PC1 Sim Discussion Monday - PCARS 1

[Paul Jeffrey]

Monday morning blues? No worries, let's talk Project CARS 1!

Next up for the 'Sim Discussion Monday' feature of articles is the very first release from Slightly Mad Studios - Project CARS 1.

Now the intention of these articles is to talk about a particular sim with like minded individuals, discuss how to get the most from the game in terms of performance and satisfaction, share you wheel or game settings, discuss particular likes and dislikes and generally just chat about anything and everything related to the title.

I appreciate discussion about PCARS can often get a little... tasty, so I ask you to please don't get into a silly flame war or throw around trolling comments. We are (mostly) adults here, let us remember that before we type and keep up the generally good behaviour we display in the various comments sections throughout the site.

With Project CARS 2 on its way in a couple of weeks, this should be a nice opportunity to have a look back at the first game after the benefit of time and experience has helped shape our opinions.

Mondays boring? Nope, Mondays be like...

 

[MarcG]

I got it cheap in a Sale IIRC and thankfully so, the Menus kept crashing the game for some reason, the in race performance was questionable....and not to mention the irritating bugs. Shame as it had all the potential to be good, but for me it just never got to a decent place, I'm hoping pCars2 improves upon the first but I'll be waiting for a Sale again due to other Sims being better for my needs currently, I shall watch from afar with interest though.

 

[Chobonator]

They just tried to do to much and sadly forgot about the basic's.

Dynamic weather, snow, seasons, multiclass, off-road, ice racing, rally cross, every type of car possible, etc. Looks like they haven't learned a thing.

its a shame the usual folks will be calling it a simcade because you don't feel like you are on ice...

The fallacy that keeps on giving. Are you a PRC contributor?
You might not have noticed, but a lot of cars in Project Cars are harder to drive than most stuff in rFactor 2. And when you factor in the new GT3 McLaren, the two products might as well be on two entirely different spectrums. One sloshy unfinished mess, and the other a refined study on grip and weight transfer.

 

[The Flying Hun]

The fame of PC lives by its content list, and by its looks, that live especially by weather and full day-night cycle. These two points are its shining pros.

The launch was terrible, the AI initially was terrible as well, now is so-la-la, sometimes doing good, sometimes doing something absurd once again, like racing through sand bunkers as if they were not there. FFB and its setup, are hilarious, the first of two big cons with PC. Sound is not worth to be mentioned.

Driving is okay, but not comparable with the likes of Raceroom or Assetto Corsa, you lack many subtle physics events there, you never forget that you are ot driving a car, but play a game. This is the second big con with PC.

That all together is okay as a package if that is what you are looking for: to play a good looking game.

For more realism-hunting drivers, not recommended.

As a racing sim, its below standard, FFB and physics prevent it from being a good sim. As a solid racing game, it is quite good. I was lat eto the party and bought it just months ago, during a Steam sale. I played less than ten yhours, however, it just does not pick me up, when you are used to so much better racing and driving, you hardly can make yourself accepting much lower quality again: and why would you even want to?. However, for that money, I do not complain. 10 Euros!

For racing: Raceroom. For perfect driving: Assetto Corsa.

I am not waiting with excitement for PC2. I am not even waiting at all. Maybe I get it in another sale - in three years or so.

 

[ShredatorFIN]

pCars is the reason I'm not hyped about pCars 2. We'll see

 

[davifernandeslima]

"no worries" and "project cars 1" is a incongruence in terms

 

[formidable]

Physics: 2/10.
Graphics: 9/10.
FFB: 0/10.
Track variety: 7/10.
Car variety: 5/10.

I reccommend the game? No, If you enjoy with physics, ffb, and engine sounds.

 

[Conrad Miller]

"Sim discussion Monday"..... Sim? Really?......How cute...

