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The Watkins Glen for rF2 is not part of the beta release. It’s a 3rd party mod track. So it’s not really a fair comparison.

Stock pCARS track vs. 3rd party rF2 mod track.

If you’re going to compare SMS to ISI, you should use stock content imo.

Agree. A mod track with cardboard cutout tress used in a comparo video linked from here…really?

Ok a 3rd Pary Mod with ingame Content is not a fair compairsen but one thing is fact on this comparsion. The Sound of CARS is a lot better as the one from ISI. And what i have been seen in the Beta of rFactor2 the Tracks of CARS also better in the state of Development.

..and maybe play the audio back at comparable volume levels for a fair comparison.?

Lets put all the comparisons aside because they mean squat. pCARS looks to be a very interesting project and one that may just give the sim-racing world what it has desired (content wise) from a racing game. Its one of the games I’m looking forward to just as much as I look forward to the full release of rF2. Why not just enjoy each game for what they are? do we have to do comparisons of games that share nothing aside from the racing experience with each other?

This is ridiculous that someone has compared that poorly converted Watkins Glen for rF2 with pCARS, it should compared with iRacing version.

rF2 looks super gay … lol

Have to say that I have been following this title with great anticipation and especially when i heard that Ian Bell was at the helm.

But after reading all off the screencaptures, taken from pCARS forums, consisting the ban ordeal about physics of this game, I have to say that pretty pictures lie more than 100000 lines of code..

Lost the trust for Ian Bell (as their own real life driver, physics feedbacker Ben Collins was agreeing with the banned people) ignoring the point made in the original post and banning people who pay money developing this title (and trying to help, for crying out loud!)

And because the respond to a clear physics shortcoming was like this i have lost the trust also for this “game”.

Well big part of the title has been sold so of course it’s not “convenient” to agree on any shortcomings while making money, but this is ridiculous..

Everyone make you own decisions: http://db.tt/4XtNlSVR

 The mentioned physics shortcoming is like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJjX6soPM6A.
The car seems to magically selfright itself without any acceleration or steering input, which is impossible if thrown into a slide like in this video, even in 4wd car.

at this point in this game can be seen only beautiful screen shots. This is not a simulator. How was shift2 remained.

hehehe no… it shouldn’t.

 Good day

Looks even more unnatural here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhu_xJaesj8
Criterion’s Burnout (NFSHP) is the only other game I can think of where car behaves like that.

 Okay I must be honest now…this is the most beautiful racing game I’ve ever seen!

That’s what made me skeptical of the model at first, too. “Pay us up front, and we’ll listen to your input, we promise.”

I would like to invite some of you over to my home that i’m building, it’s little more than a shell at the moment but you should get the idea of where i’m going with it.
It does not have a toilet so you will have trouble evacuating your crap there.
Nor does it have a kitchen or a living area, infact, it’s incomplete.
So, please no complaining and telling me that it’s not a home yet, I know it’s not but i’m working hard to get it finished. It will be finished and it will be a home.

If you bitch too much about my potential home i’m putting hard work into, I will kick your ass out. :D

double post, sry

If you let me pay to be in your home and there is no toilet, I will kick your ass out.

i don’t know if physics are 100% correct as i never had the chance to drive any of these cars before in real life.. shit, i don’t even know  a damn about mathematics or physics.. .. but who cares when i’m having this much fun? Just enjoy the game, guys!

Mark, I get your point but wouldn’t you want to know if one of your guests noticed that your chimney has been installed upside down? I bet it would be useful information while it’s still “relatively easy” to fix? :)

I like rFactor 2′s braking zone bobble. It sounds/looks like it might be just a tad too harsh but pCARS is quite a bit too subdued. The feelings through the wheel are actually REALLY good for braking in pCARS but the visuals don’t quite match.

If the physics end up being a crap, at least the game will look gorgeous. Nothing, and I mean nothing really, looks that great on any platform. GT5 and Forza looks like bad jokes compared to the eye candy on this game. It’s astonishing how it can look good. If the physics are at least serviceable, that game is going to be huge.

Somehow I don’t think that childish comment will end up in a book of great historical quotes.

Shift 2 was designed with the demands of EA overriding the desires of the dev team.
With pCARS, theres no-one from above looking down telling them to dumb it down.

