The. Wait. Is. Over.
After four years of development, Project CARS is now available for purchase on Steam for $49.99. European’s who pre-ordered it for the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One can also download and play it now.
While there certainly been some highly anticipated releases in the sim racing world recently, such as Assetto Corsa, the buzz surrounding Project CARS has been borderline fanatic.
Of course, the fanaticism is partly due to the strategy that Slightly Mad Studios utilized to develop the title. Project CARS, aka Community Assisted Racing Simulator, was created in conjunction with the fans. Fans were able to fund the title and help steer the direction of it, truly making it for the people, by the people.
And now all that work put in by the developers and funders can see the light of day. Check out Darin’s first impression of the PC version of the title below and let us know what you think of Project CARS now that it’s finally here. Does it meet your expectations?
And look out for more Project CARS videos from us in the near future on our YouTube channel.
[youtube]https://youtu.be/wvu3r2tVYbc[/youtube]
i hear that triple screens are not properly supported ?
You are correct. One flat stretched image only. It looks awful. But the performance of this game is so bad that it would take a ridiculously powerful PC to run with proper tripe screen support anyways.
It certainly pushes PCs to the limit. I’m running 4K with medium FXAA, ultra settings and with 20 cars on track get a steady 60 fps. At night in a thunder storm I see drops into the mid 50s. But it definitely takes a monster PC to pull off.
I’m sorry the triples are having issues. You’d think that it’d be something that was sorted out in development like the other weird issues I’ve seen.
Transitioning to wet weather on slicks isn’t very well done, you lose grip but it should be much worse but the bigger problem is that the AI don’t seem to lose any pace. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out how to select a livery and every time I run a race it seems a livery is chosen for me at random.
If you’re running a res beyond 1440, you don’t need any antialiasing. Try turning on vsync. Oddly, the frame rate stays pretty much locked most of the time, where as when I had vsync off, it dipped a lot more. Didn’t think that’d be the case but its pretty much locked at 60fps at 60hz on my Sony 46″ bravia. Highest res that your card can handle, and No AA really help free up the frame rate. I put shadows to medium, grass @ high setting, antiostropic maxed at 16x, and reflections on high (not a huge difference switching to ultra though). I couldn’t be happier. Everythiny else on ultra. Try adding a little motion blur. Med setting looks pretty cool. I normally prefer not to have it in most games, but It adds a little smoothness and excitement
Yes, can someone please tell me how to select a livery? I can cycle through them in the garage but when choosing a car for a race there doesn’t seem to be an option to choose a livery. It just assigns one to you. Ugh.
I finally found it. Go to my garage, select a car and in the top left hand corner you can cycle through liveries. A very strange UI decision.
I was playing today and it’s certainly growing on me more. Tires still take a bit too long to warm up IMO but once they do feels really good. The only handling trait that’s off to me is catching big slides. Hooning is definitely easier in AC.
Yes, I was able to cycle through the liveries but I found it wouldn’t actually save my choice until I hit “Enter” on the keyboard after selecting the livery.
Thanks for pointing me in the right direction.
well hopefully 2 titans should give it a good go 🙂
No triple screens work just fine. Mine set itself to the basic triple screen settings. I did do some adjusting.
I’ve got the game now tim, and yes 3 screens do in fact work, however, and i should have been more specific earlier. triple screen support that i was looking for is the same as in iRacing, Assetto Corsa, Rfactor 2 etc were you can render each screen separately, what project cars gives you is a stretched image.
hopefully they are working hard on bringing it to us in a patch update 🙂
Yeah, it does lack triple render, but I can’t get my fps high enough to consider that. 60-70 is all I have found yet. But I hear turning off the grass helps. Yorkie065 has some tips, his is single screen, but I have seen him with triples.
This game is making me want another 980 and 3 monitors.lol. I didn’t get a chance to try the final version in rift dk2 yet, but if there still aren’t any shadows, I’m gonna pass and just keep playing it on a flat screen with all the glorious graphics bells and whistles turned up instead. Gtx 980 runs this game pretty damn well. But it just makes you want even more more more.
2 980s do the job pretty well with SLI scaling being very good. I’m waiting on the final specs for the consumer Rift that was announced yesterday and seeing what HTC does with the Vive.
I’m running triple 27’s with a single 970 with virtually every setting on Ultra and it runs smooooooooth.
Smooth at ~30 fps in the rain?
