Why are GT3 so popular?

Cote Dazur said:

Are they? so popular.
Open server online racing seems to be obsessed with GT3 at SPA, or Monza. But open server online racing is the tip of the iceberg, not even the all 10%.
Are league obsessed by GT3? not sure.
offline racing, difficult for me to say, but I am guessing, GT3 are part of the mix, but no more used than all the other options, like F1, LMP, DTM, all types of TC, classic racing cars, and even hyper, super cars.
In VR, one thing I like about GT3, when racing offline, is that their dash, when properly done, like in ACC, gives you all the info you need to know what is happening to the car (tire, fuel, etc...) and in the race (laps/position).
GT3s look good, drive nice, offer full grid, so what is there not to like? But, at least for me, they get their fair share of action, but nothing more.

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I think if you wonder about their popularity you should take a quick look at iRacing. GT3 is simply by far the most popular for road racing and it really isn't close. So no, there isn't some secret society of people driving other cars. GT3 IS the most popular for multiplayer racing in sims. F1 is seen as too difficult by many. LMP and DTM are very niche. TC is simply seen as a step to GT, and vintage isn't even remotely in the same ballpark.

The only thing more boring than endless GT3s at Monza lobbies is people endlessly complaining about GT3s at Monza lobbies.

GT3: still reminds in some ways of so called "Old school racing".
The only thing I would personally change is remove from GT3 is TC (traction control).

Shannon Flynn said:

I honestly have no idea. But, I'm a senior citizen
I'd much rather struggle to drive a vintage car on the edge than have a bunch of computer nonsense and downforce drive the car for me.

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I, too, prefer the older sports cars, be they Gp. 5, Gp. 6 or something from that era. Those cars were difficult to drive, especially with a manual transmission. The problem is that they are difficult to drive and while one can use paddles with them, that is not how they were driven IRL. Not many want to use a manual when they are zipping around in a sim.

I resisted driving them for a long time but my league went to GT3's in iRacing, and when we would participate in the enduros the rest of the guys driving would want to use the GT3's, so to join I had to drive them.

Now I am used to them and while I prefer to drive the LMP2 (that car is the first one in iRacing I could drive well as soon as I got behind the wheel), I now have no problem with the GT3's.

HF2000 said:

It's the fastest car class where I have the feeling that I can drive it to the limit.
With formula cars or LMP cars I've got the feeling that I am the limiting factor.

Slower car classes can also be driven to the limit but not at those speeds.

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You just have to get used to the cars. I am not gonna tell you that your opinion is wrong, as GT3's are good, fast cars but they are, to me, much more difficult to drive at the limit as quickly as I took to the P2. Once you learn a car and practice, you just get to the point where you can also drive it to the best of your abilities, but it took me more time to be relatively fast in a GT3.

I was actually able to drive the P2 in iRacing better due to spending so much time behind the wheel of the GT3 in official races. Once you go from a car with ABS, to a car you may frequently drive without ABS you find it easier to drive the car without ABS (at least in my experience) faster. Why?

One of the things I learned driving the P2 as much as I did was that I had to learn to trust the downforce. Once you get to the point of trusting the downforce you find the car very easy to drive. It is much easier to drive the P2 hard than it is for me to drive the GT3 at the limit, due to the lack of DF in a GT3 or even a GTLM.

To me, those cars present a much bigger challenge than the P2 because of the P2's DF. GT3's and GTLM's require much more car control to wring out as much speed as possible because you are trying to find closer braking points and better lines that allow you to take as much advantage of what little DF (in comparison) you have in those cars.

In my iRacing official races, the best drivers tend to drive the GT3's and GTLM's leaving the P2's for the "scrubs" like me.

Marcel B. said:

That is the single most annoying reality in Sim Racing: The one car class that sucks the most, has the most populated servers.
1. This car class is basically created for rich wannabe racers (IRL)
2. It may look like the streetcar counterparts, but has almost nothing to do with (different suspension, drive system, aero, power output, all altered due to homologation), so the driving experience is completely different
3. It uses assists, especially the traction control, that sucks out the fun of driving these cars (I imagine if I would go on a track day with my car IRL and leave all assists on - NEVER ever did that happen! In GT3 this is basically standard)
4. compared to other racing car classes, it lacks nimbleness of the car
5. the setup influence is huge -> makes you 2 seconds faster, comparing a bad versus a good setup
So to me it is popular for 3 reasons: they look and sound cool, they are fairly easy to drive on a +/- competitive level and they have the numbers of active racers.
Personally I will never invest my spare time in this car class, when I have myriads of other possibilities. I want to drive a sim car that is fun to drive and where I have full control over the car.