It IS a simulator.  I think you’ll find it easily meets the description found in a dictionary.

Joni.
Fair point, I’ll go back and hide in my corner…..in a min :D
If the chimney were upside down, I would accept any criticism and rectify the problem.
In the case of pcars I think the chimney is not aligned to the fireplace.
People are saying there is a fundamental problem with the physics, I know where they are coming from, I just dont think its “fundamental”
The countersteer or lack of argument, I have on a number of occasions corrected big slides without the need for countersteer in an mk2 rev1 mr2 with ditchfinders on, just a slight liftoff and straighten the wheel and things (might) come back. Yes, it is extreme in pcars at the moment and the mr2 is the only car I have driven that did this.
Regarding the caterham video that caused quite a stirr, you could also do this in the mr2 in wet carparks. Accelerate while turning and you would get some understeer, keep accelerating hard and because of the viscose/open diff the inside rear wheel would start to spin up, as your speed incresed the momentum of all that weight in the rear would cause the backend to go loose, all while understeering badly. If you lift off at that point you would go into a spin, if you didnt you could do this all day with only minor tweaks to steering and throttle input. Yes the layout is different but you cant tweak reality, you can tweak a game, oops I mean a sim :p

Peter, I can provide nappies for the duration of your stay? :D

Due to the lack of sleep, the above may or may not make any sense.

If the chimney isn’t lined up with the fireplace, that is fundamental! You would die of CO poisoning if you lit a fire!

i think gt5 comes fairly close to this? and that can be played on a 300 bucks platform.

 The neighbours called my chimney an eye sore and told me to remove it or else, they were very rude. When its finifhed, I don’t think I will invite them round.
On the other hand, the people who I invited round voced their concerns about my chimney. After listening to their concerns I have decided to rip it out and get central heating.

So did they say they’re going to work on the slide issue? All I ever hear is about the kerfuffle over it.

Care to elaborate ?

That was the point, I think. A 300 bucks platform can’t compete with this. Simple maths, a modern PC is many time more powerful than the PS3/XBOX360.

The point here being, that in the C.A.R.S. video, the sound is better, however, the sound in the rFactor 2 video would have been much better, if the user had just turned up the volume.  Lol.  Another thing, if you’re going for realism, you’d think animated hands turning a wheel looks a great deal more realistic, than “phantom” hands turning a wheel.  I guess it’s a matter of preference.

 I’ve not had much time to read their forums since the start, only been playing the weekly builds.
My opinion is that it’s not a specific problem or bug but a combination of things, for the most part the weird behavior can be dialed out in the car setup and any residual weirdness is down to it being early in development. There has been some discussion on providing good default setups on the WMD forums.
If it were a month before it’s intended release date I would be worried but it’s got a long way to go.

 Indeed yes but there is rude and demanding and polite and courteous, these two things meet in the middle and in the middle there is a fine line.Looking back I feel there was always going to be at least one person banned and refunded from WMD, by the very nature of what they are trying to do and the fanatical nature of us sim racers, it was always inevitable.

Little boxes, on the hill side, …

Agreed, as well as waiting for final releases of both games… Only kids and insecure people need to compare all the time. Are we so pathetic as a society that this has become the standard behaviour ?

GT5 can look far better in certain situations. But pCARS looks this good in game, that’s the ticket.

Great anticipation…but not great enough to actually participate in the forums months ago? Hate to say it but this is jumping on the hate bandwagon a bit isn’t it?

Made it into the community gallery, without fail every week ;D Also my skin is in Nismo’s trailer, cheers!

Varazdat, Like Nike famous punchline say: just DO (I mean TRY) it! if you truly find it is like S2, I think you are a very biased person… because this as NOTHING TO DO with Shift2 anymore!
Just think out of your box and try it, it’s just 10 bucks for Xsake!

How long is it til pCARS release? It feels like iRacing took about 9 months to tune out most of the big handling issues with their new tire model, and it still has issues. I’m sure they’ll put forth an effort, but tire modeling is hard, which is why nobody has really nailed it yet.

 Agreed. Not sure pCARS will look better than GT5 when it will be released for the PS3.

