PC1 Project CARS is very good SIM

[HSken]

Hey,

I have been sim racing since my 16 (now 28), TOCA Race driver, richard burns rally with my brand new Logitech Momo, I have played almost all race/rally game out there.
Rfactor, GTR 1/2, Race 07, all the colin, GT Legends, F1 2010-2011, IRacing, you name it.

I have bought rFactor 2 and CARS, and I have to say they bought feel realy good, but the looks and sound of CARS are amazing! Its almost like real.
What I also like is that every week you get a new build and its is better and better each time.

Believe me its becoming the best sim game out there ever!

If you like to drive on pc and have a good wheel just try it your self, its only 10€ for Junior memeber ship, thats cheap : http://forum.wmdportal.com/toolpacks.php

http://forum.wmdportal.com/toolpacks.php

 

[Peter]

He was the only reason for me to watch the news

 

[RaceNut]

My old master once told me that if it looks like a tree, grows leaves like a tree and has bark like a tree, take no notice until it actually becomes a tree. Only then will you reap fulfillment and happiness. He also warned "beware weeds disguised as tree's".

Okay, yours is better but, mine is original.

I do have something in common with Mr. Miyagi though, that is age!

 

[Mark Quigley]

I will not say anything about an ugly duckling turning into a swan, but
I wonder if what we are trying to say is don't be too premature to judge?

 

[Kazumi]

I will not say anything about an ugly duckling turning into a swan, but
I wonder if what we are trying to say is don't be too premature to judge?

True.

But expecting a change in the projects direction? I doubt that's reasonable.

 

[Mark Quigley]

I think we need to start treating promises made by publicly funded development projects like this as if they were made by politicians. No bad thing tbh,
I will wait for the fat lady.

 

[Dave Flower]

Hey I like Shift 1 and 2.
Your tone suggests that this makes me a bad person

You are a bad person... but it nothing to do with the games you like !!!!

Hope your ok mate, long time no speak.

Get yer arse into the GTL Club Events you'll love em!

 

[Seb Kettle]

Let's check out the Stig's thoughts. Here's his feedback from build 499.

Quote Ben Collins
Version 499

For me, today is the best day yet on the PCARS Sim!

So Casey has worked up a new slick – he calls it the GreenFlash.. It’s bloody epic.

I ran through the GT’s In this order. The new tyre is currently on as a Default though I suspect Casey has moved it on as per my comments.

Mercedes SLS

General: wicked engine notes and that A pillar is exactly where I remember it! Super job on the detail of the rumbling motor. The body roll and bounce is superb and mirrors the nuances of kerb hopping, braking, sliding – it’s all there.

Balance: what I love about this new tyre is the throttle control. It’s amazing. Finally there is a way to crack the throttle open and get the car to just start taking a set. It registers like a little step, a tiny skip, and is uber-realistic.

Beyond that if you push too hard then it bites you – but equally the car is recoverable! We have driveability. It does exactly what it should – you run wide, take in some real estate and have a fighting chance of pulling it off so long as you don’t hit the wall. It’s PERFECT.

Braking: in a straight line the balance and feedback is AMAZING. The car bobs about and communicates how much grip it has through the locking tyres (front and squirming rear) all the while in concert with steering feedback.

Slight negative: Where it gets interesting is when you combine braking AND steering, or if there’s any curvature in the track. If you stay on the brakes on turn in, the rear really skids and it is over the top. I quite like a little help on the turn in by using the brake but not this much. When you go over a crest and press the brake whilst steering, brace for impact because the car will rotate big time (e.g. the fast kink towards Rivazza at Imola / Bologna)

If you can fix that last comment – please lock the software down right there, light a Cuban cigar and relax because the car will be perfect from where I’m sitting. Seriously awesome.

BMW Z4 GT3

Again – great acoustics and I like driving this even more than the Merc, which is fair enough because it’s a better car in real life too. The grip level felt absolutely right for GT3.

The fantastic throttle control is also evident in this car, love it.

