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!

 

[Kenny Paton]

I think back then companies had to release a game that was mainly for offline use so it had to be more complete and be nearer to the real thing. I don't mean by that only the physics/handling side but how players perceived it, I remember the kick up because GTR2 didn't have working wipers.
I still have 3 installs on my PC, thanks to the modders I have every track I like and most of my favourite cars, I also have GT Legends and Race 07 with mods and tracks including my local one.
Fortunately with my deteriorating eyesight the graphics don't bother me and the games with my more modern computer run like dream.
Good thread @Paul Jeffrey and I've enjoyed reading the perceptive comments from all.

 

[Associat0r]

Some interesting comments so far and a nice read, however I think some people have missed the point of the article.

I am not saying the features / physics / ffb or whatever are better than what we have in modern sims, what I'm trying to get across is the sheer volume of features in a game from 2006 I would have expected to have been carried on and improved by more recent games. Instead it seems that many of the things in GTR2 that were considered standard don't exist in many other sims.

Night racing for example. GTR2 it isn't anywhere near as good as PCARS or rF2. But it's missing from AC & R3E. I would have expected by now that night racing would be standard for all games, and having had 11 years worth of improvements made to it too.

Same with weather and other such things. I know animated flags marshals aren't exactly a deal breaker, but if it was around in 2006 then I suppose it should have been made super smashing marvellous and be in all games by now.

It's like a tyre manufacturer decided to make wheels from rubber one day. Everyone looked at it and though "awesome, that's a great thing" and used it for ages, then the next tyre manufacturer just went back to wood and everyone followed suit, occasionally adding rubber patches to the wheel that were likely to either fall off or not work at all.

So no, I'm not saying GTR2 does everything the best of the best, I'm just surprised that everything in GTR2 hasn't been adopted and improved in other sims, as is the usual case with things that improve over time.

All those questions have already been answered multiple times throughout the years, here on RD and elsewhere.

• The old isiMotor character animation code was coded for and owned by EA or whoever.
• Making fully animated pitcrews work properly for multiple types of racing series and be convincing with the expectations of today is a much bigger task, hence why it's missing from the universal car sims. FYI. Animated flag marshals and track workers were there since F1GP (1992).
• Simbin/Sector3 rewrote the gMotor gfx renderer. It's much easier to get good looking gfx by not having to worry about things such as day/night cycles and dynamic wet weather. AC's lack of day/night cycles is also a conscious design decision from the start, but that's the least of its problems.
• Driving schools and career modes are non-essential gamey fluff that any self-respecting indie sim dev shouldn't waste any time on, given the vast amount of resources this takes to develop. Especially in this day and age where you can just do a google search to learn about race craft.
• Built-in championship is nice to have, but isn't something to make a circus about. Even some popular figure agrees.

With limited resources and no backing from big publishers, sim devs have to focus on the core essentials for its core audience. That said, rF2 has almost all the features you want, and working much better than they did in GTR2, and more is coming.
That said, Simbin sadly marked the beginning of the end for dedicated race cars in simracing.

Also, why is my rating ability taken away again? Did you guys also take away the rating abilities of the people who haha'd or rated me sad too? Or is it because I rated the article Haha?

 

[Tim Meuris]

My first simracing experience was gtr2. It is a very complete game.
I have nothing with old cars. Not nostalgic at all. Carindustry is all about evolution and so are sims. Everything in the simracingworld has become so much more complex and difficult that i think it's very hard to deliver a complete package as gtr2 is. As a simdeveloper i think it's more a question of which aspects you will accentuate. Therefore i will always choose for the one with realistic physics (imo that's ac atm). Sure it misses out on lots of features but racing side by side with another skilled driver has never given me more pleasure and detail as in ac. That's for me the essence of racing and that's when i forget about all the things ac doesn't have.

 

[Rui F. Martins]

I completely agree with this article, even today GTR2 doesn't fall far behind modern racing games in my opinion.
My only regret is to not have started sim-racing earlier and with GTR-2

 

[Kenny Paton]

With limited resources and no backing from big publishers, sim devs have to focus on the core essentials for its core audience. That said, rF2 has almost all the features you want and more is coming.

