Project CARS

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Project CARS

bUm: Jan 11, 2011

Terminally Bored posted:

Will this game be fun for someone who really liked the original Grid and only plays with 360 controller? How customizable is it in terms of realism?

Kind of wondering a similar thing. Long time fan of Gran Turismo that has gotten jaded on their lack of damage model/more cars (in the actual races, obviously they have a lot of cars to pick from) that is debating whether Project CARS will be worth the buy given that I will be using a controller. I'd assume with their console releases the PC ought to have options, but I'd feel more comfortable with confirmation by someone who has actually been playing the test builds.

Also, anyone have an idea how competitive a controller vs. wheel setups will be for online play in Project CARS?

# ¿ Apr 20, 2015 01:38

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# ¿ May 14, 2024 19:27

bUm: Jan 11, 2011

I said come in! posted:

PCARS doesn't by default have support for borderless window mode, but is there a way to manually force it?

Not without a third party application as far as I could find, having recently Googled about it for a different game.

That's unfortunate to hear; I feel like full screen windowed ought to be standard for every PC game nowadays.

# ¿ May 3, 2015 23:48

bUm: Jan 11, 2011

ethanol posted:

edit: I still don't have a key from GMG

Kind of disappointing. Also: I thought a week ago they said May 8th midnight was the release most places; is Steam getting it a full day early? Wonder if that'll impact GMG timing or if us going the cheap route will be waiting till late Thursday/early Friday.

Good thing the Dirt Rally surprise last week has been more than satisfying my racing game wants. I hope PCars is as satisfying as it has been and is essentially the road version of it.

# ¿ May 5, 2015 01:00

bUm: Jan 11, 2011

quaunaut posted:

First off, if this is what Kart Racing is like, no wonder no other games have it. The kart's desire to spin out quite randomly is pretty awful- I never was able to get a handle on it through 5 full events(so 10 races). I won each regardless, but every turn felt like "WELP LETS SEE WHAT HAPPENS", and luckily at Amateur difficulty everyone is too stupid for it to matter.

I thought Zero to Hero would be fun since pretty much my first glimpse of PCars Career. However, 125CC Karts with controller seem to be some of the least fun racing I've ever had because of these random spins. At least I understand what's going on when I spin hitting the corner bumps (it's a Kart-specific track, why are the bumps big enough to spin me out!? :negative:

), but other times (see: at least once a lap) my Kart just cranks 90 (okay, more like 75) degrees sideways out of the nowhere when entering a turn. I've tried going slower, going easier on the brakes, turning on ABS (all other assists off), raising the ride height, and nothing seems to stop it. Really confused what's going on and can't wait to get to a real vehicle at this point.

Edit: also still managed to win most of the races with difficulty at 70, even if many of my turns were being made at right angles.

Edit 2: Apparently the Dubai track is just fine and I don't have issues spinning randomly here. On the more amusing side: qualifying first at Dubai with Karts not only actually starts you in second place, but gives the green with you facing straight into a wall whilst "second" place is facing straight down the main straight (and actually on it, putting him ahead of you who qualified first).

bUm fucked around with this message at 03:36 on May 7, 2015

# ¿ May 7, 2015 02:49

bUm: Jan 11, 2011

Mootallica posted:

I actually thought the Karts were amazing - when I was using a wheel. With a 360 controller though they are woeful, hateful things that will murder you and your family at any time.

Pretty much. If I wasn't confident there's better gameplay elsewhere than the Karts on a controller (indeed I stopped playing after some practice with the Caterham invitational and the Caterham 7 was much more playable... albeit still a bit frustrating in a flimsy/twitchy feeling, but that's probably part learning curve and part that the car is literally light/flimsy), I'd have just as well uninstalled last night because that was hours of not fun at all once I got over the novelty of controller Karts playing like a ghetto NES arcade racer with really fancy graphics.

Passing AI in Karts is pretty hilariously easy though: get inside them going into a turn and then just gently side-push them as you go into the turn and off the track they go.

Also going to agree with whoever expressed frustration over not having control/assist/etc. options in the pause menu (among other bad UI choices... not a fan of the race UI either; there any mods for that?) so I can trial and error control problems that much easier.

SanitysEdge posted:

The secret to the 125 karts is to bump the front tire pressure up 0.2 bar and never lift off the throttle past corner entry

I did find I started spinning out less when I started having full throttle and full brake simultaneously going into medium-degree corners (not tight enough to really need brakes, not open enough to not slow at all) like that so a setup change that lets you throttle more is likely to be more stable; apparently Karts become very unstable without the gas peddle down, braking or not. :shrug:

quaunaut posted:

I'm on an XBox One controller.

If there's better control settings for this controller, I'd love to hear them. Otherwise, I might persist in this, but wow am I disappointed.

Edit: Hmm. And apparently, doing certain things the game doesn't expect makes it freak out pretty hard. Tried some recommended controller settings(and wow were they different from default), and while they worked pretty alright [...].

Got links to any you've tried that felt better than default? Using a DS3 pretending to be an Xbox controller and definitely wasn't feeling good with the default config.

Dirt Rally having good controller feel immediately, no changes necessary, really spoils PCars role as the perfect road-counterpart of it.

Combat Pretzel posted:

The sudden loss of control while cornering when playing with a gamepad probably stems from the tire model, which simulates the warping and buckling of the carcass under load, which results in grip loss. When driving on the edge, there isn't much leeway on a tire in that regard, the same time a gamepad isn't a precision control compared to a wheel (twiddly thumbstick vs nearly three full turns from lock to lock), which also gives force feedback early enough to let you react accordingly. Overshoot with the turn in, the stressed tire thanks you by skidding off track. Finally on top of that, the nature of it being a game makes people push the cars more than they'd in real life, minimizing the headroom.

--edit: Additionally, the caster in the front wheels will straighten or countersteer for you, if your rear breaks out or you understeer, because it feeds into the FFB of your wheel, which will turn the itself for you if you let it go. As in real life, however another disadvantage for the gamepad, which will pull the tires just straight if you let go of the stick, causing more grief on the car control.

This is interesting, but they're releasing the game on consoles so I feel like there should be behind-the-scenes assists or something for controller users if it is actually this difficult for the player to manage.

# ¿ May 7, 2015 19:03

bUm: Jan 11, 2011

Norns posted:

loving lol. Guy trying to play the game with a dualshock 3. How are those triggers working for you...oh wait.

DS3 has triggers. :confused:

Works just fine for Dirt Rally to get top 150 times on the dailies out of like 4000 people doing them.

But, you know, your dickishness for people having issues is appreciated.

# ¿ May 7, 2015 19:27

bUm: Jan 11, 2011

track day bro! posted:

Is it realy unplayable with a controller? I dont have space for a loving wheel.

All my complaining was directed towards Karts (me not just ignoring Zero to Hero :argh:

). The one actual car I ended up driving (Caterham through career invitational) felt definitely doable.

Joink posted:

I think a lot of controller players are conditioned from playing other arcade racers and having trouble adjusting. Also some of the cars default settings are terrible or bad for the track your on. In general the game isn't a set and forget when it comes to handling.

I think the latter points might be part of my problem. I am always hopeful that the default car setups are somewhat not terrible and haven't really done too much besides shorten gear ratios (so I could speed off again quickly after spinning out my Kart). Unfortunately, there are so many settings it can be tricky to know which knobs to turn to make things better without irreparably breaking something along the way.

I'll have to give the couple suggested controller setups a shot. Once I feel good with the base controls, I'll probably feel more comfortable changing the vehicle setups.

quaunaut posted:

Is there any borderless windowed mode? Didn't see it in options.

Pretty sure not.

Think there are applications out there in the internet that can force things to use full screen windowed if there's no native support. I haven't messed with them myself though.