Fair question. Ran a test. Hockenheim, 20 cars, light rain, transitioning to heavy rain. Here’s the results:
Gameplay was smooth, and never saw the Fraps meter dip below 42 fps. Getting mid-60’s on average with clear weather. I’ve got detailed grass turned off and particle settings on Medium. Everything else is on High or Ultra. I’ve turned Lens Flare off because I don’t like it, not sure what impact that’s having on fps.
good graphics but I find the force feedback to be a joke,Ive been playing assetto corsa for a while now and have been looking forward to project cars since announcement but now after playing it cant help but feel a little disappointed.In a couple of previous posts I have moaned about force feedback concentrating on power over feeling and this game sums this up perfectly,I can see the car bouncing on screen over the rough surface but none of this is transmitted through the wheel,likewise there is no feel when you hit the rumble strips or when the front wheels lose grip,No problem I would just go and tweak the force settings….WTF! sorry slightly mad but I don’t have a degree in rocket science,what a totally insane number of variables,im pretty sure im not the only one who cant work out the exact exact force of the tire acting on a linkage connected by a flexible coupling to a shaft connected to the flexible lever of my arm,by all means have these options in an advanced tab somewhere for the die hard tweakers but I would be happy with the simpler settings from assetto….4 hours of tweaking and its still crap….just sore arms,and yes I have looked in the forums but why should I have to?If I cant feel the kirbs or rumble strips or the road surface in general then let me alter an effects strength setting or a simple tyre feedback setting or better still sort it so I don’t have too you put the release date back time after time so there is no excuse,so until this is sorted im going back to assetto and my advice to anyone thinking of buying it would be to try it out first along with a couple of its rivals but you splash the cash….
I agree. I’ve never played Project Cars until today. I have a Thrustmaster TX with the latest drivers and all settings at default. The FF is almost non-existent and what little there is feels vague and sloppy. By contrast, other PC sims like Assetto Corsa, iRacing, RBR etc. feel amazing on default settings.
The physics aren’t impressing me either. I was expecting them to be close to the likes of AC, iRacing, GT6, Forza 5 etc. but it feels like a dated NFS:Shift/GTR2 physics model at best.
After playing DiRT Rally, the graphics and sounds seem very dated in Project Cars too. Honestly I don’t think the game has anything going for it other than lots of (smooth, lifeless,non-laser-scanned) tracks.
Try before you buy is my advice folks.
Thanks for your reply….I had the day off today and have spent a lot of time looking at a load of reviews on youtube and everyone seems split into two groups…the ones that don’t like it cause its full of bugs and the rest just seem to be afraid of saying anything bad about it although they are clearly unimpressed with it,watch a few and you will see what I mean,There are two things I find hard to believe…one that its been in development for 4 YEARS!…and secondly that a community of racers didn’t pick up anything wrong which either means my wheel is broke even though it works fine on assetto or that they changed something before the gold version was released.i never played the pre release so couldn’t really say.I cant believed they released it on console because I don’t think it has enough substance and there is no way that its able to go up against either forza or gt…anyway back to assetto until someone comes up with a solution
try to mess around with 3 parameters – overall FFB + tire force and deadzone removal range (both in calibration). And do not touch anything else.
For my t500rs FFB -100 %, Tire force – 50 % and deadzone – 0.06 – working fine and no FFB cliping or loosing in the deadzone. But Yea, kindda not very intuitive.
I finally found out the problem with the force feedback. Even with overall force set to 100%, the master scale on each car seems too low for my wheel. e.g. the McLaren MP412C had a master scale of 26 for Imola. I changed it to 40 and it was *much* sharper and stronger. I tried 60 but that was just ridiculous and felt like the car was stuck in a tram line.
Also, the default set ups for a lot of cars at a lot of tracks is pretty bad e.g. crazy brake bias which badly unsettles the car on corner entry. That sort of stuff wasn’t immediately apparent when the steering was so messed up. I’m warming to the game now but I’d still like to see more bumps in the tracks. The surfaces are far too perfect which I suspect might be a console geometry limitation.
Project Cars greatest strength is its tweakability but that might be its greatest weakness too. It’s going to bamboozal a lot of people…especially when the defaults on common hardware are so poor. Also, most of the gameplay, graphics, sound and controller options are only available in the main menu so it’s a real pain having to quit out of a race just to make a small tweak.
Looks like it’s worth persevering though.
