Foerst Nürburgring (serious driving simulators,first 3D car race videogame) The world first 3D car racing videogame was invented in Germany. It was the arcade machine "Nürburgring" by Reiner Foerst. In year 2000 I wrote down my childhood memories about it. http://weltenschule.de/vgames/Nuerburg/Nuerburgring.html Reiner Foerst died in 2009, and his company "Foerst Fahrsimulatoren" is now managed by his son Kai. In the meantime more info about Nürburgring has appeared on the internet, including the very useful German language company history PDF with many pictures and screenshots those helped to assemble this summary about their different early machines and their hardware platforms. On the internet apparently yet nobody cared to document this groundbreaking piece of videogame and VR history. I also identified related patents those explain the inner working. Foerst GmbH, Historie https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRVQLAQ5kZg (Note: In this official video, often mentioned release years in text and depicted hardware don't match. Many show N4 where they talk of N1 or N3). The engineer Dr.Reiner Foerst planned to create a compact and sufficiently affordable driving simulator, that should be additionally suited as an arcade machine to earn money. In 1970th however the only driving simulators with 1st person view were huge scientific research installations with mechanical projection screen, and the most advanced machine at Volkswagen ("VW-Fahrsimulator") had a DEC PDP-11 mainframe computer with tape drive cabinet and vector monitor (resembling a large oscilloscope) that would have been prohibitively expensive. So after a fruitless attempt with mechanically moving lightbulb matrix graphics (that scrolled too jerky for a realistic feel of driving), in 1974 Foerst dismantled a "Pong" machine to employ its CRT display technology. Foerst licensed the brand name "Nürburgring" of the nearby German racetrack to market his invention together with the company Trakus. The machines got improved over time and came out in several versions, those until mid of 1980th were famous and got mentioned in many newspapers and TV shows. While most arcade versions were red, the serious later simulator cabinets were painted blue. I remember many of them from science docus on TV about physiological driving fitness tests, effects of drugs and alcohol etc., but did not know that Foerst had made them. In 1980th the graphics looked far advanced than homecomputers and the style did not resemble any known arcade games. The album cover of Kraftwerk's "Autobahn" with its mountains obviously inspired the style of Nürburgring 3. In the first half of 1980th people associated both with each others. Nürburgring 1 Initial version of 1975 with simple B/W graphics displaying the road only as white posts on black ground. The hardware contained 28 cards in an industrial rack, employing no CPU but an analogue computer for the simulation model, road graphics and sound. Only the character generator (drawing dashboard numbers on screen) was actually digital, so it resembled rather a Magnavox Odyssey than Pong. N1: Nürburgring/1 patents US4077138, US4077138A The gameplay featured realistic drifting behaviour and was a great commercial success. The analogue sound synthesis included tire skid noise, crash sound, wind hissing at high speed and the dynamic motor sound was made from filtered sawtooth that turned loud at high rotation, sharp when stepping the gas pedal and hollow at engine brake. US companies like Midway promised to licence the game, but the complicated circuitry with about 2800 components and 10000 solder joints was expensive to manufacture and maintain. Because others released in large quantities a knock-off with cheaper all-digital hardware that needed no trimmer adjustments, the deal failed and Nürburgring 1 did not sell anymore. Also the patent lawsuit by Foerst failed. (So SPOBAG cancelled in 1976 an order of 10 pieces, those were each 4690DM+VAT.) The company history says that the bootleg was named "Midnight Racer" with the impudent slogan "Another Atari First" (note the word resemblance "first" and "Foerst") which is likely incorrect. "Midnight Racer" aka "280-Zzzap" was by Midway, while "Night Racer" was by Micronetics and sold to Atari those rebranded it "Night Driver". Nürburgring 2 N2: same game with motorcycle handlebar (hardware like N1) Nürburgring 3 Version of 1979 with more relistic colour graphics featuring crash barriers and pretty mountain backgrounds and the controls had a 4 gear shifter lever. The hardware on 25 cards in an industrial rack now featured a Z80 MK3880 CPU for graphics, but the simulation apparently still largely depended on