Unfortunately that doesn't seem to be enough to lift it out of the doldrums. It is without doubt one of the best racing games out there, it's AI is the best IMO, but past presentation has meant it now struggles against the other modern titles . Hopefully 397 can turn it around
One thing that occurred to me was GTR2 was also from the times of brick and mortar sales so even casual buyers could get it from their local games store and it had good levels of difficulty adjustment so was very playable for most punters, so a lot of people have fond memories of it.

 

[Alx^]

I'm not a business owner so could well be talking out of my buttocks, but the logical side of my mind says I honestly don't think it's any deeper than money and profit ratios, and a reflection of what a complete and utter shambolick ripoff "money for nothing" the world at large is these days. The games industry is no exception from what I can see. Paying your staff to implement a man waving a flag is less likely to result in sales, compared to paying that person to implement a shiny exotic supercar.
Regarding the gaming world at large, with steam early access, mmorpg subscriptions, paying to play multiplayer on console, etc, it's been clear for a while that the bulk of gamers are herding cashcows ripe for milking, with minimal effort (Edit; I mean minimal expenditure I guess, not effort. Most dev staff seem pretty into what they're doing. They aren't the ones calling the shot$).
In my idyllic world I'd love to see the spawn of rF2, R3E, Pcars, iRacing and NFS, with all the full sim details of ye olde, right down to the occasional seagull on track and how large the eyebrows are on my driver model, and I'd love to fly or drive my racing team to the tracks of the world in an openworld Xplane/ETS2 style fashion, but I very much doubt those things would make the owner of the company rich(er), sadly.

 

[JayJayRaceinho]

well, all that said, for some immersive fun racing i have DriveClub on my PS4Pro. Hard to beat this one.

and for serious sim-racing i'm gonna purchase a BIG-Bobby-Car and make somer serious competition with the little kiddies in my neighbourhood ....so, who needs pcars2, gtr3, gt Sports and whatever there'll still to come?

 

[David Dominguez]

With limited resources and no backing from big publishers, sim devs have to focus on the core essentials for its core audience.

Essentially, this.

 

[Juliusz Baczynski]

You're picking on GTR2 because it doesn't simulate flatspots and flexing...well tell me how many games do simulate this then?

iRacing XD

 

[protonv5]

I'm not a business owner so could well be talking out of my buttocks, but the logical side of my mind says I honestly don't think it's any deeper than money and profit ratios, and a reflection of what a complete and utter shambolick ripoff "money for nothing" the world at large is these days. The games industry is no exception from what I can see. Paying your staff to implement a man waving a flag is less likely to result in sales, compared to paying that person to implement a shiny exotic supercar.
Regarding the gaming world at large, with steam early access, mmorpg subscriptions, paying to play multiplayer on console, etc, it's been clear for a while that the bulk of gamers are herding cashcows ripe for milking, with minimal effort.
In my idyllic world I'd love to see the spawn of rF2, R3E, Pcars, iRacing and NFS, with all the full sim details of ye olde, right down to the occasional seagull on track and how large the eyebrows are on my driver model, and I'd love to fly or drive my racing team to the tracks of the world in an openworld Xplane/ETS2 style fashion, but I very much doubt those things would make the owner of the company rich(er), sadly.

You basically said it as clearly as any could have said it. You hit the nail on the head. I'm soooo tired of hearing the 'We're a small studio' excuse. I don't start a taxi service and then offer terrible service because I only have one taxi cab. If that's all I could offer, then I don't start a taxi service. If you can't build a proper sim, then don't. These sims nowadays are built specifically to not give simmers what they want. They are built to make the company as much money as possible. It's a greed thing plain and simple. You couldn't get away with this back in the day. Now you can. We're all used to it now. Why build a complete sim so that the simmer is happy and that's all he buys? Make it in stages and then sell endless DLC and of course say, 'In the next version you'll get this and that feature'. This unfortunately is what it's come to.

