Project CARS

The ultimate racing game
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MadManCK
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So far i like the driving. Most important of course.

The wheel setup and menus are a mess however. I had to ctrl alt delete to get out of the game as i could not find an exit button, pff. :lol:
I will take some time to check the layout next time. But to get quick in the car to just drive was not as easy as i hoped for.

I drove in the Clio cup to get an idea how the physics work etc. The good thing is that most functions on my wheel are working, including shifting lights and gear indicator. But i had to manually setup my separate pedals.
It did not work out of the box.

FFB is just basic, but i will have to wait for my V2 to arrive to get a better idea of how that works.

Good thing is that there are good factory setups as a starting point to work with. I seriously did not like that in Assetto as you had to download setups from the web.
Engine sounds are very good, so are the car models but i did not expect less from SMS.

Bad thing is that i can not change the difficulty to Pro as i want. I had to manually adjust individual settings, but it was not possible to change the starting settings, despite the promise in the opening screen. Maybe it is somewhere, but the menu layout is a bit unintuitive, like all SMS games. Switching off all stupid driving addons, like racing lines etc. The line was not even showing the best racing line, but the usual green and red arrows on the track, like we know from Shift2.
I had a lot of Shift2 deja-vu moments, but the handling is clearly more responsive and sharper than that previous game. Graphics are only a small step up tbh. I have to see the weather effects and other stuff. But it is good enough and also the FPS are consistently high, making the game very smooth and that improves gameplay a lot. FPS drops were absent during my play.

Once you start to drive, you forget all the hassle to get into the car and enjoy the drive. It is good. Have not tried any other racing classes yet. But it is a rewarding drive.
And that is the most important part of this "sim" driver.

Sounds, models, realism and tracks are well modeled. Menu logic is the usual SMS unlogic.

But i can not stop thinking this is Shift 3.0. With better, more refined driving dynamics.
That is my first impression of pCars. :mrgreen:
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Beardroid91
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Imo then the NFS Shift games were good enough, but they lacked the challenge of driving physics etc., but Project Cars is bang on the money for me, it is a challenge to drive cars in the races, cold vs. warm tires, and when the clouds could open up and turn a sunny dry track into a wet hell hole, so the key to being good in Project Cars is being able to adapt your driving after the conditions on a moments notice ;)

But some cars, or should say kart's are a nightmare to drive, or atleast that's my assessment of them, i can't wait to get my current season over with so i get away from the mental Superkarts :mrgreen:

But the handling with my Xbox controller is really good.

My only hate moments are the rolling starts, when you always get raped when the race goes green by being in the wrong (low) gear or having a bad starting line :angry-tappingfoot:
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Ryzza5
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MMCK - there's an X top-right in the menu's to quit. I agree it's a little weird that you can't back your way out of the game via Esc\Bksp\(B). I totally get the menu grips but it's still a big step up from Shift 2's carousel. Also note you can get quick access to options/garage from the drop-down menu top-right if you have your mouse handy.
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MadManCK
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Yes, i obviously went way too quick trough everything and did not look around too closely. But i like things that need no manual :lol:
And there is something like basic game logic that is not working in pCars.

I'm a bit rusty as well with PC driving. I will post a video of my first attempt in pCars in another thread, lol.

But it does still have a Shift vibe somehow. At least that is how i experienced my first time on the track in pCars. Even if the driving model and handling are without any doubt miles ahead of that game. It also reminded a bit of some good old touring car games.
The cars react realistic and are therefore a blast to drive. At least the ones i tried. And it gives a great sense of actually being in a race with mistakes being made around you and you being forced into mistakes or off track, without being rammed like in other games :lol:

There is a lot of good stuff in pCars for sure. 8-)

