Experiencing Project CARS 2's Red Bull Ring via Controller

Looks good. But the article certainly makes it clear that this is first and foremost a GT site:

"Slightly Mad Studios has opted for a more colorful feel for the track, as opposed to the more subdued color palettes of the Gran Turismo 6 and Assetto Corsa offerings."

In fact, I have always found the exact opposite to be true. The colors in GT have always been too strong. THe greens are always too green (grass and trees) and the reds are always just a bit too red. This makes GT always look a bit more "cartoonish".

Real grass is a blend of greens and browns, not one uniform shade of intense green, and this is where SMS has always been better than the competition.

Now as to the gameplay, yeah, either the controller input still needs work, or the guy using the controller is not used to using it. With that said, he did better than I would have with a controller. Never got the hang of driving by thumbstick........
 
F1Racer68
Looks good. But the article certainly makes it clear that this is first and foremost a GT site:

"Slightly Mad Studios has opted for a more colorful feel for the track, as opposed to the more subdued color palettes of the Gran Turismo 6 and Assetto Corsa offerings."

In fact, I have always found the exact opposite to be true. The colors in GT have always been too strong. THe greens are always too green (grass and trees) and the reds are always just a bit too red. This makes GT always look a bit more "cartoonish".

Real grass is a blend of greens and browns, not one uniform shade of intense green, and this is where SMS has always been better than the competition.

Now as to the gameplay, yeah, either the controller input still needs work, or the guy using the controller is not used to using it. With that said, he did better than I would have with a controller. Never got the hang of driving by thumbstick........
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That video is a few weeks old from VVV. There's a new one where they drive rallycross cars with a controller and praise it. There's also insight into why the GT controller feel is a little off in that particular video at RBR.
 
To this day I have yet to manage a consistently comfortable setup on controller for Project Cars. On Assetto Corsa it still feels twitchy, but in general I have found a much more bearable setup controller-wise.

I REALLY like seeing that PC2 has added brake temps as a HUD element. I thought I read not too long ago AC also added something similar, although I have yet to find the setting for it (so maybe I was imagining it).

The overcorrection issues this guy was having in the video is very similar to what PC1 feels to me, although it is about 3X worse. This is why I've barely put 10hrs in the game, while AC I have over 100hrs!
 
Any sim is going to need dialing in with a controller. If you go at it cold without a chance to alter settings to suit your personal preferences this kind of thing is going to happen. Let's hope the game is released with good controller optimization and customization.
 
Good playability from a controller is often overlooked in many sims, and was personally my biggest problem with the first Project Cars. Not all of us own wheels, and if it's not seriously improved by release I'm afraid I might have to skip it.
 
I bought Project CARS without owning a steering wheel for my PS4, so I had to stick to mostly GT3 or cars with high grip, or else whatever I was driving at the time was uncontrollable.

Mostly, I want the countersteer issue fixed. It's impossible to recover from a slide with controllers.

I can only hope, because I won't be convinced unless I have this game in my hands and I can feel the controller handling personally.
 
MrWaflz55
I bought Project CARS without owning a steering wheel for my PS4, so I had to stick to mostly GT3 or cars with high grip, or else whatever I was driving at the time was uncontrollable.

Mostly, I want the countersteer issue fixed. It's impossible to recover from a slide with controllers.

I can only hope, because I won't be convinced unless I have this game in my hands and I can feel the controller handling personally.
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This is as much an issue of the tire/physics model as it is the controller inputs. There are some cars where even with a wheel they are impossible to catch once they start to let go. That is an acknowledge weakness of the first game and one that keeps being harped on in the current marketing info for the new game.
 
MrWaflz55
Mostly, I want the countersteer issue fixed. It's impossible to recover from a slide with controllers.
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That's just not true. It's far harder than it should be, but certainly not impossible (except, maybe, for Formula A, didn't try these cars that often).
 
It's obvious and they said in their podcast that it was his first time using that controller for the game. I think we'll need to wait a long while yet before we see how the controller really is.
 
