Ian Bell: Modding, Throwback Game Modes Coming to GTRevival

GTRevival Audi R8 LMS GT3 Evo II Cockpit.jpg
One of the big sim racing titles joining the market in the next year or so is GTRevival. We had a chat with the project’s leader, Ian Bell about the game and his team’s projects including the game’s development.

Image credit: Straight4 Studios

From the early 2000s working on ISI engine mods to the glory days of Simbin and the GTR series. Then moving on to creating Slightly Mad Studios and the hey day of Project Cars. Ian Bell has been an integral part in some of sim racing’s most special eras. He and his team are now hard at work on their latest project.

Having put together Straight4 Studios from the ashes of the senior Slightly Mad Studios team, their latest project throws back to what Bell himself describes as “a special time.” GTRevival is all about combining the soul of the glory days of sim racing with new gen tech. We were able to get a few words with the man himself and discussed everything about the new game.

GTRevival Logo.jpg

A logo draft for the upcoming Straight4 Studios game. Image credit: Straight4 Studios

Including chat about the project, he mentioned that the game will have many features rarely seen in modern racing games. He also broke down the plans for the future after the title releases as well as answering an important question; will GTRevival allow for modding?

What is GTRevival?​

Kicking off the chat, Ian Bell was keen to point out the main goal for GTRevival. When asked what the team is targeting with the game, his initial answer was, “to rebuild trust with our community.”

In fact, a messy restructuring of the SMS team upon its Codemasters takeover led to Project Cars 3 falling short of fans’ expectations. “we wanted that title to be a Forza Horizon-type spinoff of the CARS franchise. In the end, our new owners decided otherwise, and we were saddled with that decision. It hurt us, it hurt our reputation that had taken us a quarter-century to build, and it’s still hurting us,” he added. Clearly looking to right past wrongs, it is clear this game is truly a passion project.


OverTake: How would you describe the difference in style or approach between the Project CARS series and GTRevival?

The first word Bell used to answer this question was: focused.

"We have a good amount of cars and a lot more experience in the team and that means the cars in GTRevival will all be given the superstar treatment their pedigree deserve. And that, ultimately, is the difference in scope of the two sims.The other major difference, of course, is that GTRevival is unapologetically a motorsport sim. Pure, passionately, motorsport."

In fact, Bell goes on to explain that it is a way for the team to return to its roots; “With GTRevival, we have a sim with a certain breed of car that lends itself to our strengths.” The most recent screenshots show that this could well indicate a return to early 2000s GT1 models, such as cars seen in GTR2.

Straight4 Ferrari 550 Maranello GTS Cockpit Teaser.jpg

This Ferrari 550 ran in the GT1 class which featured in GTR and GTR2. Image credit: Straight4 Studios

OverTake: Is it still an aim for GTRevival, and the GTR series to be focused on a single series or discipline? Or will it resemble more of an Assetto Corsa/AMS 2 sandbox style?

"I can tell you what it isn’t. It’s not a CARS or AC or AMS2 clone. And it’s also not a single championship. As I alluded to earlier, funding for those types of sims—particularly if you want to make a AAA-title across the major platforms—just isn’t practical for us right now."

Alongside fighting the corner of a focused simulator, Bell mentions that the Audi R8 GT3 one sees in many screenshots on the developer’s Twitter feed aren’t as significant as the community believes.

GTRevival-Audi-GT3-1024x540.jpg

The Audi R8 GT3 may not even feature in the full GTRevival release. Image credit: Straight4 Studios

"So what was up with the GT3? Well, it’s our test-mule for physics and for the look and feel of the sim during the initial phase of development. GT3s are popular these days, and that affords our teams across multi-departments the ability to benchmark because all our main competitors feature pretty much the same car. That’s crucial for us, as it is for all other developers.

I wouldn’t, however, read anything in that image in terms of the content that will come with GTRevival. Not in the least."


Clearly then, the simulator will yet distance itself from the current crop of modern GT racing games. It is indeed a crowded market with the likes of Assetto Corsa Competizione and Rennsport among others tackling the niche.

Features Included​

If a sim racing title only includes cars and tracks to race, even the best physics in the world won’t entertain fans for long. The best games have a plethora of features and game modes to keep players coming back for more. It seems GTRevival will be no different. But in a very different way.


OverTake: Are you looking to replicate the success of the Project Cars career mode in GTRevival?

Are we looking to replicate the success? Yes. Are we looking to bring the same career path to single player? No. We have something better, and that fits more organically with the ethos of GTRevival.

