There's a lot of history on this little pastime we call simracing. There have been so many influential people in this scene from innovators to developers, to die hard average Joe's who love it all. Is there somewhere to read a little history on all of this starting from the early days to now? I'd like to know where people started out and where they are today.

This one is cool.

www.simcyberworld.com/html/tep/trackpack.htm

This also (not sims though)

www.castlewales.com/contrib.html

Or even here in our back yard

www.thepits.us/about.html

Bob,

I havent seen that in some time, but the track packs and files are still hosted at my site as well: http://www.tmcarthur.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=6

To help the original poster, the track pack was a compilation of tracks that I created between 1999 and 2000 with the help of a lot of people (most are noted in the credits). Those people had a head start on track making and modding well before me, I just happened to have the actual track making tools from Papyrus after my employment with Papy in 1998-99 which allowed me to make "from scratch" tracks. (funny how I was never sued for that huh?)

Yes, the USPits history page is a great place to start with the history of Sim racing. Jan and company have been around for a very long time and have been dedicated to this passion even longer. A good portion of content of all sim-racing files (tools, mods, etc) and such have been distributed by, worked on, counseled by, or created by members of the US Pits.

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well..... there's nothing on TV tonite, so I will take a run at this...... no there really isn't a "history" site, but there is a lot of history. I can only go back to N2 and ICR2 but here goes........ at least on the Nascar side. I'll mention a couple of ICR things at the bottom and won't go into GPL at all.

Go check simcyberworld.com for the BB&B section. There is a bit of history of who BB&B was; they were one of the first to make track edits and tools for track editing (no track building back then). Chas Bornemann headed up that group, and they worked closely with the Pits crew. Their section is still functional for downloads of N2 and ICR tracks, I think.

Big N2 sites:

Racing Design run by Brian Z (he's still around; I see a post by him on occasion on some boards). The site actually had a different name then. Mostly cars, but then they combined forces with Turtle and Co (and I have forgotten the name of their site (mostly tracks), and became Racing Design. Later on, it became The Racing Groove under new management.

Turtle and Co. (Turtle, Bugs, and Tony K) became Turtleworks and moved from Racing Design over to Simcyberworld. They later renamed themselves Coast to Coast, which is dead but still up.

YellowFlag......... dang, I can't remember who ran Yellowflag. One of the bigger message boards of the time. Lots of cat fights there...... LOL. The last yellowflag board is still up. I just went there and Ace27 had actually been there and posted a reply this week to an April post. The place is deserted; it died when N3 died.

Alex's Nascarnet..... still around, and it hasn't changed much --

MT Church's Links site. Multiple games links site -- sorta what NCRacers site is today.

Bob James Tracklist. The first comprehensive tracklist for papy games. When he quit, I foolishly took over that idea and Craig (a Sierra forum mod) and I started N99 Connection (now SRC).

3-wide Racing - Mayfield's site. This one started up about N99 time. Nice cars. He did tracks too. At one point, he won some "award" for "original track of the month". LOL...... he converted NL Richmond to N3, and changed the location of 2 porta-potties. but the kiddies who did the voting obviously didn't have NL so they thought it was this wonderful eye candy new track. Basically they voted that a papy track was good.

Gary Champagne's various sites with all his degatona edits. Wonderful stuff!

The Speedway ....... what a megasite that became. Many of today's track makers were part of that place. They had lots of cars and utilities too. It was a "must visit daily" site for the forum as well.

Team Lightspeed...... can't forget them. Way back in N2 days, it was just car downloads and Bob Stanley setups. In N3, they opened up a forum. By N2k3, they were a super-site. Bob Stanley's pride and joy.

Stephen Gibson started Rubbin's Racin' about N99 times too. Always a popular site, it remained one of the "secondary" sites for a long time. It absorbed a lot of TLS forum members and has a big forum now. They still do great cars, and had a bunch of tracks and track edits for N2 thru N4. There is an N2-99 Indy graphic patch there that is absolutely stunning for its time; put all other N2 tracks to shame (big file for the time too..... about 7 megs for a track!)

