Grand Prix Legends (nicknamed
GPL) is a
computer racing simulator developed by
Papyrus Design Group and published in
1998 by
Sierra Entertainment.
It simulates the
1967 Formula
One season and is considered by many people who play with it
one of the most realistic
racing games
ever released.
The real F1 of 1967
The
1967 season is widely
viewed as a turning point in Formula One, which was probably the
reason it was chosen by the developers of
GPL. The cars
were powerful again after the rules changes of 1966 but had no
aerodynamic wings as yet. They were still using only treaded tyres,
which made them very delicate to drive. It was also the last full
season before commercial sponsors' liveries replaced the teams'
traditional
national racing
colours in 1968.
Despite fatal crashes, safety was not felt to be a particularly
important issue in the mid-1960s, as it was widely believed that
everything that could be reasonably done to prevent serious injury
had already been done.
Apart from Jackie
Stewart's shaping experience of being soaked in fuel while
being trapped in a BRM wreck at Spa
1966, it was the shocking fiery crash of Lorenzo Bandini at the Monaco chicane in 1967 and, in particular, the hugely
talented Jim Clark's death
at Hockenheim in a F2 race in 1968 that
got Formula One as a whole to start thinking on the topic of safety
more seriously. As one result of that, the 1969 race at
Spa and the 1970 race at Nürburgring
did not take place due to the drivers boycotting
the sites as safety upgrades were not installed as demanded.
A simulation based on these seasons would lack these great
tracks.
1998 simulation of 1967 cars
The game, developed under the direction of
David Kaemmer and Randy Cassidy, was published
in 1998 by the Papyrus division of
Sierra Entertainment. To this day it
maintains a reputation as a very realistic race car simulator. Its
strong points are fairly accurate car physics (how the car responds
and feels on the track), reasonably attractive graphics, impressive
engine sound effects, good online racing and solid Internet support
from its user community. The weak points are the game's difficulty
as the cars are quite difficult to drive well (although many fans
consider this to be a virtue, as Formula One cars of that era were
difficult to drive compared to modern high-downforce cars), and
some minor physics flaws, such as primitive aerodynamic modelling
(for drag etc.), and a simplified tire model that completely omits
tire wear, although, in 1967, racing tires on F1 cars would not
wear out during a race and might regularly be used for more than
one event.
The cars
Cooper T81
The cars available include the
Lotus 49,
the
Ferrari 312, the
Eagle-Weslake T1G, the
Brabham BT24 and the
H 16 powered
BRM P115
(which though striking was not a great success; indeed, Jackie
Stewart called it the worst car he drove in his entire career).
There are also two fantasy cars to choose from, the Murasama and
the Coventry — thinly disguised versions of the
Honda RA300 and the
Cooper
T81B, with licensing issues precluding these particular marques
from being included in the game. There are third party patches
available to put the Cooper and Honda names back in the game. Some
cars appeared only late in the season, especially the Lotus 49
which did not take part in Kyalami and Monaco. For all the cars,
there are significant graphic updates available, most notably from
the
GPLEA (GPL
Editors Association), which make the cars look far more
realistic and detailed. Most of these were included in the GPL 2004
Demo but there have been subsequent upgrades.
The drivers
The player races against the top drivers of 1967 including
Jack Brabham,
Denny
Hulme,
Jim Clark,
Dan Gurney,
John
Surtees,
Pedro
Rodríguez, and
Lorenzo Bandini.
Jackie Stewart was not included due
to licensing issues.
Unlike the real 1967 season the make-up of the teams remains stable
throughout the year. The driver list is not entirely accurate,
since some of the computer-controlled drivers appeared only rarely
in real life. For instance, the Frenchman
Jean-Pierre Beltoise is driving a BRM
in the game, although in fact he drove a
Formula 2 Matra (at that time
it was not unknown to see an F2 machine entered in an F1 Grand
Prix) on three occasions in 1967, and never drove a BRM before
1972. The presence of the Belgian
Jacky
Ickx who had a minor role in 1967 (driving only at the
Nürburgring — also in an F2 car — and at Monza) is also noteworthy
in this regard. There are third party patches available to change
the driver list.
