OpenWheel – New Brain in a Jar project on KickStarter.

Brain in a Jar Studios based in Cheshire, United Kingdom are working on a new Sim Racing tittle called ” OpenWheel” 
They hope to get the support from the SimRacing Community for this already impressive project. 

So make sure to check out their Kickstarter page.

Brain in a Jar Quote:

OpenWheel is an on-line multiplayer racing game. OpenWheel is about the real heart of racing; built to race, single seat open wheeled race cars.

No pick-ups, no power boosts, no killer combo moves. A pure and realistic racing experience.

Our goal is to provide competition with real people from all over the world, a means for proving yourself and your racing skills in a community of racing fans. In other words, we love racing, and the best racing is done against other people, not some boring predictable AI, so we have been working on this game that makes racing against other people fast and easy.

OpenWheel is a competitive motorsport simulation.

 NO LOBBIES!

• For OpenWheel we have developed a system that does away with the ‘traditional’ game lobby. When you want to go racing you can choose a car and track and GO! Let the game find you a session or choose the one you want and drop right into the action. Racers can join mid-race! 
• Up to 32 racers on track. Races can range from just two competitors up to thirty-two. As new racers join they will be given their own garage. In OpenWheel you don’t have to have an empty track though, the host can allow AI drivers to fill empty slots; as new racers join they will take over from one of the AI already on the track.

LEADERBOARDS and TELEMETRY.

• OpenWheel will track a huge range of data about you and your cars, You will be able to compare performance over entire races, over single laps, or through a specific corner. The leaderboards will show how you
• compare to the rest of the racing community while telemetry data will allow you to compare yourself in detail with other individual racers.

Online CHAMPIONSHIPS.

Create and discover online championships. OpenWheel will have the tools within the game to build a championship and share it with your friends and the racing community. Devise your own series of events, rules and points systems and the game will help you manage your championship.

TEAMS.

Create or join a racing team with no limit on the number of members. Create a logo for your team from a huge selection of images that will be displayed on all team members cars. Track your team’s progress through detailed event information and compete as a team in championships.

CUSTOMISE YOUR CARS.

• Choose from a wide selection of body parts and accessories to make your cars more unique to you.

CUSTOMISE YOUR DRIVER.

Choose from a selection of suits, gloves, boots, helmet designs and helmet accessories to make your in-game driver represent how you want to look.

ON-CAR BADGES.

Everyone you meet will know how accomplished you are as a driver as all of your achievements and awards will be worn on your car as badges. When you arrive at a race it will be easy to check out the competition as the cars are adorned like fighter planes.

ON-TRACK CELEBRATIONS.

Race finishes will feature celebrations happening live on the cars while big personal events like beating personal bests, gaining fastest laps in a race and earning awards and achievements will be broadcast to your friends and the OpenWheel community.

CAR DAMAGE.

OpenWheel features a damage system that will crack, bend and break parts in collisions. With full damage on you will have to take care of your car like a real driver would. If you want to be able to hoon around you can create or join a race event with the damage off. The choice is yours.

TYRE WEAR and FUEL USE.

For the most realistic experience race with tyre wear and fuel use on.

OCULUS RIFT SUPPORT.

We think Oculus Rift is one of the most exciting things to happen to gaming in a long while and OpenWheel will have full Rift support; just as soon as the guys send us our kit! 😉

There will four cars available initially: 

• 250cc Racing-kart
• 750cc Formula style car
• 1960s Grand Prix style car
• Modern Grand Prix style car

These four cars represent a wide range of performance and handling characteristics.

Visually the cars are to be constructed to realistic standards with detailed body work and mechanical parts as well as highly detailed and fully functional cockpits, instrumentation and mirrors. We want to create cars that immerse the racers in the feeling that they are ‘real’ vehicles from the moment the instrumentation leaps into life as the ignition is fired to the moment the car is parked back in the pit garage and switched off again. As OpenWheel grows so will the cars available to race, this will happen as the number of players grows after launch, or will be added as stretch goals to this Kickstarter campaign.

We intend OpenWheel to be an evolving community after launch, so through continued promotion and a growing base of active racers we will continually expand and improve upon the game throughout it’s active life.