"This sim represents a blend between the past and the future. Its soul is the glory days of sim racing while its tech’ is very much next gen’. So obviously while I can’t give anything away, I can confirm that our career mode is something … let’s say nostalgic and leave it at that. Although I should add—when we look back at the glory days of sim racing, there were gameplay elements back then that really brought games to life. We want to bring that back because it’s our opinion that some things have just fallen through the cracks through the years for no good reason at all. Things that worked, and things that will still work given a little love and tender updating."


Not only will the game’s career mode get plenty of attention during the title’s development, GTRevival will also seemingly feature a collection of rarely seen features in modern racing games. GTR2 had a nifty track learning system and Driving School feature that pushed players to improve if they wanted to unlock tracks to race on and championships to compete in. Could the new game draw inspiration from that as the team looks “into the past and its history” for game mode implementation?


One new age addition we were anxious to ask Bell about was AI. Early in 2023, Austin Ogonoski, the S4 Game Design Director shared videos showcasing AI synthesised commentators and pit crews. It seems they will indeed feature in the game as AI is reportedly a big focus point for the development team.

OverTake: What can you tell us about these features’ implementation into the game? Will they feature at all?

"I’ve made it a priority that the dev team gets these things into the game. That said, it’s not easy working with new technology, and for us, as a new studio, it’s doubly-hard because we’re also dealing with new tech’ when it comes to our underlying physics engine and so on.

The AI components, what’s more, haven’t been done before in sim racing, so we don’t have a model we can point to and improve on, we’re having to literally invent the whole thing ourselves. It’s hard work but we have a good group here at S4 when it comes to AI: we’ve recruited an entire team dedicated to AI and we’re seeing positive results."



GTRevival Will be Moddable​

As aforementioned, the Straight4 team is a group of developers that, for the most part, began their careers creating mods for sim racing games like F1 2002. This ISI engine mod later went on to become the first GTR game, a legendary title. So it’s clear that mods are important to the team. This is something Ian confirm.

OverTake: Is there any discussion on modding capability and making third party content easy to create and install for GTRevival?

“I started my career as a modder, and our first sim, GTR, was essentially a mod of an ISI F1 game named F1 2002. We owe our existence to modding and, because of that, we understand the spirit and what drives that community.

We see modding as an integral and vital dynamic of this new sim, and we have an entire department dedicated to ensuring GTRevival will be the most moddable platform we’ve ever delivered. And I say this without prevarication: we are absolutely committed to offering the modding community all the tools and behind-the-scenes help that they require to make GTRevival the community’s foremost modding sim.”


It seems then that not only will mods be available for GTRevival. They will indeed be an integral part of the game. With the necessary tools being made available to budding content creators, we should see the sim have a long life beyond the developer’s support. One must therefore expect to see this title rival the likes of Assetto Corsa and Rennsport. The latter recently announced it is also welcoming third party content.

Launch and Beyond​

Speaking of the title’s life post-launch, Ian Bell also had something to say about that. Whilst he could not go into much detail on the matter, he did confirm that content will be added further down the line.

OverTake: Are there plans to support the game long-term post-launch? Will there be many DLC packs for fans to look forward to?

“Will there be DLC? Yes. But they’ll be a little different than what’s traditionally on offer. Again, though, this is directly linked to PLAION and therefore not something I’m able to discuss at any length.”

PLAION-X-Straight4-Studios-1024x576.jpg

Plaion will publish the new title. Image credit: Straight4 Studios

So GTRevival will indeed receive DLC packs to keep fans entertained after it releases to the market. But he once again attempts to set his upcoming title aside from the heard. The traditional DLC offering typically features a set number of content pieces for a price. Whether GTRevival goes down the iRacing route of single content pieces, we do not know. We will simply have to wait and see what Bell means by this after the game launches.

At the end of this year, GTRevival will go through an early access soft launch akin to those of the Project Cars days. Those truly committed to the title will get their hands on the game then in one form or another. The team announces a full release of late-2024.

Are you excited for GTRevival? Tell us on Twitter at @OverTake_gg or in the comments down below!
About author
Angus Martin
Motorsport gets my blood pumping more than anything else. Be it physical or virtual, I'm down to bang doors.

Comments

People talk so much about promises that Ian Bell broke, i already asked here for a list, nobody could provide one except for "fizzix".
Have you, actually, watched any real-world race in person or on the screen? Have you seen the sheer difference between #1 finisher and the last finisher (if he didn't DNF)?

