Looking Back at the Original Project CARS

This game completely blew me away!

I was still playing GT6 on my PS3, doing the WRS and GTP Endurance Series, when PCARS was released.
I was not a WMD member and had not been following its development, so I had no idea what to expect.

I also had to choose between buying a PS4 or upgrading my PC.
I went with a PC upgrade because I wanted to get triple monitors and I'm really glad I chose this route as the PS4 version had a number of issues.

On my PC version I was astounded by the game. It gave me so much of what I was looking for in a racing game and the immersion was like nothing I had ever experienced in a racing game before.
The endurance races I did with Bob in my career were the highlight of the game for me. With the day/night transitions and weather changes I was in my element!

For me, PCARS was a brilliant game and I'm really looking forward to the sequel.
 
The first game was an enjoyable mess. The atmosphere and authenticity were great, as was the car selection, but the controller issues made a good potion of the cars unplayable like the old F1 cars and the McLaren P1, not to mention the...

...radbull
Don't forget the constant crashing either, thankfully it got fixed for the most part
Overall though, good enjoyable mess. 6/10

For reference, 5/10 is a good game, but not a great game, 7/10 is GT6 and 10/10 is the best game I've ever played.
 
PROJECT Cars for me was a love/hate. The visuals, the sounds, the career....amazing! The feel, however, was much to be desired. I could never seem to get a good grip on the right ffb setting, up until the last 2 months. I went to AC, and loved the feel, disappointed in the content. After scouring forum after forum, and playing with setting after setting, I finally found the" feel" that brought it together for me. With Pcars2 on the way with the simplified ffb presets, the options to fine tune, and all the above mentioned that I loved, my enthusiasm for Pcars2 is high. See you all on track!:cheers:
 
Favorite Sim Ever
till pcars 2 come out that is
:D

Overall the only real issues i ever had with this game was?

Game crashes alot whenever i go to Circuit de 24h du Mans..This happens only at that track ?

I never really had a issue with how the game handles with a controller :D Since i got use to it and plus i found a good setup

Big issue i have is the fact the P1 doesn't back flame :boggled: like seriously 🤬 is like SMS has never seen a p1 in person :lol:

Second big issue i had was no ferrari or p1 gtr

Other then that i love pcars 1
And plus it has my favorite chase cam :bowdown:
 
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Animera
This game completely blew me away!

I was still playing GT6 on my PS3, doing the WRS and GTP Endurance Series, when PCARS was released.
I was not a WMD member and had not been following its development, so I had no idea what to expect.

I also had to choose between buying a PS4 or upgrading my PC.
I went with a PC upgrade because I wanted to get triple monitors and I'm really glad I chose this route as the PS4 version had a number of issues.

On my PC version I was astounded by the game. It gave me so much of what I was looking for in a racing game and the immersion was like nothing I had ever experienced in a racing game before.
The endurance races I did with Bob in my career were the highlight of the game for me. With the day/night transitions and weather changes I was in my element!

For me, PCARS was a brilliant game and I'm really looking forward to the sequel.
Click to expand...

Pretty much my experience too, but on PS4. Before Project Cars I had been playing GT6 on a PS3 as my only racing game. I had loved GT6. Then last year in anticipation of the promised GTsport release of November 2016 I bought a PS4 about a month or two before November just for it. Then of course we all know GTsport didn't come through with the then promised release date. My brand new PS4 was just sitting idly on the side. I think it was in February this year I decided to buy a racing game/sim to play on it. Eventually chose Pcars, The Complete Edition. I became hooked on it much preferring its Career Mode and gameplay in general including dynamic weather changes. I didn't have to go through what others experienced in the earlier release because by then everything was fixed in the updated patches, plus I was using a wheel. Since then Pcars was the only sim I was interested in playing and eagerly awaiting September 22 for Pcars 2 which I've already pre-ordered. I'll still be buying GTsport when it releases later though.
 
I remember seeing gameplay the Monday before the Tuesday it came out. Went GameStop to pre-ordered right then. Loved it. Still do. The looks and sounds and weather too; it was great. The handling on some cars and oversteer recovery I didn't like at times. But still all love. Can't wait til this
Animera
This game completely blew me away!

I was still playing GT6 on my PS3, doing the WRS and GTP Endurance Series, when PCARS was released.
I was not a WMD member and had not been following its development, so I had no idea what to expect.

I also had to choose between buying a PS4 or upgrading my PC.
I went with a PC upgrade because I wanted to get triple monitors and I'm really glad I chose this route as the PS4 version had a number of issues.

On my PC version I was astounded by the game. It gave me so much of what I was looking for in a racing game and the immersion was like nothing I had ever experienced in a racing game before.
The endurance races I did with Bob in my career were the highlight of the game for me. With the day/night transitions and weather changes I was in my element!

