PC2 Sim Discussion Monday - Project CARS 2

[Paul Jeffrey]

First day back in the office for many this morning, what better way to pass the time than have a good discussion about the new Project CARS game?

Now the dust is beginning to settle around the recent release of Project CARS 2, we thought it a good time to look deeper into the game, driven by our community, and share our findings and impressions from the heavily hyped new racing title from Slightly Mad Studios.

Do you have some useful tips for getting the most from the sim? Found a magic setting to really unlock the FFB? Got a trick up your sleeve that helps bring sharper graphics for little FPS trade off? Or do you simply want to share your most / least favourite car and track combinations?

So long as it remains on topic, respectful and mature, we want to know your thoughts!

Mondays be like...

 

[Acke Rosa]

Pcars did have realistic damage before release. Then they took it out.

Can see this damage working well with pcars AI?
1 lap races before the track is a junk yard! Haha

 

[fl0wf1r3]

I dont have pc2 yet, but does someone knows how the AI in pc2 works? does it have to be trained like the AI in Raceroom for instance? people complaining a lot about the AI but how does the AI should know how fast someone is at the beginning? perhaps it will improve and learn lap by lap?

 

[GP20]

Plenty of times I've crashed and smashed cars in iRacing to a point where no driver could survive

Crashing a car in IRacing directly load a flight simulator.
You have two in one.

 

[GP20]

And the main question now is :
_ Should RD add races with PCars 2 in his calendar?


You should make a poll.

 

[AbeWoz]

The game it self is pretty good, but... no matter what I want to do in the game im stopped by bugs or problems...

Circuit racing career mode: Qualify is just stupid in the game now, with the skip session bug and no option to choose qualify lenght. Which makes you really tired off starting last in every single race. And how they force you to use snow, in the scripted career mode weather. I mean... open wheel racing in snow, really SMS?...

RX career mode: The AI is simply broken, in quick race they are ok but in career mode they are slow as......

Online: Keep getting kicked from server, and thats fine, not really interested in public servers anyway was just testing it since career mode has so many problems...

AI in career mode evolve as you get deeper in the career. This is intentional and you too are supposed to evolve and get better. So 90% (example) AI ability in Ginetta Junior are 'slower' than 90% AI in the PWC series.

 

[Martin Larsen]

AI in career mode evolve as you get deeper in the career. This is intentional and you too are supposed to evolve and get better. So 90% (example) AI ability in Ginetta Junior are 'slower' than 90% AI in the PWC series.

Yeah and thats fine. But when you put AI to 120%, a 4 lap RX race so laps takes 40-50sec and you beat them by 14sec then... thats not so fine...

 

[GP20]

And the main question now is :
_ Should RD add races with PCars 2 in his calendar?


You should make a poll.

http://www.racedepartment.com/threads/should-rd-add-races-with-pcars-2-in-his-calendar.141441/

I'm not wmd member or paid by SMS.

 

[Shiimis]

I have to admit that after loading "stable" setup the handling is much much better. Why do they hide this feature (I would have never guessed that "Load setup" actually contains anything besides user made setups) and why do they default to "loose" is beyond me.

 

[MSKbeans]

Gripes.

BRAKING yeah they work!!! FEEL zero, no shudder, shake or rattle.
VR lag on certain tracks gets quite bad, especially on peeps joining or leaving.( Not New)....
FFB needs tweaking, but only tweaking.
DRIVER RATING
Your knocked off track you become a passenger get hit by someone else rating gets hammered !!!! If you cause it then yes. Even IR same just because you are involved dosnt make it right to loose your rating

GOODIES

VR outstanding without taxing GPU. Can run higher settings because of it. Except as above.
FFB Feels good in general. I think most peeps having issues because it's not AC, AMS, RF2. Each game has its feel this is just another. I found driving smooth, which is hard for me, gets me better feel.
But the brakes sound doesn't cover feel.
RATING it's there hopefully will get updated for involved in incident but not caused. Double the driver responsible. 5 points for being involved. I was docked 50 points for getting knocked of track then getting hit.. that's 8-12 races to make the points back depending.

 

[rw3]

It is not laser tracked, perhaps you are right. Oulton, Snetterton, Cadwell, Brands Hatch are.
See here :
http://forum.projectcarsgame.com/sh...ARS-2-The-FULL-track-list-at-launch-Sept-22nd

In my experience a track doesn't have to be laser-scanned to be right. For instance RFactor 2 has Silverstone, which is not laser-scanned, and when I got there everything was exactly where I expected it to be. It's still possible to create a very good track without laser scanning. It may not have every bump, but is that even relevant when a track evolves over years of use (and indeed one can argue that this is responsible for iRacing's calcified state)? What matters is that the track is in the correct dimensions, with the right camber, and the bigger more permanent bumps are covered.

 

[rw3]

All games have bugs...look at AMS, at the moment you cannot use the main hud cause it will crash the game....and last I checked I cannot change the number of pitstops (this may have been fixed as I saw a patch coming through two days ago)....

Indeed, and currently iRacing has a grip bug so that in cold weather cars are flipping over due to too much grip (including the likes of the DW12 which is fairly ridiculous).

 

[Tr3voRR]

I play with a controller and it pisses me off we can't have full lock...during beta a bunch of us told we would love to have that and we suggested it ! off course they didn't do it... ffs they could have an option to activate it or not !! I hate having an artificial lock on the steering !!!

