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Nice to hear Multiplayer is being worked on. I have been hoping to see at least one BMW or a Ginetta in game, even just a preview. Any word on those cars?

this Scam lol.

The Z4 GT3 is getting close to having the basic model complete, as is the M1 Procar. Both were started before the license was publically announced however. The team haven’t shown any progress on the Ginettas yet.

Ok, I get that you might not like the game or the people behind it, but how exactly is this a scam? There are builds released weekly (twice a week in my case) that you can try on your own and play.
If it’s a scam, how come I get to try the product every day?

i just updated from 271 to take another look at the eifelwald development. i was afraid that they wouldnt refine the track itself and just add trackside objects and it looks like thats exactly what happened

When multiplayer is in, I’ll definitely be back into playing this. That’ll be a huge incentive for me, after my long hiatus away.

I dunno, dude. I paid, they deliver more every week. Seems pretty legit to me.

the way it makes progress, feels like they hold back a bit, especially physics wise, they tease people with content so they upgrade, but meanwhile the physics side is not very fun, overall to me it feels like a bit of a scam.

Thats just my honest gut feeling, this whole project I have seen the content side yes, But the physics side no, at least make it feel as good as rfactor, I just don’t get it?.

When will everyone stop talking about physics, and multiplayer? This title is still in an”ALPHA” trial. It’s not a beta test, ALPHA people, ALPHA. From what I recall this isn’t even meant to be completed until late 2013, so forget about every little detail of what isn’t there, and assist in the progression of the title. I repeat “ALPHA!”

Actually that is incorrect. If you bothered to follow the Eifelwald Progress thread on the WMD forums you would see the Loft and width of the track was worked on in a lot of places between build 271 and 291. Did you not notice the AIW and Lap timer is broken? Ya that’s due to the track realignment. Which is also pointed out on the forums(post #73 of the Eifelwald dev thread). It’s not all eye candy updates as you suggest.

We can do without this kind of flaming, thank you.

I not a fan of pcars or SMS but that was hardly constructive.

Amazing shots.

I wish this drove as good as it looks! Graphics are stunning but car simulation is average so far. I cant get a feeling of balance in any of the cars so far, the cars just understeer like crazy and when you get some oversteer it does not feel natural and steering input does not counter the front end of the car as you would expect.

The cars do not react to steering, brake and throttle input as you would expect when pushed to the limit in a corner. I really hope they tweak this in the upcoming releases. When we get the first road/sports cars in the game that are not hypercars it will be much easier to benchmark the handling and car balance, really looking forward to the BMW’s.

Personally, even though its Alpha I was expecting physics to progress a bit further at this point since the other aspects are so awesome already. I haven’t seen any significant improvements in car handling for the past 3-4 months?

Driving cars on grip alone, listening to the engine sounds and looking at amazing car and track models though this is great! Well worth my $$$ even if this would be all we got, I’m hoping we will get more though, especially in the handling area!

graphics is stunning since the first release, same for sounds, same for contents. 3d car models are the best ever seen. Some tracks are not so similar with real counterparts, but only the Lord knows what data they are using to reproduce them, considering that they not have the licenses and anyway tracks are good enough. Weekly updates, released with a remarkable timeliness, no other developer does this. Physics was poor and still is. It’s an alpha, ok. In 1 year we have seen improvments by each single side, but the physics. One question: Shift 1/2 physics was bad because EA decisions, Test Drive Ferrari Legends physics is bad because Atari decisions. Anyway, they feel exactly like pCars. I would like to remind here what -the same- developers said about Shift, literally: “we have THE most advanced physics system ever released in a racing game. – Shift 2″.

Can I give a suggestion? Open your eyes ;)

I’m sorry but “Shift 1/2 physics was bad …… they feel exactly like pCars”?? Come on, you’ve clearly not played the Shift games or you don’t have a clue what you’re talking about. I’m sick of this pathetic line, it is complete nonsense.
Yes pCars physics has a long way to go and it isn’t fantastic but it is NOTHING like the physics in the Shift series. (Which in my view are awful and unplayable).
They way you talk it’s as if they’ve simply imported the whole Shift physics engine into pCars and done nothing else. Really??
I think it’s you that needs to “open your eyes”!

