RACING SIM Speed Dreams
Version: 2.2.3 Web: www.speed-dreams.org
Speed Dreams is a motorsport simulation and racing game, which began life as a fork of the venerable Torcs racing car simulator. Thanks to constant improvements over the years, Speed Dreams has now grown to include several interesting features, cars, tracks and AI opponents, and offers a more enjoyable experience, and excellent physics realism.
The game offers several different racing modes, from a simple practice session to a full-time career. The latest release adds three new car sets, namely 1936 Grand Prix, Supercars and Long Day Series GT1, each featuring a variety of cars and car classes. In all, the game includes a total of 82 cars under 16 different car sets.
Speed Dreams also includes animated drivers on the 1936 Grand Prix cars, and offers 3D wheels for all cars. The new release boasts of brand new gauges, new liveries for all the cars, as well as an updated version of the original TRB1 car set from TORCS, with a more realistic behaviour. The game includes a variety of tracks, and the addition of the three new ones in the latest release brings the total number of tracks to 21.
One of the best things about the game is its accurate driving behaviour, thanks to its various physics engines. The new release includes an experimental Simu V3 physics engine, too.
Speed Dreams offers customisable daytime and weather conditions, supports up to four local multiplayer users in split-screen mode, and includes several different AI bots to race with. The game can be played with a variety of input devices, though support for force feedback is still under development.
A lot of work has been done over the years to improve not just the game, but also the player experience. The graphics, time, and weather settings, and game modes have matured quite well. Speed Dreams is available as an AppImage and a Flatpak, as well as a XtraDeb PPA for Ubuntu users.