Well, to some of you this will certainly be old news. However, since I
haven't seen it mentioned in R.a.s. so far, I'll make a mention of it
since I believe it's worth knowing about.



Anyway, main point is, late last year Strava (praise be him) made a
really nice free little mod for rFactor called Vintage Formula Vee. The
name should be self-explanatory, and it's available he

http://www.nogripracing.com/details.php?filenr=23475


Turns out this one is real, *real* fun to drive. Several former
real-life Vee drivers gave it the nod for being close to the real thing
and having a ball with it, too.

The car model visuals are simpler than most large-team mod wizards
manage for most sims, imho it's the only thing that could do with a V2.0
update, but they're still decent - simple but effective.


Now, like real vintage Vees, being based on a VW Beetle engine this only
has 60ish BHP and a top speed of about 180 kph / 105 mph max, but it
certainly doesn't *feel* slow on anything but the fastest of tracks.
Mosport, Zandvoort, Rouen, Lakeside, the Ring and dozens of other tracks
are a blast having close racing with this one (if you turn down their
aggression level the AI isn't bad, too).

After tearing through several tracks, I realised: This is rather like
"GPL Lite", really.

Not as fast, not as on-edge, but similar - having to squeeze every mph
out of a tiny Beetle engine drifting through tight corners in a little
Formula car makes for some real good racing. It reminded me of the best
bits of the 65 Mod. (Some leagues are running it at the moment, but I'm
hoping more servers will do so. How about a worldwide Formula Vee 'Vroc'?)


As an added bonus, it also runs fine on Mac OS X.

Which for me means that I don't have to fire up the old PC every time
I'd like to do some laps in between work hours. Thanks to an 'rMactor'
guide by Daniel Parsons (up on Google Docs) it was pretty easy to get
rFactor to run on OS X thru a Wine-derived program called CrossOver
Games 8 - I only had to set the rFactor Config utility to DX8 instead of
'auto'.
Runs fine, too, and though I didn't dare hope that rFactor mods and
tracks would work as well, turns out it all runs fine. Can't drive it at
the highest gfx settings on my 2 GHz early-2009 Mac mini, but that's not
really a bother. I'm too busy trying to outbrake those other Vee racers
in the streets of Hitchin or into Moss Corner at Mosport!


So, there you have it, FYI.
If you haven't checked it out yet, it's definitely worth doing so and in
my opinion, is fun enough to justify getting rFactor for it. Rarely have
I bumped into a simulator mod that's such a blast and captures the
thrill of racing old Formula cars as well... Hence, here we have, in my
view, 'GPL Lite' - tho less the speed, no less the fun!

Regards, Rudy
(GPLRank: -40)