By Becky Rose
I started out my career in sim racing from the perspective of having raced real cars. I was impressed by the sheer detail of the physics and the comprehensiveness of the various simulated aspects. It was not long before I had thrown in the towel on my more expensive hobby and started getting more racing for less investment with simulated motor sports.
At that time things were much less professional than they are now, but the beginnings were certainly there. The most glaring omission I found was that the top leagues at the time were broadcasting their events by stringing together a few minutes of replay footage and putting some stolen music to it. A few had reached television for more comprehensive coverage but the shows were 'gamer' orientated and the camera control and style of the shows were so bad that even I, interested in the sport as I was, could not bear to watch.
When I set up the STCC I had a very clear mission in mind. I wanted to create a spectator driven sport, I decided that I was going to make a sim race broadcast in the style of a real world racing series off TV. This would involve a lot of work, and I was keen to ensure that the race I broadcasted was designed to enhance what I was investing so much time into, so I devised a spectator driven sim racing series, the STCC.
Most people did not think we would succeed of course, some said we would not make a single broadcast let alone a season. Well we did get the first broadcast out - but it was awful! The cameras were out of sync, Tristan commentated the whole thing on a low quality video feed that he could barely identify the cars and my cut ins were added afterwards to cover mistakes, and I was nervous! We even 'lost' the use of some cameras because of mistakes I made in filming them, meaning we only had partial track coverage.
Attempt 2 and technical problems had meant we'd stepped backwards, we also had issues with a few drivers 'still not getting it'. On top of that we also had huge technical issues on the day of the race and had to borrow a server from the MG Power team to host it on, this meant I did not have admin control in the server and combined with the low standard of driving there was some confusion over safety car deployment. In all this was a race to forget, STCC was starting to fail.
Round 3 was a turning point. After the troubles of the first two broadcasts I was determined to do better with the visuals, but my commentators were not available so I stepped up to the microphone myself. It worked. We still had a long way to go though but at last we were starting to get there.
For the fourth round Tristan was back alongside me and this brought new technical problems, latency over the internet meant we spoke over each other a few times. Overall we had definitely improved again but it was clear we still had more work to do. The race was a cracker though!
And so came our round 5 race at Aston Cadet. I put a huge effort into this one as to be honest it was not the most awe inspiring race. A tip from a fan on the visual settings meant the visual quality had improved dramatically and overall round 5 was a seminal moment for the Sim Touring Car Cup. Tristan was not available again so I roped in Thomas Arends, a former driver, to help with the commentary. I also managed to get Lawrence Simpson involved in a radio cast of a qualifying race as part of the show's promotion, and he was stellar.
Something else happened in the build up to Aston that would later prove even more important, I started popping in to UKCT team speak, the team that had provided me with the servers that the races were run on. This innocent step would start to form some strong friendships that would prove absolutely instrumental not just for the survival of the STCC but in getting to where we are today.
One of the problems we had with the public servers was, to put it bluntly, public racers. The 'pick up and play' nature of public racing meant that not all drivers were up to standard, so I developed a tiered server system designed to filter out the best drivers to practice alongside our league drivers. Little did I know what effect this would have on the sport in the longer term.
It was a lot of extra work and I started to divide my time equally between the two projects, the tiered server system and making the broadcasts - spending about 2 weeks on each every month. The servers proved hugely successful and, on the whole, actually started to have a positive impact on overall public driving standards.
The round 6 race was a tough one because it was the longest circuit we'd covered so far and using the methods we had been deploying to film back then it was very hard to get good camera coverage over the whole circuit - there were just not enough cameras. If anything I think our race 6 coverage was a small step backwards after round 5, which is a shame as I'd been plugging this one as our top billing!
I knew after round 6 that I would have to up the game somewhat, it was time for another huge step forward. At Blackwood I had experimented with making an on-screen position ticker but I could not get the video stream from my software synchronised with the video feed. For round 7 I did it by hand and when all was said and done I think we managed another good step forward, Tristan and I were starting to work together as a team. In all, with round 7, the formula was starting to work and everything was paying off - but my word what a huge amount of work it all was.
Enter Patch X.
