PC1 Project Cars mostly hype? Your opinions

[Azfalt Raser]

This thing has been hyped so much.
I swore I wouldn't buy another car game unless i tried a demo first. But like all the other sheep, I followed and purchased it.

Thus far it's been a massive disappointment
Played in: 4800x900 resolution
No driver's aids
Logitech driving force GT
DTM car at Spa
Default force feedback settings

*Little to no steering feel.- I don't feel like I'm driving on ice though.
*Arcade style driving (extremely forgiving) on the hardest settings.
*cockpit sides are stretched oblong
*BEAUTIFUL GRAPHICS overall though.
*audio left alot to be desired.

Are either tracks accurate?
I compared DTM cars in R3E at Hockeheim & pCars at Hockenheim.
pCars seemed more difficult due to the shadows cast on the track, light reflections... so I had difficulty picking up some brake markers, but the track itself seemed easier to drive (less turning in corners), no tire squealing, basically turn the steering wheel according to the video on the screen - like an arcade game.

The cars were worlds apart.
R3E: you felt the weight transfer, heard the tires scrubbing then squealing as they lost grip, felt/heard the oversteer, the understeer.
pCars: I just hear alot of wind noise. or what sounds like wind noise.
Drive too fast? no problem in pCars just slam on the brakes mid-corner.
Drive too fast in R3E, slide off the track - tires squealing & screeching the whole way, then dig yourself out of the gravel.

Right now, my impression is that pCars is a better version of Grid Autosport.
Somewhere between Arcade and Sim - leaning more towards arcade.

Admittedly, I have optmized R3E and I was only in pCars for about half an hour and need to change fov, force feedback, and audio settings.

What's your impression of pCars to other games?

 

[RaceNut]

Pcars has much to offer and the physics goes much deeper than most realize as it really doesn't show straight out of the box. That's where things could really be improved, baseline settings that just work without all the fuss, designed for use with wheels. The extensive settings can be intimidating/confusing and there needs to be more explanation in "layman's" terms.

The wheel support is extensive but, it's also taken a bit of a back seat to pad use where default car setups are concerned. There has been talk at WMD about ways this can be addressed and improved and it seems that may happen at some point. I believe that there are FFB tutorials in the works that should help explain the various car FFB settings.

Regarding the sounds, SMS has said that we will have more individual sound adjustments coming in a update at some point after release. I fully agree that they are much needed.

The potential is there but, it needs to be dug into and sorted by the community to get the most out of it. I think we'll see that happen over time. As always, its far better to ask questions, make suggestions and provide useful feedback than to simply say "X sucks". SMS and the WMD community are watching and listening and there are new forums setup for those who have sincere interest in learning how to get the most out of Pcars.

 

[Connor Caple]

Enjoying it. Graphics are pretty and runs smoothly. I quite like the effect of the sun on the windscreen at Monza, but it does make spotting braking points a touch harder.

 

[AcidRJ]

I have played it for around 3 hours now. Tried only Spa to have a good comparison with some other sims. Drove the BMW Pro car and BMW M3 E30 GR A. FFB on my T300RS was almost nonexistent out of the box. Improved greatly after some tweaking. Still not as good as rFactor2, GSCE or AC to my taste. Graphics look great, but somehow I was expecting something more - running on Ultra on GTX980. Of course, all weather conditions and time of the day settings are cool features, but Spa looks better on AC IMO. Will not go into physics as this is such a personal and sensitive topic (such as FFB, by the way), but I like other sims better. Sounds are average. AI is bellow average really. It is not as bad as the early versions of AC, but there are tons of improvements opportunities here. Pcars supports TrackIR (helmet cam only), but the triple screen support is horrible - hard to get the FOV right without leaving the image stretched or distorted. SimVibe is still missing a few effects such as road texture and suspension surges for instance - but this is probably not pCars fault.

Overall not so impressed at this point - need to try other tracks and cars probably.

After driving PCars for 3 hours I was starting to miss AC and GSCE - my to go-to sims.

Cheers!

André

 

[Tobbe Bergman]

Coming from AC this is utter garbage physic and FFB wise.

Graphics are nice but engine sounds are generic at best.

I messed around for about an hour before I got bored.

I call it NFS Shift 3

Yes -Mostly hype

 

[Andy_J]

Coming from AC this is utter garbage physic and FFB wise.

Graphics are nice but engine sounds are generic at best.

I messed around for about an hour before I got bored.

I call it NFS Shift 3

Yes -Mostly hype

So you don't like it then?

