PC2 Project CARS 2 Official Screenshots Revealed

[Paul Jeffrey]

Slightly Mad Studios reveal first official images from the upcoming Project CARS 2 game.

Following the recent leaked trailer and several leaked preview images of the latest instalment to the popular Project CARS franchise, Slightly Mad Studios have released the first official screenshots from the new game. Posting on the official Project CARS twitter account, SMS have been releasing images over the last couple of days with a mysterious hint at a big announcement, due possibility as soon as Wednesday (8th February). The images revealed so far have formed part of a countdown that includes mysterious titles such as #anytimeAnywhere and #ProRacing. Could this be a build up to news of some kind of advanced eSports solution within the new game, or could it relate to an interesting official association with a major motorsports governing body...?

Regardless of the meaning behind the teaser tweets, it is at least nice to be able to cast our eyes over something official from SMS for the first time, and it looks like the developers have been hard at work ensuring Project CARS 2 leaves nothing left of the table in terms of graphical quality. We are already fairly confident from the leaked trailer that PCARS 2 will have yet more versatility in the weather options for the new release, with snow, changeable wind direction and enhancements to the rain modes already teased. The new official shots back up these leaks, with one image showing off snow in the game, possibly taken from the same scene as the drifting Mercedes in the trailer leak.

One thing is for sure, despite selling over 2 million copies of Project CARS on all platforms SMS will have to hit the ball out of the park on first attempt with this new title, following the heavy criticism from some quarters of the gaming public after Project CARS 1 shipped with a number of frustrating and unacceptable bugs. SMS will be keen to avoid a similar situation with the new sim and win back some of the sim racing public trust, as can be evidenced by several messages from SMS head Ian Bell when he assure fans the new title will be undertaking a much more robust quality assurance programme before receiving it's public release.

The game is looking to be shaping up to be one of the stars of 2017 and personally I'm intrigued to see how it fairs once it hits our shelves towards the end of the current year.

Needless to say we will be keeping a close eye on the upcoming announcement and post any details for you here at RaceDepartment as soon as they become known.


Project CARS 2 is expected to be released on Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and PC during Q4 2017.

Check out the Project CARS 2 sub forum here at RaceDepartmet to keep abreast of all the latest news and discussions surrounding the sequel of Slightly Mad Studios best selling racing game. Join in with your fellow community members and get involved with the discussion today!

Looking forward to PCARS 2? Do you like the look of the new screenshots released by the studio? Will the title improve upon the often frustration original? Let us know in the comments section below!

 

[Xtriko]

Mod edit: this is the last time we removed a personal attack from you against another user. On the next offense you're out.


Winner comment

AC physics are worse than PCARS physics (excluded are bugs) - rF2 has the best physics sofar ...
The questions where will PCARS 2 end up? How many bugs has the game?

FFB of PCARS is brilliant when you have tweaked it - I recommend using the Jack Spades Tweaker Files & Settings

This guy is hillarious xD Funniest thing I've read on RD this year xD

 

[Patrik Marek]

am I the only one who likes AI in pCARS ??
try a CLio race on Snetterton ( or was it Oulton park) and it was the best experience agaist AI I ever had

not sure if they still cut some corners like they used to , but that was problem with track rather the AI itself,
I find AI in pCARS best from all the game by quite a margain. THey really fight with you, like real people in MP do, but they also leave me room and sometimes go a bit on grass to avoid collision, unlike other games where they are just " no, this is my line, sorry, but let's end race for both of us here ... "

 

[paracletus]

does this mean PC3 will be announced next weekend then

 

[thewarmer]

I am keeping out of this one , I remember how nasty the run up-to P.Cars became & afterwards.
For me it did not show the good side of lots involved across several forums & social media platforms.

The only other game where things got so nasty for me was on GT-Planet over GT6 woe people were seriously burning each other there.

I am not sure that I am into this current trend of trying to make a Sim car type game that attempts to cover every single type of 4 wheeled sports.

I some ways I would prefer one sim that perfects open wheeled racing another for closed wheels & one that deals with off road. has the old saying goes jack of all trades master of none & its true in most things in life.
But seriously enjoy what ever game you like that's all that counts & not what anybody else thinks.

