PC1 Is Project CARS a simulation? lets vote!

[Mike85]

Hi guys!

The time has come and many sim fans have purchased and tested Project Cars already! So lets express our opinion about how ''SIMMY'' this title is!

 

[David Ignjatovic]

Simcade games can be impossible to set up properly.

 

[unknwn]

Whilst potentially true, it's also a matter of steering precision and satisfying communicative ffb, which is what we experience in ALL the real PC sims, granted, some do it better than others.....however, what difference does it make how accurate the physics are if the ffb feels lifeless and or has deadzone issues for example.

Again FFB should be compared to real life not other sims if the accuracy/realism is priority. Some sims has pronounced effects that shouldnt be even felt over the real steering wheel. Also don't forget that not all real cars has a great/accurate feedback on the wheel. Thought I don't know which sim has the physics/FFB closest to real life. But with Jack Spade standard set I think pCars FFB provides most likely the best feeling of front grip I have experienced in sims, which I think is the most relevant effect that should be felt over the steering wheel. I have no deadzone issues with pCars FFB and it provides strongest center feel compared to other top sims. For comparison AC center feels pretty much limp and effect of front tires grip is much weaker however you get many other effects (very good weight transfer feeling however I don't think that's realistic).

 

[David Ignjatovic]

Again FFB should be compared to real life not other sims if the accuracy/realism is priority. t strongest center feel compared to other top sims.

With respect, sim developers could also choose to try and partially simulate the effect of g forces, there's nothing that says they must exclude g forces given we're using controllers.

And center feel is what pcars seems best at, all springy weight vs the heavier forces in pretty much every other top level sim.

 

[unknwn]

With respect, sim developers could also choose to try and partially simulate the effect of g forces, there's nothing that says they must exclude g forces given we're using controllers.

And center feel is what pcars seems best at, all springy weight vs the heavier forces in pretty much every other top level sim.

You are right that we won't feel many forces with just steering wheel. However canned effect shouldn't be regarded as a standard of what is a good FFB. Because good is subjective. For me it was hard to adapt to pCars from AC because of lack of weight feel, however after I managed to do that I started to think that pCars has a better FFB especially for racing cars (because of very good grip feel effect when cornering while weight transfer isn't as important because cars are very stiff).
Personally in pCars I miss ABS vibration and some effect for the tire spin when you apply too much throttle.

 

[bmanic]

To make it very clear i do like the majority of what this sim has to offer and agree with what you're stating "IF" you have all these ingame FFB settings adjusted in perfect harmony in order to receive all this great FFB "relevant grip information" which for many people is an overwhelming task. Reading through all the FFB topics leads me to believe that the majority of purchasers are still not satisfied with their FFB settings!

So, my thoughts/questions for this company (SMS) is why haven't you figured out all these FFB settings for us in the past 4 years of beta testing to eliminate all these trial and errors that we as the customers have to perform in order for this sim to get all the proper FFB information?

They were just way too late in implementing the settings themselves into the user interface, which in itself was a complete mess just shortly before release. It was a matter of "oh damn! we are running out of time yet again and this time we can not delay it any more! Let's quickly just throw it all in there!". That's at least my take away on the matter.

Trust me, many of us were very vocal about the general issues of the user interface and the complete lack of a simple to use "preset" system. Heck, just look at how convoluted and simplified the car setup handling is. ALL of it could have been handled a lot better but I suspect it just wasn't as important as trying to get the game to run at all. As everybody has noted, pCars was definitely not released "ready to go" but rather in a hurry.

Hopefully there will be improvements with the system and I've even suggested new default settings for the FFB.. or at the very least I hope they finally get some decent explanations for each of the settings so that people have an easier time figuring this stuff out. By far the best option would be a built in "preset" system where the user simply chooses from 3 or 4 pre-defined default settings and then tweak some critical main settings and only has to dwell deeper into the truly advanced stuff if they feel like it.

The whole Fx, Fy, Fz and Mz part could all be done very nicely with some graphics and keeping them as ratios to one another instead of each one having a seemingly arbitrary value.

To be completely frank; I think the UI could use one more complete overhaul to actually make it usable. It's horribly convoluted as it is now (and every review has given the UI negative critique.. deservedly so). Sometimes it feels like pCars is held together by sheer luck and virtual sticky tape.

However, having experienced the development firsthand I can almost completely forgive them for the shortcomings. It is pretty impressive what they have achieved with a relatively small team (yeah, it's bigger than most other simulator teams, except iRacing's team, but a lot smaller than any other AAA game developer team) considering that they are using 99% their own technology. The only known 3rd party systems are PhysX and that one calculates the cones and debris flying around, and the audio system by FMOD (and even here they have custom modules and code as far as I know).. that's it. Everything else is their own engine. Graphics, physics, UI, networking, controllers (and this is HIGHLY advanced, to reduce input and output latency) etc.

But yeah, in short: SMS did screw up the release and just "dumped" all them fancy FFB controls on us and went ".. let the community sort them out! lol!". Though I do prefer this to the other extreme ("aww screw it! lets just add a single FFB strength slider and be done with it"). At least we now have a chance of using the amazingly potent FFB engine that was created last year for pCars.

 

[bmanic]

With respect, sim developers could also choose to try and partially simulate the effect of g forces, there's nothing that says they must exclude g forces given we're using controllers.

Why always the reference to AC? it's possibly the worse sim out there so what you have as your ffb won't be how I like my ffb, who's right?

And center feel is what pcars seems best at, all springy weight vs the heavier forces in pretty much every other top level sim.

It's just a different opinion. I don't like the FFB in AC either. It's mediocre at best and has actually become worse as of late as I quite liked the feel of the early alpha release.

So yeah, I don't understand these comments either but it's important to realize they are just differing opinions. Heck I've seen some comments on the iRacing forums calling the Game Stock Car FFB completely dead and useless while I consider them some of the best FFB in the business. Go figure..