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!

 

[Durge Driven]

I finish on... in Dynamic Resolution (1440p) with Default High Settings, cars and tracks 120fps be possible
Have yet to test on my gsync 1440p

First one is 1080p 130 fps Default GTR2 + Anniversary patch ( not cars or tracks ) tweaked a few settings
Second is 2560 (dynamic res) same settings as above , still crazy good for a APU hit 100+ fps
Oh that was 2EQx 8x on 2560 you can barely notice diff from 4x 16x



That is best thing about GTR2 runs on a sniff of a oily rag

edit: Forgot 2560 is 35 AI not 23

 

[Bjarne Hansen]

Looks good!

 

[tahzib]

i have GTR2 on my lappy since 2018.....
tried to learn assetto corsa, but the cars behave like a goddamn battleship with how the inertia works when using keyboard+mouse driving....unless i am braking from 100+ meters i cant drive properly (i am looking at you le mans).....
and then there is GTR2, where i can attack a corner at 50m or less without screwing up....thankfully the new GT3 cars have been modded in.....and hoping for the modern GT500 cars, and i wont even look at other car games......
the FIA GT 2000-2009 mod is so huge that who has time to do anything else....

 

[Sato2008]

I have GTR2 and Assetto Corsa in my PC, But I still prefer GTR2 as my best Racing Sim because I hate some of the AC 3rd party's Cars were too money-hungered... When there's a free mod that can play 2018 season of DTM in GTR2, same things in Assetto Corsa will always drain extra money that not from the Main Game's DLC, is pretty annoying at all!(For me)

In conclusions for myself, both Assetto Corsa and GTR2 are very good Racing Sim, but Assetto Corsa will most likely using for street racing with Tuned/Drift Cars because Assetto Corsa lacks a lot of Regular Racing Cars(From any kind of Free mods), when GTR2 most likely will be Regular Motorsport Racing.

 

[Shovas]

This thread warms my heart to see it here in 2020 so here's a bump

That said, I think we're seeing AC eclipse GTR2, finally, at least featurewise. Looks like they're getting real rain and wipers. I think that's one of the last few features to beat GTR2.

 

[GTR233]

Yes and no, for young simmers who never knew GTR2 you may be right and AC can be seen as the new king...but there are features that AC do not have as 24h championships and for offline GTR2 AI is far ahead all new sims ATM IMHO

 

[Haydan Jinnette]

Hopefully game developers are taking advantage of what these modders are capable of...

 

[Will Mazeo]

Yes and no, for young simmers who never knew GTR2 you may be right and AC can be seen as the new king...but there are features that AC do not have as 24h championships and for offline GTR2 AI is far ahead all new sims ATM IMHO

Yep. Those that played GTR2 back then are more like "so just now... 15 years later... a sim is finally catching up and doing some things better". I mean it's impossible that anyone that played GTR2, GP4 and rF1 at their release time expected simracing to be just this in 2020.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

[Shovas]

Yes and no, for young simmers who never knew GTR2 you may be right and AC can be seen as the new king...but there are features that AC do not have as 24h championships and for offline GTR2 AI is far ahead all new sims ATM IMHO

What do you mean about the AI? You know how much trouble I've had with AI I find the AC and rF2 AI very, very reasonable, not exactly "interesting" to race the AI but at least their competitive with you. iRacing also has very, very good AI - Almost out of the gate it was as good as AMS1/AC/rF2.

 

[Kenny Paton]

GTR2 AI is far ahead all new sims ATM IMHO

I must admit that I found vanilla Race 07 AI better than GTR 2 vanilla.
I'll shortly get the chance to try it as my GTR installs have became such a hodgepodge of mods etc that it's time to start again. This time only installing what I'll actually use.
For more modern sims my favourite AI is RaceRoom, I find them really good.

 

[Bjarne Hansen]

What do you mean about the AI? You know how much trouble I've had with AI I find the AC and rF2 AI very, very reasonable, not exactly "interesting" to race the AI but at least their competitive with you. iRacing also has very, very good AI - Almost out of the gate it was as good as AMS1/AC/rF2.

I can't believe you put Assetto Corsa's Ai together with Rf2 or any other sim for that matter.
Sure they can drive the cars around the circuits to some extend but are completely unaware of the human driver.
Completely random if they hit you or not.

For me the very poor AI and FFB are the reason I can't get into AC.
Everything else has improved dramatic in that sim the last couple of years.

Rf2 on the other hand got reasonable good Ai.
But as Will says Ai in sims have not developed at all and in most cases declined.
Pretty sad state when we read all about how much general AI have progressed the last 10-15 years.
And the average simmer got computer hardware that nobody could even had imagined 15 years ago.

Recently gone back to Race 07 and with proper settings as most base content got I think they are still among the best Ai in any sim and that just should not be the case in 2020!

 

[Peter van de Kolk]

GTR2’s AI is fantastic in single class racing, but multiclass is a different story.

 

[Will Mazeo]

my main use for GTR2 back then was IMSA offline racing before I moved to online only. If you get tracks with good AIW (or learn to edit them yourself) multiclass works really well, no idea where to find these tracks now tho, last time I played GTR2 offline was in 2011

 

[JoelGL]

Find many mod GTR2 cars don't have good FFB. What do you guys use?

 

[GTR233]

I have quite finished the anniversary patch 14.1 update and do tests actually : multi class is good in fia gt championship as long as you keep AI on TIMID behavior (HQ PATCH is tweaked to access this low setting in SEMI-PRO and PRO) with low aggressivity (<0.4) in RCD talents , in this case they don't push you in the back and they pass you in a clean way if you don't try to block them of course.

 

[Peter van de Kolk]

Problem is that overtaking and more important lapping of lower classes is very time consuming for both classes wich gives the player an unfair advantage. If the advantage would be small it wouldn’t be a big issue but I have closed gaps of 15-20 secs.

 

[Gregoryleo]

I have quite finished the anniversary patch 14.1 update and do tests actually : multi class is good in fia gt championship as long as you keep AI on TIMID behavior (HQ PATCH is tweaked to access this low setting in SEMI-PRO and PRO) with low aggressivity (<0.4) in RCD talents , in this case they don't push you in the back and they pass you in a clean way if you don't try to block them of course.

Oh dear, I just read this. I started the HQ 2004 championship with the AI at clean and its a wreck fest. Literally half the field has crashed out in the first half of the first race. Should I abandon it and start over?

 

[theguy69]

I would suggest changing ai to ai collision rate to 0 in the plr. That way when they crash with each other they don't get damaged. Unfortunately, I'm still trying to get this game working on my new machine

 

[Tombprince]

To me i always come back too GTR 2 purely for the immersion factor the sound is well done plus dynamic weather and tire build up make non laser scanned tracks feel laser scanned and the mods for the game may as well be official content quality wise

Plus the variety of race rules the sim has nothing has ever come close since

 

[GTR233]

I would suggest changing "ai to ai collision rate" to 0 in the plr. That way when they crash with each other they don't get damaged. Unfortunately, I'm still trying to get this game working on my new machine

Sorry but no, ai to ai collision rate has nothing to do with such damages which are set in every xxxx.dmg files. It is the contrary, the more you increase "ai to ai collision rate" the better it is (it is collision detection) but also the more your cpu is used. Default value is 20, today I recommend 30-35 but if your cpu is powerful and you don't see any stuttering then set 40.