BHMS: When and how was Sim Bin Development Team formed? Who was/is the father behind the idea and what was the purpose for forming this team?

Eric Boosman: The history of GT Racing 2002 and the SBDT actually starts with Sports Car GT.

Marco Demontis did 3d modeling in Zmod for a number of cars for SCGT. He also did a bunch of liveries, and started the M@dFactory for distributing them.

Marco decided to port his FIA GT models over to F1 2001 with help from Locutus, and enlisted Neil Walker's help for the physics. These cars were released as separate downloads, with sounds as a separate download, and the manual installation process was documented online. Not user friendly, but it was brilliant. The screenshots looked like renders and the graphics had to be seen to be believed. Shortly after, Marco started a new job, which took all of his spare time, and he dropped out of modding for a time.

Around this time, Ian Bell started a little website called "The SimBin", along with Stephen 'Rousseau' Smith. This site was dedicated to racing sim news and mods, and drew a small group of talented, mature individuals. A perfect breeding ground for the SBDT.

After the initial FIA GT mod release there were big physics modifications by Doug Arnao. Ian had a good bunch of setups to offer, Neil created an installer, and Eric Boosman added a complete menu screen set along with a custom game icon. This was released as the FIA GT mod V2.

Shortly after the V2 release, Eric completely repainted the JMB-Geisse 360 textures with double resolution, following in the footsteps of Ralph Hummerich's high resolution F1 textures. Daniel Karlsson quickly followed suit with the Italtecnica 550s. Eric then created high res layered Photoshop templates for the viper model, which was used for the three Paul Belmondo Racing vipers, then released to the community.
It was around this time in March 2002 that the SimBin Development Team was formed by Ian, Doug, Eric, Rousseau, Bramzel Knot and Neil. Work immediately began on the FIA GT mod V3, with the goal of making it a revolutionary complete package, unlike any racing mod before. Ian started out initially coordinating the efforts as a project manager, and hosting a private team forum.

Sean Vollmer was immediately brought on as a master track creator from SCGT days, and David Driver joined as an experienced track texturer. Bram was an invaluable resource for gathering information and reference photographs, along with having an early talent for car painting, which was evidenced in his beautiful porsche 993s done for GT Racing 2002.

There was only one definitive guide on the web regarding how to add a custom team to F1 2001. This was Locutus' guide. Locutus was also the author of MAStudio2001, the tool with which we could write and extract from ISI's MAS file format. His programming skills and insatiable curiousity to see how things worked and broke made him a must-have addition to the team. Many of our tools and most of our understanding of the game's programming has come from his work.

Marco finally settled into his new job, and got back into the scene, and was of course expected to be part of SBDT. He started adjusting his models to fit real world dimensions, tuning the cars' meshes to be more accurate, and began work on the brand new Diablo GT.

Gabor Palko joined the team after displaying his talent for normals tuning on the incredible Porsche 993 mesh, which sadly, didn't make it into V3. This didn't stop him from fine-tuning the normals on the rest of the carset, really making them shine.

Stephen Viljoen had been creating night and dusk variations of the original tracks, along with creating works of art with the car's projected headlights. How could we not invite him to join? He proved to be an invaluable asset when it came to final packing and bug fixing, but his real claim to fame was his multi-point environment map system. This allowed individual mesh pieces to be assigned separate environment map textures, allowing for realistic glass, and bright chrome rims, while maintaining a modest, realistic body reflection.

Jan Frischkorn was brought on early for his beautiful Larbre Competition skins, but school and work dominated his time, so he had to leave the group until work on GT Racing 2002 was well under way. He's come back with a fire that can't be quenched, and he works like a machine, branching into every area of the mod creation, just short of modeling, and has been heading up the work on the forthcoming patch for GT Racing 2002.

Daniel Karlsson was working like a factory, churning out hi res skin replacements for many of the cars. It turned out that he did more than half of the grid of cars for V3, so how could we rightly not have him in the team? His seemingly endless passion for painting makes him an irreplacable member, and his dedication to improving his technique keeps his quality improving where it seems improvement is not possible.

Darren Barrett had been reworking some menu functions for more compact car setup screens, and more detailed game options and made a perfect addition to the team. He ended up developing a car browsing menu system which showed detailed information that the original game couldn't touch. Perfect for the GT car enthusiast. He's ended up being invaluable with his work on GT Racing 2002 with the new class specific game launcher, as well as all his menu work, including live track feed.

Mana Pellizzer posted some incredible extremely detailed dashboard screenshots that he had worked on, and we didn't have anyone working on the insides of the cars, so we snatched him up. He has since gone from just editing textures to doing 3d modeling on the dashes and has created some masterworks with an authenticity that the actual GT drivers have remarked on.

