Project CARS News and Reviews

http://www.xboxachievements.com/news/news-19477-Project-CARS-Hands-on-Preview-----As-Real-As-It-Gets.html

http://news.softpedia.com/news/Project-Cars-Gameplay-Videos-Show-Why-It-s-the-Most-Ambitious-Racing-Sim-461425.shtml

Check these amazing vids out.

PS4 actual game play  

http://www.ign.com/videos/2014/10/09/4-minutes-of-project-cars-gameplay-nycc-2014

another fine comparo Real vs Unreal!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGePS0xRU2s

"In an age where playing a games console can be easily mistaken for watching reality, racing simulation games have proven a tricky task to master. The tracks are so accurate that you’ll feel the crest coming out of the tunnel at Monaco, or the force of downhill braking as you descend the mountain at Bathurst. Yet there has been one aspect that is yet to be conquered – recreating the full driving experience through to the gamer. Well in Project Cars, they might just have cracked it."


http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/gaming/project-cars-preview-wheels-to-make-you-go-wow-9790834.html

Fascinating remarks by Ben Collins, the original "Stig" from "Top Gear" on simulation games.

The Stig: "GT (Gran Turismo) is quite fun for a bit, but it was quite arcady, and didn't think it was that real."

The Stig: "I got bored with Forza."

http://www.virtualr.net/ben-collins-talks-project-cars-video

Project CARS aims to replace bits and bytes with true character 
http://www.lazygamer.net/general-news/project-cars-aims-to-replace-bits-and-bytes-with-true-character/

Here's hoping this is true.  Apparently Micro$oft has decided to play nice with Fanatec.

Landshut, Germany – 3.10.2014 – This is the announcement many people have been waiting for and we are happy to announce that Endor AG (the company behind the brand Fanatec) and Microsoft Corp. have closed a license agreement to make racing peripherals for the Xbox One. 
Fanatec plans to release a broad line up of racing wheels which will fit all kind of racing styles Landshut, Germany – 3.10.2014 – This is the announcement many people have been waiting for and we are happy to announce that Endor AG (the company behind the brand Fanatec) and Microsoft Corp. have closed a license agreement to make racing peripherals for the Xbox One. 
Fanatec plans to release a broad line up of racing wheels which will fit all kind of racing styles and different budgets.
Xbox One brings the latest in innovation and power to the development of racing peripherals giving fans of Fanatec products the opportunity to play the newest Xbox One titles with full support and integration. 
Available soon, fans will be able to enable Xbox One compatibility on their current Fanatec wheels by simply attaching them to a Fanatec wheel base, making their whole system compatible to Xbox One. Additional details and features will be announced soon.
Additional Fanatec peripherals like pedals, shifters or handbrakes that were purchased with an Xbox 360 will also be compatible with Xbox One. The modular configuration system in the Fanatec webshop allows you to purchase only the components you need.

Thomas Jackermeier, CEO of Endor/Fanatec: “I am very excited to announce this partnership as we have been working with Microsoft behind the scenes on new and exciting products. Xbox One and “Forza Motorsport” will continue to be a landmark of ultra-realistic racing simulations on any gaming console and we look forward to bringing this realism to a whole new level for our fans.” 

http://www.Fanatec.com/
https://www.facebook.com/Fanatec
@fanatec 

You can thank our friend RSR Nelly for this technical data on Project CARS tire modeling.  The detail is extreme, giving us a glimpse into just how serious Slightly Mad Studios is about getting it just right.

INSIDE PROJECT CARS SETA TIRE MODEL

POSTED: OCTOBER 16, 2014

Racing, whether it happens in the real or the virtual world, is all about tires. That’s why Project CARS is powered by the revolutionary Seta Tire Model (STM) that plays a key role in making the WMD-powered title the most authentic virtual racing experience.

But what exactly does the Seta Tire Model do? Slightly Mad Studios’ physics expert Andrew Weber takes us for a look deep under the hood of the tire technology that drives Project CARS!