 

[Oops]

Hi all, I have to say that I'm loving PCars2 atm but it took me a while to get the FFB sorted, it's still a work in progress.
At first, I couldn't drive the cars at all without the back end of whatever car I was driving stepping out on almost every bend. I started testing the Clio on Zolder and every time I took the first bend after the start & finish straight the back end would step out unless I slowed to a crawl, so I started tinkering with the FFB settings, it got a little better but as soon as I let my guard down the back end would come round again and off I'd go into the barrier, I must say I was getting pretty fed up with it!
Until I found the Jack Spade files and what a difference they made I can now feel every bump on the road but better still I can feel when I'm losing the back end and I now can catch it before it starts now I'll never be the fastest driver on the planet but these files have made such a difference to me, I now am really enjoying the experience so much, I race with the CV1 and I Love it

 

[rw3]

And the main question now is :
_ Should RD add races with PCars 2 in his calendar?


You should make a poll.

I'd be all over this. Currently rolling starts are a no-no for online races (people getting penalties for stuff done during the AI-controlled phase) so that'll need fixing first if we go that route, are there any other showstoppers that we know about?

 

[kkdrummer]

Indeed, and currently iRacing has a grip bug so that in cold weather cars are flipping over due to too much grip (including the likes of the DW12 which is fairly ridiculous).

You see, this is the type of thing you rarely hear about other games, funny isn't? now imagine if this bug was in PCars2...the whole world would've known by now lol

 

[rw3]

Gripes.

DRIVER RATING
Your knocked off track you become a passenger get hit by someone else rating gets hammered !!!! If you cause it then yes. Even IR same just because you are involved dosnt make it right to loose your rating

RATING it's there hopefully will get updated for involved in incident but not caused. Double the driver responsible. 5 points for being involved. I was docked 50 points for getting knocked of track then getting hit.. that's 8-12 races to make the points back depending.

So.. in defence both of iRacing and Project Cars re the driver rating and safety rating:

Visit any racing forum after an F1 race in which an incident has occurred and see if everyone agrees who is at fault. Even once you get beyond national partisanship and the odd bit of racism, you find that people can't agree on what is acceptable racing behaviour, and whether a particular move caused the incident or not.

I'm a software developer in my day job, so I know what computers are good at and what they're bad at. They're very good at maths. They are very bad at making judgements about things. If you're thinking AI, forget it. AI can just about determine that a picture of a chicken is in fact a chicken and not a horse, but it takes a lot of processing power to achieve. To determine who is at fault in a crash is way beyond.

So we're left with only the ability to create simple rules. We can for instance create a rule that says that if the guy behind hits the guy in front it's the guy behind's fault, after all he's just rammed the other guy off the road right (highly prevalent in iRacing in the Skippy where the rear of the car is made of paper and the front of titanium). So I go into a race knowing this, all I have to do is hit the brakes when the other guy is behind me and he's going to get penalised when he hits me. Not how I roll but plenty would do it. When designing any system you have to consider what inputs you can trust and what ones you can't. Users are an input you can't trust. Ever.

In general, a no-fault system works pretty well. It will trend long-term towards fairness, with better drivers finishing higher on average with fewer wrecks, and thus improving their license and rating, and worse drivers crashing more often and finishing towards the back. Wreckers will have poor ratings on all fronts. That works. Except it doesn't on iRacing because you can just time trial your safety rating back. It seems then that PC2 has done better than iRacing on that front.

In short, in one-off races you might suffer a minor injustice. In the long term it'll end up about right.

 

[RasmusP]

So.. in defence both of iRacing and Project Cars re the driver rating and safety rating:

Visit any racing forum after an F1 race in which an incident has occurred and see if everyone agrees who is at fault. Even once you get beyond national partisanship and the odd bit of racism, you find that people can't agree on what is acceptable racing behaviour, and whether a particular move caused the incident or not.

I'm a software developer in my day job, so I know what computers are good at and what they're bad at. They're very good at maths. They are very bad at making judgements about things. If you're thinking AI, forget it. AI can just about determine that a picture of a chicken is in fact a chicken and not a horse, but it takes a lot of processing power to achieve. To determine who is at fault in a crash is way beyond.

So we're left with only the ability to create simple rules. We can for instance create a rule that says that if the guy behind hits the guy in front it's the guy behind's fault, after all he's just rammed the other guy off the road right (highly prevalent in iRacing in the Skippy where the rear of the car is made of paper and the front of titanium). So I go into a race knowing this, all I have to do is hit the brakes when the other guy is behind me and he's going to get penalised when he hits me. Not how I roll but plenty would do it. When designing any system you have to consider what inputs you can trust and what ones you can't. Users are an input you can't trust. Ever.

In general, a no-fault system works pretty well. It will trend long-term towards fairness, with better drivers finishing higher on average with fewer wrecks, and thus improving their license and rating, and worse drivers crashing more often and finishing towards the back. Wreckers will have poor ratings on all fronts. That works. Except it doesn't on iRacing because you can just time trial your safety rating back. It seems then that PC2 has done better than iRacing on that front.

In short, in one-off races you might suffer a minor injustice. In the long term it'll end up about right.

Very very good post man! Kudos!

 

[jimortality]

Refunded.
Another unfinished game. The people saying a nice start are pure comedy.
Start? Its pcars 1.5 and still totally underbaked.
They going to fix this and that with a patch first time around too. Did that happen? Nah got this $50 patch instead lol.
Please go ahead and tell me this is how software dev works I've been in the industry 20+ years.
These guys just pump then dump the games, good luck to them it seems to have made them a mint but you dont get to keep my coin.
See again when its on sale and all the bugs have been fixed haha

Boo hoo

 

[Chobonator]

It's so good it makes me want to build a top PC with Gen2 VR as soon as it's available, and a full rig.

 

[rw3]

It's so good it makes me want to build a top PC with Gen2 VR as soon as it's available, and a full rig.

Gen 1 VR is pretty damn good you know, no need to wait