Martin Galpin | Racing Driver | number66.net

In the early days, Geoff Crammond was king. Crammond really was the first pioneer of the genre and quickly earned himself a reputation for creating realistic simulators. In 1984, Crammond and Acornsoft published REVS, a Formula Three Simulator which combined a full 3D environment and undulating track surface with sophisticated AI competitors. For it’s day, it was pretty special.

Almost 10 years passed and you could argue it was spent waiting for the hardware to catch up. In Ë92, Crammond again set the benchmark when Formula One Grand Prix was released. It marked another milestone for the genre whereby 3D environments became more elaborate and for the first time, a player could change the setup of the car. The success of Crammond’s Grand Prix series saw three further sequels, appropriately published as Grand Prix 2, 3 and 4.

As the Grand Prix series grew, so did the genre and other publishers began to show innovation through their own titles. Papyrus, already an established player with its IndyCar Racing and NASCAR series was, in 1998, to significantly raise expectations once more. Grand Prix Legends (GPL) portrayed the heroic 1967 Formula One World Championship with immaculate attention to detail, far surpassing anything at the time and probably for the next few years too.

Aside from one of the best handling models ever written and an incredibly versatile graphics engine (variants have been used as recently as 2003) GPL introduced the world to online multiplayer racing and sparked an enthusiastic community still proficient today.

Crammond was not done and in 2000 published the much anticipated Grand Prix 3. However, unlike it’s predecessors, Grand Prix 3 was immediately criticized and whilst it still provided ultra-realistic car handling, its graphics and sound were dated.

The short-comings of Grand Prix 2 and 3 created opportunities for others, the most important of which being Image Space Incorporated (ISI). Shortly after Grand Prix 3, EA Sports introduced the first of its F1 Series. ISI took charge of development whilst EA Sports used their weight to ensure distribution and some much needed license negotiation. Whether consciously or not, ISI had delivered the community another important milestone – modding. For the first time, the community was able to take advantage of the game without relying on a handful of individuals who could reverse engineer the games proprietary formats – as was the case with Grand Prix and GPL.

The success of EA Sport’s F1 series largely overshadowed the last of Crammond’s titles and almost certainly was a contributing factor in the demise of his series. Grand Prix 4 arrived in stores in late 2002 and featured a much improved graphics engine. However, licensing difficulties meant it still lacked online play and it offered nothing more to the modding community than its predecessors. Despite this, Grand Prix 4 largely stood the test of time and there is still a vibrant community of players today.

That would be the last we’d see from Crammond, the Grand Prix series was discontinued and Micropose went into submission in early 2003. What was once the pioneering force in race simulation dissolved through a sequence of strategic errors. First, they were unable to negotiate a full Formula One license and therefore could not offer online play. Second, Crammond did not see the potential in providing a more open platform, one which would encourage the modding community. Crammond, fatally, had missed two of the most important milestones.

Unfortunately, EA Sports would suffer a similar fate as in 2003, Sony Computer Entertainment Europe entered a multi-year deal with the Formula One Administration to develop the exclusive Formula One game. Consequently, Formula One simulation on the PC has become stagnent and both EA Sport’s F1 Challenge and Geoff Crammond’s Grand Prix 4 live on as the last and best of the genre.

Why have I only talked about Formula One simulators? Firstly, it gives historical context to the genre. Perhaps more importantly, it allows me to demonstrate the legacy it has created.

Ever since Formula One was effectively retired on the PC, the genre has become polarised. At one end of the spectrum, the rise of console gaming has given birth to many titles like ToCA Race Driver or Gran Turismo which sit between arcade game and simulator. They’re superb for what they are but they’re not serious racing simulators.

At the other end, it gets interesting. ISI, developers of F1 Challenge for EA Sports, now lead the market with their own title, rFactor. Learning from the strengths of F1 Challenge, rFactor provides unprecedented levels of customisation and its success heavily depends on how much the community gets involved.

ISI has chosen to not pursue licenses for official cars or tracks. A stock rFactor includes two categories of cars, open wheel or sedan (touring) all of which are heavily inspired by their real world counterparts. The open wheel “trainers are Skip Barber Dodge cars, the “rF3³ is a Dallara and “FormulaIS has an obvious synergy with Formula One. In addition to this, since October 2006 and in celebration of Intel’s latest processor, rFactor provides an official BMW-Sauber Formula One car and licenses for Silverstone and Nurburgring circuits.

