Project CARS Available as Free 'Games with Gold' Title in February

Well this is pretty nifty. I've always been curious about PC, I just never bought it because I didn't know if I'd get into it.
 
May as well get this question out now while the attention is on this thread:

I hear this game's default controller settings are pretty troublesome on Xbox.

Does anyone have any setting parameters they can provide that will help make the cars better to drive or a little closer to the performance that similarly skilled people can get out of a wheel?

For reference, the Forza titles usually have rather good controller settings out of the box, to the point where it doesn't matter if you use a wheel or controlller when it comes to competitive play, as both are easily capable of setting top leaderboard times.

I haven't played Project CARS at all, but if I'm going to start then I'd like my controller to be as adequately set up as possible.
 
@PJTierney -- I was literally just about to share mine, including my reference for what exactly each setting does (as far as I could figure out). :cheers:

FYI, I'm normally the type of player to use quick taps of the analog stick, but I found that dampening the steering to accomplish that is more trouble than it's worth. For this game I think it's almost obligatory to play by tilting the analog stick instead, but with these settings you can tap the stick for minor course corrections without upsetting the car.

Input Mode: 3
Assists: ABS ON
Code: 
Steering Sensitivity:   25
Throttle Sensitivity:   45
Brake Sensitivity:      45

These sensitivities control analog linearity.
0-49 is slower near the center/low end and faster at the end of the axis.
51-100 is faster near the center/low end and slower at the end of the axis.

Code: 
Speed Sensitivity:      50
Filtering Sensitivity:  50

Speed Sensitivity controls the maximum steering lock based on your velocity.
Higher = less steering lock at high speeds.

Filtering Sensitivity controls the maximum rate (speed) of steering.
0 is fastest, 100 is slowest.

Code: 
Advanced:                  ON
Soft Steering Dampening:   ON
Visual Filtering:         OFF
Opposite Lock Help:       OFF

Soft Steering Dampening helps soften sudden inputs, like a flick of the analog stick.

Visual Filtering affects the cockpit wheel/driver animation, making it smoother and more "realistic". When turned off, it reflects your actual steering position in real time, like in telemetry.

Opposite Lock Help boosts countersteer input to catch oversteer more quickly, but it does not prevent you from overcorrecting.
 
PJTierney
May as well get this question out now while the attention is on this thread:

I hear this game's default controller settings are pretty troublesome on Xbox.

Does anyone have any setting parameters they can provide that will help make the cars better to drive or a little closer to the performance that similarly skilled people can get out of a wheel?

For reference, the Forza titles usually have rather good controller settings out of the box, to the point where it doesn't matter if you use a wheel or controlller when it comes to competitive play, as both are easily capable of setting top leaderboard times.

I haven't played Project CARS at all, but if I'm going to start then I'd like my controller to be as adequately set up as possible.
Click to expand...

I was forced to switch from wheel to controller due to a lasting knee injury and the video from Moneyman300 is pretty damn great for basic controller settings.



It still doesn't make PCARS as easy to play as Forza's "tick tick tack tack" steering but it does make some of the cars really fun to drive, even with a controller. The game overall feels soooo much better and realistic than FM6. If you play PC for a few weeks and then go back to Forza the latter will truly feel like Super Mario Kart. :) I'm not kidding. Also helmet camera with looking into corners and motion blur + the dynamic weather with and day/night cycles and affecting tyre strategies + all the customisation you want for controls and races + a very fun single player career calendar + the massive track roster and much more realistic sounds make this IMO the best racing game currently available on the XBox. Forza is more polished and Assetto has the superior handling model (only for a wheel) but nothing beats PC in the complete package.

Back to that video, you will also notice that you have general settings and per-car settings. If you follow Moneyman300's video that's for the general part. If you then start driving different cars they all behave different. I didn't go much into per car tuning myself, way too much work for my taste. I just drive what works well. For example that Rocket Bunny GT86 was fenomenal just doing rounds on the Nurburgring's Mullerbach schleife the other day. But then at the same time that Ginetta Junior GT5 car I currently have to drive in career mode is crap, it doesn't stick to the road at all. I'm sure it could be set up to drive much better but I CBA ATM. :)

Also check out the PCARS community forums, seriously nice and matture people there and very different from the kids from the T10 boards. :) Sections I use the most are general, then off topic (great for real life racing discussions) and the XBox forum.

http://forum.projectcarsgame.com/

Welcome to PC!

edit - Wolfe I will check out your settings as well tonight and compare them with Moneyman's. And then go back to the Mullerbachschleife to see the impact on that GT86 RB. :)
 
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breyzipp
I was forced to switch from wheel to controller due to a lasting knee injury and the video from Moneyman300 is pretty damn great for basic controller settings.



