SimHQ.com - Motorsports Zone - Interview: Unification Theory: Part Two An Interview with CasH from F1RST3

CasH (continued): We run Leagues 365 days per year. As we think the racers themselves know what they want, we always poll what Leagues they want to run. Of course F1 will always be there, in sequence with the real guys. But even in Winter we continue with tracks (again) voted for by the competitors. The nice part about the Leagues is that they are fully automated. So in short the driver does his Qualify and Race and the rest is automatically put up in the rankings and available right after the session in Real Time.

Another plus is that all races are done in ones own Time zone, so no matter where you live, you’ll always compete against others on a time that suits your Time zone best.

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In our opinion the best part even is the human input and support for our community. Unlike other Leagues where you race, and see your results, we have a system of devoted Marshals and League Administrators daily available for all aspects in Online League Racing. In fact we could not run all without their hard work! This works two ways: drivers can dispute things happening during races, but also ask for help or explanation during or before race weeks.

That way the sense of a friendly, helpful community is being strengthened. It remains ‘human’ and therefore simply a fun place to be. Marshals and Admins can easily be recognized in our client by the icon beside their names, so if any help needed, just ask them and they will help you going.

After many years of experience running Online League Communities, we also fine tuned the rules with which our races and Leagues are run. Unlike real life, the Marshals and Admins can’t be in every race LIVE, therefore we developed rules that can always be verified afterwards, so all know before racing what they are up to and what is expected from them. This also provides clean and sportive racing.

As example I like to add that even some successful Real Life GT3 drivers, like Sean Edwards (yes, the son of the famous Guy Edwards) run in our Leagues, which in our opinion ‘proves’ that our system is at least as real drivers want it to be.
I also have to mention our cooperation with Ralph Hummerich, who even built in our client in their latest RH-MOD, which shows us we are on the right track. Needless to say we are proud of it!

Lots and lots more can be told, but the best way of course is to find out yourselves ;)

The history of the F1RST3 Client: F1RST3 consists of an online application and a website which are merged together as a total solution for your online racing games. Games like Rfactor and F1 Challenge 99-02 are very popular, especially on the modder platform. Back in the days when the F1 2002 (and later the F1 Challenge) platform was king of the hill, the only solution to play online was via GameSpy. GameSpy was a disaster for many people, because of the difficulty to find the right room (used mod, driving aids...) that you wanted to play in, and most important the mismatches that flooded the rooms which was known or described as cheating in most cases. F1RST-2 was released at that time with F1 2002 support and was the solutions to all these problems. These days, games like rFactor and GTR now list those items that GameSpy was missing. However, F1RST-2 managed to offer that already for F1 2002. Friends could meet up, there was integrated cheat protection so drivers could trust each other, and it was easy to host and join rooms as you were able to select or see what options the room was running. F1RST-2 was upgraded with a automatic update system and throughout the years it was improved, developed further and updated with all new mods, tracks and alike that were released. Many people used F1RST-2 as it was known as THE online solution for F1 Challenge. Then in 2005 Rfactor came in to play to take over where F1 challenge left, as the new ’platform for modders’. This also became the new platform for support in F1RST-2 and we changed the name to F1RST3, like it is known these days.

F1RST3 supports the rFactor platform with the quality that we developed and maintained for F1 Challenge for all these years. This includes support for all mods & tracks and automated leagues for the most popular mods. Our current goal is to go one step further in improving & organizing the services we already offer, the new and the coming ones which are of course a surprise.

Jens: What is the background of the people behind F1RST3, and why do you feel what you do is important ?

CasH: Currently the ’core’ team consists of ""killing_attack"", ""Tygernoot"" and "CasH". "killing_attack" and "Tygernoot" are the developers and maintenance team of F1RST3 while CasH is fulfilling the job over the community, leagues, support & more. "killing_attack" has his own Internet solutions business. Programming and designing on platform, web and everything the job brings along keep the man busy. "Tygernoot" is a computer science student at Brussels’ University, who spends most time on programming the client. He’s been active in the online racing community for many years and feels happy to finally do something in return. Plus, the programming gives him a lot of useful experience.

CasH works for the Dutch Central Bureau of Statistics. He runs a Contact Center that does technical support for companies using their software. He has been running Online Leagues for many years.

Looks like the hobby follows the job, or the other way round.

F1RST3 is there for the users to enjoy their hobby. We like to bring them joy and because of the movement in the racesim community our job is never done. We are there to keep f1rst3 running and improve it for the people.

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