The tracks
Honda RA300
are 11 vintage 1967 tracks included with the simulator.
These
include the high speed Monza
circuit in Italy, the roller-coaster-like Mosport
track in
Canada, the tight streets of Monaco
, and the
original 14 mile long Nürburgring Nordschleife in Germany.
All but one of the races in the game are held on the tracks used
for the real 1967 season.
The French Grand Prix is raced at Rouen-Les-Essarts
in GPL, even though the actual Grand Prix that year
was held at the Le
Mans
Bugatti
track. This change from reality met little opposition from
players: while the Rouen track, site of the 1968 French GP, passes
through beautiful landscapes and is pretty interesting for the
driver, the Bugatti track and its surrounding landscape is
generally considered somewhat lacking in interest by comparison. In
fact, the Bugatti circuit proved unpopular with the drivers at that
time, Jack Brabham calling it a "Mickey Mouse" track.
Also, licensing issues were probably a factor. Eventually, a
version of the Bugatti Circuit was released by the community. (
The Alternative GPL Track Database)
Gameplay
David Kaemmer said that "Driving a
1967 GP car is more difficult than driving just about anything
else, and the simulation is more difficult than driving a real
car... many people think that it feels like driving on ice."
In some ways GPL is more a virtual sport than a game. The essence
of GPL is the talent required to drive these classic cars around
the challenging circuits of the 1967 era. As in learning to play a
fine musical instrument, the player must have the patience and the
light, smooth touch to get the most from these machines.
Much of the difficulty in driving the
GPL machines is due
to the accuracy of the physics model, which is limited to dry
conditions. Wet races are not missed, though, as the car handling
is somewhat slippery anyway. 1967 Grand Prix F1 cars made a large
amount of power i.e. over 350 hp (260 kW), had very
little mass i.e. about 500 kg (1100 lb), and rode on
hard, skinny, 'pre-radial' tires, with no downforce of any kind.
All of these factors contributed to what in reality was one of the
more dangerous Formula 1 seasons the series would know. Virtual
racers can still get away with pushing the reset button,
affectionately known as "Shift-R".
Reputation
While Grand Prix Legends provided the most realistic (and hence,
difficult) simulation of automotive physics in a PC game at its
launch, the reputation of "difficult to drive" was exacerbated by a
number of decisions made both for the demo and the launch of
version 1.0.
The demo
version gave users a taster of the Brabham
F1 car at the Watkins Glen
circuit. Unfortunately, the car was set up
with approximately one degree of positive
camber angle whereas an actual car of that era
would have run one or more degrees of negative camber. Negative
camber proportionally increases the lateral grip produced by the
outside
tire when cornering. Positive camber
proportionally reduces the amount of grip available from the
outside tire when cornering. This resulted in a car whose cornering
grip was markedly less than it should have been and whose grip
decreased more sharply than expected when the car turned a corner,
greatly increasing the skill required to drive the car
quickly.
When version 1.0 of the game was launched, it allowed users the
option to drive "Novice Trainer", "Advanced Trainer" or fully
fledged F1 cars. The Novice Trainer and Advanced Trainer cars
approximated
F3 and
F2 regulations in that they had reduced power
and in the case of the Novice Trainer, fewer gears. These trainers
were more forgiving to drive, but the game only allowed the cars to
be used for practice sessions. It was only possible to race against
the computer using the F1 cars, which meant that a player's first
experience of competition was in an F1 car at F1 speeds with F1
opponents.
A further complication affected users with lower powered PCs.
Version 1.0 of
Grand Prix Legends allowed users to reduce
the number of computer opponents if their PCs were unable to render
a full grid of cars at a reasonable frame rate. Unfortunately,
reducing the field was achieved by removing cars from the back of
the grid starting with the slowest, leaving a reduced grid
containing only the fastest drivers.
Lotus 49
Perhaps the most damaging aspect to the game's reputation was that
of
ride height.
Grand Prix cars from 1967 typically ran 5 to 6 inches of
ground clearance, unlike the later
ground
effect cars that were designed to have the chassis as close to
the ground as possible. Version 1.0 of Grand Prix Legends, allowed
its cars to be set up with a ground clearance of only one
inch.