# ¿ May 8, 2015 00:22

bUm: Jan 11, 2011

Joink posted:

Controller gamepad settings I use:

Controller input mode 3
Steering sensitivity reduced to 30
Speed sensitivity reduced to 60

From that, I make per car tweaks , differential tweaking to fix wheel spin, increasing the down force on faster cars, increasing steering ratio to help with quick steering that can cause loss of control.

quaunaut posted:

The best I've gotten out of my XBox One controller:

Controller Filtering Sensitivity: 50

Thank you. I did the first and it felt significantly better than yesterday (no longer felt like turning/brake/throttle were all basically binaries of full or nothing). I added a bit (15) of controller filter sensitivity (googling indicated it's the game trying to smooth your actions and can cause input lag [why isn't there an in-game explanation? :wtc:

]... 25 had noticeable input lag for a Kart anyway, but I might up it for cars since they aren't as twitchy). These changes also made it much harder to spin out completely from going into a turn too hot, hitting track curbs poorly, or getting air on Glen Cairn's hills.

Now I just need to fix my gearing because blowing the engine on the 125cc's is super easy and now I can move about well enough to actually top out.

# ¿ May 8, 2015 03:08

bUm: Jan 11, 2011

Norns posted:

I play with the Real assists on. I figure if the real life version of the car has all the poo poo turned on when people drive them, why shouldn't I drive it that way in a Sim?

Wait, is this a setting? I could swear I only saw on and off. I do like that you can bind them to swap them on/off on the fly through so you can have them off and determine pretty quickly if you need them on (FYI to whoever asked quite awhile ago: it doesn't pop up any text telling you when you turn assists on/off, but in certain camera views the HUD does show which are enabled below the speedometer and they also flash when they're taking corrective action on your poor driving). Based on Top Gear, I'm inclined to think your average pro driver turns them off anyway if it's possible.

Seems very vehicle dependent on levels of assists necessary.

Speaking of bindings, why is DRS not bound by default for a the standard Xbox controller preset? Isn't it pretty useful for any vehicle that can use it? I feel like I should probably bind it.

Norns posted:

How come my loving Crew Chief never says poo poo?

Agreed, what the hell is his problem. Especially playing this interchangeably with Dirt Rally. A co-driver is overkill on a circuit, but boy would it be nice the first few laps before you find braking points to get you at appropriate speeds to hold a good line for turns.

I really miss the GT feature where it told you what gear to brake to for turns. It helped so much to get a feel for things without having to have the driving line on (something I refuse to do in any game because it's hideous and kills the joy of racing to just try following a fancy color line).

bUm fucked around with this message at 12:20 on May 10, 2015

# ¿ May 10, 2015 11:28

bUm: Jan 11, 2011

redwalrus posted:

While it can sometimes be amusing, there is no way he really finds it that hysterical, I guess when you have to act on camera for kids that would rather watch games...

Guy was annoying, but the pile up about a minute in is a quality pile up.

Kind of reminded me of my Formula A testing when I was messing around a couple days ago: I was right on an AI's rear coming up to a turn I knew could be done with fairly little braking. Apparently the AI disagreed and went hard on the brakes real early. I rear ended him hard and before I could react he'd gone up my front aerodynamics and over the top of my driver's head, leaving me with a clear road ahead to continue into the corner. The strangest thing was, even with full damage, my car was still in pretty good shape (just a slight pull to one side, which seems to happen if you make pretty much any contact with Formula A's to a car or otherwise).

Arzachel posted:

Also, you fucks are making me want this and the new Dirt too. I don't have money or even a proper desk

Neither is a bad choice. Money seems like a meaningful problem; proper desk not so much since you'll be playing with a controller or wheel. :shrug:

# ¿ May 12, 2015 10:48

bUm: Jan 11, 2011

Rad Valtar posted:

Picking this up later today are these settings good?

They're pretty similar to what I'm running and feel good.

I think I have slightly higher steering sensitivity (15 or 20?), am running 5-10 on deadzone-sensitivity for throttle/brakes, think I have 50 or 55 speed sensitivity (was running into understeer issues on high speed turns where full joystick motion wasn't enough despite the car being able to manage without losing control), and, lastly, I have much lower Control Filtering Sensitivity (assists making your turning smoother, but can cause input lag... set it wherever feels good to you) at 25 (I lower to 15 for Karts because their super fast steering causes noticeable input lag at 25).

Feenix posted:

Tire pressure changes after a lap, though?

If it's like real tires (probably is), then, yes, the tires will have a good deal higher pressure when warmed up. The default Kart setups (125cc at least, still meandering my way through the bevy of invitationals before my 250cc season starts) seem to bottom out a lot sending sparks up. Not sure if this is normal and the game just doesn't generate sparks for AI Karts or if I should tamper with the setup. :shrug:

I guess I managed to win through 125cc with it bottoming out a lot on 80 AI difficulty (albeit with a ton of restarts prior to getting more playable controls for my controller so I didn't inexplicably hard spin 180 degrees in basically race ending fashion anymore) so it wasn't that big of a deal.

Not sure if you can tamper with ride height on a Kart, but upping the tire pressures might help some with bottoming out.

Edit:

Aishan posted:

For those having trouble with Karts, I found an amazing way to improve your Kart's speed:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEifDocGriM

Lap times just got better and better.

bUm fucked around with this message at 01:00 on May 14, 2015

# ¿ May 14, 2015 00:53

bUm: Jan 11, 2011

Ran into an invitational using the BMW 320 Turbo Group 5 and like it quite a bit (pretty cool noticing that the exposed wires in the dash actually jiggle as you go over bumps and the window net moves about some as well), but seem to have a curious problem: the left front tire seems to run way hot and is red while the others remain a steady green. Part of it is probably that Hockenheim short and now Barcelona National have more fast right turns putting more work on the left front tire, but is there anything settings-wise one can change to reduce how hot the tire is getting? Tried turning down the pressure on the left front, but that accomplished nothing. Venting brakes more seems like it could help, but the right front staying green as is makes me hope for a better option.

Even at 100% race length it doesn't seem long enough to matter, but still made me curious since running much slower isn't an option without falling behind the AI.

# ¿ May 14, 2015 02:36

bUm: Jan 11, 2011

Baggins posted:

Ugh, I'm tiring of the same damned track rotation in almost every series and invitational event. Outlon, Snetterton, Donington, Brands Hatch.... There are a lot of other tracks in the game, why not use those too? I've yet to see Monza, Monaco, any track in the US that isn't bloody Sonoma, I've been to Hockenheim and the Nurburgring exactly once...

Part of this is that, if you look at the title of the invitational, most of them are UK invitationals. I kind of wish they'd loaded up on less iconic tracks in another location as well and let you pick between the two for your career base of operations.

It's also getting a bit on my nerves, but that's more because Outlon and Brands Hatch were designed by masochists that think it's fun (and it is, in a way) to have rolling hills, off-camber bends, and slight turns into sharp turns that make keeping control, especially in a RWD hypercar like the McLaren F1, a pain in the rear end. To add icing to the cake, many turns (on the layouts I've been put on anyway) don't have signs so you have to do brake points based on track features alone (guess the hilliness becomes a perk for finding a braking point based on road ripples).

That said, the invitationals as my second season is getting underway seems to have had much more variety, dropping me in mainland Europe and Dubai a fair bit.

Norns posted:

Yep Monaco with friends only.

Was mucking about in offline with a couple friends a few nights ago and didn't notice damage was turned on for Azure Circuit after it had been off. Ended up falling to last from a cut penalty on the first turn (didn't know, first time on the track in PCars) and was right on the rear end of a slower friend after it ended. Thinking damage was still off, I gave him some loving nudges in the first downhill to hairpin, sending him careening into the wall so hard he lost a tire. Whoops. Apparently sports cars only manage 30 MPH with three wheels (until he blew his engine). My other friend ended up doing the same to himself on the second lap after I'd passed pretty cleanly and I was volunteered to sacrifice myself to the wall god on lap three so it'd be over faster.

Outside of messing around though, Azure Circuit in every game is a tough one to find passing opportunities on. Haven't felt the joy of Azure Coast yet.

