Phillip Island circuit in consideration for Project Cars 2
While the legendary Mount Panorama circuit has become a regular fixture across most of the major racing game series, the rest of Australia's tracks have been consistently on the outer.
The last game to achieve the feat of including all of Australia’s great circuits was Codemasters Race Driver 3 – aka V8 Supercars 3. It released way back in 2006! The game featured 11 circuits from the Aussie championship; Mount Panorama, Barbagallo, Eastern Creek, the Queensland Grand Prix circuit, Oran Park, Sandown Park, the Gold Coast Indy 300 Grand Prix circuit, Symmons Plains Raceway, Phillip Island, Hidden Valley Raceway and the Adelaide Street circuit.
How awesome it was.
Recently I spent some time with Project Cars 2 – don’t miss my write-up on Mount Panorama – and had a chance to interview Slightly Mad Studios’ chief commercial officer Rod Chong. I asked him about the possibility of other Australian circuits ever getting a run in the game. Pleasingly, the answer was positive.
Phillip Island, a legendary circuit with 90 years of motor racing history behind it, is currently part of the MotoGP calendar and a stop on the V8 Supercars Championship. Excitingly, it could also be part of Project Cars 2’s DLC, or Project Cars 3, in the future. Here is what Chong had to say:
When you look at all the tracks around the world, where does Mount Panorama rate?
I'd say Mount Panorama is definitely one of the top three tracks. You can argue which is greatest, but it's between Nordschleife, Spa and Mount Panorama. They’re the greatest tracks.
Have you had any discussions about adding other iconic Australian circuits?
Phillip Island was on the list for a while, but it didn't quite make it through. It's something we are definitely interested to look into in the future. We will have to see how it goes.
When Race Driver 3 came out way back in 2006, there were 11 Australian circuits included; if you could get the whole championship back you’d get a sale from every Aussie race fan.
The thing to note is that making a track now is not the same as making a track a few years ago. The expectation now is that is has to be millimetre perfect or go home, right? So starting any track now we have to go out there with the laser scanner, we have to fly drones over it, we have to do data analysis of the whole surface to make sure every little nuance and every bump is perfectly replicated. So for us, taking on a track is a big deal now. Making these simulation games is a big deal - it's not nearly what it was. You can't just whip up 11 tracks like that.
So we won’t see 11 Australian tracks in Project Cars 3?
Sure, we’ll just move our entire office here!