This site is dedicated to racing simulations. It started as a place to share the track mods I created for the Papyrus NASCAR Racing series of games and expanded to include other things related to racing simulations. The site primarily features the games I'm most familiar with. Below I've written a brief description about each sim and a little bit about the controllers used at the end. Game specific headings are color coded throughout the site to make them easier to find. If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions feel free to e-mail me.
When Papyrus was closed down by Vivendi Universal (VU) in 2004 founder Dave Kaemmer started a new company called iRacing with financial backing from Boston Red Sox owner John Henry. They bought the code for N2003 (see below) from VU and began working on the new iRacing sim that features both oval and road racing. In addition to the most accurate physics and graphics for cars and tracks to date, the company hopes to take racing simulations to a whole new level with a massively multiplayer online (MMO) style game play. The player earns his/her way through the ranks by racing online against other racers. This online career simulates a real racing career and is overseen by a sanctioning body called FIRST Racing. The pricing for this sim is a monthly subscription fee similar to other MMO games. The official public release was in mid 2008.
NASCAR Racing 2003 Season (abbreviated N2003 or NR2003) is the last in a series of NASCAR racing games for the PC and Mac developed by Papyrus. It was the best simulation of stock car racing available until the release of iRacing. Thanks to the mod community the game has expanded to include short tracks, road courses, sports cars, and open wheel racing. On this site you'll also see references to the two pervious versions in series: NASCAR Racing 4 (N4) which came out in 2001 and NASCAR Racing 2002 Season (N2002).
Grand Prix Legends (GPL) is still one of the best racing simulation made despite the fact that it was released way back in 1998 by Papyrus. It is a historical simulation of the 1967 season of Formula 1. It features 7 different cars from the era: the Lotus, Eagle, Barbham, Ferrari, BRM, Honda, and Cooper. Each car drives differently and they are very tough to learn how to drive but are also very fun and rewarding once you get the hang of it. It has stood the test of time in part thanks to a dedicated mod community that has created new graphics, sounds, tracks, cars and even new physics based on different seasons.
Though the games support keyboard control you can't control the car like you need to with it. Instead you'll need either some kind of joystick or, for more realism, a steering wheel and pedals. I personally use an Act-Labs Force RS with shifter and performance pedals. I recently upgraded to Windows 7 64-bit and continue to use this wheel even though it isn't officially supported. I created a page on Act-Labs Force RS Drivers for Vista and Windows 7 to help others who want to use this wheel in newer operating systems.
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