Cheers for that,but give this a try.like you said turning up the force feedback made the steering better but still not much feedback off the road,return that feedback setting in the pits to the default 26 then go into configuration on the controls menu go to the bottom to advanced and turn that off and it should blank out the last three options,then toto control scheme so it displays your wheel and click on calibrate force feedback,turn wheel position smoothing off and turn linkage stiffness to max,then the ones that make all the difference are per wheel movement and movement squared I set both to 130 to start and then tweek to suite your preference….hope that helps….also turn up the tire force to 120 and then tweek,let me know what you think
Sorry that was per wheel movement to 30 and squared to 130,staring at numbers all day is making me go mad. Lol
Sorry about this but just found out I’m not going mad I’ve found another bug.when I changed the settings for wheel movement and squared I swore they were both at 130 but when I altered it, it changed to .30 hence the 2nd reply apologising for the mistake,but just went out for another test lap went back to tweek the settings and it says 130 again but changing it puts a zero at the front and then after a race it goes back to a 1 again so just move the sliders to the right until it feels right
I want my money back…
This has been the biggest disappointing release for me. The game looks ok but the physics is simply not there.. at all. FFB is non existent and the lack of proper support for 3 screens is unbelievable.
This game is not even close to be a simulator and is just another Need for Speed like game. I am sure that it can be fun playing Project Cars at a party with drunk friends but it is next to useless as a simulator.
Me too,but that’s the joys of digital downloads,no disc to try and exchange at game…lol
I thought I was being too hard on the game so I went away and gave it another chance. I spent a good 6-7 hours trying everything out and reading forums to find recommended settings for my wheel and it’s still pretty terrible. I can’t believe they spent 4 years on this and still have the nerve to call it a simulator.
The game runs at a constant 60fps on my 980..even at 4K if I disable AA but so it should as the graphics are nothing special in my opinion.
Project Cars has given me a new level of appreciation for Assetto Corsa, iRacing and even Forza 5.
If you got it on Steam can’t you trade it?
This is a true dichotomic game. It has some really fantastic graphics in some ways, but I can’t get my frame rate to stay much above 60 fps. Which is okay, as long as it is smooth, and other than during hard corners it is good. I am using motion blur for first time on triples, it is heping(?) I guess. The sound is much better than GT6, but the adjustments are lacking, I want more and better road noise for my Buttkicker2. Setting up a lobby for online racing is okay, but three of us were on TeamSpeak and we all saw different lobbies available. We did find each other by entering the host’s name. I use a T500 and I did get the wheel ffb to work somewhat, but still not much actual feedback. The rumbles, are disappointing, I know “no canned effects” and paint does not provide feedback like in other games. I did like the way I can put cracks in the concrete walls with my car. LOL Broke bits off in spots and then hit a small signpost and it spun me around. LOL Not what I was expecting. Anyways, driving in the rain is really special. IF you allow traction control and abs it is really driveable and the looks are amazing. I would like to see more than on/off switching of abs and traction control. I did spend three hours of adjusting my graphics first. I locked up my pc a couple of times and found I had to go into “C:UsersYourNameDocumentsProject CARSgraphicsconfigdx11” and delete the file. (Hidden file needs admin and unlock.)Then I could enter the game and readjust some of the graphics til it worked better. FXAA was the main culprit. (Your results may vary.)
I have a factory superclocked GTX780 video card and triple screens. It seems to make no difference what I set the details to, except the shadows, the picture remains virtually the same. The fps goes no higher than 70 and no lower than 45, and that was at Sarthe with the weather turned to its worst. Not perfect but still looks good and is fairly smooth. With triples, turn all the bells and whistles down and tweak up as needed. Even 2AA or 4AA works ok. As far as feedback goes with my T500, I turned it to 810 degrees on global and in game, 65 overall strength global 100% constant and periodic, 0% spring and damper, but I do have 12% Auto-Center, it works. In game, match the 810 degrees and just follow the onscreen prompting in wheel setup. I have found some of the cars still have too light a wheel, but I found going in the setup for that car you can adjust the wheel feedback there. No the game is not perfect, but there is a lot to work with. I kept thinking how they went on about how this game was not going to be released until it was perfect and how I was going to roast them every time I found a problem, but instead I decided to just make the best of it. I am actually finding the game to be fun. True it is not iRacing, but if it was then there would be two iRacing games.
So, for all the folks below that seem to hate the game…I quite like it. And about 80% of the reviews on Steam are glowingly positive…so keep in mind your mileage may vary.
I’m not saying it’s perfect, but I do feel that the good far outweighs the bad and if you’re truly a fan of the genre it’s a no brainer purchase.
To be honest when i tried 8xx build I was not expecting much but in the end of the day I guess pCars is Ok compared to AC. It has not so detailed FFB but overall physics is sim no doubt – but still with a lot of small physical bugs 🙂 Corsa had it’s own physical bugs and still has some of them.
But as I see it pCars now has solid base for improvement to be competitive with AC.