# ¿ May 14, 2015 22:25

bUm: Jan 11, 2011

Endymion FRS MK1 posted:

You know, I wonder if that's why I'm sucking with the McLaren F1 right now. I mean I know its a road car, but it handles like rear end and during practice for the 3 hour Zolder event it took 5 laps for just one front tyre to heat up. The rest were still cold. Unless that's how its supposed to be and I'm dumb.

The McLaren F1 only getting one wheel type for rain or shine is part of the problem; it's extra unwieldy when raining. Make that rainy day on Oulton and :smithicide:

.

You're not crazy: the wheels take forever to heat up (longer still when raining) and, as far as I can tell, there's no options like brake cooling you can change to increase their warm up time.

The McLaren F1 is a brazen beast, but when you can keep it in check it is an extremely good car (best in class for many of the road events it's allowed in as far as I've seen). There's probably settings one can change to make it more manageable (even with cool tires), but I've just used it in various one-off invitationals that only warranted minor tweaks rather than extensive testing to seek a comfortable and fast setup.

# ¿ May 15, 2015 07:24

bUm: Jan 11, 2011

Nostratic posted:

Is there a retard's guide to career mode? Because I'm tired of racing lawnmowers. I'm in season 2 and burned out on the kartzzzzzzzz and have no idea how to progress aside from grinding away at races.

And I'm supposed to see invites on the calendar automatically, right? I've gotten a ton of them and none have made an appearance yet even after I searched the calendar.

The Kart seasons are like eight race days each (three for the UK Championship, five for the overall championship) if you ignore the optional invitations. Turn down the length % and difficulty if you really want to cruise through them without hassle (you can also instantly simulate the rest of the race after a certain point if you choose the "Skip to End of Session" or something like that from the pause menu during the race).

Yes; invitationals will be jumped to automatically when they come before your next season-related race.

Also, I wish I had a lawnmower capable of 160 MPH, but, hey, Honda comes close.

Phuzun posted:

I started at the lowest level of karts. I've completed the first karts championship and selected my team for the 250cc karts, but all I've been getting is invitational races, not a single 250cc race.

The Superkarts season doesn't start till June so, yeah, there's potential for ~10 Invitational races before it happens if you don't skip them. I'd imagine invitationals are dependent in some capacity on how often you're winning assuming that whole realism thing carries over to the career dynamics.

Rad Valtar posted:

What AI difficult is everyone playing on? I started a Kart series and am lapping peoe and taking first place in every race with it set to 50.

I chose "Pro" for skill level when first starting the game and it preset to 80. I turned it down for awhile initially, but once I got a control scheme (controller) that felt good (no longer hard spinning out once a lap) I turned it back up to 80. 80 is way easy for Superkarts, but 50/50 just right vs. a tad too easy for many of the invitationals.

# ¿ May 15, 2015 22:22

bUm: Jan 11, 2011

Popete posted:

Do you guys play with restarts? I'm at 50 difficulty with all settings set to real.

Yes; usually only use it on qualifying though, when I'm being an idiot and keep screwing up the last turn so it keeps invalidating current and next lap (they seriously need to remove this or add some conditions that it only does it if you skipped in a manner that'll help your next lap be faster by letting you pass the start/finish line faster than an ordinary line) and I never actually get a qualifying lap done.

I tried Real assists for a bit, but the McLaren F1 not having Traction or Stability control made me throw in the towel on that because the ~1cm range of accelerator motion on the controller makes the throttle way too touchy to pretty much even drive in practice (made worse by the tires taking half or more of the practice session to warm up in the invitationals I've been doing with 12 minutes for practice), let alone trying to race against other cars. I have the toggle assist keys bound so I adjust them based on car as feels necessary (the Caterham 7, for example, is fine without any enabled).

I'd rather have more difficult AI and not screw up spectacularly as often with assists helping than have AI that I can trounce as long as I can keep my car from spinning/crashing personally. :shrug:

Hopefully in the coming months it'll be in the cards to get a wheel and I can then leave the assists in the past since I won't have my "I'm on a controller" cop out anymore (and, hopefully, legit won't feel like I need them with an actual pedals/wheel that has a lot more range of motion).

holocaust bloopers posted:

Someone discovered that the AI has zero awareness of tire wear when it's been accelerated. They'll routinely blow tires and drive on rims without actually pitting for a new set.

Interesting. The most common/amusing AI failure I see is that they crash head on into a wall and either just sit there or keep trying to get off by flooring it (still in forward gears) and literally remain there for the remainder of the practice/qualifying/race unless another AI hits them.

Curiously, it once happened on pit road and I couldn't for the life of me figure out why there was a warning for a crash ahead every lap on the main straight during a practice session. It was only after returning to garage to change my car setup that I saw an AI was nose-planted into the wall separating the main straight and the pits (on the pits side).

# ¿ May 15, 2015 23:37

bUm: Jan 11, 2011

njsykora posted:

Damage is something that seriously needs better indicating. The amount of times I've been in kart races and run off the track a few times or had a couple of minor collisions and then just suddenly the engine blown message pops up with no warning.

In better news I finally had enough of stagnating in kart racing and restarted my career in Formula Rookie and holy poo poo these things are fun.

The 250cc Karts seem more resilient, but with the 125cc Karts: set your gearing (final drive) such that you're never maxing RPMs in top gear (6th?) because their engines blow very easily (a dozen seconds total max RPMing or so). Learned that one the hard way and never had issues again once I made sure to gear appropriately (if you don't, you can manually feather the throttle such that you never max RPMs, keeping it in low-mid RPMs in top gear, but it's kind of tedious).

Was planning to go up the GT line because people were also on about how fun GT3 is, but now I just don't know with all these good words about Formula Rookie. :ohdear:

Might have to do some test runs with the cars in each to see what's up before signing my next contract (just past halfway through Superkarts currently) and hope you get forward and side jump contract offerings at every level if I continue up the open wheel line awhile longer.

# ¿ May 17, 2015 02:36

bUm: Jan 11, 2011

Kilonum posted:

Set a loving push to talk button or get yelled at by ~~spergs~~ rational voice chat users for the past decade+.

FTFY.

I guess it's a little different for a racing game where a push to talk can be a bit more difficult, but still.

widespread posted:

My question is, why are you letting the game decide on what tires you need. From my understanding, it's really best to just set the tires manually, as I said before.

Because he, like many, probably assume that it will only give you rain tires if it's actively raining because that's exactly what you would think it would do when it says it sets them according to weather conditions.

I also had this issue last night: was driving my BAC Mono for an invitational and couldn't figure out why during a 12 minute light clouds/foggy practice I not only couldn't come close to keeping up with AI, was losing traction all over the place, and my tires literally would not warm up (even after ten laps they were still solid blue). Mucked with settings for a bit trying to make it more manageable while getting confused because it'd been fine the previous event in the invitational before thinking that it was giving me the wrong tires. Sure enough: changed them and had all the grip.

On a related note: it should totally give you a weather forecast so you know what's coming. Modern race teams keep a close eye on the weather if it's going to be a factor and it seems pretty awful to have no idea and just have to roll the dice on tire choice based on current conditions.

Also on a related note: I wish the tire types were more clear. Many of them mention clearly whether they're Soft/Slick/Rain, but I think it was the invitational with the old school BMW race car that the tire names were in German and I had no clue what was what. Realism is great, but not clarifying foreign languages is not so great.

# ¿ May 17, 2015 22:36

bUm: Jan 11, 2011

BlackMK4 posted:

Real life: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAvN0EzEacU

That's intense.

Anyone else feel like they're at a big disadvantage when it's raining compared to the AI? I feel like the AI is basically unphased by rain while, as a player, I can't see poo poo when cars are ahead (kicking up much water) and have a much tougher time keeping the car under control.

