PC1 pCars - to buy or not to buy?

Thoughts? Is the reviewer all wet? Reviewing an old version? Is he correct?

My 2 cents, there is some credibility to the reviewer. There are some issues still with the release which SMS are addressing. So is it perfect day 1? Nope. Will it be perfect after the first patch? Nope.

SMS will be continuing to address issues as well as enhance the platform over the next 2 or more years.

I will say that the reviewer purposely picked the worst scenarios to publish. It is a deliberate smear tactic but the issues he points out do exist. The vintage racing right not is not the best. Doing what he did, throwing the AI up to 100 and jumping in vintage open wheelers is just going to cause frustration. The AI is very aggressive at 100 and does not care about situational awareness. That level of AI works well with tintops that can stand a little banging, but not with the open wheelers, especially the vintage ones which need more cornering room.

As for some of his other points, they are subjective. He comments on the sound, and that's purely subjective. Actually there was an only post where someone who works in sound (and actually used to work with the SMS sound team on other past projects) commented on the samples. His comment were the samples were very crisp and clean. I think this is where the subjectiveness comes in. What most people are used to hearing are Youtube videos of racing cars. The sound you hear from the inexpenive GoPro or other onboard camera mics which pickup a ton of other noise. The engine sample in pCARS are direct engine sounds, no background chatter or noise so they are very clean. This is what he's calling "digital" as there is no distortion or background noise to taint the pure engine sounds.

The gear sounds, well, that's going to be subjective as well. It is true that the sound developers didn't have as much freedom in this area as they would like. They have all the gear worble and other shifting sounds already. The physics side (for transmission) wasn't able to expose a lot of their pieces to the sound guys to hook into. That doesn't mean it won't happen to make the transmission/gear sounds better, but it is what it is today. I will say that what is there doesn't bother me and I rather enjoy most of the car sounds. I will say there are some I don't enjoy, but I'm sure I wouldn't enjoy them in real life either. ;)

As far his comment on ease of driving, I've posted about this before, but I'll post it again. Yes, pCARS has a more progressive grip falloff than other sims. This is more realistic as tires just don't give up. Tires, even slicks, will provide feedback for the driver so he/she knows when they are about to go over the limit. When the tires do go over the limit, there is a progression where you can control it rather than the car just spinning out. Sims like iRacing have the grip falloff way too sharp and that's not correct. With the more progressive falloff in pCARS, you can get the car out of sorts and possibly save it. Here's what I mean about progressive grip falloff:


That's a video of me and you see the car starts to loose it in the corner (without much if any tire sound) and I don't spin out. I'm able to keep the rear end behind and scrub off enough speed to keep the car going forward. pCARS tire model is able to replicate this much better than most sims which makes it "seem" easier to drive.

I will say that 90% of the cars have a safe default setup which is fairly easy to drive. However, if you try to use that setup online, you'll get wiped. ;)
 
Sims like iRacing have the grip falloff way too sharp and that's not correct.

Thank you! I have recently stopped doing iRacing ... this sort of thing just keeps me from having fun racing online even though they have a stellar online system. That is really the only thing they have going for them.

So - the reviews I've seen from Empty Box and Gamermuscle are good then? pCars may not be perfect but is pretty good fun?
 
as a preorder buyer, thats my hope.

regarding online ppl's opinions -- i think william marsh i very good, i havent watched the review yet, but im pretty sure hes not out to smear anyone. empty box's last video was positive but if he posts another one before release, it wont be. he had some comments on twitter suggesting ppl cancel pre-orders. meanwhile i love gamermuscle but he thinks absolutely everything is good fun. :)

as for the other two guys, who aim more to be critics, i disagree w/ them plenty. they also know their stuff. its simracing, youre going to disagree & be frustrated, even to the point of thinking stuff is done w/ monetary-based bias (i am guilty of this after laughing at others for doing it). but basically those guys are quality, just remember its ok to disagree.
 
Thank you! I have recently stopped doing iRacing ... this sort of thing just keeps me from having fun racing online even though they have a stellar online system. That is really the only thing they have going for them.

So - the reviews I've seen from Empty Box and Gamermuscle are good then? pCars may not be perfect but is pretty good fun?

