Improved tire physics in Project Cars 2 makes the game more realistic and accessible

midian182

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While racing games are fairly popular, most don’t offer a very realistic driving experience. 2015’s Project Cars was one of the exceptions. The racing simulator was generally well received, though a lot of people found it too difficult. For the sequel, developer Slightly Mad Studios wants to make the game more accessible and accurate to real life by improving the physics.

"If you look at sim racing as a whole, there's this misconception that it needs to be really, really difficult, or it's not a sim. This is not simulation, that's not reality," COO Rod Chong told Ars Technica.

Slightly Mad Studios launched a crowdfunding campaign for Project Cars 2 less than a month after the release of the first game. As well as some stunning looking graphics, improved AI, and a host of new cars and tracks, the sequel promises a more realistic tire model that should help it avoid some of the original’s problems.

"The acid test is taking a powerful rear-wheel drive street car on road tires and [trying] to drift it. When you're over the limit and burning the tires, does the sim stand up? The answer was no, it didn't," said Chong.

Project Cars 2 has been undergoing testing by a group of around 700 gamers, as well as pro drivers including Corvette Racing's Tommy Milner, who was able to use his experience to explain why an early incarnation of the game's tires weren’t behaving in a realistic manner.

"It was amazing after offering that suggestion and seeing the process the guys went through modeling the tires looking at what could be the problem, seeing it manifest in the game, fixing it, then driving it in the sim a few weeks later and seeing a real appreciable difference," Milner said.

New to Project Cars 2 is rallycross, which puts vehicles on tracks that are a mixture of asphalt and gravel, meaning the design team had to figure out how the tires would behave on these loose surfaces.

"These cars are meant to be slid, you drive them sideways, you're on multiple surfaces," Chong said. "You can now feel what's happening and control the car and get an intuitive sense of how you need to manage wheelspin to control the angle and trajectory of the car. It's a beautiful thing, and we're very excited to roll it out."

So, not only will you get over 170 cars and more than 50 tracks, but Project Cars 2 also includes what's likely to be the most realistic tires ever to appear in a video game.

Project Cars 2 arrives on Steam, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4 later this year.

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Well, it looks promising, but as the review said, it's still a bit early so we'll just have to wait and see. What seems to be the biggest challenge is for them to show appropriate body damage and performance desegregation from any collisions (for those that want more realistic performance) and personally, I would like to see much larger, wide open mapping like we get in some of the other games .....
 
Unfortunately you will never be able to "feel" the car from a game like you can a real car. That being said I always welcome more realism. And they are right, realistic isn't necessary difficult and difficult isn't necessarily realistic. But what can make a game like this difficult is that you can't feel what is going on. You only have visual and aural data, your missing an entire segment of data which can be frustrating when trying to do something like drifting, which relies heavily on feeling the car and the forces that are affecting it.
 
Yeah, it looks good, so far. I hope they integrate steering wheels into the game properly then I'll be dusting off my Logitech G25 and dropping money on the game... when the price gets drastically reduced naturally.
 
Unfortunately you will never be able to "feel" the car from a game like you can a real car. That being said I always welcome more realism. And they are right, realistic isn't necessary difficult and difficult isn't necessarily realistic. But what can make a game like this difficult is that you can't feel what is going on. You only have visual and aural data, your missing an entire segment of data which can be frustrating when trying to do something like drifting, which relies heavily on feeling the car and the forces that are affecting it.

You gotta try the g 27 /g29 wheels with force feedback support in a game .you can feel what the car is doing.drifting ..rubbing.driving a damaged car.etc yes you can feel it as well as see and hear it.

I started force feedback racing in the 90's with a Microsoft force feedback wheel and peddles.with monster truck maddness.(oh grave digger) then to a logitech momo.then my current g27 .and the implementation has just gotten better and better.depends on the developer a lot though.
 
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Unfortunately you will never be able to "feel" the car from a game like you can a real car. That being said I always welcome more realism. And they are right, realistic isn't necessary difficult and difficult isn't necessarily realistic. But what can make a game like this difficult is that you can't feel what is going on. You only have visual and aural data, your missing an entire segment of data which can be frustrating when trying to do something like drifting, which relies heavily on feeling the car and the forces that are affecting it.

