Orbital Racer

Games that are interesting for one reason or another
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Keeper
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Joined: Thu Jan 04, 2018 9:23 pm
Location: Indian Hills, Nevada, USA
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Orbital Racer

Post by Keeper »

This interesting title came out recently. The name is a misnomer as it isn't orbital racing, but Zero-g racing (or perhaps microgravity, from the looks of it). It has two modes -- arcade mode with less-realistic physics and stupid power-ups for people who can't fly or race properly, and simulation mode which from what few accounts there are so far seems to be pretty hard-core, e.g. people saying they fail the Flight School.

I'm tempted to give it a go, but worried about low-frame-rate remarks (due to the physics calculations with all the AI competitors -- similar to the FPS drops I experience when I do racing simulators in offline mode instead of the usual online). Unfortunately, Orbital Racer does not have an online mode. That would be really nice...

http://store.steampowered.com/app/723100/Orbital_Racer/
Keeper
Posts: 97
Joined: Thu Jan 04, 2018 9:23 pm
Location: Indian Hills, Nevada, USA
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Re: Orbital Racer

Post by Keeper »

Since it's on sale, I decided to buy it. Pretty fun so far, going through the tutorial. I got annoyed with the flight school being too strict about things and tried to go right to the evaluation to get a racing license, and passed the evaluation on the first attempt. I decided to take a break there though, so haven't done any races yet. (Also have not tried the arcade/action mode which obviously is of no interest to me!)

The frame rate did drop a lot the longer I played the tutorial, going from 70-90 fps down to about 15-17. Quitting and restarting the game rectified that. We'll see what it's like with AI competitors in an actual race...
Keeper
Posts: 97
Joined: Thu Jan 04, 2018 9:23 pm
Location: Indian Hills, Nevada, USA
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Re: Orbital Racer

Post by Keeper »

I got into this again recently, and it really is a blast. With practice I've begun to win some races and earn a sponsorship.

It's a shame that development was abandoned (I think the developer sold the rights to another company, which made the stripped-down "Void Space Racing" for consoles). Of course I got to tweaking things as I do, and did some English clean-up and other text improvements which I wrote about on the Steam Discussions page.
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