Do I need to tune?

[twitcher]

If you enjoy racing, and especially if you enjoy online racing, I would definitely get PCARS, and this is from someone who as pretty much played GT online 4+ days a week since GT5 Prolog.

It's a completely different experience than GT6.

For the record though, as many bugs as there are in pCARS (and it's actually not that bad!), if you are coming from GT6, this should be old hat to you. Especially online. I don't think I'm wrong in saying that pCARS online is much more stable than GT6. Yes, there's some lag, weird stuff happens at starts, rolling starts are broken, etc etc....but not nearly as often or severely as in GT6. There certainly aren't connection and stability issues like there is in GT6.

As far as tuning, you probably don't have to tune to race offline. If you want to race online you'll need to, otherwise you'll get smoked.

If your main reason for not tuning is because of your experience with GT, and tuning having the ability to make many cars feel the same, you don't really have to worry about that in pCARS. I haven't driven everything yet, but everything I have has been different from one another. The GT3 cars, GT4 cars, and Group A cars are great examples. Each car is unique in how it handles, and in how you have to drive it to be fast.

The tuning is more about making the car feel more comfortable / predictable for you to drive, so you can push harder.

Think about it this way. Every person who buys a wheel should set up all the settings so that the wheel behaves in a way that they feel comfortable with...and those minor setting and adjustments will be different from person to person. You can look at any individual car in the game the same way. Tuning is like configuring the car for your inputs. But like I said, don't worry about "ruining the feel".

 

[Mike_grpA]

If you enjoy racing, and especially if you enjoy online racing, I would definitely get PCARS, and this is from someone who as pretty much played GT online 4+ days a week since GT5 Prolog.

It's a completely different experience than GT6.

For the record though, as many bugs as there are in pCARS (and it's actually not that bad!), if you are coming from GT6, this should be old hat to you. Especially online. I don't think I'm wrong in saying that pCARS online is much more stable than GT6. Yes, there's some lag, weird stuff happens at starts, rolling starts are broken, etc etc....but not nearly as often or severely as in GT6. There certainly aren't connection and stability issues like there is in GT6.

As far as tuning, you probably don't have to tune to race offline. If you want to race online you'll need to, otherwise you'll get smoked.

If your main reason for not tuning is because of your experience with GT, and tuning having the ability to make many cars feel the same, you don't really have to worry about that in pCARS. I haven't driven everything yet, but everything I have has been different from one another. The GT3 cars, GT4 cars, and Group A cars are great examples. Each car is unique in how it handles, and in how you have to drive it to be fast.

The tuning is more about making the car feel more comfortable / predictable for you to drive, so you can push harder.

Think about it this way. Every person who buys a wheel should set up all the settings so that the wheel behaves in a way that they feel comfortable with...and those minor setting and adjustments will be different from person to person. You can look at any individual car in the game the same way. Tuning is like configuring the car for your inputs. But like I said, don't worry about "ruining the feel".

I agree with this. 👍

In GT, you can go to a tuning forum and find a set up that will transform the car and make it significantly better, often making it feel completely different, and often having very odd looking settings, due to all the set up bugs and things working backwards.

In Pcars, you can go to the tuning forum, and test a set up you find there, and it might make the car feel worse for you. This is because a set up alone won't make the car completely different to drive. Changing settings to suit the way you want to drive the car is how you must approach it, like in real life. It's about finding a compromise in the set up that will suit your driving, and also about setting the car up to be more predictable for each track, depending on the track's attributes.

An example is at Bathurst, over the top of the mountain, where the track drops away over skyline, that is a very tricky braking zone, and poorly set up cars will constantly try to swap ends, often so quickly there's no hope of catching it. Therefore, you have to set your car up to be very stable under brakes, and to not have a tendency to break out the rear over bumps. This often induces understeer, and can make the car slower through the chase at the end of conrod straight, but the time you make up in skyline and the dipper will more than make up for what you lose in the chase, and it'll make the car much more predictable for the race, which can make an enormous difference, especially in long races.

A different example, and a much more simple one, is Monza. In a race car, you can go significantly faster with low downforce on the straights, but you will compromise your speed through the corners, particularly through the two lesmos and the Ascari chicane. The amount of downforce you'll want to retain will be different for different cars, but there will always be a point you'll find a good balance between corner speed and straight line speed. Any less downforce beyond this point will give you better straight line speed, but what you lose in corners will be more significant, so will lead to slower lap times. Any more downforce beyond that perfect point will enable you to go faster through corners, but your acceleration and top speed will suffer enough that you will lose out in ultimate lap time.

Two defining features of Monza though are Heavy braking zones from high speed, and heavy traction zones from low speed. So you need to factor that in to your set up. The car needs as much grip as possible under brakes, without relying on downforce, and as much traction as possible from low speeds. The suspension set up will always be very different at Monza because of this.

Anyway I'm ranting now so I'll just leave it at that lol.

