GTR Is Set For A Revival

GTR Revival.png
For those who have been around sim racing since the early 2000’s, the GTR series of titles are ones which are firmly etched on the brain.

For many, they are the titles that launch them into the world of sim racing in the first place. From GTR and GTR 2 through to GTR Evolution, the titles stood for realism and brought the world of FIA GT racing into our homes.

Join the conversation in the new GTR Revival forum here

For the last several years, there have been rumours, speculation and the occasional screenshot regarding a proposed GTR 3. However, these have been few and far between and have since dwindled into the background once more.

Today, an announcement has appeared which is completely out of the blue. @Ian Bell once head of Slightly Mad Studios and part of the original GTR development team, tweeted the news that he is working on a new title; GTR Revival.

Not only that, there are several other members of the original development team involved too including; Stephen Viljoen, Andy Garton, Stephen Baysted, Henrik Roos, Johan Roos and Vik Klomiets.

As far as the sim itself is concerned, there are no specific details just yet, but Ian Bell has promised that it will be a hardcore, no compromise title.


Will this be the GTR sequel that we have all been waiting for? Share your thoughts with us below as we await more information on GTR Revival.

(This is a developing story, more soon)

Updates

  • RaceDepartment asked Johan Roos (ex-Simbin) for a quote if the above tweet is true and he replied: "Well I do not deny it but cannot comment any further than Ian already has written and that it sounds like one hell of a game by one hell of a crew".
About author
Phil Rose
A passionate sim racer with over 20 years of virtual and real world motorsport experience, I am the owner and lead content creator at Sim Racing Bible as well as a writer here at RaceDepartment. I love all forms of motorsport, especially historic motorsport, but when it comes to sim racing, I will drive anything!
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If (and it's a big IF) this comes to fruition I will be right on board, Ian Bell might be an obnoxious narcissist but he's simply the front man. I could care less about personalities provided we get an up to date version of GTR, complete with PC2 graphic DNA and the 'moddability' of the GTR series.
 
It's hard to imagine a new GTR game with the current cars, ugly and slow.

If it is remaking the GTR2 game, well not sure it is worth the effort, as GTR2 is still playable and still feels great, with a complete package of cars and features, and it is now playable in VR.

I'd be interested in a game with several iconics years of GTs : 1996 (maybe the best car entries ever : mclaren F1, F40, lotus esprit, venturi 600, jaguar xj220, lister storm, viper...), 1997 or 1998, 2003 or 2004 (gtr2), 2007 (including the citation cup, so lot of different cars), 2009 (with the entries of the ford gt1 and the nissan gtr, last year of the milticlass racing). It would be also geeat to have IMSA GT years, even ALMS years, and some Japan super GT years. Even "just" 2 years of each continent would be amazing.

That would be a really worthy GTR revival. I'm not impressed by the former developpers of GTR2 being involved, I'm more concerned about Bell's last ambitious work, pcars2, a great game which has never been finished. Pcars3 is another story, it wasn't an ambitous title. The issue is that this guy is a good money maker, nobody can take that from him, but he hasn't any notion of customer service, and he won't change ; if he wasn't able to do it for pcars2, he won't ever do it.

Anyway, wait and see, I'd like to be positively surprised.
Modern GT3 cars trounce every other era of GT cars in terms of lap time besides when "GT1" was prototypes and GTE. Plus they are getting closer to GTE in pace every year. So calling them slow is a bit funny. Don't get me wrong I think they are somewhat boring to drive exclusively but they certainly aren't slow.
 
Modern GT3 cars trounce every other era of GT cars in terms of lap time besides when "GT1" was prototypes and GTE. Plus they are getting closer to GTE in pace every year. So calling them slow is a bit funny. Don't get me wrong I think they are somewhat boring to drive exclusively but they certainly aren't slow.
Boring to drive and slow. GT1 were close to lmp2s lap times but did not drive like prototypes, except the 1997 and 1998 ones. That's why different eras would being really different experiences imo.
 
Premium
Diminishing returns refers to features that had a lot of time put into them, but nobody ended up using.

