11/12/01 - The VROC Web site has a new location. Peter Burke has kindly offered to host the VROC site at http://didnt.doit.wisc.edu/vroc/.
We hope to have the traditional vroc.net URL working soon, but in the meantime please bookmark this new URL.
Thank you, Peter!
8/4/01 - RACEsim.NET has released a gorgeous rendition of Mallory Park by SabreTeam. Mallory Park is a fantastic place for online racing with F2 cars. This site also has a good collection of GPL utilities and other enhancements.
Chris Kelley has released a beta version of Bathurst. What a wild place!
8/4/01 - Jon Ferreaz has released a new version of his magnificent carset. With these enhancements, GPL's cars look unbelievably real! You get chrome roll bars, textured brake calipers, enhanced instrument panels, and much more. Get it here.
7/11/01 - Ruud van Gaal is building an open source racing simulation called Racer. GPL was his inspiration.
Racer is very much a work in progress, and there is still a huge amount of work to be done. However, it is driveable, and I think its potential is enormous, largely because of its open architecture and Ruud's open-source philosophy.
In a sense, this is a sim that can turn out however the sim community wants it to. If someone wants a new feature, they can just add it themselves. Any cars, any tracks, any era could be simulated. Amazing!
Just look at all the effort now going into development of tracks, cars, utilities, and other enhancements for GPL. Now imagine if even half that effort were going into a sim like Racer!
Download the current version at Ruud's Racer Free Car Simulation site.
6/30/01 - Since the release of the GPLEA's track editing tools, there has been an explosion of new tracks available for GPL. My favorites include the full La Sarthe circuit used in the 24 Hours of Le Mans, and a new version of Snetterton from the GPLEA known as Snetterton67. The Sarthe circuit is magnificent; it's fantastic to be able to drive it in GPL. And Snetterton67 is perhaps the most realistic circuit ever built for GPL.
Other newly released circuits include Keimola, the new GP circuit at Indianapolis, two versions of Daytona (the oval and the oval-plus-road course used in the Rolex 24 hour race), the long Riverside circuit used for the US Grand Prix in 1960, Croft, a version of Monza which includes both the banking and the road course, and some fantasy tracks including the challenging Vil and Road67.
Also, numerous graphics enhancements have been released, including a magnificent fall foliage package for GPL's original Watkins Glen, and a beautiful night conversion for the Sarthe circuit, both by Kevin L.
For the latest in GPL new car graphics, new tracks and track graphic upgrades, and other add-ons, see Legends Central, the GPLEA, GPL++ The Addons, and the Ultimate GPL Links Page.
Legends Central's GPL and Release Ready forums are particularly informative about the amazing amount of activity going on in the area of enhancements for GPL.
6/30/01 - Due to a limitiation in the size of numbers GPL uses for timing, fast CPU's (including some 1 ghz machines and all machines above 1.4 ghz) cannot run GPL properly.
Papyrus has released a Speed Fix to allow fast CPU's to run GPL properly.
Note: don't install the Speed Fix unless you need it. It's not compatible with certain other enhancements which also patch GPL.EXE, such as the Sound Patch.
Papyrus has also released a new version of their Direct3D rasterizer which incorporates some bug fixes and improvements in visual display quality, and support for anisotropic filtering.
A fellow named Jammer explains how to set up your Voodoo5 for use with this new rasterizer. He claims better performance and looks compared with either the V5 and Glide or a GeForce3 and D3D. Details here.
Both the Speed Fix and the D3D rasterizer are available at the Papyrus site.
A thousand thank-yous to Grant Reeve and Randy Cassidy for these improvements.
2/8/01 - Steve Smith has released what he says will probably be his last collection of setups for GPL. He's embraced the setup philosophy "loose is fast", which has been used so effectively by many of the GPL world's fastest "aliens".
I can personally attest that Steve has gotten much faster as he's evolved these new F2 setups, and he is now a formidable opponent on many circuits.
Steve has written a meaty discussion, Secrets of Online Setups, explaining his philosophy behind the new setups. Check it out!
2/8/01 - More tracks! Two beautiful new tracks, Anderstorp and Bremgarten, have been released in the past few weeks, and the GPLEA has released a fantastic update for Goodwood.
Anderstorp, built by Martin Granberg, Jonas Matton and Fredrik Nornemark, is a great place for online racing.
Bremgarten, from the Sim Racing Club Bern, is intoxicatingly fast, with a wonderful rhythm.
Goodwood is superb, gorgeous, drenched with historic atmosphere, and now has great frame rate too.
How fortunate we are that the dedicated authors have made such wonderful tracks available to us!
2/8/01 - Yet another source has been reported for GPL, this time for only £9.44 + p&p in the UK. Go here.
1/23/01 - Two more readers have reported sources for GPL. Go here and here. The former source is also said to have copies of Rendition Ready CART.
1/5/01 - A British retailer, Software First, ships GPL worldwide, for a quite reasonable price. Shipping costs are reasonable, too. Go here.
12/30/00 - GPL is no longer available through normal channels, but I've learned about two new sources which will ship it to you. Also, an upcoming issue of a German PC gaming magazine will include it on the cover CD.
Details here.
1/25/01 - For the past few weeks I have been distracted from sim racing. I've been dealing with the unexpected death of my sister Kathi.
As a result of this traumatic event, I am not currently able to maintain this site and post updates as I usually do. I hope to resume my normal activities soon, but I don't yet know when this will be.
I have put together a memorial site for Kathi. It's at:
There are some details about Kathi's life, and remembrances of her from her children, parents, siblings, and others, as well as some things she wrote herself. It's beautiful, even for people who didn't know her.
Thank you to the many people who have sent condolences. I very much appreciate your thoughts and sympathies.
12/24/01
Steve Smith's F2 Superguide is back! Most of the pages lost when Marc Nelson's Simracing.com vanished have been retrieved from the Web Archives, thanks to Chris Noto. Steve's F2 setups are back, too.
6/30/01
Added Rendition Ready 3D Kit files to site and revised links on 3D Kit Install page to point to them.
2/19/01
Eliminated a link to a site with pornography on it.
2/8/01
Reorganized Add-On Tracks page, putting more recent work near the top.
Spun out news from the year 2000 to the News Archive 2000 Part B.
Added Magnus Torme's excellent summary of Papyrus tracks to the Track Lists section of Add-On Tracks.
Corrected a bug in the Sygate apprule examples in the Online FAQ and clarified them. Added a new question and answer, 8.3.1.
1/23/01
Fixed links to 3D Kit files.
Added link to Jay Beckwith's Team Friendship site, which has enhanced GPL skies and other track enhancements, including a nighttime version of Silverstone and enhancments for the CART conversion tracks.
1/5/01
Added links to my T-Bird 900 page from my GPL Survival Guide and my Hardware FAQ. Also updated both pages to reflect current hardware.
1/1/01
Added a link to the AMD Zone on my T-Bird 900 page.