I personally enjoy it. I'm not just saying that because I originally backed the project. I've spent the last almost 4 years with the project, and I don't get tired of driving it. In fact, it's the opposite. I really "enjoy" driving it. I never really enjoy driving iRacing. I did it just to do it, but never really wanted to just load it up and drive. With pCARS, I enjoy it and find the racing very good (when you have a good group of drivers). Here's a short online race I did a while back (so older build):


I'm not saying it's the best thing since sliced bread, but the overall experience it provides is one of the best representations of what's it like to be inside of a real race car (i.e. graphics, sound, FFB, cockpit movement, etc all combined).



pretty sure if you have 40 cars in real life on the grid you will get crashes

Insert random Spec Miata video.... ;)
 
forumula 1 manages to have crashes at race start with only 20 (or is it 22?) cars on the grid. I think you can probably have clean starts with lots of slow cars, but the difficulty rises the more power the cars have.

So - I enjoy SOME rfactor2 ... most AC ... I tried for almost three years (and lots of $$) to enjoy iRacing and failed. I did NOT enjoy Shift 2 ( I could have if the thing would have worked properly with a wheel ). Think i'll like pCars?

EDIT: How is the triple screen support? Works? By works, I mean does it support multi-view for angled side monitors like rFactor2, AC and iRacing do? Big performance hit if so? R3E doesn't have it at all and I can't drive without it anymore.
 
pCARS does not drive like the Shift series. Entirely different/new tire, suspension and aero models. Basically, the only carry over from the Shift series is the base graphics engine.

As for triple screen, there current is no separate screen rendering available at this time. There are plans to add it in later, but it's not there currently (which also means they could decide not to provide it at all). I am a triple screen user (I use 720P only for videos).
 
awww ... show stopper right there :(

Yes, if that's something you require you may want to wait. I will say that rendering 3 screens individually is quite demanding. Given how demanding pCARS already is, I don't see a lot of people being able to utilize it for a while (with decent frame rates).

I don't understand how Kunos could add amazing triple screen support in literally one day back during the tech preview (three days after TP release) and other companies can add it in several months/years ... if ever.

Well, to be fair, you don't really know how long they worked on it. It's possible (and likely) they had been working on it for while but just didn't enable it in published builds. I work in software development (not game development) and I've done this in the past. i.e. hide stuff until its stable and then flip a switch for the consumer..
 
Well, to be fair, you don't really know how long they worked on it. It's possible (and likely) they had been working on it for while but just didn't enable it in published builds. I work in software development (not game development) and I've done this in the past. i.e. hide stuff until its stable and then flip a switch for the consumer..


I do too, and I have also done this. I swear sometimes that everyone who sim races is also involved in IT in some way :) It just seemed as if that wasn't the case. I remember the outcry on their forums that there was no triple screen support. They at first said that wasn't something they were going to do but then capitulated and literally a day after the capitulation, there was triple screen support with a nice app for setting it all up. In later comments about this, they said that it was pretty trivial to add. Maybe something with their graphics engine (or the tools that came with a third party engine if that is what they did) made it easier...
 
Ok I will clear his mistake with Le man 24 night in settings , if he recorded this at 8 in the evening and in game setting had DATE TYPE ( race date or current ) it will not be dark , it will be 8 or9 in France ,he should have set ( custom Date selected ) and the time midnight ---- now the race is in darkness :)
 
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Ok I will clear his mistake with Le man 24 night in settings , if he recorded this at 8 in the evening and in game setting had DATE TYPE ( race date or current ) it will not be dark , it will be 8 or9 in France ,he should have set ( custom Date selected ) and the time midnight ---- now the race is in darkness :)

You sound knowledgeable about pCars ... can you confirm what the poster said earlier that triple screen / multi view are not currently supported? The only reason I ask is to just get a 2nd opinion to be sure (and that I want it to not be true :( )
 
They will add the support. It was initially planned for the release, but I guess they had other more important things to do before.

I will wait and see - I hope so tho - looks great from what i've seen. I am not talking about graphics (although they are spectacular, they probably aren't as much so when triple support comes I suppose ... probably have to turn them way down) - i'm talking about the career mode and all of that.
 
You might find some helpful information for Pcars here:
http://en.pcars.shoutwiki.com/wiki/Physics

Here's a video showing the tire deformation at work in-game. Unfortunately, this feature doesn't show in the replays.
Pcars Tire Deformation

Again, the default car setups are designed to be "safe" in order to accommodate game-pad users across all platforms. There is a planned update coming later to implement the saving of more custom setups for wheel users.
 
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