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https://dirtfish.com/rally/wrc/how-it-started-jimmy-mcrae/
Thanks for replying - very good points! I figured they either used reference photos of an RHD version or even possibly 3d scanned parts of it. I was just unsure how popular an RHD version was to warrant it being put in the game as opposed to an LHD version.
However that article on Dirtfish could might as well explain it - Röhrl might have drove it to world wide success, but it was apparently Jimmy McRae who worked on developing it in the first place. Considering what game we're talking about, that might as well be a solid enough reason. I just find it a pity they didn't put any reference to any of that in the history section of the car.
I thought I'd dig a bit further and look up the registration plates of the cars from the photos in the Dirtfish article. One thing I found funny, is that right around the point where they mention the Ascona, there's a photo of the car with the plate GG-CK 188, which was apparently the car that Röhrl drove. Later that car was re-registered with the plate GG-CK 217 and was driven at some point by Ari Vatanen. I can't tell if it was used for the 1983 safari rally, where Vatanen won, but on ewrc-results it's listed as registered with GG-*** (can't see the rest cuz I'm not a subscriber there), so it might as well have been the exact same car. It blows my mind, even if I'm just speculating at this point :D
Later on in the article, there's one with the plate GG-CK 620, which from the photo is clearly RHD, however I can't find anything on it. Even the ewrc-results page doesn't list it, and that one has a total of 333 plates listed (I counted them, don't ask :D)
Anyways, there's probably too much information on the internet about events that happened over 40 years ago, so accuracy probably varies.
Thanks again! It was fun digging through some rally history on this in my opinion absolutely beautiful car.
Here's the article about what went on to happen with Röhrl's car:
https://www.ihle-motorsport.de/en/fahrzeuge/opel-ascona-400-ra48/
Here's the ewrc-results page, with the registered plates (careful with that one, it's apparently partnered with Dirtfish, but throws ads at ya):
https://www.ewrc-results.com/cars/99-opel-ascona-400/?s=1983&sct=1&w=0
And the results page from the 1983 safari rally:
https://www.ewrc-results.com/final/4297-marlboro-safari-rally-1983/
It never got much further than running the prototype before management changes caused it to be scraped and they came up with the Group B RS200 instead, but they kept the engines from the 1700T.
As it looks like Codemasters was sampling the engine & chassis noises from BGM Sport (Malcolm Wilson of M-Sport is known to own one of the five remaining 1700T):
https://www.bgmsport.com/galleries/ford-rs1700t-for-codemasters
No date though, so was it for DR 1, Dirt 4, DR2 or EA WRC? Or perhaps they just used it for the engine noise for the RS200 ?
Further info on the 1700T if your interested:
https://supercarnostalgia.com/blog/ford-escort-rs1700t
You can find the 1700T in Art of Rally though:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/550320/art_of_rally/
It's sad that change of management sealed it's faith, but it seems there are a lot of other factors that played a role in it too. At least they kept the engines and some of the cars, but why scrap the rest...
In that Goodwood video I heard that distinct turbo - sounds exactly the same as the turbo on the Ford Escort RS Cosworth in the game Network-Q RAC Rally Championship. Don't know if you know this one, but that was the game that started it for me almost 30 years ago.
Goodwood video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISC-a_8eAYM
Network-Q RAC's escort:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Bn1jGxPrXM
You can pretty much hear that valve sound right at the start of both videos. Anyway it would be pretty nice to see the 1700T in full detail and drivable in a modern rally game. I hope Codemasters didn't go the same route and scrap all of it. I mean it's like an oddly specific thing, right? Why specifically this car, even if it's the same engine as in the RS200. Wouldn't it have been easier to just get a hold of an RS200, I think there's a bit more of them still around. It's just strange to me that they would go out of their way to record such a rare car, that has little screen time in video games and use the gathered data/sounds/information/whatever for a car that's been in quite a lot of games already. Maybe we'll find out one day.
As far as "art of rally" - I've been looking at it ever since it came out and I'm on the fence on it - one day I'm thinking wow that minimalism in graphics looks really nice and you can clearly see the developers really enjoy rally, but on the next I look at the videos and I'm unsure about the gameplay... I mean the reviews are positive, maybe I should give it a go.
EDIT: Judging from the titles of the galleries on the BGM page, if they are in chronological order, the recording took place maybe sometime between 2020 and 2021.
Agreed tracking down a working RS200 would surely be easier than a 1700T, especially when the person who owns the 1700T also has a (presumably) RS200 - Malcolm Wilson's M-Sport who was one of the development drivers for both cars and since 1979 the closes thing to a Ford Rally Team as you can get.
