PolyTrack

A driving simulator rather than a racing game. The car is a rigid body on four independent suspensions, and every one of them is doing real work: the spring and damper decide how hard that corner of the car is pressing on the road, and how hard it is pressing decides how much grip the tyre gives back. That is why the nose dives under braking and why the front tyres bite hardest just after it does. Grip itself comes from a slip curve — force rises with slip, peaks a few degrees past straight, and then falls away, which is why a car that is gone is properly gone. Underneath is a torque curve, a six-speed box, a limited amount of rubber and a road surface that changes: tarmac holds, the dirt verge does not, and the grass beyond it barely tries. Nothing about the handling is scripted. Understeer, oversteer, wheelspin off the line and a handbrake that swaps ends all fall out of the same four contact patches. Assists are yours to switch off. The landscape and the circuit through it are generated, lit by an atmospheric sky that also lights the paintwork, and the whole thing runs at four hundred physics steps a second so the tyres never lie to you.