SimHQ.com - Motorsports Zone - Review: GTR: FIA GT Racing

This review covers the European release version 1.3.0.0, including the 1.4.0.0 patch which is downloadable from the official site.

Building upon the popularity and obvious quality of SimBin's free add-on mods for EA Sports' Formula 1 2001, and subsequently the GTR 2002 add-on for Formula 1 2002, the spare-time modders decided to go professional and create a commercially successful simulator. Partnering with Henrik Roos, who at that time drove a Viper in the GTR series, SimBin obtained the official license from FIA for simulating the GTR series.

SimBin/10Tacle go to great lengths marketing GTR as a "game"; re the subtitle "FIA GT Racing Game", perhaps to lure casual players into sim racing. Hidden deep within the game they have buried a very fine and very accurate simulator. I fear the simulator has been hidden so well, that to me it feels like GTR goes out of it's way to make excuses for being a sim.

No-one should be in doubt though: GTR is a very fine sim that will occupy a lot of your spare time.

GTR is not without its quirks but the fact remains that since the initial German-territories release in the fall of 2004 it has been constantly and vigorously supported by updates from the developer, even including support for new features like the RaceMore web site and dedicated high-speed servers.

This kind of after-sales support by the developer is very welcome and very appreciated.

One note about the Race More service is that it will eventually be "Pay-to-Play" after the beta period is over. When that will eventually be, no-one knows as of yet.

Box Art and Contents

The game comes in the standard DVD-sized box and as artwork is perceived individually, I'll just mention that in my opinion the best thing about the box-art is the fact that the circuits included in the game are depicted on the front cover, at least on the retail box with the red cover.

The box contains 2 PC-CD's, a credit card sized "Online Racing License", with the online activation-code printed on it. We'll see if there is more to this nice gimmick; if it has some hidden significance yet to be revealed. The printed manual really only covers the absolute minimum and therefore disappoints the sim racer who likes to use a manual for checking out all the subtle features available in any new sim title. There isn't even a section with tips for optimizing frame rates in the manual, or should we call it pamphlet. Such a section would be very welcome indeed, as turning the automatic MoTec monitoring off, will give a big boost to frame rates. It is noted on the pages explaining the keys however, that pressing "3", will toggle MoTec on/off.

15 pages (pages 03 through 18) is all we get in this manual. One page is used for the license agreement, and one is used for listing phone numbers and email addresses to obtain technical support — which is not at all a bad thing, mind you. That leaves 13 pages to cover game modes, game controls, multiplayer guide and descriptions of HUD and the MoTec utility, and that is not nearly enough.

There's a more detailed manual on the CD, but a printed manual that fits in the box would be preferable from having to print out the manual yourself.

Installation

The installation went smoothly without any hiccups, and the Starforce Copy Protection Scheme required a re-boot upon completion of the installation. Incidentally, when updating the box version from 1.3.0.0 to 1.4.0.0, the copy protection kicked-in once again, and most annoyingly required yet another reboot.

Despite reading the section in the manual about multiplayer registration several times, I had major difficulty in figuring out which code to enter where and in what sequence, in order to register for online play. The procedure is very confusing and not at all well documented. Somehow I hit the right combination of keystrokes, but I still don't understand how I finally did get it to work.

First Time Startup

Entering the game for the first time the user is prompted to configure the controls. This is a very nice way of ensuring that the controller is properly configured and set up to the desired controlling device, and it is reminiscent of the way you were greeted in Papyrus titles.

Next on the agenda, the user has to decide whether to run GTR in arcade mode, Semi-simulation mode or Simulation mode. If this choice was stored somewhere, so I wouldn't have to make the selection every time I enter the sim, occasionally even when tabbing back a bit too far, it would have been perfect. As it is, I have to make this same choice over and over and over again, and I can't get over the feeling that GTR bends over itself backwards in order to hide and excuse that it is, in fact a simulation. As it stands, this bit is particularly user-unfriendly and a constant grievance.

Performance

Since installing the sim I have not experienced any problems in terms of CTD's or issues with the hotly debated Starforce protection.

GTR definitely looks best at resolutions at or above 1152 x 864, and if you can use a bit of filtering as well that will help towards making the game look very good. My system meets or exceeds the recommended specs but I do get the feeling that even higher specs would be beneficial. The minimum specs of 1.2MHz and 384MB RAM seem a bit, well, very optimistic to me, unless the minimum spec machine is highly optimized for gaming and you will be content with running only one or two cars. At resolutions lower than 1152 x 864 the image starts to look a bit grainy in places. These observations are made with AA and FSAA disabled.

I must say that I do get some slight stutters from time to time, and I originally I suspected that they were connected with LOD'ing, i.e. the game switches Level of Detail (LOD) on the cars not in view in order to maintain high frame rates. But I get the stuttering even with very few cars on track. Perhaps the files that makes the weather change continuously are responsible for the slight and occasional problem. Setting vsync to on or off does not cure the stutters which are noticeable when driving, and in TV replay view, but not in other views. Another option if you suffer from stuttering is to try this: On some systems at the cost of FPS you can change VBSTRATEGY=1 in your config.ini ( edit with notepad) to read VBSTRATEGY=0. This tip didn't help in my case though. Turning down my resolution from 1280 x 1024 x 32 to 1152 x 864 x 32 seemed to help minimizing the problem.

You'll experience the lowest frame rates when driving out of the pits. I generally see 18 fps, although some tracks seem to be more demanding than others. Driving by the pit area, the fps ususally dips to about 22. On other sections of the tracks the fps is about 40 - 50, and in replays I've seen the pfs go as high as about 60 fps.

Perhaps the LOD'ing is the explanation for the fact that when I watch a replay of a race from the rear bumper of a car, the cars behind suddenly disappear and then reappear again after a short absence. Three cars were on track at Brno and the two Porsches vanished from time to time, as did the Lister. It is supposed to be there, very close behind the Porsches.

The loading times are very time-consuming though. Even though the game has to load track, textures and a lot of cars, and 1GB of RAM would probably speed the process up quite a bit, the recommended specs on the box still say 512MB.

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