analogue circuits. Also the blocky pong-style character generator looks the same. N3 S: Nürburgring/3 Upright Standing Game N3 F?: Nürburgring Formel 1 (sitdown) N3 P: Nürburgring/Power-Slide (motion sitdown with tilt mechanism) N3 T: Nürburgring/Turn-Table (motion sitdown on horizontal moving disc) patents US4383827, DE3243574A1 (no framebuffer), US4464117+DE3032250A1 (Power-Slide mech) According to patent DE3243574A1 the colour graphics works without framebuffer using gate logics with counters to draw the road etc., likely controlled by an eprom. Although this machine yet had no opponent cars, the graphics style of drawing a 3D road with center line and horizontally scrolling 2D backdrop (sky and mountains) had set the standard for games like Sega's "Turbo" (1981, which completely lacked car physics and switched curves as static still pictures) and the famous "Pole Position" (1982 by Namco, having car physics and proper curve motion). In 1979 (some say 1977) also the US company Vectorbeam released a driving simulator game "Speed Freak". It featured a 4 position H-shifter and was the first arcade machine with true 3D modelled wireframe vector graphics. Running on a quite fast discrete RISC CPU board, the game had opposing cars in 3D and displayed various flat objects like roadsigns, police roadblocks, planes, pine trees, cows, signage bridges and hitchhikers. While technically even more beyond its time, the all digital car physics simulation felt unrealistic and the 19'' B/W vector display in the upright cabinet likely looked less appealing to ordinary gamers. Commercially it flopped. Nürburgring 4 Version of 1982 with improved graphics, higher resolution dashboard text generator and likely opposing traffic. The hardware was now fully digital and so needed no trimmer adjustment anymore. And it was possible to link multiple machines through a network for racing competition. N4 ?: Nürburgring/4 Motorrad-Simulator (block-shaped sitdown motorcycle, 1982) N4 F: Nürburgring Formel/1 (cockpit with real car seat, 1982) N4 ?: Nürburgring/Power-Drive (motion sitdown with tilt seat) patent US4196528+DE2703025A1 (link mode), DE3400518C1 (Power-Drive mech) N4 games had plenty of thin black horizontal stripes on the grey road, which was likely meant to improve sense of speed but looked ugly. Other companies (like Namco in "Pole Position II") used alternating bars of slightly different grey instead. A strange N4 spinoff was the "Märchenland-Lokomotive" (fairytale-land locomotive) - a closed cockpit machine designed for young kids, driving a steaming locomotive on its track through a colourful fairyland. There were no score/number displays; instead of steering wheel it apparently had 4 buttons and a knob. I am not sure about controls - likely it could only change speed and perhaps switch tracks. Crossties and track sides were drawn of horizontal segments those may have been a scanline effect. This graphics seems to use 11 colours (black, white, grey, beige, yellow, orange, red, green1, green2, pink, blue). Other N4 screenshots show some different, so it may have used about 16 (palette?) colours. The monochrome sprites look like when it either made the graphics from 2D polygons or runlength encoded bitmaps. The text looks roughly like C64. Nürburgring 5 Version of 1983 with improved graphics having more object generators for displaying houses, cars, animals, persons and fantasy objects for various new "entertainment machines". There can be forking parallel roads (like later in Sega's "Out Run"), and where necessary, large objects seem to use 3D polygons (e.g. overtaking a truck - possibly prerendered sprites) while others are flat shapes. Among the screenshots are abstract motives like a road with flying blue-black teraeders (obstacles?) and a road with blue-pink roof (tunnel?) those look trippy and may have been planned to become a sci-fi themed arcade game. Possibly it was intended for the "Spacecar", a singleton for the German amusement park "Phantasialand" with 2 monitors and special steering for 2 players built into the dashboard of a real car, however the car hoods in the screenshots differ. N5 CR: Nürburgring/Competition (sitdown with link mode) N5 DT: Nürburgring Dino Turbo (built into car, 2 players) N5 ?: Nürburgring Power Bike (with real motorcycle on moving platform) N5 DT was a singleton, built into a real car with dual dashboard containing 2 CRT screens mirrored through the windshield and controls for 2 player competition in a 90 seconds race. Also 1 player vs. computer was possible. N5 CR linked 4 sitdown machines for competition. The "Power Bike" singleton had a real BMW motorcycle mounted on a moving platform that responded like real on