Grand Prix Legends by Papyrus Review by Erik Frechette

TheUSPits.com-When I was assigned the GPL review, I grinned like a twelve year old on Christmas morning. What could be more fun than sharing my ideas (with quite a bit of help from the rest of The Pits crew) about the most advanced auto-racing simulation to date? Little did I know just how much work would be involved.

First of all, to step back and look at such an exciting sim from a completely analytical perspective proved to be near impossible. How many months had we all waited, watching the newsgroups, the rumor sites, perking our ears every time the words "Grand Prix Legends" crossed someone's lips? Needless to say, hardcore simmers were tearing the liners from their helmets waiting for Papyrus' promised masterpiece to hit the streets. Finally it shipped, and all over the world sim-racers could be heard cursing and growling, smiling all the while, as they spun time and again in their Lotuses and Brabhams. Flipping nose over tail at the Nürburgring, locking the right front at the Lesmos of Monza, hitting light posts at Monaco, just experiencing what it was to sit in an ultra-light, hyperactive racing machine circling tracks designed with safety as the final consideration. That was the purpose of building Grand Prix Legends and to that end the Papyrus design team has delivered in almost every way.

Inspire Me With Pictures

Humans are visual creatures. Papyrus realized this and went about giving us enough optical stimulation in Legends to get our attention without distracting us from the task at hand. The menus are effective and straightforward. From the Main Menu screen one can easily navigate the Options menus, Team and Player Info Screens, and select play modes. My only disappointment was the Car Setup screens. Here a little added graphics wouldn't have hurt, since all the user is provided with is a list of adjustable features (very numerous and thorough) and arrows with which to make the desired changes. I rather liked N2's clipboard approach and would have appreciated something similar in GPL. At the lower corners of each menu window, red and green flags lead you hither and back throughout the game's interface. The selected imagery and relatively simple approach lend game screens a feeling of class and suggest an honest respect for the subject matter. No music plays to annoy you, no fancy animations or needless fluff clutter the screen. Papyrus chose to give us what we want, a quick and ready path to sim-racing Valhalla without being boring or bland.

Overall, the in-game graphics and animations are fantastic, best in the genre considered as a whole, but not quite worthy of the graphical adulation heaped upon a game like Unreal. At 800x600 in 16 bit color, object hues are crisp and clear, perhaps lacking a bit in total vibrancy. Each car's appearance is modeled and painted accurately, complete with elevated engine intakes, exhaust pipes, roll bars and rear suspension. From outside the cockpit, tiny virtual pilots can be seen sawing at the controls and raising their arms. Tracks come compete with trees, chainlink fences, guardrails, gravel traps,animated flagmen, spectators strewn throughout (even on the sidewalks at Monaco!) as well as era accurate advertisements and local architecture. The Nürburg castle? It's in there! Visual effects include smoke, dynamic skid marks, bursts of engine flame as motors expire and realistic lighting. Though excellent in most every way, more could have been done in the way of color richness and frame efficiency. Taking nothing away from the racing experience as a whole, the track graphics just lack the 'pop' a modern Voodoo2 board and a Pentium II can provide(see Need For Speed 3 and Monaco Grand Prix Racing Simulation 2).

The first person perspective provides the pilot with a true to life view of each team's actual cockpit; mirrors, glass windshield and all. Within the cramped driver's compartment, two polygonal arms complete with circa '67 sleeves and driving gloves flail and yank away at authentic team steering wheels. Two frighteningly narrow, treaded tires revolve and swivel at the end of tie-rods and braking assemblies. Unfortunately, you'll have to memorize the placement and purpose of each gauge, since the tachometer is the only gauge whose function is immediately apparent. Lock up the rears and you'll see puffs of smoke in your mirrors. Watch your backside for the competition and you'll soon realize just how inadequate even these relatively big mirrors can be!

Your only alternative to the first person viewpoint is a standard behind-the-car position which, in all honesty, takes too much away from the experience of the game to truly be worthwhile.

Be prepared to sacrifice quite a bit of detail if you have a machine slower than a PII at 300MHz. You'll need gobs of RAM and a mighty processor to achieve a playable frame rate with 19 cars at 100% detail. A plethora of graphics options are presented within the sim, so stand ready for some graphical tweaking and compromise for the sake of gameplay.

Getting Real

Here is where we get to the true power of the machine!