They are. Some of them are just jaw droppingly good.

Claiming that Shift 1/2 feels exactly like pCARS definitely shows you don’t know what you’re talikng about, as pCARS was already better than those games months ago.

When will people stop talking about it being Alpha. The fact is the physics are rubbish, absolutely awful, and they have been since day one.
Basically no progress has been made with the physics at all.
Forget doing it later. Physics should take priority over EVERYTHING else!!!!
No magic new tyre model is going to instantly fix the bad driving sensation.
I don’t doubt for a minute that by release they we have a real nice shine on this but that will not hide the fact that it is still a gold painted turd to anyone with any common sense.

So will the screenshot button be mapped to the wheel by default???
It’s looking like a great photography simulation. Will there be filters and shutter speed adjustments available in game?
I had kinda hoped for a decent physics model but I guess SMS are keen amature photographers???? ;-)

So, you want the graphics artists and sound engineers to stop working until AJ’s new tire model is complete? You want people who are working on multiplayer, AI, and the user interface to stop working on those and just sit in their cubes?

You don’t know what you’re talking about.

Perhaps you should go on the forums to see all the updates about the new tire model and subsequent FFB work to follow. It’s being worked on by several people and in the mean time you get new features, tracks, cars, etc.

You don’t ‘get it’ because you, like so many others on here, won’t give a game developer TIME TO MAKE THE GAME!

PCars is getting better with every build… As far as how it’s driving is, it awesome and what I’d expect a car to do… I’ve been sim racing for 12 years and this just keeps getting better… The cars DO react to the brake/throttle and steering as it should IMO.. It’s not perfect but they are very close…

Those 3-4 months have been spent writing a brand new tyre model. Major engine updates like that can’t be dropped into builds piece by piece, instead it will be released in one huge update once it’s near completion. The current tyre model is stripped right down too for the time being. Other aspects of the physics and FFB are reliant on getting the new tyre model in first. It’s pretty unusual for a pre-alpha to be a drivable game at all, overall progress is just skewed a bit by having a heavily developed graphics engine handed down from Shift 2.

Out of curiosity, how many other pre-alpha games have you actually played? It’s a fact that almost everything will change before release, and I’m not sure what makes you think that the physics won’t despite a large portion of the engine being replaced. As for priorities, physics clearly ARE a high priority as everyone who can work on them is working on them, and have been for many months.

Ok didn’t know they where re-writing the tire model, that is great! I understand they cant put that out in weekly pieces.

I think a lot of the “interaction feel” I’m missing is down to the tire model. Do they have any expected ETA on including the new model in a build? Looking forward to trying it out!

you assume that Shift is a negative comparison because you find it awful. Not me, I liked it very much as racing game. But it was ”sold” as simulation, and it wasn’t. Even if mr Candini from drivingitalia.net (best cut&copy sim website ever) spent months trying to convince their readers that Shift physics wasn’t bad at all, trying every physics mod possible.. I’m just trying to tell you that music isn’t changed, but it’s just my opinion and I don’t earn nothing trying to convince other people. But please ask yourself about this: IF this is a simulation created by the simracing community FOR the community (and everyone knows that accurate physics is drammatically important for simracers), WHY after one year pCars physics is the most criticized feature of this ”simulation made by racers for racers?” Ah sure, because it’s still alpha. Ok, you get the point.

I agree its getting better each build (each week in fact which is awesome).