It still doesn't make PCARS as easy to play as Forza's "tick tick tack tack" steering but it does make some of the cars really fun to drive, even with a controller. The game overall feels soooo much better and realistic than FM6. I
Click to expand...


Even though Forza has seen its share of criticism from gamers and hardcore sim purists alike, myself included, I would have to call you out on the "tick tick tack tack" steering. While it may not be as diverse or detailed as pad steering in other driving games like AC or PCARS, it takes a lot more than just flicking or tapping the stick on either side. It's called sim steering accompanied by 0/100 deadzones which requires you to take proper racing lines in order to hit the best lap times. That means moving the analog stick only as much as you need to and many a times, holding it at specific angles to drift your car, recover from slides or hit apexes while keeping speed reasonably up.

Also, FYI, Forza is a first-party game which means they have to build it around the pad. However, the other two are programmed to take full advantage of a wheel.

We're just speaking strictly from a pad perspective.

As for physics being more realistic than Forza.. if we're talking a wheel, yes, for sure! Unfortunately, I don't see Forza being hailed as a physics innovator in future titles. It is sad. Good news is, Developers like S.Mad and Kunos are serious about delivering realistic and highly authentic driving experiences. 👍

BoneSawTX
I tried every setting suggested, it's terrible with a control.
Click to expand...

Wolfe's settings work pretty good for the most part - you can fine tune them according to your desire. But I know what you're getting at; coming from a Forza pad experience, it can feel downright broken. Particularly when it comes to recovering from slides...there's a point past which you just can't recover...it's as if the steering is glued to some invisible goo that's preventing you from turning the wheel sharply and fast enough to countersteer. I can even see the wheel animation in cockpit... it just doesn't turn properly. It goes to near-full lock once your car is already in the barriers!

Wheel users though have no issues to report.

However, I'm still compelled to reinstall and give it one last try. Horizon keeps getting more arcade-like with every release and FM is, well... they're capable of a lot more but they want to keep the game casual and focus more on content. Which is fine. I don't own AC yet so I suppose PCARS is the best bet. Already have DR, and that was a dream come true. :dopey:
 
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PJTierney
May as well get this question out now while the attention is on this thread:

I hear this game's default controller settings are pretty troublesome on Xbox.

Does anyone have any setting parameters they can provide that will help make the cars better to drive or a little closer to the performance that similarly skilled people can get out of a wheel?

For reference, the Forza titles usually have rather good controller settings out of the box, to the point where it doesn't matter if you use a wheel or controlller when it comes to competitive play, as both are easily capable of setting top leaderboard times.

I haven't played Project CARS at all, but if I'm going to start then I'd like my controller to be as adequately set up as possible.
Click to expand...

I'm absolutely loving playing Project Cars (wheel user), but I have a couple of friends who tried it with hand controllers and gave up despite being competent with a controller on Forza and GT6.
 
Some good replies there, all quite useful.

One other question: How is the game in terms of bugs and whatnot? I remember reading about all sorts of issues when the game came out.
 
PJTierney
Some good replies there, all quite useful.

One other question: How is the game in terms of bugs and whatnot? I remember reading about all sorts of issues when the game came out.
Click to expand...

It's much better on PS4, although it worked well for me as I didn't start playing much of the career and what I did I ran at full race length races. From what I understand the Xbox One version is much improved.
 
JohnScoonsBeard
It's much better on PS4, although it worked well for me as I didn't start playing much of the career and what I did I ran at full race length races. From what I understand the Xbox One version is much improved.
Click to expand...

I have the XBox One version, it plays solid without any problem. Note that I only play it single player so I have no clue how it fairs in multiplayer.

Also a good advice when you start playing: Drive a lot of different cars. If one car feels totally weird in handling, neglect it and move on to another one. Once you apply some setting suggestions for the controller don't judge those by just one car, try at least half a dozen different cars and start from there.

