PC1 Latest Build testing.

[Andy_J]

As you all know, Ian gave me a free pass to test the latest builds and that's what I have been doing for the last week. I will report here as and when I see fit to tell all about my findings.

But I will say that the latest build (296) is quite good. Now lets make some sense of my statement. I used a Lotus 98T in helmet cam using my antique MOMO red wheel and I can honestly report it is coming along much better than I anticipated. The actual feel and immersion is damn fine at this point. The handling is strange at first compared to say...RF2 and FVA, but it grows on you within minutes. At this point in time, this actual car feels good. I like it and I love the Milan circuit. The damage model has come on leaps and bounds.

I am doing some more testing all of next week using a G27 and I will also test some of the other cars that don't interest me as much (I am a F1 nut) and see how the feel in comparison to Shift 2, because that is what I was initially comparing PCars to.

I would like the replay function to have a directors mode though. Something that jumps from action to action and from car to car.

Aside from that, the replay's do crash my PC quite often but I understand that is being looked at.

Watch this space.

 

[Birddogg66]

@Mid-pack Jack, can I ask you something? Is there any meaningful penalty system on this game? I'm not talking about false starts and cutting corners, but actual contact with another player. I know it would be very difficult in that different series' have different rules and expectations (NASCAR vs. F1 for instance), but to me, a racing game just can't be complete unless you have an immediate steward for fairly obvious shunts. Often the F1 crowd complains about the "fairness" of the penalty, but at the end of the day, we are all subjected to the same rules and, I think, driver more carefully because of it. One of the first things I noticed when I started gaming instead of racing was how much more people disassociated pain and injury from their reckless actions on track. To be expected of course, but not encouraged, IMO. Thanks.

Actually I'll take a crack at this and the answer is I believe there is no plan to have penalties for on track contact. As far as pit violations I don't know if there will be speeding on pit lane or entering or leaving under red as at release pit stops will be with Auto Pit Lane and the option to turn it off will be patched in later

 

[Rob]

Actually I'll take a crack at this and the answer is I believe there is no plan to have penalties for on track contact. As far as pit violations I don't know if there will be speeding on pit lane or entering or leaving under red as at release pit stops will be with Auto Pit Lane and the option to turn it off will be patched in later

Okay, that's for that insight. Thinking further about it, I'm not sure it's possible with limited resources.

 

[Andy_J]

@Mid-pack Jack, can I ask you something? Is there any meaningful penalty system on this game? I'm not talking about false starts and cutting corners, but actual contact with another player.

As far as I know Robert, the answer is no. I don't think even the mass needs of the sim racers who joined WMD have been taken into account in this matter and many others that would have made PCars a real sim racers sim. But I hope to stand corrected on this and many other matters. Only time will tell.

 

[bmanic]

Okay, that's for that insight. Thinking further about it, I'm not sure it's possible with limited resources.

Would be awesome if somebody managed to create such a system though. I don't know a single game that has a well working system like that. I know that in Project CARS you do get a warning if you drive recklessly but I've yet to get any real consequences from it. Apparently there is a work-in-progress AI system that looks at race incidents (more like looks at the players actions.. never the AI opponents!) but it's dodgy at best. I think this kind of system is really hard to implement and requires sophisticated AI. There's a reason why not even iRacing with all it's resources has managed to create such a system.. in that sim all players involved get the penalty point, no matter who is at fault.

 

[Rob]

Would be awesome if somebody managed to create such a system though. I don't know a single game that has a well working system like that. I know that in Project CARS you do get a warning if you drive recklessly but I've yet to get any real consequences from it. Apparently there is a work-in-progress AI system that looks at race incidents (more like looks at the players actions.. never the AI opponents!) but it's dodgy at best. I think this kind of system is really hard to implement and requires sophisticated AI. There's a reason why not even iRacing with all it's resources has managed to create such a system.. in that sim all players involved get the penalty point, no matter who is at fault.

I could not agree with you more. Well said. All but maybe 5%. lol. I think the biggest impediment is the perception among different racing fans what "inappropriate contact" is. That hot blonde who covers the paddock in DTM may think it's touching her....no wait...um moving twice to block....but an IndyCar fan (open-wheeler at that) or a Brazilian stock car fan have very lax interpretations of what that definition is. NASCAR just makes it up as they go along, so we need a SIM version of Mario Cart for them.

 

[Birddogg66]

Project CARS is a Sim even if it is not in your opinion resembling the old school traditional sim. Anyway I wanted to control Post 1666

 

[Andy_J]

I wonder if this thread will reach the 2000 mark? Hmmm what can I say about Pcars next........

 

[Birddogg66]

Well my point is you will always lose a percentage of realism going from real world real life equipment to virtual gaming machine and simulation hardware and the differences in situation from the one scenario to the other.
I see hardcore simulation as a serious gaming model for driving simulation while I don't see it as being as true to life as some may think it is. If you want to believe that's fine you have created a mind set for what you want out of the software even at the cost of realism.
Let's take it a step further and say everything has been done by the developer in a mathematical sense to strive for as close to real life as possible. However have they considered any compensation for the crossover to the virtual world and the percentages of realism that are lost by doing so?
This is what I think SMS is trying to do create a driving experience closer to real life than what was thought over the last generation of sim titles and I think Kunos has always had this approach as they have a wonderful tire model.
In defense of those old school sim racers out there you all worked very hard to get to the level that your at and don't think you should take a step back to a sim that may be considered a little more foregiving in the overall handling of some of the cars.
However to write these titles off as not being simulations is inaccurate and misleading to the moderates out there.
Keep your hardcore titles if you like but why spread misinformation about titles that may not be considered as hardcore sim. Instead why not look at it as a Sim title on consoles that just may lure some of the casuals to try your hardcore sim of choice thus creating healthier MP lobbies.