The team now had the main components needed for a big production. V3 was well under way. Physics worked and reworked, setups were developed, all car models were refined, all skins completed in hi res glory, the new menu graphics and menu system were developed, sounds were further refined, and some night tracks were thrown into the mix. Stephen Viljoen burned the midnight oil many a night to get all the bugfixes and final changes in (of which there were many, including the new environment mapping system). Come to think of it, he burned the 1,2, and 3 o'clock oil many nights, as well. This package was released as FIA GT V3, the ultimate recreation of the 2001 FIA GT season.

V3 met with much praise. It received great reviews in Italy's "Autosprint" magazine and "The Games Machine" magazine, which also featured V3 on its cover disk, as did "Giochi per il Mio Computer". Hungary's GameStar magazine ran a glowing review as well. An online matching service was setup at Relay Games, and there was much rejoicing in the streets.

There were still several acknowledged problems with the game, most of which were due to the game's engine itself, especially where the tire's physics model was concerned. V3 was a great racing experience, but it did not have what it takes to convert the most hardcore simmers from their beloved Grand Prix Legends, although most allowed themselves a nice 'break' from GPL.

Armed with a new physics engine in F1 2002, and a host of improvements suggested by the community as well as inside the team, the SBDT attacked the development of GT Racing 2002 with a bright star still in their eyes.

Doug had an early beta of the F1 2002 physics engine, and immediately began work on tuning the physics for the GT cars, as well as helping to refine the physics for the F1 game. Work started flooding in. Car models were again reworked, most from scratch, brand new models were included (the 996 gt2 turbo, 993 gt2, Marcos LM600), all 2002 FIA GT liveries were recreated with meticulous detail, surpassing that of V3. Music, sounds, dashes, menus were worked into a completely new look and feel, brand new tracks were added, having been converted from EA/Milestone's Superbike 2001 with the blessing of the original track author. New track textures were done utilizing the new multitexturing capability of the F1 2002 engine.

Early screenshots were met with much approval and admiration. But our GT cars weren't the only previews receiving accolades. There were also a few rendered shots of some 1977 F1 cars that were quietly posted, and news of this spread like wildfire. These cars were done by Perran Truran and Martijn Haans, who were talented modelers and painters, but lacked the knowledge to get their beauties working in the game. Having been impressed with V3 and needing some assistance, Perran and Martijn approached the team about a possible combination, and they were welcomed into the family. GT Racing 2002 was well under way by this time, so Perran decided to temporarily halt 1977 work to create the awesome Marcos LM600.

The only thing we lacked at this point was an announcer to call the driver names. Aaron Brown was brought on for this duty, but real life got in the way of his finishing the recording in time for the release.

We brought on our latest team addition, Rick "Vince Klortho" York to help with website maintenance, and it turns out this professional C++ programmer has many more tricks up his sleeve.

Work continued steadily on GT Racing 2002, and just as with V3 there were new additions and fixes up to the last day. Everyone really pitched in to bring GT Racing 2002 out, but Marco remained a driving force, and put in near full time hours to make everything come together.

GT Racing 2002 was released on schedule (no mean feat!) to huge critical acclaim and adulation. There were 8 high bandwidth servers pumping out this 265mb behemoth, all of which were brought to their knees, as the near 80,000 downloads were requested in the first 24 hours. To date, well over 200,000 people have downloaded our magnum opus, with more joining the fun every day. It has spread to far too many servers for us to keep track of, all over the world, and can be found on nearly any peer to peer file sharing system.

Everyone seems to love GT Racing 2002, from the novice Need For Speed arcade racer learning how to let off the accelerator, to professional racers. It has even claimed casualties from such GPL devotees as alien racer Greger Huttu and Alison "Eaglewoman" Hine.
The sim racing community has really taken up the banner, and is no longer modding F1 2002, but GT Racing 2002.

... and we're just getting warmed up.

BHMS: How did you go about selecting the team members?

Eric Boosman: First we subject them to a number of humiliating litmus tests to find their exact PH levels, then this is averaged along with their FSD (farthest spitting distance) and we choose the top performers.

Seriously, though, in the beginning there were only a few of us with common goals, and we had been working together as an 'unofficial' team for a couple months, and decided to give ourselves a name under which to produce future projects.

Currently, the way we select new members is a little different. Most of us keep a fairly close eye on all of the race mod communities (racer, NFS, F1 200x, etc). We watch for someone that produces great work, works to find answers for themselves, and presents themselves in a friendly and respectable way (sense of humor a plus!). If we like their work, and can use an extra hand in their area of expertise we will contact them and offer them a position in the team. If this is accepted, we will put it to a team vote so anyone can veto the decision for 24 hours. Barring any reasons one of us has to admit someone, they will be brought on.

BHMS: What is the background of the main members in the team?

Eric Boosman: First of all, there are no "main members". We are a round table, and everyone is given equal input, and holds equal importance in the team. Some of us do project management, but that's more an organizational thing, than an importance thing. After all, we're all paid the same (not a thing!).

Our backgrounds vary widely. We have a few university students in our midst, a few professional graphic artists, a couple professional software developers, a couple professors, professional race suspension tuner, an architect, and a few small business owners (entrepreneurs). All of us have a background loving race cars, though.