PC1 Will Project Cars have dedicated servers?

Is there any information known with how many people you can race online?

Hopefully this is something that doesn't get limited by their console aspirations. If you have invested money I would urge them to consider separate multiplayer mechanics for consoles and PCs.

Consoles tend to be limited to 16 or so.

The other thing to think about is how well a lot of cars will run with all the graphics on high. Like for me shift 2 runs awesome, but if I get into a multi car wreck, or roll my car and cause a lot of damage, including wheels coming off, my FPS takes a serious hit. This could cause all kinds of problems on line.

So maybe have a scaled back damage model for online races? I don't know if that's a reasonable thing to do or not.

Anyway, I'm hoping to invest in this when I get the extra money to do so
 
Hopefully this is something that doesn't get limited by their console aspirations. If you have invested money I would urge them to consider separate multiplayer mechanics for consoles and PCs.

That would be groundbreaking. I really hope they would take that into consideration as it will make a good example to the rest of the industry. The console limitations for PC gamers have been one of the things that made me sad with the recent F1 games of Codemasters.

25 players online should be the minimum at least for PC rooms/servers.
 
I think 32 cars will be the least we see online with pCARS but they are testing now with 64 car fields at certain tracks. Not sure if that would be carried over to the MP, but i don't see why not if a track supports it and they are gonna have dedicated servers
 
I think 32 cars will be the least we see online with pCARS but they are testing now with 64 car fields at certain tracks. Not sure if that would be carried over to the MP, but i don't see why not if a track supports it and they are gonna have dedicated servers

This is awesome news. With the hi def cars and textures though we're all gonna need beasty machines to play a 64 car field. I hope they optimize well and include a large range of graphic scalability to make sure they don't alienate people with lesser rigs.
 
A list of items to be included in future builds, whilst its still pre-alpha, included multiplayer. The list was released a couple of days ago but doesn't suggest how long it will be for any of the features to come to light.
We are now six months further and I would really like to know if we will be able to host races on a dedicated server in the future with large grids or that pCARS will stick with the P2P style hosting of Shift, F1 2011, Forza and GT5 with tiny 8 to 16 player grids.

Multiplayer is such an important part of a racing game nowadays I am a bit surprised its still racing with AI only.
 
pcars is still 1 year away from the release but maybe this helps a bit.
for more informations you can look at the multiplayer thread on wmd
this post is from Stepan Vondrak (sms staff)
Multiplayer progress update

Hi guys,​
I would just like to make a quick post about Multiplayer progress. I am starting a new thread for this because this has been asked many times in several different threads, as well as in PMs.​
To answer the most common question - when will we release the first MP-enabled build?​
We still have no specific estimate for this, so for now you will have to live with "as soon as it's ready".​
Now for more specific information. As you have probably noticed from the daily code changes thread (if you follow it), I have been working on the Dedicated Server since MP work has been started. The first usable server version is nearly complete and ready for testing. So far the DS supports these features:​
  • Clients can connect to the server. DS authenticates each connecting client with MS (our Master Server, where authentication/stats/leaderboards are handled), so only users logged into the game can connect to DS.
  • Connected users can browse running game sessions, create new sessions, join and leave existing sessions.
  • DS registers itself to MS on startup and then sends basic information about number of connected users and running sessions to MS. This information can be downloaded by the game, allowing it to display all running DS and how busy they are.
  • Sessions members with admin privileges can change session attributes (game mode, track, ...), advance game session state (start race, end race) and kick other session members.
  • Each game session has a separate rebroadcaster instance that resends all game packets received by DS to other members of the session (either all or selected subset).
  • The server informs session members about connection details of all other members, allowing direct peer-to-peer connection. We have not implemented any complicated NAT punching yet, so only players on the same LAN, with public address, users who manually port-forward the game's ports on their router and users behind least restrictive NATs will be able to connect to each other. This will improve over time.
  • The server also collects various statistics and has a simple web-based interface to view the statistics and control the server. This is how the status screen looks on my recently launched local testing DS:
    attachment.php
Of course there is still a lot of work to do on the server ; for example there are no user whitelists or blacklists, no support for matchmaking, user ranking, leagues, social nonsense and other features. But what we have now is good enough for good old-fashioned multiplayer racing - find a nice game, join it and play.​
Now what's my plan for the near future:​
I will still spend one or two days working on the web interface, adding the ability to view detailed stats of individual sessions and all users connected to DS, sorted by various criteria (id, connect time, session they are in). Later this will connect to interface that will allow server admins to ban users, kill sessions, send messages to all members of a session, schedule server shutdown, and so on.​
Then I will start working on the game-side of things. As you probably noticed, we have not done much work in that regard yet. We already have a pretty solid multiplayer gameplay core code from our previous racing games, with vehicle predictions and all that fun stuff. What needs to be done is connecting the game to DS and implementing game-side for all the features it supports so far. I will start with implementing the low-level TCP-based protocol the game will use to communicate with DS. Implementing individual commands the server supports and connecting them to the user interface will follow afterwards. When all this is done we will have DS browser in the game: select DS first, connect to the DS, display all running lobbies and races, create new games or connect to lobbies, etc.​
Then we will have to finish the low-lavel game protocol, send game packets through the rebroadcaster while trying to establish peer-to-peer mesh for optional direct communication. And once that's done, we will have the first MP-enabled build! Hopefully more coders will be finally able to join me on these tasks, speeding up the process significantly
smile.png
Hoped this answered some of your questions. Feel free to ask more in this thread. But be aware that we are not yet ready to discuss any details about more advanced features such as rankings, leagues, special multiplayer game modes, social features and so on. The focus is on being able to join a multiplayer quick race and have some fun first, the rest will be added on top of it afterwards.​
 
