Grand Prix Legends - Reputation

Reputation

While Grand Prix Legends provided the most realistic (and hence, difficult) simulation of automotive physics in a PC game at its launch, the reputation of "difficult to drive" was exacerbated by a number of decisions made both for the demo and the launch of version 1.0.

The demo version gave users a taster of the Brabham F1 car at the Watkins Glen circuit. Unfortunately, the car was set up with approximately one degree of positive camber angle whereas an actual car of that era would have run one or more degrees of negative camber. Negative camber proportionally increases the footprint of the tire, thus lateral grip, when cornering. Positive camber proportionally reduces the footprint and the amount of grip available from the tire when cornering. This resulted in a car whose cornering grip was markedly less than it should have been and whose grip decreased more sharply than expected when the car turned a corner, greatly increasing the skill required to drive the car quickly.

When version 1.0 of the game was launched, it allowed users the option to drive "Novice Trainer", "Advanced Trainer" or fully fledged F1 cars. The Novice Trainer and Advanced Trainer cars approximated F3 and F2 regulations in that they had reduced power and in the case of the Novice Trainer, fewer gears. These trainers were more forgiving to drive, but the game only allowed the cars to be used for practice sessions. It was only possible to race against the computer using the F1 cars, which meant that a player's first experience of competition was in an F1 car at F1 speeds with F1 opponents.

A further complication affected users with lower powered PCs. Version 1.0 of Grand Prix Legends allowed users to reduce the number of computer opponents if their PCs were unable to render a full grid of cars at a reasonable frame rate. Unfortunately, reducing the field was achieved by removing cars from the back of the grid starting with the slowest, leaving a reduced grid containing only the fastest drivers.

Perhaps the most damaging aspect to the game's reputation was that of ride height.

Grand Prix cars from 1967 typically ran 5 to 6 inches (130 to 150 mm) of ground clearance, unlike the later ground effect cars that were designed to have the chassis as close to the ground as possible. Version 1.0 of Grand Prix Legends, allowed its cars to be set up with a ground clearance of only one inch.

Lowering the ride height lowers the center of gravity of the car which helps improve cornering ability by reducing the roll moment of the chassis. It also has the side effect of reducing the amount of suspension travel available.

When the suspension in a car is fully compressed, it reaches the bump stops, small blocks of rubber that catch the suspension arms at the end of their range of movement. This is often referred to as "bottoming out". Once a car's suspension reaches the bump stops, its effective spring rate increases sharply as the bump stops are effectively very hard springs. Increasing the spring rate at one wheel transfers weight onto this wheel and away from the other wheels, causing the car to understeer if it is one of the front wheels or oversteer if it is one of the rear wheels. The sudden onset of understeer or oversteer can result in loss of control if the driver does not react quickly enough to the change in handling.

The default setups in Grand Prix Legends combined uncharacteristically low ride heights with short bump stops which resulted in cars whose suspension frequently "bottomed out" and oscillated abruptly between the expected spring rates and much higher bump stop spring rates. This caused the cars to behave erratically over kerbs, bumps and any significant application of acceleration or braking, with only the highly skilled able to fully exploit these "low rider" or "go-kart" setups.

The problem was further complicated by the lack of audible feedback when the cars hit the bump stops, leaving many drivers scratching their heads at the erratic handling of the early setups.

Papyrus were aware that there would be difficulties for the novice even before the simulator was released. On the very first page of the manual, it cautions, "The first time you go out on the track, you WILL spin and crash. This is because, the first time they play Grand Prix Legends, EVERYBODY spins and crashes." Rumor among simulator racing enthusiasts was that when Jackie Stewart had an opportunity to drive the simulator in the late stages of development, he claimed that it was harder to drive than the actual 1967 Formula One cars.

Papyrus recognised the ride-height problem and the first patch (version 1.1) prevented setups from being lower than 2.5 inches (64 mm). However, both the default setups and the majority of third-party setups were still designed with the theory used on modern, high-downforce race cars, with the car as low as possible with an extremely stiff suspension to prevent the car from bottoming out at speed (due to increased aerodynamic downforce not present on 1967 era cars).

Increasing the ride height back up to 1967 levels transformed the handling of the cars and demonstrated the power and sophistication of Grand Prix Legends, but the reputation of "overly difficult handling" and "no grip" was already established. However, for those who were willing to try the more realistic setups, it became obvious that, while total grip levels were still realistically low, the cars were now extremely driveable.