If you’re a racing fan, you may want to get behind the wheel of Extreme Acceleration, a new interactive, 3D-enhanced Shockwave game created to commemorate the first NASCAR Winston Cup race of the season.
Racing fans can drive their own customized car through a variety of immersive 3D courses at high speeds. The free game is now available online.
The game was created by MindComet for International Speedway Corp. (ISC), promoter of motorsports entertainment activities in the U.S. ISC wanted to provide racing enthusiasts with something beyond the basic sporting information on their Web sites, and decided to bring the racing experience to the Web. MindComet authored the game in Macromedia Director 8.5 Shockwave Studio, utilizing the Shockwave 3D exporter in NewTek’s Lightwave 7.0.
“Extreme Acceleration enables computer users to play a full-featured driving game within their Web browser, through the power and rich 3D visuals of Macromedia Shockwave Player,” said Miriam Geller, senior product manager, Macromedia, the folks behind the Shockwave technology. “The game shows an example of how a company can effectively use the power of Internet-based games to augment offline marketing and branding campaigns.”
Shockwave Player resides on 65 percent of Web users’ systems, reaching a growing audience of more than 270 million Web users, she said. On average, over 300,000 people install Shockwave Player daily, making it the most widely deployed 3D technology on the Web.
Shockwave Player for Mac OS 10.1 is now available from the Macromedia download center. The file size is approximately 3MB.
As MacCentral reported on Jan. 16, Macromedia has updated Director Shockwave Studio, the authoring software used to create Shockwave content, to version 8.5.1. It’s not Mac OS X native, but such a critter is in the works, though no timetable has been set.