SETA TIRE MODEL DESCRIBED

Seta Tire Model (STM) is a full dynamic tire simulation. Actually, it is three coupled simulations, one for the tire carcass, one for the tire tread and contact patch, and one for heat transfer simulation. It is also modular, where different carcass and tread simulations techniques can be used interchangeably. For example, off road racing may use a different tread simulation.

CARCASS SIMULATION

The carcass simulation used in Project Cars is a finite element simulation with specific computational optimizations specific to real time tire simulation. The carcass is discretized into small connected “elements”, each one flexing and deforming due to forces.

Features:

Elastic behavior changes with speed, temperature, and pressure
Rolling resistance changes with speed, temperature and pressure
Sidewall buckling at low pressure
Bias Ply, Radial, or Hybrid construction
Gyroscopic Effects
Dynamic response such as vibration, telescoping, and twisting
Seta Tire Model
Seta Tire Model
Seta Tire Model


TREAD SIMULATION

The tread simulation used in Project Cars is a finite difference simulation of the contact patch, with the tire tread “flowing” through the contact patch. The whole tread itself is discretized into elements much like the carcass, but the contact patch itself is a finite difference grid.

Features:

Flash Heating, which is the change of temperature in the outermost rubber layer through the contact patch.
Componentized grip model. Each component is affected differently by road surface conditions, wetness, and temperature.
Deformation – the rubber deforming in and around asperities, resisting sliding motion.
Adhesion – the rubber bonding to surface rubber and material.
Tack – the sticky tacky grip you can feel on your shoes when walking a rubbered in track, related to adhesion.
Tearing – the ripping of rubber from the tire
Cut – grip from the geometry, edges, grooves, and siping of the tread, with particular effect in dirt and gravel
Tread channel depth and water handling.
Discretized and temperature sensitive wear
Curing
Temperature sensitive elastic properties
The carcass and tread simulations are coupled such that there is no roughness or “stepping”, while still preserving the detail of both simulations. The contact patch size, shape, and pressure distribution is determined by the carcass simulation and is used by the tread simulation. The forces on the tire from the road surface are simulated in the tread simulation and transferred as external forces to the carcass simulation.

HEAT TRANSFER SIMULATION

The heat transfer simulation handling heat flow between brakes, wheel well, rim, carcass, and tread layers. The heat transfer amongst tread elements, from tread elements to the road surface, and from the tread elements to the air are handled directly by the tread simulation (including advection and evaporation). The pressure of the tire is maintained by the carcass simulation via the ideal gas law.

Emergent Effects

Most effects just “fall out” of STM without explicit coding for effect:
Fy, Fx, and Mz vs slip angle curves, complete with realistic nuances, such as Mz inversion
Inclination effects such as camber thrust
Complex and sometimes subtle changes in behavior due to load, heat, pressure, and speed.
Proper behavior at a standstill and very slow speeds, although due to limitations of consumer force feedback devices, oscillations may still occur. Many tire models break down at a standstill.
Flatspots
Hydroplaning
Changed in behavior due to surface differences, such as surface roughness, track rubbering in, wetness, and dirt. 

Sad news indeed...


In a statement passed to Eurogamer, the company reaffirmed the reasons previously stated to backers - that the game would benefit from being moved away from the competitive holiday season dominated by household names and from extra development time to polish the game.

"Our goal has always been to deliver a landmark title that encompasses the wishes and desires of racing fans from all around the world; something with features and content powered by the community that provide a truly unforgettable and pioneering experience," Slightly Mad Studios boss Ian Bell explained.

"Whilst a tough decision to make, the change in release date allows the game the greatest chance of success and visibility, and the opportunity to polish the game even further to the high standards that both ourselves and our community demand and expect. We're eager for you all to see what we've been working on in just a few months."



ORIGINAL STORY 17/10/14 1.20pm: Slightly Mad Studios has reportedly delayed its upcoming racer Project Cars until March 2015.


The delay has yet to be publicly confirmed, but was earlier announced to the project's community of backers via a post on the studio's private forum.