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1. Look at racing throughout history and you will find it populated with as many gentlemen drivers as pro or factory drivers:

Aside from the top F1 teams many of the grid fillers paid for their seat. How do you think Mazepin got his drive? Not because he had the skillz.

Gp. 5, GTP (IMSA), GTO-GTU (IMSA/SCCA), Prototype (Gp. 6) even F1 "back in the day" grids were chalk-full of gentlemen drivers. We just did not know about them because perhaps we were too young, or we did not pay attention.

2. But it does retain the silhouette of the actual road car, as did the Gp. 5/GTO-GTU cars back in the day. They are instantly recognizable.

3. Yes, they do use assists, because they are safer, especially since a good number of them are driven by gentlemen/woman drivers. Ask any of them if they would turn off those assists in their road cars if they tracked them. I bet the answer would be: "No."

4. Gp. 5, Gp. 6, Gp. C and Gp. A cars were not known for their nimbleness. As a matter of fact, compared to todays cars they were tanks that did not stop nearly as well as even GTLM cars (no ABS and no TC until 2012), nor were they as safe. GT3 cars of today are just as powerful and more nimble than Gp. 5 cars of the '70's and can turn a lap on any track faster than those older cars.

I would argue that GT3's do not look or sound better than a Gp. 5/GTO-GTU car. Back then we had the chirps of compressor stall that many of us did not know where it came from but it sure sounded cool. Back then we saw these exotic cars with big sponsons over the wheel arches, flames shooting what seemed to be for miles out of the exhaust and the snap, crackle and pop of an engine decelerating through unrestricted exhausts. We did not hear about noise abatement at tracks, nor did we really car about the burning dinosaurs. We we just enthralled.

We all have our preferences. I would prefer my league drive the older cars, but many in the league find them too difficult to drive, thus to stay with the guys I raced with for years I had to adjust.

I don't regret it at all.

YMMV.

Slapped said:

Actually the most popular class of car by a country mile are the F1 cars.

F1 2021 has more concurrent players than ACC, AC, R3E, RF2 and PC2 put together - according to steamdb.

I'm now just waiting for the "But that's not a sim" wailing.

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Codemasters F1 has easier physics though. Which allows much wider audience, with gamepads etc.

Not saying F1 isn't more popular than GT3 generally speaking, it is. If you stop someone on the street, they almost certainly know some F1 drivers by name, only very few people would know any GT3 drivers by name

This may come off as flippant, but genuine questions for people mentioning that GT3 features their dream poster cars:

1. If being similar to real life supercars is a selling point, why isn't GT4 rather than GT3 the top dog?
2. If racing actual supercars is the golden ticket, why not actually race road-going supercars themselves rather than heavily modified versions of them? Basically, if I have a crush on a girl, but you offer me a version of her with bleached blonde hair, a Versace dress, plastic surgery and a Vuitton handbag, I'll pass, I'll want the real thing instead.
3. Gaudy liveries and massive sports tend to really hide the beauty of very good looking supercars, doesn't that detract from the visual enjoyment of supercars?
4. Is there some suspension of disbelief happening? I mean, NASCAR cars drive nothing like their road-going counterpart, and while the difference isn't as stark in GT3, other than the engine and the shell, the experience of the race car and the road going car is radically different, isn't it? So... is it just the feel-good boost that one's driving a Porsche supercar rather than the actual experience relating to the real life exotic?

Because even at full price on Steam, ACC is only 1/6725th the cost of a used Ferrari 488 at my local Ferrari dealer.

Personally I'm in the H shifter, no-aero, no-fiddly-knobs camp.

jongen said:

This may come off as flippant, but genuine questions for people mentioning that GT3 features their dream poster cars:

1. If being similar to real life supercars is a selling point, why isn't GT4 rather than GT3 the top dog?
2. If racing actual supercars is the golden ticket, why not actually race road-going supercars themselves rather than heavily modified versions of them? Basically, if I have a crush on a girl, but you offer me a version of her with bleached blonde hair, a Versace dress, plastic surgery and a Vuitton handbag, I'll pass, I'll want the real thing instead.
3. Gaudy liveries and massive sports tend to really hide the beauty of very good looking supercars, doesn't that detract from the visual enjoyment of supercars?
4. Is there some suspension of disbelief happening? I mean, NASCAR cars drive nothing like their road-going counterpart, and while the difference isn't as stark in GT3, other than the engine and the shell, the experience of the race car and the road going car is radically different, isn't it? So... is it just the feel-good boost that one's driving a Porsche supercar rather than the actual experience relating to the real life exotic?

