FYI: Interested in some hide and seek? Some lucky developers are at the Nürburgring 24hour race this weekend. Make yourself known!

-Sofie Madsen

As always, the main shape gets laid out quite fast. The guys from Aquila have been very helpfull with the data provided.

We will have a near QA on this car, as one of the Aquila engineers has been part of our test team for a long while already. It will get some scrutinee from an expert!

More details are added

Near a final shape of the car, time for a sun tan.

A bake and basic livery is applied!

A Danish stamp of approval and we are ready to put it ingame. Now Marko can get his hands dirty on this car!

In the meantime the artist  has put the magic touch to the interior. A minimal cockpit, but all the important bits are there. Wheel, check, pedals, check, gearstick…………….

game over…..

More shots with less teasing coming to you next wednesday!

–
Jay Ekkel

I was welcomed by Martin,  he manages Daniel Keilwitz who races for Team Callaway in a Corvette Z06R GT3. RaceRoom is supporting Daniel in his career and Daniel helps us out every now and then!

Meet Daniel Keilwitz, 23 years and raced more real race cars than most of us ever will! And doing a great job while at it! Currently holding the 6th place in the FIA GT3 top 10 point scoring list with a whooping 183 points and Top 3 spot in the most racewins!

Working his way up from karts, through the BMW Mini Challenge, to a debut race in the ADAC with the Ascari. Onto a full first season of ADAC in 2010, in which they took 4 wins and a total of 8 podiums, and took the crown of the FIA GT3 Championship!

Season 2011 was a bit more unfortunate, while being very competitive, luck was not on his side though out the whole season. Media summarizing his season as “using up all of his bad luck in one season for the rest of his racing career”.

On to matters that count, RaceRoom has decided to support Daniel in his career and so he received a super slick, “go fast” RaceRoom sticker set for his Corvette.

Go fast sticker tuning (as always) works, but most likely more due to the talents of the driver they drove the car to the fastest time in Qualifying. Pole position!

And the converted pole position to a clear cut race win! Kudos!!!

Showing of your bling like Flavor Flav.

Eat that Flavor Flav!

Congrats to Daniel Keilwitz, Diego Alessi and Team Callaway Competition! May there be more to come!

–
Jay Ekkel

Race Images copyrighted by Klaus Bitzer and rennoptik.de

It has already appeared on a bug screen in our post “a call for beta testers”, and some sharp eyes already spotted the car. But now we are ready to announce this car in a more official way!

SimBin Sudios is happy to announce a license deal with Aquila Racingcars for their Sports GT car the Aquila CR1. And it seems that SimBin and Aquila have a lot in common….

Aquila is a Danish racecar manufacturer. It is sharing the same birthyear as SimBin as they also started thir adventure in 2003. It may be young, but they have years of experience on them. And like us, they are creating products out of pure love for the sports…

They started out by building a revolutionary Formula Ford and by that delivery they set a new benchmark for the competition to match. Like we did we released GTR, it came with a bang!

The Aquila CR1 is now their prancing horse, and is mainly referred to as the Aquila.

With its mean looks and big V8 its not just a proper track day car, its a serious racing machine! And in the not so far future you will be able to drive this car in our new project!

Update:
For the gearheads among us a smalll summary on the spec of the car:

Engine: GM LS7
Displacement: 7.0L V8
Power: 550Hp
Tq: 637Nm / 470ft-lbs
Weight: 900kg
Max RPM: 7100 RPM
Gear: 6 Speed Sequential
Fuel: 80 Litres
0-100km/h: 2.9 sec

–
Jay Ekkel

Credited Sources:
Images courtesy of Aquila Racingcars
Photos taken by Thomas Juel

With our tight little group we are working on redefining the sim racing concept, although passionate about what we do we need new blood to enter our team! Yet with all the recent efforts we have not found the people we were looking for, so we are kicking it up a notch and what better way to do it to ask help from our fans.