Project Cars had been due to launch in the UK on 21st November for PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. A Wii U edition had already been delayed into next year.

The text of Slightly Mad's post to members - and the upcoming press statement designed for public release - have now been shared online via backers reaching out to SixthAxis and NowGamer.

"Attached to this post is a press release which will go live tomorrow which announces that the new release date for the PC/PS4/XB1 versions of the game is now March next year," director Andy Garton wrote.

"We wanted you guys to read it here first and to try and expand a little more on the reasoning.

"Primarily, this has come about because a couple of other big games have announced they are shipping around the same time as our planned first date," Garton continued, likely due to the close launch of Ubisoft's own racer The Crew, and possibly due to the rumoured November release of Grand Theft Auto 5 for PS4 and Xbox One.

"We know it might be a little hard to believe but this would have had a very significant impact on our initial sales (and the initial sales period is critical as that's when the majority occur. It became immediately clear therefore that we'd need to move away from this release window.

"The other factor at play here which I'm sure most if not all of your are aware of is that the game is still lacking the fixes and polish it really deserves. We've been working extremely hard on tracking towards the original date, and could indeed have made it, but deep down we knew it wouldn't have resulted in the ultimate level of quality that we wanted. 

"Project Cars isn't 'just another game' for SMS, it's the start of our very own IP/brand which we believe can live and be succesful for a long time. It's critical the first release is a solid one therefore to lay the foundations for those plans.

"As such we decided that a release early next year made a lot of sense all round. January is traditionally a very slow month for game sales (people have spent all their spare cash up to and including the holidays). February is affected to a lesser degree so March is an ideal window.

"We appreciate there may be some disappointment but hope most will see this as overall a positive move for the project."

The statement closes with the reassurance that the developer has now secured financial backing for its additional development time and that there would be no major additions despite the delay - as the studio would again find itself short on time to polish the game to the level it needs.

Project Cars distributor Bandai Namco told Eurogamer that it could not yet comment on the delay but was aware of the reports online. 

Unbelievable!!!

One more delay of 5 Months, that is not professional at all. If the gamoe is not ready yet it will neve be.

They have compete with some other games, thats why they have been promoting the game with videos and Bla Bla Bla. no reason to be afraid.
The game is incomplete and that is the why.

I really dont know what to think. Not happy very sure

Indeed, but, I know this is the truth of the matter. They need more time to get the Xbone to run 1080px60fm, and since it will take more time, they might as well optimize the release date to a better time too. I'm crushed like everyone, but it will be worth the wait.

Yes, another delay is disappointing. I was looking forward to giving this a go.

Back to iRacing for the time being. It is very challenging! I do wish its telemetry system was...simpler. Simple isn't their goal, though, realism is. If some computer jockey could recreate Forza4 telemetry, overlayed over a replay, I'd spend $100 on it...
. Time to go to iRacing forums to throw that bait out there.

I might have to do the same in the interim and pay for a little iRacing time.  Check out this comparison.  The sound for Project CARS is amazing, better than any I've heard.  One small thing I noticed in this footage between Assetto and PCARS is that Assetto seems to be loose in the fast corners and tight in the slow, while PCARS is the opposite appearing, tight on the fast sweepers, and loose in the low speed stuff.  I think PCARS has it the right way for best effect.

http://www.gamepur.com/video/16634-project-cars-vs-assetto-corsa-eye-popping-comparison-video-pc-playstation.html

MTBVator wrote:Yes, another delay is disappointing.  I was looking forward to giving this a go.

Back to iRacing for the time being.  It is very challenging!  I do wish its telemetry system was...simpler.  Simple isn't their goal, though, realism is.  If some computer jockey could recreate Forza4 telemetry, overlayed over a replay, I'd spend $100 on it...
.  Time to go to iRacing forums to throw that bait out there.

