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

[Richard Dastardly]

Post-2000 DTM is not touring cars, not even remotely - spec spaceframe chassis with branded body on top, it's a silhouette prototype series and I wish it'd die already so it can be replaced by actual touring cars again. 1995 DTM was kinda stretching the boundaries of "touring car" a bit but it was still vaguely production based.

BTCC by itself was good enough to sell games once ( remember the TOCA series? ) but it was a little more popular back then I guess - certainly more international than currently although there are so many teams trying to get in it's oversubscribed right now. And as someone has said I suspect the license is locked.

What's left? WTCR is not terribly popular, WTCC was even less. TCR has a local series just about everywhere but it's hardly drawing masses in yet. V8s? popular in Oz certainly, niche everywhere else.

I think to be a success right now there needs to be a complete touring car DLC of some sort riding on another already successful game - not just the odd car or two as standalone releases. Unfortunately I don't think any of the SRO series have touring car support so it's not likely for ACC, iR takes so long to add cars you'd never manage a bunch at once, R3E should consider it, and it's the sort of thing rFactor could easily do but they'd have to start making more good quality tracks too.

 

[MapoUK]

I would love to see more BTCC in racing sims, but doubtful it's ever going to happen. TOCA and TOCA 2 were among my favourite games (still have them both for original Playstation).

There should be a clause in licencing that if you don't use it, you loose it. I wouldn't trust Codies to make any touring car racing title these days - if they do still hold the rights to the BTCC.

 

[tlsmikey]

If I were to rank my list of types of cars I would want to see in a sim, touring cars is pretty far down. Don't particularly care for FWD cars and they aren't very exciting to watch on TV.

I'd much rather see some GTE, LMP2, GT1 or even GT3 (ugh, if i must) over any touring cars.

 

[NtsParadize]

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.

Too bad PCars 2 is complete garbage.

 

[MoerasGrizzly]

Y'all are talking about how Touring Cars aren't popular but I seem to recall that this little company called Reiza Studios got a lot of it's success from modelling, say, Brazilian Touring Cars and Brazilian Stock Cars

 

[NtsParadize]

Because it's not electric.

And not Honda...oh wait

 

[Copef1]

I like racing anything, but I will say one of the best leagues I was ever in was called Syncro, and we raced Race07 WTCC cars. The races were always close and exciting. I had a lot of fun in that league back in the day. I am looking forward to Racerooms next touring car mod.

 

[Tero Dahlberg]

Like already pointed out, these days DTM and V8 Supercars (called just Supercars these days) are both classed as touring cars but are really prototypes underneath the body panels. But I don't think this is relevant when asking why touring cars/series' aren't popular in sims these days.

I think it more or less directly relates to the popularity of each series. Each series has their dedicated fans through the years but in general (global) touring car racing hasn't been as popular as it used to be. Though I feel it has become more popular in recent years.

Supercars tried to take an advantage of this by having races at COTA, Abu Dhabi and Bahrain. But it's ultimately an Australian series. Same as DTM is German and BTCC British. It's tricky to massively expand outside "your region". And thus you can't pull in the attention of a global market with content from these series'.

That said, Supercars is by far my favorite racing series to follow. Been for over 10 years. Don't think I've missed a race since mid-2006 or so. And Finland is about as far away from Australia as possible

 

[Teguh Waluyo]

Please be patient. Kunos will make 1992 BTCC as DLC on ACC.

 

[Richard Dastardly]

If I were to rank my list of types of cars I would want to see in a sim, touring cars is pretty far down. Don't particularly care for FWD cars and they aren't very exciting to watch on TV.

I'd much rather see some GTE, LMP2, GT1 or even GT3 (ugh, if i must) over any touring cars.

They're not all FWD ( no matter how much TCR is trying to take over ) - but some touring car series are pretty damn exciting to watch still.

 

[ouvert]

well V8 Stock, V8 Supercar, Marcas, Opalas, Historic Fuca,Gol, Passat + R3E content is at least something but TCR needs to happend

 

[Nick Hill]

Touring cars are not my thing, I don't mind them being underrepresented...but that's just my opinion. FWD drives me nuts, so most modern TCs are non starters for me.

If I had my wish, I'd like so see more variety in feeder series open wheelers - new and old. I'm looking for anything I can get - F-Ford, F-Atlantic, F-Mazda, Indy Lights, F-3000, F-5000, etc. And, as always, I am 100% fine with "a car closely resembling a ..." because I understand many of those cars I mentioned have licensing issues.

