Victory Lane

Papyrus' impressive physics engine from GPL gave the NASCAR series a big boost.

But with 2001's landmark NASCAR Racing 4, Papyrus was given the green light to bring in its GPL engine. The tide would then change, and not a moment too soon for those who had listened to rumors for three years about each new NASCAR being a truly new and revamped NASCAR.

Kaemmer admits, "It was definitely a balancing act. What finally turned the thinking around was that we got an internal demo going that showed what a Winston Cup car would be like in the sim, and it was pretty cool and easier to drive than GPL's F1 cars. The physics engine will do whatever the numbers say should happen. We've actually done cars similar to modern F1 cars, which are a handful but unbelievably quick, as well as 5000 hp Top Fuel dragsters, which are absolutely insane. It turns out that 1967 Grand Prix cars were very tricky to drive in real life--the drivers complained at the time that they were too skittish and had too much power for their meager grip. The designers were starting to look at four-wheel drive as a solution, and then some genius realized he could stick downforce generating wings on the cars, and things got much better. So we maybe blew it by choosing 1967 (for GPL). I've always felt that the driver aids are an impediment to learning, which is what a sim is all about. What we really should have been doing is putting people in lower-powered cars. But to sell to the mass market, we needed the brand recognition of the "Big Cars," so of course with no driver aids they are tricky."

NASCAR 4 may have been the pinnacle of that series.

In NASCAR 4, Papyrus utilized everything it had learned previously and injected it into a game focusing on North America's most popular racing genre. To say it clicked is an understatement. NASCAR 4 cars sported active four-way suspension that reacted both visually and practically to weight transfers. The game featured source-sensitive lighting, real-time shadows, and stunning collision effects that sometimes tossed vehicles into the air, end over end. And because it took full advantage of 3D acceleration, the pixeled appearance of prior NASCARs was gone and frame rate hassles were no longer the issue they once were.

From a physics standpoint, NASCAR 4 confirmed that Papyrus could do precisely what it said it could do with the GPL engine. To quote Kaemmer, "It was definitely a vindication of the physics engine when Nascar 4 was so well received." In simple terms, NASCAR 4 could be anything you wanted it to be. Indeed, if all drivers' aids were used and alternate modes explored, it was the most approachable NASCAR to date. But if you wanted to hike up the difficulty and experience terrifying authenticity, you could do that too. You could even race with 40 of your best friends or enemies via the Internet, though the game's online frame rate proved to be erratic at best.

Spectacular and realistic crashes were possible.

NASCAR 4 also further blurred the line between virtual and actual racing. "Real feedback started when we got Kevin Harvick and Dale Earnhardt, Jr. to beta-test NASCAR 4," says Kaemmer. "They loved it right off the bat, and were able to give us quite a bit of useful feedback about the feel of the cars and the realism of the tracks. Kevin Harvick told us a story about the first time he raced at Dover. He had never been to the track in real life, but had been beta-testing NASCAR 4 for a couple of months and had driven hundreds of laps around the virtual Dover. He said he hadn't driven more than two laps around the real track before he had a huge wide grin behind his helmet because he felt he just knew the track. It was as if he had been there before. He then proceeded to put his car on a pole."

NASCAR Racing 2002 Season followed in 2002 and then came NASCAR Racing 2003 Season. Both featured several minor enhancements, the latter being particularly noteworthy for its heightened difficulty and adaptive AI drivers. Papyrus (and its loyal followers) knew going in that NASCAR 2003 would be the series' swan song, and neither could have asked for a finer farewell. Certainly the game gave the good folks at Electronic Arts something to mull over for its own NASCAR series, now in its fourth year and striving to reach the same level of believability and authenticity.

Tons of tracks were available as well.

Looking back, Kaemmer is justifiably proud of the Papyrus' heritage and in particular of sticking to his guns when things got tough. But how was it that this comparatively small studio was able to stay at the forefront of the realism curve for so many years, bowing only slightly when push came to shove? "I think the fact that we started with Indy 500, which really put us on the simulation path, had a lot to do with it. I ended up with a fanatical devotion to realism, which rubbed off on quite a few of our employees through the years. We never spent a lot of time thinking about what would make a fun game--only what would make the experience more like driving a real racecar. I think most of our competitors through the years were always worried about how difficult it was, and would sacrifice the realism, figuring that if it was difficult, it wasn't fun."

"To me, that's nonsense. How many people would play golf if it were a piece of cake to hit par? It would be mini-golf. OK, maybe a lot of people would play it, but they'd get bored pretty quickly, and they wouldn't spend much time on it. How many people play a lot of mini-golf? Anything that is truly fun in a lasting way in life takes time to learn--playing the piano, playing baseball, sailing, you name it. People don't devote themselves to simple things for long periods of time. Our software always seemed to be able to hold people's interest for a long time, since it takes skill, and the exercise of that skill is a tremendous rush, just like the real thing."