GTR2: Why are Modern Sims Still Not as Good?

[Paul Jeffrey]

GTR2 is 11 years old, features a series that no longer exists and was developed for technology less advanced than a modern smart phone. Unbelievably it's still one of the best sims available today.

What I want to know is why? Why in the last 10 + years have some of the many awesome features found in this now long forgotten game not made their way into something more modern? Ok granted many different games feature some of the bits in GTR2, but no single title has taken what was already an incredible base and expanded upon it with the aid of much advanced technology we now have at our disposal.

Driving School? Check
Fully animated pit workers? Check
Animated flag marshals? Check
Day - night transition? Check
Weather cycle? Check
Full official series licence, over two separate seasons? Check
...and the list goes on and on...

Simply put GTR2 was massively overdeveloped, period. SimBin Studios quite literally took every single aspect of the then premier GT racing series in the world and recreated it all into a compelling racing experience that still stands out as a top simulation even by the standards of today, 11 years after the game hit our shelves.

I just find it all incredibility bizarre. In very few industries outside of sim racing will you see a decline in product quality and content as the years progress like we have to put up with today. When GTR2 first shipped in September 2006 the game was a complete package, not splattered with ridiculous bugs that prevented anyone having a good time, not bombarded by wave after wave of disparate DLC content with little or no relevance to the main experience and not hanging on by the merest thread for dear life as another iteration of something that's been released by someone else already. It really was a golden time for sim racing fans, and those who witnessed it all first hand really did think this would be the beginning of something big in sim racing.

Fast forward to 2017 and sadly the progress expected post GTR2 has quite simply not materialised. The game, the official simulation of the FIA GT World Championship, was probably the very last fully feature complete racing simulation we have seen in our niche genre. We've had loads of new games since then, some of which have even been released by the same people responsible for GTR and GTR2, but none have even come close to matching the level of features and polish afforded fans back in 2006. It's down right strange.

Take RaceRoom Racing Experience for example, developed as the next GT game from the people behind GTR and GTR2, when the title first hit public beta stage back in February 2013 what did we have? Basically a hotlapping simulation with limited content, no official series licence, no AI to race against and precisely zero multiplayer features. Added to the still missing animated flag marshals and a range of other GTR2 items that haven't made the move over with time, it's all rather a depressing scene in which to take in.

Ok I appreciate Sector3 have worked exceptionally hard at improving RaceRoom to get to a level where it is barely recognisable now to what it looked like on launch day, but still to even consider releasing a game that was basically stripped of everything that made GTR2 great is simply mind boggling.

And it's not just RaceRoom that are guilty of missing out some key features considered par for the course 11 years ago, everyone is doing it! You only have to look at one of the most popular sims on the market Assetto Corsa as a perfect example, they consider themselves to be perfectionists on a mission to produce the most true to life experience possible, and they even miss out the core basics like weather and day to night transition, never mind such "nice to have" features like a driving school, proper flag implementation and multiclass racing options. It's simply amazing to realise that these features quite simply only exist in a game that was designed and released over a decade ago. Unbelievable.

GTR2 still looks pretty good on top graphics settings, still feels very nice indeed with my trusty CSW V2 and still sounds like it belongs in the very top tier of audio experience. All that whilst replicating a seriously mega international championship in a exceptionally detailed simulation that really does pick out all the little features that makes driving on a virtual track feel like the real thing. With that said and the pretty compelling physics considering the age of the title added up with stuff that no other sim has all together in one package, this is why I still believe GTR2 is, without reservation, the very best simulation racing experience one can purchase during 2017.

I love the game, it's just a bit sad that no one has thought to try and make something similar in the following 132 months since it was released.

GTR was released by SimBin Studios exclusively for PC. The game is still available to purchase on Steam for £4.99.

Like GTR2? Well lucky you, we are seriously considering a brand new informal league! Check out the GTR2 sub forum for general GTR2 discussion or our new GTR2 RDGT Championship forum for more details of the new league season. To prepare for the league all we ask is you have Premium membership, a fresh GTR2 install and these two additional patches HERE and HERE. Get ready for a return of the legend....

