Early 2005 was a fascinating and turbulent time in the world of simulated racing for many reasons.  A new company called Simbin had transcended the modding world and released a demo of GTR, making everyone wonder if finally they might be stepping away from GPL, a new and exciting online magazine called AutoSimSport  had started expertly reporting on the genre, and the greatest Rally sim of all time, Richard Burns Rally (RBR) was starting to be broken open by modders everywhere.

For me, an intrepid reporter for the aforementioned magazine, this was all I needed to hunt down high adventure and before long I was involved in the beta of the most fascinating mod of them all: RBR-Online.  Upon delving into the early beta forums I found I had to brush up on my Italian and was soon talking with the development team with whom I remain in touch with to this day, looking back, it’s remarkable to think that simracing can build such friendships, but then, some of the rallies we enjoyed were epic!  Chatting with Luca Giraldi, head developer Paolo Ghibaudo and community manager Luisa Ghibaudo (who became a writer for AutoSimSport herself) excitedly in the forums and discussing the depth and ambition of RBR-Online as we put together magazine articles to spread the word seems like only yesterday.

RBR-Online took the base sim of RBR and pulled it away from its console inspired interface and allowed drivers that were registered on their website to compete alongside one another across a number of stages, cumulatively scoring on an overall leaderboard, as in, you know, Rallying.  Even though one would drive the stage alone, as one does in rally driving, the tension built up in advance of a stage, and then watching the times come in at the finish easily counts as some of the most heart rending online racing I have ever done.  There’s something about being separate from your competitors in these environments that adds a little more to the thrill of it all, you can do nothing to influence their driving, it is not a matter of driving defensively, your only choice is to be as quick as you can.

And therein lies the challenge, RBR was difficult, achingly difficult.  As simracers that had got used to track driving over the years, a serious rally sim came as a shock to us all.  Addressing the “track to stage” mindset is not an easy leap.  On the track you know where you are going, this means that you can practice for a bunch of laps and then find yourself able to push at 100%, pushing at 100% means leaving no spare brain capacity and so once we jump in a rally car we instinctively want to push to that level, but we can’t because some spare brain needs to be left behind to listen to the poor bastard who foolishly volunteered to sit next to you and bark out directions.  No doubt a decision he began to regret the first time you careened into a ravine/rolled into a river/smashed into a copse/rolled end-over-end an improbable amount of times.

This first hurdle goes hand-in-hand with a remarkably different driving technique on loose surfaces, the fact that the surfaces are, indeed, loose, and the fact that roads are inevitably barely wide enough for your car.  Enough time in RBR would result in one developing heroic pace and sweating behind your force feedback, but all too often a stage would end with you proceeding directly to the scene of the accident.

Thus, in online rallies in RBR, there would often be non-finishers, but that was part of the excitement.  There may be some fast guy ahead of you that you are worried about, but you’d soon be ahead of them when they spent 30 seconds reversing out of a hedge.  It led to a tactical way of driving, just getting to the end was an achievement, doing it quickly doubly so.  RBR-Online went on to establish the WIRC (World Internet Rally Championship) and crowned many champions before eventually closing its doors.

By now the courageous reader is wondering why they are bothering reading about my trip down memory lane: “Come on Denton, that was nearly ten years ago, you old fart, no one was even alive then!”  And you may have a point, but if you could forgive my overtly amative expositional opening paragraphs I’d like to tell you about something happening right now that you really should be aware of.

Out with the old…

After many years of operation, RBR-Online was shut down, and talk of a new project was seen here and there from Paolo Ghubaudo, who some of the keen among you will remember talking at length to Simon (spamsac on RAVSim) about back in 2011.  Then in its nascency, the talk was of an all-new scratch built sim that would be the spiritual successor to RBR, and would take the dream of RBR-Online even further.  Three years on, they are ready to talk about gRally.

I sat down with Luca Giraldi over a glass of smooth Sangiovese last week to talk about where the gRally project is now and what we can expect from the sim.

Jon Denton: So, Luca, firstly, it’s been a while since we spoke, how have things been going?

Luca Giraldi:Very well, thank you! Of course, in the team we all have our personal life, our respective families, sons, and some other hobbies… But as soon as we were able to find some more spare time, we have been working hard on gRally.

Jon Denton: Other hobbies?  I’m not sure the simracing community will accept this!  It’s great to hear that the project is still being worked on,gRally has been under development for a few years now, as it has not been a full time job, how much of a challenge has it been to keep working on it alongside “real life” jobs and commitments?

Luca Giraldi:Well, this is where we can find the real essence of gRally; it’s born out of our passion for the racing sim and for the vehicle simulator in general, but unfortunately we can only build it in our free time, and we don’t have that much free time, really. We’re a small – very small- group of people with one common dream: To build an excellent rally sim. But gRally is and remains a completely home-made product, and this, I suppose, is also one of the most fascinating aspects of it. We started the simulator from scratch and now we see something coming to fruition, and this is the reason why we keep saying that everything is possible…

Jon Denton:  Is gRally independently funded or do you have backing? Dare I say it, even from a publisher?

Luca Giraldi: It’s currently funded by us, no one is giving us money for anything. We pay everything we need to develop it, also in terms of the time needed to do something. We hope that soon gRally will be supported by fans, which would help us a lot!

Jon Denton:I suppose that means I should pick up the bill for dinner then!  The website www.grally.net went live a few days ago, in case anyone was thinking of throwing a donation of either money or skills in the direction of the team.  One question though Luca, what does the “G” stand for?

Luca Giraldi: Oh that’s an easy answer: “G” stands for “ghiboz”, the nickname of Paolo Ghibaudo, the main programmer of the sim.