For me, PCARS was a brilliant game and I'm really looking forward to the sequel.
Click to expand...
Friday.
 
llNovall
PROJECT Cars for me was a love/hate. The visuals, the sounds, the career....amazing! The feel, however, was much to be desired. I could never seem to get a good grip on the right ffb setting, up until the last 2 months. I went to AC, and loved the feel, disappointed in the content. After scouring forum after forum, and playing with setting after setting, I finally found the" feel" that brought it together for me. With Pcars2 on the way with the simplified ffb presets, the options to fine tune, and all the above mentioned that I loved, my enthusiasm for Pcars2 is high. See you all on track!:cheers:
Click to expand...
I wouldn't put it any better plus the unreal amount of bugs that destroyed lots of awesome races in the early months.
A thing that never changed as a negative opinion about PCars was the very arcadish physics that was never improved and the tremendously complicated book of parameters to set up in both ffb and car fine tuning.
SMS took us all as top end race car engeneers that we are not and that was the main reason I lost interest as soon I drove 200 metres in Assetto Corsa.
Cheers to SMS for the ability to understand this and put an efford to simplify set up parametres.
I'm hoping PC2 comes a blast.
 
davidt33
Pretty much my experience too, but on PS4. Before Project Cars I had been playing GT6 on a PS3 as my only racing game. I had loved GT6. Then last year in anticipation of the promised GTsport release of November 2016 I bought a PS4 about a month or two before November just for it. Then of course we all know GTsport didn't come through with the then promised release date. My brand new PS4 was just sitting idly on the side. I think it was in February this year I decided to buy a racing game/sim to play on it. Eventually chose Pcars, The Complete Edition. I became hooked on it much preferring its Career Mode and gameplay in general including dynamic weather changes. I didn't have to go through what others experienced in the earlier release because by then everything was fixed in the updated patches, plus I was using a wheel. Since then Pcars was the only sim I was interested in playing and eagerly awaiting September 22 for Pcars 2 which I've already pre-ordered. I'll still be buying GTsport when it releases later though.
Click to expand...

Same here, so much so 10 months later it's platinumed.

Ginetta GT5 is still my favorite car to jump in, miles of smiles there.

Say, did you ever get your G29 issues sorted?
 
Schmiggz
I wouldn't put it any better plus the unreal amount of bugs that destroyed lots of awesome races in the early months.
A thing that never changed as a negative opinion about PCars was the very arcadish physics that was never improved and the tremendously complicated book of parameters to set up in both ffb and car fine tuning.
SMS took us all as top end race car engeneers that we are not and that was the main reason I lost interest as soon I drove 200 metres in Assetto Corsa.
Cheers to SMS for the ability to understand this and put an efford to simplify set up parametres.
I'm hoping PC2 comes a blast.
Click to expand...
Wait, you thought pCars 1 had arcade physics?
 
PS3 died on me, while i was still hooked on GT6. Got a PS4 and the G29 thinking about the next GT, and i would "check about that new sim racer, Project Cars, see what it's about".

It already had released all DLC, so most (if not all) problems were sorted out by then.

So my experience couldn't have gone better - i've never had to touch the gamepad, and never had a single hiccup, on or offline.

Given how PD decided to do things, and what PC2 is shaping up to be, i have, unawarely, set myself up for the latter.

:gtpflag:
 
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Project Cars 2 better be the second coming. Project Cars sucked! It delt with less simulation calculations per second then Assetto Corsa and yet I get a smooth 45 fps in the latter. Project Cars has trouble reaching 20.
 
I had followed the team since Simbin/GTR days. I read they brought the rights to Blimey and called Slightly Mad Studios so I went out and got Shift1 (SMS) on the old Xbox 360 to try. I also saw Race Pro (Sim bin) had been released so I tried that but I did not get on with this one, the screen tearing was too much, it was a great try to console but I loved this new immersion of speed in Shift1 after playing usual chase cam games. This got me in to the cockpit views. Shift2 Unleashed then came and I really enjoyed this more, there was nothing else like this 'helmet cam' even on a 1080p TV it was great.

So I was really looking forward to PCars when it was initially delayed from Winter to May15 it seemed a long time coming. Yes it did have its controller problems and photomode problems but I could see the core game being there even if there were many frustrations logging back to the menu to change the FFB or settings etc but it was a huge improvement putting Shift behind them now. Eventually I also found great Settings with help from forums and still enjoy to this day racing around Oulton Park International with the Ginetta V6 GT4's.

With me buying the PS4 Pro I see there will be further visual improvements which will be great in photomode. Also there are now more tracks and cars, Live track improved weather and physics, better settings and improved photomode and so far all good things are being said on previews.