For the STCC the LFS Patch X was the single most disastrous thing that could possibly have happened, at first. The public server system broke overnight, destined to the scrap heap. On top of this I had for a while caught the attention of a somewhat seedy neo-nazi movement who happened to enjoy sim racing. They targeted me for abuse and my word did they play dirty. The worst part was the 'voice of reason' put forward by many people who had no idea of this small sub-groups complete actions or the extreme level of abuse going on, every time I heard somebody preaching reason and moderation my heart sank a little further.
Although the lid has long since been blown off this now, for the most part I don't think people realised just how bad it was, I cant begin to explain it all but it was bad enough for law enforcement agencies across several countries to get involved including the FBI.
So there I was, no public server system, a colossal amount of work to put the next broadcast out, and the target of a sustained campaign of abuse. Things were not looking good and I was ready to throw in the towel and go back to real racing, leaving sim racing behind me for good.
I handed over the concept of the public servers to the UKCT team and pledged to carry on the STCC for the drivers only with no broadcasts. There were problems however, UKCT struggled to get a new X-compatible system together and because I was spending so much time with them on their team speak server I eventually relented and said that I would do it.
I think it took several months to put the X-System together, more or less, and it wasn't just a replacement system but a huge leap forward. We relaunched as the CompuTeam Race Authority and unleashed our new creation on the world. It was big, very big, and it's had a huge impact on our sport. The CTRA is now the largest simulated race licensing authority in the world, holding 500 events a day when our next nearest 'competitor' (who started about the same time) has held just double that in their entire lifespan.
I also resigned from my job at this time, after being repeatedly harassed and eventually outright insulted by the management because I refused to compromise my professionalism (and to go into details here would not be correct, either). I was now jobless, and because I live with my sister unable to claim housing benefits to live on, with poor employment prospects.
So I had a little time on my hands and with the X-System back up and running I found myself with a really good core program that looked very versatile, so one unemployed day I decided to experiment with camera control. X-Cam was born.
X-Cam made production of the broadcasts considerably easier and knocks our production time down from 2 weeks to a few days and at the same time raises quality. With a little extra hardware and a touch more development it could be adapted to go out live.
Our last broadcast had been of round 7, and round 8 was held before patch X was released. So I decided to relaunch the STCC with round 9. Then disaster. Up until now my PC had multiple graphics cards (SLi) and a stack of hard disks (RAID stripe) which had been vital components in producing the broadcasts. Unfortunately whilst I was filming one graphics card died and the RAID array fell over. It was a disaster!
I managed to get enough life into the array to do an up to date backup as my previous one had been before X-Cam. I also managed to salvage most of my work on the round 9 broadcast.
It was a huge setback and occurred at just the wrong moment. I could not face redoing the whole thing so I ran with what I had, and so round 9 hit the world square on. X-Cam proved to be a revolution not just in production process, but in improving the quality of the final production. Add to that a real cracker of a race, enhanced by the camera seeing the action and the viewers better informed than ever of what was happening around the circuit. Round 9 was a huge success.
Enter Television.
As this is the "History of the STCC" I'll write about this in the future.
Just one other thing before I sign off though, it has been pointed out to me that STCC is also the name of the Swedish Touring Car Cup. Naturally being the internet this came in the form of demands from 3rd parties to change the name because 'they' hold the ownership of it.
Well actually no they don't, they're a national touring car league and we're an international eSports league. We operate in different market sectors, but actually something good might have come of this accidental use of the same abbreviation.
The Swedish Touring Car Cup is administered by the SBF, who have various members who, for whatever Google mishap of a reason, now race in simulated motor sports. The SBF are now involved in the Swedish sim racing community and who knows, maybe something might come of that.
For our part we've spoken to the MSA (the UK governing body of motor sports) and they are not interested in sim racing. We've also spoken to the FIA but they said I needed to walk through the door with a bigger cheque as somebody else has the rights (a software house).
The lack of recognition doesn't actually worry me though, because over the last few years the grass roots of real motor sports has been buckling with ever lower turnouts. I've raced and I know the score, and I can tell you the problem is that it's getting even more expensive just to compete in a friendly club championship. I would not dream of competing in even club level go karting now without a five figure budget, because I'm used to winning and that's what it costs.
Sim racing is extremely cheap, you get more time racing, very few breakages that cost you money (I have once broken a spring on my pedals) and with leagues like the STCC and various others ordinary people can compete at the very top level of international sports and make a living.
Sim racing will not replace Formula 1 or Nascar any time soon, but I can see a time where the top sim racing league is billed just under them.
