ewil 8 years ago
PC & PSX Assist & Tuning compare information	JessicaSix 10 years ago
PSX unlock cars and track	JessicaSix 10 years ago
Tips & Tricks for driving	Ewil 6 years ago
Tournament and Knockout runs	Ewil 7 years ago
Tuning	Ewil 6 years ago