 

[apex11]

Well i quite liked it, if for nothing else it did things for console gamers of which we hadn't experienced since the ToCA games, UK club tracks for a start, practice, qualy etc. After years of GT Forza clones.
But I will say this there is no way that PC 2 is going to be vastly different to PC 1, no way.
It'll have improvements yes, but totally different in feel etc no.
SMS started out with grandiose plans to reinvent how driving games were developed ( remember it was meant to be a stand alone game that they would add to over time) then suddenly they revert back to standard industry "oh that'll be in number 2... Oh that'll be in 3..."etc etc, like turn 10 and codies they will simply sell you back pretty much the same game every 1 or 2 years...

 

[Sky]

the best bit of project cars was the refund.

 

[Haiden773]

I started playing PCars1 on Xb1, and loved it. It was amazing, and got me started on the path to sim racing as a hobby, something that Forza had never been able to do in the ten years I'd been playing the franchise. Unfortunately, as soon as I made the move to PC, and started playing other sims, my love for PCars quickly dissipated. Having other sims to compare it to, I realized the FFB and AI were terrible and I found myself spending less and less time with the title. Today, I don't play it all, unless showing a friend VR, because, graphically, it's still the best looking sim on the market. Anyway, I appreciate it for getting me to see/realize the potential fun of sim racing as a hobby. But overall, as a sim, I don't find it to be that great of a title. And, if I'd been on PC when it released, having played the likes of AC, rf2, and R3E, I doubt I'd have put as much time into it. Once the shiny weather and transitions wore off, I think I would have gone back to another title. One things for sure, I definitely wouldn't have been so patient and experimental with the FFB system. Compared to every other sim I've tried since, PCars1's FFB controls were a serious time-sucking nightmare. Looking back, I speculate about one-third to half of my total hours time in-game were spent tuning and testing FFB on track. I'd never do that today. Back then, it was deal with it or go back to Forza.

That said, I've pre-ordered PCars2, and do hope it solves, or at least improves, the FFB and AI issues. If it does, I'm pretty sure I'l enjoy it.

 

[apex11]

Dynamic weather, snow, seasons, multiclass, off-road, ice racing, rally cross, every type of car possible, etc. Looks like they haven't learned a thing.


The fallacy that keeps on giving. Are you a PRC contributor?
You might not have noticed, but a lot of cars in Project Cars are harder to drive than most stuff in rFactor 2. And when you factor in the new GT3 McLaren, the two products might as well be on two entirely different spectrums. One sloshy unfinished mess, and the other a refined study on grip and weight transfer.

I agree, i have rfactor 2 and bar a green track with cold tyres its pretty good with grip. My point is the community as a whole is obsessed with "grip = arcade" and it is annoying even in the fact of sim games having loads of it...

I also agree that SMS bit off more than they could chew and now have simply added more stuff rather than possibly just refine what was there.

 

[Stuart Gillard]

So far I have stacked up 92 hours in pCARS, I own all of the DLC and have areas I like within the game and areas which just aren't quite right.

Firstly the visuals and graphics are very good and the performance hit isn't that bad either for me especially considering I am running on an AMD FX-8350 @ 4.5Ghz and a AMD R9 290...Intel and nVidia perform much better however it is much improved over what it was upon release which was bordering on unplayable on AMD hardware especially GPU's.

Having got an Oculus Rift at the start of the year the game performs great even on my hardware with a good level of detail and quality, there are quite a few racing sims out there now which have implemented VR and I have to say that this is definitely one of the better ones at doing this out of those where it is available.

The area for me where this game lets itself down which is pretty much throughout this thread is the FFB, feel and car control. If I solely play pCARS and nothing else for a while I get a little more used to the FFB and car control however when switching between various racing sims regularly as we tend to, the likes of Assetto Corsa, RaceRoom, Automobilista and a few others pCARS is always the odd one out when it comes to FFB, feel and car control and the only way I can put this is that it feels heavy, with a lack of detail and lazy handling. I've tried all kinda of tweaks including the Jake Spades files and haven't ever really managed to get it to a place I've been really happy with, I've more or less just pretty much put up with it which is a real shame as the game has such a lot to offer however this area, probably the most important area lets it down quite dramatically.

Having said all that I have had a lot of great online races, and quite a lot of which have been in public lobbies where the racing has been very clean and fair.

