The 2.5 in HOF2.5 is not just a number. There's actually some logic behind it! This HOF is not an isolated, personal project, but the latest continuation of a great tradition surrounding Geoff Crammond's computer racers (REVS, F1GP Amiga & PC and GP2). For the origin, we have to go back a long way in the history of the Internet:
The HOF-saga started about 5 years ago, at a time the Net had not yet exploded with the introduction of HTML. Dane Peter Dalsgaard from the university of Aarhus, Sweden, founded the motherHOF in the first half of 1993. At that time, the Amiga version of F1GP was used for the competition. Although the Atari ST version was the first to be released, it never showed up on the Internet. What only very few people know though, is that there actually exists a HOF for REVS, the first simulator by Crammond!
Right from the start, HOF featured strict rules banning chicane-cutting and touching grass. An attention to fairplay and thoroughness that has been continued throughout the entire history of the different HOFs.
In may 1993, Amiga HOF had "only" 15 members. Nevertheless, it was already a truely international affair with people participating from universities in the UK, Germany, Finland, Canada, Australia, Norway and Denmark! At least one of the earliest pioneers, Anthony Holloway, was around until very recently in our GP2 era....
Peter Dalsgaard was succeeded by Dutchman Edo Nijmeijer in june 1994.Undoubtedly a very important moment, because by this move, Peter Dalsgaard sent out a clear signal that HOF was intended to be more than a personal project. HOF was here to stay, no matter what happened to the directors! A principle that was illustrated again just a few months later, when HOF got hit by probably the biggest incident in its history...
Because of putting a little bit too much effort in his hobby (not surprisingly hacking :), Edo was cut off the Net for a few months. This time, New Zealand's Grant Reeve took over and kept HOF alive until Edo's return in july 1995.
The years 94-95 can probably be considered as the Golden Age of Amiga HOF. Famous names like Dave Gymer, Oliver Roberts, René Smit and Ivanhoe Vasiljevich appeared on the list of competitors. Editors and patches started to make the game even more interesting. This was also when the first times without traction control were posted! Kind of like the first F1 cars with wings appearing...
The last man to manage Amiga HOF is Alan Strang The great thing about the Amiga HOF (and one of the greatest examples of the viability of this legendary machine) is that it is still alive and kicking! There are about 100 members, with every now and then new people joining. Around 15 active people submitting times regularly.
From what I hear, the mother of all HOFs is planning to stay for many years to come!
PCs started as strictly business-machines. But during the last 4-5 years, they slowly evolved to suitable gaming platforms. F1GP for PC was released more than a year after its Amiga predecessor. Many Amiga-F1GP lovers were attracted by the possibility to play with 25fps on PCs. No problem with the explosive CPU-evolution that was about to take off in the PC world around the time.
At the end of 1994, Dave Gymer (aka "Gizmo") , decided to do a PC counterpart of the Amiga HOF. In no time, every F1GP lover with a connection to the Net seemed to join the league! For some strange reason, I never did. Although I had connection from home in the summer of '95.... Probably my inability to drive without TC at the time (which rendered me chanceless..), and the fact that LFRS seemed more important at the time. It's a pity since I should have been able to make quite an impression..:)
The secret of PC HOF was obviously that many more people had PCs, and they were still evolving. So it soon overshadowed Amiga HOF in terms of number of participants and fame. With the arrival of GP2 in mid '96, it was taken over from Dave by Steve Smith. Although still available, there doesn't seem to be much activity left... Reasons aren't hard to find: unlike the Amiga version, PC F1GP has to cope with GP2 (and other decent F1 sims). Still, I think it could have some future left if only there would be a bit more publicity in rec.autos.simulators and such.
Three great names brought PC F1GP laptimes to levels never dreamt of. The Prost, Senna and Schumacher of F1GP are undoubtedly Ivanhoe Vasiljevich (what else can you expect with such a name? :), René Smit and Steven Mestdagh. Check out some of their keyboard times and drop your jaw! HOF was the scene for some of the closest and most determined competition ever seen...
In the summer of '96, millions of people rushed out to their software shop to buy GP2. Naturally, it was only a matter of weeks before plans for a HOF2 were developed. Dave Gymer handed over the PC F1GP HOF to Steve Smith and started working on what will be remembered as the most ambitious chapter of HOF. Contrary to F1GP HOF, GP2 HOF had an abundance of analogue (wheel/joystick) drivers. It remained attractive for digital players because the control method was also included in the charts. It could have been great: with HOF2LAP to check against cheating and a completely automated scoringsystem, nothing seemed to prevent an extension of the HOF success...