Jon Denton: Yea, I should have guessed I suppose.  How are you going about collaborating on the sim, do you all live near to one another or do you work over the web?

Luca Giraldi: We live in different towns many kilometres apart, so we work using the web with many new technologies.  Sometimes we all meet up together for a weekend spending time in heavy development, and some fun. In these occasions we get to see that it would have been easier to produce the sim working closely with one another in an office, but it’s not really possible.

Jon Denton: Is gRally built completely from scratch in all areas? Graphics engine, physics, audio, and all that?

Luca Giraldi: To develop gRally we started from the scratch with everything, but we decided to use external, existing open source libraries to accelerate the creation of the game in some areas. With regards to the physics, I am sure this is something we will discuss more, but the physics engine has been absolutely developed from the ground-up, but using all our knowledge and experience in order to simulate the maximum possible level of realism.

Jon Denton: Right, well let’s get into the nitty-gritty of it all then…

At this point, rather helpfully, a waitress arrives with our dinner, initially Luca’s gnocchi di spinaci in salsa di zucca which I try to keep my eyes off before my strozzapreti con ragu alla bolgnese sormontata con pecorino arrives.  We take a brief moment to utter superlatives about our dishes, and take a sup of wine before continuing.

Jon Denton: So, can you give us some detail as to the content planned for the “V1.0” release? Tell us about what gRally is and what it is going to do.

Luca Giraldi: Okay, <puts down his fork>, I hope you’re sitting comfortably <slurps some wine>, you have a drink, so relax and I will begin…

<I don’t put down my fork>

It will take me some time to explain what we have in mind for gRally but… I hope you’ll like what we’re going to tell you. gRally. A dream. But a special kind of dream. A dream made into reality.  We started from our RBR-Online motto that was “Dream. Experience. Believe.” And then we started dreaming ourselves.  Our dream is to develop simulation software that is free for those who want to play it. gRally, indeed, will be free software. We will provide it for download and everyone will be able to play it without paying a single penny, in offline mode. For those who want to be part of the multiplayer experience, we will ask a small amount of money, as we did with RBR-Online. In this case, the money will cover the cost of the setup and management of these multiplayer events and championships.

So, championships like WIRC (World Internet Rally Championship), EIRC (European Internet Rally Championship) and CIIR (Campionato Italiano Internet Rally) will be started up again, using the new simulator and connectivity software.  But the software will be and will remain free. And on this decision we are building our hopes… That people will understand this, will appreciate it and will support it, not only with money but also with new content. Basically, we would like the community to play a strategic role in the development of the software.  gRally, ideally, will be a platform to be used for modding and creativity – mods that will be selected and approved by the gRally team – and thanks to tools and guides for the creation or the import of contents users can create new cars, new rally stages, new audio, etcetera… In this way, we will be able to have a bigger development team, as a true community effort, and that will keep the game alive for a long time, and we hope, eventually gRally will become the essential product for any rally sim enthusiast.

If we are honest, we don’t have any wish to become rich with this project. We want to prove that a dream can be turned into something real. We’re not competing with any software house because we’re not a software house. We were born as modders of the amazing Richard Burns Rally, and we still are.

Jon Denton: From modders to developers of a scratch built sim is a dream that deserves to be realised, especially as it has been over ten years now since RBR was released.  Rally simmers are thirsty for something new. What is the timeline for release?

Luca Giraldi: Time to market… Well, we have a roadmap that will bring us to the eventual release of the game but at the moment it is something that is currently more a draft than a final plan, because we have to have the spare time to work on the sim and spare time can suddenly, sometime, disappear…  This makes it very hard to work in absolutes with timescales.

We’re working hard, building and destroying what we’ve done several times because we’re implementing solutions sometimes to improve the game that affect the entire code base.  But step by step, we’re reaching the point where we are ready to release the beta.

Jon Denton:  Do you plan to provide support for a wide range of controller peripherals, for each driver’s various “rig” set-ups?

Luca Giraldi: We’re planning to provide full support to as wide-a-range of controllers possible. We’re investing a lot of time by doing this. Our aim is to provide to the players with the most accurate feedback possible from the car. The driver will be able to fully customize the force feedback and there will be a very refined and rich set of options for this. More importantly, it will be possible to work on these parameters directly within the sim, while you are driving. So you will be able to tailor your steering wheel reactions to your heart’s content.  We are in contact with some hardware companies and we will contact more of them, so that we will be able to provide the beta-testers with an entire set of options specifically developed for each peripheral.

Jon Denton: Physics of the tyre are very different in rally sims when compared to track sims. As so many different road surfaces and tyre choices exist. How have you worked with this to develop the optimum feel?
Luca Giraldi: The tyre model took inspiration from the acclaimed “Pacejka model” but we “tweaked” with some interesting features that we’ve added with the aim of improving the force feedback feeling. This has been done in order to better simulate the varying situations that the different road surfaces present, especially in the case of gravel. We have also worked on the model to avoid the well-known issue of the Pacejka model at low speed.

The real challenge here is to simulate a rally tyre on cars that are more than 30 years old.  To simulate a car on a track is a relatively easy task to perform, and is really a very different thing. It is not easy, however, to simulate the reaction of a car – let me say the 1980 Audi Quattro S1 – that uses more than 500hp on an irregular surface that changes inch-after-inch. It’s damn difficult!