So, there's still some issues with the controller. Nothing has changed. Hopefully the release build has the controller issues sorted out.
 
Will be interesting to see how much the landscape changes with the seasonal weather. Remove the yellow foliage on those trees to show the cold of winter and it will feel like Europe. Night transition looks sweet as well.

As for the controller- people who play wheel all the time will always have problems using the thumb sticks. It is very important to set up for each corner and brake in a straight line before turning. This guy is a wheel racer who is just 'driving' and hoping for the best. Give him 10 laps and he would get more adjusted to it.

Of course, fingers crossed that SMS fine tune the inputs further and make it easier to catch the corners.
 
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CLowndes888
So, there's still some issues with the controller. Nothing has changed.
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So while it is not perfect, nothing has changed? Let me quote from the video: "I think the controller inputs are definitely worlds above what they had in Project CARS 1."

Fact is, counter-steering will never be as "easy" or intuitive as with a wheel, because of the lack of force feedback, which is what really guides you when you are driving with a wheel. Without it catching a slide comes down muscle memory, which means tens or hundreds of hours of driving experience with each car, depending on how hard the one question is to drive.

That said, if someone really doesn't want to or can't use a wheel with pCARS, then I would highly recommend getting a controller that has a gyro, preferably a Steam Controller on the PC (the PS4 controller has it as well) for its sheer number of configuration options, and setting it up as an additional or even the only steering method. The reason for this is that the sticks of gamepads have a really small amount of travel, which hurts precision. This can be countered somewhat with in-game settings (and here I think actually pCARS 1 did better than most already), or in the case of Steam Controller with its many settings in Steam (custom response curves help a lot), but whatever you do the precision will never come close to what you can achieve with the gyro (or a wheel of course), which is really important for counter-steering. When I started using it as the sole steering method in pCARS 1, my lap times with the gamepad improved seconds just after about 30 minutes and my driving became much more natural as well, no twitchy movements at all.
 
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F1Racer68
Now as to the gameplay, yeah, either the controller input still needs work, or the guy using the controller is not used to using it. With that said, he did better than I would have with a controller. Never got the hang of driving by thumbstick........
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This holds so much truth and people might overlook it so easily. I started sim racing with a wheel but due to a knee injury was forced to swap to a controller. You should have seen my first attempts at racing with a controller in FM6 after using the wheel for several months and compare that to how I do it now. It's miles different between both situations while it's still the same game and the same controller, only I'm the one who has been "fixed". :)

And still, even if that person is a controller racer, when SMS show this game to the media and let them have a go with it, these media people are not used to the game yet. It's the same as when you buy a new game, it doesn't matter if you play with a wheel or controller, you will always need to get used to it for a while.

Ian/American/Owl/SMS have communicated a ton on these forums and controller improvements has always been one of the things they mentioned that was vastly improved over the first game. Having that said, in the first game for some cars the controller drives just fine with some general controller tweaking and not even touching the per-car settings, other cars (like that Caper Monterey Stockcar) are for me impossible to drive without stability control assists on (and even then it feels as if I'm driving on ice with steel rims). So Project CARS 1 is a bit of a hit and miss with the controller, some cars work fine, some indeed don't work fine at all. But in general it's still very much playable with a controller. And having PCARS 2 further significantly improve on that, I have no doubts it will be fine there.

Also take into account there are 2 very different ways to drive with a controller, you can do the precision steering where the amount of left-right steering input from the controller's left analog stick is directly applied to your wheels (Assetto Corsa way of controller steering, I personally don't like it and find it very hard to use) or you can do the "tick tick tack tack" way of steering where for very short time periods you tap the input all the way to the left or right, but that input gets filtered and your car won't immediately switch between left and right full locks, it's how controllers work in the Forza series and I personally feel much more comfortable steering this way with a controller.

