Open Letter to Sim Developers - Why the Lack of Touring Cars in Sim Racing?

[Andy-R]

I can't stand modern GT cars in sim racing, they are everywhere like some kind of plague and they are horrible to drive. I'm more of a classic race car fan but BTCC is my favourite race series on TV and I would certainly buy a sim that focused on modern touring cars such as those. That said I would much rather a sim that replicated a historic series or two gathering as much data for these gems as possible before they are gone for good!

GT500, GT3, DTM etc. etc. they are all a steaming pile of yesterday's horse lunch!

 

[RaceNut]

I'd like to see more Touring Cars - and GT4 for that matter but, a dedicated title seems unlikely at this point.

 

[muzikant]

The biggest thing in Simacing country is....

There is not after GPL Papyrus (1997) a Simrace title from the golden motorsport era.... never made again!!!
And that is sad.... strange and a shame Because the 60`s and the 70`s and even still the 80`s............ are the best time in motorracing. Love the cars and dangeous tracks with fast
corners...simply the best layouts the whole ambiance. I do not think it's hard to be creative about this. I emailed this years ago to Marcel (studio397) whitout a succes.

To make a commercial succes
Raceroom.... Ac...Project cars.... Automobilista... it is a bit of everything. Gt3 s.. a few openwheelers or lmp's.. some road cars.. to much same modern tracks.. borring Tilke things.. If you want a commercial succes you have to distinguish from the rest. If everybody make the same blue shoes... and your factory make also the same blue shoes like the other. It is not the way to make monny or a commercial succes doing something different. And whats wrong with the old days?

No doubt. I love rfactor2 and the rest of the race sims! Gt3 everything...

If there was today a gpl2 or a legends season..with the old stuff I think a lot of simracers like this very very much!!? that is my opinion)

No touringcars... Ohh Yess touring cars with the lotus cortina with Jim Clark on a rainy

 

[muzikant]

Old school racing is Magic!!

 

[Troy Barman]

This is a Touring car.

This is not a touring car.

 

[FeltHat]

need touring car masters

 

[silhouette106]

It's swings and roundabouts with what is popular with manufactors and drivers. GT3 is the rage these days. Go back about 20ish years when super touring ruled the roost, you got TOCA games. People dont buy what isn't popular, and the manufactors tastes are in GT3 at the moment.

 

[Andy-R]

The biggest thing in Simacing country is....

There is not after GPL Papyrus (1997) a Simrace title from the golden motorsport era.... never made again!!!
And that is sad.... strange and a shame Because the 60`s and the 70`s and even still the 80`s............ are the best time in motorracing. Love the cars and dangeous tracks with fast
corners...simply the best layouts the whole ambiance. I do not think it's hard to be creative about this. I emailed this years ago to Marcel (studio397) whitout a succes.

To make a commercial succes
Raceroom.... Ac...Project cars.... Automobilista... it is a bit of everything. Gt3 s.. a few openwheelers or lmp's.. some road cars.. to much same modern tracks.. borring Tilke things.. If you want a commercial succes you have to distinguish from the rest. If everybody make the same blue shoes... and your factory make also the same blue shoes like the other. It is not the way to make monny or a commercial succes doing something different. And whats wrong with the old days?

No doubt. I love rfactor2 and the rest of the race sims! Gt3 everything...

If there was today a gpl2 or a legends season..with the old stuff I think a lot of simracers like this very very much!!? that is my opinion)

No touringcars... Ohh Yess touring cars with the lotus cortina with Jim Clark on a rainy

I'd much rather see GTL2 than GPL2 but I would take either over GTR3

 

[Shaun Clarke]

As you all know, I am an avid fan of Grass Route Racing, which basically is touring cars, no matter how you look at it, (BTCC, TCR, WTCC) no matter what series.

Now the answer to your question is simple, there is no money in it, and very very high costs to develop a whole series (i.e the BTCC) What TOCA ask for License fee, totally out rules what it would cost in man hours to re-produce this, to perfection, which is a damn shame I know.

The WTCC is really dead and the TCR is still up and coming, so who knows, but the "community" don't seem to pay an interest to these cars, only a select few, so it's not on mass.

Me personally I could come up with loads of cars, that I believe the community would love, examples are:

Formula Ford (no aero)
Midgets
Renault Clios (done properly)
Ginetta's Junior (WIP)

The cars that are now over powered and enable close racing, but alas, the software companies don't look at this, they look at the high profile, high powered cars, as to be far, they sell.

Just my two pence worth

Shaun

 

[larre90]

I do think, there's another reason for that beside the popularity/license thing.

To me, Touring Car classes aren't a thing so much, because most of them, especially the more modern ones, come with FWD. And I don't like FWD, it may be responsible for good racing, yes, but to me, it is simply unenjoyable.

So regarding me, I would really love to see some more classic series instead for WTCR/BTCC and so on.

Though, I wouldn't mind if the tourer have RWD or AWD...

 

[Alex Hodgkinson]

 

[LoeVG]

DTM-cars are pure prototypes with no resemblance of any real cars under the hood. In pCars 2 there are enough touring-car classes with a decent field like Group 5, GT1, GT4, GTO, TC, Super Trofeo plus the vintage-classes.

But it's pCars....

 

[Durge Driven]

Personally speaking what made old sims better is they were largely unique and refreshing

 

[Patrik Marek]

all important has already been said,

I think at this point your best bet to get mods that will cover the series that you like. But since mods take easily 6-10 times as long to develop, it will simply take 6-10 times longer to see the full series done

I really like Touring cars as well, but I totally understand and agree that the return isn't quite there. People (the masses) want to drive Ferraries against Porsche, not Ford vs Lada

 

[LoeVG]

Imo, the slower cars makes for a more fun race experience.

 

[muzikant]

GPL2 in VR

 

[Dr. Death]

Because everyone wants to be the top dog. Formula 1, NASCAR, Indycar, LMP, GTE, nobody cares about GT4, WTCC, BTCC, smaller series NASCAR (unless its required in iracing to advance) and so on.

I remember a lot of people claiming that it was a lot more fun to drive slow cars fast than fast cars fast. I get a lot more fun in AC when i try to use a small single seater formula car that wont exceed 200 kmh, but it seems many dont share that ideology. Which is a shame. Slow touring car competition can be extremely fun and tense.

 

[RufGTI]

I don't think that the TCR boom is going to result in a bigger investment in touring cars by devs. These cars might be cheap for teams but they absolutely got no soul compared to other touring car classes. The WTCC should never have changed to TC1 regulations...

 

[chili pepper]

Formula Ford (no aero)

While I think endurance racing is cool and the cars are fantastic inventions of speed and technology, I haven't the patience or time to watch them or the time to run those types of sim races, either. I'll take a frenetic and hairy 20 lapper with touring cars over contemporary F1 or endurance racing any day of the week, especially if those cars have 3 pedals and a wiggle stick.

 

[omanrak]

DTM is awesome, but WTCC is really boring.