“and if you’re truly a fan of the genre it’s a no brainer purchase.”
so because I don’t like this game im not truly a fan of the genre?i actually find that quite insulting and as for the reviews on steam I have just read a few that gave it a thumbs up and most just go on about the graphics but also that there is room for improvement,i did like the one ‘glowingly’? positive review who commented that this game was THE REAL DRIVING SIMULATOR! as a casual pc keyboard game player and that it would probably be better with a wheel, that’s why I usually watch video reviews or visits sites like this to get an informed review from proper racers…….I just wish I had waited to read a few instead of believing the hype.
You feel quite insulted by my comment above?
I’m good with that.
I feel like there needs to be some kind of sim racing psychological study regarding the chasm of opinions on this title.
I’ve been playing sim titles since before Grand Prix Legends, lots of hours in iRacing, I’ve played Assetto Corsa for over 80 hours…I own and have driven rFactor 2 a ton…and the bottom line is I enjoy Project Cars…a lot. The fact that some people actually really genuinely like this title a lot seems to just make some people really angry. I see a lot of negative reviews on Steam and most of the people writing those negative reviews have very little playing time, usually less than an hour. There are lots and lots of ways to tweak this title to your liking…so dig in.
Also, I play with triple screens and I hear all the time about how horrible it is…I have no problem with my triple screen setup. I look to the left and it looks like I’m looking to the left of my car…same for the right side. Maybe you all need to adjust your FOV? You can also map the seat forward-back-up-down. Give that a shot.
I like all those other titles for various reasons…Project Cars does some things better than those other titles and for me delivers a fun time. Your mileage may vary.
I like it…if you don’t you don’t. Hopefully you’ll find something in there to enjoy too.
Well good for you,obviously a sim racing master,maybe you should use some of that vast knowledge to offer helpful setups like other people on this this forum instead of blowing your own trumpet,be careful that you don’t strain your ego turning from left to right to quickly on your triple screen setup,again help people..As it happens if you took the time to read all the latest posts you would find that we are still trying to get the settings right and that after several helpful contributions we are starting to make progress,after spending another four hours solid I’m finally getting the feedback to work but there are still problems with the game like no feedback from the road if travelling in a straight line,bumps extra only when making an input on the wheel.Also it’s not a great physiological mystery,project cars promised to be all things to all men but it isn’t,it does lots of things I love like no rewinds,no stupid upgrades and everything being available without having to earn credits,what I don’t like is that I’m spending hours on trying to get it to feel right when considering the time it was in development I would have expected out of the box,maybe your more interested in eye candy than how it feels,each to there own I guess,
Reread your posts, especially the last one.
Anyone else? Happy to help.
Yes. It’s a game clearly aimed at console casuals…like you.
Wow…you got me there…total burn.
You might want to go take a few deep breaths before posting. The guy you responded to wasn’t showing an enormous ego— just saying he has been playing sims quite a while— including the “hardcore” ones– and yet still finds pCars enjoyable.
80% of the reviews on Steam? That means nothing. Who cares what some 12 year old thinks. Oh, and you know alot of those reviews come from developers, publishers and their families and friends?
Hi guys my first tip for the t3/500 is to make sure you calibrated it (in game)and try in the control config options controller imput mode 1 my ps4 version was set on 3 but my pc version was set on 1 so its best try them all
regarding calibrating your wheel. during the second part it asks you to hold your wheel at 90 and press A button. Don’t let the wheel snap back you must hold it at 90 until you feel the wheel stop trying to spin back and then you will get decent FFB on your wheel. If you let the wheel snap back there will be very week to no FFB.
Did you folks really think you would get a game that would be better than iRacing for under $50? Come on man. It is a really pretty game with sunrises and sunsets that beat any other racing game I have seen. Is it perfect like they promised us? Of course not. I really considered blasting them for each and every little problem with the game. But, I decided to just enjoy the game as what it is, a game. You buy it, you adjust the video and your wheel and play. No buying cars, no building your safety rating and losing it in one race… Just play.
Agreed. Nice and casual.
Good graphics but that’s as far as the ‘good’ goes. FFB is practically non-existent (cars feel glued to the surface) and here’s a list of bugs I’ve encountered:
1) Rain doesn’t affect AI cars. They just drive around like it’s dry and sunny.
2) Tyre wear doesn’t affect the AI.
3) Fuel load doesn’t affect the AI (you can see this by watching lap times).
4) AI is ridiculously bad. I’ve lost count of the number of time I’ve rear-ended someone on the start grid because they don’t get away fast enough.
5) Collision detection is broken. Many times I’ve driven through and AI car instead of having a proper shunt.
6) Wet weather races are far too common.
7) Pit crew audio seems to be random. It isn’t in every race.
8) The never ending lap 1 bug. I’ve had this when I get stuck on lap one. The lap counter doens’t increase. Have to exit race and start over.
There are also numerous UI faults.
pcars is an anagram of scrap, btw.