 

[Brian C Hayes]

Yeah went back to it again today considering how much money I spent on it and only playing it for 20 mins ... and even after tweeks ingame ... its just not great .. it is pretty .. I'll give it that ... but there is something missing .... Can you sell Steam Games ?

 

[RaceBaby]

Coming form Assetto Corsa, PCars FFB feels very subtle on my G27. Maybe tweaks will improve things, but the forces feels very faint even @ the 100% setting.

Where PCars really lacks is the area of triple screen support. It is 2015, why would a driving game not render separate screens to adjust for screen angles etc? Both Assetto Corsa and I-Racing allow for angle adjustments so that you don't get a stretched unrealistic image on the far right screen (when sitting in a car with steering on the left).

I run 3 screens, so maybe we are the small minority that don't get the attention deserved. However, PCars pride themselves in catering to consumer feedback; maybe they never heard of rendering separate screens.

If I had known about the above, I would have not purchased PCars. I would not recommend PCars to someone with a triple screen setup.

 

[Andy_J]

I run 3 screens, so maybe we are the small minority that don't get the attention deserved. However, PCars pride themselves in catering to consumer feedback; maybe they never heard of rendering separate screens.
If I had known about the above, I would have not purchased PCars. I would not recommend PCars to someone with a triple screen setup.

I guess they didn't think many console users used 3 screens?

 

[yusupov]

My 5p's worth. I think pcars is actually a potentially important title for racing, and places like RD. It's a crossover title. It could well bring in new blood and £$€ to siming and RD. It's a far more complete product than AC for example, and more accessable than the likes of rf2, regardless of how good they feel 'out of the box'. In fact to me, a very casual "race for fun" type, it's what I was hoping AC would be as a product.

Yeah SMS ought to consider giving a few options for preconfiguring all the ffb as a baseline, maybe "Arcade / Casual Racer / Simer" or something, rather than the 1 default, but... as a crossover title, I can only assume that they were thinking that all the serious simers would love diving in to all the ffb settings, including on a per-car basis, whereas the casuals wouldn't. It's trying to cater for 2 markets and pull them towards each other. That said, all the settings are there to be tweaked. If people can't be bothered, well....

I'm not a simer, too slow and easily distracted, but I've tweaked my ffb settings, and starting tinkering with the per-car settings, and it feels just as good as AC to me, but in a slightly different way somehow. AC almost feels overly grippy in comparison now to me (although AC does give you a really good sensation of weight transfer imo). While driving the oldskool Escort I also noticed that if you have the driver aids in pC set to Real, a lot of the cars inc' this one still have some level of traction control on in their setups (maybe that's real, I dunno, but I don't like it), so setting driver aids to None removes that, and things get a bit more interesting.

really weird that last bit -- will have to ask about that. i noticed that in some setups (and not in others, or i think its greyed out? now im not sure), what i would do is manually turn TC off; unfortunately this is another area where the UI seems incomplete, there is no information about TC or ABS unless you have the HUD up and are NOT in cockpit view (some cars it may show up on the dash, idk, but not the vast majority). but yeah, after being sure to do that my first few hrs w/ the game, i have since mostly just set it to real & not worried too much as im driving older cars (incl the escort). would never have guessed it has active TC...

 

[M Theory]

Pcars has much to offer and the physics goes much deeper than most realize as it really doesn't show straight out of the box. That's where things could really be improved, baseline settings that just work without all the fuss, designed for use with wheels. The extensive settings can be intimidating/confusing and there needs to be more explanation in "layman's" terms.

The wheel support is extensive but, it's also taken a bit of a back seat to pad use where default car setups are concerned. There has been talk at WMD about ways this can be addressed and improved and it seems that may happen at some point. I believe that there are FFB tutorials in the works that should help explain the various car FFB settings.

Regarding the sounds, SMS has said that we will have more individual sound adjustments coming in a update at some point after release. I fully agree that they are much needed.

The potential is there but, it needs to be dug into and sorted by the community to get the most out of it. I think we'll see that happen over time. As always, its far better to ask questions, make suggestions and provide useful feedback than to simply say "X sucks". SMS and the WMD community are watching and listening and there are new forums setup for those who have sincere interest in learning how to get the most out of Pcars.

Visit the forums at http://forum.projectcarsgame.com

There are many long-time WMD members there with years of playing, testing and troubleshooting Pcars and are eager to help answer questions. Some of them also try to maintain some presence on the Steam forums to help out as well.