Dead centre in the middle of Sweden just below Europe’s largest lake, is an idyllic place called Lidköping, a city not particularly famous for its wild nightlife and famous attractions.

We fear that the remoteness of the place and the uniqueness of our team may scare away people from applying to our vacancies. Which is why we want to take this chance and make our case for anyone who might be considering to join us.

So here it goes!

While small and somewhat remote, Lidköping does have a lot to offer. It is a very bohemian city situated right on the shores of Lake Vänern, tucked with quiet cobblestone streets, fancy shops and restaurants and almost unlimited exploration options for nature lovers. While it may not show it, it is a booming city in terms of economy and you can see the effort that is being put in by the municipality to make it a truly welcoming and fertile place of business. But it also offers many of the benefits only smaller towns can offer: its easy to find a nice place to rent, the rental prices are considerably smaller compared to Stockholm or Malmö, you can never live too far away from work and you almost never spend your time in a queue at the supermarket. If you don’t want to spend your free time in the nature, you can choose between several tourist attractions quite nearby, out of which the most famous is Läckö Slott, whose beginnings date back as far as 1298.

Alternatively, you can spend an interesting night in one of the clubs nearby, or you can even visit Gothenburg, which you can reach by car in less than 2 hours. Or, for those who love the speed, you can go Karting right in the city or go speeding on the nearby Kinnekulle Ring raceway.

As for the bunch of us at SimBin, we are a family by all possible definitions in the world. We very often spend our free time together and, of course, when the weather allows we frequently go Karting, to Kinnekulle Ring or to see any race that’s happening nearby. We also have the Lidköping RaceRoom right near our offices, and we are passing through it and the associated bar every day when we are at work. We race almost every day, to test our upcoming game but also to have fun – and it is indeed very nice when both work and fun come together as one. In the evenings, we often stop by for a beer and a short race.

We don’t want to kid you: while our work is deeply connected with our passion for racing and games, the road ahead SimBin is challenging. We have much to say about what we are building now, but unfortunately cannot yet disclose it publicly. All we can say is that its bigger, bolder and more beautiful than what we’ve ever done, and that every day we try to take one step ahead towards what we hope to offer soon to every person who likes speed. We have made a big promise to ourselves, and standing by to it every day is our challenge.

This translates into a very agile development process that now starts to be split into weekly releases awaited by the whole team. We’ve reached the point when we can see it all come together, but anyone who has the slightest idea of what it takes to make a game, know that this is the precise moment when the workload and stress start to be quite high. Fortunately, not because we need to satisfy the wishes of a publisher, but because we are all aware and want to deliver the next chapter in sim racing that the world is waiting for.

So we are desperately searching for help, and in particular for a C++ Game Developer and a Build Engineer. We just have these titles now, but what we really search for – and offer – is 2 more members of our family, willing to take the extra mile with us and make this sacred promise come true. And because we need this help fast, we sadly can only accept candidates who have the right to live and work in Sweden, meaning, you have to be an EU citizen. If you are an EU citizen and if you fit our family, you can start working immediately. And since we know very well that moving is not such a fast thing to do, we are ready to make things as easy as possible for you: we have a company apartment to host you until you can find accommodation, we have people who can help with the paperwork, we are there to show you around and help you settle in. Many of us are not from Sweden and therefore passed through the entire moving process together with our families, so we really know how to help!

So if you can “talk” code or know someone who does, contact us. The ones who will join us will not only help shape the next best racing experience, but also SimBin itself as a company who tries to grow and learn and shape itself based on the team’s needs and aspirations. And if you have questions or want to know more about anything SimBin, just ask on the forum and we will answer!

A list of current openings can be found here.

So I went, got on the plane to Budapest, picked up my rental and drove down to the race track! Here, I’m driving accross the border bridge between Hungary and Slovakia.

Upon arrival at the racetrack, I was suprisingly welcomed by a roaring racecar around the track. So I jumped out of the car and decided to have a look at what was going on!

There was a German Team testing their virgin white Porsche!