My point was that I haven’t noticed any significant improvements in general handling and car balance for a while now, but I guess that is mainly related to the new tire model pez2k mentioned which is being developed. It does not make sense to change other parts when they are working with such a big update as a new tire model as there will be a lot of dependencies on that to all other vehicle dynamics.
I’ve been sim racing for at least 12 years as well (since GPL came out in 1998) and have some real-life experience with race cars as well as extensive experience with sports/supercars. I have driven most recent sports/supercars (Ferrari F430, 458, Lambo LP560-4, BMW M3, M5, M6, Corvette Z06, GT-R, Mustang GT-500, Porsche Cayman R, Ariel Atom etc), all of them hard including drifting some of them. Here is a clip of a “fun” lap in a V10 BMW M6 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e999YJqDYvI&feature=plcp.
In my view some cars are “OK” (V8 Radical is my favorite so far) but all are really lacking feel and feedback at and over the limit. Due to this its hard to feel and control the balance between over and understeer, weight transfers does not feel as they have as much impact on balance as it should. The worst part in my view is the handling when you are in a slide, steering input does not feel as its doing what it should to adjust the front end in relation to the rear. All cars snap hard when retaining grip, which is understood for race cars on slicks but the same feeling exists for the road cars on street tires which are much more forgiving in real-life.
Since its pre-alpha I have full understanding that its work in progress and I’m really looking forward to updates, especially improvements in car setups, tire model and physics which addresses what I described above.
Its great that you feel comfortable with the current handling, I wish I did as well. I hope the new tire model will make it appeal more to me as well. That said I enjoy driving pCars at this point as well, will do some laps tonight on the latest build and the Nordschleife (which since the last build is starting to look great!)

While i don’t know how good the new tyre model and new dynamics model ( also in development ) will be. All these issues you just pointed out are known by the devs and have been discussed alot in the physics threads. I think they already got an early contact patch model or something in from the NTM they can experiment with. So fingers crossed that we see those changes this year yet. :)

Tyrewalls at Nordschleife shouldn’t have a full tire sticking out at the top.

They are. Some of them are just jaw droppingly good.

same old, same old. YAWN !

It’s pretty much a Shift 1/2 conversion unfortunately. Probably best to ignore this version and look forward to Assetto Corsa’s new translation of the track.

Except that it’s not a conversion.

Except that it is.

Thumbs down doesn’t change the truth.

Sorry, I’ve had enough of the fanboys and will not be posting here anymore. You can compare the tyrewalls and armco to the Shift track if you want.

Bye.

The truth is that it isn’t.

A conversion means that they would use assets from the Shift games, which they aren’t since they’re rebuilding it from scratch.

Bugger off then, this has nothing to do with being a fanboy. You are wrong, can’t decently backup your claims and run away from the discussion because it’s obvious you don’t have anything decent to back up your nonsense post.

How immature of you, can’t expect anything less from a big part of the simcrowd.

Yeah that’s right, and you wouldn’t see a virtual car driving there also ! :)

Anyway this is Eifelwald, so maybe some artistic licence is allowed.

Dude, you can go to the forums and see the track development yourself, the very first export of this track was just the road with no details on the side.
I mean, there’s not only screenshots available proving you wrong but we also got to drive in it.

At the moment, my biggest problem with this game is not really the physics, cause those aren’t tragic. My biggest problem is the way that the game conveys what the car is doing as your flying around the track. You can see it with your eyes, but you don’t feel it at all. The force feedback is dismal, and the little feedback there is is pretty useless since it doesn’t really tell you anything. I hope that soon they fix the FFB, cause then this game will honestly be pretty amazing. Hopefully this NTM will improve the FFB and perfect the physics, and then along with these graphics this game will be killer.

So, how long to go before this stuff is in? How long until release?

Late 2013? Well then, do we have to have bi weekly screenshots every single time there’s an insignificant change?

And if they haven’t even shown the basic proper physics yet, why all this broo-ha-ha about it?

Until it has proper physics it’s a gfx tech demo – which is what it looks like. And if it isn’t just a tech-demo then why can’t conclusions be drawn based on the physics as is?

And mightn’t the physics be considered critical to the entire endeavour – at least to those whom demand more than just eye candy?

