28.03.2022   3 comments

Episode 12: VRC v3.5 distribution and promotional efforts

When v3 was released, we started our promotional efforts to let the r/c world know about this new exciting r/c racing sim: Virtual RC Racing. One of the first things I had to come up with was a good VRC slogan, how about: DON’T WAIT FOR THE WEEKEND… A pretty obvious slogan but what did I want to get across?

RC racers practice their hobby mainly in the weekends, and usually don’t get much more than an hour or so of real track time. Add to that probably an hour or 2 driving to and from the track, and 3-10 hours of preparation to be ready to go practicing or race. And add to this the considerable expenses for tires, fuel, batteries, bodies, and parts, you end up with a very time consuming and expensive hobby. That’s no news, we know this for a long time. To get good at it you need to spend a whole lot of time and a whole lot of money! However, the r/c hobby is so challenging and addictive that tenths of thousands of racers head to racetracks all ov... read more

20.03.2022   3 comments

Episode 11: VRC v3.5 release and Kyosho version

Once we had started to release VRC v3 the word quickly spread that there was finally a serious r/c sim on the market. No serious game studio had probably ever thought of the idea that r/c cars are actually very suitable for a racing sim, they probably didn’t even know anything about r/c anyway. And if they knew anything about r/c, they would have understood very quickly that it was a typical ‘insider’ hobby/sport, a very niche market, nothing like a serious consumer market. I’m afraid they were dead right.

Why did I think an r/c racing was so well suited for a sim? It’s quite simple to understand. The only feedback an r/c racer gets when controlling his r/c car is visual, what you see, and to a lesser extend audial, what you hear. An r/c racer has learned to respond solely to these 2 inputs. R/C stands for radio but also for remote controlled, there is simply no physical feedback. With VRC we have created a sim that gives you exactly the same feedback, bu... read more

11.03.2022   6 comments

Episode 10: Database work, website, and release VRC v3

The VRC adventure that started in 1995 with the development of the VRC-1 game port adapter had finally culminated in an r/c racing sim of some sort. OK, it only covered 1:8 and 1:10 nitro on-road but those 2 classes were the most feasible to do as that’s where our Serpent expertise was and where we had a lot of data from our DRX-2000 datalogger available to come up with something that was as close as possible to the real thing. Todd had done a fantastic job with the physics and had become an expert in understanding car-setup and even in driving these virtual equivalents of the real cars. Tony had done an amazing job creating the cars and a series of on-road tracks for which I had provided the reference material. Now it was just a matter of setting up structures for competitions, member registration and of course the Virtual RC website for members to be able to see the race results etc.

Database and website
As I explained in episode 1, we had starte... read more

04.03.2022   4 comments

Episode 9: Evolution of the game port/USB adapter

VRC-1 Game port adapter
In episode 1 I explained how I got interested in using an R/C transmitter to control racing games like Indy Car. I assumed that using an r/c transmitter would be a lot more intuitive than using a joystick and that this could be a way of introducing r/c transmitters and the r/c hobby to a large public. At that moment I had no intention at all to develop an r/c racing sim myself, why would I? This was far beyond my skills and to be honest also my interest. I had Serpent to run and had my hands full on it with ever increasing competition. To develop a device that would connect an r/c transmitter and receiver with a PC was all I had in mind. It was a matter to find an electronics engineer to develop the electronics, write the software for it and a company that could do the printed circuit boards and the assembly.

In 1995 when I started this project the USB port was not invented yet, that came in 1996. So how to connect our game port ... read more