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

SimBin have released a free add-on called "King of Ovals" and as the title implies, you get three ovals with this add-on. The ovals are superspeedways or speedways with fantasy names.

Strictly speaking, running FIA GTR race cars on ovals is not realistic, but who's against a bit of fun? Now we have entered the fantasy or fun department, license-fees asides, I'd love to be able to run with these cars on tracks such as Nordschleife and Le Mans. Will we ever see official SimBin versions of these tracks for GTR or future SimBin sims? Until such a day might arrive, those of us who have such cravings will have to look for such tracks in the growing number of user-made, unofficial add-ons.

These add-ons enhance the longevity and the replayability, and although not all the track add-ons support the LiveTrack feature, driving Steve Life's Imola with its gorgeous graphics, or the almost as equally good-looking "Mother" version of the Nordschleife, adds a dimension to GTR that personally I find very endearing, if not entirely accurate in terms of where the FIA GTR cars actually race. Part of a fun simulation to me is to play "what-if" and to be able to do things that would not be possible in real life.

Here are some sites for you to visit, and the list is by no means complete or objective:

Le Mans Sarthe, Bugatti, Bathurst and other very good tracks here.
Imola, and hopefully more to come here.
The Mother of all tracks; The Nordschleife here.
And the 24 hour version of Nordchliefe here.
Check out sites like m4driving for more tracks and add-ons. And remember to check the motorsport newspage on this site as well!

Competition?

Not so long ago the racing sim community was in a depression because it seemed like all the best simulations had already been released. Papyrus was left to wither until finally loosing the NASCAR license to EA. EA lost the F1 license to Sony. Geoff Crammond's GP4 looks very likely to be the last installment of that series, and apart from mods for the existing simulations, Live for Speed and NetKar, there wasn't much to cheer about.

The mods for F1 Challenge on paper seem to be serious competition for GTR and indeed these mods are extremely well done and of increasingly professional quality. To mention but a few of them. We have Sports Car Challenge, Virtua_LM Prototype-C, ETCC Evolution and newcomer WSGT. Some of these mods include many of the cars featured in GTR, so why should you pay $30 or more for a copy of GTR? Well, it's ultimately your choice but apart from voting with your wallet and helping SimBin stay in the market and raising the profile of racing simulations, with GTR you get an authentic and well-researched simulator. With access to the FIA GTR teams, tracks and real telemetry data you would be hard pressed to ask for more in terms of transferring a real experience to a simulator that can run on your desktop-PC. Add to that features like Livetrack which builds up the grip on the track as more rubber is laid, and great support of TrackIR, there is quite a bit more in the GTR-package than just cars.

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