I have pre-ordered and really look forward to seeing the improvements and the reviews coming this week.

This game has slowly pushed its way through to the Top unsettling the Big Guys Forza and GT who have had the Run for many years untouched. This should now be interesting to have these 3 Racing titles on Console competing and Pcars2 will sit proud in my collection along side these 👍
 
PC1 is awful in physics and handling model, especially with a controller on PC. That said, I tested some settings guys here proposed to make the controller work better and they were indeed helpfun but only for some cars done well. Unpredictable and sudden yaw movement, grip suddently lost from power oversteer when gently pressing the accelerator without any chance to regain the grip if you loosen the "pedal" or do anything else on the "wheel" that work in reality. That applies to stock or low downforce racing cars as 70's touring cars for example as the BMW of that era. Tried hard to make it work but it was too bad to bother with. Unistalled after some races won when I met a car or two behaving so badly.

Imho, even GTLegends from more than 10 years ago was MUCH better in its physics. GTR2 and rFactor was even better and Race07 is great even for today. GTLegends and GTR2 were just bad when a yaw rate was surpassed. From there on, a spin was unavoidable. Until that point they were great. When you get used to that quirk, you just don't risk too much too often, especially on the wet (weather was changeable in GTR2).
 
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This is my PCARS 1 story.

* I bought an XBox One standard in summer 2015 in anticipation of FM6. It was my first XBox console ever.
* Bought FH2 and enjoyed it immensely, what a blast to play! (that was with a controller in the sofa)
* Bought PCARS 1 early september out of curiosity, the huge tracklist drew me to it.
* Upon downloading the game I could drive a race in an LMP2 (I think) car in Dubai, this was with the controller and felt pretty decent.
* I moved my XBox to my brand new rig and started playing the career starting with the karts. Glencairn in karts was a horrible experience. I believe I got as far as superkarts (season 2 or 3) before FM6 launched.
* Abandonned PCARS1 and played FM6 for 6 months, partly with a wheel (until january-ish) but due to a knee injury I moved my XBox back to my living room and learned to play FM6 with a controller.
* Spring 2016 I got bored with FM6 and all it's frustrating shortcomings. Picked PCARS 1 back up and quite enjoyed it, playing it on and off. This is also when I put in more effort to find better settings for the controller (Used the general settings from Moneyman300 on YouTube and then the per-car settings from that Polish tune database).
* Dirt Rally passed by, enjoyed that simultaneously with PCARS1.
* Dirt Rally got put on the side, PCARS1 I still kept playing. I got F1 2016 and Assetto Corsa in august 2016 as well but didn't play those that much yet.
* September 2016 FH3 launched, I put PCARS 1 on the side again.
* Played FH3 avidly for 2 months and got bored with it.
* Late 2016 I started playing PCARS1 again and this lasted until April 2017 when Dirt 4 launched (with about 1 month pauze for Horizon Zero Dawn and my new PS4 Pro).
* After Dirt 4 I continued playing PCARS1 until just before summer 2017 and almost finished my career but due to an annoying 24h at the Green Hell where my co-driver always fekked up badly after 2-3 attempts with it I put it on the side.
* So summer 2017 I kinda stopped playing PCARS1, maybe also because the PCARS2 anticipation is going through the roof and I don't care that much to finish PCARS1's career mode anymore.

So there it is, I played PCARS 1 on the worse platform (=XBox One standard) with the worse input device (= controller) and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I have put it on the side for many games but over and over again when I got tired of the new shiny game I came back to PCARS 1 to enjoy it, and that for nearly a full 2 years (late summer 2015 until early summer 2017).

PCARS1 for me is the only game where the racing itself, the atmosphere, the career calendar and everything involved with the game feels realistic. It is exactly what I want from a realistic racing game and stands out from all the arcade and simcade games like FM, GT, FH and so on. Yes there were troubles with the controller, yes it was really annoying to set up individual cars, yes the devs should have done this themselves, but once you get certain cars set up and feeling right, ooh boy this was a great feeling and there was so much more feedback info from the car visuals / sounds / even in the controller about what the car was doing than in FM6. I absolutely enjoyed the hot hatches and low speed cars up until the modern GT race cars and even prototypes, all with real assists. What didn't work well with the controller for me were the older race cars, especially that vintage fictional NASCAR (Monterey or something) I had to put assists on because it would spin out of corners even without touching the gas. But that is nitpicking about a single car, for the majority this experience was great.

The highlights for PCARS 1 for me were:
* Realistic feeling and immersion and this includes everything from the racing calendar, the pit engineer voices, the realistic sensation and feeling of speed, race weekends with practice and quali, etc etc.
* The tracklist - I absolutely LOVE all the tracks I didn't find in any other games like Brno, Zuhai, Ruapuna, etc.