Braking: I had the same issues under braking so I tried a 75% ratio towards the front on the braking bias. (I should point out that I’m on the standard pressure and it is working perfectly).

Changing the brake bias did calm down some of the propensity for over/steer on turn in with the brake, but the trend was still there in the background. So basically I lost out on braking performance, couldn’t slow down efficiently and still had oversteer as I braked into the apex.

This confirmed to me that the trend of combined steer PLUS brake is a fault with this tyre. But like I said, it’s damn near perfect in every other way!


BMW M3 GT4

I have to say, a bit of a pig.

The front tyres felt like wooden blocks, with no braking grip at the front end with which to stop, and no front grip once in the corner.

The car’s body language, throttle control and the sound again felt superb, but my impression was that this car had some extreme experimental kind of front tyre that made it very tricky to drive. Basically i think Casey was making sure i was awake.

FORMULA A

Holy ****, this is real.

Starting with the sound again because the development team have upped the ante and given the Formula A the most orchestral “wa-ppppaaaaa” on the gearchange. I found myself making unnecessary shifts just to listen to it.

Throttle control

The Formula A is wild, of that there is no doubt. You need a strong cup of coffee to have enough wits to hold onto this bronco and a delicate right foot. The way the car balances on throttle is incredible. From the initial touch, the first transition into slight o/steer, into more of a drift as you bounce kerbs and nail it through medium speed corners. A major breakthrough and exactly what I wanted to see in the FA! Outstanding.

Equally good is the feedback from the brakes.

My gut feeling is that Casey has thrown some of GreenFlash at the Formula A because the throttle sensitivity feels very similar to the GT cars. Also, like them, there is an anomaly on corner entry although slightly different with the FA.

Braking & Entering

For some reason at the end of the braking area in the FA, everything feels fine and then it locks the rear tyres and I spin, even when braking in a relatively straight line. If this tendency to rotate could be replaced by a little sideways kick or a squirm then I wouldn’t mind but the current state is OTT.

It also spins me off on the way into certain low speed corners (especially Rivazza 2 and the Variante Alta chicane) and I cannot figure out why it does this. I began to wonder if there was a tyre heating element involved because you get those “hard to feel the reason why you spun” spins on cold slicks, but it was doing it several laps in. I didn’t notice as much instability on turn in to faster corners.

As with the GT cars – this feels like a small anomaly in an otherwise perfect machine. All it needs is some more stability and predictability at low speed under heavy braking, and on turn in to slower corners.

Of all the cars I was only left slightly confused by what was making the anomaly in the Formula A tick, so I hope my feedback makes sense to Casey. Who deserves a knighthood as far as I’m concerned, the game/sim/life is on a whole new level now. It’s almost time to light a Cuban. Ian ..?
Please excuse the vocab on the last post, i'm just very excited about this turn of events and it's brilliant to see how this project has created something so good. I'm really blown away by the realism. I hope everyone else enjoys it too.

 

[RaceNut]

Having been away for the last couple of weeks, reading Ben's feedback really has me chomping at the bit to run some laps in these cars ASAP.

 

[David Ignjatovic]

Phyx and FFB still miles away.

 

[Andy_J]

Having been away for the last couple of weeks, reading Ben's feedback really has me chomping at the bit to run some laps in these cars ASAP.

Totally opposite to me. Paid consultants do not convince me. Impartial tests do though.

 

[RaceNut]

Totally opposite to me. Paid consultants do not convince me. Impartial tests do though.

I get your point but, I don't think that is necessarily an issue just because they get paid. That seems like a very pessimistic view to me. It would be interesting to get their feedback based on comparisons to other racing titles though. Do we know what other titles they have played?

 

[Chronus]

Totally opposite to me. Paid consultants do not convince me. Impartial tests do though.

I usually think along the same lines. And if I for one was rather critical of Junior's (and Van Gisbergen's) appraisal of iRacing then I ought to be as sceptical of the feedback provided by Ben Collins.

But judging from the criticism by Ambrose and McLaughlin about their feedback being somewhat disregarded, I'd say the situations are different, with SMS paying a lot of attention to what Ben has said (both the positives and his several negatives).

