PC2 Lots of New Project CARS 2 Preview Images and Info

[Paul Jeffrey]

Slightly Mad Studios have released a number of new previews for the upcoming Project CARS 2 as well as a first look at dedicated servers...

Released as part of a recent batch of update images, Slightly Mad Studios have confirmed the GT4 specification KTM X-BOW will be making it's series debut in the new game, presumably alongside the original open top X-BOW that formed part of the first game release car roster.

Other vehicles included in the gallery images include the mighty Le Mans specification Jaguar XJR, the equally impressive historic version of the Nissan Skyline Silhouette Formula, Skyline R34 and of course as no racing game is complete nowadays without a massive GT3 field, so enter the Nissan GT-R Nismo GT3.

Dedicated Servers

Additional to the car and track previews recently revealed by Slightly Mad Studios, the development team have also given fans a sneak peak at some of the early proposed functionality behind the game in respect to how dedicated servers will work in Project CARS 2.

Unfortunately it appears that player rankings and the collection of rating points will remain when drivers race on dedicated servers, with no opportunity for server admins to assign penalties and warnings during a race. SMS have taken the decision to leave out this feature within dedicated servers, however they remain confident that the automated system employed by Project CARS 2 will prove to be efficient in a league environment, stating that the software has been tested and balanced for 18 months. Perfect for online open multiplayer lobbies, it remains to be seen how this feature will be received by league admins who typically like to control the penalisation element of an event manually by driver appeals and live stewarding decisions.

The released images from the dedicated servers do however show a very nice looking and compact piece of software with some nice and useable looking features that will surely come as a blessing to those of us who wish to create our own racing events. As can be seen from the attached screenshots, it appears that multiclass racing with selectable opponents will be possible, as will the ability to create and save your own rules packages, player ratings lockouts, number of sessions and all the usual driving aids and event realism settings. This looks to be a considerable improvement over the previous game and again shows SMS' intention to improve the online hosting and broadcasting experience within the new title.

We know Project CARS 2 will be shipping with over 170 cars at initial launch and already we have an idea about some of the cars expected to feature within the game. If you want to keep an eye out on what's been confirmed or leaked so far, check out the Project CARS 2: The Cars Revealed So Far thread (regularly updated) to stay abreast with the latest reveals.

Project CARS 2 will be available for Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and PC towards the end of 2017.

Check out the Project CARS Series forum here at RaceDepartment for all the latest news and discussions regarding Project CARS on both PC, Xbox One and PlayStation 4. Browse our modding database, engage with the community or join in one of our many League and Club Racing events. Its all here at RaceDepartment.

Looking forward to some additional GT4 machinery in PCARS 2? Which car revealed so far are you most looking forward to trying for yourself? Let us know in the comments section below!

 

[shimon.ifraimov]

KTM GT4 ^.^

 

[John Addison]

Does any one wonder if PCars2 will just tell us to piss off after we purchase it like they did with PCars. I really dont understand this deal??

 

[GEEDOGG]

Does any one wonder if PCars2 will just tell us to piss off after we purchase it like they did with PCars. I really dont understand this deal??

Correct, that is exactly what they did. Lol

 

[Paul Jeffrey]

Guys please, civil and sensible in the comments please. I've about had enough of the PCARS bashing stuff.

Yes PC1 didn't tick the boxes for everyone for sure. Will PCARS 2 be different? Who knows. So far things sound good from what we have been told, and visually it looks great as usual.

Once it's out we can judge it. Don't worry, we'll review it and let you know our opinions on the subject!

Let's just stick to the article in hand and try and be decent about what we say in the comments, like we all do 99,99% of the time in the other threads. Please

 

[Celestiale]

Looking forward to some additional GT4 machinery in PCARS 2?

A proper full grid hopefully, if they only release the KTM in this class i couldn't care less. But i think they will release a proper grid

Which car revealed so far are you most looking forward to trying for yourself?

Ford GT LM GTE, using in RD WEC club race with fully licensed grid

 

[samcar304]

I hope there is a 570s GT4 in the works. Love the road car and the GT4 car!

 

[aka2k]

Unless they have incorporated PTM mod in the base game, I'm not holding high expectations for PCars2. Looks good, but mostly every game does look good in the pictures sent to the press. Even Mafia 3 did.

Hope I'm wrong though. And the physics and the game just looks and plays as great as those hype pictures.

 

[Tobiman]

Gets a +1 from me for adding the zakspeed GTR GT3.

 

[Paul Jeffrey]

I know this is a stupid thing to say, but I wish they would put a 2005 VW Passat in the game, it's the car I drive and I really want it in a sim!! Never even (unsurprisingly) seen it as a mod before.. I'm gagging to push some diesel power slowly and wallowy around the words tracks..

 

[John Addison]

I'm not bashing ...i liked Pcars It didnt quite run very well on my rig as all others sims do. I am just puzzled as to why they just dumped PCars when they could have just added to it and did the work to make it better. Just an inquiring mind who feels bamboozled. But you know I'll go get PC2 when its out.

 

[Drecho 65]

I'm hoping the 2016 Ford GTE LMS and the Ford 2017 GT will be in the game

 

[Hor-hay]

I'm not bashing ...i liked Pcars It didnt quite run very well on my rig as all others sims do. I am just puzzled as to why they just dumped PCars when they could have just added to it and did the work to make it better. Just an inquiring mind who feels bamboozled. But you know I'll go get PC2 when its out.