Today I can’t say I prefer rFactor 2 graphics, but the comparison is really unfair. Pro against beginning amateurs…

 I’m a tad confused here, who are the pros and who are the beginning amateurs?
I was under the assumption that both developers have a fair amount experience.

The track used in rFactor2 is a conversion from rF1 on a beta software, so the pros would be pCARS and the amateurs would be the track modders on rF2.

Far better than CARS ? In which situations ? Would you have a screenshot to illustrate that ? (not bashing, really curious)
Do you mean the weather stuff ?

Ah, confusion averted :D
In my opinion comparison videos of any up and coming sims is a tad trollish.
Real life comparisons on the other hand are fair game.

Think Ross means in photomode Laurent when all of GT5′s magical PP effects all of sudden enable hence him then saying pCARS looks this good in game. I personally think pCARS even without a photomode still beats GT5 in alot of situations.

How things have changed in gaming !

We used to drool at the picture on the box, knowing the game would NEVER look that good.Now it’s the opposite. Rendering in game is so beautiful they just put a logo on the box :D

Indeed mate, i keep having to pinch myself now that the racing genre on PC has finally caught up with FPS games with the use of DX11 engines and just amazing lighting and textures. Graphics never used to be really up there for me on my list of things a sim should nail but tbh it’s up there now with sound and FFB for me. Physics are a given on any list really.

 You are misleading every one with what you say here, Ben Collins doesn’t have one single post in that thread or forum even, agreeing with what the banned members said. Some of the feedback that he gave has already been adressed in the latest builds and they are constantly woking on it.

 I really did have to double check the last 2 AC pics very close, I was starting to convince myself they were screen shots. I think true photo realism is on our doorstep.
Healthy competition between developers in the coming years can only mean we get some of the best looking and feeling sims possible.
I think we are going to be spoiled for choice.

I did convince myself they were in game lol. I swear i looked at the tyres in the 2nd shot and the little wings that are flaring off the bodywork near the tyre looked like they needed more polys lol. They didn’t look perfectly formed and the whole scene in general just had a game engine feel, it looked and felt over exposed like game lighting.

I have since gone back and looked at previous shots and any game shots have had “in game” written on them. But it just goes to show how far we have come when shots like that can make you think twice

The Caterham 500 feels so good, pure sim for me. :)

The screenshots are amazing.  To me they look better than those 2 console titles.
5th and 6th shot down on the 1st column.   Yikes !

Render makers are going to have to up their game to keep up now !   argh.

don’t have the chance to do so right now (or months ago) The point is that developers sell slots for people to be test drivers and contributors and then the paying “stockholders” are treated like bunch of know nothings by ignoring their comments and thus being arrogant. In my opinion.
So no, I wasn’t jumping any hate wagons.

If you pay to get to be able to comment and develop and point out things needing addressing then you should be treated a totally different way, especially if you have been contributing for a while.

Think of yourself being a stockholder in a company which’s product has something that needs to be looked at. After you tell that to the CEO he says thats not the case and tells you to get your stuff, leave your stocks and go. It doesn’t work like that does it.

 Sorry about that. The thing is he did, so i’ll try to find that part also. It was after these guys were banned so it might need some diggin’

Because of this matter being so vulnerable to the pCARS team they deleted the whole thread,  otherwise you could have read that from there.

Another thing to consider when it comes to graphics (especially in a driving sim/game) is the motion of the car when you’re watching replays or even following behind other cars while playing.

When it comes to replay, that’s where the guys at Polyphony excel.  The cars have actual weight and suspension (provided , of course, that you drive the cars realistically).  The tires can be seen to actually grip the road and you see a good amount of body-rolls especially on road cars.  Even race car- the Super GT cars in GT5- move very much like its real world counterpart- with high grip and quick transition.  Mind you it’s still far from perfect but to me the only other sim/game that comes close or exceeds GT5 at the moment is iRacing (but iRacing doesn’t have road cars which moves more dynamically than race cars). 

In SHIFT2, SMS did a pretty good job when it comes to capturing movement but for most part the cars still lack certain amount of weight.  While the suspension’s pliable it doesn’t quite project a believable movement- that could be the fault of SHIFT’s physics but even looking at what is still a WIP, pCARS seem to retain some of the shortcomings.

trying to compare the uncomparable is not a good idea…
CARS is what it is , and so Rfactor2!
I like CARS but I know that nobody will have an online race before a very long time! and this makes the difference if any!