 

[St3fan]

am I the only one who likes AI in pCARS ??
try a CLio race on Snetterton ( or was it Oulton park) and it was the best experience agaist AI I ever had

not sure if they still cut some corners like they used to , but that was problem with track rather the AI itself,
I find AI in pCARS best from all the game by quite a margain. THey really fight with you, like real people in MP do, but they also leave me room and sometimes go a bit on grass to avoid collision, unlike other games where they are just " no, this is my line, sorry, but let's end race for both of us here ... "

I'm too fine with Clio cup AI, especially on tracks that I have similar lap times with them. But AI in endurance races is very dull. GT cars and Prototypes feel lifeless, and I have loads of trouble racing them in open wheelers. If there is variable weather there would be more trouble because AI is still very op in wet.
Since day 1 I've been saying there is problem with Superkart AI at various tracks especially Road America, and they are still terrible. This video was recorded right after the patch in which they said they fixed Road America AI. Such AI lunacy is still in the game now.

 

[Patrik Marek]

well, if I'm honest - and call me biased, - that's a problem of a car, rather then AI,
this car isn't designed to these type of tracks , or are you telling me they run karts on big tracks ??

yes, if they didn't release these kind of cars, the game would appear less broken, but that's the downside with game that has more things in it, it's easier to find combination where things get broken , when compared to if you had 3 tracks and 2 cars to chose from

but sure, I'm not saying it works 100% of the time, most of the time it's becasue of the track and sometimes becasue of the car ... but to me , it's not the AI logic that's bad/broken (depending on how you look at this)

sure, since it's possible to run kart there, it should work - I give you that
but I think that you could find similar issues in other games, and can't really complain that it's AI fault

these are old of course, so maybe already fixed

this imo is a great example,

you might apply similar logic as the karts in pcars and say that AI is broken .. but I would argue that's not the case and it's the car that's the problem , therefore I won't complain about bad AI in this case

however here,
I'd say that it's AI code problem, that AI is unable to pass much slower car

 

[St3fan]

well, if I'm honest - and call me biased, - that's a problem of a car, rather then AI,
this car isn't designed to these type of tracks , or are you telling me they run karts on big tracks ??

They do with Superkart, all the time. Superkart is fast! Real life footage of the same combo:

What upsets me is that they explicitly talk about AI on Road America in the change log but not much has been changed.

[Off topic stuff]

I'd say that it's AI code problem, that AI is unable to pass much slower car

I don't know what's AC's footage is doing here but in the case of AC AI at first I thought the AI had broken code for overtake and I kept telling other people how broken it was by driving slowly and let them see that AI couldn't pass, but after I spend more time with the AI, my understanding is that the AI treats cars in front moving too slow as a hazard. They will make overtake attempt if cars are moving at comparable speed.

Slow car ->hazard->yellow flag->no passing. I think this is the problem.
[/Off topic stuff]

EDIT: Don't take the text of my AC video too seriously. I recorded that part for a discussion on AC official forum. It was not intended to show "AC's AI is perfect" or "there is nothing to fix" or anything. AI in ALL current sims needs improving IMO.

 

[modmad]

Would be nice if they could include an entire championship not just a one car series.

 

[Skidmeister]

I got in on the ground floor for Project cars and was involved in beta testing etc. We got weekly updates and often the physics would be 180% polar opposite from week to week. Even the UI was drastically changed, and the final product was different from what was beta tested. Still it had tons of promise, but was filled with lots of bugs. I always loved the graphics, but it takes a lot of HP to run triples at 7680 x 1440 at 100hz. 2 Titan X pascal to be exact. And no real support for triple screen, they sure could take a lesson from AC there. I switched from a CSW V2 to an Accuforce and the amount of tweaks it took to get it right was ludicrous, way too much in game adjustment between all the controller and car settings. Jack Spade really helped tweak that mess out but shouldn't have had to. Still once it was dialed in to your flavor the physics and handling were very fun to drive, and you could jump in any car and be competitive quickly. The selection of tracks was great also, but like many have said before (Momad) they needed to bring out more than one or two cars for several of the series. Never liked single make races personally.