 

[arthur666]

GTR2 was good, but nothing captivated me like GTL did.

 

[sameereps]

the article just poses the same question that was running in my head for the past few days when i returned to my GTR2 once again. been into racing sims for quite long and still i feel compelled to return to gtr2 after a few months of AC/ Pcars/ R3E/ automobilista rF2 etc as none of them feels as complete and satisfying as gtr2. the developers today seems to have lost focus and hence fail to deliver a package at least comparable to gtr 2. life would have been real miserable for sim racers if it was not for gtr 2. and talking of rf1, with a little tweaking and realfeel plugins and the sort, some of the rf1 mods seem far superior to some of the so called new gen racing sims. forget the eye candy stuff as that really does not matter at least for me once you get immersed in the sim experience.

 

[Kenny Paton]

I'm not a business owner so could well be talking out of my buttocks, but the logical side of my mind says I honestly don't think it's any deeper than money and profit ratios, and a reflection of what a complete and utter shambolick ripoff "money for nothing" the world at large is these days. The games industry is no exception from what I can see. Paying your staff to implement a man waving a flag is less likely to result in sales, compared to paying that person to implement a shiny exotic supercar.
Regarding the gaming world at large, with steam early access, mmorpg subscriptions, paying to play multiplayer on console, etc, it's been clear for a while that the bulk of gamers are herding cashcows ripe for milking, with minimal effort.

The grumpy old man in me agrees with your view of the world today
I think a lot may start off with good intentions, but of course they have families to feed and have to live in the real world.

 

[alex_pt]

noooo... now i have to go and play this game again... got to go and search for it

 

[Skybird05]

Some interesting comments so far and a nice read, however I think some people have missed the point of the article.

I am not saying the features / physics / ffb or whatever are better than what we have in modern sims, what I'm trying to get across is the sheer volume of features in a game from 2006 I would have expected to have been carried on and improved by more recent games. Instead it seems that many of the things in GTR2 that were considered standard don't exist in many other sims.

Night racing for example. GTR2 it isn't anywhere near as good as PCARS or rF2. But it's missing from AC & R3E. I would have expected by now that night racing would be standard for all games, and having had 11 years worth of improvements made to it too.

Same with weather and other such things. I know animated flags marshals aren't exactly a deal breaker, but if it was around in 2006 then I suppose it should have been made super smashing marvellous and be in all games by now.

It's like a tyre manufacturer decided to make wheels from rubber one day. Everyone looked at it and though "awesome, that's a great thing" and used it for ages, then the next tyre manufacturer just went back to wood and everyone followed suit, occasionally adding rubber patches to the wheel that were likely to either fall off or not work at all.

So no, I'm not saying GTR2 does everything the best of the best, I'm just surprised that everything in GTR2 hasn't been adopted and improved in other sims, as is the usual case with things that improve over time.

If today somebody would do a sim with textures and track design from 11 years ago, people would again complain. Heck, many already complain about the looks of Assetto Corsa or Raceroom - two games of which I think they both look still great and absolutely stunning. So if you want to have all the feature completeness you demand and which I also would like, you still would need to add more quality in track and car building. That needs more work, translating into more time or more staff, in both cases: more money. If the profit income should be held, you would need to sell more units. See the problem? You end up with needing to do more - with the same ressources (or even less ressources, if you consider the difference in size between former SimBin and Sector 3, the size of the crew was cut by over 50%). The natural solution is that you start assessing what is more and what is less important. Most people do not use rain racing that much, simply because it is no fun: means it can be frustratingly difficult, and can mess up especially MP racing even more than MP on free servers is being messed up already now. Most drivers in reality prefer sunny daylight racing to nightly storm driving. Because the latter is so much more difficult. - So developers may come to the conclusion that they may want to serve their time/staff/money ressources on something that is higher on the priority list.

A title also can be very successful, and generate income on a scale that is unexpected. Kunos Simulazioni is a good example, the success they had caught them by surprise - and they found themselves in the suitable economic position to produce more and more content that orginally was neither planned for, nor announced. I think it is save to say that for most race games these days it does not work like this, however. Kunos nevertheless could not easily, on-the-fly, replace the old one-light-source-engine they originally thought would be sufficient. And so they are stuck with it.