But you're right: the feedback given by paid consultants should not be taken seriously. rather, wait for several pro drivers to actually try the game and talk to other simracers or pro drivers about it. I have caught on to feedback such as this from several pros not affiliated in any way with ISI or SIMBIN (much less being paid to do it), feedback about rFactor and Race07 (and GTR2) which is largely positive. To that, no doubt, I pay a lot of attention as I find it convincing and marries with the feedback I got from working with pros.

Still, a sensitive issue this one. Considering your point of view "negative" is somewhat naive, I'd say. It would be interesting if that opinion is coherent and applies to any paid consultant/driver for any sim/game (from GT to Forza to iRACING).

 

[DrJustice]

I get your point but, I don't think that is necessarily an issue just because they get paid. That seems like a very pessimistic view to me. It would be interesting to get their feedback based on comparisons to other racing titles though. Do we know what other titles they have played?

I agree that such a view is pessimistic, but that is Andy Jackson speaking. He has openly expressed a great dislike for the sim and the community from the beginning, to the extent that he's hoping that the sim will be a failure (ref. posting), so I have less than zero confidence in any impartiality on his part, including statements on this issue.

Of course, back in real life, whole industries depend on paid consultants, and I, for one, have confidence in professionals paid to do a job which they will have to be accountable for. Also worth mentioning that Ben's and Nic's involvement is not a PR stunt being plastered all over the net, but an internal testing process where they speak their minds and are quite critical of things they don't like.

As for sims played. Nicolas Hamilton : "I have played racing sims for about 5 years, having grown up with GTR, GTR 2, RACE, RACE 07 etc,". He is a very fast sim driver. Ben Collins has been at it since the days of Microprose Grand Prix series, although we have no list of specific sims played. But more importantly, Ben has experience of driving a wide range of cars on (and over...) the limit - more so than most other people. They're both recruited specifically because they're real life racing drivers who also play sims.

 

[Bram Hengeveld]

Don't take this wrong way as I do like young Nicolas a lot and have raced quite a lot of great and clean races with him here at RaceDepartment back in the RACE 07 days but lets not over-qualify him as a very fast sim driver which he is not.

He was an clean driving, very friendly, average sim racer that at that time needed help to make his own setups for a FWD touring car (Seat Leon) like so many, and in leagues finished mid pack behind the really fast sim drivers.

If he were not Lewis' brother he would never been asked as a consultant for PCars either so I am pretty sure that PR is the only reason, which is totally fine as he so far has been a great ambassador for the game and sim racing as a whole.

Knowing his background story its fantastic that he managed to get a real racing career of the ground and I am 100% sure we all would have done the same thing if we had the chance to make the jump to a real series .

But a consultant because of his qualities and experience with various cars, no sir. There are plenty enough drivers in the sim racing community that also have a real life racing career on a very high (if not higher) level but are less known to the wider public.

I wish they would all come forward and become testers/consultants as its one of the ways to easily blur the line between real and virtual motorsports. <--- Hey our site slogan, what a coincidence

 

[DrJustice]

There are undoubtedly others. And on WMD, experienced and knowledgeable simmers with and without real life racing and engineering experience are being listened to. In particular those who can express themselves well. Nic is concentrating on the type of cars he has experience with, i.e. GT, Touring and karts. The more exotic cars are mostly Ben's area.

Of course there's PR value in having known handling consultants. That's intrinsic to it. But it's hardly being used. The consulting happens in a closed forum, and neither of Nic and Ben are being used in marketing for now. It would be silly not to mention their involvement at the time when marketing starts though.

BTW, Nic is a regular in the top spots on the pCARS leaderboards, routinely holding No. 1, or close positions. I guess he's improving his skills both as a result of his real life racing and his continued sharpening of his sim skills

 

[Peter]

Nic is testing a racegame for the firstime in 5 years with pedals, he normaly uses button for throtlle and brake with ABS.