The fact that ISI has chosen not to purchase licenses itself is not restricting. The modding community they’ve created largely supplements what is missing. It’s rare that lawyers get involved with non-commercial developers and so much of what ISI would like to publish themselves can be downloaded at rFactor Central. Stand out examples being CTDP F1 2005 and Grand Prix 1979.

ISI, too, realised the next major milestone, this time with its distribution (a distribution model pioneered by LFS, see below). Without EA Sports, rFactor lacks a commercial publisher. Consequently, ISI distribute rFactor themselves, entirely from their website. The full game can be downloaded but the purchase of an activation key is required to unlock the major features. Whilst this naturally means the overall profile of the title is reduced, it is plausible that a traditional distributor would restrict growth which so heavily depends on third party modifications and the Internet.

ISI doesn’t have it easy and other similar simulators look promising. UK-based Live For Speed (LFS) stands to challenge rFactor’s supremacy and it’s latest release, S2, is certainly of no less quality. LFS focuses almost entirely on the online play in an attempt to bring more organisation to the experience. Like rFactor, there are no official cars nor tracks but with a little imagination, their real world equivalents are immediately obvious. Similarly, an official BMW Sauber Formula One car arrived in late 2006 and a lack of a commercial publisher means distribution of LFS is exclusive to their website.

Whilst both rFactor and LFS continue to explore new markets, the commercial future of both is a little less sure.

In 2005, a new development studio arrived on the scene and quickly gained notoriety for its efforts. SimBin released GTR in March and it was exactly what the genre needed. SimBin acquired the official license for the FIA GT Championship and through Atari distributed the game worldwide. Suddenly, there was another player and like Papyrus and Crammond before them, SimBin committed to ultra-realistic products.

The success of GTR was good news for rFactor too as much of what SimBin have achieved is largely due to ISI technology. GTR, its sequel GTR2, GT Legends and now RACE – The Official World Touring Car Game all use variants of the graphics and physics engines used in rFactor: gMotor2. The association, no doubt, has provided ISI with a much needed revenue stream to continue the development of its own title.

Furthermore, some still feel that even rFactor and GTR have sacrificed gameplay over realism. Up until recently, Italian Kunos Simulazioni single handedly created a simulation more realistic than anything I’d expect to find on the general market. netKar PRO, or nkPRO as it’s more commonly known, is, like Live For Speed, intended purely as an online simulator. What makes it special, however, is the most complex tyre model ever produced. Tyres are able to wear, pick up dirt, be flat spotted and are sensitive to heat cycles. Each factor has a dynamic effect on the handling characteristics of the cars, which presently includes just single-seaters.

nkPRO really is unique. You should think of nkPRO as you would a commercial flight simulator at Boeing. nkPRO is a technology, it’s an engineering tool. nkPRO can be used not only to train drivers in a particular environment but also to provide accurate data to how tyres or different setup parameters would affect the handling charactistics of a real car. The Marangoni Group recognise this and have recently negotiated tyre evaluation for the Italian Speed Hillclimbing Championship through a partnership with nkPRO.

The original Geoff Crammond genre no longer exists. Instead, it’s fractured into smaller but equally thriving subgenres: console simulators (ToCA Race Driver, Gran Turismo), online simulators (rFactor, Live For Speed), the championship endorsed simluators (GTR, RACE) and finally the reality simulators (nkPRO, iRacing.com).

2007 should see the addition of two more simulators entering someway between the online and reality genres. Papyrus co-founder David Kaemmer has recently announced his intention to release iRacing.com and its development is impressive although no concrete information is available about its release. Likewise, Drivers Republic should also make its debut in 2007, this time crafted by Eero Piitulainen, previously an architect on Richard Burns Rally.

I will leave you with the following chart. I have tried to give a visual overview of the PC simulator sphere as it is today and show associations where possible. Need For Speed and Test Drive Unlimited are included to give the chart context whilst iRacing.com and Drivers Republic have lower opacity to indicate they are yet to materialize. Moving your cursor over the different emblems will reveal information about each respective title.

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