As someone who has been mad for racing sims since first discovering NASCAR Racing back in 1995, I thought I knew what it was to drive a racecar. I had taught myself enough to contest the internet's hotlap kings in games like Indycar Racing 2, Grand Prix 2, NASCAR Racing 2 and Formula One Racing Simulation. Squashing the AI became the rule rather than the exception. Regularly I would have to bump up the artificial intelligence's power until we were all lapping at ridiculous speeds not ever seen in real-life race situations. Let's just say, I thought I knew what I was doing.

With the unveiling of GPL's next generation physics engine, many a sim-race badass has seen his rear swinging wildly out from beneath him, all the while believing he should have had that corner. Terms like pedal modulation, four wheel drift, powerslide and engine blips are now realities, no longer the stuff of myth and canned effect. Tires really do lock independently of each other, the rearend hops about, you do indeed have to master four wheel slides and only a fool doesn't let off the accelerator between shifts. Get on the gas too quickly with the wrong number of clutches or too steep a differential in the back and you may spin the right rear, looping your machine wildly as you downshift, stomp on the gas to get both rears smoking, fight to right your craft and continue on.

Aero, Aero, where for art thou Aero? Without wings these beasts were as squirrelly as your grandparent's old Grand Marquis on an icy ess bend with more than twice the horsepower, a third of the weight and no driver restraints whatsoever. The scariest thing about GPL is that the physics powering the sim are as dead on as is possible with modern PC power. Taking a hairpin in a modern F1 sim is easy; roll on the brake, get your outside tires to the edge of the asphalt, downshift evenly, turn in, neutralize the throttle, apex and accelerate out. Taking the same curve in Legends is something all together different. You have to toss that monster at the turn. Forget the proper racing line, the only real way to make a corner effectively is to carve your way in, gather her up as best you can while using the gas pedal to point and shoot your way past the apex. Sounds simple enough until you take a couple of laps at speed. The technique is excruciatingly difficult to employ and driving GPL will likely force you to relearn everything you know about corner entrances, trail braking, exiting and driving a sim in general. Break an engine and you've actually broken a virtual part. Hit the wall and your suspension components will fly off into the wilderness along with your tire(s), all according to actual physical law. Large humps, bumps and 'yumps' cause the rear to get light and can easily send you swirling into oblivion. Think of something you'd like to try with the car and chances are your Grand Prix racer will react in exactly the way you expected.

Our own Goy Larsen attested to this fact when he said,"I'm currently lapping Monza over and over, just trying out different stuff in the setups and experiencing how it affects the way the car handles. Having tried this out on my roadcars over the years as well, all I can say is WOW! The car reacts to my changes as I'd expect them to according to my practical and theoretical knowledge about these things. I'm more and more impressed!"

Site administrator Jan Kohl reaffirmed Goy's conclusions, saying,"When I first got to try Grand Prix Legends, it was something like night and day when compared to previous simulators. I was hooked!  Why is that?  Well, having previously driven many high performance vehicles (my favorite was always my 1961 Ford F100 with a 390 cu in [6.9 liter] Thunderjet engine delivering approximately 450 hp), I KNOW what it feels like when vehicles of that performance power get a little squirrelly...I've had a rear tire just skip the pavement, and felt the vehicle turn towards the inside and the tires start to spin.  I've had the rear meats both rolling smoke as twin black marks stretch out towards the horizon.  I've wrestled the wheel back and forth as the torque from tires grabbing the pavement attempt to send the vehicle on a trail to oblivion...I've been there and I see all this while driving the Lotus, or Ferrari, or Brabham...and love it!"

This is not a game folks. There is no arcade mode, there are few driving aids and most sim-racers will have to use the advanced trainer in order to conquer the straight-from-reality mathematics of the game. I must warn you, be prepared to be frustrated, irritated, exasperated and deflated. Kaemmer and the clan meant it when they said "realworld physics". You could get more realistic, but so far as I know NASA doesn't do racecraft. The result of this exquisite attention to realistic behavior is of course the sweet, unadulterated satisfaction of having pulled within a tenth of Clark's pole at Monza. Outdrive Hill or Hulme, McLaren or Gurney and you will have truly become a master in car control.

Papy is teaching us to drive.

They're baaack...

Almost as evolutionary as the physics, the AI in Legends has set a new standard for computer controlled intelligence. What were once pitiful robots, there to be bullied and belittled by the user, have been turned into road hungry, testosterone fueled racers.