Basticle posted:

Kinda bullshit that the replay viewer wont let you switch cars to focus on so this is the best I could get

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ax66lBVoTJs

My invitationals sent me from driving a Mercedes Sauber to a Mercades whatever-the-hell-those-are last night. Talk about a shock jumping from a very fine feat of engineering of the late 80's to basically an early 70's road car. Ended up switching the to the other in-class option of the old school Ford that is also like a 70's road car (that, at least on the first track of the series [Oulton], was blowing the Mercedes out of the water), but at least isn't a land yacht. Either way though, the AI is wrecking me and I can't figure out why (can't change anything really but suspension so tire type/gearing as the old standbys for making up massive performance gaps are out).

On a totally unrelated note: I hope at some point they make the game save your choice of livery. So tired of having to manually select the same one over and over because it always defaults to random.

# ¿ May 19, 2015 02:34

bUm: Jan 11, 2011

So I got into the invitational that puts you in the BMW M1 Procar and, :wow:

, I am in love. Even aside from the pop-up lights (which I didn't get to use with purpose

), it looks cool and just feels so good going around the track in that it's enough of a race car to really run fast and hard laps, but not such a feat of engineering that any error can be disastrous (aka: it's pretty forgiving).

Cacator posted:

1. Is there a way to save your custom HUD permanently? It only stays on for the current race. You'd think it would save afterwards since it asks you if you want to save it...
2. Is there an AI setting where they aren't complete maniacs who will drive into you at every opportunity?

Nope. I assume it's a bug because there's no way the devs would be that foolish, right?

I feel like AI are very hit or miss, literally. They seem like they try to avoid you generally, but if you move up next to them too quickly they usually don't take notice and will run right into you (not unlike a human driver in some instances... I really wish the spotter/crew chief actually called other cars doing runs on you). It seems like a coin toss whether AI hitting you is worse at higher or lower AI levels: at high levels you are traveling at more equal speeds so you will find yourself closer to parity with them and your passing moves will be slow enough that they should take note and not collide (unless you chose a poor place to pass and they don't really have a choice), but it also takes longer which increases the chance of a collision because of a turn coming; at low levels you can blow past AI much easier, but if you cut into their intended line they will ram you before they even recognize you're there.

# ¿ May 20, 2015 06:12

bUm: Jan 11, 2011

Apparently the flood gates are open after Superkarts (only if you win a lot?) for you Zero to Hero pursuers out there. I can sign contracts for: Superkarts (renewal), GT3, UK Clio Cup (first touring one) x2, Formula Rookie x2, Formula C x2, LMP3 Semi Pro, and LMP2. As far as I can tell, there's no benefit for jumping ahead to complete the Zero to Hero quicker (doesn't track how many seasons it took for e-peen measurements) though so I'm probably just going to continue on to Formula Rookie (tested both those and the Clio awhile ago and vehicle-wise Formula Rookie seems like the clear winner).

Rad Valtar posted:

Has anyone tried the suspend/resume feature with this on PS4 for long races? I want to try races as close to as realistic in length as possible.

Do you really though? Just finished a 2-hour (minimum duration) edition of the 24 Hours at Le Mans and that was quite the affair itself. Does PC even get access to a suspend/resume feature? Really lame if not. Assuming that works though: as close to realistic as possible should be the full thing (think the longest events are 25 hours?) unless that's different on PS4 vs. PC.

Some general comments on Le Mans:
- Really cool that it actually divides by class so my picking an LMP1 put me in a race of 7, despite having 30 cars on the track simultaneously (all are pooled for Practice/Qualifying).
- They really need to make AI responsive to cars coming up on them (headlights flashing to trigger this awareness would be acceptable... also making it so doing so doesn't turn your headlights off completely while dark would also be a plus) since this was a notable issue that multiple times forced me to pass in the grass to do so "safely" when not happening on the straightaway areas (extra cool that doing so often invalidated current and next lap because, I think, any off-track after T2 does that... which is a huge chunk of track on an ~8.5 mile track... especially since T2-to-start/finish is the high speed winding turns area where AI are the biggest nuisance hogging the raceable surface). Playing with full damage made some passes scare me when there was paint traded.*
- Hilariously, the single race made the car (RWD P30 LMP1**) and track my "favorites" on my driver profile (putting both into the 500+ mile range), snuffing out the numerous Kart races that caused Glencairn to be my previous "favorite" locale.
- Ended the race at lap 34 after the 2 hours had elapsed, was a little scared doing so since I had ~1/3 lap of fuel left and was just going on logic/hope the race ended at the first passing of the finish line after time was up.
- Had no cautions I saw (assuming this is even a thing in offline... saw it happen in a goon race a couple nights back) and only evidence of one major wall impact by an AI leaving a couple body panels in the grass.
- The Default car setup had the turbo Wastegate Pressure maxed and I rolled with it. Things seemed to be getting a little more sluggish by late race, but the scary engine damage the tooltip warns of won't kill your engine completely in two hours (least with this car). :sweatdrop:

- Managed to win by a solid minute and ~35 seconds thanks to going bold on my pit strategy of full fuel tank (the first run, I realized slightly less than full was all I needed after the first set because the extra 4 [liters? gallons?] would've left me dry mid-lap trying to push it further) allowing me to do only two pit stops the entire two hours while the AI seemed to be taking ~half tanks and had to pit a lot more (when things cycled at one point about an hour in, an AI ended up a mere ~2.5 seconds back which was a concern); thankfully it was a rain-free race which could've seriously screwed up my long-runs strategy.

All-in-all a good time. Maybe when SMS deals with AMD cards running like poo poo I could try streaming since an endurance race seems like a good background stream for people doing other things (and hoping I crash :ohdear:

).

* Recently drove on Bathurst for the first time. I do not look forward to the Endurance race there with the walls right up against the racing surface with no run-off areas at all on most turns. Similarly, N�rburgring will be quite a test with slim run-off areas and long winding roadway not giving much respite in the form of long straightaways.
** The rear facing camera monitor in the cockpit is too cool in this thing. Will be sad going back to other cars that rely on clearly inferior technology (mirrors).

# ¿ May 21, 2015 09:18

bUm: Jan 11, 2011

Wooper posted:

Mine is the AI being unaffected by cold tires or weather, taking turns smashing into me on my warmup lap.

Stumbled across the known issues list last night after my setup drastically changed (pretty much every single tuning option the car had was altered... which was almost all of them since it was an LMP1 car) between the Practice/Qualifying and the actual race.

Glad to see the AI not being affected by weather (in some cars) one listed among some other things I'd run across.

# ¿ May 21, 2015 22:16

bUm: Jan 11, 2011

Smelly posted:

I don't think there's anyway currently to save your hud layout.

There isn't; pretty sure it's a known issue. I'm sure it'll get sorted, but I hope they're prioritizing more game breaking problems unless it's an easy fix. I threw in the towel some time ago and just stick with the default layout (I've only had to move the track map once or twice since thanks to a sunset/sunrise ending up right behind it so I couldn't even see it).

On a related note: Spa is all sorts of hosed at sunrise or sunset (forget which... think it was sunset). Goons in their infinite desire for painful weather conditions would love it since the sun is perfectly positioned to be blinding you for ~1/3 the track, including multiple turn entries.

njsykora posted:

Yeah, get right behind opponents and don't try to pass everyone at once. If you get greedy or misjudge your clearance you'll end up without a wheel 90% of the time in open wheel cars. You will end up having to go slower than you want while waiting for an opportunity to pass so bear that in mind.

With the HUD all I want is to not have to quit the session and go to the options screen to reenable it after using observe mode in practice and qualifying because that makes it turn off for some reason.

Pro tip for big passing first turn (assuming it's fairly tight... looser turns usually don't work because things don't get so bunched up): set yourself up to be in the innermost line (occasionally the grass is even fair game) of the clusterfuck. Often the AI will get all jumbled together leaving a gap inside on exit and will be going slow enough due to jostling each other so that, even though you lost a lot of speed cutting the corner really tight, you ought to be able to pass some (at the very least the ones that got pushed off the track outside).