 

[DrJustice]

I don't know when his first time was, but he uses both methods. He needs some adaptions to the real cars to make it work for him. There are others, both in sim and real racing, that have certain requirements for adaptions, or are just overcoming their physical issues. I dare say that Nic's accomplishments, despite his condition, should be an inspiration to all and only makes him an even better candidate. My hat is off to those who stick with it in the face of such problems. It certainly does not devalue their input.

 

[Chronus]

Don't take this wrong way as I do like young Nicolas a lot and have raced quite a lot of great and clean races with him here at RaceDepartment back in the RACE 07 days but lets not over-qualify him as a very fast sim driver which he is not.

[...]

If he were not Lewis' brother he would never been asked as a consultant for PCars either so I am pretty sure that PR is the only reason, which is totally fine as he so far has been a great ambassador for the game and sim racing as a whole.

[...]

But a consultant because of his qualities and experience with various cars, no sir. There are plenty enough drivers in the sim racing community that also have a real life racing career on a very high (if not higher) level but are less known to the wider public.

That is what a lot of us think indeed. Having both the former Stig and the brother of Lewis Hamilton is one great PR stunt, something only a business man with "a cunning plan" can come up with. This alone deserves a lot of credit.

There is obvious value in having Ben Collins on the team. There are only handful of guys around with his experience as both a racing driver (solid, long experience) and a "tester"/hot lapper of different types of cars, from "regular" cars to sports cars to GT and F1 cars.

On top of this, Ben expresses himself very clearly and to the point, and his technical expertise ought to be taken as must-have. Ultimately, any serious effort on simracing development ought to defer to physicists, engineers and professional racing drivers; however, we know that simracing development is contingent upon other factors, somewhat extraneous to the goal itself (which ought to be to make a real sim with no sugar coating and eye-candy to embellish it or cover its faults).

If Nic Hamilton's simracing experiences have been mostly with a gamepad and not wheel&pedals (which any serious or semi-serious simracer normally uses), then the importance of his feedback is less as simracer than as a PR effort and probably as a casual gamer (over 90% of which, statistics prove, use gamepads for racing games)

I wish they would all come forward and become testers/consultants as its one of the ways to easily blur the line between real and virtual motorsports. <--- Hey our site slogan, what a coincidence

Indeed, me too. Unfortunately, from experience and talking to these guys, a few things hinder their coming to this genre:
- their feedback is often ignored or not seriously followed
- simracing is still viewed by many pro drivers as "playing games"; more and more pilots are beginning to see the value of a good racing sim, but the majority, in the open, share the same opinion as Mark Webber
- having their name tied to a failed sim is not something they want, regardless of how much they get paid.

 

[DrJustice]

...If Nic Hamilton's simracing experiences have been mostly with a gamepad and not wheel&pedals (which any serious or semi-serious simracer normally uses), then the importance of his feedback is less as simracer than as a PR effort and probably as a casual gamer (over 90% of which, statistics prove, use gamepads for racing games)...

I know that there's no chance of getting people here to admit to players using anything other than pedals can be "sim racers".

However, let me add that using a button to control throttle does not equate to an unsubtle on/off action. Button inputs use filtering (low pass, specifically), or so they did back when wheels weren't even available to the general public. I assume the same is still true; game pad filtering is indeed a feature. This allows the user to achieve any throttle setting by virtue of manipulating the button in a PWM fashion. That takes skill, but when you're used to it you can achieve subtle throttle control. For brakes the same is true, and/or you can use ABS.

I.e. his input entirely relevant, even in a sim racer sense. He has excellent car control and is competent to comment on handling. When he uses buttons, this input is even more relevant to the majority of potential users, which will get better controllability and a more sim like experience. as a result. This is a unique opportunity and can only be a good thing.

 

[David Ignjatovic]

I know that there's no chance of getting people here to admit to players using anything other than pedals can be "sim racers".

.

But the FFB is worse that ever and I can't tell any diff in physics even if some progress has been made{G27}.

They're still miles from getting my approval as a simcade, let alone a sim.


There's also next to no weight transfer, which won't be felt by pad users, but is critical for a sim.