body balance (patent DE3612383A1, DE361238C2?). Patent DE3301704C2 of 1983 describes a H-stick shifter with force feedback motor and crunching gear noise to simulate realistic tactile interaction with a clutch pedal. That nasty little gadget would have taken sim driving down the uncanny valley where no game has gone before. Even more interesting is that Foerst envisioned in his patent DE3045841A1 already in 1975 (priority date, filed 1980) an open world 3D driving simulation with roadmap featuring signs, traffic lights, opposing traffic etc. - suggesting a multi-player capable driving game with time measurement and simulated police reprimands in case of traffic rule violations. - A concept that took until 1990th to find its way into popular games like "Test Drive III" and eventually climaxed into the "GTA" series. 1986 there was a contract between Dr.Foerst GmbH to license their know-how to NSM Bingen, which had been the biggest German arcade machine manufacturer, intending large scale production of commercial racing simulators. This resulted in a 1 million DM lawsuit, which was won by Foerst with the help of the Gauselmann group (a big German arcade operators company). In total yet over 1000 different machines were built. As a franchise, Dr.Foerst leased 200 of them to public places like shopping centers and cinemas, which caused high operating costs. Despite the German Traffic Safety Council rated these driving simulation machines as recommended for traffic education and thus pedagogically valuable, an insane German youth protection law in 1987 outlawed the placement of any kinds of coin operated gaming devices in public - treating them like gambling or brutal adult-only shooting videogames. So they had to be removed and most were scrapped because they were considered outdated and hence unsellable. The Foerst company several times got into financial trouble but survived (also thanks to governmental support). Beside those arcade machines, the Foerst company makes particularly special purpose driving simulators for research, trade shows or fairground attractions. So they made demonstrators for new car safety features (like ESC), or campaigns to teach eco-driving to conserve fuel or illustrate not to drive drunk (simulated by increased input lag and reduced viewfield). Often these were large and include parts or fullsize actual vehicles on moving platforms those by high cost or temporary need typically were only leased and not sold. E.g. they created in 1985 a platform with real motorcycle that steers through curves realistic by body balance (patent DE3612383A1). Like church organs, most of these larger simulators are custom built singletons or at least heavily customized in hard- and software, and get destroyed or recycled into something else once their job ist finished or the hardware defective or considered outdated. And unlike classic arcade machines, these serious simulators (not only big ones) seem to have no real lobby for preservation but yet seem to be an absolute nerd topic. May be that with rise of the sim-racing gamer community this will change and they suddenly become the new cat's meow hipsters paying fortunes for like now for Apple I. The employed graphics computers can be surprisingly complex. So in 1985 Foerst developed a forklift simulator, which block diagram shows a row of multiple video generators to draw each 2 of the shelves etc. (in polygon graphics), which was a parallel computer in a rack full of 128-pin cards made from 30-pin custom LSI chips. And an ambulance simulator of 1995 with real car employed an SGI Onyx with Reality Engine 2. These were computers for several 100'000DM. But not all computers were that exotic. So Reiner Foerst with his son Kai invented in 1986 a stylish red ergometer bike with small CRT for gyms simulating a bicycle race. That is to say, the so-called "ASKE-BIKE" by ASKE (later named "Telebike" by MPK München) used for its graphics an assembly programmed Amiga. The graphics style had similarity with N5, but featured some more textured spirtes for trees and mountains. The special variant "AOK Öko-Trainer" (1987, only a singleton for a campaign?) even was powered through a dynamo by the pedaling user. The thing was predecessor of Namco "Prop Cycle" and ancestor of the Peloton hype. But even this once famous 1980/90th gym equipment seems so forgotten that websearch finds no pictures. patents DE4212788A1, DE4226776A1 (with games), DE4415256A1 (torque control), DE4222665A1 (powered by pedaling) Nürburgring? 