Other names to mention (I'm looking thru old dead bookmarks now):

Bill Anderson and his colorful N2 track edits. Still running a site and painting the best fictional cars on the net.

Duke M..... another brain fade...... what was Dukes site called? Duke has really come on strong with his car painting and now is a contributor to Summers Brothers (which has been around forever as well).

Hckynut, nice old chap who visited every board on the net giving answers to anyone who asked for help about how to make their gaming experience more enjoyable or fix a problem.

Cory Leigh - had a site with pit wall removals for N2. You could drive into the infield thru a wall that you could see but wasn't there. If you hit the centerline, the infield gods would throw your car clear outside the track and you couldn't get back in! Fun stuff. He had a lot of dirt edits there too. Cory was still around at least when the sierra boards were up.

I've forgotten their names now...... I'd have to do internet archive to find the site...... two guys made a truck mod for N2. Worked and looked great. Shortly after they released it, N99 was released with trucks. I've still got the N2 truck patch on a cd somewhere.

Tony Stevens -- N2 Goody's Dash patch...... Tony is now working with others to make tracks for N2k3.

IDRS..... I think they're still active. You can still download their old N2 tracks; they moved over to ratbag stuff at one point....... not sure what they do now, but they're still running.


There are tons of names of folks..... some were big and are now gone, some have never been big but have been around forever..... some do stuff behind the scenes and the average user never knows it.....

As to ICR2..... and the guy posted here recently about his new love -- train sims....... and I can't think of his name!! Someone help me out here... He had an ICR2 site that was the equivalent of the Pits for that game. A big jump in ICR2 stuff was helped along by teaman's site with track editing tutorials and tools. Did you know that game still has a dedicated following and a pretty active message board over at m4driving? They're making scratch tracks now..... not edits.

OK...... I'll stop now...... maybe someone can fill in some of the blanks I had or other stuff too.

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steve b
NR2k3TRACKS

It was (well, still is) something like Marc Nelson? Mike Nelson? which was the one from MST3K? it's the other one.

What was the site Gene Cully ran? It was something about pits, but obviously not "the pits". Pit road I'm thinking... Dale Jr showed up there once, before he was a busch reg. and asked someone to paint a car for him, and I think it was Gary Champagne that jumped on him and said he wasn't the real Dale Jr, so Jr took a picture of his car with the site's address written on masking tape on it. I think. That was a long time ago, so it's very possible that I messed up a bunch of the details.

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Steve,

A few other sites in the day that were pretty big:

IWCCCARS - The Grand Daddy of them all (circa 1994). I started with them in the N2 days ... I hear it's going to be re-incarnated "soon".

Joe's Drive In, which became High Compression - John Hughes did some great work, good luck to you in your new endevours

Bassman - He's still around too.

There's plenty more that I could come up with if I think hard enough

BTW, 3 Wide Racing was run by a kid in high school, Gary Shultis, Jr. He did everything himself, but hink he burned out on it. Remember his "flip" patch, LOL! The Domain is still active, but no new content for a few years.

Also, Duke Mayle is still very active in certain circles. You will see some of his latest work very "soon", LOL!!

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Despite the flat or declining television ratings and the apparent drop in attendance, NASCAR officials see this as part of the natural cycle of growth of the sport and wave off any serious concern - Bob Margolis (Dec 6, 2006)

Around 2001 or 2002, The Yellow Flag merged with another site to for OTERacing (On the edge racing). They did cars for NR2002 and had a lot of their older carsets on the site too. Around 2003, the site's activity dropped off a lot, but they began to host sites free of charge, including The Racing Groove. Last year, the host eventually left the community. I guess he decided it was time to move on.

EDIT: How could I forget this one.