Ooh and some cars have fenomenal levels of immersion when you have them set up right. It's not a part of the XBox Gold freebie next month but that Classic Lotus expansion is amazing and worth every penny if you are into the classic racers. Those old Lotus open wheelers sound amazing and extremely powerful, driving them around on the classic circuits like Silverstone (60s), Hockenheim (1982) or Rouen-Les-Essarts (60s and 70s layout, RIP :() is something special. And unlike Forza where you have your generic Daft Punk avatar behind the wheel of a 60s open wheeler racer, in PCARS the helmets and clothing of these avatars are adjusted to which car you drive. Small things like that have a big impact on immersion.
 
Speedster911
Wolfe's settings work pretty good for the most part - you can fine tune them according to your desire. But I know what you're getting at; coming from a Forza pad experience, it can feel downright broken. Particularly when it comes to recovering from slides...there's a point past which you just can't recover...it's as if the steering is glued to some invisible goo that's preventing you from turning the wheel sharply and fast enough to countersteer. I can even see the wheel animation in cockpit... it just doesn't turn properly. It goes to near-full lock once your car is already in the barriers!
Click to expand...
I've avoided that problem by running a lower Speed Sensitivity setting than most recommended setups I've seen. '50' gives you more countersteer to work with (and you can always tweak it lower). Steering Sensitivity at '25' allows you to control that countersteer more easily than the common value of '0', and same with turning Opposite Lock Help off.

For a few cars, though, the last piece of the puzzle is to adjust the steering ratio in the car setup menu. I know the Ruf CTR, for example, needs a bit quicker steering ratio to be able to feed in enough countersteer to drift. Karts and some racecars might benefit from a slower ratio to aid your steering precision. But the nice thing is that you can tweak that from the pit garage in any session, and once you find the right ratio, you can save it to all tracks as a baseline and you're done.

Of course, it doesn't fix the nasty default setups certain cars have, but I use the PCARS Setup Database to find better baseline setups.

breyzipp
Also a good advice when you start playing: Drive a lot of different cars. If one car feels totally weird in handling, neglect it and move on to another one. Once you apply some setting suggestions for the controller don't judge those by just one car, try at least half a dozen different cars and start from there.
Click to expand...
Agreed. I also recommend a somewhat bumpy track with a variety of corners (I used Zolder), and loading yourself in a quick race with zero opponents so you can start on the grid with warm tires.
 
FLX1981
FYI: Time trial will also give you warm tires.
Click to expand...

Indeed, that's what I mostly use for testing purpose, it also comes with a rolling start. However the track selection screen from quick race (pressing Y to see all track locations and another time to sort on country) is a bit more convenient than the long laundry list from the time trial screen (disclaimer - I'm not complaining by any means we have so many tracks in game!!! :P). Same for car selection, the full UI there is better in quick race than the shortened UI based on classes from the time trials.

I guess it all depends on whether you want to switch your car/track a lot or not. :)
 
Might finally give this a go after holding off on it for so long and to form some kind of impressions of it after playing a short demo last year. I'll just need to try and put up with the supposed poor controller optimisation.
 
BoneSawTX
I tried every setting suggested, it's terrible with a control.
Click to expand...


Same here man smh. I bought this game at launch for xboxone and it was horrible with a controller! I was really hoping things would be better now but its not looking like it
 
I've been debating pulling the trigger for awhile now so it's nice to see I won't have to pay for it. Hopefully I can find some controller settings that work for me. :cheers:
 
For people getting pre-worried about controller settings & handling, below are some of the cars in the game that always seem to work great for me no matter if I play with a wheel or controller. And that is only with the general settings changed by following guides like Moneyman300's video I linked earlier, not by further setting up the cars individually. Therefore I think these are also cars that drive good straight out-of-the-box. They are all either from the base game or else one of the 10 free DLC cars (you will have to download those separately unless you get the GOTY edition but that is not what will be free on XBox Gold). I left a few other great ones out since they are from DLC packs.

- 2009 Ford Focus RS (base game)
- 2011 Renault Megane R.S. 265 (base game)
- 2013 Scion FR-S (free DLC)
- 2012 BAC Mono (base game)

(I'm sure there are more but I haven't driven all the cars in the game yet myself.)

