The Nürburgring may be the most-simulated location on the planet

The Nürburgring is a place with few equals. A ribbon of tarmac and concrete a little over 16 miles (just under 23km) long, it snakes its way around the hills surrounding the town (and medieval castle) of Nürburg in Germany's Eifel Mountains. Many people think it's the planet's most challenging race track, a combination of long straights (and therefore high speeds), plenty of blind corners, and an extremely unforgiving nature. And perhaps uniquely, it's a real-life place intimately familiar to tens of millions of people who have never set foot on it thanks to its inclusion in a number of best-selling video games.

It's hard to think of another real place that's featured in so many games and simulated with such depth. Between its inclusion in Gran Turismo (from GT4 onwards) and Forza Motorsport, more than 50 million digital Nürburgrings have been shipped for consoles since the mid-2000s.

It's unlike any track that would be built today—unlike any track that anyone has built for the last half-century, in fact. Opened in 1927, it was the brainchild of Dr Otto Creutz, a local administrator. Car races had been held on closed public roads in the area, but Creutz figured that a purpose-built track would do just as well at drawing in tourists without the annoying road closures and disruption.

Its construction would employ thousands in an economically deprived area, and Germany's burgeoning automakers could use it as a place to test and develop their machines. Finally, there was also the clever idea to open the track to the general public as a one-way toll road, a practice that continues to this day—as long as your vehicle is road-legal in Germany and you pay your €29 ($33.2).

The Nürburgring is actually two race tracks in one. The original 1920s version was built with a 14.1-mile/22.8km Nordschleife (north loop) and a 4.8-mile/7.7km Südschleife (south loop), which could be run together, although the last time that happened was in 1929. (The latter was demolished in 1970). The Nürburgring was home to the German Grand Prix during the interwar years at a time when Mercedes and Auto Union were duking it out for technological supremacy, the beneficiaries of significant state funding as a way of propagandizing Germany's industrial renewal under Hitler.

Racing returned to the Nordschleife after the war, and it once again became home to the German Grand Prix. The Nordschleife's challenge didn't just come from having so many corners (some say more than 170, others more than 80). The area's weather is infinitely changeable from one minute to the next, meaning rain or even heavy fog is possible at one part of the track while parts are still bathed in sunshine. The track's length also made it hard for marshals and emergency workers to respond to crashes. And as Formula 1 cars got faster and faster, they were starting to get airborne at several places.

In 1968, Jackie Stewart nicknamed it "the Green Hell," a moniker that caught on but didn't stop F1 from visiting until almost a decade later. The catalyst for that was Niki Lauda's fiery crash in 1976, and it wasn't until 1984 and the construction of a second track—the GP-strecke, purpose built for high downforce racing cars—that the series returned. But racing continued at the Nordschleife in F1's absence, notably with Group C sports cars in the 1980s. Most recently, the main draw has been the VLN series in Germany, the annual highlight of which is a 24-hour race that usually sees more than 200 cars compete.

But even with the regular public sessions at the track, the number of people who know their way around the Nordschleife without ever visiting it for real must be at least an order of magnitude greater. It all started with 1998's Grand Prix Legends, a PC racing sim that recreated the 1967 Formula One season before wings and sponsorship changed everything.

But the real breakthrough was the track's inclusion in Gran Turismo 4, which introduced the famous Nordschleife to almost 12 million PS2 gamers. Since then, it has been a mainstay of Gran Turismo and Forza Motorsport games, with more than 50 million digital Nürburgrings shipped for consoles ever since. Those tracks weren't always perfect. Early versions in Gran Turismo and Forza were criticized for being too wide, not bumpy enough, and in the case of Forza, about 20 percent too long.

More recently, laser-scanned versions of the Nordschleife have upped the realism in Forza Motorsport 6, Project CARS, iRacing, Assetto Corsa, and others. Its inclusion is a virtual requirement for a top-level racing game these days, which makes it a handy—if subjective—way to gauge and benchmark games against each other. I know that when I'm checking out a new game, several laps of the Green Hell is often the quickest way to get to know it, the track exposing foibles in game engines or tire physics models just as surely as it exposes problems in real cars tested by OEMs for the same reason.

After putting in so many hours with digital Nürburgrings, I'm now even able to visualize an entire lap with my eyes closed—a handy trick when insomnia strikes and sheep counting proves inadequate. But like so many million other gamers out there, I've yet to drive it for real. One day...

Listing image by Getty Images | Archive Photos