SPRL had a huge painting site for a while before 2003, and it was just recently did they start back up again. The site owner is Josh Sheppard. They were mostly fictional painters back in the NR2002 days and I'm not sure what they were up to before then.

I remember a site run by Marcello Bassino (sp?), it seemed to mirror the pit's stuff for n2. Anybody remember the name? That site, The pits, IWCCCARS, & BB&B/Simcyberworld were all daily visits for me.

Edit: Brainfade. The site I was thinking of was The Sim Project. And Marcello Bassino was with BB&B as Jan corrected below.

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lp

Gene Culley's site was "Pit Road". That's where I started out as a painter for his site before starting my owm site "Northwest Racing". Back in those days "nascarnet" was known as "Alex's NASCAR PitStop".

thanks, jabroni. Marc Nelson ran the Sim Project for ICR2

Few other N2-N3 sites: Deep South, Nascar Creations (author still around, made Altoona for N3k3), Airwalk Racing, Grandpa J's editing tutorials, Dave Ruelle of IWCCCARS and his own N1 site, Cucalenni Brothers paint shop, CCG N2 AI project, Nascar Sanctioned, Nascarn's car site, etc etc. A lot of these sites are dead but still up and downloads work. Still linked at SRC on the various pages.

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steve b
NR2k3TRACKS

the legends in simracing IMHO are as follows: Bob Stanley, Doug Arno, Steve B, Dave Noonan, Jan Kohl, Tim McArthur (totally insane), Tim Robinson, Brian Ring, DDawg, Tundra Schmacher, and anyone who has worked with these fellas. If I omitted anyone, my apologies. These men have taken simracing and advanced it forward in endless ways.

The best site to get real cars used to be thepitwagon.com, but IIRC, it kinda died after PWF took the members from the site to paint cars for their mods.

You all are talking about 'late' sim racing history, really...

http://web.archive.org/web/199701171221 ... links.html

Now you'll see a lot of the original content when sim racing really first started.

IVGA & Don Wilshe
Spyder's NASCAR Racing
Wally's world had a lot of good stuff and Wally was a great guy.
Eric Busch before he was a Papy employee
Tim Wortman & NASSCAR
Leo & Shannon's carsets

As you mentioned above, Steve, you had Marc Nelson's TSP (The Sim Project), lots of great stuff for ICR2...some of it way ahead of it's time, I might add. Tony John's had a racing league IWCCCAR's that the car site grew out of.

Marcello Bassino worked with Chas and Brian Fox on BB&B, he did have a separate site, I believe. Mike Grandy (NASSCAR champ) also ran a site with a lot of stuff he had gotten.

Hckynut was a great guy. Helpful to everyone. Bill Anderson originally started with some track guides that we linked to from The Pits.

MT Church and Alex's NASCARnet started right near the beginning.

Technically, we really started a year or so after organised Sim Racing began appearing. There were some groups on AOL and CompuServe that ran some organised stuff in 1994, Tony Johns being one of them.

As far as 'who's who'...you've missed quite a few people. Neil 'Jed' Jedrzejewski, Marc Nelson and Gerhard were the original 'editors' of sims...way before anyone else started. Dave Kaemmer, despite what you may think of him now has to be counted as one of the sim racing pioneers. Geoff Crammond as well. David Noonan got missed in your group...you probably would not believe the amount of things which would have never appeared had it not been for David's influence.

Another good location to go look at sim racing's history is rec.autos.simulators. Most people have forgotten about that now since we've got message boards, but that was where you used to go to find new and interesting information about racing sims. If you search the archives, you can find all sorts of interesting posts...

Cheers!

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»» jan kohl ««
= www.theuspits.com =
racing realism for the pc

I think you mean Bill Cranston's track guides. BTW...... that site is still up and guess what..... his discussions of how to drive the base game tracks still apply to N2k3.

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steve b
NR2k3TRACKS

Thanks Jan , Those were the days !
I miss the innocent we all had .