That said, I also second the opinion you should also being doing Practice/Qualifying (especially for a new car or track, never mind that sometimes minor setup tweaks can shave seconds off your lap times because the Defaults occasionally have terrible gear ratios or something else silly) such that you shouldn't have to deal with starting from mid-to-deep pack anyway. I've recently been contemplating bumping the AI up to 90 or 100 because of how often I'm now able to qualify on the pole (or just off of it) and roll to victory without ever dropping a spot (the inconsistency of AI depending on car/track being the main deterrent as there seems to be occasionally large variance between invitationals and I don't want to change difficulty every race :effort:

).

You can bind a key to cycle HUD elements (was left D-pad by default on my controller for me I believe), it goes: full HUD, full minus HUD rear-view mirror, just speedometer, telemetry, no-UI at all. It works to bring back the HUD without exiting out when it gets cleared during Practice/Qualifying (and, yes, pretty sure the bug is tied to using the Monitor to watch other cars).

bUm fucked around with this message at 11:09 on May 22, 2015

# ¿ May 22, 2015 11:04

bUm: Jan 11, 2011

Came across a new and interesting beast thanks to an invitational: the Ford Capri Zakspeed Gr.5. Had a choice of it and the BMW Gr.5 car and decided to try it out since I'd already done an invitational with the BMW. I ended up practicing for a half hour just playing with it because I feel like the car has the downforce to handle very high speed turns without raising a fuss, but the tires don't have grip proportional to the handling so I'd inevitably find myself going around. Tweaking many setup knobs have not yet made it a comfortable drive pushing it the limit (I don't want to give in and just drive it tamely since one of the few practice laps I managed to finish without spinning was four seconds quicker [on Snetterton 300, so like ~1.8 minute laps] than the 80-level AI).

New car, new challenge being a reoccurring theme of PCars is awesome.

ethanol posted:

I turned real assists on and I like it. I also really like my xbone controls right now... but ffb is nooot good. It's buggy, it causes severe perfirmance stuttering in the dirt, and it is not accurate to what is happening with the car. Turning it completely off eliminated 90% of my oversteer spins with a controller and I've felt much more comfortable taking corners. This is a really stupid loving game, but it's worth it. I love our goon races

I ran with real assists until I got to an invitational with the McLaren F1 and then a Track Day Car one; both are difficult to manage with a controller and no assists and with real they have none. I copped out and got lazy and just leave the standard (ABS, TC, SC) ones on most of the time.

I've heard that about FFB on the controller and know it's borderline useless, but I can't bring myself to have no shaking (also don't feel like I've had bad stuttering tied to FFB so that is part of not doing away with it).

Phuzun posted:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d2g6sTSbxBU
Formula car doing the ring in the snow. (phone posting)

When I thought snow, I was thinking falling from the sky, not a snow covered track. Be amusing as a gimmick, but not sure how much time it'd take them to manage the physics for it since I doubt it'd get much use in career given most racing events are scheduled to avoid that weather, aren't they?

# ¿ May 22, 2015 23:07

bUm: Jan 11, 2011

Norns posted:

Almost every car needs better defaults. Some are hilariously bad.

SMS would be doing themselves a favor by putting in decent defaults for all the tracks. Most people aren't going to invest time into tuning. Hell, I know how to make adjustments to the cars, and sometimes skip beyond basic stuff like tires.

Also my setups never seem to save.

So much this. Have been running 50% session lengths with 15 minute practices and have sometimes found myself having to restart one or even two times to have the car even be stable enough to reliably run laps without going off course, never mind whether or not I'm actually running competitive times once I get it stable (usually I am, but sometimes not... at which point frustration starts to rise even more than it did already from 30 to 45 minutes practicing).

I like Invitationals as a tool to try out new cars, but spending 45 minutes practicing and 10 minutes Qualifying for a 3~5 lap race (7.5~10 minutes) is awful when you take a step back and realize that if SMS had given half a gently caress about Default setups, that 15 minutes of practice should've been more than enough since it should just be personal preference tweaks to an already decent setup, not basically starting with a clean slate of terrible and having to hone it into something at least marginally driveable.

Getting to the point where I think I'm just going to start skipping non-drive-ready ones and hope they give less lovely Default setups in the future so I can do them later.

Fingers McGee posted:

This game is really frustrating sometimes. I'm racing in Gt5 and finally got the car in a good setup after it wanted to spin off after touching my brakes for a couple races. In the final race I bump up the ai and set the fastest lap in practice by 2 seconds. Then in qualifying just as I get my to my hot lap it starts a monsoon with fog. Even after restarting with wets on I'm skidding all over and the ai just zooms by, I gave up and let the ai sim my qualifying lap and he gets the pole, but of course the race is in the rain too. I didn't need to win the race to win the season but I wanted a good race for the last one. Hopefully they fix that ai weather bug.

I swear this happens like half the events I run: clear and sunny day practice, qualifying starts (an hour or two later according to the session info*) clear/light cloud but starts raining as soon as you're starting your first timed lap, and the race starts clear and then fucks you again by turning to rain halfway through. Doesn't matter if the track is in the UK, continental Europe, or in a loving desert (California tracks... haven't seen rain in Dubai yet) it happens all the time.

I got so annoyed the other night when it happened the third event in a row (including two instances of the aforementioned issues of having to restart Practice to get the car driveable [gently caress you Ford Mk.IV... almost as bad as the awful '71 Mercedes that is a gimmicky staple of goon races with Default setup]) to screw me over that I just quit out of the race (that, even in the rain, I managed to qualify fourth for), cranked the AI difficulty and session length to 0, and went in again. The first corner, as I was taking first place against the super bad AI, the AI pit-maneuvered me off the outside of the first turn and I found myself in 10th place. The second turn, a hairpin, the super bad level AI slowed down so much that I cut into the inside grass and went from 10th to first. I was over halfway to lapping cars by the end of the three lap race. Satisfaction: low. Fucks given? None because the AI being totally unaffected by weather is frustrating as poo poo. :argh:

Can you turn off dynamic weather in career? I might have to do that if possible until they fix the AI because wow does dynamic weather kill the fun when the AI runs just as fast as it being dry and there's literally nothing you can do to compete (unless you're in first and can block like a champ till the end). This is a pretty game breaking bug that 2.5 weeks on seems like it should've got hotfix attention.

* Amusing aside on session times: my upcoming Formula Rookie practice starts at 10:00 at Barcelona. The Formula A practice session on the same day also starts at 10:00 at Barcelona. I'm guessing this is just a lazy miss by SMS (like the typo in the car setup info where there's an errant "corenrs"), but a hilarious thought of Formula A's and Formula Rookies running together on partially-overlapping track layouts.

JaysonAych posted:

I had a lot of trouble with the Caterham 7 Classic. It didn't matter what I did to tune it, it drove like the tires were made of butter and the tarmac was coated in Vaseline.

This seems weird to me. Even with Default controller controls when I was having a really frustrating time with the 125cc Karts, when I came to my first Invitational with the Caterham 7 it was a breath of fresh air because it was so much easier to drive than the Kart. After fixing my controls up, the Caterham 7 seems even easier to drive (so easy I turned off all the assists I normally use [ABS, TC, SC] and the HUD and it was like a pleasant Sunday drive to victory at 80 AI difficulty).

It's slow in speed and handling (protip: be very light on the turning, if you turn too far it tends to just start sliding straight ahead), but I find it one of the easiest drives in the game. It's one of those cars I've found is much like Formula Rookie though: you need to qualify well because on the track the speed differences are so minor that it's pretty much impossible to make significant headway with.

# ¿ May 26, 2015 00:13

bUm: Jan 11, 2011

GutBomb posted:

I can not drive the mclaren f1 with a controller. It's just so frustrating. I can drive pretty much everything else I've tried with the controller, but the mclaren, even after the tires warm up is just a huge mess.

