How a unique competition helped an upcoming driving sim evolve

First, a quick reminder. The Last Garage is a work-in-progress driving simulator, using scratch-built physics mixed with open-source elements, such as Godot for graphics.

But it isn’t going to be a sim racing title you can buy. Well, not as ‘The Last Garage’ anyway.

It’s currently used, in a ‘B2B’ sense, by the Dutch military for driver training, sportscar manufacturer Donkervoort for car development (including a laser-scanned TT Circuit Assen venue) and as a rally driver testing tool.

The public will be able to drive it later this year, however, when the new driving game, MONOsim, will be released via Steam, utilising The Last Garage as its basis.

Now we’re all up to speed, earlier this week, VCO’s Esports Racing League competition drew to a close, using The Last Garage and its custom VCARUS model. On the face of it, nothing new, the ERL had held an event using the vehicle and sim platform before,in particular at January’s Sim Formula Europe event.

That time, however, all drivers were in the same room for a LAN race-off.

What made this recent competition different was that the drivers were remote, debuting TLG’s online multiplayer for the very first time.

Which wasn’t in the original plan, as an in-person event was meant to be the structure until just one month before the championship-deciding gathering. Oh, and a new track had to be built in that time, too.

“I didn’t really have any plans to do [the ERL final] online because I was still working on some elements,” explains Marcel Offermans, the former lead for rFactor 2 who is creating The Last Garage.

“But I thought, ‘Well, what the heck, why not? Let’s give it a go!’ I had a month to build a track and come up with a format that would work online.

“I mean, for January in Maastricht, Sim Formula Europe, obviously [LAN] multiplayer had to work and had to work well. It did already the year before, so it’s not like there was nothing [to work from].

“I had a feeling that it would already be okay just from a technical point of view and from a latency prediction, the things that start to matter once people are not in the same place.”

Unique side-by-side race format

That track and format proved to be rather distinctive. Reminding us of a ‘Race of Champions’-style knock-out event, instead of just two drivers on track simultaneously, Offermans built a venue with four lanes side-by-side.

With four teams in the final, following prior rounds using Live for Speed, Gran Turismo 7, iRacing and RaceRoom, one driver from each squad hit the track across 10 short races, with TC Esports crowned victors at the end of the evening.

“I wanted to do a format that didn’t require much in terms of running qualifications. Typically in an online race that people want to watch, that just takes a lot of time, and it’s not always super interesting to see people hot lap for a few laps, and then just to set the grid,” explained Offermans.

“So we thought, ‘Well, let’s do Race of Champions-style, and let’s do it with four people side-by-side, because we have four teams.

“But that meant making a track that could support that, because there’s nothing out there that does that. As far as I could find, no modder had ever thought of this idea; I guess it’s very unique.

“We wanted to make sure that people could test the game, see if it worked on their computer, but not race the track.

“I ended up making a little paddock area for the track, and basically that was the only area that people could drive prior to the test races on Saturday and then the finals on Sunday.”

Testing for upcoming game release, MONOsim

The hurried nature of the event format helped Offermans to innovate with the unparalleled circuit design. As the online aspect acted as a testbed for The Last Garage features, it did too for the tech-sharing MONOsim release, which will feature network-connected racing.

“We learned a lot about how long all of this stuff takes, how to organise it and also how to create the right cameras, because in hindsight we should have used different cameras to make the event better to watch,” explained Offermans.

“I was glad that there were no major glitches. I’m quite happy with how it all went and it’s a good first step towards more online stuff.”

However, due to the layout, there was no car-to-car contact and just four vehicles in use at one time.

“It’s not like the engine can’t do that,” clarified the industry veteran when asked about larger grids and traditional circuits. “It was more like, ‘We only have a month to get all of this done.’”

For MONOsim especially, which will be a public release centred around the single-seater British sportscar, according to Offermans, a hidden element was also tested during the VCO event:

“I mean, obviously it’s a first test for online multiplayer, but another thing coming in MONOsim is driving through traffic.

“Even though you did not really see that in this event, there was some traffic in the background because the track is next to a highway, and we actually had some vehicles driving on that highway and driving into the paddock area, stopping there, driving back into the highway.

“That was more or less just a test for me to see how the traffic would respond online.”

The (NPC) traffic is slated as one of the playable levels within the game, being that the real-world BAC MONO (regular model) can be driven on both road and track.

“MONOsim development with David Hatton is going nicely. I mean, it’s still a lot of work, but we’re not at the end of the year yet, so we still have some time.

“We’re already getting ahead and trying to plan some stuff for the actual release, but that’s still a few months off.

“I’m having a lot of fun building all of this stuff, but that’s no news.”

We first tested MONOsim at the SimFormula Europe event in January 2026, and we hope to test it once more as it nears completion.