The Virtual GP sims website is still under costruction. We hope to be fully up and running as soon as possible!
In the late 90's Paolo Cattani
developed Virtual GP
, a racing car simulator for the Amiga range
of computers, worldwide published and distributed by Islona Entertainment Ltd, a subsidiary
of Epic Marketing. The aim of the simulator was not only to let the user virtually drive an open wheeled
racecar in the most realistic way allowed by the technology of those years, but also to recreate
the experience of a full GP weekend; practise sessions to find the best car setup, qualify ones to get
a good starting grid position and, of course, races against computer controlled opponents. A full
championship mode was possible, too, in which the user can try to become the virtual champion by
racing and scoring points on each of the 16 different tracks available in the simulator.
Virtual GP was followed by two sequels: Virtual Grand Prix 2
(VGP2) and Virtual Grand Prix 3
(VGP3),
developed for the PC Windows and Mac OSX platforms (VGP2 was also available for MorphOS, an AmigaOS-like
operating system).
A specialized car dynamics library, AVC,
was developed by Paolo Cattani's R&D company AlasSoft (in collaboration with an Italian motorsport
company) to obtain a robust simulation of real-life racecars; AVC
was used (in part) in VGP2 and was the foundation of VGP3, in order to continue the tradition of
delivering one of the most realistic simulations available on contemporary hardware. Moreover, the
sequels offered more and more options to the user, such as the possibility to create new tracks,
customize car liveries, or race online against other human players.
The latest installment of the Virtual GP series is
the VGP3 engine
;
based on the latest developments of the AVC library, it is an improvement of the original VGP3 game engine
and can simulate many different car types and terrains. The VGP3 engine can be fully modded into any
type of car simulator/game, from stock cars to rallye to extreme open-wheeled racing.