Thoughts? Is the reviewer all wet? Reviewing an old version? Is he correct?
My 2 cents, there is some credibility to the reviewer. There are some issues still with the release which SMS are addressing. So is it perfect day 1? Nope. Will it be perfect after the first patch? Nope.
SMS will be continuing to address issues as well as enhance the platform over the next 2 or more years.
I will say that the reviewer purposely picked the worst scenarios to publish. It is a deliberate smear tactic but the issues he points out do exist. The vintage racing right not is not the best. Doing what he did, throwing the AI up to 100 and jumping in vintage open wheelers is just going to cause frustration. The AI is very aggressive at 100 and does not care about situational awareness. That level of AI works well with tintops that can stand a little banging, but not with the open wheelers, especially the vintage ones which need more cornering room.
As for some of his other points, they are subjective. He comments on the sound, and that's purely subjective. Actually there was an only post where someone who works in sound (and actually used to work with the SMS sound team on other past projects) commented on the samples. His comment were the samples were very crisp and clean. I think this is where the subjectiveness comes in. What most people are used to hearing are Youtube videos of racing cars. The sound you hear from the inexpenive GoPro or other onboard camera mics which pickup a ton of other noise. The engine sample in pCARS are direct engine sounds, no background chatter or noise so they are very clean. This is what he's calling "digital" as there is no distortion or background noise to taint the pure engine sounds.
The gear sounds, well, that's going to be subjective as well. It is true that the sound developers didn't have as much freedom in this area as they would like. They have all the gear worble and other shifting sounds already. The physics side (for transmission) wasn't able to expose a lot of their pieces to the sound guys to hook into. That doesn't mean it won't happen to make the transmission/gear sounds better, but it is what it is today. I will say that what is there doesn't bother me and I rather enjoy most of the car sounds. I will say there are some I don't enjoy, but I'm sure I wouldn't enjoy them in real life either.
As far his comment on ease of driving, I've posted about this before, but I'll post it again. Yes, pCARS has a more progressive grip falloff than other sims. This is more realistic as tires just don't give up. Tires, even slicks, will provide feedback for the driver so he/she knows when they are about to go over the limit. When the tires do go over the limit, there is a progression where you can control it rather than the car just spinning out. Sims like iRacing have the grip falloff way too sharp and that's not correct. With the more progressive falloff in pCARS, you can get the car out of sorts and possibly save it. Here's what I mean about progressive grip falloff:
That's a video of me and you see the car starts to loose it in the corner (without much if any tire sound) and I don't spin out. I'm able to keep the rear end behind and scrub off enough speed to keep the car going forward. pCARS tire model is able to replicate this much better than most sims which makes it "seem" easier to drive.
I will say that 90% of the cars have a safe default setup which is fairly easy to drive. However, if you try to use that setup online, you'll get wiped.
