This has to rank among the most bizarre stories in all of simulations, if not in all of computer gaming. Longtime sim fans will remember this title from 2000-2003.

The two brothers, Tony and Chris had a dream of making the most realistic racing simulation ever titled "World Sports Cars". I saw them at E3 in one of the suites upstairs. They had a running test and a cockpit mock-up. I believe IIRC they were in attendance to find a backer, a publisher. The two were highly creative, very friendly and great artisans.

SimHQ was in touch with them when they were doing WSC, and they provided SimHQ with images. You can still download the four sets and the accompanying reports in mht here:

http://www.simhq.com/_motorsports/motorsports_archive/World_Sports_Cars_1.zip
http://www.simhq.com/_motorsports/motorsports_archive/World_Sports_Cars_2.zip
http://www.simhq.com/_motorsports/motorsports_archive/World_Sports_Cars_3.zip
http://www.simhq.com/_motorsports/motorsports_archive/World_Sports_Cars_4.zip

Keep in mind these were given to SimHQ in 2000! What machine could have run World Sports Cars?

But technology was out-running their production capabilities and after they dropped an extensive amount of money in their initial effort of creating the ultimate Le Mans type FIA sports racing sim, they sold off World Sports Cars in a partial state. I cannot recall the name of the publisher who bought and finished it, but they released it as an arcade game with flashy graphics, and little physics.

But the money allowed the brothers to regenerate their talent into "Racing Legends", a historic F1 sim like none before or even now.

I remember they had sold their house for funding and were sworn to finish the project. They had even tried selling promotional items to acquire funding.

Its not hard to feel very badly for them. They generated some fabulous work in renderings. They did have some operating 3D code working and drivable... I saw it at E3 myself. It was probably an early generation of code that was to change many, many times.

Sadly, they became the butt of several running jokes because of the time they worked on the 2 titles purely as a privateer effort. Remember this was a time when production houses had big teams, and had they tried to do the same thing in the current business climate, it would probably have been better received instead of it becoming known as sim racing's version of Duke Nukem.

I believe Tony West posted the last message from them on the site several years ago, now known as the infamous "Sorry" message... not that they were quitting the effort but that it had been a while since he had posted and was sorry for the lapse of time, but he must get back to work to generate several more lines of code before bedtime.

Then, nothing more...

Fast forward.

When I was browsing around tonight I came across the link to their site again. It had been years since I was there. To my shock, it still exists fully intact. I mean every link is there, and the forums still had people posting!

As one poster said, Racing Legends must have the distinction of being the only sim ever to have a 60,000 post forum, but no product.

If you decide to go there, take your time and look around in the old site for the sports racing cars. Look at the still downloadable wallpaper. The promotional items. The forums. The list of all the other privateer sim racing efforts, of which many are still active, and you probably will find some you never knew existed! But most of all look at the "older news" renderings of the Le Mans cars and the Gold Leaf Lotus F1 images.

The link is: http://www.racing-legends.com/

the images look pretty awesome

Oh god I was sooo looking forward to this sim.

Wow, I'm suprised it's still there!

Back in their day, those screenshots were mesmerizing and we couldn't believe the amount of eye-candy in those images. Hoods and panels would come off and reveal the detail in the engine compartment or the suspension arms!

Simbin later included such details in their mods and commercial releases.

I remember there was an "radio" interview with the West Brothers published on the net way back, about two hours in length, where they talked about features and technology and answered questions from listeners. They demonstrated some engine sounds using the "Scacazzo" sound engine, or whatever it was called. I downloaded the two files that comprised the interview; huge files in those days and listend to all of it.

LFS and netKar PRO (the initial release) have used this sound engine with limited success.

Somewhere along the line, I can't recall if it was in the interview or from some other source, they talked about the exciting new possibilities that newer generation Gfx cards offered - iirc they were intrigued by the Geforce 2.

The brothers I think were contracted by Empire at one point, and apparently the cooperation stopped somewhere along the line leaving the WSC product incomplete. Later Empire relased Total Immersion Racing. I think they weren't allowed to talk about it for some time and at first wouldn't/couldn't comment on the reports that TIR was the remnants of what was left of WSC. At least the brothers had to start from scratch with what was to become known as Racing Legends.

I remember the countdown and the buzz it created in the community, prior to the opening of the RL web-site, quite a few had hoped that it was signifying a release date or something "firm" but alas, it was "only" a web-site.

I checked the site daily for quite some time, reading all the posts on the site and in the forums. Haven't been back in years and in spite of the buttons for the forum being either removed or being inactive now, a while back, there was a backdoor into the forums through a direct url. Don't know it it still exists as I've long since stopped keeping thew bookmarks.

What a blast from our past though!

Come to think of it, the concept that was Racing Legends seems to have been adpopted by iRacing, sans the leatherbound storage media with full car-documentation sheets that was rumoured to be a possible way of selling the content once the simulation was released.

Its still being worked on to this day ;), beleive it or not.

Hmmmmm, or not. I don't believe it will ever see the light of day.

No?! Honest or are you kidding? Any reference out there?

Jens... Total Immersion Racing. That's it, couldn't recall the name. The forum link is still there and people are still posting.

Besides the fact the brothers spent their monies on the effort, they were ahead of their time developing a privateer effort with modular sales of add-ons.

What a coincidence! I never heard of these "work in progress" until someone a few weeks ago.
I started a "Where can i find the new FighterOps vid" thread. FO being a game in production now for 5+ years (?) with very little progress shown to the public (unless you pay to join FO). Someone posted a link to this game as a game suffering a similar fate.

The last entry is dated 2003 and the graphics for the pics still look good today! imho, ymmv

I would be very happy to drive those nice-looking cars in that nice-looking world today, let alone in 2003.

I think the publisher of Total Immersion Racing was Empire. I purchased it hoping for at least a reflection of the goodness in the original game, but nope. I hightailed it back to EA Sports: Sports Car GT.

I saw rather detailed pictures of Racing Legends in a magazine I bought back in Sept of '00. The detail these guys hoped to include looked amazing, and I salivated at the prospect of what was to come..... to come.... to come.... to never come. Sigh.