Always liked racing games. I was always interested in racing cars, race circuits and the technology and what goes into the driving. Feeling the car on the limit, getting the perfect rotation into the corner and getting the power just right when coming out. Repeat 10000 times and it is still fun. I've been sim racing for a long time so at different times the reasons why I simrace have been little different. Early on I just liked to drive and there was nothing more to it. Tried every new game or sim that came out. Always looking for something better while still trying to enjoy what I had. Liked playing with computers as well.
But early on it was just the pure driving. Not even racing, just hotlapping in the early racing games. Grand prix circuit at my friend's house was my first and even though it was very basic it was still one of the best things available with test drive 2 and with its supercars. Especially the theme music from gp circuit has forever etched into my mind. Mainly played console games at first though because we didn't have a pc home and tried to find good racing games. I think about 90% of all my games were racing games. Played the early gran turismo games. 1 and 2. Loved the car tuning aspects and believable physics. Played some splitscreen games with my friends with both of us using our favourite cars.
Then came other games until I tried gpl. Pretty much everybody says gpl was difficult but for me it was just amazing. The cars can slide and it doesn't always lead into a spin! So I just drove mostly alone hotlapping. Doing some laps, downloading tracks and occasionally racing against the ai. Dreaming about some day learning the 'ring and where the corners go. Learned some basics about how to adjust the setup. Tried all the isi games but did not like how the slip angle was modelled in those games at the time. So I just closet hotlapped gpl. I did download the gpl track editor at one point and tried to make my own circuit but never really got into it. I think I have the data still somewhere on my hd for it.
Then live for speed s2 was released. I was not a fan of S1 but S2 was a major step in the physics which has always been important for me. S2 also introduced me to online racing. Had lots of fun racing against people. A some point I started to make my own skins which is still fun. Back in the day it was just jpeg files. Now it takes multiple dds files to create what I want but skinning is still great fun. I did participate in some lfs skinning competitions and I did well I think. Also had my first league experience. It was fun although I still to t his day prefer pickup racing more with good fair racers. I don't like timetables and scheduling my racing.
Then nkpro came out... kinda. Did not like the early version so much but the 1.1 and onwards it was just amazing. Online was kinda silent but when you had people on the server it was great fun. Good physics even though the game clearly had issues. Tried some sound editing when the daytona coupe style car came out. Released my own sound mod for it. Iirc it was wav files from one of the historix cars (I asked and was given permission) and my own ini files
Played some rf1 because niels was doing his magic and he really got a lot out of the engine. Previously I had had kinda low opinion about all isi engined sims but niels proved that the physics engine is great if you use good data. Downloaded historix mod and loved fell in love with historic race cars. Earlier it was all about gt cars. But there really isn't anything better than lots of power, big slicks with mediocre grip and primitive aerodynamics. Then bobstrackbuilder came out and I made and released my own fictional track for rf1 (horsma raceway). I had always dreamed of making my own track but did not want to learn 3d modelling so I was kinda stuck until btb came out. Loved that software, worth every penny.
Tried some console racing as well. At this point though it was all about physics and multiplayer for me. Forza had kinda laggy steering and the online was pure wreckfest. I did not really care much about the career mode even though forza's was imho 100 better than gt5's. But gt5 online was great fun and I had lots of good races. I still mainly played pc sims but it was nice to be able to drive on laser scanned nordschleife and put effort into finally learning that track and try beating real life lap records.
Played some iracing too but I kind quickly noticed scheduled racing is not my thing. I want to join to a server and just race for couple of hours doing multiple races instead of hope there is one scdule race happening that I can do within the free time I have.
Then came assetto corsa. It was great racing game and one day I decided I want to try this modding thing. But knowing that trying to find an interesting car and making physics for it is meaningless unless you find someone to make a model for you. But modellers are rare and generally want to choose their own models. So why not learn modelling I thought. Can't be that hard. Downloaded blender and tried to learn by doing. Failed horribly. Then went to youtube and watched some tutorials and suddenly it looked really easy. It did not take that much time to get basic cube like car into ac and it all kinda went out of control from there
. And it is not difficult although it helps if you already know how to make textures. Got my mod released with help from others. Modding for ac is easy because there are great tools from the devs and good amount of documentation. The community was also very active and extremely helpful. Then kunos decided to kill it so I took my stuff and moved to rf2.
Huge change. Whereas the physics files in ac are easy to understand and really well documented the rf2 files are the total opposite. The documentation is just plain horrible. In ac it took just hours to get my first model from blender to ac without knowing really anything at all about the whole process and make it drivable.. it took a week or more in rf2 just to export the car that kinda looked like a car even when I knew what I was doing and had good help and lots of stuff ready to go.
Nowadays I don't really drive much anymore. I don't even remember the last time I raced online. Mostly I do modelling or texturing and that's it. It is great way to spend time and there is always more to learn. Sometimes you get little burned out with sim racing and go do other things and for me modelling and texturing is the thing I mostly enjoy doing nowadays. It is kinda crazy I nowadays enjoy modelling cars for sims at hobbyist level when for a long time I thought I could never do it.