You gotta try the g 27 /g29 wheels with force feedback support in a game .you can feel what the car is doing.drifting ..rubbing.driving a damaged car.etc yes you can feel it as well as see and hear it.

I started force feedback racing in the 90's with a Microsoft force feedback wheel and peddles.with monster truck maddness.(oh grave digger) then to a logitech momo.then my current g27 .and the implementation has just gotten better and better.depends on the developer a lot though.
I beleive that IAMTHESTIG is referring to the physical sensation of driving a car hard, the g-forces etc. I too have had a moderately decent FF wheel since the 'old red' Logitech Wingman FF (the one that shared the same base until as the MOMO but with the superior cable drive in the 90s and FF can be good, though still quite rare these days, but it's 20% (at most?) of the feel of a driving a cars (and sadly most cars these days have little in the way of feedback from the heels) - even the feel of the brake pedal would be a nice enhancement.
 
You can get your own simulater built with everything as a jetfighter sim that will give all that including the g's.hydraulic rams the works.the fact that only musk,gates ,and a few other guys on the planet could afford it is the major setback.not very feasable for a gaming setup.I can see Kim dotcom with one .lol.( NASA my first choice.they can sim anything.)

having the high g's like doing a loop in an airplane unable to lift your feet from the floor would be impossible to simulate at home.space cowboys anyone.
in retrospect the MechWarrior series of games .Ver3 came with my ms ff stick.had quite a few reactions programed for it.the stick would react when the mech got hit.was pretty cool at the time.again it was dependent on the game developer adding the features.microsoft game studio were doing good stuff.but licensed the tech to Logitech or sold it outright.
VR ,same thing ,cool right now ,but if the developers don't code for it .it will go the same route as 3D and die.
 
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You can get your own simulater built with everything as a jetfighter sim that will give all that including the g's.hydraulic rams the works.the fact that only musk,gates ,and a few other guys on the planet could afford it is the major setback.not very feasable for a gaming setup.I can see Kim dotcom with one .lol.( NASA my first choice.they can sim anything.)

having the high g's like doing a loop in an airplane unable to lift your feet from the floor would be impossible to simulate at home.space cowboys anyone.
in retrospect the MechWarrior series of games .Ver3 came with my ms ff stick.had quite a few reactions programed for it.the stick would react when the mech got hit.was pretty cool at the time.again it was dependent on the game developer adding the features.microsoft game studio were doing good stuff.but licensed the tech to Logitech or sold it outright.
VR ,same thing ,cool right now ,but if the developers don't code for it .it will go the same route as 3D and die.
Not that unafordable - you could build your own 6DoF (six degrees of freedom) setup but there seems to be a lot out there that seem to be in the $5000-$10000 USD range (sure, it is a lot of money but not just for the super-rich)

this 3DoF one is mental
 
Unfortunately you will never be able to "feel" the car from a game like you can a real car. That being said I always welcome more realism. And they are right, realistic isn't necessary difficult and difficult isn't necessarily realistic. But what can make a game like this difficult is that you can't feel what is going on. You only have visual and aural data, your missing an entire segment of data which can be frustrating when trying to do something like drifting, which relies heavily on feeling the car and the forces that are affecting it.

You gotta try the g 27 /g29 wheels with force feedback support in a game .you can feel what the car is doing.drifting ..rubbing.driving a damaged car.etc yes you can feel it as well as see and hear it.

I started force feedback racing in the 90's with a Microsoft force feedback wheel and peddles.with monster truck maddness.(oh grave digger) then to a logitech momo.then my current g27 .and the implementation has just gotten better and better.depends on the developer a lot though.
I beleive that IAMTHESTIG is referring to the physical sensation of driving a car hard, the g-forces etc. I too have had a moderately decent FF wheel since the 'old red' Logitech Wingman FF (the one that shared the same base until as the MOMO but with the superior cable drive in the 90s and FF can be good, though still quite rare these days, but it's 20% (at most?) of the feel of a driving a cars (and sadly most cars these days have little in the way of feedback from the heels) - even the feel of the brake pedal would be a nice enhancement.
Be tough to get the g's to make ya pass out in that but great stuff.
Be tough to get the g's to make ya pass out in that but great stuff.

You won't feel the lateral G's but a good wheel and VR goes a very long way .. your brain tends to fill in the gaps. Other than that the next best thing is to get into karting. Get all the G's you want and relatively cheap. :)
 
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