We have worked with telemetry data, and in some cases we have spoken with drivers that were at the wheel of the beasts in question in order to understand what the difficulties were while driving such cars. We’re still working and refining this, but we think that we have achieved a very good result. To be honest, we’re proud of what we’ve achieved. All of us, before all of this, are passionate driving simmers, and we’ve spent a lot of hours driving on Richard Burns Rally, iRacing, rFactor and Assetto Corsa because we enjoy all of these sims. We think that we’re not that far from the feeling that these sims are providing. When we asked a few friends to try our sim, the most common comments we received was: “This is serious stuff!” We have been able to get rid of the “soapy” effect that often cars have in a sim and the feedback you have on the steering wheel, even at slow speed, is amazing.

We’re not talking about an arcade or a console game here, for sure.

Jon Denton: How much of the vehicle is being simulated in the physics engine? Will details such as brake fade with excessive temperature, clutch wear, mechanical failures through abuse, or even on the stage repairs be modelled or possible in the sim?

Luca Giraldi: It’s on the to-do list, but at this stage we need to be sure that the basics of the simulator work and are appreciated by our beta-testers, and then by the public. Some of the things you’re suggesting are, in any case, not so easy to be implemented with the time and budget we have.

Jon Denton:  I do apologise, I am a tyrant when it comes to these things!  How about the graphics? Modern graphics are reaching very high levels when it comes to genuine artistry. What have been the challenges to developing, what could be, an entire forest to drive around?

Luca Giraldi: This is a strategic decision that we need to take. The biggest challenge is making the graphics widely usable on a range of PC’s. You can have the state of art sim, where you struggle to understand what is real and what is not, but then you need to have a PC used by NASA to send a satellite into space in order to have a satisfactory frame rate.  We think that we’ve reached a good compromise between quality and realism, thus preserving a good frame rate for most.  It’s not easy to develop a scalable sim.

Jon Denton: Indeed, appealing to a broad range of simmers is nigh on impossible when it comes to the thousands of configurations that are out there. Tell me about the sound engine, rallying is noisy, but at the same time requires a keen ear to listen to pace notes. How much work has gone into the various creaks, moans and bangs of a rally car chassis?

Luca Giraldi: When talking about racing and rally cars, we can say that they are not making noise, but creating music and symphonies. We love the sound of racing cars so we’ve tried to make it as good as we can on gRally. We’ve recorded onboard, internal sounds moreso than sounds from the outside, because the sound you hear when driving is very different from what you hear when the car is passing by. Again, it’s not easy to do, but we’re happy with what we’ve got now.

Jon Denton:  What about the pace notes?  Drivers can be very particular, you know, some people feel better with numbers for corners and some with words, some prefer the sharper turns to be higher numbers and some lower, and some like to have the notes called out three or four corners in advance.  How much variance in the configuration of pace notes do you plan to put into the sim?

Luca Giraldi: There will be standard calls but the player will be able to fully customize the notes.

Jon Denton: And in which languages in the initial release?

Luca Giraldi: English for sure, at least at the beginning. But we’re still evaluating how many languages we will be able to support, at the beginning. It will also depend from the collaboration we will get from the community.

Jon Denton: Indeed, I suppose with the limited amount of samples to make it would not be hugely difficult for the community to create many language packs, this really seems to be becoming “the people’s rally sim.”

Luca Giraldi: That is our dream.

Jon Denton: Thanks Luca, it has been a pleasure, as always.  More wine?

As stated in our interview, my plans to drive Ash McConnell’s Online Racing Championship (ORC) project were somewhat hampered by a controller glitch that had left me with perfectly functioning steering and brakes, but sadly no throttle. Some head scratching, tweaking, testing, head scratching, tweaking, testing, swearing, tweaking and more testing finally saw the problem resolved.

The version I have on my hard drive consists of a real world single seater in a formula that sits below F1 in performance terms (licensing not secured) and a very much work in progress fantasy track. Through the course of the controller difficulties, I had become quite accustomed to the cockpit and pit lane. It was both a relief and enjoyable to hear the engine note rise as I flexed my big toe, and finally see the pit lane start to pass me by as I engaged first gear.

At this point ORC gave me my first surprise, and put its first smile on my face. With proper clutch support not yet in place, and a little overeagerness on my part, my take off was more F1 pitstop than gentle getaway. With the rear tyres well lit up and a smidge of left lock on the wheel, the rear of the car started to push around as forward momentum increased. With a quick application of opposite lock, followed by some subtle corrections, I was heading down the pit lane grinning from ear to ear. Maybe not the most important element of a racing sim, but pulling away from a standstill at full beans (as I tried a few more times) is entertaining, challenging and manageable.

Ready for the carnage to begin…

Come the end of the pit lane and the first right-turn out onto the track, and the second surprise came my way. With the input of a good chunk of steering lock, it became apparent that something wasn’t quite set up right as the car’s response was somewhat underwhelming. Focussing on the in-game wheel, it became apparent that the steering lock wasn’t correctly configured. Pressing escape brought up a selection of option tabs overlaid onto the in-game action, and I duly selected the control tab and moved my mouse to the “steering lock” slider. Without any numbers on the bar I wondered how I would know where to place it to obtain the correct ratio, but as I moved the slider I saw the in-game wheel slowly adjust its lock. By putting my wheel at 90 degrees and adjusting the slider, I could watch the in-game lock change in real time until they matched up. Whether this is intentional or just a coincidental by-product of how the game functions, the ease and intuitiveness with which settings can be tweaked without exiting to menu screens puts more convoluted UIs out there to shame.

With the virtual steering inputs now attuned to my physical ones, I once again laid some rubber down as I pulled away, this time fishtailing a little more as my enthusiasm got the better of me. The WIP track immediately began to cause a few difficulties; with a lack of trackside detail it is both difficult at times to judge pace, but also to learn exactly where you are/where you’re going. As I tried to push a little prematurely, the inevitable happened and I ran out of track and onto the grassy surrounds. The car promptly “sank” and there was little choice but to return to the pits and try again. I would be lying if I said this was the first and last time this happened, but it is the nature of software at such a level of development and one of those things you have to work around rather than against. Backing things off and tip-toeing around to familiarise myself with my surroundings, a few things quickly became apparent.