 

[David Ignjatovic]

The funny thing about birdogg's simcade love is that some of the pcars vehicles have very little grip under throttle and are far more difficult to control than many of rf2s cars for example.

I'm more than happy to accept that some sims have gone a bit too far, but that doesn't change the fact that they have precise ffb and excellent physics regardless.

 

[Birddogg66]

The funny thing about birdogg's simcade love is that some of the pcars vehicles have very little grip under throttle and are far more difficult to control than many of rf2s cars for example.

I'm more than happy to accept that some sims have gone a bit too far, but that doesn't change the fact that they have precise ffb and excellent physics regardless.

Actually I can agree with your post however the simcade tag could have been left out. Maybe you think GTR2 was simcade and pCARS is pretty close a modern version to that. I think comparisons can be made to Assetto Corsa and iRacing while they do have their differences. Bottom line it will be the Best Multi Plat Racing Game ever released even if the console titles I am throwing into the mix of comparison s are not multi plat. I do this is because pCARS will make a statement as to what Racing title can be on console and a well liked game on PC. Better then Forza, Gran Turismo, Drive Club, Grid titles, The Crew, whatever and in a top 5 class on PC and will be many peoples favorite on PC. If you prefer something else fine. As for me The games I really don't fire up too much are rF2 and iRacing even though iRacing has much improvement on the road physics side. For some reason I just don't feel engaged into those titles.

 

[bmanic]

Isn't the "top dog" simulator the one that actually simulates the most features of real driving and one that gets closest to the real experience? At least according to quite a few real race drivers Project CARS is pretty high up there.. while on the opposite side of the coin, iRacing has gotten quite a bit of critique (but to be fair, it's exposure is has been much larger over the years so it gets more drivers testing it), especially from real racing drivers, for providing excellent track fidelity but very lacking physics. Heck it got so bad back in 2011/2012 that they reset/deleted the whole forum. Some drivers were so vocal about how bad iRacing physics were that they had to pull the plug on the forum.

 

[David Ignjatovic]

Who said anything about ice racing, there's plenty of other sims in town

 

[Chris Partridge]

The problem with iRacing is that the FFB doesn't fully convey the tyres losing grip. The rate and manner that they lose grip though is spot on in iRacing. It's always dangerous trying to fudge tyre models to deliver improved FFB - and making the tyres perform less correctly.

Check out this video - combined with telemetry - I made some time ago. This was with NTMv4 (we are on 5 now).

 

[Birddogg66]

Who said anything about ice racing, there's plenty of other sims in town

Well the whole point is that all should be given fair consideration. I was one of those people blasting iRacing for it's road physics but I think this is quite good today and while I did re-up for a year I just don't play it that much without having any real problem with it. Even rF2 it's not the whole game in general that turns me off but certain cars. This still has caused me not to play it that much which maybe due to not having enough stuff I really do like(modding hasn't taken storm yet).

 

[David Ignjatovic]

Chris, ice racings ffb limitations is the problem, and that's why I'm of the view that the overall package of steering precision/ffb and physics constitutes the true underlying basis of a simulation.

 

[Chris Partridge]

David - look at the wheelspin figures in my graph - if the FFB better represented that then there would be no problem. If that constitutes a physics issue, it is a part-problem, IMO.

 

[David Ignjatovic]

What I'm getting at is when you build the sim car, u need to consider the "controller" and how you're going to best represent the full range of car behavior given the controller isn't a real steering wheel with identical forces.

 

[Chris Partridge]

My point is the absolute base for physics is the interaction between the tyre and the road. So the tyre model has to be perfect. From that, everything else is derived. You can "tune" and "retune" the FFB to correlate with the tyre model but if that base is working properly, everything else has the potential to flow and work properly. Fudge the tyre model - everything else automatically becomes wrong.

 

[Birddogg66]

@David Ignjatovic I installed rF2 on my backup PC with my Backup input hardware and I must say that I might have gotten behind on the builds or just haven't engaged myself seriously enough into it because the ensuing laps I ran after getting everything all loaded up and some of the packages installed went really nice and is also a great racing game title.
I felt you deserved a reply since you said the iceRacing word as I don't think that tag fits there anymore either and as a whole these ongoing projects are really shaping up across the board leaving some with hard choices to make over what MP lobbies to frequent the most. Anyway the industry is entering a win win scenario weather it being great simulations or great titles more on the arcade side of things. A lot of great material to sort through.

 

[bmanic]

The problem with iRacing is that the FFB doesn't fully convey the tyres losing grip. The rate and manner that they lose grip though is spot on in iRacing. It's always dangerous trying to fudge tyre models to deliver improved FFB - and making the tyres perform less correctly.

Check out this video - combined with telemetry - I made some time ago. This was with NTMv4 (we are on 5 now).

Indeed, iRacing is now millions of times better than it was in the old tire model days.. but my point was that even during that time, right at launch, it was considered by a huge part of the sim-racing community "the pinnacle of simracing, the best of the best and the most realistic" when so many real life racing drivers kept saying on the forums that it was horrible.

I just wanted to point out how skewed the view of the "community" usually is when it comes ot what is realistic or close to reality.

You only have to look at how much Assetto Corsa has changed since the early tech demo to the current release and still you see the same people praising it's physics, never finding a single fault. Well you can't have both.. you can't have the physics keep changing and it constantly being "the best".