Project CARS has received a lot of buzz due to the fact that they have professional race car drivers helping with the development of the racing title. Now we have some great insight from quite a few drivers, talking about their thoughts on the racing sim. Judging from their reactions, it is pretty positive!
Slightly Mad Studios has brought some interesting race car drivers on board to provide development insight and advice for Project CARS. Former Stig Ben Collins is one of the notable drivers, as well as Nicolas Hamilton (brother of Lewis Hamilton). Rene Rast has provided many videos, and accredits Project CARS as a training tool for his races.
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MjqwMtEJAYg[/youtube]
Some of the drivers’ impressions on Project CARS are below, but to check out all the testimonials, click this link. What are your thoughts on the drivers’ impressions? Let us know in the comments below!
PROJECT CARS TESTIMONIALS
BEN COLLINS
“When Ian Bell from Slightly Mad Studios contacted me about developing a new sim racing game, I thought he must have made a mistake. “No”, he said, “I’ve read that you think sims are rubbish, and that’s the honesty we need to make this game real.”
At first I complained so bitterly about the vehicles’ handling qualities that I was sure I would be excommunicated.. But then the changes started coming, crowd sourcing scaled the pace of development and then about 6 months ago we unlocked the secret ingredient to realism. It was, as they say, ‘a game changer’.
When I’m driving this ‘game’, my heart starts pounding, I work up a sweat and the hairs on my neck stand up until I’ve crossed the line and search for the lap time. I’m diving into the setup to make changes that marry to my driving style, and i can attack the greatest tracks in the world with the best cars ever made. You can even drive in the wet, where the graphics and the pitfalls are so lifelike that I’ve lost many an afternoon singing in the rain.
During my three year journey with Project CARS, I’ve born witness to the dawn of a new era of computer-generated reality. For the first time, the racing that I know and love will be available to anyone with a console. I’m proud to have played a small part in the process and fortunate that the development team kept me around.”
NICOLAS HAMILTON
“I was first placed on the Slightly Mad Studios team at the end of 2012 to assist with Project CARS by implementing both my sim-racing experience, which ranges from National level to World Championships for over 5 years and my real life racing experience. Having driven most of the cars and circuits in real life, I have been working on all levels of detail, from car handling to tyre behaviour, circuit surfaces to circuit detail, even down to the stitching on the interior of the car or animations of how the driver turns the steering wheel or shifts gear.
What you will notice is that every car you drive feels completely different to the last, where you have to adopt a different driving style or technique to get the maximum performance out of it. You will go through the same rituals as a real racing driver, warming the car up before the race or flying lap, working the brakes and tyres in preparation for maximum attack!
Project CARS is for gamers of all levels, from casual gamers, to professional drivers, you are all in for an incredible experience! It has been an honour and pleasure to work on this title. I hope you all enjoy playing it as much as I did developing it.”
OLI WEBB
“Being the test and development driver for BAC, I was first approached by Slightly Mad Studios to consult on the handling of the BAC Mono in-game. Once I realised just how authentic it felt already though, I was hooked! From that point I started working further with the team on the handling of all the cars to ensure they were as real as possible to those I was fortunate enough to have raced in real life.
For the tracks, I could give input after coming back from ‘hard to get to’ tracks such as the Indy 500, Monaco and Le Mans 24h to ensure the team had the most up-to-date info possible and they felt completely authentic.
I feel very lucky to have worked with such a great team and the first race game, I believe, of a new era.”
It does look and sound incredible. I am dubious about the reference to a console since he is driving a Fanatec and it looks like a PC version of the game. The quality is far too high for a console. That being said, it has really gotten me interested in the game again. I am just so disappointed about the delay, but it does make Spring more interesting. Just so many questions are left unanswered at this point.
for me Assetto Corsa is better sim
Nicholas Hamiltons real life experience he boasts about doesn’t quite stack up to his career statistics. Raced at 13 different locations, mainly in the UK in the Renault Clio Cup. 38 Races ran, 0 wins, 0 poles, 0 fastest laps and 0 podiums. Sure, he has more real life experience than me, but as someone who is advising slightly mad studios etc on all levels of details including handling and tyre behaviour, I would expect a bit more real life experience.
He also says he has driven most of the cars and the tracks in real life. Sure, I believe he might have driven some of them and on the circuit, but track days, or taking a car around a closed circuit is one thing, racing them in anger is another.
Basically, his knowledge and opinion in my opinion is not worth the internet code it is being presented up on. Ben Collins and Oli Webb however do have more real life experience and have won races, championships etc.
Kenn, the main plus point with Nic is that he has the “sim” racing experience. The problem with Real drivers is they usually have a complete lack of knowledge of the Sim racing games we all know and love (with a few exceptions), Nic may lack the overall real world experience but he makes up for it in translating how that should feel in a “game”. That input is priceless IMO. We all know that a Sim without spending multiple 10s of thousands in money on hydraulic systems and multiple monitors (or Occulus) is NOTHING like driving a real car, let alone a real race car. We just don’t feel 99% of what a race driver feels and it’s that feeling that the race drivers uses to understand what the car is doing. Anything a game does to convey those “feelings” is a fudge and some games fudge better than others.
Reduce “Tire Force” to 30 and pCars has the best FFB I’ve ever felt on my TM TX wheel. Unbelievably good.