FIA-GT Racing

One thing we really enjoy here at ERS is racing, and the same holds doubly true for racing simulators. In early 2005 Simbin released GTR, the FIA-GT Racing game. Since then auto aficionados and sim drivers of all sorts have come to love the rich graphics and flexible modding system of GTR. However there are some difference of opinion, namely in favor of a competing sim called rFactor. It is not our intention to portray GTR as the best racing game that's ever been written. Instead our aim is to show you how to get more out of the game.

GTR relies upon the ISI engine, which according to various Internet sources was originally designed for an F1 racing game. Thus many of the mods derived for GTR come from an F1 background. Over the past year or so we've collected various tidbits of knowledge about the configuration files of GTR. This all culminated last weekend when we were trying to set up a halfway authentic ALMS field for our running of the Petit Le Mans.

While we were working with the cars we noticed several things. First, while several authors had taken a great deal of time to model and create the cars, very little play testing seems to have been done on the vehicles. Among the original cars most were competitive within their groupings, however the add-on cars varied wildly. Second there were severe problems with the AI programming which often ruined any offline game we played. Given the history of GTR's online play, this rendered the game nearly useless. So we decided to sit down and apply our methodical software testing skills toward the aftermarket mods and to make them better.

We've acquired our knowledge through various online forums which are not only a great place to find new mods, but also to hear about the troubles others have been having with those mods. While we respect the author's right to control how fixes are released, we cannot entirely agree with the policies of several major forums about the release and dissemination of information concerning these mods. That being the case we feel that if we tell you how to fix the mods yourself, and we won't have to post files from someone else's package "without permission". PLEASE feel free to forward this information to your friends if you find it useful. Consider it a gift to the community and a way to give back to Simbin who has created a great game that we all enjoy!