The ideal viewpoint is the driver’s eye view, but not everyone likes that view, not even everyone at Brain in a Jar prefers it, so we will offer a choice of views to race from including a chase camera. Rather than a 2D screen HUD when in chase though, we will project all of the information you need when racing onto the track behind your car.
You will also be able to fine tune your chosen view position with controls for adjusting the field of view, angle and position to get your viewpoint just how you want it.

Just as important will be the driver avatar for the racer within the cars. The drivers will animate to represent control inputs and will also adjust dials and switches, perform idle animations and be capable of a number of player controlled animations such as waving, pointing and a selection of taunts that can be used when racing. And like the cars themselves, the customisation options available for the drivers will enable you to create your own identity within the game.

The game will also feature an onboard race computer. This will be able to display everything you will need when racing; from the vitals like RPM, speed and lap times, to your position in the race and the number of laps remaining. It will also be able to display your telemetry data, as well as track maps, tyre temperatures, fuel level and more!

The wheel itself is also customisable, you will be able to choose and set the default display modes for the computer, screen colours, dial functions and a variety of wheel designs to suit your car.

In the Kart the computer will be mounted into the Nassau panel (driver fairing) and in the Classic it will be mounted onto a rig at the side of the dashboard. Whatever you are driving it will be there, giving you all the information you need to know.

The car customisation does not stop at cosmetic changes to make your vehicle ‘look’ different. In fact, a far more important part of your ability to customise your car is the ability to adjust the mechnical setup.
In OpenWheel you can adjust a wide range of settings to tune the handling of the car to suit you and squeeze every last hundredth of a second out of your performance.

The settings you can adjust include:

• Tyre pressure
• Camber
• Toe
• Caster
• Inclination
• Spring rate
• Damper bound and rebound
• Ride height
• Roll bar stiffness (if present)
• Weight jacker (if present)
• Stagger
• Track width
• Brake bias
• Differential
• Gear ratios
• Wing angles
• Engine mapping

Changes to your setup won’t make the car go magically faster, but they can give you what you need so that you can go faster!

Initially OpenWheel will feature three environments which between them will offer a total of twelve different race tracks.

They will be:

• Circuit: Based on classic race tracks of the world the circuit will have four racing configurations. The Circuit will offer tight corners and blind crests as well as fast sections where the cars can be pushed to maximum speed. 
• City: No room for error on this tight road course, with barriers that run right up to the track edge the configurations of the city track will be a real test of skill and nerve. Storefronts, hotels and other buildings form a man-made ‘canyon’ through which the race cars roar. 
• Speedway: This tri-oval course will offer flat out speedway racing as well as three other combinations. The Speedway Track is a gladiatorial arena where every inch of the courses are under the inspection of the vast grandstand seating. 

Each of the three race environments will offer a distinct visual identity.
The Circuit Track will be leafy and tree lined, fluffy white clouds will drift across the sky and when the engines are off and all is quiet birdsong can be heard drifting from the trees.

The City Track will feature colourful store fronts and a variety of architecture, there will be crystal clear blue skies, boats bobbing in the harbour and a night race that features flood-lit streets.

The Speedway Circuit will be hot and scorched. A dusty haze will hover on the horizon and the gleaming grandstands will glint and sparkle in the searing heat.

All of the circuits will feature animated track marshals trackside lights, dynamic objects (such as cones and polystyrene ad-boards), animated cloud effects and particle effects (such as dust, dirt, grass, ‘marbles’ and heat haze).

This is what OpenWheel is all about! The core of it, the beating heart, and so OpenWheel will support up to 32 racers on track. The essence of the game is the online racing experience it is important to provide capacity for enough players in a single event to make the game both challenging and entertaining.

We also want it to be fast and easy for everyone to get onto the track and spend as much time actually racing as possible, so we have done away with lobby screens.
This doesn’t mean that you won’t get the chance to check out the competition before diving into a race; in game displays will present relevant information such as the other connected players, the status of the race session, track information and other data that will useful. This information will be displayed on your race computer screen, or projected onto the car or track if you’re in a view where that screen can’t be seen. If you want to you can even drop into a spectator mode and watch the other racers from all of the camera angles available, including trackside TV cameras.