Firstly, whilst the content might not be finished by a long shot, the graphics are suitably pleasing on the eye. The in game models I am using are the handy work of Nick Ovey (now of Reiza studios), and Ash has clearly put some work in to get the Ogre graphics engine well incorporated into ORC. It was only after a number of laps that I noticed the realtime shadows dancing across the cockpit as my car changed orientation to the sun; not only does it look nice, but the graphics and effects are unobtrusive and only act to submerge you deeper rather than bling your mind to death. We’re not talking Project CARS levels of detail and polish, but we are talking attractive and convincing.

To turn to the driving model, before I had familiarised myself enough with the car/track combination to get anything close to the limits of possible pace, I had started to explore the limits of the car (and driver) under a number of different circumstances. In many respects there isn’t a huge amount to say about the driving experience. This is no bad thing, but rather it all seems really rather good, and consequently somewhat predictable. Too much throttle, brake or steering input and the car can be unsettled and the resulting behaviour is believable and as expected. A bit too fast into a corner and the front end will push out, refusing to go where you intend it to; try to rectify too aggressively with steering or brake inputs and the understeer can soon make way for oversteer. Similarly, too much brake or throttle will soon see a snatched brake or frantically spinning tyres behind you, respectively. Whenever such an occurrence takes place, the behaviour in that instant is always understandable, and likewise the instinctive responses always seem to have the correct effect. Locking a brake or losing the rear end can happen in a tiny fraction of a second, and yet there is that almost telepathic “connectedness” with the car, and you sometimes seem to react before it even happens. In this respect the car is hugely engaging, as you can push and explore the limits as well as really feel what is going on. It never feels like you’re learning where the limits lie before something funky or unexpected happens, it is very much pushing and feeling the limits of adhesion between the car and track.

Perhaps the trickiest part of the circuit, these esses are challenging but offer massive reward for nailing the line.

Force feedback is, for the most part, very good, though this area is where my only real “Huh?” moment has arisen with ORC. Sometimes when the wheel is around the centre point (specifically on a straight as opposed to changing lock from one direction to the other), an odd repulsive force from the centre is noticeable. Holding the wheel at the centre point is like trying to keep two oppositely polarised magnets lined up as they move closer and closer together. Consequently, sometimes you find yourself struggling to push the wheel towards the centre, resulting in a somewhat nasty weaving line down the straight. This isn’t like in certain past titles though where the wheel would oscillate madly on a straight if released; it’s somewhat more subtle. Thankfully, it is also something Ash has confirmed he is fully aware of, and no doubt it will be rectified soon enough. Putting this issue to one side (I’ll stress again that this is far from a finished title), there are plenty of positives to take from the wheel input/output on the whole. There is absolutely no discernible input lag for one. Moving the wheel from side to side as fast as I could, I literally could not detect any latency between the wheel in my hands and its on-screen counterpart. When driving, this immediacy ties up with the (centre-point issue aside) fantastic FFB to provide a sublime feeling of being at one with the car. Often I find FFB tends to lean to either too exaggerated or too subtle. The FFB in ORC strikes a fine balance here, and provides a wonderful level of feedback about what the car is doing without being over the top. The end result is like much of ORC; I didn’t start driving and find myself thinking “Wow, the FFB is great”, but rather you don’t notice it at first. It’s only when you stop and reflect that you realise how good a job it is doing.

A word that I can happily apply to my time with ORC is “fun”. This isn’t some pseudonym for “watered down” or “compromised”; ORC is sim through and through, and I’ve found driving it a real blast. Nailing the turn in point and line through the high speed esses (not easy with no braking markers or real features of any kind) is massively satisfying and enjoyable. Braking for the hairpin at the bottom of the high speed straight, mindful not to lock the front tyres and miss the line, is challenging and entertaining. Squirting the throttle between two low-speed corners before accelerating away, feeling and judging just how much of a squirt you can get away with, is testing and immensely satisfying. It’s hard to say just exactly what it is that ORC seems to be getting so right here, but as a whole it just does what it does very well indeed. The included single seater provides a combination of engine, chassis and tyres that grant you the ability to pile on the speed at a significant rate, as well as carry that speed and scrub it off in equally impressive fashion. What ORC does is give you a feeling of a full control over all of this; such a machine provides a pretty frenetic driving experience and ORC captures that, whilst at the same time always making you feel like you are in charge. When you pull it off you feel you pulled it off. When you don’t, you know it is you who is responsible. It’s a fine line between between being on the limit and being over it. Walking that line is far from easy, but it is enormously engaging and entertaining.

Since when was approaching a hairpin this enjoyable?

Having spent some time with ORC now, I can say that I am really rather impressed. It’s only natural that at this stage of development there are issues. The graphics are nice but incomplete, the place-holder sounds are some way below the level that they need to be to compete with the established titles on audio terms, and there is the FFB quirk to sort out. The first two of points are really not something to worry about (visual content will be done when it is done, and a new sound engine in on the agenda), and the FFB bug will no doubt be quashed. That’s the only real negatives of my experience out of the way. On the plus side, even in this early form, ORC provides a solid and absorbing experience. The menus, interface and general presentation are high quality, and put a number of other finished titles in the shade when it comes to usability and aesthetic qualities. Similarly, the physics engine of Gregor Vebles seems to justify Ash’s high praise, and it is successfully absorbed into the rest of the code to provide a truly solid sim experience.

