PC1 Is Project Cars realistic?

[Dan Allen]

Don't worry...

 

[unknwn]

Simulation can be unrealistic/inaccurate. Main question of the topic was "is Project Cars realistic?". Apparently there quite a lot effects simulated in PCars (most likely more than other sims except rF2), yet it gives this weird dynamics when at the limit or sliding/drifting because of generally accepted fact that tires have a bit too much grip than it should. "Normal driving" (below tire limits) dynamics that are accurate have been available for years, if PCars wants to be considered "next gen sim" then grip levels and driving at the limit/sliding/drifting should be accurate too, though the main base for that appears to be present.

 

[bmanic]

Well, the poll question asks: "In your opinion, do you think Project Cars can be considered a *true* sim?"

As for realism in terms of grip.. which is worse: 5% too much grip or 15% too little grip?

Objectively the answer is obvious.

Also, the confusion is in the progressive grip level of the tires. Especially the street tires are massively progressive in their longitudinal grip levels.. too much so in my opinion. However, actual PEAK GRIP levels of the tires seem pretty plausible and are extremely close to the other simulators like iRacing and Assetto Corsa (which has the highest peak grip on default grip levels of all the tracks).

Traditionally the actual progressive grip levels in sims have been awful and nothing at all close to reality. Not sure how many of you guys here remember iRacing's old tire model. It's a great example to make every single time these things come up because the consensus among most self-titled "hardcore simracing" people was that iRacing was the most realistic simulator ever. Only a few brave souls dared to oppose this notion on the old iRacing forums and said that rFactor, GTR2 and Live 4 Speed were far more realistic.. among these quite a few real life racing drivers. Of course these people were heavily antagonized and ridiculed on the forums.

.. fast forward to today's iRacing version: Tons and tons of more progressive grip and tires that are far easier to drive. Tires that make a whole lot more "sense" and actually behave like real tires.. somewhat.

Not sure the "it should be difficult to drive! = realism" thing will ever truly die but it's always good to remind people of checking reality every once in a while. You have all the tools necessary to see if something is completely off or somewhat realistic. Heck it's usually enough to look at the G-force readings to see if we are in true-arcade territory or lunatic-fringe-ice-racing territory (luckily there doesn't seem to be a single sim alive in this category any more).

I've only ever driven various kinds of street cars so I have no real world experience of proper slick tires and such but at least the street cars with the Masculine Allweather tire in pCars is pretty damn convincing until you do silly stuff.. and even while doing silly stuff it's almost there, most of it falling apart due to the car setup having been tweaked for console players. Simply changing the differential to a more appropriate and realistic value transforms some of these cars. Sure, they are not "perfect" yet and probably never will be but in my opinion they are as close to reality as any sim has ever come yet.. except for the issues with longitudinal grip levels that do annoy me (or "transient grip", when the rubber suddenly twists and regrips). That's an area AC is superior.. but then again the AC street tire models fail in other areas like how they can feel real strange during minimal understeer moments that just "explode" into random weirdness.

I'd also go as far as stating that the GT3 class of tires are extremely believable but this is of course pure speculation on my part as I've never driven a GT3 car and probably never will.

 

[unknwn]

Driving dynamics are mostly good, but nothing "revolutionary" I would say.
However "endurance capabilities" are lacking in my opinion:
tire pressures and camber has nearly no impact on tire temperature distribution (most likely there is no noticeable impact on tire wear but I don't think that's confirmed);
there is nearly no reason to use tires others than soft unless it's wet;
you can overdrive and slide pretty much every corner without overheating or killing the tires, instead they just wear progressively (actual softs shouldn't be hard to overheat and "kill" them in just a few laps when driven like crazy man, also road non-track suited tires will overheat on a track in a few laps);
with patch 6.0 pCars was going in the direction where users who were constantly using too much steering lock started to overheat their tires, but this change was rolled back, driving style has very low impact on tire wear/longevity.

recently there has been a report that camber has no effect on lateral grip (camber fiascio continues)
pCars isn't without issues when it comes to the tire model.