Nevertheless HOF went into its darkest period. In the first half of '97, a few supertimes ripped HOF2 apart. Nothing is more devastating for a competition than having some people disappear into the distance. After a few months of disbelief, it was discovered how these times were possible without being verifiably illegal. It was an example of violating the very fundamentals of a hotlap league. It was slowmo- driving.
The understanding that this type of cheating was undetectable, and would remain so for the foreseeable future, was one of the main reasons behind the death of HOF2 on April 1st 1997. (no, it wasn't a joke.......)
It is not easy to try to pinpoint why the atmosphere had suddenly changed. During its five year history, Amiga HOF always remained fair and a perfect example of sportsmanship. Competitors were always loyal to the spirit of the game. In HOF2, cheaters indeed had more opportunities because there was no background logger like GP2LAP available yet for GP2. But my best speculation is that it helped to have a small community ("Amiga against the rest of the (PC) world") and a stronger sense of being fellow Internet-pioneers.
By the time HOF2 went on air, the Internet-community had become a more accurate mirror of society: good meaning people but also people with less noble intentions...
An important difference between HOF and HOF2 (essentially between F1GP and GP2) was that analogue controls showed a huge advantage over digital. What's more: the initial impression was that slowmo would only offer advantage for non-steeringhelp driving. These considerations were enough motivation for me to ask Gizmo whether I could take over HOF2 for digital control only. Hence HOF2.5 since it wasn't going to be an all-encompassing HOF like the predecessor.
The first HOF2.5 edition appeared in May '97 and was soon supported by the main digital drivers from HOF2. For more than half a year, HOF2.5 was all I had hoped it would be: the same close competition and fierce battles as in PC HOF. I tremendously enjoyed keeping it online and updating it.
But once again, dark clouds started to cover HOF. Once again, some people started to dominate the league in an unrealistic way. Everybody knew what was going on, but I faced the same situation as Gizmo half a year earlier: having no hard evidence and feeling the spirit of the series fading away. After just a few months, the powerlessness had completely destroyed my motivation. In october '97, HOF2.5 was put in hibernation mode, in hopeful expectation of some cure for the slowmo virus...
It wasn't until April of the next year that a glimmer of hope started to shine through. René Smit released the first versions of Perfview, and this seemed like a tool that could assist in seperating slowmo from realtime. At least based on some ideas that I had while trying to detect slowmo on the basis of a replay.
Despite the immense effort of René Smit, and almost going as far as developing a neural network, a good dose of realism forced us to accept that this war would be lost before it started.....The only way to detect slowmo would be to track it while the laps were driven! This required an approach that no-one had been able to realize in the 2-year history of GP2. At least that's what we assumed....
That was when Frank Ahnert came to our rescue (it was even he himself who "by coincidence" contacted me. There definitely must be "something out there" :) Within less than 2 months, the cooperation between René and Frank resulted in the basic version of the tool that put an end to the scourge of GP2 HOFs and the other hotlap competitions: GP2LAP. At the time of writing (08 sept 98), GP2LAP goes out of bèta and clears the road for HOF2.5 edition '98!!!
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A big thanks to Jo Helsen for writing this extensive history of the Hall Of Fame. As you can see, this competition goes way back to the early days of sim racing. Sometimes there were separate HOF's for digital and analogue and sometimes they existed together. John Boggle used to maintain the HOF2.5 analogue version for example. It was the analogue counterpart of Jo's digital competition.
Now HOF continues with new directors, a new game and hopefully many new and old drivers. The new game is ofcourse Grand Prix 3 by Geoff Crammond. HOF3 will host both digital and analogue laps, but there are two seperate directors for both divisions and also seperate pages. René Brehm will be directing the digital section and Heimen Brons will take care of the analogue hotlaps. These pages wouldn't be possible however with the programming skills of Anton Dachounine who wrote all the scripts for uploading hotlaps, registering, rankings, etc.
Fortunately HOF3 will start off very strong right away, with all the verification tools necessary to make it a successful competition. GPxlap is available already and among other values, will check the Processor Occupancy. HOF3 launches at exactly the moment when the sim-racing community is booming again, with LFRS starting it's GP3 season and also the GP3 Global League starting a professional league. This is indeed promising to be an exciting year for sim-racing!
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