The McLaren F1 was the first, but certainly not the last, car I came across through the career that is quite hard to drive with controller. It kind of makes me wish they had throttle speed sensitivity (like they have the speed sensitivity for steering) that makes the throttle less responsive at lower speeds (and not at higher speeds where wheelspin isn't much of an issue) because I think the dexterity of my fingers can only managed ~4 proper acceleration positions on the trigger and you're in trouble when the "just barely pressing" option is causing you to spin round accelerating out of corners (even with TC on... at default levels).

The latest beast I found was the '86 Lotus Indy Car with 900 BHP all to the rear wheels (I understand why previously this thread said it was undriveable). It took some setup working, but I made it driveable and it's a really fun and cool car. It's also a pretty intense Invitational, weighing in at seven events.

# ¿ May 26, 2015 23:09

bUm: Jan 11, 2011

EdEddnEddy posted:

I know the GTR games were always supposed to be some of the other Realism Sims, but while fun, they always seemed to feel like you were riding on some crap hard street tires even when you're driving a Race Spec GT car with 335 Race Slicks. That and you would almost never have oversteer no matter what you did to rotate that rear end.

The difference between many of the road cars and the race cars in PCars really puts things in perspective with regards to how much better handling-wise your average race car is*; I think the Zonda and McLaren P1 are the only two road cars (not counting track day cars) I've driven thus far that even feel remotely as composed around the track as most of the vehicles designed for racing. You can actually feel the big differences in how the car is driving in most cases (even with a controller, I imagine a wheel with good FFB settings is many times better) and it is neat.

* Excluding the GT Mk.IV, Mercedes 300, and Escort RS1600, but I'll give them a pass between possibly really poor Default setups (I have yet to make a good setup with any of them though) and the fact that they're from the late 60's/early 70's.

holocaust bloopers posted:

Which Lotus only moves forward, and at the speed of loving sound, only in boost range? That was one a nightmare.

Norns posted:

The lotus 98t is amazing with heat in the tires. Try turning up the boost and do Monaco though.

That's the one. The one that can take the same (non-hairpin) turns a full 20~30 MPH faster than most cars I've taken around the same tracks prior ( :stare:

) and can blaze up to 180~190 MPH at the end of fairly short straights before using it's Hulk brakes to grind those MPH away in half the normal braking distance I use on those tracks.

And, yeah, you definitely need to wait for the tires to heat up before you can do anything but baby it around the track since, even with a driveable setup, it will spin like a top while the rear wheels are cool. I've only finished two events of the seven so far with it, but the front tires like to stay cold (and I'm hesitant to drop the Default high front tire pressures too far to get them to warm up for fear of it inducing oversteer... the last thing the car needs more of).

On top of all that, it's pretty fragile. Came round for lap two of one of the event races to find a couple errant wheels off of AI cars strewn in the middle of the racing surface. Luckily I avoided them, but I think an AI or two ended up eating them to not good results. I also lost wheels three times between practice/qualifying sessions that involved AI rear ending me while trying to get my tires up to temperature. :v:

# ¿ May 27, 2015 01:56

bUm: Jan 11, 2011

dirtyfrog posted:

LMP1 race at the "Monaco" circuit. Tapped the car in front going into the Loewes hairpin, spun him, carried on. Came round next lap to find a 19 car traffic jam. Clearly all the marshals were on siesta.

You're pretty much a monster. A monster that I hope has at least a SS, if not a GFY/video of said traffic jam.

On a related note of LMP1's: back when I did the Le Mans invitational, I tried the Audi R18 first. Does anyone else feel like the driver is ridiculously far back and ridiculously low in that car (literally the front wheel bodywork is impairing sight lines to the front left/right)? I understand it's somewhat meant to be that way for aerodynamics, but the RWD P30 felt so much more natural (further towards the front, able to easily see over the front wheel bodywork) and it's also an LMP1.

In other news: found a second car with the rear-facing camera in the RUF CTR3 road car. Unfortunately, it's on a standard lower-center-mount GPS area and the driver's arm is blocking it from sight except when shifting. :eng99:

On a related note: the Blue Chrome livery for the RUF CTR3 is something special, especially when it was out on the track under gorgeous mid-day sun at Road America. Apparently it was so bright it blinded the AI because I ran out of fuel on my last lap of qualifying and just drifted to a stop on the track to check out the interior a bit (admittedly, sitting right in the desired line on the outside not too far before a corner); after about 10 seconds of sitting there at a dead stop, some AI (presumably) rear ended me at over 100 MPH sending me flying up into the air (all I saw was sky outside the windshield) before I came crashing back down still on the track where I had been. I was then almost immediately hit be another AI with a glancing blow to my rear. When I finally got outside the car to admire my beautiful blue car, the rear end was mostly bare bodyframe with my bumper and other bits sitting on the ground behind my car. Subsequent AI to come by seemed to avoid me without issue. :shrug:

# ¿ May 27, 2015 11:14

bUm: Jan 11, 2011

njsykora posted:

No, I finished 6th on the track (I could see the 5 in front of me) but in the post race results screen and on the HUD it said I was 1st.

While we're on things I'd like to see I want a single season option, just pick a discipline and play through the season outside the career mode.

Are you sure it wasn't a multi-class race? When I did the 24 Hour Le Mans, there was 30 cars (as shown in practice/qualifying), but the actual race only had 7 LMP1 cars that formed my racing group, despite 30 on the track. Sounds like it was multi-class and you had 19 in your class and it was working as intended.

Norns posted:

The AI needs some work, but for the most part I'm pretty happy.

I've started lots of races at the back of the grid just to see how the AI reacts to me working my way into a 20 to 30 car pack. The game does wheel to wheel really well, they defend and generally respect my line. When I get rammed, a lot of the time it's my fault for being to agressive, or trying really risky late breaking.

I've had a few wtf moments, but I bet a lot of the AI complaints are just due to poo poo driving.

This is more or less my experience. AI ramming me when I don't invade their blind spot abruptly isn't crazy common (see: was also the cause of one of those real life Monaco accidents and plenty of other auto racing crashes). If anything I rather like that AI behaves realistically enough to do occasionally dumb aggressive things like late braking to try and pass and make actual mistakes that allow passing/cause AI exclusive incidents.

All that said, they do need to touch up AI with respect to multi-class races because there's no reason they shouldn't get the hell out of the way for a faster class of vehicle that they aren't even racing against.

# ¿ May 28, 2015 19:48

bUm: Jan 11, 2011

Norns posted:

And, they are loving superman in the wet.

Known bug that it is pretty absurd SMS hasn't hotfixed the poo poo out of three weeks on. There are bugs that crop up that need to be fast tracked to fixing because of how dramatically they impact the fun of your players: this is, without a doubt, one of those.

I guess while we're talking about AI issues: we can't forget to mention they often forget how to reverse and if they get stuck nose-first into a wall they will often just be stuck there, gassing it into a wall until the end of the session (practice, qualifying, or race).

# ¿ May 28, 2015 21:09

bUm: Jan 11, 2011

Hello Spaceman posted:

Speaking of bugs and AI: the computer cars are also impossible to beat in qualifying. I hosted a race on Spa and went out in the Group 5 Ford Capri. Set a pretty good lap � game told me I was on pole. So I chose "Skip to end of session" and suddenly the AI cars had all managed to set laps 55 seconds faster than my flyer. To put it into perspective: my qualifying lap was just under 2m30s, and the AI cars ahead of me had � in their 450hp group 5 cars � set 1m33s laps.

Only happens if you skip to end. I usually only ever do that in Practice so it doesn't really matter that it causes the AI to set inhumanly fast times.

In qualifying, I just go to the time progression thing on the menu and tick it over to 60x (maybe 50x?) and let it run (after I'm content with my time and/or can't set another within the session). I don't think the AI have ever set impossibly times when I've done it this way and it only takes seconds to finish out the session since it only gives 10 minutes for qualifying usually; which is frustrating on long tracks where that only lets you get one, maybe two, actual qualifying lap attempts in thanks to a forced warm-up lap.