Do you still enjoy GTR2? What did the sim do right in your opinion? Why do features present in GTR2 still not appear in moderns sims? Let us know in the comments section below!

 

[Rob]

Fair point. But with AC's headquarters being smack in the middle of a nice Italian track, I'm sure they have that covered, at least mostly.

 

[ouvert]

What you said has nothing to do with sound quality tho, just wrong sound samples.
In that case I wish they'd replace the sound of the Marcas... annoying as hell

would you prefer more appealing fictional sounds ? .. but yes .. anoying as hell .. took me year to get used to it ...

 

[Ken Bell]

Maybe we should have a few races with it!
Those of us that love it can have the chance to use it.

 

[Andy_J]

I still have my special GTR2 steam install working great. I really do still love this race sim. It is still the most complete and with 10th Anniversary Mod Patch installed over a vanilla steam version, you get just about everything you could possibly need to run this wonderful sim.

Doing some AI races last night reminded me how much better the AI in this old sim compared to the absolute rubbish AI in RRE, AC and Pcars 2 etc. The physics are still spot on too, as is the sound. Absolute quality. Love it.

 

[Celestiale]

I still have my special GTR2 steam install working great. I really do still love this race sim. It is still the most complete and with 10th Anniversary Mod Patch installed over a vanilla steam version, you get just about everything you could possibly need to run this wonderful sim.

Doing some AI races last night reminded me how much better the AI in this old sim compared to the absolute rubbish AI in RRE, AC and Pcars 2 etc. The physics are still spot on too, as is the sound. Absolute quality. Love it.

Recently i watched a video of Jimmy Broadbent and he had a completely different opinion to the AI, he said you "realize the age of the AI". Anyway, is there a VR mod for this game, like for example for RBR? Would like to try it, but without VR racing is a no-no for me..

 

[Andy_J]

Recently i watched a video of Jimmy Broadbent and he had a completely different opinion to the AI, he said you "realize the age of the AI". Anyway, is there a VR mod for this game, like for example for RBR? Would like to try it, but without VR racing is a no-no for me..

I don't know about VR or mods for it with GTR2 sorry. Racing with VR is a no-no for me.

But just from back to back testing is how I know that the AI is far superior in GTR2 esspecially with the 10TH Anniversary Patch. Don't get me wrong, RRE is good.I love it, but the AI is currently no way good enough. But because I mainly race against the AI these days I get to test them quite a bit.

 

[David Wright]

Anyway, is there a VR mod for this game, like for example for RBR? Would like to try it, but without VR racing is a no-no for me..

People report using GTR2 with vorpx successfully

http://www.nogripracing.com/forum/showthread.php?p=1920972

 

[jimortality]

WHERE ARE MY WIPERS!!!!

 

[Bjarne Hansen]

You activating them same way as you do in AMS, AC and RRE
Yes it is a shame that they skipped the wipers.

 

[Eric Boosman]

A few familiar faces here

Sorry to ping an old thread, a buddy just sent a link to this my way.

I was #4 in the SimBin mod team and Art Director on GTR 1 & 2.

Just to try to super quickly recap ancient history, there were some cool mod cars and tracks for Sports Car GT that the guys wanted to bring to F1 2001's improved engine. I volunteered to rework the menus so it had a fresh feel, although I mostly did copycat stuff for FIA GT Mod v1.

We got as much permission as possible from the SCGT mod content creators to use their stuff, reskinned it in much higher resolution, put together a standalone installer, full UI package, and reworked physics and that was the FIA GT mod v1.

We released a few other versions, and the V3 mod started to really take on its own life. We added lots of talented guys from the scene and built a really amazing team of extremely passionate fans/devs/players and it's this point I want to stress that you remember.

ISI released updates to the F1 series, and we used the newest version as the base for the GTR2002 mod. By this time we had all original car models, all high res skins, a completely redone menu system (at least in visuals if not functionality), radically reworked physics, Lots of great new tracks, new audio, and plenty I'm forgetting. It was this mod that made cover discs of PC magazines all over the globe, and it was this mod that caught the eye of Henrik Roos (getting to drive as himself, lol) and it was from that experience that he contacted Ian about making a retail version of the game, which we all jumped at, and that became GTR, and was the beginning of SimBin as a pro dev team.