Okay Vator, I've reactivated my iRacing account, what cars do you race in?  I'm pretty bad at iRacing but it appears their physics modeling has improved a little.  It's been well over a year since I've tried these cars.  In FM4 I was in the upper 90%, but in iRacing I'm in the bottom 10%. A total noob. lol

insane!

http://www.ign.com/articles/2014/10/24/project-cars-new-gameplay-trailer-is-scarily-realistic?watch

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QksH65BmjK4

http://www.nintendolife.com/news/2014/11/gallery_project_cars_screens_focus_on_realistic_karting

For those of you who want to know what the differences are between PC iRacing and console sims, I recently returned to iRacing after a 2 year absence.  I did so because Project CARS has been delayed, Forza 4 is burnt out, and Forza 5 and GT6 are boring.

It is interesting how iRacing has little changed.  The feeling is still very stiff, cluttered, and not the fluid or simple user interface console users are used to.  The tracks are technically true, but not particularly eye popping.  It’s not that they are bad looking, but they don’t solicit an emotional vibe either.  They are fairly clinical and a tad opaque with too much contrast for my liking.  But this is just nit picking because they do offer the proper realistic performance you’d expect.
 
Because each track is a digital copy of the real track, they are all very unique.  And with more tracks than cars to pick from its amazing how few tracks you end up running on with each car.  This is how iRacing has addressed their limited number of cars.  Instead of having gobs of cars and a few tracks to run them on (which gets boring quickly) they have gobs of tracks and a few cars.  Project CARS has picked up on this improvement as well.  It turns out that it is the venue that is somewhat more important than the cars.  The more places you have to go to, the more variety of racing you will experience, and the less likely you will get bored.

The iRacing cars are well done, not masterpieces, but accurate looking. More than half are terribly difficult to drive leaving you with almost no joy to want to drive them at all.  Strange isn’t it?  These are the most accurate simulation race cars available, and yet they mostly suck to drive.  What gives?  It turns out that there is a not so slight mis-translation going from real to simulation.  Let me explain. 

You can copy all or almost all the physics acting on a real car to a simulated car and it will be accurate.  So accurate in fact that without the real peripherals such as a real steering wheel and real pedals, not to mention real motion, too much is lost in the translation.  In effect what you end up doing is driving a real car with unreal peripherals.  This is no small gap.  What happens with most of the iRacing cars is that you tend to be too ham-fisted with the inputs such as braking and accelerating.  Braking in particular is overly sensitive so that even a gentle stab can send you into a spin.  Most of the cars (because of this gap) tend to be wild over steer cars, and have almost no hope of saving them once the spin initiates. You basically have to totally re-learn how to drive with most of the iRacing cars because of the heavy over steer and super sensitive brakes.  Now you might be tempted to say, “Maybe it’s just you GTDon, maybe you’re just not very good, or maybe your wheel setup sucks?”  Before you go there, let me tell you that I have driven some of these cars in real life and did not have the same problem.  One car in particular is the SCCA Spec Ford, tube frame, 1.9L 4cyl 105hp.  Having driven this car at my home track, I can tell you it was fairly easy, and did not lose its tail every time I stood on the brakes, or got on the gas early like the iRacing version does.
 
My conclusion is that in the real car I could feel so much more about what the car was doing, that it gave me ten times more control than the simulation version.  I started to think, if I had to use my Fanatec CSR wheel and elite pedals, to control a real car, with no sense of inertia, momentum, or much movement at all, how hard would it be to control the real car then?  I’m thinking pretty damn hard.  I’m thinking I would over use the brakes, and be too heavy with the throttle, and spin the damn thing out everywhere, pretty much like I do in iRacing. Lol

Credit has to go to the boys at iRacing for remaining so true to the vision of an uncompromised simulation, but, there is something to be said for what constitutes a better more realistic feeling simulation too.  It seems to me that just having a pure simulation without the familiar control you are used to in a real car, misses the point of what a “true simulation” should actually be.  I already know how to drive a real car, so why would I need to re-learn how to drive a simulated car if the simulation is supposed to be the same as the real deal?  If car sim people don’t take into account the senses we are missing in a simulation, it doesn’t seem fair or right to expect the user to operate the car without some level of compensation, that allows the car to feel more like what a car should feel like, given our limited controls.