How ORC shapes up further down the line as a complete product depends on a number of factors. An initial implementation of tyre and brake heating are in place, but interaction between the two, along with tyre wear and damage, are yet to be included. Also of upmost importance, the netcode obviously needs to be experienced first hand before I can pass comment and, likewise, content can only be judged and assessed as and when it is available. Netcode is apparently well developed, and many things that aren’t yet included are on the “to do” list. I certainly look forward to trying different machinery within ORC and seeing how it handles them, and given the nature of the underlying engine there’s no reason to suggest it will be with any less aplomb than the formula car driven here.

I said in the closing remarks of our interview that I wouldn’t hesitate to say “watch this space”. Having put some good time in behind the wheel of an up to date build, I can only reiterate this sentiment. Many of the foundation elements are in and appear to be implemented well, and it just remains to be seen when and how it all comes together. With ORC it is the same old story: if Ash can find the time to work on it, I see no reason why it can’t be a top class title. Let’s just hope we don’t have to watch this space for too much longer.

Welcome to the dream.

Racing Legends. To many in the community, these words will rouse many a mixed emotion. To some, especially those who are younger or relatively new to the community, they will likely mean very little. This perhaps goes some way to reflecting on the fate of Racing Legends; what is was, and what it would never be.

Turn back the clocks, and a small development team (West Racing) were working on the title World Sports Cars. Unveiled at the 2000 E3 convention, WSC began to gather attention within the community. At the time, GPL was but a couple of years old and still very much the sim-benchmark, but WSC seemed to be promising features that previously sim racers could only have dreamed of; hell, some of those features are still missing from some of today’s cutting edge sims. It seemed the real deal; from the fully-modelled suspension, component wear, damage and sophisticated tyre model to the dynamic sound engine, beautiful graphics and acute attention to detail, it looked set to shift sim-racing onto a whole new level of realism. What’s more, Chris and Tony West were clearly passionate, driven individuals, and it was difficult not to get swept up by their enthusiasm. With big-time publisher Empire Interactive backing the project, there seemed no reason why the sim-racing world wouldn’t soon be presented with a very special simulator.

So why is there a good chance you haven’t heard of WSC? GPL, even to this day, still enjoys attention and use, but where is WSC? Let’s just say things went a bit wrong. Exactly what happened has never been openly discussed, but it soon became apparent that a project like WSC, under development by a small team of conscientious perfectionists, was not compatible with the typical developer/publisher model of the day. The net result was that West Racing and Empire went their separate ways, and WSC was never to see the light of day. Or, more specifically, it was reborn in the form of Total Immersion Racing, developed by Razorworks and released in late 2002. I’m not sure if it was ever officially confirmed, but it is widely known (amongst those who know such things anyway!) that some of what was developed for WSC had been reworked into TIR. The game enjoyed mediocre reviews, and both publisher and developer are no more- Razorworks shut down after 12 years on the back of Empire going into administration in 2008.

And what became of the West brothers? Jump forward a few months after the split with Empire, and it became apparent that Chris and Tony were once again working on something, a new project named Racing Legends. Some in the community observed a few changes on the West Racing website, specifically what seemed to be a daily countdown. Upon the site `launching’, it wasn’t long before someone tacked “/forum” on the end of the address and found…  I’m sure you can guess. News of this spread quickly, and before they knew it, West Racing had an active forum on their hands. This wasn’t planned. It later transpired that the website was changed in preparation for a trip to the Goodwood Festival of Speed where info’ packs were to be handed out to real world car owners, teams and drivers. The website and forums were simply an extension of this.

With this unexpected and unintended series of events, a community quickly grew over on the West Racing forums. Many had been avid followers of WSC and simply brought their enthusiasm and passion over to this new project. Others, like myself, began their journey with the WR story at this point. Yes, there were the odd troll and the usual forum pricks that plague any site, but on the whole the forums were a happy place with a highly enthusiastic and supportive crowd. This was no doubt helped by Chris and Tony being thoroughly nice guys. Some forums members met them at the GFOS and brought back stories of conversations and observation to the forums, and it all helped to feed a real sense of unity with WR and what they were trying to achieve. And this was the crux of the support and enthusiasm: what they were trying to achieve was so far beyond anything seen at that point in time that it was difficult not to be drawn in. The Wests reciprocated, too. Although a small team and very busy, they posted on the forums and joined in conversations, and news and updates were posted on the homepage.  They even went as far as to set up a webcam where you could see them working on RL in real time, where Spooky the cat (R.I.P.) became a kind of unofficial mascot.

Sitting here ten years later (Jesus!…) with the Racing Legends website open in front of me, looking at the development images and reading the news posts, it’s difficult to put into words what it felt like when I first saw these things; this isn’t because all those feelings have gone -Racing Legends, after all this time, still stirs my sim-soul- but rather because they are inert, intangible feelings. The best way I can describe the feeling each image and update gave me was similar to what I feel when I see a really fine piece of engineering; that sense you get when you see a meticulously prepared race car, a beautifully formed piece of carbon fibre, or a fine piece of milled billeted aluminium. I’m aware I can be a bit weird so perhaps this isn’t a step forwards in explaining myself … For me, Racing Legends always had an air and aura of perfection about it. It was as though everything was perfectly honed and crafted, and it wasn’t just the screenshots that exuded this quality. Reading plans for the product, and also Chris and Tony’s attitudes and explanations of what they were doing and why, Racing Legends seemed a well- formed and -oiled machine, with every component working in unison, smoothly integrating into the whole to create an unrivalled structure. Little things that sound trivial now and have been ridiculed and mocked repeatedly over the years- those were a big part of what made RL so appealing to me. Special leather bound manuals and brochures for the program; each car coming on its own mini-CD with accompanying documentation; the Team Lotus transporter bus (perhaps the largest single source of derision and piss-taking in sim-racing history) to carefully unload your car from; the barn door garage from which you could wheel your car out and listen to the tyres crunch on the gravel underfoot … little touches that would have made little or no difference to the experience of driving a car on track, but that would have had unknown levels of impact on the immersion of car ownership and all that it entails. Whilst a lot of this might sound fanciful, or self-indulgent and pointless to some, they formed the backdrop for things that could really have had a massive effect on the realism of the product and sim-racing itself.