Now, the thing to keep in mind is that we essentially started development of GTR as a mod team in 2001. If we could have seen the full trajectory, all the mods we released would have been essentially alphas and beta test releases.

What GTR is did not come from an 18 month dev cycle, but in fact, several years of passionate dedicated mod work, continuously improved upon and further developed. We didn't have any schedules, we had no idea of the danger of feature creep, and our overhead costs were $0. I personally put in about 35 hours per week in mod work on top of my full time job (I worked 4x10 hour days doing tech support at an ISP) for years before we got the opportunity to be paid for game dev.

But even that's not the whole lot of it. Gjon and his team at ISI spent years developing that engine before we got on the scene. Locutus and others spent their time developing tools to allow us to mod the engine. And all the SCGT modders built a base for us to learn from. Although SBDT / SimBin put in a ton of work, we were adding layers to untold gobs of work that was already there. We had the easy part. We had the fun part. Make it as pretty as possible, make it feel as good as possible, make it sound as good as possible, add all the stuff to really make it an accurate representation of the sport.

And that's the point I want to make.

A standard 18 month dev cycle can only incrementally make things better, even with a huge team. Many of the features the article is talking about that made GTR2 a complete package were present in ISI's F1 games that we got to improve upon (pit boards, animated pit crew, etc.). Yes, we added a lot of features as well (nobody has mentioned the actual MoTeC telemetry system which is amazing), but again, many features had their start in GTR or GT Legends, so were developed over years.

So, think about that for a sec. If you wanted to recreate a race series exactly, you'll have a huge list of features that need to be built, and if you need to build all of that from scratch, you'd have to have an immense team to do it in 18 months, or you'd need years to develop it over time, but you can't financially support a studio to do that without ongoing revenue.

What you have to do is say "I want to build the modern GTR2. A perfect multiclass simulation with every feature important to the experience. And we can do that by 2025." So you have to build this huge project plan to get you all those features and start adding them incrementally into your products that you can sell to generate revenue while working towards this one dream product. And if that vision is ever compromised along the way, the project will never come to be.

We really hit it at a sweet spot for simming / development that allowed us to build what we did. And like the pyramids it was built with essentially slave labor (I wonder if the pyramid builders were as passionate as we were XD ), but the foundation was laid by many others before us.

 

[Mark Reynolds]

Greets Eric

 

[Eric Boosman]

What's up Iceman

 

[Mark Reynolds]

Funnily enough was thinking of you very recently when trying to find the old Phantom livery you made me, was gonna add some of the design to my helmet for real racing , damned if I could find it tho sadly

 

[Shovas]

Love hearing the history of GTR2, Eric, thanks for posting.

All that labour and passion you guys put in is still being enjoyed 12 years later. That's something. Just tonight I was writing up AI tuning notes to improve the race experience.

 

[Stephen O'Sullivan]

I've always thought that GTR2's rear-view and wing mirrors were very good. For some reason, their lighting and colour scheme felt realistic and thus immersive.

 

[Eric Boosman]

Funnily enough was thinking of you very recently when trying to find the old Phantom livery you made me, was gonna add some of the design to my helmet for real racing , damned if I could find it tho sadly

Pretty sure I still have that on an ancient HD. question is if it still spins. I think it melted.

There is a chance I burned it to disc, though, with some other old n crusty SBDT stuff, I'll see if I can find it

 

[Bram Hengeveld]

Maybe we should have a few races with it!

Only if Mark and Eric join as well

 

[Mark Reynolds]

Sorry to go OT chaps, to fill the void slightly here Eric

 

[Mark Reynolds]

Only if Mark and Eric join as well

I'd be happy to turn some laps again, time is my biggest enemy at the moment tho as I working nights, and UK based, which means generally the rest of the world has better things to do when I have time to race, hence I lapsed my iRacing account as well

 

[Bram Hengeveld]

We can make it fit for sure