 

[useauget]

this is a great game , my ps3 boinked so ps4 and project cars was to way to go.granted it does take more skill to drive the cars on project because it is more like the real thing baby.kudos to my gt5&6 friends that are here giving very sound advice you can belive and trust them

 

[CountinFrames]

Drive Club is now a free download for PS+ members on PS4. Very arcade like but it is new and different ;-)

Also be aware *if* you buy PCARS, unlike GT5/6, all the DLC will cost you. So basically the bugs and glitches are free but you have to keep paying for more content.

Don't play drive club. But can't disagree with your pcars comment. Well said.
But there is a next gen experience and a damn fine physics engine under the hood of Pcars. And the tire model is deep. AI is best on consoles if you can handle your business. It is hampered significantly by poor coding, UI issues and a host of missing features.
But it's worth a gamefly rental. Or purchase maybe even at the 17.99 they sell it for. But don't over pay for a largely unfinished game.

Expect to have to do the basics to get a car to feel good. At least monitor telemetry and adjust pressures.
You can dial down the AI to your own level, but there will be a bit of invitational seasonal content in certain cars that may require some tinkering not to be unforgiving to drive.

I find you can dial a fair amount of stability into almost any car via diff settings pretty easily.
If you want to play online? Expect to have to dig deep into the tuning box of tricks

 

[ONESPACE]

Thank you guys for your replies.
@TT92, yes I'm aware of most of the issues but there seen to be the lucky ones that have experience bugs maybe one or two two times. I hardly play gt6 anymore and really looking for something new.

SNAIL Project Cars, we run a default setup race every Tuesday night, no tuning.

 

[ynot]

Do not buy it. I, like many others, have gone back to GT6.

The bugs, glitches and AI will drive you mad. And I wont even mention how hard it will be to get a handle on setting your wheel up.

This game is at least 6-12 months and many patches away from even being half reasonable.

I bought the digital version for $20.00 on sale on PSN. If I had spent $60 on it I would have been pretty disappointed to say the least.

 

[ynot]

GT6 online is a lot better than PCARS online by several magnitudes.

I would not be as bold as to claim anything is 1,000 times better but I do get your point :-) GT6 career and AI is quite a bit to be desired I will agree. PCARS AIs are just nasty when you wind them up over 80% but do behave like a lot of online rooms I've been in ;-)

PCARS graphics is very good (obviously) because it is a next gen console.

The real no brainer is the online functionality of GT6 and PCARS just does not cut it at all (sadly).

Agree that the gameplay online is way better on GT6

 

[Fanapryde]

I bought the digital version for $20.00 on sale on PSN. If I had spent $60 on it I would have been pretty disappointed to say the least.

Which means you either did not "discover" the game yet, or a sim is nothing for you.
PCars beats GT on all levels by a mile (except MP and replays).
Back on topic:
If you want to go faster, you need to tune, it makes a huge difference. Once you get into tuning, you'll notice quick enough.
Thing is: whatever you tune, each car has its own character and keeps it. That is where PCars differs the most from GT, where you can tune a Caterham so it feels exactly the same as an Audi R8 LMS. Which is pretty stupid as far as I am concerned.

 

[CountinFrames]

GT is also more stable. Doesn't crash. Has no land mines. Pits aNd setups that actually work. AND STILL Has populated lobbies. YEARS LATER.
Gets new content updates, and online races.
Come off it.
GT is far superior as a game. And light years ahead as a franchise with assets.
pCars is a good hot lapping sim, or short race stint simulator, when it works.

 

[Fanapryde]

Come off it.

I suffer no crashes, have yet to encounter a landmine.
PCars has pits and setups that REALLY work, not the funny, unrealistic way that GT has. Why do you think a lot of the expert tuners moved on to PCars ?
PCars is on Patch 7.0, gets new DLC's every month (free cars also).
PCars AI are ten times better, cars are better AND real (no laser driven 500 mph, glued to the track space ships).
PCars has real cockpit view.
PCars sounds are not based on screaming tires.
PCars has much better FFB (though a bit difficult to set up, grant you that).
MP seems to be a bit of a problem.
PCars has dynamic weather, rain and spray like IRL, graphics are far superior.

GT "superior" ? You got to be joking...
It is a 'driving' (car collecting) game on a PS3 console, where PCars is a multi platform sim. Despite that, it has a real career mode (if you are into racing), practice, quick race weekends... Completely customizable...
A LOT of cars on the grid.
All cars available from the start, no need to add spoilers or turbo's or nitro, no unrealistic speeds or cornering capacities.

"Short race stint simulator" ?
PCars is also focused on endurance (Nurburgring - Le Mans - Bathurst 25-24-12-6...hr races. Not PCars' fault that people scale the races down to a minimum. I don't, have done all endurances full length (had a crash in the pitlane on PS4 and needed to restart one because AI team mate got DSQ'd for cutting track). No issues on PC.

Also, PCars races include practice and qualifying sessions, warm up lap, standing starts...where is GT in this ? Nowhere...

BUT: the topic was about tuning in PCars, right ?