I really wish they added an option to have practice/qualifying begin Time Trial style as well where you're coming up to the start/finish with readily warmed tires (but realistic fuel load/use) since I've probably sunk multiple hours already into just doing tire warm up laps for practice/qualifying to test a setup/do qualifying runs. Realism is great; fruitlessly squandering hours of time warming up tires should be optional because it's still a game.

Norns posted:

I'm still working on zero to hero...

Yup, still in the early parts of my Formula Rookie. Even skipping invitationals (I haven't been, besides repeats where I already snagged the accolade), it's a pretty long haul goal that gets even longer considering the higher tiers look like they have a lot more actual racing (Formula A having 19 races; GT Endurance presumably being filled with lengthy races).

bUm fucked around with this message at 22:45 on May 29, 2015

# ¿ May 29, 2015 22:43

bUm: Jan 11, 2011

Finished my second endurance invitational (at 10% length, 2.5 hours) tonight: 25 HR Panorama Madness (Bathurst w/ Road Group B cars [McLaren F1, Audi R8, M-B SLS, RUF, trackdays]).

Highlights:
- Confirmation that an endurance race at Bathurst involves decently many wall hits (small mistakes in the hill portion rarely go unpunished).
- Myself (McLaren F1) and the one AI McLaren F1 were basically ruining the competition most of the race. He must've had a bad crash or something though because our position trading (him passing me a couple times when I pitted thanks to incidents) stopped after about an hour and 45 minutes in favor of a BAC Mono almost a full lap behind behind second (who I eventually lapped, then got unlapped from a crash, then lapped again).
- Had some weather fun this time 'round: started with a sunny evening, rain shower for awhile after it got dark, foggy for awhile after that, clear till dawn, another rain shower in the morning, and then a long hot day (presumably based on running on red hot tires most of the day despite fine-tuning the tire pressures in practice/qualifying and having no tire temperature issues the prior ~1.5 hours).
- Had an AI that blew both rear tires... and chose to keep driving. He had an Audi R8 so he had four wheel drive, but by like the fifth time lapping him some AI had rear-ended him because his rear body panels were gone. On the ~tenth time lapping him, it was my turn to have caught him at an inopportune time and damage my car really bad with his slow rear end, forcing a pit.
- Almost lost the race thanks to the first pit rotation because when I entered the pits I got a "Pit Box Occupied" message and it just drove through, costing me a good 15~20 seconds and almost making me run out of fuel as I had to do another lap before pitting in again. Not sure what that was about : is there pit box sharing or was it because a few AI got screwed up and spent most of the race doing donuts on pit road (and happened to be in my spot when I pitted in)?
- Ended the race as I took my 64th pass on the start/finish line, a solid 3.5 minutes up on second place (80 AI difficulty; my top lap time was 2:13 something, so roughly a lap and a half ahead of second) thanks in part to AI pitting a lot due to the weather (perhaps stupidly since the McLaren F1 at least only has one tire type so pitting for weather makes no sense) and part to the McLaren F1 being slightly slower on the turn-y portion and much faster on the straights.

All-in-all, much better than I was expecting since Bathurst seemed like a pretty scary track my first encounter with it (never raced it prior to PCars). Less lapping thanks to everyone being the same class (albeit some decent performance differences) was a perk over the Le Mans and passing moves were generally easier thanks to lower speed turns and the F1's straightaway speed.

Not sure if I want to do the Le Mans 24 Hour again with a different class of car or continue to my fourth season, rising to Formula Gulf or GT5 (thinking Formula Gulf because the goon race in the Ginetta Junior didn't leave an enticing impression).

Ether Frenzy posted:

GT6 is Ridge Racer though? Or is it actually finally faster to even try and steer and not just use the Armco as your guide to victory in your 400 mph pretend design-intern-at-Dodge's fever dream? I quit hoping for that after 5 and never played 6.

I too gave up on Gran Turismo after 5 for that and other reasons. PCars is much better to my tastes (more challenging/realistic), but it's not such a ridiculous jump that you should feel totally blown away.

Things I like about PCars over GT:
- Each car feels much more unique (and, correspondingly, going between them can be quite a shock).
- It has damage. Like real damage. Like you can't crash into things all race long and expect no consequences (GT5 was the one that implemented "damage" to GT and it was a total joke both visually [never mind most cars didn't even have visual] and actually harming performance).
- It can have up to 45 (I think) cars on track (races never felt big enough with GT). I think 35 is the highest I've come across in the career invitationals and 20 is the highest in the career contracts I've done so far (Kart, Superkart, Formula Rookie).
- Racing/simulation quality feels better.
- AI feels much closer to actual other drivers.

Things I like about GT over PCars:
- Car collecting/upgrading/mileage/oil changes give you some sense of ownership of something.
- Much more polished (mostly UI-wise, but some stuff gameplay related needs patching/fixes).
- Better controller feel and default car setups (both hopefully still getting some work with PCars).
- Has some cool custom/street tracks.

Both have good careers in differing ways, but I definitely prefer PCars overall. If you're more about enjoying the racing itself than the extraneous stuff in GT, I think PCars will probably be a sound investment for you.

bUm fucked around with this message at 08:54 on Jun 3, 2015

# ¿ Jun 3, 2015 08:49

bUm: Jan 11, 2011

Welp, that's incredibly loving stupid. Finish my Formula Rookie season where I had a ton of new invitationals, did them, and had a metric asston of contract offers (an Endurance, 2 Formula B's, 4 GT4's, 2 Prototype 1's, 2 GT5's, 2 Formula Gulf's, and the contract renewal). I chose Formula Gulf for natural progression. Having nothing but repeat invitationals (that I already got the accolades from prior seasons) I skipped them all, kind of relieved by being able to focus on the contract at hand without being pulled off to use a bunch of cars I may or may not care to drive. Thought it was kind of funny that Formula Gulf only had two events, both on the same track (might've gone GT5 instead if I knew that, even though the Gulf seemed like a more cool car). Managed to win 3/4 races and am declared champion. Gleefully skip all the invitationals after to get moving onto Formula C with hopefully more than two race weekends. NOPE! Go to jail, do not pass go, get hosed guy... the only contract offer I get is a renewal for Formula Gulf again.

For their proclamations of a no hassle career, it seems like a lovely oversight to allow zero forward progression when you win the championship of your current contract just because you didn't do invitationals on the side (I can understand not getting more offers than you can shake your fist at... I would've been just fine with just a Formula C or two for minimal effort that season). Guess it's good Zero to Hero lets you use 10 seasons since I didn't count on having to have a remedial Formula Gulf season because I didn't want to do the optional invitationals.

Time to crank down AI difficulty, session length, and waste hours redoing invitationals (and the Formula Gulf season) just so I can continue progressing. :argh:

tl;dr: Cautionary tale: don't skip every invitational and only do your contract races (with Formula Gulf) because even if you're champion you don't get to progress.

Edit: Anyone know if this is also true of longer contracts than the extremely brief Formula Gulf? If so, anyone know how many invitationals satisfies SMS's dickish coding to let you progress so I can minimize repeating stuff I don't care to?

Edit 2: Oh lovely. I'd forgotten about the bug where sometimes (all the time?) setups don't save in career. Repeating invitationals I get to use loving awful default setups instead of the ones I spent 15~45 minutes making the cars actually drive nicely. PCars has made me very angry this day.

bUm fucked around with this message at 04:58 on Jun 5, 2015

# ¿ Jun 5, 2015 04:49

bUm: Jan 11, 2011

biglads posted:

I got offered a Formula C contract after winning in Formula Gulf. I skipped most of the invitationals and did poo poo in the ones I did run (good to see patch 1.4 promises to do something about the Escort ending up scraping down the track on the roof every time it's within a yard of another car). PS4 here.

Well, I re-ran like five invitationals before stopping for the night (pick through them fairly quickly with the difficulty at 50 so I can skip practice, get pole on a single qualifying lap, and finish the race in under 5 minutes); maybe I won't do too many more though if you didn't run many and got the Formula C contract offer.