I also did find a couple of obvious bugs:
  • Pit exit light remained red during the pit stops
    You get warned way too fast for being off track
    During replays the gear indicator remains in neutral
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Prepsi
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I've noticed that most of the game breaking bugs only seem to happen in online. Had some good [bug free] fun in a single player game earlier.
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grooks10
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It's great to hear that the game is turning out so well! I can't wait to get home from school in a month to try it out for myself! Even though I don't have a wheel. :(
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MadManCK
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grooks10 wrote: I don't have a wheel.
Get one. Soon® :mrgreen:
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grooks10
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MadManCK wrote:
grooks10 wrote: I don't have a wheel.
Get one. Soon® :mrgreen:
Hopefully I'll have a little money to spend Soon®! :loll:
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MadManCK
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ATI/AMD will finally come with a (beta?) driver that will improve performance in pCars, as right now the current high end 290X is not even capable of outpacing last gen Nvidia or the mid range GTX960.

Image

There were some discussions where SMS was accused of favoring Nvidia. Even that they were paid. Nvidia simply worked together with SMS to get the best possible performance from the game for their cards. Just like they do with a lot of other games and development studios. During the release of new games you can expect a graphics driver update with optimized settings for that game. And this attitude pays off with the best game support in their drivers. A thing AMD/ATI has always been not as good at.
This is also one of the reasons why i prefer Nvidia cards over ATI/AMD.

This was the reaction of Ian Bell (SMS Boss)
Ian Bell's post verbatim. 5/7/2015

"Of course.

Looking through company mails the last I can see they (AMD) talked to us was October of last year. I'm holding an internal investigation now as I'm seriously pissed at this allegation.

Categorically, Nvidia have not paid us a penny. They have though been very forthcoming with support and co-marketing work at their instigation.

Edit - More info below. Lot's of communications with them around March and more yesterday.

Gains that were made with an earlier driver they released were lost in a later release. Our internal analysis shows only very marginal gains available from our side (around 1%) with an excessive amount of work.

We've had emails back and forth with them yesterday also. I reiterate that this is mainly a driver issue but we'll obviously do anything we can from our side."

Some great gains we saw from an earlier driver they released have been lost in a later driver they released. So I'd say driver is where we start.

Again, if there's anything we can do we will.

I've now conducted my mini investigation and have seen lots of correspondence between AMD and ourselves as late as March and again yesterday.

The software render person says that AMD drivers create too much of a load on the CPU. The PhysX runs on the CPU in this game for AMD users. The PhysX makes 600 calculations per second on the CPU. Basically the AMD drivers + PhysX running at 600 calculations per second is killing performance in the game. The person responsible for it is freaking awesome. So I'm not angry. But this is the current workaround without all the sensationalism.

The best advice I can give while we work with AMD is to reduce settings which influence CPU load. Specifically in this order:

Shadow Detail -> Medium
Reflections -> Medium
Environment Map-> Medium
Car Detail -> Medium or High
The updated driver will be released soon®
AMD is committed to improving performance for the recently-released Project CARS and The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. To that end, we are creating AMD Catalyst™ 15.5 Beta to optimize performance for these titles, and we will continue to work closely with their developers to improve quality and performance. We will release AMD Catalyst™ 15.5 Beta on our website as soon as it is available.
- Statement AMD

Fact remains that they should have had this driver ready before the release of those games. And maybe follow the example of Nvidia and work a bit closer with the big development studios. Wouldn't hurt their position in the graphics card market as well. But maybe that is just me thinking :think:

Anyway, good news for the ATI/AMD GFX card owners who play pCars.

:spy:
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Beardroid91
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Ouch, good thing i got a GTX 970 :lol:

But i can't but feel bad for all the R9 290(x) owners, or GTX 970 who ditched their GTX970 for a R9 290x, what a mistake that turned out to be :P

I hope AMD Radeon is going to step it up after this humiliation, their top cards being kicked in the nuts by last gens entry level gaming card ... uh, that has got to hurt :teasing-nutkick:

But hopefully AMD will fire the idiots who messed this up, and headhunt some Nvidia guys, that's the only future for them :(
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