I remember when I first tried a racing game - F1 2010 - and how disappointed I was initially; I thought I would never master even getting around a circuit without an off or facing the wrong way because of mis-handling the throttle. I was a noob, that goes without saying. I was still a noob, still learning with the next two versions of the game. Worse, each time a new version came out, I had to unlearn and re-learn. That was just one title.

My DVD copy of the PCars game arrives tomorrow and I fully expect to have to learn, to get to grips with setups and unlearn habits that might have been ok with my previous game, but not ok with this one. After becoming relatively competent with the F1 series, all assists off, I recognised it did what it said on the box. It is a racing game that gives you a sense of immersion in a career, in the set-up of the car, tyre strategy, pit stops, practise and qualifying etc; a game about Formula One. No matter how often I raced, every race was different.

I've tried RacePro, Grid and Forza games (of which RacePro was the best) but none of them really immersed me as much as the F1 games. (Test Driver Ferrari was peculiarly interesting but ultimately frustrating).

I will therefore continue to trust the F1 games, will buy F1 2015, but have been lured by the PCars ability to depict a career which starts with Go Karts. Will I gnash my teeth if a car doesn't feel just like a F1 taking a long-fast double apex turn? Well I have no idea what it really feels like or the fear which must accompany it in reality, so no. Everything is relative. It is a game.

 

[yusupov]

Coming form Assetto Corsa, PCars FFB feels very subtle on my G27. Maybe tweaks will improve things, but the forces feels very faint even @ the 100% setting.

Where PCars really lacks is the area of triple screen support. It is 2015, why would a driving game not render separate screens to adjust for screen angles etc? Both Assetto Corsa and I-Racing allow for angle adjustments so that you don't get a stretched unrealistic image on the far right screen (when sitting in a car with steering on the left).

I run 3 screens, so maybe we are the small minority that don't get the attention deserved. However, PCars pride themselves in catering to consumer feedback; maybe they never heard of rendering separate screens.

If I had known about the above, I would have not purchased PCars. I would not recommend PCars to someone with a triple screen setup.

if it feels faint to you, you may be in luck; i saw someone post about g25/27 settings yesterday & said they tried (from stock out of the box FFB) upping the master spindle to a value of 50-70 depending on car, & it felt great (they also said they did this with logtiech profiler closed, but mine automatically opens when i start pCARS are ofc there is still a huge difference, but you can try unliking it or w/ it closed as well). the result is a strong spring, much heavier steering than ive ever had (outside of a kart sim anyway), but when i looked at the ffb meter (this is the upper left in the HUD telemetry) it didnt seem to be clipping. you def. get much better road feel but ill have to try some more bc the steering, clipping or not, is way different than what im used to.

 

[Marc]

Haven't played the Game for around half a year now.
Had good times with AC since that day and i liked to see how PC will improve/change until release. When i played it last time, and i played it alot especially in Clubs insinde WMD, it felt great already, had so much fun and already loved it. MP and final polishing became main focus that time and i just got a bit bored by testing car/track combos i don't liked that much again and again...
I'm just a casual racer. Doing 1 or 2 races a week is far enought for me. I'm always looking for nice "closed" car/track combos with hopefully big grids all around the web i could sign up for, no matter which game, so AC within RD became main focus around that time...
Yesterday i tried PC again and it felt like finally coming home again. It's a bit more arcardish than i expected, but i guess it's just cause i played rF2 for most last few weeks?! But all in all it's awesome as i hoped it'll be and am really looking forward for some big grid action right here at RD. Some things need to get sorted out, some sadly may never make it into the game but anyways, i guess we'll have a lot of fun with this game.

 

[RaceBaby]

if it feels faint to you, you may be in luck; i saw someone post about g25/27 settings yesterday & said they tried (from stock out of the box FFB) upping the master spindle to a value of 50-70 depending on car, & it felt great (they also said they did this with logtiech profiler closed, but mine automatically opens when i start pCARS are ofc there is still a huge difference, but you can try unliking it or w/ it closed as well). the result is a strong spring, much heavier steering than ive ever had (outside of a kart sim anyway), but when i looked at the ffb meter (this is the upper left in the HUD telemetry) it didnt seem to be clipping. you def. get much better road feel but ill have to try some more bc the steering, clipping or not, is way different than what im used to.

Thanks, I'll look at adjusting the setting you referenced. There are many options in the FFB. I hope the community can collectively sort all of the adjustments out to come up with something that has a good balance for the G27.