Good example, pC2's built-in league functionality. Similar to EA Sports games, you could set up custom online leagues, within the game.

This had an enormous amount of time and resources put into it, only for us to realize that nobody used it because sim racers were perfectly happy running their leagues externally via Discord or on sites like RD. In fact, they were so happy with running leagues externally, they began building their own apps to bypass any sort of ingame tool SMS created - I'm talking about SRS and SimRacingGP. Discord leagues also allow the same group of guys to jump from game to game, which happens a lot because a lot of sim racers own a lot of different racing sims, and want to play them all at some point. The time spent on the pC2 league tool that nobody used, could have been better allocated elsewhere.

pC3, online racing has a "quick match" feature similar to Call of Duty. You press the button, it seeds you in the next available room with a random track and car for pick up and play racing like the PGR days. We wasted resources and man hours on this, knowing full well that iRacing's format of scheduled start times is how people play racing games now. And that we probably wouldn't even have a userbase big enough to support quickmatch working as intended.

Those little decisions, can buy you time to improve or implement things people actually do want.
I just have to say that your involvement in this project brings a whole new light on your postings regarding Motorsports Games. To me you have lost all credits off being a thrustworthy source off information.
 
Boring to drive and slow. GT1 were close to lmp2s lap times but did not drive like prototypes, except the 1997 and 1998 ones. That's why different eras would being really different experiences imo.
No GT3 cars aren’t slow lol. They are literally only a second behind the 2008 GT1 cars which have almost 100 hp more than modern GT3. They are very quick for the limits on them. Also GT1 wasn’t never near LMP2 pace. There were ten seconds off in 2008 Sebring. Rose tinted glasses sure are something.
 
Premium
I just have to say that your involvement in this project brings a whole new light on your postings regarding Motorsports Games. To me you have lost all credits off being a thrustworthy source off information.

To me, in this thread (I'm new here) his posts bring a voice of someone actually involved... which I see as a good thing!

...
As far as I'm concerned there are 4 types of features one can implement in a racing sim: physics features (how cars drive and interact with their environment + FFB), environment features (weather, day cycle), gameplay features (what a player can do with the game, like custom championship, racing rulesets, driver swaps, yellow flag + AI)...
As a six decade car buff (yes I'm old) with little actual knowledge of how information gets from a programmers mind to my screen I can only really speak as a user or customer if you will, so your points on features are of interest to me.
Firstly the Physics, cars should behave differently to one another, but too many games/sims make the mistake of either ignoring differences or leaning on the side of weighing in too heavily on them, making them less enjoyable because of their exasserbated foibles.

The weather is always something to marvel at in sims and as computers become better I'm bound to be happy.

Ahh... the Rules and AI, in the past the AI seemed to live in a different world to the one I was racing, ignoring flags and being unable to overtake backmarkers, often making dive decisions which resulted in the player going off and the (AI Cheat) emergency stability being initiated to continue as though nothing was wrong,... with no recourse for the player (yes, I'd like AI stop and go/drive through penalties)
But more than this I like to see the AI adopt what our great motorsports hero Murray Walker would say... to finish first, first you have to finish
 
I'm not sure if they've publically stated against their various dev-blogs, it could be seen as in poor taste to point such things out when you've got/had a good relationship with the people that developed the engine you're using.

But there has been plenty of it said by devs cordially on forum posts and discord chats.

I'd guess if I was to start looking for an 'official' or 'more accountable' source, I'd go towards anything they've posted in regards to tyre sidewall simulation.

Cracking the code on that - why the simulation wasn't doing what it was supposed to despite everything surrounding it being up to snuff - was one of their biggest battles in getting AMS2 to drive the way it does today.

The SETA is one of, if not the most advanced tyre models in sim racing to this day, but for years it was completely hampered by the fact their sidewall construction modelling wasn't doing what they intended - and developed the rest of the tyre model around - for it to do.
You see, I don't doubt that Reiza improved on what was there when they acquired the Madness Engine. That doesn't mean that this stuff was broken before that, though. You can always improve stuff if you just throw enough resources on it. The thing is that you need to ship the game at some point.