You could walk into McDonalds, order Big Mac Menu, eat it, leave McDonalds and you wouldn't get late to see the finish of the last driver on the track after #1 has finished. Ian Bell promised realistic racing experience and what we got is NFS-style bunch driving, where all cars are driving in pack for "competitive racing experience", which is absolutely unrealistic in the real world. Even already after the first lap the peloton gets way too stretched out, yet in Ian Bell's world what we got in Project C.A.R.S. was realistic depiction of the racing experience.
 
Premium
The AI commentary demo was actually pretty impressive and sounded very natural, but I think it is best used in something like a replay, think I'd find it pretty distracting during the actual race and would probably just turn it off!
This type of tech is only useful if it enhances the sim such as Crewchief which already does this to an extent or race engineer/strategy tool ... As a broadcasting feature it's completely useless.
 
Premium
As long as there's an option to turn off the advice from the pit crew about "car on the left" "car closing up from behind" "car on the right"... (then, me thinking) I have mirrors and I'll pay attention if you'll just shut the f*** up
But, it could be good for advice on strategy calls.
Most importantly, for me is the inclusion of things like pit boards being on the wall not in the HUD.
I found, and still find, that HUDs in sims use up far too much screen, working dials and lights are all I need, but equally, the HUD should be a customisable option... as should the internal Mirror and seating positions.
 
lets start betting wether this next thing farted out by bell will actually release before rennsport gets out of its terminal beta.
 
I might be in the minority here, but if there's one thing that Ian Bell and his team get things right, is about the visual and gimmicky stuff, which is very much spot on and I hope to see the continuation.

Project Cars Series' visuals are still holding up pretty well, and they look reasonably well even in low settings. The Photo Mode are amazing, very easy to use and to create good in game photography from the get go (even without resorting to the likes of photoshop). The career mode with different ladders to take also was a good idea. Race Engineer, while still very limited in what it can do on PC2 was actually very helpful to introduce how to tune to newbies and they also have a great explainer about what the tuning setup does to the car. The live weather was also revolutionary, and you could even do real weather for some time until they shut the service. The sandbox racing mode that doesn't limit you to race class was fun. You want to race the gokarts at full le mans track? Sure you can do it here. Who else gives experience like that?

It really excites me when they showed those demo with AI, it shows that these people still knows how to make exciting stuff on the gimmick side. Would be great if they could integrate AI tech onto the bots as well, right? Think of it as a budget Sophy of Gran Turismo!

It's just a shame that people tend to only looks at the negative side of things, which i do agree that the actual driving and physics aspect can be janky at times. But the game that they produce really done well to introduce people to different discipline of simracing in an easy and accessible way, especially for first timer simracers. They could then jump into something else if they want to get more serious and competition like rf2, ACC, iracing and all those stuff you guys preach to death. Me who enjoy driving little Escort on jumpy Bannochbrae could still stay and enjoy the lovely sunset.

Don't forget to have fun peeps, can't wait for these folks to feed me a Morgan Aero or Marcos Mantis GT3 to fight against a bunch of shiny new 296 on the grid :)
 
"If a sim racing title only includes cars and tracks to race, even the best physics in the world won’t entertain fans for long"
wtaf?
Many people play SP only and ultimately single race/hotlapping can get boring as hell, so SP needs a decent season/career mode
 
Premium
Many people play SP only and ultimately single race/hotlapping can get boring as hell, so SP needs a decent season/career mode
If you have the tools like Championship Manager for GTR2 then you can drum up as many series as you wish to keep the single play mode interesting* if you add to that accessible community mods you could have a Game/Sim the could keep even the most easily bored entertained.. I've been hitting GTR2 for nearly two decades and it's not lost it's appeal.

*if there is way to link and or integrate championships in the new 'Career' mode.
 
Last edited:
Well, just thinking when Ian said this

“I started my career as a modder, and our first sim, GTR, was essentially a mod of an ISI F1 game named F1 2002. We owe our existence to modding and, because of that, we understand the spirit and what drives that community.”

If you're reading this Ian, it is me dwightyone your number one fanboy - I concur with everything you said so is there any chance you can give us the keys to Project Cars 2 so we can put some more tracks in it or better still rob the likes of Bahrain from Project Cars 3 to put into PC2 - EA won't notice for sure. From your loyal servant dwightyone.
 
Well, just thinking when Ian said this

“I started my career as a modder, and our first sim, GTR, was essentially a mod of an ISI F1 game named F1 2002. We owe our existence to modding and, because of that, we understand the spirit and what drives that community.”