6 In 1986(?) version N6 came out, which hardware contained 20 cards to display realistic weather effects like rain, fog, snow and headlights in the dark. It did lines draw, curves and area fill in hardware. And the software (in eproms?) could display more traffic types like cyclists and pedestrians and simulated better driving physics. N6 ?: CAR (Computer Aided Risksimulator, simulating drunk driving, 1987?) N6 S: (cockpit with car seat and blue case, 1985?) patents DE3816544A1 (GPU with line/area fill) But here likely ended the arcade era, so N6 was for professionell simulators only (often focussing on physiological experiments, those needed smooth rendering to identify subtle changes). I am not aware of contemporary arcade games having such effects. Likely this GPU technology was way too expensive. The patent DE3816544A1 claims priority date 1988; unfortunately there are only text versions online but the company history shows the block diagram. It mentions circuits for line draw and arc of circle generation; the latter was pretty unusual at that time and may have been used for irregular curvy objects like trees, which gave the graphics a special look. Apparently multiple video generators could run parallel drawing each an obbject, using a priority circuit to layer them in the manner of sprites. The screenshots suggest that instead of priority the analogue outputs could be also mixed to implement transparency (alpha channel with likely 8 steps = 3 bit) to render effects like weather. A Swiss newspaper article of 1989 about driving school future stated that the simulator's video system had 10 MByte memory while 1 MByte was standard for PC, and that it had a "very musical" noise generation for synthesizing the car and environmental sounds. Strange is that the screenshots are marked 1986 while the text indicates 1988, which is possibly an error because for 1986 the graphics would have been outstanding (although untextured) and the N6S is even listed as 1985. This is an Area 51 moment, because in arcades there were no such effect quality until about 1991 and was outperformed only by the PlayStation 1 era with its massive use of textures. The arcade game with most similar style was perhaps Taito "Air Inferno" of 1990th, although I think its "Taito Air System" GPU (introduced 1988 in the flight sim "Top Landing"?) was less powerful despite it had some transparency, rounded shapes and colour gradients. Interesting is that Foerst argued that his driving simulator technology would be cheapest on the market, while Atari in 1988 released the "Hard Drivin" platform of much fewer parts, that originally was planned to become the ultimate low-cost simulator for places like driving schools but failed to sell there and so ended in arcades, although a professional version with multiple linked cars got known as the AMOS ("A.G.C. Mobile Operations Simulator" aka "Atari Games Police Training Simulator"). It took until 2000th before Foerst offered equipment affordable enough for average driving schools. Atari patents: WO1992002917A1+US5269687 (driver training), US5354202 (link mode), US5474453 (level editor, opponent AI) Nürburgring? 7 In 1985 version N7 was the hardware for the forklift simulator. This highend computer employed 8 parallel working 32bit CPUs "Thomson MOS EF9367" with arithmetic coprocessor combined with custom highspeed surface renderers. The block diagram shows a row of 8 video generators those each draw a fixed part of the 3D polygon graphics (e.g. each 2 of the shelves etc.), in a rack full of 128 pin cards made from 30 pin custom LSI chips. N7G: Gabelstapler-Simulator (motion cockpit with tilting seat + vibration feedback) patents DE3816543A1 (3D polygon GPU), DE4114103A1 (motion seat mech) The online versions of the patents are text-only. The company history shows a block diagrams of the graphics hardware and of a sprite collision algorithm to simulate the interaction between forklift and transported cargo. Nürburgring? 9 By the zeitgeist of 1991 Foerst experimented with real image technology ("Realbildtechnik") that was intended to use recorded live video of road scenes for simulators. Despite laserdiscs (and since 1993 harddrives) could change playback tempo and jump around within video, it failed to properly simulate lane change by steering or interact with opposing traffic. So despite tricks like scrolling a magnified part of the video when steering or switching between multiple videos, the concept failed as a simulator by too unrealistic motion and was only suited for entertainment. The PC based version got named N9. N9: Ralleysimulator (motion sitdown with tilt mechanism) patents DE4102176A1, DE4105963A1 In 1995 a version with motion cockpit (tilt+turntable resembing N3T) was shown on the IAA (international automobile exhibition) to illustrate the benefits of the Mercedes ESC variant "FDR". The cost for that custom built machine was 250'000DM. In late 1990th "Realbildtechnik" became pointless by the progress of PC graphics quality. Already in 1979 a crude predecessor of such a concept had been tried in Kasko's 16mm film based sitdown arcade machine "The Driver", which suffered even worse of too static gameplay. Nürburgring? 