When a new session is created the host racer is given a random garage in the pit lane, and every joining racer will then be allocated their own garage in the same way. You don’t have to sit here and wait for the the grid to fill up; just start your engine and take to the track for some parctice laps if you want to. Once a few players have joined the session or when the session creator decides to initiate it, every connected racer will be given a single controller button press ‘ready’ option. When enough players have indicated they are ready the cars will be lined up on the grid in random order for the first race.
At the end of the race, points will be awarded, statistics updated, celebration animations played and you can continue to drive around the track, park up for a chat about the last race, or return to the pits to see the race breakdown and replay.

After a period of time, the ‘ready’ option will appear again for all racers. This will re-initiate a race with the grid organised into the finish order of the previous race, or any other order that the session creator has decided to use. This sequence will continue until there are no racers in the session, in other words; race sessions are persistent for as long as there is at least one person there racing. If you want to join a particular track and race there all day you can.

But you don’t have to hunt for a new session in order to go racing, you can join mid-race!
If there are available slots in a race session you can take one of these slots at any time. For example, you can join a session 3 laps into a 5 lap race. You will start in the pits with the display screen as you would at the beginning of a session, or take over an AI car as it races around around the track, but either way, you can choose to join in.
You can also wait until the current race is over if you want to, and just watch the action with live telemetry and statistics for the racers currently out on track.

OpenWheel will feature a system to allow racers to create on-line championships. When you set up a championship you choose the cars that can enter, the tracks and the order, the points scoring, penalties and even the trophies. These races can happen consecutively in a single session, or be run as separate individual events at dates and times to suit your competitors. Championships can even have practice and qualifying sessions.

Races and championships are great, what OpenWheel is all about, but the thing that makes it better is the ability to create and manage teams. Teams made up of other players!
Any racer will be able to create a team. Once the team is created any number of members may join. Teams can create special team events, take part in championships as a team and create and share a special team insignia, suit, helmet and car configurations. All team member points are counted towards an overall team score which is used in rank tables for teams from all over the world. Teams will even be able to challenge other teams to head to head races and championships.
Racing is great, racing as a team is better!

RACE 

The core mode of OpenWheel. Racers enter into a race either as a host, having created the session and set the race parameters (track, course, car, laps etc) or a guest (having searched for races through the race menu). It is in these races that most of the points and statistics for rankings, leaderboards and points are gained and calculated.

• Races can range from allowing 2 entrants to 32 entrants. 
• Races can be run from 3 laps to 100 laps
• Races can allow single or multiple car types (e.g. Karts only to all cars). 
• In races that include multiple car types the players are awarded points per type (i.e. they race as different classes).

CHAMPIONSHIP

This mode will show all the championships that you are currently running or taking part in, with the sceduled dates and times for the next races, your current points and standings and details for all of your competitors available. From here you can set up reminders for events, and event promotions that will take place within the OpenWheel community

• See all of your championships
• Create new championships
• Set up reminders and promotions
• Manage existing championships that you have created.

CHALLENGE

This mode is a separate ‘ladder’ system in which racers can challenge other racers to head to head duels, except only one of them needs to be online at the time of the challenge meaning anyone can challenge anyone at any time! It works by uploading a small replay data file, a challenger then downloads this replay file and races against the virtual opponent.

• Racers start by challenging someone else, this first challenge creates their replay file.
• Racers may challenge any other racer above them in the leaderboards.
• When a racer challenges another the new data for that challenge is uploaded automatically at the end of the challenge.
• Challenges are a 3 lap race.

TIME TRIAL

This mode is all about the racer and the car versus the track. There is no limit to the number of laps a racer run in any one session. When entering time trial mode the racer will be shown the current fastest lap from the leaderboards, along with the lap time of the racer immediately above them in the leaderboards and their own best lap; these three bits of data form the ‘targets’ for time trial. Every time the racer beats any (or all) of these times they are informed, the data is updated and the acheivement is shared with friends and the community.

• New fastest laps and lap records with have the telemetry data uploaded.
• Racers can have their own previous best lap played back as a ‘target car’

PRACTICE

• In the practice modes racers can run unlimited laps without any scoring data being recorded, at any track and in any car. 
• Racers can download time trial telemetry data from any other racer, this data can be displayed in a technical form, as a ‘racing line’ overlay on the track or as a ‘target car’.
• Racers can set up practice races against AI opponents to hone their race skills.

TROPHY ROOM

• The trophy room offers a place in which to check stats and rankings, trophies, pictures and replays.