With admittedly limited race time under my belt, I have yet to see a computer controlled opponent slip up and make a stupid mistake without my first initializing the moment. No longer will you be squeezed in all the wrong places by AI that just seem to be having trouble recognizing your existence. GPL drivers operate like their real life alter-egos. Sometimes they turn in too aggressively or sometimes miss the entrance altogether. They make honest racing mistakes, no more following the perfect line time after time without regard for what is happening around them. As a consequence, your electronic adversaries can also be absolutely perfect, turning in that special lap at just the right time, taking pole at record speed, making an unbelievable move into the hairpin at Rouen. They are capable of everything from blunders to brilliance and this does nothing but increase the level of satisfaction gained by competing.

The most enticing moment I've had so far involved a lap with Jim Clark at Watkins Glen. Clark was eight tenths faster than I was in my Eagle during practice and moved easily up to my rear tire headed toward the esses. I set it in my mind to hold him off as long as I could and entered the first bend as smoothly as possible. We headed down the Straight nose to tail, but I managed to keep him in my mirrors with a very exuberant entrance to the Outer Loop. We continued on this way with Clark making small moves from side to side in my mirrors at every turn and curve. Was he feigning a pass to distract me from my driving? It sure as hell felt that way! Coming into the Ninety I slowed as little as possible, slid the car in as best I could, started to roll back on the gas and countersteer, but to no avail. Clark swung his Lotus below my floundering T1G and silkily sped away. As I corrected for wheelspin and went up through the gears, Jimmy hit the line with at least eight car lengths between us. Sometimes it is fun to be beaten!

"Step on the gas, step back in time"

As is to be expected, the controls are easy to calibrate, completely customizable and fittingly precise. You're going to have to be on top of your game to run with the greats. With built-in online compatibility, even more thrills await the gallant virtual racer, competing with as many as 18 racers(the most I've heard to date)on any of the tracks of old, each of which is modeled in tremendous detail.

Nürburgring's treacherous 174 turns, Monaco's tunnel, Spa's famous La Source hairpin, Zandvoort's blind turns and The Glen's banks. They're all here in full simulated detail. Lay waste to The Ring and you've overcome the most demanding track ever created. Charge Rouen's claustrophobic hairpin, feel Mosport's kinetic challenges, Silverstone's deceptive simplicity, Kyalami's altitude and Mexico City's chaotic attitude. Each track is graphically correct and an absolute joy to behold. Every curve, every major feature has been meticulously recreated and will challenge the best electronic racer.

The only substantial gripe I have with the simulation is the sound. Papyrus repeatedly seems to forget that we also want to hear the racecar as if we were in the cockpit, not just drive it. I want engines roaring loud enough to rattle my bones and tire squeals so authentic the neighbors run to their windows! Although the various engine notes, skid sounds, collisions and other miscellaneous audio effects are adequate, there is once again a lack of punch. I have a fully compatible Dolby Surround sound system with subwoofer and satellites attached to my machine and GPL's sound engine does nothing to take advantage of such hardware. Papyrus chose to code in standard stereo, something most other game designers have moved beyond. Let there be no doubt that I would be willing to live with plain stereo if recoding for surround and 3D would have meant an additional delay in the release, but with the technology having been available for quite sometime, addition of such sound support would not have proved too difficult. Let's hope for a patched improvement or an editor that will support sound swapping sometime in the near future.

Pits member Jim Getzen adds,"[We should] note some of GPL's ommissions and how, ultimately, they don't significantly detract from the game. I'm talking about lack of weather settings, no work allowed during pit stops (they only serve as stop and go penalty spots), no pace car (although they were rarely used from what I understand), no shift-r restart, and no fine-tuning of AI speed (using a % like N2). These last two kind of bug me, to be honest, especially since they would be so easy for Papyrus to include.   Like I say, these are relatively minor ommissions from an outstanding, state-of-the-art simulation. Also, I agree with you regarding the sound, it seems to lack any depth or throaty-ness.  Neverthless, GPL is stunning."

Pole Sitter

Solid graphics, cohesive sounds, beautiful atmosphere and the best physics engine you can find. All told, this is the crème de la crème, the only sim you absolutely need to have on your hard drive. You want to race? You really want to know what it was to drive at the edge? Look no further. Witness the birth of a classic.

"You see, this doesn't just simulate a racecar...it simulates an ATTITUDE..."-Jan Kohl

Review System specs: 400MHz PII w/128MB SDRAM, Diamond Monster3D 2 w/8MB RAM, 12GB Ultra ATA Hard Drive, WIN98 w/DirectX 6.0, Full GPL Install