From the Press Release
To celebrate the start of 2014, Eutechnyx’ free-to-play online racing game and car community, Auto Club Revolution, today released the majestic Watkins Glen International track and a special challenge to its players, as well as a developer diary giving racers everywhere a behind-the-scenes look into the creation of this famous location. Known to avid racers worldwide, the New York-based track has played host to nearly every type of major road racing event since it was founded in 1948, including F1, NASCAR and Indycar.
Eutechnyx has selected three of the most popular Watkins Glen courses to include in-game, but only one – the speedy, NASCAR-style Short Route – will be available to drivers today. Giving the community added incentive to race together toward a common goal, the ACR team has issued the ‘Race to Release’ challenge, which will unlock the remaining Watkins Glen paths when completed. In order to unlock the two longer routes – the Watkins Glen Classic Boot and Watkins Glen Boot – the community must collectively race 100,000 miles at the track. Players will be updated via social media and the ACR forums as key milestones along the way are met, as well as through a unique progress tracker bar on the ACR website.
Based in Newcastle, UK, the development team, including its executive producers and track designers, worked around the clock for 12 weeks to carefully recreate Watkins Glen as accurately as possible, combing a vast sea of reference pictures, telemetry data and videos. Beginning with placing the initial track layout in the ACR virtual environment, ‘The Glen’ underwent time checking and tweaking based on camber heights and the width/length of curbs in various places to ensure that the virtual track matched its real-world counterpart. Once the layout was completed, assets were fully produced, ranging from crowd seating/stands, trees, road markings, and buildings – even portable toilets! Eutechnyx’ talented concept and environment artists worked together to add the final touches, polishing it off before working with the Quality Assurance team to ensure the track was bug-free. After final sign-off, detailed videos were sent to the track officials for approval, guaranteeing complete authenticity to the renowned Watkins Glen International.
To learn more, visit the official Auto Club Revolution website.