It looks fabulous – everyone can see. But do we need it reinforced every week? Especially when seemingly the physics aren’t even done.

What if the final physics are awful? What if they’re like you have now?

Well, what are the gfx and audio people working towards? Where is the core of this thing? The core would be the driving model? Right? Or wrong, maybe? Maybe the core of the game is not physics and the driving model…….maybe its graphics?

You know how mods need to be updated when the core code is altered significantly? Well, the more PCars physics changes, the more changes there are going to need be made to existing assets – like cars (and their physics).

It’s more sensible to have your core code pinned down – in this case a driving type thing. And you develop assets around that – in this case, cars and tracks.

How much of a part in all that does the physics/driving model take? If it’s a lot, how much is it going to change now? And if it isn’t a lot, what sort of a driving game is it?

I’m looking forward to being proven needlessly cynical about PCars, but it looks like shiny-shiny is blinding people, again. Same as it ever was. ;)

It’s apparently advanced enough that it’s being tested in terms of the game, rather than purely mathematical. Check out “AJ’s thread” in the Physics section of the forum for status updates, but it sounds like it’s a couple of months away at most. I’d expect it not long after the first public multiplayer tests.

Yeah what a great suggestion!!!!
Physics should be groundwork. Build the game around a solid base and everything else should sort it self out.
SMS are building it backwards in my reckoning. Physics last. Graphics first. Everything else inbetween.
I’m talking about this topic Eric. What you talking about?

People have been working on physics for many months?? Hmmmm. Well I can’t see any evidence of their work so far. Give us a shout when you are able to locate some. ;-)

Audio doesn’t need to change when physics change. Neither does the UI, career modes, multiplayer, tracks, or car models…

The vast majority of things don’t need to change except chassis and suspension tuning, the tuning menu options,and FFB. These are things ISI is still working on on, I might add, despite it being very late in Beta.

Early version of the BMW Z4 GT3 should come in the next build (7 September).

Lying fool. Track was started from scratch. From photo comparisons the accuracy looks damn near perfect and it’s still not finished.

If you can’t see evidence it’s because you’re too lazy to read. Look for AJ’s thread in the physics section, he goes into extreme detail with his work on the new tyre physics.

To quote myself from another comment further up this very page: ‘[The last] 3-4 months have been spent writing a brand new tyre model. Major engine updates like that can’t be dropped into builds piece by piece, instead it will be released in one huge update once it’s near completion.’ There is also plenty of evidence in the developers’ posts as Matt below points out.

Yeah because its the same old problems with the physics, Jeez man I wish SMS never brought out this site.

All this talk of the physics/feeling is not final. The game is in development. This means everything is open. It can be bad but also very well and the likelihood that it will be good is very high for such a big experienced team. Since it is now already very good but not perfect ( logically for a pre-alpha software ). It needs only a NTM and the authentic transfer of their forces for the ffb. Exactly on this part the guy’s are working to the time. This is not in three days done. But as I also do not know how the NTM will be can i judge it not with warranty but I can say one with security the simulation basis is good even if it isn’t ready. If the result is as imagine it and expected, pCars not much stands in the directions to the Crown.
I hope for these sim and people so much this all works as expected. SMS please not disappointed me.

Sorry for my english

Quote: ” It’s pretty unusual for a pre-alpha to be a drivable game at all ” End of quote.

Assetto Corsa is pre-alpha, it as a smaller development team than SMS.:)

True, but few have driven Assetto Corsa yet so hard to know for sure. I do agree though that it looks VERY good from a handling perspective from the videos, and it clearly does manage oversteer physics very well (they even have a drift mode to count drift score). Its the sim I’m most looking forward to at the moment! :)

Those that have driven Assetto Corsa, are respectable in the sim racing community,some of them run sim racing sites, like BSIM Racing & Race department, they have tested Assetto corsa.

What makes you think they have ?

The seizure and total control of NoGrip.com??? Effectively killing a decent sim forum and turning it into a secondary base for hype generation.