I just have to say that your involvement in this project brings a whole new light on your postings regarding Motorsports Games. To me you have lost all credits off being a thrustworthy source off information.
Why? This way, he certainly knows more about this kind of stuff than industry outsiders.
 
Modern GT3 cars trounce every other era of GT cars in terms of lap time besides when "GT1" was prototypes and GTE. Plus they are getting closer to GTE in pace every year. So calling them slow is a bit funny. Don't get me wrong I think they are somewhat boring to drive exclusively but they certainly aren't slow.
I think the reason people call GT3 cars slow is because of the way they make laptime. Like most modern racecars they are underpowered and over aero-ed. You add in traction control and abs brakes and they become boring cars, especially in a sim. It's also important to remember the evolution in tire technology when comparing them to older GT cars. If you put the GT1 cars of the past on modern rubber they would probably be several seconds clear of the GT3's. I agree that they're not slow, but they do lack something in terms of driving excitement.
 
No GT3 cars aren’t slow lol. They are literally only a second behind the 2008 GT1 cars which have almost 100 hp more than modern GT3. They are very quick for the limits on them. Also GT1 wasn’t never near LMP2 pace. There were ten seconds off in 2008 Sebring. Rose tinted glasses sure are something.
When will people learn you can't compare laptimes accross different eras? Tire technology is always improving! Stick the old cars in modern tires ,and we shall see that difference grow again!
 
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Yeah, sure, because S397 and Massarutto call him at home and tell him what is going on with their projects and business plans. Sure.
He can know just as much as you and everybody else inside here. He just decided to waste his time looking for those infos and build his conspiracy theories. We obviously had better things to do in life. And he did that for a reason: to bash and discredit them. And maybe now we understand why.

He also said that the failure of pCars 3 doesn't depend by Mr. Bell, the CEO of the company, the man who has control on everything, but by the game designer, Paul Rustchynsky. He didn't say the name (not enough balls of course), but made him recognizable describing his previous job as game designer for Driveclub and Onrush (he did also Motorstorm). To be fair, in the pCars 3 credits there is also another lead game designer, called Kris Pope, who also worked in the forementioned games, but Rustchynsky was game director for Driveclub, so should be him the guy blaimed by Austin for the pCars 3 debacle.
So who was Austin? Who do we have to blame for the pCars 3 fiasco?
We all know what role the CEO has inside a company: there is chain of command, a hierarchy and the CEO is on top of it. He is the guy who, inside the company, has the major responsabilities and takes the most important strategic decisions.
Imagine if the game designer of the next MarioKart would propose to make it simulative and force the 5YO players to create a setup and fiddle with the same settings of the RF2 setup? The CEO would never approve such design, because would be a suicide for the game. And if japanese he would have to cut out his fingers. :roflmao:
Was Ian Bell asleep during the development of pCars 3? They wanted to make an arcade from the very beginning.
During the development of pCars 1 Mr. Bell and the other people who were in charge of every major departments of the SMS, were aware of everything, were actively involved in every aspect of the development process. Nothing happended without them knowing the reasons, discussing about it (also with the testers) and giving their approval. Because in a normal company things work this way.
But here we have some smarta$$ that try to convince you that Ian Bell is just the guy with the money, a visionary, that he puts together the team with the best hopes and prays God that everything will go as planned.
How ridiculous is that? And someone believes this crap?
Their very few loyal fans stick together and detach themselves from reality.

Maybe a side effect from drinking the cool-aid :D
 
Played an hour long race in GTR2 last night with the 10year Anniversary patch. Still a brilliant, fun to race sim. It gets so many things right. I won't let Pcars3 diminish the Simbin/Blimey legacy.

I'd love to have all those who comment about PC3 show their Steam log of hours played on the game. Willing to bet there's a lot of piling on to the bad reviews by a lot who never played it.

(Disclaimer: I don't own it and I've never played it. I feel like I'm the only one who knew this wasn't a successor to PC2 and didn't waste my money.)
 