It is this debate that has been at play with the console sim racing developers to date.  Their answer has been to back way off and go the opposite direction by adding-in hidden assists to make the cars easier to drive.  It has been the contention of people like Dan Greenawalt of Forza’s Turn 10, that not many would like a full unassisted simulation, and the art is in easy access and pick up and play, with cars that are fun to drive.  He has his point, but being at the opposite extreme to iRacing isn’t really the answer either I think.  No, what you want is the challenge of a full sim-racer, but with the more familiar feel of a real car that you have to in a sense, remotely control with less than accurate peripherals.

I think this is where Project CARS is stepping in.  They will be closer to the iRacing model and further from the Forza model by all accounts, and this to me might just be the best of all worlds.  You’ll have a slick looking game with a lot of tracks, leaning heavily toward a more challenging simulation, that won’t feel as unfamiliar or out of control as iRacing.

iRacing is paying attention of course as you can use assists in certain race situations, and they recently added team racing, something that Project CARS is going to have too, and that has been asked for, for a long time but never delivered.

So that’s it in a nutshell, if you go iRacing, expect to unexpectedly spin out until you re-learn how to drive, and then you’ll be good to go.  Or wait for Project CARS, and expect a certain immediate familiarity that you can build on right away.

Nice Review Don!

I think we never are going to reach real driving simulation, and as many of us have reced a real rece car, we can tell the difference between games and real life.
But we have succed on simulate racing, thats the point i Like.

Anyway, I have P.CARS not as priority right now, because it have came a fantasy story, a Prhofecy. I´ll wait until it will ¨be ready¨ to focus on it. Meanwhile I think i´ll be on shooting games since January.

See you soon!

Manuel CR wrote:Nice Review Don!

I think we never are going to reach real driving simulation, and as many of us have reced a real rece car, we can tell the difference between games and real life.
But we have succed on simulate racing, thats the point i Like.

Anyway, I have P.CARS not as priority right now, because it have came a fantasy story, a Prhofecy.  I´ll wait until it will ¨be ready¨ to focus on it.  Meanwhile I think i´ll be on shooting games since January.

See you soon!

Thanks, I don't want to make iRacing sound bad, because it's not, but I do want to point out that it is a very different world to that of console racing.  It is fun, and extremely challenging, the graphics are very good as is the sound, but there are some things the console games do better still.  If you could merge the two you'd have something really cool.  

If you could merge the technical seriousness of iRacing and cash payouts, with the user friendly ease of the console, you'd have the best of all worlds. Project CARS is attempting to do something like this.  Their graphics will be superior, their sound quality as good or better, their track environments richer and more alive, their XBL community easier to communicate with others, and the physics of the cars more in-line with what you'd expect from experiencing real cars, and you'll have the total package I believe.  It will be gorgeous to look at, and NOT a simulator to a fault, meaning that just because you have an uncompromising simulation doesn't mean that it translates very well to how the car should feel.  There are certain elements to the feel of a real car that are lost in a pure simulation like iRacing simply because you can't feel the motion that goes with it.  Developers have to do some trickery to account for a lack of g's to get a more accurate feel that people will recognize.  Even more so when using essentially toy steering wheels that are not truly as accurate as real steering wheels, and can't really keep up with the more precise software.  Yes, the top of the line wheels and pedals do much better, but not many can spend over $1,000.00 for those.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nELMKvrExDw

http://www.carthrottle.com/gamers-can-instantly-race-any-car-they-want-in-project-cars-does-this-defeat-the-object-of-racing-games-for-you/

http://www.ign.com/articles/2014/11/20/project-cars-will-run-at-60fps-on-xbox-one



http://gamingbolt.com/new-project-cars-screenshots-are-pretty-impressive

http://www.pcgamer.com/project-cars-now-up-for-pre-purchase-on-steam/