Too lazy to read!??! What a classic!!! Top stuff. Keep it coming.
I just read your comment hey??
Tell you what when the work actually translates to me experiencing a realistic driving sensation and tangible FFB effects then I will consider that as evidence of their work. Until then……no.

That doesn’t answer my question.

But to answer your post, I highly doubt SMS seized and took control of NoGrip. The only person who controls what goes on there are those that run it. How they choose to do that is up to them and their reputation sits accordingly.

It’s not happening here though, you only have to look at the comments that we allow on here to know that. I’m sure SMS would love to not see many of the tedious criticism levelled at pCARs by people who just want to hate it or those who don’t understand fully how a game is developed.
It’s one thing to not like a title but quite another to keep coming in pCARS threads and saying so.

Let me make one thing very clear. I take a very dim view of people who make these accusations of VR being bought out or in SMS’s control. There is no evidence of that.
If it were to happen that someone here made a really bad comment that SMS didn’t like and they approached myself or Rob (and I have never once been asked by them to remove posts or ban people), I think if we felt it was justified, we would remove the offending post. But I think thats normal. The same treatment would be afforded to Simbin, Kunos, or even another member who may feel particularly aggrieved at a post.
It doesn’t mean anyone is in control of this site. Rob is the man in control and I moderate. 99% of post removals or bans, if they are done, are done by me.
Any accusations by anyone that this site is bought out will be treated as trolling/flamebaiting and therefore breaking the rules. Not only is it trolling but it is offensive, especially to Rob.

I think Rob is a good guy and a very fair guy and I don’t think he would let his personal site be in control of any third party.
I don’t believe SMS would compromise Rob in that way either. I also like the guys over at SMS, I’ve worked with them before and they are a great bunch of people who were so friendly and helpful. They are dedicated and very good at what they do.

However…. if I thought for one minute that SMS had control of this site I wouldn’t moderate for it. That’s nothing against SMS, but I think something like one site influencing another in that way, should not happen.
This is Robs place and as far as I’m concerned it has to stay this way.

There are usually more negative vibes in pCARS threads than anywhere else. So they are more prone to moderation than other threads because some people just don’t know how to post in a behaved manner when discussing the merits or flaws of pCARS development.
If someone gets out of hand with a post and it gets some moderator/admin attention then it is NOT because SMS has control but because it either breaks OUR posting rules or it just simply crosses a line. The same applies to any other thread, pCARs or not.

N.B. I would caution anyone against making further accusations like this. I won’t stand for it because as far as I’m concerned it is just a nonsense.

Are you sure AC is pre-alpha? I thought they were aiming to release it by the end of the year, which would need it to be in very late alpha if not in beta already.

Yes it is pre-alpha http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cV6kN1oGI0Q&feature=player_embedded#!
Wix from BSIM racing has tested the pre-alpha, you can also see where it says pre-alpha version bottom left of the screen @ 2:14 on wards.

I’m baffled as to how it’s possible for anyone to still not understand, at the fundamental level, the whole idea of ‘mass development’, and yet they all seem to find VirtualR.

That’s impossible, because all of the assets from shift 1/2 are property of EA. Only the engine was licenced to EA.

The FFB can be VERY good right now.

If you look in the WMD forum, there are some custom FFB profiles by Andy Garton that are a massive improvement on the default.

I use the ‘Rack force’ one as it uses pretty much the same idea as realfeel :)

Hopefully the physics and tyre model changes will be available soon as the current build still drives rather poorly and the FFB needs work. When is this game due for release? I’ve been playing builds for the last 10 months and while some improvements have been made to the physics and ffb, I’ve never been impressed with the driving model, and would rather race 7 year old sims, there’s still too much of a Shiftness about it for me.

Not every old asset is a “Shift 1/2 conversion”. They also used some of their assets on the Ferrari game. EA doesn’t own everything. But of course SMS have to rebuild the tracks from scratch using either new or some of their own existing assets.