They didn't dump PCars they just chose to release a new version of it instead of updating/fixing the first one. It's like the F1/Call of Duty/Fifa sales model.

 

[Deleted member 113561]

I'm not bashing ...i liked Pcars It didnt quite run very well on my rig as all others sims do. I am just puzzled as to why they just dumped PCars when they could have just added to it and did the work to make it better. Just an inquiring mind who feels bamboozled. But you know I'll go get PC2 when its out.

They didn't dump PCars they just chose to release a new version of it instead of updating/fixing the first one. It's like the F1/Call of Duty/Fifa sales model.

You can't just add stuff simply ... sometimes its better to redo the stuff from ground up ...
This is necessary for stuff that is broken deep down ... and better for implementation of new stuff (ie. Vulkan Support)

The same is for all games btw
"Why is there a rFactor 2, when they just could have upgraded rFactor 1?"
"Why is there a GTA 5, when they just could have upgraded GTA 4"
etc.

With the amount of new features coming to this game (ie. Livetrack which is a huge change and never seen before like this in a racing game), this is nothing like Fifa cycle (where they just release the game with minimal new features)

 

[Hor-hay]

You can't just add stuff simply ... sometimes its better to redo the stuff from ground up ...
This is necessary for stuff that is broken deep down ... and better for implementation of new stuff (ie. Vulkan Support)

The same is for all games btw
"Why is there a rFactor 2, when they just could have upgraded rFactor 1?"
"Why is there a GTA 5, when they just could have upgraded GTA 4"
etc.

With the amount of new features coming to this game (ie. Livetrack which is a huge change and never seen before like this in a racing game), this is nothing like Fifa cycle (where they just release the game with minimal new features)

Ok it's not as bad as the games I mentioned.
Anyway I actually like that they are releasing a new version with new features. Dedicated servers and player rankings sounds really good. Hopefully it works...

 

[Scrambles]

Are there any plans to allow driver swaps and enduro races?
I haven't been following news about this game so sorry if this has been asked before.

 

[Deleted member 113561]

Are there any plans to allow driver swaps and enduro races?
I haven't been following news about this game so sorry if this has been asked before.

Yes Driver Swap has been confirmed by Ian Bell himself - but he said probably post release
[Postedit: There are though rumours which say it has been cancelled lately - i really hope not]

Endurance Races were always possible in PCARS ... there is a 24h Day/Night cycle and dynamic weather and the necessary classes (ie. Ford GT LM)

 

[ermo]

I would caution against viewing pCARS 2 as the one version that fixes all that ails pCARS 1. If anything, if you adopt the view that pCARS 2 will likely be a slightly less rough-around-the-edges version of pCARS 1, you're probably not going to be too disappointed.

And I'm not saying this to cast SMS in a bad light, as they appear to really have gone all in on making pCARS 2 the best it can be from a development and QA/QC standpoint. At the moment it appears that the team is doubling down on fixing bugs and optimizing the various subsystems, which implies that we're fast approaching the alpha phase (feature complete but with known bugs).

It's just that delivering a title of the scope of pCARS 2 is quite evidently a huge undertaking and that this necessarily implies that there will be gaps and undercooked features on release (i.e. the feature is there but it is not perhaps completely fleshed out like in a mature, battle tested product). This does not mean that the devs haven't worked their assess off to get things to work, just that the fullness of time hasn't yet revealed the optimal configuration of said features in both a user experience and development sense.

I have no idea what the post-release support will be like, other than some rumblings that post-release patches will likely be landing at a lower rate than with pCARS 1 because MS/Sony approval for patches is apparently quite costly and time-consuming.

With the amount of features that won't make the cut (I see the phrase 'Maybe for pC3' a lot on the dev forum these days), I would also expect parallel pCARS 3 development to pick up quite soon after the launch of pCARS2 (3-6 months at the most is what I would tentatively speculate).

With that in mind, one possible scenario could be that pC2 will be supported with 4-6 post-release patches during the first 18 months. Again, this is pure speculation on my part and only time will tell how this will all pan out.

FWIW, I would guess that the above is all fairly standard fare for a franchise in the games dev business these days, so it's not like SMS are any better or any worse than any other studio in this regard.

 

[ermo]

Yes Driver Swap has been confirmed by Ian Bell himself - but he said probably post release

If history is anything to go by, Ian confirming a feature is certainly a sign of intent, but not necessarily a dead certain guarantee, as sometimes sh*t just happens that prevents following through on said intent.

Take native triple screen support in pCARS 1 for instance: Everyone on the SMS side of the fence wanted it in the game and the initial intent was for it to land before release. When that didn't work out, the intent was to land it after release, then in the next patch etc. etc.; right up until the last patch when for unspecified reasons it fell through and didn't make it into the game.

When I brought this up on the dev forum in the context of the state of native triple screen support in pCARS 2, it emerged that the devs were just as frustrated (if not more!) about this as us punters, but it does serve as an example to illustrate that intent is not the same as a guarantee and that SMS is comprised by people like us, making plans for the future and trying their damnedest to deliver. Sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn't -- and that's life in a nutshell as we all well know.

That said, the team does appear to take Ian's 'suggestions' rather seriously.

 

[wicken]

I'm hoping the 2016 Ford GTE LMS and the Ford 2017 GT will be in the game

Well, then I have great news for you.
Both cars were seen in either official or leaked screenshots.