I guess I did find a bright side: I branched out and tried different cars in the trackday invitationals rather than always going McLaren F1 (faster tracks) or BAC Mono (more turn-y tracks) that are just plainly superior to everything else in the class. I liked the engine sound on the Ruf RGT-8, but otherwise it felt kind of like an oversteer-y, heavy mess (much like Ruf cars in GT always were). Gave the M-B SLS a try the next trackday invitational and it's a drat fine car; it certainly doesn't go toe-to-toe with the McLaren or BAC, but it felt very composed (when not bottoming out hardcore, it was Zolder and I couldn't adjust ride height) and smooth around the track for a street car. It also has nice interior styling to match.

Athanatos posted:

Same, I never do invitationals and I advanced just fine.

Even with the two-event, four races Formula Gulf? Did you win all four races instead of only 3/4?

Maybe I wandered into an anomaly and should post about it on the official forums (but that'd require making an account... :effort:

)? Don't see it as a known issue to not get a moving-up contract despite being crowned champion of your current contract.

# ¿ Jun 5, 2015 22:25

bUm: Jan 11, 2011

Edit: Never mind.

bUm fucked around with this message at 10:19 on Jun 6, 2015

# ¿ Jun 6, 2015 08:39

bUm: Jan 11, 2011

widespread posted:

Oh come on, what's the worst that could hap-

*suddenly everyone blows their engines by lap 2*

I don't think I've ever blown a Superkart engine, even when hitting max RPM for 5+ seconds a lap for a 5~6 lap race. :shrug:

Laguna Seca would definitely be an interesting Superkart track given how twitchy they are and how turn-y it is; the corkscrew would be extra terrifying in a Superkart though.

AnimalChin posted:

[...] he can't possibly be worse than Tanner Foust.

The american Top Gear would be pretty ~~great~~ decent if it wasn't for that dreadful twat.

I don't think so. Rutledge is the only one with a potentially redeemable personality, but it's, in my opinion, an annoying and bad one. He might work with two other less lovely hosts, but the only thing that makes TG America worth watching is an interest in seeing some cool/dumb stuff with cars (whereas I've had a good success rate recommending Top Gear UK [ :rip:

... maybe not, but Top Gear America, and kind of Australia, prove that hosts make or break it] by countering "I don't like or care about cars" with "it doesn't matter, it's entertaining whether you give half a poo poo about cars").

# ¿ Jun 9, 2015 03:54

bUm: Jan 11, 2011

I had car setups rewriting themselves mid-session last night (first time I've seen that, it was just between sessions before). I was out running laps in practice after messing with setup, did Return to Pits to adjust according to tire temperatures, and everything reset to Default. Had that happen multiple times. Definitely annoying to have to redo the setup like seven times in a single racing event.

simble posted:

Yeah... my precious bytes!!! If I don't have to download something why do I have to pay for it?!

Not sure if the reply to this was carrying on :thejoke:

, but if not that's funny.

If it wasn't: it would be especially dumb if you couldn't race against them w/o getting the DLC (particularly with regards to online with vehicles of the same class [assuming the DLC cars aren't significantly better within said class]).

hopterque posted:

That's hosed up considering how awesome it is.

Agreed. Throwing down a vote for the M1 Procar.

Ether Frenzy posted:

The effects are executed perfectly in this game and it's very impressive visually (and changing weather conditions are awesome) but I wouldn't be surprised to learn they can't really fix the AI's cheating in the rain problem because making X number of rain physics calculations every sixth of a second (or whatever 30fps gets you) across the entire pack causes the game to chug even more than it does when it's just approximating the rest of the field's grip in the dry.

I suppose they'll just turn down the generic factor for AI grip in wetness number but the reality is there's no way they are doing individual physics calculations for the entirety of the field on varied road conditions.

I don't know about perfectly: rain on the windshield/your face (open top cars) kind of looks bad; also, there's not even an attempt to make it look like it runs so water droplets remain perfectly stable on a car moving 150 MPH.

According to the patch notes, it should theoretically be fixed whenever the patch drops. Guess we'll see.

# ¿ Jun 10, 2015 00:07

bUm: Jan 11, 2011

On the subject of Le Mans, freedom seeking to liberate France once more from the tyranny of Germany's cars.

I hope we get both street and Le Mans in PCars by this time next year.

# ¿ Jun 14, 2015 05:21

bUm: Jan 11, 2011

The patch that was a few days ago was supposed to fix setups not saving, wasn't it? It definitely didn't. Doing my American Endurance Championship Road America race right now and the car setup literally reset to Default every single time I went back into setup (so three times the first practice session, twice the second practice session, when I went into qualifying, and now as I'm going to start the race). Could tell by changes in the car that the setups were definitely saving and having different on-the-track performance, but just reset every time I returned to the tuning screen. :wtc:

SMS.

# ¿ Jun 15, 2015 03:58

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# ¿ May 14, 2024 19:27

bUm: Jan 11, 2011

Mr SoupTeeth posted:

SMS you only had nearly a half loving decade to get this poo poo sorted.

Follow up to previous post: moved on to the World Endurance Championship. Car setup again reset 5/6 times I returned to the car setup screen throughout the event. Which is to say: it seems SMS actually made the bug of not saving setups worse in the patch proclaiming they fixed it. :shrug:

At least I only once ran into setup resetting mid-session once prior to the patch and now it seems to be the norm.

Real reason for posting along the lines of "you had nearly half a loving decade to get this poo poo sorted": I am so loving pissed about AI not heeding blue flags, flashing headlights, or anything else that lower class cars in a multiclass race should abide by when an LMP1 is doing their thing. :argh:

Which is to say twice I was abruptly cut off by AI swerving in front of me so fast I couldn't brake or swerve myself before rear-ending them. The first time I had to pit-in (after having just done so five laps prior for what should've been my one and only stop) to repair the damage because my car was going to overheat (for shits and giggles the pit stop was an extra ~12 seconds when my pit crew decided to top off my fuel tank despite the pit strategy I changed up to remove the tire change very clearly called for zero fuel :wtf:

). The second time I had just passed the pit lane and was effectively coming around for the white flag. I rear-ended the fucker super hard (probably a 30 MPH speed difference... even after I'd slammed on the brakes and probably lost 15~20 MPH before impact) and my temperatures started sky rocketing immediately so I was going super slow (couldn't go too slow, second place was only 37 seconds back thanks to the first unnecessary pit stop), like half the pace I normally would. No dice, my engine still blew up as I came around to the high-speed bends with about 1/4 of the track (Spa) to go. Hour and a half long race totally hosed by utter garbage AI not having some mechanism of recognizing cars coming up to pass them at all. I guess at least I still got credited 3rd (of 6 competitors that are LMP1 cars) since the others weren't on the lead lap and I was.

PCars is such a love/hate relationship. The racing is solid and fun, but miscellaneous buggy bullshit always seems to force me into taking a break out of frustration over stupid poo poo for every night I spend racing. It seems unreal that SMS even included the possibility of giving you a blue flag (despite half the time I get them being when I just passed the "fast car" it wants me to yield to), but didn't program AI to understand/follow them.

Maybe I'll have to bite the bullet and turn off damage for continuing endurance racing; I don't want to because I believe if I gently caress up I should pay for it (I have no problem with having to take a not-part-of-strategy pit for damage because I mistimed my braking and hit a wall or something), but AI sticking steadfast to their driving line until you're side-by-side makes no sense in a multi-class race and is too loving stupid to continue with so they can ruin more hour and a half long races with their poor programming.

On another patch-related note: the AI lap times with rain seemed better for the case of it I ran into tonight (Road America, LMP1). One can hope that bug is actually fixed across the board and not only kind of fixed.

bUm fucked around with this message at 09:01 on Jun 15, 2015

# ¿ Jun 15, 2015 08:57

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