Especially the Megane and the Focus, try those. I drove them both as recent as this week with a controller (Elite) on an exact copy of Moneyman300's settings and with no individual tuning/settings on the cars themselves.

Also note that these are NOT per default my favorite cars, I love em but there are for sure some others which are even more fun. But these are easy to start off with, especially if you come from easy-mode games like Forza Motorsport. :) They are not too fast and they handle rather easy. Eventually you can move to other classes like vintage formula (awesome classic F1 cars, most from the Lotus DLC though), Group 4 (love that BMW M1 procar :P) / Group 5 / touring / GT / prototypes / open wheelers etc.

I personally dislike the karts with a passion and open wheelers is not my cup of tea either. But give me one of the vintage lotus formula cars or the retro touring / GT cars with my home cinema loud and that's an awesome experience. PS - don't forget helmet camera! :) If you don't like the helmet itself (top and bottom on the screen) you can turn the helmet itself off but still keep the motion blur effect (I love that) and the looking into corners as you approach them.


For your own sake, start out with some time trials on an easy map first when you try the game. Wolfe seems to prefer Zolder for that, for testing I use mostly the Mullenbachschleife from the Nurburgring (it's the smallest circuit on the south end of the GP circuit). Snetterton 100 is also a very fun and small test circuit I sometimes use. Same goes for Ruapuna Park A Circuit but that is part of the Audi/Ruapuna DLC.

If you ignore my advice and jump straight into the "from zero to hero" career mode, let me inform you that the karts where you have to start in are just aweful and horrible out-of-the-box and that first circuit you race them on (Glencairn) isn't making it any easier. That initially really turned me off form the game and made me hate karts in PC forever, don't make the same error. :)

IIRC while downloading the game when it's 20-30% done you can already start playing 1 race. I believe this was an LMP2 car on one of the configurations of the Dubai Autodrome. I did that with the controller as well and that already did feel good back in the ol' days. Certainly give that a try.

And let us know what your initial impressions are. :)
 
Sorry if this is being posted in the wrong thread, but can someone please shed light on what camera FOV settings and all other cam associated settings to use in order to relay the best sense of speed without making the game look like warp mode?
 
To be fair, they did improve the XBO version a great deal in the time I had it. I did intend to pick up the Complete Edition at some point, but getting the base game free is even better.
 
Hopefully they'll drop the price on PS Store for PS4 users as well.
 
VXR
To be fair, they did improve the XBO version a great deal in the time I had it. I did intend to pick up the Complete Edition at some point, but getting the base game free is even better.
Click to expand...

You're telling ME?! I just reinstalled it not too long ago - nice and chunky 7 gig update waiting and they have massively improved it since the last time I played it. Drove all cars like a smooth operator and there's significantly less tearing and pop up on distant objects.

Very happy I held on to it. :D
 
Playing this game for free on the Xbox One is great! I wish I hadn't waited so long to try this game. I found some controller settings online, spent a little time driving slowly & getting a feel for the handling. I really like this game. It's almost like a console version of GTR 2.

It's so different from Forza. I'll still continue to buy the Forza games, but now I'm really excited for Project Cars 2.
 
JDMKING13
This game is fire!! I woud like it even more but im a road car guy and they are very minute in this game.. other than that very good! The best part to me is the tracks they are alive!!
Click to expand...

I know where you're coming from. :cheers:

Reason I keep going to PCARS is not just the physics but track collection. They are indeed alive; you really feel the elevation changes and bumps. The roster I actually like better than F6.

But like you, I'm more of a road car guy and upgrading cars - race cars only hold my interest for so long. So personally speaking, road cars have a lot more personality cos' I suppose you can relate to them immediately. Forza's road car collection is second to none and the car audio is refreshingly better.
 
@JDMKING13 @Speedster911 -- Roadcars are inherently more dynamic than high-performance racecars, and for me that makes them more rewarding to drive. But historic racecars are similarly dynamic compared to newer racecars, with more pliable tires and not as much downforce, and I recommend giving them a try if you haven't already, like the Group A, Group 5, or "Historic" touring car classes. 👍
 
I traded my copy in before Bannochbrae was available, so waited a long time to try it. What a wonderful road course. Highly believable and captures the typical British road so well.

I don't recall the game ever looking this polished on XBO back then, either. Seems like they really improved it.

The sound of the old Renault Alpine and the way it drives is addictive.
 
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