I'm keeping an open mind about pCARS 2, I will be getting it regardless of what any reviews or previews come out with as they are never indicative of what a game will become after a few patches and developer support which is pretty much the norm now to some degree.

Oh and the last thing is that this game is such a screenshot magnet, I've spent so much time in replays getting some nice looking screenshots in this game it is just such as shame the FFB, handling and general feel of the cars lets it down, finger crossed for pCARS 2.

 

[protonv5]

Totally agree. In fact I paid for a server for Assetto Corsa to do multiplayer a while back. Overall I had maybe a half dozen people or so join. That was it. I pushed it on the Assetto Forums to bring awareness and excitement to my server. A couple guys joined my server and then proceeded to bash me on how my server was setup. They claimed no one would join because my track grip was set too low etc. I was like, isn't this how it would be in real life? I thought this was a sim? Well, apparently it isn't. Guys just want to get on a server where they can have perfect weather/grip and win all the time. They won't join a server that is difficult because they can't drive on it. So needless to say I kept the server for a couple months then shut it down. I was thankful when Kunos fixed the offline AI and they are actually really good now. So, no more online racing. Total waste of time. But to your point. Folks say they want one thing in a SIM, but in reality they want something else. Go figure. That's why I enjoy any SIM on my own or I can't enjoy it. PCars is no different. I'd rate it 6 out of 10 compared to other titles. I made the best of it. We'll see about PCars 2. I'm hopeful.

 

[NASCRAP]

Arcade garbage.

 

[GethemaAT]

Enlisted in the crowdsourcing/early access/pre-alpha thingy back in 2012 as a Manager.
Played 1,000+ hours since, enjoyed most.
Luckily, notinvestment paid off too as the game sold better than anticipated.
Looking forward to the second installment, won't buy day one though.

 

[dcully]

By far the worst sim effort on PC, SMS a shoddy company with shoddy game so far and the single most arrogant boss of a game dev company, time will tell about PCARS2

 

[apex11]

Arcade garbage.

Please explain further, I honestly want to know your exact reasons for this. Should be simple to explain as you seem quite sure of it.

 

[OzBoz]

Simply loved the graphics and Jake's FFB files made it a totally different game for me. Think I got over 850 hours playing time but that's mostly driving the Nord in all kind of cars at public servers.

Really the worst thing is they announced PC2 a few weeks after releasing PC1 and while some bugs did (finally) got fixed there are still too many left. As a customer I expect a bit more support instead of the feeling the company doesn't give an f and focus just on the follow up.

I will buy PC2 because I just love the looks of the graphics. We'll see what it will be. For now I mostly drive Assetto Corsa which is different in many aspects but after a time I played the Nord (again) on public servers I'm now in a fun league which finally makes me more familiar with other tracks.

Than there is Raceroom which has great sounds but I think it's too expensive and I got rF2 which is getting better all the time, I love the FFB in rF2. For me fun is the most important, if I can drive laps and end them with a smile it's a good game for me. And since we're talking about PC1, I might try a lap on the Nord again, enjoying the view and see if I'm still above average

 

[F1Fan07]

pCARS' visuals blew me away. There were times that I just sat there in Neutral and looked around. I remember after driving rF2 then jumping into pCARS how awesome the lighting and shadows were in comparison. rF2 shadow effects were a hot mess of jagged shadow edges and LoD issues and pCARS was just sublime.

As most people say, the driving never lived up to the hype and with no online community to speak of, I had no use for the sim.

 

[bsmooth]

Loved it right at the beginning, especially the Classic F1 cars. But heres the kicker, it ran smooth as silk on my (then) brand new PC back when it came out, and then the patches started. With each successive patch the game ran worse and worse, until after 2 or 3 patches it was just a slideshow of stutters.
In there quest for more eye candy which I hear over and over about every single racing sim(except my favorite Automobilista!). Ok I understand that everyone wants realism, but not at the expense of a PC running the game smoothly, without that I don't even consider a sim, why bother at all.
So yes it started out great, except for maybe a confusing UI, but it was traight off a cliff afterwards.