8 In 1997 rendered PC graphics became fast enough to replace the specialized graphics generator hardware, which allowed texture mapped polygon graphics employing photos of real objects causing strong increase of image quality. Combined with simulation hardware of the previous generation the result got named N8. (Yes, N9 came first. Is this the same strange gap like with Windoze and the iPhones?!?) Nürburgring? 10 (F10) To reduce cost, eventually also the whole simulator logic and noise generator hardware got replaced by PC - fist running under DOS, then Windows. The result was named N10, then renamed F10 because the connection to "Nürburgring" was since long time pointless. At least here ends the mystique of elusive supercomputer driving simulator hardware. That software can e.g. simulate drunk driver behaviour more precisely by making gap distances shrink while driving through them, to permit detailed quantitive analysis and all that. It can run multiple cheap household TV screens in sizes those at CRT age nobody dared to dream of. And the company still puts much work into better mechanical motion parts to improve the experience and reduce cyberspace sickness caused by those big screens. And they make training simulators for special vehicles like trucks, forklifts and all that. But in a nutshell it stays a PC mixed with car parts as a working horse to do a job. That's all, folks. The graphics quality of serious simulators nowadays tends to be below cutting edge console games. Who in 1990th could have thought of that!? And for driving schools and reaction tests they offer a budget variant "Tabletop" using a PC with the same regular gaming steering wheel and pedals. (Apparently the current software is named "F12".) May be the monitor will next be replaced by VR, blurring the differences the same way like softsynths did with music studios. It is unknown how many Nürburgring arcade machines still exist. Apparently a "Nürburgring Power-Slide" (N3 P) stands in the Computerspielemuseum Berlin (computer games museum of Berlin, Germany). On flickr a person "videogamescgi1" uploaded detail photos of a "Nürburgring/1" (N1) including screenshot and PCB rack, those look fresh and suggest that it survived in collector's hands. With professional simulators it is hard to guess if some still rot in the cellars of some driving school, or if as leasing item they all got recycled by the company or converted with modern electronics. It would be exciting to emulate at least the graphics engine of the early models - and be it only for art purpose. links: Firmenhistorie - FOERST Fahrsimulatoren https://www.fahrsimulatoren.eu/images/pdf/Foerst-Firmenhistorie.pdf This 31MB tome is the German language company history with many pictures, newspaper articles and screenshots. Meet The Doctor-Engineer Who Basically Invented The Modern Racing Game https://jalopnik.com/meet-the-doctor-engineer-who-basically-invented-the-mod-5906386 VW Invented First-Person Racing Video Games And They Don't Even Know It https://jalopnik.com/vw-invented-first-person-racing-video-games-and-they-do-1671618942 These are detailed articles about Nürburgring and early driving simulators. Video Game Museum in Berlin (photo of Nürburgring 3 Power-Slide) https://dewiki.de/Media/Datei:Video_Game_Museum_in_Berlin_(45946031421).jpg Nürburgring 1 - Ultimate History Of Video Games https://ultimatehistoryvideogames.jimdofree.com/nurburgring-1/ https://ultimatehistoryvideogames.jimdofree.com/nurburgring-3/ The history of racing games https://historyofracinggames.wordpress.com/about/ https://historyofracinggames.wordpress.com/installment-three/ https://historyofracinggames.files.wordpress.com/2007/06/014a-nurburgring-1.pdf https://historyofracinggames.files.wordpress.com/2007/06/014b-n3-standup.pdf http://historyofracinggames.files.wordpress.com/2007/06/014c-n3-tiltswivelstandup.pdf https://historyofracinggames.files.wordpress.com/2007/06/014d-n3-barclay-n4-bike-n4-sitdown-s.pdf https://historyofracinggames.files.wordpress.com/2007/06/014e-n5-bikecompetitiondinoturbo-s.pdf https://historyofracinggames.files.wordpress.com/2007/06/014f-1976-night-driver.pdf This blog-like website has much info about early racing games, including excerpts of arcade prospects of Nürburgring and related arcade machines. Unfortunately it is somewhat messy and very hard to search because everything is on PDF pages.