Yeah, sure, because S397 and Massarutto call him at home and tell him what is going on with their projects and business plans. Sure.
He can know just as much as you and everybody else inside here. He just decided to waste his time looking for those infos and build his conspiracy theories. We obviously had better things to do in life. And he did that for a reason: to bash and discredit them. And maybe now we understand why.

He also said that the failure of pCars 3 doesn't depend by Mr. Bell, the CEO of the company, the man who has control on everything, but by the game designer, Paul Rustchynsky. He didn't say the name (not enough balls of course), but made him recognizable describing his previous job as game designer for Driveclub and Onrush (he did also Motorstorm). To be fair, in the pCars 3 credits there is also another lead game designer, called Kris Pope, who also worked in the forementioned games, but Rustchynsky was game director for Driveclub, so should be him the guy blaimed by Austin for the pCars 3 debacle.
So who was Austin? Who do we have to blame for the pCars 3 fiasco?
We all know what role the CEO has inside a company: there is chain of command, a hierarchy and the CEO is on top of it. He is the guy who, inside the company, has the major responsabilities and takes the most important strategic decisions.
Imagine if the game designer of the next MarioKart would propose to make it simulative and force the 5YO players to create a setup and fiddle with the same settings of the RF2 setup? The CEO would never approve such design, because would be a suicide for the game. And if japanese he would have to cut out his fingers. :roflmao:
Was Ian Bell asleep during the development of pCars 3? They wanted to make an arcade from the very beginning.
During the development of pCars 1 Mr. Bell and the other people who were in charge of every major departments of the SMS, were aware of everything, were actively involved in every aspect of the development process. Nothing happended without them knowing the reasons, discussing about it (also with the testers) and giving their approval. Because in a normal company things work this way.
But here we have some smarta$$ that try to convince you that Ian Bell is just the guy with the money, a visionary, that he puts together the team with the best hopes and prays God that everything will go as planned.
How ridiculous is that? And someone believes this crap?
And tell us, what exactly is he to blame? For making a game you don't like? Geez, the nerve. I wonder why you dont tell us about Marcel O taking years to flesh out a UI, then selling out to that disaster that is MSG. Or Kunos, essentially ripping off console users with that insulting piece of software that was the console version of AC, only to have then the CEO and lead programmer of the company come out and dismiss all criticism, and fanboys saying they should have bought the PC version.
 
I still don't know what PC2 got massively wrong that AMS2 solved? It feels like a marginal improvement if anything. (with good content stripped out for recycled Brazilian cars)
FFB for one…

And what recycled Brazilian content? Decades of F1 and indycars, more up to date GT3s and GT4s, Caddy DPi…

Take the blinders off
 
Yeah the FFB is more lively for the lack of a better word but I don't think it drives any better at all. If we could port the "lively" FFB setup and keep the rest of everything PC2 as is then I wouldn't visit AMS2 ever again, but to be honest I don't anymore anyway - I also own AMS1 and it's just leagues better in FFB and control for me. But each to their own - I appreciate that people appreciate AMS2 but after being initially enthusiastic and supportive of a small developer the inconsistency has drained it all away.

Edit: I get the FFB in AMS2 maybe more "lively" due to physics changes but I can't pretend I understand the ins and outs of it all. Just to me it's more lively and that's it - PC2 is more predictable which means more enjoyable and for me that's not a bad thing.
 
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And tell us, what exactly is he to blame? For making a game you don't like? Geez, the nerve. I wonder why you dont tell us about Marcel O taking years to flesh out a UI, then selling out to that disaster that is MSG. Or Kunos, essentially ripping off console users with that insulting piece of software that was the console version of AC, only to have then the CEO and lead programmer of the company come out and dismiss all criticism, and fanboys saying they should have bought the PC version.
Both developers you mentioned have their games, already 8+ years old, still doing much better on sales and online activity.

Stop trying to drag other games down with this dumpster fire, it ain’t working without any actual facts to back your accusations.
 
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