Self-indulgent? Perhaps. Utterly fabulous? I’d say so.

Whilst it is an open and ultimately endless debate to say which is the most `realistic’ sim available today (inverted commas since even something as seemingly objective as realism is ultimately a highly subjective thing when it comes down to individual opinion), let’s choose iRacing as a case in point. iRacing pitches itself not as a game, not even `just’ a sim, but as a training tool. Its claims to realism, from its New Tyre Model through to laser-scanned tracks, arguably make it an invaluable training and development tool to real world drivers looking for that extra edge. But just how realistic is it?

To begin with, I’ll right away dismiss issues of G-forces, fear, field of view, and anything else related to the physicality and psychology of sitting behind a PC monitor versus heading towards a wall at 200mph in a real car. Multi-monitor setups and motion platforms move things along the realism spectrum, but these `issues’ plague every simulation alike, and RL would have been no different.

The tracks are unquestionably highly accurate and well-conceived (albeit slightly dead and lifeless). The bumps, cambers, layout, elevation changes and trackside scenery are all lovingly and wonderfully recreated. The car models look very much like their real-world versions, and there’s no reason to doubt that information about component weights, geometry and performance are much like their real-world counterparts. Whilst elements like aerodynamic and tyre modelling are always going to be constantly developing with our (or rather, developers’) understanding and the available computational resources, again, I think it’s reasonable to suggest that they are in the right ball park and, perhaps just as importantly, constantly evolving and heading in the right direction. The NTM is not perfect and has its faults, but it also does a pretty good job of simulating the interaction between rubber and the black stuff.

Racing itself, meanwhile, is governed by a sporting code that bears a resemblance to real-world rule books, and incidents and disputes are watched over by a complaints panel. Just how well the latter functions is another discussion for another day, but the point is that, along with the computer code to ensure a realistic driving model, there are also steps in place to (attempt to) ensure a realistic driving/racing experience.

All of this forms a pretty compelling case for saying iRacing is a solid piece of software when it comes to simulating motor vehicles and motorsport. Indeed, these arguments are exactly why iRacing is right up there with the cream of today’s sim crop.

So where am I going with this? iRacing is an abstraction of reality. All PC simulations are to some degree, and iRacing less than most if not all (nK-Pro perhaps earning the Hard(est) Core badge from me). Even any attempts made right now to eschew any semblance of usability or fun in a pursuit of absolute, pure realism in a PC simulation would be such an abstraction by the very nature of the platform. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t a lot of room for improvement.

Nearly all of the AutoSimSport staffers run iRacing. Some more than others, but we all have/do run it. What happens when Denton goes and posts a quicker time than Martini, and the mid-life crisis and ego kick in again? Usually Martini declares Denton is mistaken and hasn’t actually run that time. Then it must be that Denton has changed setup whilst Martini is running fixed setup. Then Martini asserts that Denton must be cheating by some means or other. Then after a few angry, profanity strewn emails Martini will either come back saying “Just ran a X.XX.XXX, I am better” or “You’re a cheating ****, **** off!”. Regardless of the time achieved though, there is something that is almost without fail true: Martini will have written off a few million pounds worth of machinery. He’ll have (countless times) binned it into a barrier and reset to the pits. The covers will be taken off of another virtual car and the process started again.

It’s hard to emphasise today just how ahead of its time such attention to detail was.

And this brings us back to Racing Legends. One thing that was suggested in RL is that you would have actually owned your car. I don’t just mean you’ll hand over your money and receive a download/CD and there it is for you to race like any other DLC works. No, your car would have come with its very own and unique chassis codes and numbers. You would have painted it, tuned it, even maintained it- it would have been your own car. It would have had a place in your garage where it would have lived- yes, it would have been just a collection of folders sitting on your hard drive, a digital representation made up of vertices and polygons, textures and some physics files like every sim car before and since- but, it would have had a soul because it would, ultimately, have been yours. It would have been different to everyone else’s, it would have been unique. It would have been your car.

Looking back at the renders and shots that were released, it’s hard even now not to be impressed. You can see a few places where the poly’ count is constraining a curve or feature (indeed, I’m quite sure the poly count is nothing like many assumed it was; Tony is not only a brilliant modeller, he’s also a fantastic texture artist), but the level of detail has only relatively recently been surpassed. Well, sort of …

SMS have been releasing increasingly beautiful and detailed renders and shots of their content for pCARS. A quick look at their Lotus 49 shots shows a meticulous attention to detail (and an eye-watering poly’ count to boot), but ultimately it’s a purely aesthetic feature. Look back at the RL updates- particularly the one detailing the work that had continued on the modelling of the Ford DFV unit that is found bolted to the back of the 49 tub- and you discover that this wasn’t just an empty shell, a textured black box with unknown inner workings. When Tony said he had been working on modelling the DFV, he meant modelling practically every single piece of it. All internals were modelled and textured, and linked in a physical system where by each individual piece would wear with use and abuse. The engine could then be dismantled in the aforementioned garage for wannabe mechanics and engineers to inspect the parts and check for fatigue.

Glorious. Ignore the relatively low poly count by today’s standards; every cog, valve, piston and moving internal component is modelled.