If you're reading this Ian, it is me dwightyone your number one fanboy - I concur with everything you said so is there any chance you can give us the keys to Project Cars 2 so we can put some more tracks in it or better still rob the likes of Bahrain from Project Cars 3 to put into PC2 - EA won't notice for sure. From your loyal servant dwightyone.
sure, all you would need to do, is put the CD/DvD in as a piracy check....just....take...err....the...cd-rom and....well.....nevermind...
 
I might be in the minority here, but if there's one thing that Ian Bell and his team get things right, is about the visual and gimmicky stuff, which is very much spot on and I hope to see the continuation.

Project Cars Series' visuals are still holding up pretty well, and they look reasonably well even in low settings. The Photo Mode are amazing, very easy to use and to create good in game photography from the get go (even without resorting to the likes of photoshop). The career mode with different ladders to take also was a good idea. Race Engineer, while still very limited in what it can do on PC2 was actually very helpful to introduce how to tune to newbies and they also have a great explainer about what the tuning setup does to the car. The live weather was also revolutionary, and you could even do real weather for some time until they shut the service. The sandbox racing mode that doesn't limit you to race class was fun. You want to race the gokarts at full le mans track? Sure you can do it here. Who else gives experience like that?

It really excites me when they showed those demo with AI, it shows that these people still knows how to make exciting stuff on the gimmick side. Would be great if they could integrate AI tech onto the bots as well, right? Think of it as a budget Sophy of Gran Turismo!

It's just a shame that people tend to only looks at the negative side of things, which i do agree that the actual driving and physics aspect can be janky at times. But the game that they produce really done well to introduce people to different discipline of simracing in an easy and accessible way, especially for first timer simracers. They could then jump into something else if they want to get more serious and competition like rf2, ACC, iracing and all those stuff you guys preach to death. Me who enjoy driving little Escort on jumpy Bannochbrae could still stay and enjoy the lovely sunset.

Don't forget to have fun peeps, can't wait for these folks to feed me a Morgan Aero or Marcos Mantis GT3 to fight against a bunch of shiny new 296 on the grid :)
Indeed, the 2 first pcars games (the 3rd one isn't a pcars game, its name was just a bad CM's idea) are good games but the lack of support and the full disrespect towards simracers, SMS has shown by downgrading some aspects between the 2 games, and letting the games without proper support and with unfixed critical flaws (not even bugs, just bad features : bad FFB, broken autoclutch option, not paying the fee for the real weather, bad AI, broken puddles physics...), gave these games and Ian Bell this bad reputation.

These were amazing experiences, with solid VR, amazing graphics (still amazing and pcars2 looks more realistic than AMS2, despite the aliasing and the points everywhere in the sky, and pcars1 looked better than pcars2 ; I don't know what is wrong with AMS2, something in the shaders), incredibly fast loading times and simple UI, you're right on that. But these games were promises to simracers they weren't made to discover simracing.

On its time, the second game wasn't seen in a good way, considered as a full priced 1.5 pcars, which was unfair as there were many innovations between both games (more laser scanned tracks, live track 3, puddles, more content). The other issue was the bad simplified FFB (which was too complex in the first game) which made the physics feel bad.

With pcars2, it was hard to understand why some issues had been let unsolved although there were not that hard to fix. While a game like rfactor2 was facing much heavier issues (UI, graphics, loading times...) with a smaller development team, you can understand the disappointment.

Also, FFB has been partly fixed by a modder (here on RD, and reading his notes are absolutely interesting and shows how much SMS has been just lazy). Real time weather could be fixed by just a free subscription and a java script, SMS could have linked the FFB to its own physics (because it is the issue!) and given this piece of information about the real weather to their customers when it stopped paying the fee ; the issue now is that the data format has changed and pcars2 stays with an incompatible one. The other issues, puddles physics (which should be only a few numbers in some code lines), autoclutch, bad AI, are still there and the moders van't do anything. Modding an old game to make it better is also part of the simracing "tradition" and pcars2 critical but small issues would have been fixed if it was more opened.

There was little work to do to just to make this pcars2 game a whole better experience. And SMS, Ian Bell, never did the job, although it has much more financial means than all simracing developpers. This is the point, it is not the money, it is about the attitude and the business spirit behind these games. This is why such doubts are being made about this new project. You can also read my last post about a software made by a single person which makes what is promised there, a real time engineer AI who helps you and your strategy. Ian Bell states that a team is working on that, waste of money and ressources as it has already been done. Doesn't that give you a taste of what is coming? The team just didn't do the job and is already wasting money. What feature will be cut to finance that waste of time? This is the whole point : pcars games have been successfully launched (Ian Bell's expertise, you can read that here) but badly managed (you can read that here too, Ian Bell just not a competent CEO).