 

[Durge Driven]

I think official and mod content is saturated

My crazy idea for developers in future would be to make sims that are more interactive.

Full walk around mode and helicopters with fly by wire for start
Briefing room for example in realtime

So race officials, marshals, engineers, mechanics and more as playable characters !

You could control pace car at Lemans or wave flags, control a rattle gun, hand out penalties or as a spectator being able to free roam, get hungry and buy a hot dog lol

It could bring a whole new type of player to online sims not just drivers

 

[Kurupt CDN]

Maybe if we all actually e-mail Sector 3 Studios and expressing our love for the Super GT they may actually consider it

Pure speculations but I wouldn't be surprised to see those classes in raceroom in the next few yrs due to mercedes leaving dtm and super gt & dtm joining forces.

 

[dale223223]

It's all in the word "touring", which is an old-folks word. Kids never use this word in a racing context. Where is the excitement? Where is the balls-to-the-wall action implied?

verb (used without object)

1. to travel from place to place.
2. to travel from town to town fulfilling engagements.

verb (used with object)

1. to travel through (a place).
2. to send or take (a theatrical company, its production, etc.) from town to town.
3. to guide (someone) on a tour:

 

[Troy Barman]

You know what I want? These...

Why oh why is nobody doing these, huge horsepower, huge tires and loads of fun and thats just the TA2 cars. I realize this is basically NASCAR road racing edition but I dont care, I want Trans-Am. Its like SCCA's really cheap version of DTM.

 

[Richard Dastardly]

Trans-Am from the 90s/early 2000s would be a spectacularily fun racing series. It's not exactly touring-cars though, attempting to stay on topic ( later TA cars were a little like current DTM/GT500 I guess - which is also not touring cars ).

The other problem is when you have BoP & so on letting anything into a GT event, what's a GT car & what's a touring car? say we replaced DTM with a proper touring car series again, what would make a DTM M4 any different from a GT4 one? Looking back on the heyday of Supertourers I can't really put a finger on what made them so popular - they were quite fast, they were quite powerful, but go watch some BTCC or DTM from the 80s with the Sierra Cosworths & you'll find some seriously fast touring cars. I guess maybe it was a combination of works teams & international drivers in the BTCC, along with the cars used being distinct from anything else racing at the time - I can't think of another series at the time you'd see a Volvo estate car running in, for instance. DTM cars were faster & a little more high-tech until they were too high-tech for anyone to afford, but the formula didn't quite seem right at the time.

TCR doesn't have it quite right - it's a good cheap formula but why mandate FWD, for instance? BTCC is fine with RWD cars. Why base it around smaller hatchbacks - that's what we see all the time in rallying, and that's a far more spectacular affair than a modern circuit race.

 

[Ryno917]

Looking back on the heyday of Supertourers I can't really put a finger on what made them so popular

That's easy. Big grids and hard, close, full-contact racing.

That's pretty much what makes any racing series worth watching. Just so happens that GT3 is the current standard in grid sizes and close racing.

 

[Mikec87]

With the end of the present format of V8 Supercars, it is a shame that the 2017 - 2018 season was not re-created as a sim.

We have such a rich history with touring car racing in Australia and some awesome cars particularly the old Group C cars of the late 70's and early 80's...and Bathurst without the stupid chase......

 

[Nick Hill]

I think official and mod content is saturated

My crazy idea for developers in future would be to make sims that are more interactive.

Full walk around mode and helicopters with fly by wire for start
Briefing room for example in realtime

So race officials, marshals, engineers, mechanics and more as playable characters !

You could control pace car at Leamns or wave flags, control a rattle gun, hand out penalties or as a spectator being able to free roam, get hungry and buy a hot dog lol

It could bring a whole new type of player to online sims not just drivers

You know, a short time ago I probably would have laughed and rolled my eyes at these kinds of ideas, but I no longer consider any of this far-fetched (especially as we move into the VR era). I think an awesome idea would be like a sandbox where you start with $2000 and a '92 Miata with 170,000 miles on it and you have to scratch and claw your way into a morsports career (none of the Gran Turismo style "hey, great job winning that club race - here is your reward car: a Bugatti Veyron!" nonsense).

It would be great to see a developer really go for depth - exploring the track and hobnobbing with other drivers/sponsors, make the player responsible for repairing mechanical damage (which carries over), making economic decisions on which races to hit, etc.