I think what killed Pcars for me was all the bugs. I got several friends to get into racing it, and run a high end system myself. We had more problems trying to race each other online than you should ever have in something that took ages to get to market. I lost count of the number of times I crashed to desktop for no apparent reason. Often making simple changes like video driver revision would make the game unplayable. It went from a true source of joy to one of constant frustration. But when it worked we all had a lot of fun in close wheel to wheel racing with a decent link thanks to a rented dedicated server. There are many thing they got right, one of them being to constantly ask the community what do you want. Geoff Crammond made some brilliant games especially considering the hardware of the day, but never seemed to give a good hoot as to what anybody else wanted or thought.

I am optimistic about Pcars 2 and will probably buy it when it comes out in hope that they fix at least some of the major bugs from the first sim. Hell I would gladly pay again for pcars 2 if it was simply a working, bug free version of pcars with more content. Throw in some more DLC, more cars in ever existing series, less BS in the controller setup, and color me in. The only way to truly never make any mistakes is to do nothing. Pcars was a big leap of faith for many early adopters after the West Bros Racing legends disaster. But they tried to produce the ultimate racing sim and ultimately bit off more than they could chew. Lets hope they learned from the past mistakes and produce something of epic proportions. Or at least a little that truly works well.

 

[Patrik Marek]

ah, my mistake then, didn't know they actually run those on real tracks. I'm not really into karting, but that doesnt' excuse me

sure, they don't overtake, but it doesn't matter if it's becasue of hazzard or what not, they should figure out that the car is just slow and then overtake when safe , .. but I'm sure similar issues with AI can be find in other games,

yellow flag is an interesting point , but I don't think you would get yellow flag in this situation, you would get the white flag, and you can overtake under white flag

it wasn't meant to show that AC AI is bad, it was to demonstrate what I consider a AI bug, rather then something else from the game

 

[Celestiale]

am I the only one who likes AI in pCARS ??
try a CLio race on Snetterton ( or was it Oulton park) and it was the best experience agaist AI I ever had

not sure if they still cut some corners like they used to , but that was problem with track rather the AI itself,
I find AI in pCARS best from all the game by quite a margain. THey really fight with you, like real people in MP do, but they also leave me room and sometimes go a bit on grass to avoid collision, unlike other games where they are just " no, this is my line, sorry, but let's end race for both of us here ... "

No you are not the only one.
I think the AI from Project Cars was the best out there from all Sims, until the recent changes in R3E.
Like already mentioned, the 250cc Karts AI is broken..that's a different bug i guess...
But apart from that i think the AI from PC is very good - like you already mentioned, very human like, they defend their line, defend inside line in corners, attack aggressively. Feel very lively, and when you race them you can almost forget that you only race AI. The AI in fact was the main reason i preferred racing in PC over all other Sims...
I don't think the AI was too fast in the rain, quite the opposite for me. Everytime it was raining, i faired better then the AI in comparison to dry conditions..
I would be really fine, if the AI from PC2 would be the same like the one from PC1 - bugs like the Superkart issue aside, of course.
Second best AI in sims..but sorry.
This really deserves the new thrown:

watched Iracing videos before and after, and couldn't see a difference in "opponent behavior". I think that's all racing AI can ever thrive for

 

[Adam#81]

@Celestiale I love PCARS but what you are saying about AI in the rain is not correct. If you do comparable lap times with the AI on a track and then put on rain, the AI can take turns at more speed than you and brake later than you, with none of the sliding that you might have. It is a known issue, but they can't easily fix it. Generally in these type of games they give the AI more grip, so they can react to player movement and collisions. If you are overtaking an AI car and you are side by side really close to it, as soon as you pass a certain point of the AI car, it will detect you being there and will swerve to avoid a potential collision. This would work when you are cutting lines or it is cutting lines, but in a straight line... come on. So in order to do this kind of maneuveur safely, they give the AI icreased grip, otherwise they would crash very often with this kind of collision-detection.

 

[Skidmeister]

I think most of the newer sims have decent AI, especially if you just use them of filler or backmarkers when racing online with just a few friends. They aren't like racing real drivers just because of the unpredictability of real drivers vs AI. I thought the AI in pcars was good but never raced any AI in karts so no idea about that. You can learn where and when to pass the AI on any track and do it again and again. Real drivers are smarter than that. I do like the AI in F1 2016 as they seem a bit intuitive, they are aggressive but you can pass them. But force a pass and they try to return the favor, more realistic IMO.