Lowering the ride height lowers the
center of gravity of the car which helps
improve cornering ability by reducing the
roll moment of the chassis. It also has the side
effect of reducing the amount of suspension travel available.
When the suspension in a car is fully compressed, it reaches the
bump stops, small blocks of rubber that catch the suspension arms
at the end of their range of movement. This is often referred to as
"bottoming out". Once a car's suspension reaches the bump stops,
its effective spring rate increases sharply as the bump stops are
effectively very hard springs. Increasing the spring rate at one
wheel transfers weight onto this wheel and away from the other
wheels, causing the car to
understeer if
it is one of the front wheels or
oversteer
if it is one of the rear wheels. The sudden onset of
understeer or
oversteer
can result in loss of control if the driver does not react quickly
enough to the change in handling.
The default setups in Grand Prix Legends combined
uncharacteristically low ride heights with short bump stops which
resulted in cars whose suspension frequently "bottomed out" and
oscillated abruptly between the expected spring rates and much
higher bump stop spring rates. This caused the cars to behave
erratically over kerbs, bumps and any significant application of
acceleration or braking, with only the highly skilled able to fully
exploit these "low rider" or "go-kart" setups.
The problem was further complicated by the lack of audible feedback
when the cars hit the bump stops, leaving many drivers scratching
their heads at the erratic handling of the early setups.
Papyrus were aware that there would be difficulties for the novice
even before the simulator was released. On the very first page of
the manual, it cautions, "The first time you go out on the track,
you WILL spin and crash. This is because, the first time they play
Grand Prix Legends, EVERYBODY spins and crashes." Rumor among
simulator racing enthusiasts was that when
Jackie Stewart had an opportunity to drive
the simulator in the late stages of development, he claimed that it
was harder to drive than the actual 1967 Formula One cars.
Papyrus recognised the ride-height problem and the first patch
(version 1.1) prevented setups from being lower than
2.5 inches. However, both the default setups and the majority
of third-party setups were still designed with the theory used on
modern, high-
downforce race cars, with the
car as low as possible with an extremely stiff suspension to
prevent the car from bottoming out at speed (due to increased
aerodynamic downforce not present on 1967 era cars).
Increasing the ride height back up to 1967 levels transformed the
handling of the cars and demonstrated the power and sophistication
of Grand Prix Legends, but the reputation of "overly difficult
handling" and "no grip" was already established. However, for those
who were willing to try the more realistic setups, it became
obvious that, while total grip levels were still realistically low,
the cars were now extremely driveable.
Hardware requirements
When it was launched, GPL required what was for the time quite
high-end hardware. While a software renderer is available, for
smooth gameplay a 3D card was all but essential, and
GPL
supports only two types:
3dfx and Rendition
Verité.
GPL's box states that the minimum CPU required
with hardware acceleration is a
Pentium 90,
and without it a Pentium 166, but in reality both these figures are
well short of what is needed for a satisfactory
frame rate.
Commercial success
While acclaimed by the press in 1998 as the most realistic racing
simulator ever,
GPL did not sell very well, especially in
the US where a Formula One-based racing game holds less appeal than
it does in the rest of the world. Also, the cars were difficult to
drive, while the game's hardware requirements meant that it did not
run well on many computers at the time of its release.
GPL's lack of inbuilt support for 3D accelerator cards
other than those produced by 3dfx and Rendition contributed to a
decrease in sales when those cards became obsolete, since at the
time there was no
Direct3D support.
As of 2004 total sales were around 200,000 units. Many of these
sales came quite late in the game's life, when increase in CPU
power made the game run more smoothly, and after Papyrus had
released patches to allow
GPL to work with modern graphics
accelerators. The addition of Force Feedback support also helped.
The
release of the game on budget ranges, the inclusion of a demo CD
with the Nürburgring in the track's official 1999 season magazine as
well as its giveaway in Germany in a 2001 issue of the magazine
PC Action, also encouraged newcomers to
GPL.
