THE OLD BREED

Grand Prix Legends: 1967 Brabham at Kyalami

F1 Challenge: F1 1999 at Spa

Grand Prix Legends
Grand Prix Legends is considered to be one of, if not the, hardest racing sims ever. It's this that makes it so legendary. GPL was released in 1998 by Papyrus, and simulated the 1967 Formula One season. These 60s F1 cars were very difficult to drive, and that comes across in the simulator. They didn't have wings or spoilers, so the downforce was entirely mechanical, the cars would sometimes have to almost drift around corners. They were fast, agile, and incredibly dangerous.

There is a rumor that when Sir Jackie Stewart tried GPL, he said that it was more difficult than driving the actual cars. The manual itself states that "You will spin and crash because everyone who tries the simulation spins and crashes the first time out. And the second time out. And the third."

Over the years, the GPL community has been going strong, releasing hundreds of addon tracks, and several new series to the game. These include the '65, '66 and '69 F1 seasons, 1967 Formula Two season, 1967 World Sportscar Championship, and the 1971 CanAm season.

F1 Challenge: 1999 - 2002
F1C was released in 2003, and was Image Space Incorporated's final F1 game, it combined their previous four games (1999, 2000, 2001 and 2002) into a single game, and fixed up a few inaccuracies with the cars and tracks. It is still considered to be a fantastic simulator, and one of the best F1 sims out there. It also included dynamic weather, which added another level of challenge to these already fearsome beasts.

Like GPL, F1C has a large modding community, for instance, the Virtua Le Mans team released Prototype C, a mod containing hundreds of late 80s and early 90s Group Cs, ranging from Le Mans to the IMSA GTP series. F1C VB is a mod that has been in development for years, and contains literally every single year of F1, from 1950 through 2015.

rFactor

rFactor: 1970s Le Mans prototypes at Le Mans 1977

In 2005, ISI released their next game, based on a modified version of the engine that powered F1C. This was called rFactor. This game is notable for being possibly the most modded racing sim in existence.

Although the base game content is rather lacking, the mods range from almost any year of F1, through to endurance racing like Le Mans, touring cars from the BTCC and WTCC, and classic touring cars.

While the game didn't have a rain system like F1C, it did have (and was one of the first sims to have) a day-night cycle. This was a huge development, and added a lot of replayablilty to the game, finally people could actually simulate the 24 Hours of Le Mans in real time.

GT Legends
GT Legends was released the same year as rFactor, by a development team made up of former modders, SimBin. They licensed the rFactor engine from ISI, and got licenses for a collection of classic cars, including touring cars and GT cars from the 60s and 70s. These ranged from Ford Capri's, to a Ford GT40 MK.I. It also featured a selection of modern tracks, rather than tracks from that era like GPL did.

GT Legends: 60s and 70s GT cars at Spa

As with rFactor, there were plenty of mods, although many more tracks than cars. It was annoying to put new cars into the game, as the user himself would have to manually edit a couple of files, so the modding never took off in the way that rFactor's did. Like rFactor, it also included a day-night cycle. It also included a simple career mode, the player goes through a series of championships and earns money to buy cars, the final races were several multi-hour endurance events.

GTR 2

GTR 2 was released in 2006, as SimBin's next game. It was the sequel to GTR 1, a game which is not mentioned in this blog because all of it's content was released in GTR 2 anyway, making the game obsolete. The game contained the 2003 and 2004 FIA GT Championships, including the 24 Hours of Spa for both of those years. As with GT Legends, it was created on ISI's rFactor engine.

GTR 2: GTs at Dubai

The game is notable for including not only a day-night cycle, but also weather simulation. It was by far the best way to simulate a long endurance race, and still is today. Along with the weather and day-night cycle, it also included the ability to save mid-race, and even swap drivers, letting the AI take over for a stint (until they came in to pit next).

Like GTL and rFactor, it contained mods, although it never got up to the point of rFactor's popularity. There were still several good mods, however, the Super GT mod contained the 2005 through 2012 Japanese Super GT500 cars, and the ALMS 2007 - 2010 mod included the American Le Mans Series, adding more endurance racing. Finally, there is the Grid Mod, this mod is more like a community, and is a massive group-effort to create all of the cars of various endurance championships and races, including the 24 Hours of Le Mans, Le Mans Series, ALMS, World Endurance Championship, and a couple more.

Race 07
In 2007, SimBin released their next game, Race 07. This game used the same engine, and had a license for the 2006 and 2007 World Touring Car Championship, along with a selection of additional content, including a couple of late 80s touring cars, Minis, and a few open-wheelers.

Race 07: Touring cars at Zolder

It contained a weather system, but did not contain a day-night cycle, which is considered to be one of the bad points of the game. It also was one of the first sims to have DLC, expansions which added additional content to the game, including a GT expansion, retro cars, and a few more years of WTCC. Along with this, it contained mod support, although modding never really took off as much as GTR 2 or rFactor.

Disclaimer: All screenshots in this post were taken by me.