Try that "tick tick tack tack" steering in Assetto Corsa and you will spin out (or start "oscillating" your car if you try to correct it) and end up in the barrier. Try the precision steering in Forza and you probably don't steer at all. PCARS 1 is a bit weird in this way, I followed Moneyman300's controller setup video (see at the bottom of this post) without further going into cars individually and that already works satisfying for me for the most part. The weird thing is though is that some cars work fine with the "tick tick tack tack" steering while others (like that Caper Monterey seem to require the precision steering).

For PCARS 1 I think it's just the fact that there was simply not enough attention during development for controller racing. I think it was also SMS their first console game? Maybe they thought that the majority of console players would have a wheel setup for PCARS1? But rest assured, from what I've read on this forum and seen from various media interviews is that the attention for controller racing during development of PCARS 2 is on a whole different level. it will be much better out of the box and I'm sure it will be further patched if needed post-release. Because this is SMS, these guys listen to feedback and fix issues. This is not Turn 10 who kinda "fire and forget" their game releases, only fix the urgent things they really have to and for the rest they milk the cash out of you with lots of DLC content.

Moneyman 300's controller settings video I used and what is satisfying for me :
 
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I rarely use controllers, but the only game I actually enjoy playing with the controller is Forza. I also use the tap or "tick tick tack tack" and it works great. That's about the only game that is enjoyable with the controller. Hopefully pCARS 2 can drive at least as well as that.
 
CLowndes888
So, there's still some issues with the controller. Nothing has changed. Hopefully the release build has the controller issues sorted out.
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Sounds like expected. A lot of bla bla from the dev, but nothing has changed...
 
breyzipp
Also take into account there are 2 very different ways to drive with a controller, you can do the precision steering where the amount of left-right steering input from the controller's left analog stick is directly applied to your wheels (Assetto Corsa way of controller steering, I personally don't like it and find it very hard to use) or you can do the "tick tick tack tack" way of steering where for very short time periods you tap the input all the way to the left or right, but that input gets filtered and your car won't immediately switch between left and right full locks, it's how controllers work in the Forza series and I personally feel much more comfortable steering this way with a controller.
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Heh, for me it's exactly the other way around. I love to be precise with a controller, to me it feels much more immersive if you don't use full input for almost every corner and instead have to adjust to the shape of the corner - not quite a wheel, but it behaves like one.
 
F1Racer68
This is as much an issue of the tire/physics model as it is the controller inputs. There are some cars where even with a wheel they are impossible to catch once they start to let go. That is an acknowledge weakness of the first game and one that keeps being harped on in the current marketing info for the new game.
Click to expand...
I think the main issue is display lag. If you turn the wheel in real life there's an agonizing stutter before it reacts in game compared to AC for example.

If a car gets loose, it takes me too long to see it on TV, then add on my reaction time, then it takes too long for the wheel inputs to register in the game, and then the car's in the grass.
 
IanBell
I'm not sure if you're trolling but in the video the reviewer (note, not the dev's) said "I think the controller inputs are definitely worlds above what they had in Project CARS 1." ...

And as I said above we're still tweaking steering angles per car for pads.
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Didn't intend to, although I see now how it may have come across. I just found it striking that one of the major complaints of PCARS 1, still seems a major issue now, while it was kind of advertized in articles that it got resolved. Hopefully you guys get it right by release time.
Just please, only promise features this time that will actually make it in the final game.
 
I love team VVV but some of those guys drive worse than casual players. Jesus man. This issue somehow makes the controls look really bad.

For a team so focused on racing, i expected them to be better at driving :P

Project Cars 1 had some problems on controllers, but i managed pretty decently overall. If it's worlds better as the lad said on PCars 2, it should be awesome.

Really looking forward to it.

One question to @IanBell: the damage was turned off on this team vvv vid right? The driving physics looks decent for the wrx races.
 
IanBell
I can assure you that an insane amount of things 'has changed'. We're only now moving to set steering angles per car for controllers. Hell, with the fastest RX car and a controller is as hard as it gets.
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Curiously, I didn't mention anything about the severity of the issues.
 

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