Patches
An out-of-the-box copy of GPL lacks several features that one might
expect from a modern driving simulation, and so most people add as
a matter of course several patches: the official version 1.2 patch
that adds force feedback; a second patch to add
Direct3D and/or
OpenGL
support; and a third patch that gets around a problem that prevents
the original game from working on computers with CPUs faster than
1.4 GHz. It was considered best to get the most recent
"all-in-one v2" patch from
SimRacing Mirror Zone to get this sim working
at its best but the newly formed
Grand Prix Legends Preservation Society has come out
with a new installer which not only installs GPL for the user,
upgrading all the tracks and cars that come with GPL to the latest
specification, but also helps with custom programs that are
invaluable to the user. There is an original demo that was
succeeded by the newer
Grand Prix Legends 2004 Demo which has all the
required patches included plus upgrades to the cars and track (as
of 2004) that are included within the original one.
In later years, it became possible to have regularly-patched
GPL running not only on Windows, but also on competing
operating systems such als
Linux and
Mac OS X due to improvements in API-emulating
programs such as
Wine and Cider.
Some configuration modifications have to be made before the
program, despite its apparent lack of 'dirty programming', will
run, however.
Community
The backbone of this game is its strong community. There are
updates and addons for all tracks, cars, menus, AI, and drivers.
There are now more than 500 tracks made by the game's fans, which
are listed at the
Alternative GPL Track Database. On-line races are
organised using
Virtual Racers' Online Connection. Also available now
is a new online tool called iGOR which comes with
GEM+ 2 (a
necessary tool for all the new mods.) Many other tools are
available, including those allowing
telemetry-like analysis and various degrees of
customisation. These tools are often used for verification of
laptimes for inclusion on the
GPLRank
laptime ranking system.
Testimony to this strong community support, are the extensive
graphical updates of the original Monaco track, where numerous
photos of the actual GP at the time were collected from the private
collections of many people within the community. This to make sure
that all the buildings, billboard, bridges and tunnels were
historically correct. The project got the name Monaco Rocks and it
has been in the works for years, over which period it constantly
put out updates of the track.
Another noteworthy feature is the track Montjuich Park. As with the
Monaco Rocks project, numerous historical photo's and video's were
used to create the most historically correct track possible. With
the help of some people within the GPL community, who apperently
had connections with Spanish broadcasting companies, the track
(along with the 69 mod) served as a representitive retrospective
view of the former Spanish GP track during the broadcast of the
Spanish GP 2007, with Sir Jackie Stewart commenting on a full
on-board lap.
GPL Trackmakers already knew that the original game had a 25
kilometre limit when it came to track length. Modders have now
tackled this limitation and patches are being released which solve
this problem. In 2009, 11 years after Grand Prix Legends originally
came out, and with the length problem out of the way, the community
has almost finished its most ambitious project up to now: the
realization of the full 72 km long
Targa Florio
track.
Mods
1965 F1 Mod
In the spring of 2004 the first community made mod for GPL was
released (now in version 2). Since the game was
proprietary software, and there were no
official tools or
SDKs
available from Papyrus, almost everything had to be worked out from
scratch, the whole process taking about four years. The mod
represents the
1965 Formula One
season, the last one where Formula 1 used relatively tiny
1500cc engines. It contains all the cars and drivers and a changed
physics engine, which is considered at least as realistic as the
original. Due to the smaller engines the cars in this mod are
generally considered to be more easy-handling than the 1967 3-litre
cars, especially for beginning drivers. In 2004 the 65 Mod won the
'Best Mod' award at Blackhole Motorsports
[11109], an international website aimed at 'hardcore'
simracers.
Download and Instructions
There is a new patch for the 65 mod that allows for better racing,
it can be found
HERE
ThunderCars Mod
Subsequent mods have been somewhat easier to make (since most of
the hard work was done for the 1965 mod). In March 2005, the
ThunderCars mod was released, which simulates a fictional
spec racing series. The cars are very loosely
based on early 1970s
IndyCar, only with 426 cid
(7.0 litre)
big-block V8
engines making 625 hp. The cars are quite fast (with some
tracks allowing speeds well in excess of 235 mph), but the big
block engine and extra fuel needed to run it during a race make the
car less nimble than the F1 cars, while increasing braking
distances. Offsetting this somewhat is the addition of slick tires.
