BHMS: Where did you guys get all the data and if it is not a secret, what was the process of developing physics for each car?

Doug Arnao: Being in the business I was able to secure many engine dyno sheets from Porsche, Chevy, and Viper engines throuhg contacts I had. Comparing what they were really getting for torque/HP against that are run in the LMS series. From there the rest of the engines were easy to extrapolte from.

As far as the chassis paramters go, I've been into chassis theroy since I was in my early twenties. I was designing a-arm suspensions on paper and going to races measuring suspension points on some pretty high end cars over the years, then I'd write them down and map them out when I got home. Sometime in the early 80's I started building cars from scratch including a couple of tube-frame cars that were double arm front/rear. Also built a few with McPhearson strut and traling arm. I've got a few computer programs that I analyze and design suspension geometry in for my real customer work, and this is what I used to design the suspensions for the GTR cars before I put the paramaters in-game. I also used this to re-design the suspension links in F1-2002 retail for ISI and did the same for their NT2003 sim...

Each car's suspension is unique in GTR2003. All the cars are double a-arm except the Porsche which use the McPhearson front strut and "5-link" rear suspension which has built in roll toe-steer. Great for the street as it promotes roll understeer, but not so good on a racecar. While I had hard numbers on the Porsche suspensions, the other cars I came up with general differences in the suspensions by looking at alot of pictures and doing my own "designing"... I think the results were pretty good, making each car feel slightly unique, and needing slightly different approaches to setup.

The aero numbers again I had some hard numbers on some Porsche cars from LMS, some raw downforce numbers from rear wings that are being used on these cars... then theres is alot of info out there if you really dig, and then from there you fill in the gaps by connecting the dots so to speak. But in the end it all has to make sense - the G's, the top speed, the lap times, the feel, the setup changes doing the expected things... and this is where it takes time. Tieing everything together so it's all convincing..


BHMS: The engine sounds are great. Where did you get the samples and how difficult is to get the sound just right across all the revs?

Marco Demontis: First, the sound engine is not perfect. It allows a lot of different samples for various rev ranges, but it doesn't allow to have a different sample for throttle on/throttle off (more important). BTW, we have used original samples from various car fan sites in the net, extracting a good loop where it was possible. We have used also a couple of samples made by GPLEA for GP Legends.


BHMS: Programming artificial intelligence sure is a huge task. Since this is only an add-on, there was no programming involved (correct me if I am wrong), but more of changing different parameters. How difficult was to adapt the AI to GT racing and are you happy with the end result? AI cars are quite slow on starts. Should we expect a patch in the future which would fix this?

Doug Arnao: Another example of how great the ISI boys are. We were fortunate to be allowed the use of their AIW editor, which was instrumental in the quality of the AI you see in GTR2002... the slow start issue is something that seems to go deeper than the AI editor, and we will probably have to live with for now... as we increased the AI cars from the F1's 24 to the GTR's 36 it got progressively worse, but I'm always finding new things as I experiment, so you never know...


BHMS: How much help was there from Image Space Inc. (ISI), the original developer of F1 2002?

Doug Arnao: They were very helpfull as you can see in the previous AI question. I (doug) worked with them on F1-2002 and NT2003 so I had a trust relationship already with them that I brought to the team. This helped when we were at a loss for certain problems and they were able to help us find an answer very quickly.....Along with the use of the editor were quick explanations of just about any file structures we needed...

BHMS: Looking back, what was the most difficult part of development and why?

Jan Frischkorn: This is a really difficult question, because everybody in the team had his own piece of work and his own problems with it. So I can't really say what was more difficult. I think the hardest part was the last weeks before release. The closer we got to the deadline, the more things appeared that needed to be improved.

BHMS: Overall public was very positive about your product. Did you get and response from the publishers or other game developers?

Doug Arnao: Yes. *blink*

BHMS: Now that version 1.0 has been released, will you continue with development and release patches in the future? Are there any areas of the mod, you are still working on or improving?

Jan Frischkorn: After the release people found several things that need to be fixed. Mostly problems with regional settings or drivers in Windows, minor graphical bugs and some bugs with tracks and sounds. Most of them can and will be fixed in a patch, which should be finished in January. Additionally we are working on some surprises for the future.

BHMS: Will there be more cars, tracks or other special features such as night driving or is this more or less the final stage?

Perran Truran: A TVR is on the way, as well as a lot of updates to the existing cars.

Jan Frischkorn: We have already released 7 official addon cars and there are a lot more to come. The community is doing a great job on new cars, too. There are lots of community addon cars available.

BHMS: We've heard you were developing shorter versions of Brands Hatch, Silverstone and Donnington which caused a few problems. Are you still working on them?

Jan Frischkorn: We are working on several track projects at the moment. The F1-1977 mod will need some old-fashioned tracks and some more addon tracks for the GTR-mod are planned.

BHMS: With GT Racing 2002 being a huge success, what does the future hold for the development team?

Perran Truran: F1 1977!

Marco Demontis: We are giving support for GTR2002 bug-fixing and we are developing various patches. Meanwhile, we have started to develop "more seriously" the 1977 F1 mod. After that, probably, we'll work on another covered-wheel mod, maybe GTR2003.