Fantasy cars in sim racing, a contradiction in terms perhaps but is it strictly a bad thing? That got Luca wondering as he puts it to the community, where do you stand on the debate regarding their existence?
A couple of days ago, we highlighted a community creation that showcased what a Mercedes Le Mans Hypercar may look like if the marque did decide to return to top-flight prototype racing. Sim racing, by definition, means to simulate real-life racing, and there were discussions in the comments section of that article that split opinions quite ferociously.
You would think that the phrase 'Fantasy' would be reserved for absurd ideas that could not feasibly work in reality. But sadly, this is not the case. A car that is not too far removed from reality is considered fantasy, but should it be classified as essentially being an 'arcade' car? Mercedes has not actually committed to the top class in WEC or IMSA, but it is fun to sometimes hypothesise what such efforts would look like.
That got me thinking about all of the many varying degrees of fantasy that non-existent cars across many racing titles cover and where we, as a community, draw the line on what is considered to be a 'Fantasy' car. So allow me to wax lyrical in specifying the credentials for the fantasy spectrum within fictitious cars.
The workaround for such a thing? Taking pre-existing road cars in the game and making racing versions of those, such as the Alfa Romeo 4C, Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution X and Chevrolet Corvette C7. The latter of which did have a GTE car based on it but not a GT3 car, curious that they did not just get the C7.R GTE since a few GTE cars have been raceable in Gr. 3 races like the Ford GT and Porsche 911 RSR.
Additionally, there are Gr. 3 cars that are race-modified versions of concepts that we will get around to.
Mazda created the RX-Vision GT3 Concept with Polyphony so they could be represented in Gr.3 races on GT7.
Branching outside of Gran Turismo for a moment, many would assume that console "sim-cade" games are the only ones that goes against what many within the community consider immersive. But you would be wrong, as there is plenty of first-party content within PC-based simulators that do the same. iRacing has been getting headlines for all the wrong reasons recently when it comes to breaking immersion regarding the discrepancies with their GTP cars.
Rewind the clock back to December 2020, though, when iRacing introduced the Dallara iR-01. Undoubtedly a result of the lack of ability to scan real-life cars due to limited travel that year, this car, in theory, should have gone down a hit with the players. A lovechild of both F1 and CART in the early 2000s with a screaming V10 that everyone loves, instead the series featuring the iR-01 struggles to get a lot of people signing up for it.
There are also the countless F1 cars in Automobilista 2 that are not explicitly stated to be any one car from a particular era but are just sort of a generic stand-in for a certain generation of Grand Prix cars. All of them are denoted by some moniker like Vintage, Retro, Classic and many other words and terms. But are they different to the iR-01 because they are meant to represent a car that existed in reality, even if they technically are not one?
Just listing some off, we have the Bugatti VGT which formed the basis for the Chiron, the McLaren VGT became the Solus GT and the Audi e-Tron VGT which was used as a race taxi at Formula E events. There are other VGT cars that very much could exist in reality, but there are a handful that, whilst it is feasible that they could, is probably very unlikely.
The most absurd is the SRT Tomahawk X, a concept developed by Dodge's high-performance division. Here are the headlines: the car is powered by a 7.0-litre naturally-aspirated V10 that churns out - and I hope you are sitting down - 2,586 horsepower, all in a car that weighs 749 kilograms.
But it is not just a straight line where this car is bordering on breaking the laws of physics; its active aerodynamics assist with cornering, resulting in just over a three-minute lap time around the Nordschleife in the hands of someone who knows how to get the most out of it.
Assuming there existed a driver who could withstand the gravitational forces that would result from such a car being made in real life, not to mention if tyres could be made for it amongst other mechanical elements to withstand all that force, could it exist in reality? Maybe, and that is a very strong maybe, of course. However, it would not be comparable to VGT concepts that achieve much more feasible power outputs.
It is not just power and speed that is dangling off the cliff peaking into the fantasy abyss, but also means of propulsion. Another VGT concept that is worth mentioning is the Chaparral 2X. We, of course, all know the 2J fan car from Can-Am, but even this sounds absurd for the brand, and what is it? Laser-based propulsion, something you would expect Jean-Luc Picard to take for granted. But to us? Seems we are centuries away from harnessing it, indeed.
Scientifically, it is somewhat feasible that these two cars could exist. But that is either bordering on physically improbable, or the technology is too far out. Now, though, we have come to the all-important furthest end of the scale.
The Formula DS has just short of 700,000 horsepower and can reach a top speed of 16,000 kilometres per hour or just under 10,000 miles per hour. Plus, its turning and stopping powers are so instantaneous that you would need the reflexes of a ninja wired on 100 cans of energy drinks to react in time.
If you are interested, you can download the Assetto Corsa mod for it.
On a scale of one to ten, everything with this car is turned up, not to eleven but to googolplex. I think it goes without saying that this car could never exist in our reality, probably up there with hover cars from The Jetsons. But its pure absurdity has certainly tempted sim racers worldwide to give it a go for pure novelty's sake.
Going back to the original point, it is not just so simple to say that because it does not exist in reality that means it cannot exist in reality. I, for one, would implore @MaxStdtDesigns - the creator of that Mercedes hypercar mod - to create an LMH or LMDh version of the McLaren Solus GT because I would drive it a lot!
Where do you stand on the issue of fictitious cars in sim racing? Let us know in the comments below, and join the discussion on our forums!
A couple of days ago, we highlighted a community creation that showcased what a Mercedes Le Mans Hypercar may look like if the marque did decide to return to top-flight prototype racing. Sim racing, by definition, means to simulate real-life racing, and there were discussions in the comments section of that article that split opinions quite ferociously.
