It can be very expensive making licensed tracks for a sim, but with fantasy/fictional tracks no license is required so it's much cheaper for studios. Fantasy street circuits would be an amazing addition to AMS2 and would be incredibly popular and profitable.
Buskerud is fictional. I guess the reason Reiza doesn't make more fictional circuits is a cost/benefit analysis. Fantasy tracks don't have licensing costs, but they also might not bring in as much interest if they were sold as a DLC. You mention fantasy street circuits as an example, and Reiza has mentioned that making street tracks is more time-consuming than other equivalent-length tracks. It may happen in the future, but there seems to be a good explanation for why there's only been one fantasy track in AMS2 so far, and that was a port from AMS1.
I can think of a few reasons why not to make fictional tracks; Racers generally prefer to race on real circuits, I could stop there but I'll go on! Fictional tracks need a good layout design, not every track artist is capable of that with only a very select few who I've seen over the decades capable of creating decent fictional circuits. Alex Sawczuk being one who created the fabulous Loch Drummond for rFactor for example. It's time taken away from working on real circuits that point back to the first point above. There's still a massive amount of real circuits that could be used in the sim, again see point 1! No one will buy fictional tracks through DLC, they're not a selling point so essentially they would have to be Free items. Which is no bad thing but from a business perspective a sim racing developer would prefer to sell units based on a real circuit so that money could be used to licence another real circuit. Don't get me wrong, I'm a fan of any fictional track if it's good enough and would welcome something different. But personally I think there's too many real tracks not in this Sim that I would have first over anything fictional
I agree that AMS2 lacks street circuits. When you list the F1, Indycar, V8 supercar tracks... there are many possibilities. So if the only way to get more street circuits is through fictional ones, then I'm okay with fictional tracks.
I've thought about this. An answer I came up with is fictional tracks can be great and become classic tracks of their own but mostly in games that are part of a series. For example the original Gran Turismo tracks. Would be cool for there to be Reiza circuits which became integral parts of their games but I think with where we are real tracks are a better bet. Not against it all though! Whatever Reiza put out I'd be fully confident in they just don't miss.
I think a lot of us have thought about this, especially since there’s clearly a gap when it comes to street circuits. For accurate street layouts, licensing is likely the main issue. Even older tracks like ’88 Detroit or ’90 Phoenix aren’t automatically free to use. The race layout itself can still fall under intellectual property tied to promoters or organizers, and copyright protection can last decades. That said, “fictional” doesn’t have to mean "fantasy". I think the general term "fantasy" turns off the majority of sim-racers (although iRenting, rFactor, & PC2 all have official fictional offerings). Reiza could use real-world road data and design their own layout from scratch — for example, an “American Downtown Circuit” set in a city without Grand Prix history. They could even offer Classic and Modern versions to cover multiple eras. It would be asking a lot of the team to accomplish considering all the work that is still left & it probably wouldn't bring new players into the sim; but it would definitely fill a current gap — and the existing community would appreciate it. It's most likely a project that would be years away, but the topic is fun to think about and discuss!
I've always thought that the mini ring road that goes around my local shopping centre would make an excellent race track, and the one in LFS based on Birmingham is a classic.
Yes I think fictional is a better word to use than fantasy, I'm certainly not in favour of silly arcade-type street circuits, I'd prefer them to look very realistic, but to also be faster than the American style tracks with so many 90 degree corners (corners shouldn't be literal corners), Here in the UK we don't have a grid system of planning towns and cities, the layouts are far more random and interesting. As for those saying there are still so many real life tracks to make, yes but that goes back to the COST of licensing them. That is the very thing I'm looking to avoid for the Studio.
But there's still a a cost in creating fictional tracks; Developer wages, development time, Quality Assurance Testing (wages & time) etc. We may well get a fictional track for free, but the whole process is far from "free" itself
I would be absolutely thrilled if we had tracks like Feldbergring or Fonteny from Fat-Alfie in AMS2. In my opinion, these are the best mod tracks out there. They wouldn't be fictional either, but based on reality.
Something like the Donington 2010 F1 proposal would be an interesting "what if" scenario, but honestly I think this is better suited for mods than official Reiza content.
For me the big question is why Reiza don't make, among fantasy cars, Ferrari-like ones. Eg. I really enjoy F1 of '70s and nothing is better than AMS2: you can play fantastic 1974 or 1978 seasons thanks to car models yet available, mod liveries and default tracks, but the lack of something resambling a Ferrari 312B3/312T or 312T4 is a shame imho.
They do under their new Milano brand. Why only now? Because Reiza was chasing official Ferrari licence for some cars and sadly Ferrari rejected their offer. So I suppose with time there will be more fictional Milano branded cars
Still hoping we get a sequential V12 model that resembles the 430 for F-Classic Gen 3. And on the other side of the coin, some V10 playmates for the F-V12, then we would have some really good 1990 and 1995 sets. Or, if not, the possibility through mods if the plan to open that up works out.