Do you still feel confident? And now you are among the seasoned simracers.

EDIT : do not trust Ian Bell if he doesn't ask for our forgiveness, and the forgiveness of its SMS' coworkers. And I'm sure he won't ever do that.
 
Last edited:
Ian Bell should stop the BS, the GTR mod for F1 2002 was bad. The first GTR game was amazing in graphics, but not better in physics than the WSGT mod for F1C. Some of us weren't born at these times. Just don't trust these old guys, ask for proof
 
I'll reserve judgement until the game comes out.
Anyways we've got nothing to be pissed about. If it comes out amazing we have one more good sim on the PC. If it flops, we still go back to AMS2, ACC, AC, iRacing. Really is nothing to complain about. If they can make something as decent as GTR2 then I'm sold.
 
Indeed, the 2 first pcars games (the 3rd one isn't a pcars game, its name was just a bad CM's idea) are good games but the lack of support and the full disrespect towards simracers, SMS has shown by downgrading some aspects between the 2 games, and letting the games without proper support and with unfixed critical flaws (not even bugs, just bad features : bad FFB, broken autoclutch option, not paying the fee for the real weather, bad AI, broken puddles physics...), gave these games and Ian Bell this bad reputation.

These were amazing experiences, with solid VR, amazing graphics (still amazing and pcars2 looks more realistic than AMS2, despite the aliasing and the points everywhere in the sky, and pcars1 looked better than pcars2 ; I don't know what is wrong with AMS2, something in the shaders), incredibly fast loading times and simple UI, you're right on that. But these games were promises to simracers they weren't made to discover simracing.

On its time, the second game wasn't seen in a good way, considered as a full priced 1.5 pcars, which was unfair as there were many innovations between both games (more laser scanned tracks, live track 3, puddles, more content). The other issue was the bad simplified FFB (which was too complex in the first game) which made the physics feel bad.

With pcars2, it was hard to understand why some issues had been let unsolved although there were not that hard to fix. While a game like rfactor2 was facing much heavier issues (UI, graphics, loading times...) with a smaller development team, you can understand the disappointment.

Also, FFB has been partly fixed by a modder (here on RD, and reading his notes are absolutely interesting and shows how much SMS has been just lazy). Real time weather could be fixed by just a free subscription and a java script, SMS could have linked the FFB to its own physics (because it is the issue!) and given this piece of information about the real weather to their customers when it stopped pauing the fee ; the issue now is that the data format has changed and pcars2 stays with an incompatible one. The other issues, puddles physics (which should be only a few numbers in some code lines), autoclutch, bad AI, are still there and the moders van't do anything. Modding an old game to make it better is also part of the simracing "tradition" and pcars2 critical but small issues would have been fixed if it was more opened.

There was little work to do to just to make this pcars2 game a whole better experience. And SMS, Ian Bell, never did the job, although it has much more financial means than all simracing developpers. This is the point, it is not the money, it is about the attitude and the business spirit behind these games. This is why such doubts are being made about this new project. You can also read my last post about a software made by a single person which makes what is promised there, a real time engineer AI who helps you and yojr strategy. Ian Bell states that a team is worling on that, waste of money and ressources as it has already been done. Doesn't that give you a taste of what is coming? The team just didn't do the job and is already wasting money. What feature will be cut to finance that waste of time? This is the whole point : pcars games have been successfully launched (Ian Bell's expertise, you can read that here) but badly managed (you can read that here too, Ian Bell just not a competent CEO).

Do you still feel confident? And now you are among the seasoned simracers.

EDIT : do not trust Ian Bell if he doesn't ask for our forgiveness, and the forgiveness of its SMS' coworkers. And I'm sure he won't ever do that.
Trust me all those "could be this could be that" that you just said wouldn't be enough even if you fix those and you'll definitely want more. It's in the human nature and you can't please everyone. I don't even trust him about modding because he also said some stuff about modding in PC1, but never really materialize.

Though that said, I'm still excited with the prospect of them being able to bring new revolutionary gimmicky stuff once again. Then there's always a refund button later if it doesn't suit me well.
 

Latest News

Article information

Author
Angus Martin
Article read time
7 min read
Views
11,335
Comments
104
Last update

How are you going to watch 24 hours of Le Mans

  • On national tv

    Votes: 240 33.9%
  • Eurosport app/website

    Votes: 195 27.6%
  • WEC app/website

    Votes: 134 19.0%
  • Watch party

    Votes: 57 8.1%
  • At a friends house

    Votes: 18 2.5%
  • At Le Mans

    Votes: 63 8.9%
Back
Top