“The point is that developers sell slots for people to be test drivers and contributors and then the paying “stockholders” are treated like bunch of know nothings by ignoring their comments and thus being arrogant. In my opinion.
So no, I wasn’t jumping any hate wagons.”
I don’t know how you did it (and I don’t care, I’m no judge or police), but you must have expressed your voice in a disrespectful manner to be treated badly on SMS forums. Judging those hard working people as being arrogant is proof to me you’re judging a situation you don’t understand because you’ve been frustrated somehow. The entire post above shows you don’t understand the development model and the way it can work.
This is not a classic company with “normal” psychopathic stockholders. We’ve seen cases and cases of trolls who suddenly start to write politely as soon as they’ve been banned from SMS forums to defend their case.

Please don’t spill hate on VirtualR. However you put it, this is hating, mate. Don’t be a hypocrit with yourself and us.

Opposed to your beloved slavering model at iRacing ? 
Come on, I wouldn’t expect that kind of trolling from you, Bakkster.

Few things:

This didn’t happen to me so I haven’t been frustrated in anyway

I just read those posts from the forum (the link in my first post), did you?

I have made some hard work (for free) for 2½ years on a mod back in the day. When you put 90% of your own sparetime to something and get feedback which sometimes is quite blunt and unpolished and sometimes plain raw (which it in this pCARS thing wasn’t) yes it feels bad and it makes you gutted, but thats the only way that shit gets done!

If everyone is hooraying and padding the backs of the developers, whats the point in the whole thing? You can see with your own eyes (from the video) that the problem is real and was presented to the devs in grown up manner but as it was. The reaction to that from mr. Bell was really childish and unprofessional, can you deny that?

So next time you come here to blindly defend a gamecompany which treat paying people who have contributed before and the get banned for doing what they’re supposed to do, come back with something more constructing than “don’t be hypocrit…”

Face the facts.

The difference is I subscribed to iRacing because I was happy with its current level of development, not because I expeced it would get better later. I think people who sub to iRacing but aren’t happy with the current state of development are making a bad choice.

I haven’t heard much about pulling your money out of pCARS (I know the guys that got banned got their money back), but IMO the ability to pull your money is part of what will keep a developer honest. If iRacing doesn’t deliver, people pull their subscriptions. If pCARS doesn’t deliver, Ian Bell already has people’s money.

That said, both models will take advantage of the sunk cost fallacy to retain members.

I can only agree with you about the sim thing, look how greatly they reproduced hovercrafts going around Watkins Glen 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7UUeWAgs-o 

 Big big difference between charging for a product and asking for “investment” to develop a product.

Your post would be better suited and come across less troll driven with a video from the latest build at least and not a build from months ago. New build the chase camera doesn’t move around like that for a start that gives that floating illusion.

Did the physics change in anyway on this car? It’s not about the camera, it’s about the tyre physics. There’s no way the car can get that much angle with not a single correction on the steering wheel, it would just spin.

It has changed an awful lot since those very early builds. It still needs alot of work and Ben Collins has said it needs changes so expect it to change even more. About the angle aswell, trust me it gives an illusion of the car getting alot more sideways than it actually is. The new camera had made a fairly big difference visually to the behaviour.

 How is the pCARS approach any different than buying a finished sim?  If you don’t like it, you are stuck with it.  Paying for the pCARS pre-alpha isn’t a ‘sunk cost’ any more than boxed software you can buy off the shelf, end of story…

Sunk cost fallacy stems from investing time/money into something causing a person to continue investing in it even after they are no longer happy with the outcome, purely because they don’t want to feel the investment was wasted. I see that a lot in iRacing ‘I would quit if I hadn’t bought so much content’. Despite the fact they have just convinced themselves to throw good money after bad and would be better off not doing so. Same with pCARS, unless you can get a refund, people will be more likely to buy retail even if they aren’t a fan because they already put money into it.

With boxed software, the difference is there is no compelling situation for the user to spend even more money. That’s what differentiates the sunk cost fallacy from simple buyers remorse, that people keep spending their money even after they know the product is bad.

