TORCS

TORCS (The Open Racing Car Simulator) is an open-source 3D car racing simulator available for Linux, FreeBSD, Mac OS X, AmigaOS 4, AROS, MorphOS and Microsoft Windows. TORCS was created by Eric Espié and Christophe Guionneau, but project development is now headed by Bernhard Wymann.[2] It is written in C++ and is licensed under the GNU GPL. TORCS is designed to enable pre-programmed AI drivers to race against one another, while allowing the user to control a vehicle using either a keyboard, mouse, or wheel input.[3]

TORCS
Splash screen
Original author(s)Eric Espié and Christophe Guionneau
Developer(s)Bernhard Wymann, et al.[1]
Initial release1997
Stable release
v1.3.7 / May 26, 2016 (2016-05-26)
Repositorysourceforge.net/projects/torcs/
Written inC++
Engine
  • PLIB
Platformcross-platform
TypeRacing game
LicenseGNU GPL, Free Art license
Websitetorcs.sourceforge.net 
Race track in Torcs in Top-down view.
Comparison of the reflections system of TORCS 1.3.3 (left) and Speed Dreams 2.0 (right): Front view of a racing car split by a bright line; the right part shows more vivid reflections

History

Development

Development of TORCS began in 1997 by Eric Espié and Christophe Guionneau as a 2D game called Racing Car Simulator (RCS). It was influenced by and based on RARS (Robot Auto Racing Simulator).[4] When Espié and Guionneau acquired a 3dfx graphics card for game development, they made the first 3D version of the simulator with OpenGL and renamed it Open Racing Car Simulator (ORCS) so as not to be confused with the Revision Control System.

The early versions of ORCS did not include cars with engines, making the game a Soap Box Derby-style, downhill racing simulation. When engines and engine sounds were eventually added, the simulation was given its final name, TORCS, as the name seemed more relevant to automobiles given its similarity to the word torque.

Later, Guionneau added multiple camera angles during game-play. Guionneau developed much of the original graphics code in TORCS and eventually added texture mapping to give more detail to the cars. Espié then worked on piecing together and finalizing code for release.[5]

Future goals

The current main developers of TORCS are Bernhard Wymann (project leader), Christos Dimitrakakis (simulation, sound, AI) and Andrew Sumner (graphics, tracks). Aside from bugfixes and maintenance of TORCS code, the next features planned include network multiplayer mode, improved physics engine, enhanced car interior detail, and replays.[6]

Reception and impact

In December 2000 CNN placed TORCS among the "Top 10 Linux games for the holidays".[7] Linux Journal considered TORCS to be the best open source driving game in their October 18, 2007 issue, highlighting the ability for players to design their own cars, realistic graphics and vehicle handling.[8] The game has gained substantial popularity; between 2000 and 2017, it was downloaded over 2.9 million times via Sourceforge.net alone.[9]

Competitions

The TORCS Racing Board hosts a competition on its website among players in the TORCS community. Unlike traditional network multiplayer events in which players compete in real-time on local network or Internet-connected clients simultaneously, the TORCS Racing Board is a competition between artificial intelligence "robots" developed and uploaded by users.

Faculty from the University of Würzburg and Politecnico di Milano host two AI competitions, the Simulated Car Racing Championship and the Demolition Derby Competition; the latter uses a patched TORCS server.[10]

TORCS forks

TORCS has been forked into several projects, for example Speed Dreams,[11] originally known as Torcs-NG.

Use in research

Thanks to its openness, modularity and extensibility, TORCS has been adopted as a base for many research projects; examples include automated computation of car setups, human-assisted algorithmic generation of tracks and the application of several computing techniques (e.g. genetic programming) to different aspects of robot driving. Since 2008, TORCS has also played an important role in various research fields within the IEEE Conference on Computational Intelligence and Games, where it appears as a base for 4 to 6 projects every year.

According to the TORCS FAQ the current version of TORCS should be cited as "B. Wymann, E. Espié, C. Guionneau, C. Dimitrakakis, R. Coulom, A. Sumner. TORCS: The Open Racing Car Simulator, vX.X.X, 20XX."

See also

References
  1. TORCS Team
  2. "TORCS FAQ: "Who develops TORCS?"".
  3. About TORCS on torcs.sourceforge.net
  4. Evolved to Win by Moshe Sipper, ISBN 978-1-4709-7283-7 (2011)
  5. "TORCS project history". SourceForge.net.
  6. "TORCS FAQ: "What are the future plans?"".
  7. Top 10 Linux games for the holidays by Lee Anderson on cnn.com (December 20, 2000, archived)
  8. Diehl, Mike (2007-10-18). "Free Games for Linux". Linux Journal. Linux Journal. Retrieved 2007-12-04.
  9. stats 2000-03-19+to+2017-05-25 on sourceforge.net
  10. COBOSLAB, University of Würzburg, Simulated Car Racing Competition 2010: Demolition Derby, archived from the original on 2010-04-06, retrieved 2010-04-03
  11. "Speed Dreams home page".
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