 

[Hash_V8]

Driving dynamics are mostly good, but nothing "revolutionary" I would say.
However "endurance capabilities" are lacking in my opinion:
tire pressures and camber has nearly no impact on tire temperature distribution (most likely there is no noticeable impact on tire wear but I don't think that's confirmed);
there is nearly no reason to use tires others than soft unless it's wet;
you can overdrive and slide pretty much every corner without overheating or killing the tires, instead they just wear progressively (actual softs shouldn't be hard to overheat and "kill" them in just a few laps when driven like crazy man, also road non-track suited tires will overheat on a track in a few laps);
with patch 6.0 pCars was going in the direction where users who were constantly using too much steering lock started to overheat their tires, but this change was rolled back, driving style has very low impact on tire wear/longevity.

recently there has been a report that camber has no effect on lateral grip (camber fiascio continues)
pCars isn't without issues when it comes to the tire model.

Recently discovered AC is in same boat at moment regarding Camber/heat/ and heat distribution across tyre, ive been pretty disappointed with what IMO is pretty major issues in these "sims".

 

[Avo77]

Well, the poll question asks: "In your opinion, do you think Project Cars can be considered a *true* sim?"

I've only ever driven various kinds of street cars so I have no real world experience of proper slick tires and such but at least the street cars with the Masculine Allweather tire in pCars is pretty damn convincing until you do silly stuff.. and even while doing silly stuff it's almost there, most of it falling apart due to the car setup having been tweaked for console players. Simply changing the differential to a more appropriate and realistic value transforms some of these cars. Sure, they are not "perfect" yet and probably never will be but in my opinion they are as close to reality as any sim has ever come yet.. except for the issues with longitudinal grip levels that do annoy me (or "transient grip", when the rubber suddenly twists and regrips). That's an area AC is superior.. but then again the AC street tire models fail in other areas like how they can feel real strange during minimal understeer moments that just "explode" into random weirdness.

I'd also go as far as stating that the GT3 class of tires are extremely believable but this is of course pure speculation on my part as I've never driven a GT3 car and probably never will.

Almost exactly my feeling.
Road cars in PCars now are very believable and some are just great.
Most of the race tires are still too hit and miss with unrealistic grip levels (too high) but the improvement has been MASSIVE in the latest patch.

 

[David Ignjatovic]

So patch 7 turned this from simcade to sim?

 

[Avo77]

I don't know exactly when the change happened. Maybe patch 6 or 7...
The tire physics 'till patch 3 was so bad I lost any interest in the game and tested it again just some days ago finding it completely transformed.

 

[bmanic]

I think it was Patch 5.0 that fixed the road car tires. Doug basically went through them all and redid a lot of the carcass flex stuff and other black magic as he felt they didn't turn in properly. They basically went from "there's something weird here" to "wow! This is how it's for real!" in one single patch. Patch 6.0 introduced the heating changes that were so hated by some console players (and I can understand why.. it's hard to drive a car optimally with a tiny little analogue stick that has 2cm movement range). Patch 7.0 now tried to reverse the heating introduced in 6.0 to the previous model in 5.0 but got bugged on the way.. causing all tires to be very difficult to get up to temperature.

Patch 7.0 also introduces the camber exploit fix.. so you no longer gain massive acceleration and speed advantage by running zero camber.

I hate the latest patch due to the heating nerf / bug but luckily the road cars are still as good as they've been.. perhaps even better now that camber seems to be fixed. The BAC Mono also got it's tire revised and is even better now than it was ever before. So yeah.. I'll stick to the street cars and have some fun.