Of course there is wheel correction, it’s called counter-steering.

I think if you’re going for realism, you wouldn’t draw a wheel or hands on the screen at all.

Usually the wheel I see in front of me when I drive is the same one that I’m holding. The arms are mine. Why do racing games draw a 2nd set of hands and another wheel.

It basically puts you in the position of sitting a few feet behind a puppet driver controlling him, rather than (as most professional sims do) sitting inside the cockpit of the car.

Not really

For a couple of reasons

(a) Racing games are never huge on PC
(b) The game isn’t going to look as good as that on most PCs anyway. You only have to see the number of racers that were struggling to get decent performance from Shift 2 to realise they won’t get decent performance from this with either those graphics and/or 64 cars.
(c) The game isn’t going to look as good as that if they port it to existing consoles (although I suppose some next gen console may improve things iff it appears next year)

(and I know they talk about an optimisation phase, but if they add all the features they’ve suggested, the game won’t be any quicker at the end of that. At best, it’ll run as well as it does now but the chances are the performance will get worse not better over the course of development)

It’s relatively straightforward to create high poly models and big textures and then up the AI count of cars to 64. But it’s also very unlikely that the combined result, contained with all the other features the game is supposedly adding at some point, will perform on the typical hardware people have.

Even if you say “well it’s not out for a year, so this card and that cpu will be faster” – I’m sure you’ll be able to buy a faster computer next year. The question is, are you going to, to run this? 

A few might, but I doubt enough will to make the game “huge” based upon a few screenshots,

A typical example is Crysis, A complete flop because no computer could run it, and by the time computers could just about run it, it was worth around £5. And, ironically, when the average computer could just about render Crysis, most games released at that time, looked better than it and ran better too.

So when the wrote crysis 2, their approach is targeting the hardware people actually have and making it run well on it. That’s the general approach behind games that are huge – including the biggest one of all.

Bottom line : it’s easy for game developers to create great graphics that run poorly.

No, there’s not any counter steering in the video I posted…

What a horrible comparison-video on a terribly done Watkins Glen conversion – the trees screams to heaven for help… is someone purposely trying to make rFactor2 look bad ?

I’m sorry I used the T word on you, Bakkster. I was in impulsive mode again :(

I think the confusion comes from the new development model SMS is trying to work in. Everybody is trying to adjust, including themselves.
I also don’t know how iRacing was financed, but when you take a look at the ratio of money brought by the “small” contributors to pCARS, you understand their voice can’t count for too much in the balance.

Now I haven’t followed this particular episode of banning, so I can’t obviously talk about it as if I knew exactly what happened from both parties, but having discussed a few times online with Ian Bell as an open source developer myself precisely about their development and funding model, I was struck by the guy’s honesty and good will. He’s not trying to screw us up with an evil plan to get our money. He’s running a team with tens or even hundred people, that have to eat for a year and a half, working 60 to 80 hours a week on their own funds, as they’re not backed up by big money anymore. The amount of money the small investors have put in the project, don’t even pay for the salary of ONE developer for a year… How would you expect them to give so much importance from somebody who invested 25$ in the project ?

Investing in pCARS is a bet, not a privilege. You put 10€ to 45€, the team at SMS invests a year and a half of their life.

I invested 100€ in pCARS, but am not expecting anything from it. If it’s good, great, if it fails, too bad, at least they tried, but I know my money was spent to pay a developer.
On the other hand, I invested much much more in iRacing, and as soon as I quit paying, I loose everything. They got me by the balls. Seen the amount of money they suck out of a few thousand players, I’m not so sure where my money goes anymore… (but I’m not saying they’re not working hard, don’t misinterpret me… I’m attacking the business model, here, not the work of Dave…)

 No worries.

I don’t mean to say it’s a bad model, just one that gives me a healthy dose of skepticism. To put it another way, I’m not convinced I would really gain anything with a junior membership other than early build access. My issue is more with promising that they will change the game based on user input, and I just don’t think that my single voice is loud or unique enough that the game will be any different whether I personally subscribe or not. On the other hand, I could be the vast minority and the game turns out significantly different from what I want. I can’t see the win situation for myself in this instance. The higher levels are just a straight up investment in the game like stock would be.

