Project CARS

Well this is surprising. Earlier this week Sony announced PlayStation Hits, a collection of games at a discount price. This will sound familiar to many as it’s no different than the past Greatest Hits line.

UK sim racers looking to get behind the wheel of a real-world open-wheeler, take note. A seat in the 2018 National Formula Ford Championship is up for grabs via a sim-racing competition.

The familiar setting of Brands Hatch has become a testing ground for yet another comparison, showing the similarities — and differences — between two racing simulators. The latest video compares Project CARS to the GT Sport beta, using the up-to-date Corvette C7.R and Gr.3 car, respectively.

This year has certainly been kind to racers on the Xbox One so far: just earlier this month the Forza Horizon 3 Car Pass was up grabs to Live subscribers for 40% off, and it appears the Xbox team has already outlined its plans for February. Another racing game will be the highlight, this time offered for free through the Games with Gold program.

If one were to make a list of innovations that have changed the way we play video games in recent years, eSports would be near the top. It’s safe to say that eSports has boomed over the last few years and could be well on its way to being classified as a regulated and officially-recognized sport.

Project CARS’ latest eSports tournament drew to a close over the weekend, with £4500 being dished out across the lucky winners on Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and PC. Streamed live on Twitch, the best drivers on Slightly Mad Studios’ 2015 racer went head-to-head across two 15 lap races on British circuits Brands Hatch and Oulton Park in the Ginetta GT3 racer. The end results were anything but tame with such a huge prize at stake.

The climax of the 2016 Ginetta x Project CARS eSports Cup is about to get underway. This weekend 45 selected semi-finalists are going to compete for the championship trophy and a three £1,500 cash prizes. Scheduled for today and tomorrow, the big finale will be streamed live on Twitch, which you can watch above. Is everyone ready?

Today seems to be full of surprises. The unusual Porsche avatars on Xbox are one thing, but a free edition of an existing game is something different altogether. Hot on the heels of the news that the game has sold two million copies, Project CARS – Pagani Edition launches today, exclusively on Steam.

The men and women over at Slightly Mad Studios had cause for celebration this week, as their 2015 multi-platform sim racer hit another sales threshold. Project CARS first crossed the seven-figure mark shortly after launch in June 2015, and has now doubled that amount to two million.

Quick: What is the first thing that comes to mind when you read the word ‘Ginetta’? Is it the manufacturer’s storied history of producing sports cars for the aspiring racecar driver? Perhaps the name rings a bell because of games like Gran Turismo or, more recently, Project CARS. Or maybe no significance comes to mind at all.

Project CARS and Ginetta Cars have entered into a partnership to give competitors an opportunity to reap the rewards of a potential racing career, courtesy of the Ginetta x Project CARS eSports Cup.

Located in Britain, Oulton Park circuit has hosted a number of Formula-style events during the its existence — British F3 still visits every year — before it became widely associated with modern touring car competitions. If driving around this challenging course in an open-wheeler seems to be rather unusual, then perhaps the following challenge should make you reconsider.

It’s been a while since we covered anything related to Marcel Pfister’s Mixed Reality series of gameplay videos. After the last few clips showcased iRacing’s RUF GT3 Cup car (tackling Laguna Seca first, followed by the Green Hell), we’re back to Project CARS, Slightly Mad Studios’ multi-platform sim racer.

It certainly seems to be a big week for Porsche fans. Hot off their Le Mans win, the German purveyor of sports cars has announced a serious tie-up with Kunos Simulazioni to bring the marque’s best and brightest to Assetto Corsa this autumn. It now appears another sim title could be seeing Porsche’s inclusion soon, judging by comments from Slightly Mad Studios CEO Ian Bell.

The push toward Virtual Reality is coming hard and fast, with Sony’s Playstation VR launching this October – if you can get your hands on it – while HTC’s Vive and the Oculus Rift are already in consumer hands for the PC market. From a sim racing perspective, Project CARS leads the way for inclusion of VR with support for both Oculus and the Vive. Slightly Mad Studios will further show off their VR capabilities this Saturday as they host the ’24 minutes of Le Mans’ in conjunction with Audi.

We often hear of people transitioning to professional racing thanks to video games. The GT Academy initiative is perhaps the most obvious example, but it’s hardly the only one. Slightly Mad Studios, the studio behind Project CARS, has released a documentary focusing on the inspiring story of Nicolas Hamilton’s career progression.

We’ve been witnessing a prodigious heat increase among gaming enthusiasts ever since Slightly Mad Studios announced the adoption of the Oculus Rift VR headset into Project CARS, introducing the breakthrough of virtual reality technology into the world of driving games. The tried-and-true method of comparing still images isn’t sufficient these days; here you have to monitor vehicles in motion to truly perceive the magnitude of this technology. We recently reported about Oculus Rift experiments on Assetto Corsa and DiRT Rally and now it is time to see how this virtual reality item works in conjunction with Project CARS.

Has it been 12 months already? Project CARS launched 365 days ago on May 7, 2015 (that crafty leap-year). To call the current version a vastly different beast than the launch title is to be putting it mildly. While many will recall various issues with the title over the past year, what can’t be argued is Slightly Mad Studios’ continued support of the game. Wrapping that all up in a neat package is the Game of the Year Edition, available as of today for PS4, XB1, and PC.

What does a croissant have in common with Brands Hatch Indy, the clipped version of the historic circuit? Well, they both share the same, gentle crescent-shaped figure and digestibility. As far as video games are concerned, digestible content equals popular content, with a number of users continuously returning for another tasty snack. I’m quite positive anyone could confirm that the track in question fits that description.

As revealed late last week, the sonorous Mercedes-AMG GT3 joins Project CARS, further expanding the title’s impressive list of GT3 class racing machinery, and is available to everyone at no additional cost.