Quick ? - is this system a peer to peer one with a main server directing how you peer up
or is in an old school rfactor server based multiplayer.

I was under the impression that is was supposed to be the old school way as that gives the best possible connection but the post above seems to blow that out of the water unless hes referring to gtr2 multiplayer.
 
Once again, there is no proper quote, but I pick it up from martinsalat, although it's most likely a shaky foundation:
Stepan Vondrak (sms staff) said:
Of course there is still a lot of work to do on the server ; for example there are no [...] social nonsense and other features.

Interesting statement from a SMS guy who is part of a "community driven project".:whistling:
 
Interesting in the sense that Stepan is a hard-core network coder, and not a game designer, so his interest in the the "social" components maybe are nonsense to him.

Also - some people throw in amusing tweaks to their comments.. sort of tongue-in-cheek as they say. Then, other people on other forums pick it up and start formulating conspiracy theories behind it and divine the "real" intent behind the comment...

And then we laugh at it again.
 
lol, so basically you say SMS has no rules of conduct, or do not care so much about how they communicate with their customers about their holy grail, read their baby, their product, their beloved software to be sold on the market at a max. income. Anyway I would be "more" careful about formulating things, no matter if I would be the pr guy, the lead designer, the net coder, the physics genius or the poor guy who has to clean the toilets for the important guys, not that it's not important to have clean toilets though. Ever heard of being neutral, or being unbiased, when making official announcements?

Customers can "be scared and" be put off easily. A single word might be enough.

But it's not the words alone that put me off pcars. There are many factors and I leave that to you to find out, if you wish to do so. ;)

edit: What's up with the conspiracy theories everybody keeps throwing in? Are you scared of something? :confused:
 
In any form of communication, context is important. SMS has a certain connection with WMD members based over 8 months of working together, and there is quite a lot of humor to be found.

Ultimately what matters is how the WMD members receive the written word, because we can simply ask for clarification if there is some confusion or contrary argument.

WMD members, as a group, really have come to find this sort of nitpicking to be hilarious because it's inane and relentless. There's not a guy there that regularly reads info from SMS that took from Stepan's comment what you did, because there is a tremendous amount of material from SMS about how seriously they take the social aspects and other features of the game. The documentation on it from Andy Tudor is stunning.

And again, SMS is going out on the limb to even include the public on it knowing that there are going to be people who do exactly as you have. The really great thing is that in the past few months, the teeth have broken off from that bite and now we only take amusement in it. Part of that amusement is that sometimes WMD members take to other forums to correct the inaccuracies and such.. and then we go back to WMD and giggle about it some more. It's fun!
 

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