I do not know all studios' secret business considerations and secret recipes, what I am about is simply this: for them, it all is a business that pays their daily bread and butter, and so the whole show most calculate well in solid, black numbers. And where more work is needed, you surely need to invest more time/money/staff ressources. And this explains probably much of why we have not gotten a game as "over developed" - quoted form the original essay on top - as GTR2 has been back then.

Our game and fun with it - is some other people's serious business life. That explains a lot already.

P.S. One year ago, I reinstalked GTR2 and tried it again, afetr many years of absence. Could not play it anymore, the driving felt - almost "horrible", terribly simplified. The physics have gone a very long way since then, it just does not compare. So its not as if newer race titles have not added some fundamental new stuff or massive improvements in these years. Regarding the driving experience, the differences are really very, very huge.

 

[David Dominguez]

So many sim business experts here, if you see it so clear I have no idea why are you wasting your time here instead of creating your company and make the perfect sim if it's so easy.

 

[David Dominguez]

If today somebody would do a sim with textures and track design from 11 years ago, people would again complain. Heck, many already complain about the looks of Assetto Corsa or Raceroom - two games of which I think they both look still great and absolutely stunning. So if you want to have all the feature completeness you demand and which I also would like, you still would need to add more quality in track and car building. That needs more work, translating into more time or more staff, in both cases: more money. If the profit income should be held, you would need to sell more units. See the problem? You end up with needing to do more - with the same ressources (or even less ressources, if you consider the difference in size between former SimBin and Sector 3, the size of the crew was cut by over 50%). The natural solution is that you start assessing what is more and what is less important. Most people do not use rain racing that much, simply because it is no fun: means it can be frustratingly difficult, and can mess up especially MP racing even more than MP on free servers is being messed up already now. Most drivers in reality prefer sunny daylight racing to nightly storm driving. Because the latter is so much more difficult. - So developers may come to the conclusion that they may want to serve their time/staff/money ressources on something that is higher on the priority list.

A title also can be very successful, and generate income on a scale that is unexpected. Kunos Simulazioni is a good example, the success they had caught them by surprise - and they found themselves in the suitable economic position to produce more and more content that orginally was neither planned for, nor announced. I think it is save to say that for most race games these days it does not work like this, however. Kunos nevertheless could not easily, on-the-fly, replace the old one-light-source-engine they originally thought would be sufficient. And so they are stuck with it.

I do not know all studios' secret business considerations and secret recipes, what I am about is simply this: for them, it all is a business that pays their daily bread and butter, and so the whole show most calculate well in solid, black numbers. And where more work is needed, you surely need to invest more time/money/staff ressources. And this explains probably much of why we have not gotten a game as "over developed" - quoted form the original essay on top - as GTR2 has been back then.

Our game and fun with it - is some other people's serious business life. That explains a lot already.

Some common sense here.

 

[Tim Ling]

The problem is...we're very demanding.

We want top notch physics.
We want photorealistic graphics.
We want ultra-realistic tyres.
We want day/night racing.
We want weather effects.
We want a "real road".
We want, we want, we want.

And we want it now!

I'm hoping that with GTR3 using the Unreal engine, that the devs can then spend more time on the list above.

 

[pafe]

Since we moved houses all my PC CD-Cases are at the loft. In the last year I very often thought to go up there and serach for my GTR2 DVD, but in the end never did. This article made me go.

 

[Alx^]

The grumpy old man in me agrees with your view of the world today
I think a lot may start off with good intentions, but of course they have families to feed and have to live in the real world.

Heh yeah I probably sound a bit grumpy. Tired Yeah I wasn't having a dig at the devs... the devs are surely just normal folk the same as anyone else, going to work to pay the bills etc, and if they are lucky they get a job in a project they love, like racing and cars. It's the higher-ups and moneymen that are calling the shots. Them, in combination with us impatient demanding gamers hehe.
Thought-provoking article, nice one Paul J