Some folks were testing their road going KTM.

And there was a team testing their Formula car. I couldn’t spot which one it was, looked like a Formula 3000, I wasn’t aware they were still being raced!

Click here to view the embedded video.

The best suprice was the team testing their Aston Martin for the coming season. It sounds and looks just great! Sadly enough it only passed by twice! I reckon it got stranded in the gravel somewhere…

Time to cross the road and check into the Ring Hotel just across the race track, and get ready for tomorrow’s reference shoot on the racetrack. I should have brought my own car, it would have blended in nicely with the other Civic’s! The local Honda Civic club were having a driving course on the test/wet track training opposite the hotel.

Although referencing is a great job to go out and shoot references, it is not all fun and games. On trips like these, with no major activities on the track, you go on your own, and have to entertain yourself on a tuesday night! So here is me having the best steak I ever had, but at that time noone to share it with…So here it goes, the best steak I ever had!

After a good nights rest, it’s time to get on the track. I normally start with a lap around the track to familiarize myself with the layout. Followed by minimum 6 video laps. Shooting video in all directions in Full HD for the artists in the office.

Then it is time for a [long] trackwalk on this location I have been allocated the whole day! Which is a luxury, during the race season, and of cource pending on the track, we are planned inbetween activities. So a few hours here, and there spread over a few days if you are unlucky. Or extremely early as I experienced in Macau, where I had to wake up at 04.00 in the morning to get an hour of track time everyday!

I shoot panorama’s, but mainly details photos of objects like a gaurdrail ending..

A marhsall hut…

Kerbstones around the track..

Came across this lonely plant next to the kerbstone, which suprisingly enough was fixed with a bit of duct tape after someone ran over it. And people say that racing is not environment friendly!!!

At the end of the trip I gathered 30 GB of photos and video. In combination with the data we received from the race track, we are ready to build a very nice virtual Slovakiaring!

Jay Ekkel

March 30 – 2012 – SimBin Studios has evolved significantly over the last year. Strong investments have led to the employment of new and experienced developers from all over the world, a new state of the art office as well as new projects currently in the making.­­

In the line of these changes, Henrik Roos, one of three founders of SimBin and the CEO of the company, has decided to step down from his position. Henrik is turning the leadership of SimBin Studios AB into the capable hands of Klaus Wohlfarth, the owner of KW Automotive, and the main investor and shareholder of SimBin Studios. Henrik Roos will continue to support the company as a business consultant.

”It feels strange and sad to step down from my role as CEO for SimBin after 10 years of ”marriage” with the company. It is with joy in my heart that I turn the company into the trustworthy hands of Klaus Wohlfarth and his management team. I will for sure follow and support SimBin in its future endeavors, but my family needs me and I also have new and exciting opportunities to explore” says Henrik Roos.

Today, SimBin, RaceRoom and KW Automotive provide a wide product line of software and hardware products within the racing games industry. All three companies are 100% dedicated to motorsports and have a true passion for all things motorized, living up to the statement: “We Are Racing”.

“It is our intention to provide people with the best opportunities to become virtual racers. By controlling the complete production chain in all areas, we are able to offer complete solutions that include software, hardware as well as the overall concepts. The combination of all these values in one, offered by RaceRoom, is a unique concept in the world” says Klaus Wohlfarth.

Additionally, SimBin is happy to inform that the company is working on a Free2Play game platform. Further details will be revealed later this year.

Since the beginning, we have been receiving support from the most dedicated members of our community who generously offered a significant amount of their time to help spotting issues in our titles, for the benefit of everyone.  For our projects currently in development, we need to make that team even bigger ! With the new rendering techniques and new code logics that the developers have achieved, the beta phase is going to be more crucial than ever. And it’s not only about big titles, we do also have side-projects that need attention.

WE NEED YOU!!!!