In the Logitech profiler, I created a game specific profile for PCars (one each for pcars.exe and Pcars64.exe), much like I do for AC, GSC etc. I mainly set all options to allow a straight pass through (no enhancement for damper, spring etc) from the game and then checked allow game to change settings.

 

[Deleted member 197115]

Have been trying to give this game an honest run for the last two days.
- At first was outright disappointed with hollow ffb, then after learning a bit about all the settings, disabling damper, increasing Master Scale for Spindle in My Garage, got it pretty acceptable
- Second problem was flickering textures, but I have found that with DS2X antialiasing performance is the same as MSAA, but quality jumps up a lot and eliminates all that nasty flickering.
Had a couple or runs on Spa in BMW M3 GT, almost happy with the outcome, there is still lack of feedback during threshold braking and no FFB or audio cues for tires at the edge of the grip. But overall pretty decent.
But then tried the same car, same track in AC. Man, feels like home, all these missing cues are there, can push car harder, can feel all rumble strips and bumps on the track, and immersion is three folds. Audio is better two, esp. noise from tires that help a lot gauging when you about to go sideways. For graphic, yes, it looks different, but with Natural Graphic Mod (Natural Int Warm) it's surprisingly close, spare hovering helicopter or cheering crowd.
I think it's a decent game esp for console crowd. For PC, I don't know, if it wasn't AC I would be all over the moon from happiness, but with Assetto around, to me it drops somewhere to the level of Grid Autosport with slightly improved physic.
BTW, what kind of "genius" came up with all these scattered through the game no sense FFB settings (spindle, link, scoop, knee, etc.)?

 

[henrikcomn]

Absolutely loves this game!!! Wow! Best racing game, ever. period.

 

[F1Aussie]

I can't fault it, i have gsce, rf2, rrre and ac and this is my fave by far. I find ac to boring and stale, the only upside to it is all the mods, rf2 looks very dated, gsce drives brilliantly but looks like a 2005 era game and has no weather and rrre has no open wheelers and cars feel floaty, pretty tracks though. PC ticks all the boxes for me. I would not know what realistic physics are so have no prob with the ones in PC

 

[Connor Caple]

Had some great races with this already. The Time shifting and Weather changes can really change a race and the way the car handles.

Coming out of the pits with cold tyres in the practice sessions is a challenge too. Took me nearly a full lap to get the F-Rookie warmed up.

We had Fog, Rain, torrential rain, thunderstorms, sunshine and cloudy skies. The clear night sky looked great too, unfortunately that's when I discovered I didn't have a button bound to "Toggle Lights"

Cannot fault the game for sheer racing fun, or the handling with my G25.

Don't think it was all hype at all.

 

[Ace King]

Once you setup your cars to be faster/competitive then you will experience a much better challenge when racing the car to it's full limits. That also goes for the FF, once you discover those magical settings your wheel will feel more alive thus more enjoyment.

I really like Pcars for it's overall more complete racing package and in my opinion the physics are very decent and i enjoy them even if it's voted not #1 in that area!

 

[Bram Hengeveld]

rrre has no open wheelers

Imo Pcars only has one great open wheeler and thats the Formula Rookie. Not sure what the Formula A is supposed to be but it's certainly not a modern Formula 1 car in terms of sounds and handling and can't stand in the shadow of the brilliant F1 car in Stock Car Extreme.

The Formula Rookie however provides everything I am looking for in an open wheeler. Low budget and powered so it ensures super close racing. Mostly mechanical grip and drives very well out of the box and easy to enter for new simracers. Easily my favorite car in the game together with the brilliant LMP1's and LMP2's.

 

[Radu Oros]

You missed his opening sentence in which he admits he doesn't know what he is talking about.

"Disclaimer: I don't own pCARS."

He shouldn't have put a disclaimer before talking about pcars. But SMS should have put a disclaimer that what you saw hyped in screenshots and carefully selected videos (go wonder, even with triple screen setup since a long time ago, but not available to the public).
They should have put a disclaimer about Ben Collins, Rene Rast, and Nicolas Hamilton that their advice on how to make a serious sim racing game wasn't going to be taken into account. They should have put a disclaimer that they were going to name the game shift3 but went instead with project cars (community of monetary investors who get to say how the game is gonna be, and the rest of the community will work in the social media marketing hype team).

@xnorb you shouldn't have put the disclaimer that you don't own pcars, because they are now crucifying you for what you disclaimed instead of counter argument your message.