PC3 Project CARS 3 | Developer Blog: Design And Physics

Paul Jeffrey

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Slightly Mad Studios have released a new 'developer blog' about their upcoming Project CARS 3 title, where they share some insight into the design and physics decisions employed within the game.

Yup, pitstops are a thing of the past in Project CARS 3. As is fuel consumption, with the studio taking a decision to focus less on strategy and more on the driver and car upgrades... which I'm sure will cause quite a bit of discussion within the community.

Slightly Mad Studios appear to have taken a direction change with their new game, putting a greater emphasis on the driving aspect of racing, and car customisation side of the gameplay. Similar to the tactic taken by such games as Gran Turismo, whilst still promising to retain an underlying sim racing experience for those who want to disable the more arcade gameplay features, this departure from previous instalments in the series is an interesting one, but perhaps inevitable considering the cool reception from sim racing fans Project CARS 1 and 2 have received in recent years.

You can read the blog post in full below:

Project CARS has always been about racing with your heart in your mouth as you push your limits in legendary race cars on epic tracks around the world—that unparalleled connection between driver, car, and surface that comes from our passion and the know-how we’ve acquired through the years, all of it validated by pro’ drivers. Project CARS is the driver at speed—that moment when you’re right on the edge and you’re loving every moment of the experience. For Project CARS 3, we’ve really doubled-down our focus on the driver. Yes, we’ve added assists and graphic effects to bring in a new audience to sim racing, but these assists and settings are purely optional—turn them on, or turn them off, the choice is completely up to you and what you want from the game. Project CARS 3 remains, at its core, a Project CARS experience, and with the same philosophy that has always been central to the franchise—to give you the Ultimate Driver Journey.

Kris Pope: Lead Designer: Yes, Project CARS 3, from a game design viewpoint, is focused far more on the driver than the previous two games. With this new instalment, the direction was to laser-in on what makes motorsport evoke so much passion in those of us who love the sport. The cars, the driving, the racing, the speed—we’re really narrowed down on those things with Project CARS 3.

David Kirk: Principal Physics Programmer: Project CARS 3 is both new and traditional, if I can call it that—the details, handling, the motorsport and the freedom of choice, the weather and so on, that’s what our long term fans want and that’s all there—though we’ve gone in and improved on all of that. New this time around is customisation for cars and drivers, and of course upgrades which is really an exciting addition. We’ve also added a whole layer to the game that introduces weekend warrior racing on road circuits and other options designed to get a new audience into sim racing in a way that doesn’t overwhelm them.

Kris Pope: Lead Designer: As in the real-world, drivers drive, and mechanics and the team worry about the minute details, and that’s what we wanted to aim for with Project CARS 3. In the end, it doesn’t matter what series it is—an amateur weekend or track-day or the top echelon of motorsport where 300 engineers with science degrees are pouring over reams of data—drivers are there to drive. And that’s really what we wanted to highlight with this new game. We wanted to bring a renewed focus on the driver and the racing. So now you don’t need to spend hours in a practice session working out the tyre life of a set of tyres for one car in one condition, and you don’t need to do the maths on how many litres of fuel you need to finish the race, and you won’t be punished for picking the wrong strategy and so on.

PCARS 3 1.jpg


Jussi Karjalainen: Handling QA Lead: All the good, dynamic tyre heating maths is still going in, and in many cases improved, just without the potential to overheat in the long term. All the dynamic situation-to-situation stuff is still there—but now, if you want to go sliding around for an entire race, you can. You’ll also be slower, though, but that’s another story!

Casey Ringley: Vehicle Technical Art and Handling: That’s actually a good example—the thermal model in layers above that does still happen as it did in Project CARS 2. The core tread temperature is locked, but the rubber contacting the road is still fully modelled for all heat effects.

Jussi Karjalainen: Handling QA Lead: To make it a little easier to understand—tyres aren’t part of “what suits the weather situation” problem anymore, they’re now “how much performance do we want”. Within most real-world racing series, hard and soft tyres are meant to be alternatives to each other, depending on the temperature, track type and strategy. But from one racing series to another, there exist differences in outright performance. A cheaper slick used in a regional series is usually worse than what a national GT3 series would use, GTE/prototype slicks can be two seconds a lap faster than GT3 tyres, and the rubber compounds used for Formula 1 are even faster than that. The core temperature of the tyre is locked to the “optimum” value (what you’d want to heat the tyres up to in Project CARS 2), but all of the layers from there towards the outside are still fully dynamic.

Casey Ringley: Vehicle Technical Art and Handling: The tyres being locked at ideal temperature and constant pressure means the tyre pressure setup is simpler as well. So, comparing to Project CARS 2, the only difference is that we reset the core tread temperature to an ideal setpoint at the start of each physics tick. And we do this to avoid penalising drivers who don’t have endless hours to assess their tyre wear before races. In the real world, teams come to race weekends already armed with all that data.

Jussi Karjalainen: Handling QA Lead: So rather than wear, it’s really the tyre heating where most of the magic happens, handling dynamics wise.

Casey Ringley: Vehicle Technical Art and Handling: The tyre discussion is actually a good reference point to how Project CARS 3 differs. I guess it’s geek-mode on time?!

PCARS 3 2.jpg



Jussi Karjalainen: Handling QA Lead: Here we go!