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1. As GT3 is better represented in simracing it's logical that it's more popular. But strictly speaking GT4 features less interesting cars overall, for me. But honestly I love both classes. But if we go to slower classes I would rather race TCR class, which have actually obtainable street car counterparts, too bad it's not more popular in sims.
2. Where can we do it in simracing? AC, PC2 to some extent. There's your explanation. Plus, there is no BoP, everybody would race the quickest car. AC Nordschleife track day servers with road cars are popular for this reason.
3. I don't race cars with liveries I do not like, so...
4. I don't really see why it's a bad thing that GT3 cars handle better than road cars? Tuned cars are also popular with car enthusiasts. Are those a feel-good boost as well?

They are the bread and butter of sim racing, a staple food. You can find more flavoursome cars outside of ACC, to extend the metaphor.

Because they run on rails lol

Shannon Flynn said:

I honestly have no idea. But, I'm a senior citizen
I'd much rather struggle to drive a vintage car on the edge than have a bunch of computer nonsense and downforce drive the car for me.

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but youre playing on a computer....

Well, we all like GT3 the most, since the best sim(s) have it. Personally I like SUPER GT, GT500
( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_GT, https://supergt.net/?ln=en ) class from RL the most (similar to DTM specially from 2021, and back). I hope some sim developers do it one day. It really is an extraordinary series, just not well introduced in western countries.

Check out the new Nissan 400Z GT500 for 2022 season, speed, sound, WOW:
This is well knows Sam Collins as passanger in some older Nissan GTR:
And some great onboard with Lucas Ordonez (GT3 RL driver, who came from sims) with Nissan GT-R: So tell me, if this is not something we all like and want?

Think it all started after gtr2

AC Legends @ Monza 66 full circuit. That's my cup of tea. But I do drive the modern GT3s and I guess there's the paddle shift aspect to the ease of driving for many racers. I grew up in the H pattern era and I love the macho workout involved. So I drive as much of this type of racing as I can.

The GT3 cars are a total blast to drive. The online racing on many of the servers is excellent albeit, a bit of the wild west at the starts. The GT3's are racing cars today's sim racers can really relate to. I do agree with this.

What I really appreciate from AC is being able to switch from paddle shift to H pattern racing without having to reconfigure my wheel and shifter. That is awesome and so I get to enjoy old and modern racing. Love it all!

I go around the track and I keep thinking: I paid $11 bucks for this mentally amazing sim? God bless the 21st century! And many thanks to Race Department for turning me on to such a great Halloween deal!

PH

Personally I think the best version of GT3s... is actually 1998-1999 GT1s. Probably because they are a bit old they always get overlooked but a complete roster of GT1s with Porsche, Merc, Nissan, Toyota, Panoz etc. is far more enticing than GT3s. I could still see lots of people driving them if they got to know them.
They still have ABS/TC but more aero and power and they can still be used for endurance on quite epic tracks

mantasisg said:

Sounds like oxymoron TBH. Putting on super grippy and peaky tires, plus peaking the grip even more by some fancy aero, surely won't make stuff less difficult. Of course, the car will easily be 15seconds faster without trying to go fast. But racing is always about trying hard.

People think that rich gentlemen will get to drive cars that has benefit of road car and a race car in one car. It can't happen.

Just race actual road cars....

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??

I am pretty sure GT3's are more popular in simracing than out of it--an even cursory glance of actual irl gt3 races reveals that no one is watching these damn things race; they have pitiful viewership on youtube, for instance, with modern Blancpain races struggling to get over 25K views at best.

Vadara said:

I am pretty sure GT3's are more popular in simracing than out of it--an even cursory glance of actual irl gt3 races reveals that no one is watching these damn things race; they have pitiful viewership on youtube, for instance, with modern Blancpain races struggling to get over 25K views at best.

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How does that compare to WEC / Imsa races that include GT3 but also other classes? Perhaps this year at a track like Lime Rock for Imsa, where they usually limit the prototypes, we might see a closer content sample.

MickStuart said:

While I do like GT3 cars I don't enjoy them as much as other series. Personally I don't like cars that have/use traction control and abs, it takes alot of the finesse out of driving. Maybe it's just because I'm almost 50.

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Turn the TC off, adjust the BB, no need to use it. That's the beauty of settings. I would say the majority of us racing GT3 sim do not use TC, young and older alike.