You would think that the phrase 'Fantasy' would be reserved for absurd ideas that could not feasibly work in reality. But sadly, this is not the case. A car that is not too far removed from reality is considered fantasy, but should it be classified as essentially being an 'arcade' car? Mercedes has not actually committed to the top class in WEC or IMSA, but it is fun to sometimes hypothesise what such efforts would look like.
That got me thinking about all of the many varying degrees of fantasy that non-existent cars across many racing titles cover and where we, as a community, draw the line on what is considered to be a 'Fantasy' car. So allow me to wax lyrical in specifying the credentials for the fantasy spectrum within fictitious cars.
Grounded In Reality
For Gran Turismo Sport, Polyphony wanted to introduce a set of cars that would represent each manufacturer in their upcoming set of live racing championships, which would be designated as Group 3 (Gr. 3). These cars would, for the most part, be GT3 cars, a category that many brands do have cars competing in. The issue here is not every brand had or still has a real-life GT3 car.The workaround for such a thing? Taking pre-existing road cars in the game and making racing versions of those, such as the Alfa Romeo 4C, Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution X and Chevrolet Corvette C7. The latter of which did have a GTE car based on it but not a GT3 car, curious that they did not just get the C7.R GTE since a few GTE cars have been raceable in Gr. 3 races like the Ford GT and Porsche 911 RSR.
Additionally, there are Gr. 3 cars that are race-modified versions of concepts that we will get around to.
Mazda created the RX-Vision GT3 Concept with Polyphony so they could be represented in Gr.3 races on GT7.
Branching outside of Gran Turismo for a moment, many would assume that console "sim-cade" games are the only ones that goes against what many within the community consider immersive. But you would be wrong, as there is plenty of first-party content within PC-based simulators that do the same. iRacing has been getting headlines for all the wrong reasons recently when it comes to breaking immersion regarding the discrepancies with their GTP cars.
Rewind the clock back to December 2020, though, when iRacing introduced the Dallara iR-01. Undoubtedly a result of the lack of ability to scan real-life cars due to limited travel that year, this car, in theory, should have gone down a hit with the players. A lovechild of both F1 and CART in the early 2000s with a screaming V10 that everyone loves, instead the series featuring the iR-01 struggles to get a lot of people signing up for it.
There are also the countless F1 cars in Automobilista 2 that are not explicitly stated to be any one car from a particular era but are just sort of a generic stand-in for a certain generation of Grand Prix cars. All of them are denoted by some moniker like Vintage, Retro, Classic and many other words and terms. But are they different to the iR-01 because they are meant to represent a car that existed in reality, even if they technically are not one?
Pushing The Boundaries
Remember when I said there would be a bunch of concepts from Gran Turismo? Since GT6's launch, Polyphony has collaborated with manufacturers to create concept cars as part of a program called Vision Gran Turismo, and sometimes it actually led to a real-life car being made.Just listing some off, we have the Bugatti VGT which formed the basis for the Chiron, the McLaren VGT became the Solus GT and the Audi e-Tron VGT which was used as a race taxi at Formula E events. There are other VGT cars that very much could exist in reality, but there are a handful that, whilst it is feasible that they could, is probably very unlikely.
The most absurd is the SRT Tomahawk X, a concept developed by Dodge's high-performance division. Here are the headlines: the car is powered by a 7.0-litre naturally-aspirated V10 that churns out - and I hope you are sitting down - 2,586 horsepower, all in a car that weighs 749 kilograms.
But it is not just a straight line where this car is bordering on breaking the laws of physics; its active aerodynamics assist with cornering, resulting in just over a three-minute lap time around the Nordschleife in the hands of someone who knows how to get the most out of it.
Assuming there existed a driver who could withstand the gravitational forces that would result from such a car being made in real life, not to mention if tyres could be made for it amongst other mechanical elements to withstand all that force, could it exist in reality? Maybe, and that is a very strong maybe, of course. However, it would not be comparable to VGT concepts that achieve much more feasible power outputs.
It is not just power and speed that is dangling off the cliff peaking into the fantasy abyss, but also means of propulsion. Another VGT concept that is worth mentioning is the Chaparral 2X. We, of course, all know the 2J fan car from Can-Am, but even this sounds absurd for the brand, and what is it? Laser-based propulsion, something you would expect Jean-Luc Picard to take for granted. But to us? Seems we are centuries away from harnessing it, indeed.
Scientifically, it is somewhat feasible that these two cars could exist. But that is either bordering on physically improbable, or the technology is too far out. Now, though, we have come to the all-important furthest end of the scale.
Untethered From Reality
Does anyone remember a car that Jimmy Broadbent covered multiple times? It resembled an entry-level single-seater, but it is so unbelievably out of this world in terms of its performance you would think it had been created on a planet many thousands of light years away from Earth.The Formula DS has just short of 700,000 horsepower and can reach a top speed of 16,000 kilometres per hour or just under 10,000 miles per hour. Plus, its turning and stopping powers are so instantaneous that you would need the reflexes of a ninja wired on 100 cans of energy drinks to react in time.
If you are interested, you can download the Assetto Corsa mod for it.
On a scale of one to ten, everything with this car is turned up, not to eleven but to googolplex. I think it goes without saying that this car could never exist in our reality, probably up there with hover cars from The Jetsons. But its pure absurdity has certainly tempted sim racers worldwide to give it a go for pure novelty's sake.
Going back to the original point, it is not just so simple to say that because it does not exist in reality that means it cannot exist in reality. I, for one, would implore @MaxStdtDesigns - the creator of that Mercedes hypercar mod - to create an LMH or LMDh version of the McLaren Solus GT because I would drive it a lot!
Where do you stand on the issue of fictitious cars in sim racing? Let us know in the comments below, and join the discussion on our forums!
