Thirty Years of Sim Racing
......and I'm still not very good!
This month marks the 50th anniversary of the start of my passion for motorsports, as well as the 30th anniversary of the start of my racing sim "hobby"/addiction.
During the month of May in 1970, my father took me to a couple of the Indy 500 practice sessions so that I could see my favorite car/driver, the #2 Johnny Lightning Special driven by Al Unser. I remember "feeling" the sound and speed of the cars as they flashed passed and have been into on all types of racing ever since. For 50 years, every Memorial Day weekend I have always either listened to, watched, or attended the Indy 500.
In May of 1990, I was graduating from the University of Georgia with a degree in Management Information Systems and about to start my first job as a dBASE programmer. I had been into computer gaming since high school and had just purchased Electronic Arts/Papyrus Indianapolis 500: The Simulation by David Kaemmer (now of iRacing fame). While it seems simple and crude now, I will never forget how blown away I was the first time coming down the front stretch at Indy, 3 wide as the green flag flew. I thought, this is so cool to finally get to experience what it is like to race the Indy 500. I was hooked and blew several of my first paychecks purchasing a Roland LAPC-I soundcard and a joystick card/joystick so that I could race the game with the best sound possible, and not having to race with a keyboard. The game was so hard that I never came close to completing the 500 mile race without a crash or mechanical failure. The best I think I ever did was winning a 30 lap option where you were allowed to have damage off. Thirty years later and countless $$$ and hours spent on PC upgrades, graphic cards, steering wheels, VR headsets, etc., I still have yet to win or even complete a virtual Indy 500 mile race!
Since there is no real life Indy 500 today, I am attempting to at least complete the iRacing, C Class, Fixed Setup, 60 lap race using a beautiful 1990 Arie Luyendyk Dominoes livery by by Douglas Ellison as tribute to his first 500 win 30 years ago.
I hope everyone has a great Memorial Day Weekend!
Indianapolis 500: The Simulation Overview by Tim Wheatley of RaceSim Central
https://racesimcentral.net/indianapolis ... imulation/
This is the title that finally tore a rift between racing game and racing simulation, with magazine reviewers suggesting that anyone who couldn’t handle it stick to less realistic software. While there had been other software which attempted to give a realistic gameplay experience, with Indy 500 the player found themselves locked to first-person (cockpit view) and forced to adjust the standard car setup in order to compete for wins.
The game also forced players to qualify with damage on, meaning that while a slight brush with the wall could be ignored, any significant impact resulted in a disabled car. Players had to complete the four-lap qualifying session at near-perfect levels in order to qualify with an average speed high enough for the front row. To this day it is still one of the few situations in any software where a player can feel genuine pressure to perform. Skipped qualifying always resulted in a 33rd-place starting position.
Players had the option to run a 10-lap sprint race without damage or yellow flags, a 30-lap race without damage, or challenge themselves to a 60 or 200-lap race where a single mistake could end it all. Many people experienced the horror of losing hours of gameplay and desperately trying to drive a crippled car back to the pits for repairs.
Bad driving and setup also had an impact, as you could blow the engine and tires could overheat, forcing cars to drift into the wall exiting turns two and four, or to retire from the race. By all standards, Indy 500 was one of the first racing titles to offer players this depth of difficulty.
After any major event a player could choose to view a 20-second replay from five different angles, all of them locked to the player car. An additional leader and crash camera was available at trackside which was useful for placing and avoiding wrecked cars, or seeing how close you were to being lapped!
Computer Gaming World magazine May 1990 review of Indianapolis 500: The Simulation
http://www.cgwmuseum.org/galleries/issues/cgw_71.pdf
http://www.cgwmuseum.org/galleries/inde ... ub=2&id=71
Any serious attempt to master Indy 500 will require a great deal of practice—perhaps, also a little madness. Each suspension change requires many laps of testing and each complete set-up means hours of (re-)learning how to drive smoothly. Only the most dedicated and determined players will ever win a race (Of course, this is the way it is in real life, too . . . ). This means that Indy 500 is not for everyone. (Charles, you can come outnow!) For gamers who might actually be interested in racing some day, it offers invaluable experience; for die-hard simulation nuts, it offers a truly in-depth portrait of its subject; but for casual gamers it can offer headaches and heartache and hair-pulling frustration. Keep this in mind, readers—you know who you are.
Arie Luyendyk 1990 Dallara IR18 by Douglas Ellison
https://www.tradingpaints.com/showroom/ ... endyk-1990
1970 Indy 500 Front Row - AJ Foyt, Johnny Rutherford, Al Unser