Absolutely looking forward to the next one. PCARS1 was already so good and PCARS 2 is absolutely an example of what a sequel should be, it improves on about all aspects and adds a lot of new stuff. Just to name a few: livetrack 3.0, seasons, rallycross, ice racing, 3 times as much cars on launch, almost double the amount of tracks, formation laps, cooldown laps, manual pitstops, animated pit crew (per discipline!), race engineer, revamped career mode, online racing license, eSports director mode, ... the list is really massive.
 
breyzipp
Haha amazing! Sometimes the biggest impressions come from the smallest details. ;)
Click to expand...

It's all in the minor details, I remember driving an MR2 Mk1 on Forza6, (to match my real one in my garage), in the rain with the lights on, except they wernt really on as the pop up headlights didn't pop up, you couldn't see them from onboard as you should. Rubbish, I went back to GT6! Minor details matter.
 
breyzipp
Haha amazing! Sometimes the biggest impressions come from the smallest details. ;)
Click to expand...
Yes! I asked(when I first got the game), in the help thread, if the warning lights coming up on the dash of the M3 GT4 meant anything(the Mustang 302R did the same). A little bit after the start of a race, one or two extra warning lights would illuminate. I didn't know if they were caused by the puff of smoke from the engine, transmission overheating, etc. My hands would go numb, because i was trying to be careful braking, shifting, turning, keeping AI behind me, trying to hit my apexes and hoping the car would finish the race. I used to fall asleep driving around in GT6(except in the GT3 races, those kept me busy). No time to rest in Project Cars.
 
The clio cups were indeed amazing to drive,lovely little detailed nuances with them...i had some of my finest console racing moments ever with them on Oulton Park.

The 'core' of Pcars was amazing,the immersion of it all. I just hope Pcars2 is a more refined,all round finished package.
 
XXI
Same here, so much so 10 months later it's platinumed.

Ginetta GT5 is still my favorite car to jump in, miles of smiles there.

Say, did you ever get your G29 issues sorted?
Click to expand...

If it's the issue I was having about a year ago with the G29 wheel with menus jumping to various options you're talking about, no I never got that sorted out but fortunately I happened to find a guy who had a G29 parked up as he had bought a fancy Fanatec wheel and rig. He tried to fix my G29 but was unsuccessful. I offered to buy his G29 from him since it was on the side there and he sold it to me cheap. That's what I've been using since.

If it's the issue I was having with the brakes sticking that Aero and Grt8 pointed out to me recently, yes I got that sorted out. I swapped the pedals with the other spare I had and problem solved. No more brakes sticking thank God.
 
Schmiggz
Yes sir.
Click to expand...
I wouldn't conclude Pcars was arcadish, though I would agree that with a poor ffb setup or the default ffb that did not work for many cars it could feel a bit wonky. Once the settings were dialed in, for me, the game definately leaned toward sim. As I mentioned in another thread, I used AC (We'd all agree is more sim than cade) as the feel I was looking to replicate, and was able to come very close with Pcars. Once that happened, the great physics began to shine through. My 2 cents:tup:
 
Got a PS4 Pro for Christmas 2017 and Project Cars Game of the Year Edition (Complete Edition). Only done about an hour of the career as that is not really my thing. Raced online twice a week plus practise and car / track testing which I have thoroughly enjoyed. I don't touch a thing, just run default setups and the wheel default - discovered some great car and track combinations.

Previously I played GT6 and compared with that hosting options are limited e.g. no second race based on previous race results or reverse grid and no text messaging from within the room. However the positives outstrip the negatives so I can't see myself bothering with GT again. I like the track selection, car selection (there could always be more classic and historic race cars and especially cars from the 1960's and 1970's). Great sounds (mostly, but a few duds), superb tactile effects such as transmission thumps and kerb strikes etc through my Buttkicker.

Disappointed that there are still some bugs e.g. Silverstone Classic not usable online, pit stops with default setups bugged.

Hoping that the need to make a game which is more approachable for hand controller users doesn't spoil it for wheel users who like to race on default setups (some of us have little time and just want to escape after work with no tuning or faffing about).
 
I bought PC1 on Xbox and PS4 at midnight in local supermarket as I have friends that play on both networks.

PS4 version experience was great
XBox One version very much a different story
 
Sick Cylinder
Hoping that the need to make a game which is more approachable for hand controller users doesn't spoil it for wheel users who like to race on default setups (some of us have little time and just want to escape after work with no tuning or faffing about).
Click to expand...
Its been confirmed that different default set-ups will be used depending on if you are using a wheel or controller.
 
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