If all of this sounds like your worst nightmare, and all you want to do is drive, then it was all planned to be optional. But it was the kind of option I would have loved. The detail and passion displayed and conveyed by the West brothers was infectious, and you could sense many felt a similar level of affinity with the drive for the ultimate that they were pursuing. The simple inclusion of a working odometer in Shift made a car feel so much more personal to me. When today you look at the various sims we regard as being at the pinnacle, and in one or more they don’t properly model transmissions or brake temperatures and wear, allow you to stall or flat spot your tyres, you begin to realise just how much room remains for improvement, and how ambitious and ground breaking RL could have been across the board.

So, as with WSC, the question has to be asked: what happened? Whilst many, like myself, were hugely excited and positive about RL and everything the Wests were trying to achieve, there was a strange air of hostility that was always simmering away, often in the background, but every now and then it came to the fore. It’s a bit difficult to explain now as I never really understood it at the time. Certainly on the WR forums it was a few vocal individuals (some of whom were quite well known in the community for somewhat less than exemplary conduct) who, with every update, aimed derision and animosity towards RL and the Wests themselves. A few rifts brewed away on the forums, often between just a few members, but it regularly permeated further and tainted the mood and the forums as a whole. Some seemed angry at the Wests for posting news. There were accusations of hype building and thunder-stealing from other sims that were actually available or imminent.

Shader tests on fuel funnels. Such attention today would be the exception; back then it was borderline bonkers.

But this was how things had been since the beginning. What went wrong from where things were? Initially, it’s quite simple: the updates slowed and the feed of info dried up, and people grew impatient. Some, as is always the case, grew impatient if it had literally been a day over a month since the last update. Others demonstrated more patience, but by the time five months or so had passed since the last update, restlessness reached a peak. Some offered reasonable arguments as to why it would be in the Wests’ interests to improve their communication with the community. Others spouted vitriol and personal insults. The forums I had spent so much time on (I hold the perhaps dubious honour of top poster over on the WR forums), where I had met and chatted with so many people, some of whom I am in contact with to this day (I first met Mr. Denton and Mr. Simmerman over there), fell apart. Many people just drifted away, others decided to vent their anger and frustrations in less than diplomatic ways, whilst some of us tried to keep things calm in the face of growing unrest. But it became increasingly futile, and even the most ardent of followers slowly saw their resolve fade.

In hindsight, it was all a bit of a shambles. Chris and Tony (joined by physics guru Dr Gregor Vebles) were a small team working on a highly ambitious project. They had invested a lot of time, money, and energy into RL, going so far as to sell their house and cars. They really did put everything on the line to pursue the dream that WSC sadly hadn’t turned in to. As with probably every software release in history, but especially in this case, no one had more reason to want to see the product ship and be successful than the devs themselves (sounds an obvious thing to say, but you see the comments some people make and you have to wonder sometimes …). They were also perhaps somewhat naïve. The website and forums broke cover prematurely and unplanned. To their credit- though ultimately probably to their own detriment- instead of just shutting it all down, they let it remain up and running. The problem was that as soon as a community had formed, it demanded info, content and news for sustenance to survive and maintain itself.

The RL forums were a place where people hung out and discussed much more beyond just RL itself (I guess we kind of had to!); it was here where I first learned of NetKar, for example, and we talked about all other sims, real racing, irreverent subjects … It really was a mini motorsport and sim forum and community, not just a RL forum. However, RL was the reason that everyone was there, and it wasn’t going to sustain itself without RL info. Whilst some of us said we were happy for there to be no/fewer updates as long as we just had a little heads up to say all was well and there would be news when they were ready to share something, we were met, instead, with resolute silence. At the same time, others were getting increasingly irate and angry. The forums descended from a largely peaceful, friendly arena for like-minded individuals to discuss all and sundry into an aggressive, hostile place. The irony was that, apart from the odd dicktard, this was borne almost exclusively from a desire and passion for RL. Ultimately though, it must have just made the forums an increasingly unwelcoming place, and the desire for Chris and Tony to enter the discussion, regardless of intentions, must have dwindled quickly.

The community, and its desperation in the clamour for news and info, effectively destroyed itself. The last official news from the Wests on RL is the now infamous `Sorry’ thread posted on the forums. Pinned at the top of the `General’ forum board, it has now had the best part of 20,000 views. In it, Chris posted a lengthy, thoughtful apology and explanation for why the info had dried up. It addressed some of the issues that were becoming prominent in the forum, and generally tried to calm things down a bit. It reiterated the unplanned beginning to the forum’s life, the decision to leave them open, and also the lose-lose situation reactions to updates had put them in.

For many, this was absolutely fine. They read, understood, and accepted what was being said, and there wasn’t really an issue any more. For others, it was too little too late. They had either already burnt their bridges and walked away, or seemed somewhat insulted by the post. Whilst Chris’ words went some way to diffusing the situation and dissipating some of the ill-feeling, it ultimately was the end of the story. Had it come earlier … I don’t know, and no one can say, if it would have made any difference. After that, nothing else was heard from WR on RL. Nothing official anyway. A couple of times I caught Chris on MSN and asked how things were; genuinely meaning that, and not just asking about RL. I always got a positive reply, and I always just assumed things were ticking away behind the scenes. Given everything that had happened up until that point, asking `So, are you still working on Racing Legends?’ seemed a little crass, and accordingly I declined to do so.

Just look at it. Even today it looks wonderful.