 

[bmanic]

However "endurance capabilities" are lacking in my opinion:
tire pressures and camber has nearly no impact on tire temperature distribution (most likely there is no noticeable impact on tire wear but I don't think that's confirmed);
there is nearly no reason to use tires others than soft unless it's wet;
you can overdrive and slide pretty much every corner without overheating or killing the tires, instead they just wear progressively (actual softs shouldn't be hard to overheat and "kill" them in just a few laps when driven like crazy man, also road non-track suited tires will overheat on a track in a few laps);
with patch 6.0 pCars was going in the direction where users who were constantly using too much steering lock started to overheat their tires, but this change was rolled back, driving style has very low impact on tire wear/longevity.

recently there has been a report that camber has no effect on lateral grip (camber fiascio continues)
pCars isn't without issues when it comes to the tire model.

Yeah, unfortunately the hugely anticipated patch 6.0 and it's awesome new heating mechanics were killed off. It's extremely frustrating because the heating model they introduced was very promising. Keep in mind that no other simulator except perhaps rF2 has anything close to this kind of dynamic heating impact for over driving. iRacing is constantly evolving though and might soon be there but for over 5 years now it's been very weird in it's heating/wear model. AC too is very strange in this regard. So even if pCars is not quite there in terms of realism, at least they are trying (or not.. maybe they don't plan to reintroduce the aggressive heating any more which would be a real shame) unlike most of the competition.

As for the camber.. I don't agree when it comes to some of the talk about no effect on lateral grip. That's just complete bollocks. There is a gain in traction when you get the camber just right for a car + track combo.. compared to running no camber at all. The only advantage with running zero camber was the acceleration and top speed, which has now been remedied.

And the heating works as you'd expect it.. but you need to keep in mind that the telemetry for the heating is deep within the carcass! It's NOT on the surface. Would be interesting if we could switch it around. At some point during the pre-alpha we had some tires with surface temps and the numbers were wild and all over the place (probably would need some smoothing or something). And even with the heat deep within the carcass I can see clear temperature differences between inner, middle and outer parts of the tire. Up to 4 degrees centigrade difference in some cases. That probably translates to quite a large difference on the surface of the tire.

But yeah.. anyhow, I agree with you it's a real shame and a real mess right now. This game is so damn fragile and keeps being broken.. and just as they seem to have a chance to get it in a better state, they f*** it up again.

 

[unknwn]

Keep in mind that no other simulator except perhaps rF2 has anything close to this kind of dynamic heating impact for over driving.

I wouldn't say "except perhaps" is the "right" expression here, rF2 has always been the most dynamic in terms of heat/wear and it's impact over the race course. pCars at this stage is only trying.

AC too is very strange in this regard.

AC has made quite a lot of changes regarding core/surface temps and it's impact for driving. Some changes supposedly resulted in even worse tire temps (equivalent of 7.0 pCars update). Latest tire model updates seem to provide quite good results, overdriving the cars causes the core temps go over 100c+, however you can keep the tires in the optimal range by driving "normally". Understeering/oversteering causes tire surface temps to go up quickly and change the balance of the car just by getting 1-2 corners "wrong". However not all cars have been updated, those that were not have wrong tire temperatures.

So even if pCars is not quite there in terms of realism, at least they are trying (or not.. maybe they don't plan to reintroduce the aggressive heating any more which would be a real shame) unlike most of the competition.

If you consider competitors like Gran Turismo/Forza, then above is correct.

Personally I don't like pCars development scheme. I prefer continuous development of the "same release". New releases should have major features/updates where as pCars2 now looks more like what pCars1 should have been. Apparently many "a must" features/fixes that were promised or have been asked for years to be in pCars1 are now promised to come into pCars2, however you will have to buy it "again".

It's a bit of a shame that they "broke" the temps for the holidays.

 

[David Ignjatovic]

The SMS team are tards, what else can explain it.

 

[William Levesque]

I wouldn't say "except perhaps" is the "right" expression here, rF2 has always been the most dynamic in terms of heat/wear and it's impact over the race course.

iRacing makes you pay quite hard for overdriving, tyre-wise. Especially late in a run, it's very hard to "bring them back" once you overheat the tyres.