Now, although video game testing can sound fun and satisfy an understandable curiosity to see and play the game before anyone else, we are looking for responsible candidates who are able to go past that and are ready to perform tests that are very far from actual gameplay. It can be about trying to hit every single wall around a track, or to damage the gearbox of a given list of cars, but also using the game in ways that are far from personal likings (i.e.: driving in chase cam, or using various driving aids)

What skills does SimBin look for?

Required Skills:
- A keen eye for detail
- Good organisational skills
- Strong written communication skills in the english language
- Basic software troubleshooting skills
- Good at following instructions

We highly value out-of-ordinary PC hardware components but also running Windows XP or Vista can be viewed as an advantage.

If you are looking for an opportunity to contribute to our projects and collaborate with one of the best development teams in the racing game world then please apply to the position by sending us an email with a few words about yourself and a full description of your current gaming hardware !

Be advised, though: bugs in beta-phase won't be as easy to spot as the ones visible on these two captures taken from early alpha builds...

RaceRoom Entertainment, Eurosport and SimBin Studios are proud to announce the Virtual World Touring Car Championship 2012 – a free PC game.

 During the WTCC 2012 season, people from around the globe will get the chance to test their skills as virtual drivers online as well as onsite at selected WTCC events.

Throughout the season, a V-WTCC roadshow using a 400m2 gamepark will be visiting selected events of the WTCC championship.

The Virtual Championship covers the complete WTCC season calendar. The gamers visiting one or more of the WTCC events will be able to compete in high quality racing simulators. The gamers not visiting a real WTCC event can simply compete from their home PC still having the chance of winning the Virtual WTCC Championship.

The competition is a point based Hotlap contest. All points scored in online and onsite events go in to the championship scoreboard where a winner is announced at the end of the season.

Onsite points are worth twice as much as points scored in the online events, so it will really pay off to participate in the actual WTCC events that will be visited by the gamepark.

As the headline suggests, the V-WTCC 2012 is not only a roadshow and a championship. It is also a free PC game featuring the WTCC 2012 cars and circuits.

The game is developed by SimBin Studios AB and will be released in steps via www.raceroom.net as the WTCC season unfolds.

The first game package covering 1/3 of the season will be released in April, around the same time as the online competitions are started.

More details of the competition calendar, competition prizes as well as a more detailed presentation of the project partners will be announced later via www.raceroom.net

Let’s start from the beginning…

For those of you that have been too high on gas fumes the last couple of years, here are a few facts about the car:

•  Two seated all-electric roadster
• 248 bhp which gives a 0-100 kmh time of 3.7 seconds
• 53 kWh battery capable of 393 km

This winter, I had the opportunity to borrow a Tesla Roadster Sport, a high performance all-electric car. I brought it to the studio for everybody to testdrive it. Even the programmers left their cave to give this car a go!

It has one masterpiece, the acceleration – which feels almost like when an airplane takes off. Because of its single gear, constant torque configuration, it is undramatic but quick. Very quick. First time drivers and passengers almost always react with a grin – the Tesla grin.

Those brave/stupid enough to push the TC-off button, reacts differently. It’s a combination of laughter and fear. A very real fear. The tires lose their grip in the same moment the pedal hits the floor.

Our sound designer, Anthony, was a tad negative to the lack of sounds. Just a tad. We soon realized that the lack of engine sound gave us a unique opportunity to record other sounds. Sounds free of the wonderful “distortion” a combustion engine makes. Separating the sounds from distortion is the key to get the real authentic sounds in-game.

Anthony and I then drove around the streets, looking for bumps and holes, that would make the suspension and tire sound the way we wanted. We drove at different speeds to get the correct wind noise.

We also did a lot of burn outs, and hard break-ins to get the right tire squeeks. It was a hard job, but we did it for you! With the sim-racers best in mind – we are willing to make this kind of sacrifice.

We got some good material, and some of the sounds made it into the game. This will add even more immersion to the already spectacular sound experience.

And about the range; our feet were apperantly a bit heavier than the one defined in EPA’s test cycle. We burned 220 Wh/km, which equals a range of 240 km.

Simon Lundell