The suspension seem really soft and a high ground clearance on that Goodwood run you provided.
Network Q RAC Rally Championship still looks good to me, if it had FFB wheel support and high res + frame rate I'd happily buy it! Hmm wonder what the modders have done to it over the years..
Art of Rally is a very good game, outstanding music great atmosphere and car choices, it is an Arcade Game though and as such missing onboard and chase view camera, it also does not have any pace notes and requires a surprisingly beefy graphics card for its appearance. There are mods to add a chase camera (but its not great and wont give you bonnet or roof cam, certainly not on hilly stages) and another mod for pace notes (which I have not tried). There is a demo of it, although the physics maybe out of date as it got changed several times and I'm unsure if Funselektor updated the demo as well.
Your time line would suggest EA WRC or maybe Dirt 5 DLC.
Don't know exactly what engine the 1700T has on that video, but from the article you shared, they apparently considered two engines and one of them was a Cosworth, so probably they share components across them, maybe there's some info out there on it.
Network-Q RAC Rally Championship was pretty nice, it did have quite extensive adjustment options for the car at the time - you could pick tires, adjust gears, set suspension height/stiffness and adjust breaking and steering. I used to play it with the keyboard, cuz I had nothing else, but as far as I can remember, the game does support a wheel. I don't know what was available at the time in terms of controllers, so I doubt there's anything special/complex when it comes to FFB. According to PCGamingWiki it will do 60FPS, but as far as I know, the game is notoriously hard to get to run on new machines. You can't get it anywhere either anymore, except some of those abandonware sites, but that's too shady for me. GOG don't have it, only chance would be to try and get it on a CD somehow I guess.
I guess I could put my hands on Art of Rally, sounds like some good time. Right now on the arcade side I'm occasionally playing Old School Rally. Needs some getting used to the handling, but it's quite fun and even if the cars aren't licensed, but rather "inspired by", there's quite a lot of them. Lots of stages too, even if the game is still in early access.
Don't have either Dirt 5 nor EA WRC, but I am considering getting the WRC game. Do you think a DLC with the 1700T for either of those could still be a possibility, even if they did the recordings 3 to 4 years ago?
EA WRC is really a mess in comparison to DR2, they released it very early its looks and runs horribly with loads of stuttering and dropping of frames due to UE4 (Denuvo also kicks in randomly at points in stages causing a massive lag spike - which means your off the track if it happens on a corner). Pace notes are bad, tyre friction seems ott and it requires a high end graphics card to get it to run smoothly at a native res without using stupid DLS - but you still get massive frame drops in certain areas of some stages (monte carlo). Then from version 1.9 they introduced Kernel level Anti Cheat/spyware which is just a joke as its way overkill for the title, blocks any 3rd party addons from working (including some VR) straight out stops it working on Linux/Steamdeck. Doesn't seem to do much to stop cheats as its clearly written for Battle Field 2, I think its safe to assume any future title from EA will have this Kernel level (above operating system) anticheat software.
I ended up spending a massive amount of time researching and writing a guide on how to revert EA WRC back to V1.8.1 just for Linux/Steamdeck players as there is little hope for a refund. :/
You'll end up spending more time trying to tune to the game to run smoothly without popups or hideous anti-aliasing without blurring than actual playing the game.
Saying that there are some very nice stages that are *really* worth playing (Portugal) especially if your get board of DR2 stages. About 50% of the tarmac countries are terrible for some reason, Mediterraneo (Corsica) is exceptionally good!
DR2 still has way higher player count, the daily's, weekly's, monthly's are better.
Purchase with LOTS of research first is my advice.
But your better off have a look at the Rally Sim Fans modded version of Richard Burns Rally (RBR) Workerbee et al have done an outstanding job on it and will even run on older hardware nicely. It is a big install (100GB) and not super easy to download (they use a file sharing system called torrents to save download bandwidth and you have to download a torrent client first to do that etc):
https://www.rallysimfans.hu
Video:
Lombard RAC Rally 1982
by
REVS Rally Event Videos
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4CvzbDrVF4
Don't know whats up with the frame rate, bad 25 to 30fps conversion? The audio is fine and the best bit no Escorts! (Well just one - Louise Aitken-Walker) UK Rallys are usually full of escorts and not much else (cheap to buy, cheap to run and loads of spares and performance parts).
May have a go with Upscaly and see if that can clean up the number plates, it can work miracles:
https://upscayl.org/