But these events were a long time ago now. It has been nearly ten years since the site went live, and the `Sorry’ thread, the last official word on RL, was posted over eight years ago! So is Racing Legends quite obviously dead and buried? Is anyone who still holds onto a hope that RL will one day see the light of day a deluded fool who needs to wake up and familiarise themselves with reality? Whilst there has been no official news on RL since January 2004, there have been the odd tidbits, tiny slivers of info to hold onto. Both Chris and Tony have worked on numerous projects in the years since all went quiet with RL. Tony’s modelling and art work has found its way into a number of other projects, and similarly Chris has been busy and seems to be making good progress and enjoying success these days on a set of Unity plugins. Whilst that confirms they are alive and kicking, it doesn’t clarify anything about RL’s development. But amongst this other stuff, there are a few hints that appear. The odd bit of art work that unmistakably has its origins in RL cropping up in YouTube videos, little hints that certain things might be destined for implication within a sim environment. The problem is, when you have so much passion and hope riding on something, it’s easy to join the dots and draw whatever picture you want.

The fact that the RL forums and website are still up in place and the odd glimpse of some RL related artwork do not provide a particularly convincing or compelling argument that development is on-going. It’s the desperate speculation of someone who would love for it to be true. But what about a reliable source repeatedly confirming, year after year, that it is still in development? Todd Wasson (physics genius, all-round sim community nice guy and fountain of knowledge) has repeatedly said, quite openly on forums, that RL is still being worked on. Not only is he trustworthy, but Todd is about as well placed as anyone to know seeing as his VRC/VRC-Pro project is one of those which the Wests have, between them, contributed towards, with Tony’s typically rich graphics work providing the visual content for VRC.

Presentation and modelling ability was never something the Wests ran short of.

Whatever is or isn’t happening with RL behind the scenes, many might ask: until it is released, does Racing Legends matter? To many, the answer is `no’. To me, even if RL never developed beyond whatever state it was in eight years ago, the answer is a very big `yes’. RL has had a massive impact on me. In many ways it has made and conversely destroyed sim racing for me. It stoked my passion for simming in a way which no other title has before or since. It made me see simming in a different light. For all the developments that have happened over the years, and for all the effort by the likes of iRacing to turn simming from a dark-bedroom hobby into a respected, serious pursuit, for me it was RL that really shifted my attitude. I was already highly passionate about simming and very much hooked, but RL changed my perceptions of sims from simply being realistic computer games to something much more. It provided me with the drive and desire to be totally submerged in the virtual world, to really allow the boundaries between the virtual and real worlds to be blurred.

The problem was it didn’t come! And nothing else since has lived up to the expectations that RL allowed me to set. When you look at the hyper realism, detail and immersion that WR were aiming for with RL, and then you look at today’s sims, there is a massive, massive disparity. In iRacing you can’t stall and there is no dirt build up on the screen?!? Today’s sims do a lot of things very well, but it’s sometimes hard to not find everything a little … disappointing. Of course there is a huge difference between any of the other titles mentioned above and RL: they exist, they are available, and for any faults they have, you can actually use them and enjoy the things they do well. The RL I am comparing them to is not a real, usable product; it is an idea, a fantasy.

It is worth stressing Chris and Tony never made claims like `RL will blow everything out of the water’, they never blew their own trumpets. Similarly, they never slagged off or dismissed other titles; quite the opposite, a number of times I saw them speak very favourably of others’ work, and even put links to other projects on the main page. They were also modest, and seemingly quite uncomfortable at times with the stature they seemed to hold among a good chunk of their followers. They were just two guys with a lot of passion who aimed big and risked a lot to pursue their dream. Whilst they are undoubtedly highly talented individuals (Tony’s work speaks for itself, and a number of others have attested to Chris’s abilities), I think it was this uncompromising approach to their work that really snagged others and myself on the idea, the philosophy of RL.

Whilst some aimed animosity at them tied to the accusation they were simply hyping themselves and their work with little to back it up, I really think this is wide of the mark. It wasn’t they who provided the hype. They simply explained what they were working on and planning, and what they were hoping to achieve. The hype was provided by the community. People saw something special in WSC, and even more so in RL. It was a new and fresh approach. It oozed passion, love, and attention to detail. Just like each of those individually numbered cars and their leather bound packs, Racing Legends had soul.

It is arguably a stupid and pointless exercise to compare a piece of software that potentially doesn’t even exist with others that do, but it is an exercise I simply can’t help but indulge in. Every time a new title is announced, or whenever there is a `feature request’ or a `describe your dream sim’ discussion, the simple fact is that it is always RL that comes to mind. This is fruitless for many reasons. Ultimately I’m comparing real, tangible, usable products to an idea of perfection that RL itself, let alone any other sim, could probably never live up to. I’m quite aware of this. It just always was, and continues to be, hard to shake the feeling that if anyone or anything were going to get close, it was West Racing and Racing Legends.

I literally dreamed about driving around the West Lake circuit.

So there you have it: a self-indulgent trip down memory lane. Seeing the community once again whip itself up into frenzy as patience began to wear over the rF2 beta release reminded me of the journey that was Racing Legends and the West Racing forums. And quite a journey it’s been. To those unfamiliar with Racing Legends and its story, get yourself on Google, dig out the site and have a little look around. I don’t know whether new eyes will be pleasantly surprised or underwhelmed, but either way it’s worth a ten minute look. And to those who get their knickers in a twist because it has been three minutes since a dev’ last personally responded to your Tweet, or you’ve had to wait half an hour to get a download link: get a grip. You don’t know how good you’ve got it and, believe me, if the tides turn and the updates and interaction dry up, you’ll soon realise what you’ve lost.

So call me deluded and out of touch, but still I hold on to hope. Racing Legends remains my dream sim because, for me, it is just that: a dream.

In short: I wait it!

The dream lives on. What a fabulous dream it was and still is.