The iRacing initial development seemed like it went the opposite way. John Henry basically financed the whole thing, then they invited prominent members of the NR2k3 and GPL communities to a closed beta. They had Dale Earnhart Jr instead of the Stig (and he’s oval, road, and sim racer), and they picked members they expected would give good feedback instead of letting people buy into it. Again, not necessarily better, just different, and one that I favor.

The sunk cost fallacy doesn’t require a large upfront investment. It works due to people being irrational, there are people who will spend $50 so their $10 doesn’t go to waste. Same mindset with people spending twice as much because they save 15% in a sale.

With iRacing, it probably isn’t a great investment if you don’t leverage the online component, which is the majority of what you pay for. Of course, they also provide frequent updates, the game I’m playing now is totally different from the one 18 months ago when I started. It’s a very different market segment from pCARS, I doubt it will match iRacing on either of those counts. You are one of the people I really just won’t recommend iRacing for, unless you plan to start racing.

”
A second part of your ‘job’ is to make sure that the game is shown properly and promoted to the ‘outside world’, i.e. on the internet outside the forums. That means that you can tell everyone about the project and encourage them to join, and when promoting the game through videos or screenshots you should make sure that you stress the good sides and not what needs fixing or what is absent. When making pictures or videos of problems with the game, post them only on the WMD forums or use links that are ‘private’.”

I thought it was a joke when i first read that bit.

So that’s why they compared to a bad rFactor mod, instead of iRacing ;)

The trees are too close to the track in the demo of cars, or am i wrong?
Apart from that, it looks swell!

 Why would that be a joke?

I guess I have trouble enjoying these side by side videos… Am I supposed to care what the games look like? I want to know how they drive. As a Team Member of CARS, I have no complaints other than at the current moment, I find myself tweaking my wheel more than the car itself. I haven’t yet bought rFactor 2, but I expect that it will be very drivable with a shelf life of quite a few years considering future mods and such.

Both games seem great. Handling models both seem solid. Nice vid though :).

Why would it be a joke. They want to encourage people to invest into the project and so just like in the real world if you were trying to encourage investment you would want your product to shine, no? It’s what all game studios do, same goes with user made videos of say iRacing or rFactor, you wouldn’t include known bugs like hovering cars in your videos, you edit the camera to hide and cover the hovering or any bugs. Nothing new

Why would they encourage you to promote know bugs that are part of a pre-alpha that are only gonna be fixed before release. 

Ah, new version of pCARS is out… Undriveable again on Fanatec wheels. I think it’s a step in the right direction. It still feels completely off, but at least it’s not on rails anymore.

 With my G25 I had big concerns with FFB until I found the good set-up in the Logitech profiler… the user-friendly has to be improved.

User friendly is usually the last thing added to software, otherwise it slows development too much.

Man, you must not have seen all the exploding iRacing cars videos. Or the phantom contact videos. Or tire model glitches.

I get why they don’t want it publicised until they fix it, but videos of bugs are everywhere and for every game. They will need to deal with it at some point.

 In a project like WMD and pCARS it’s very important to get a maximum number of people setting right the game. The more people are happy with the game, the more praise they will get. And that’s very important to attract more people funding the game.

I agree, which is why I’m not a fan of the pay to alpha test model.

Yeah lol i have seen them and had my fair share of wtf moments with iRacing over the years and it’s normally pretty solid netcode. I shouldn’t of really started stabbing at iRcaing in all honesty but when your around immature people that VirtualR seems to be full of atm with all the trolling and sniping at pCARS i guess you just join them sometimes. 

Your right though with what you say but really there is nothing special about what general posted. It was made out to be really bad but it’s just buisness, it happens everyday in every form of retail

 Not just paying for an alpha, it’s for the entire alpha right up through beta to the final release candidate. Wont comment on what happens to your financial input after release as I don’t entirely understand myself :D
For the price of a night in the pub I get to watch it’s development, I even have some input. Win win and I dont have an hangover.

The physics changed a HELL OF A  LOT on this car. For the hotlap I found it undriveable, but imho it’s now the best car in the game. 

Seriously. The current car and that video are not comparable in any way.