On June 23, 2006 Thundercars Part2 was released, featuring
adjustable wing physics similar to those in the 1969 mod.
ThunderCars announcement and download ThunderCars Part2 release
1969 F1 Mod
The next mod released was one based on the
1969 Formula One season. This mod
adds aerodynamic downforce to the physics model, a feature not
included in the original physics model. As of the initial release,
the wings were only adjustable outside the game in the GEM+ utility
(also used to reconfigure GPL for the various mods), while in-game
wing settings were later realised in the Part 2 release. Also,
there are three carsets: one representing the pre-
Monaco, high-wing configuration, one
representing the post-Monaco, low wing configuration, and one
without wings as used at Monaco (due to wings being temporarily
banned because of major accidents at
Montjuïc Park and the Thursday
practice session at Monaco). The aero physics will be the same in
any case, including removal of the wings for speed at the cost of
downforce. The 1969 Mod was released on December 13, 2005 with the
high-wing car models. Part 2, which features the low-wing car
models, in-game adjustable downforce, a revised downforce model
that fixes an issue with the front wing, and several other tweaks
and enhancements, was released on May 5, 2006. The final release
was brought out on April 8, 2007. The major additions and
enhancements from the previous two releases include the wingless
car models, a more realistic
slipstreaming effect, and many "mod
specific" enhancements, meaning that the 1969 Mod can have its own
setup separate from the original game and other mods, all the way
down to different track graphics.
1969 Mod
homepage
Night Mod
This is another fictional mod that was released on April 2, 2006.
It includes the original cars and ’65 Mod cars but the difference
is that these have lights to be able to drive the
Night Tracks. Until 2008 there had never been
any Grand Prix races run in the dark but that doesn’t stop this
unusual mod from being quite pleasurable.
Night
Mod announcement and info/pictures --
Download
and installation guide
1966 F1 Mod
This mod was formally announced on August 8, 2006. Naturally, the
mod simulates the
1966 F1
season, with the cars themselves being based on the late season
grid to allow as many cars as possible to be nearer the three litre
engine formula that the 1966 rules allowed, as opposed to the two
litre engines that some teams ran early in the season. The teams
are the same teams from 1967, but the cars are generally lower
powered (5-10%, excluding the
Eagle, which
had to use a 2.7 litre
Climax
4-cylinder due to the
Weslake engine not being ready), and generally
somewhat heavier than their 1967 counterparts. The mod includes all
the physics developments from the previous 65 and 69 mods (though
even further refined), including the downforce model (which winds
up being slight lift on these non-winged cars), more realistic tyre
characteristics and the
slipstreaming enhancements. Another new
feature with this mod is that car choice has been expanded from 7
to 16 (out of a possible 19) and more tracks than 64 per season can
be installed. To increase the realism of 60's engine
characteristics, most run irregularly at low revs. The 66 Mod was
released on December 26, 2007.
1966 Mod
homepage
There is a new patch for the 66 mod that allows for better racing,
it can be found
HERE
Future Mods
Future
mods, planned or in progress if in most cases graphic conversion
tools work, include a Rallye mod, 1935,
1937, 1941, 1951 and 1955 Grand
Prix mods, 1964 and 1967 World Sportscar Championship
mods, a Lotus Cortina mod, a Caterham
mod, and at least a 1966 and 1971 CanAm mod.Also, a mod for 1967
F2 and (to a lesser extent)
F3 is in the works. Physics settings in the
original package allowed a very rough simulation of 1967 F2 and F3,
but the appearance of the cars was unchanged and the physics were
less accurate than their F1 counterpart. The mod is expected to
provide
F2 car-shapes, physics and
cockpits.
Later games
In 2001, a revised version of the
GPL engine was used for
NASCAR Racing 4. This game was
a big hit in the United States, although as usual with
NASCAR games, much less so in Europe. The final
incarnation of the
GPL engine can be found in
NASCAR Racing 2003 Season which
was considered at the time to be the benchmark of motorsport
simulation excellence, particularly with respect to the tire model.
More recently, the online subscription-based simulation
iRacing, also designed by Kaemmer and built on the
NASCAR Racing 2003 Season code base.
See also
References
External links
Wikis
Quiz
Map
Search