Casey Ringley: Vehicle Technical Art and Handling: Basically, while you have no actual wear in Project CARS 3, you’ve got multiple layers related to the heat model. Flash, Layer, Tread, and so on. Flash is the elements which touch and grip the track surface, Layer is an intermediate layer for diffusing heat energy, and Tread is the core bulk of tread rubber. All the heating dynamics in Flash and Layer still happen, we just lock temperature from Tread down through the rest of the model. I suppose a simpler way to put it is that the rubber layers influence tyre grip naturally at these time levels:

Flash Layer – What are you doing this instant?
Surface Layer – What were you doing in the last 5s?
Bulk Tread – What were you doing in the last 5m?

The biggest benefit comes from those three rubber layers of varying thickness and how they separate transient behaviour of the rubber from longer term heat effects.

The first, Flash layer, models the individual Setae contact points and is only 30 microns thick. This is where we do all the work-energy heating and you see huge temperature swings here—the heating of Flash layer is a primary tool for shaping our slip curves. We then have a surface layer between 0.5-1.0mm thick for the heat to diffuse though; this reacts more slowly but still pretty quickly.

If you really abuse your front tyres in a corner, this surface layer will be overheated by corner exit and results in Flash Setae entering the patch hotter than ideal. It recovers quickly for the next corner, so long as the bulk tread temps below it are in the ideal zone. What we’ve done in PC3 is lock that bulk tread to stay in the ideal zone so short-term transient behaviour is retained while minimizing long-term effects. Early in our “Seta Tyre Model” development, we only had Flash and Bulk Tread layers. Adding that middle one for the 0.5mm surface layer was a big improvement in handling feel, particularly how the car progresses through a corner. There is just something that makes for a clean, natural feel when the surface layer is slightly cooled at corner entry, heats up to optimal at apex, and is flirting with over-heatedness at corner exit.

Jussi Karjalainen: Handling QA Lead: Of course you still have access to your setups, though—aero, brake tuning, weight distribution, ride heights, alignment, springs, dampers, gearing and differential as well as tyre pressures are all there—but we’ve made the options a little easier to engage with and digest. We know that in Project CARS 2 the differentials were extremely complicated. There were 4 different kinds of differential (plus a spool that doesn’t allow for any differentiation), with at least 7-8 settings, and then all of that potentially for rear, centre, and front diffs separately, depending on how the car was set up. For Project CARS 3, we thought about what a driver would ask of their engineer: Preload, accel’ lock, decel’ lock, and done. The complex differential modelling is still there in the background, but the player has an easier time dealing with it through the new interface. Again, this goes to the driver-centric part of the design—less analysis paralysis, more straightforward tuning changes and racing.

Kris Pope: Lead Designer: So yes, if you want to get out on-track on a cold morning at Spa and just go drive and tinker with your setup, that’s obviously still there. And actually, if you do, you’ll notice that the driving physics have been improved (we’ve really nailed the over the limit feel). The key to this is the driver journey—the upgrades, the racing, the feel of the cars from the driver’s seat. Making the driving fun and the visceral enjoyment of driving a car at speed that sort of echoes that emotional connection we all get from motorsport.

Nick Pope: Principal Vehicle Handling Designer: So, for example, by removing tyre wear and fuel usage, we could in turn remove pitstops, which resulted in much closer and more consistent racing. Thus, the whole process of getting to the part that matters most—the actual racing and driving of these amazing cars and their upgrades—became a far easier and more streamlined affair. All these game design decisions have had great results in terms of the racing— with the tyres at their optimal range all the time and fuel at optimal load, there is no break in the action to stop for more fuel or new rubber. It’s pure racing action, and it’s just made Project CARS 3 into a much better racing-driver experience.

David Kirk: Principal Physics Programmer: Though none of that means we’ve simplified the tyre model. It’s just all happening under the hood. Overall, this change has kept the focus on the racing and less on engineering tactics. It makes the racing fairer—it’s about what you do behind the wheel that counts—and as a driver it makes the experience a lot closer to what you’d get in the real world.

Doug Arnao: Physics and AI director: The AI has also responded well to this new direction and it makes them a lot more predictable and really human-like. And obviously there’s no rubber-banding.

David Kirk: Principal Physics Programmer: As Casey said, the core of the simulation is still the core of the game, but we’ve really made Project CARS 3 about the driver. In the end, racing and driving is actually meant to be a fun and rewarding experience, and being competitive in a race should be more about your skills and the upgrades and so on, and less about whether you can afford to sit and spend countless hours deep-tuning every layer of your setup. The moment-to-moment experience of the franchise remains as it always was, we’ve just really focused-in on what makes a driving game—and what makes driving—such an emotional and cool experience.


Original Source; Slightly Mad Studios.


Project CARS 3 is set to release on Xbox One, PS4 and PC August 28th 2020.

Want to discuss this new game with fellow sim racing fans? No worries, head over to the Project CARS 3 sub forum here at RaceDepartment and start up a new thread!

PCARS 3 Footer.jpg
 
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The car physics are still simulation... Its not an arcade game because some features are missing...


ACC tire modell has way more realistic simulated features than the iRacing tire model... Is iRacing arcade because of that ? Cmon...
An arcade game is defined by its approach as much as its physics. Have you seen the promo video with the powerslides, dueliing cars, 'perfect corner' pop-ups etc? Does that scream 'sim' to you? SMS are targeting this at the cash-cow casual crowd, but are also trying to lassoo as many sim racers as they can to maximise sales. Good luck to them, but a lot of people here have already seen through the deception.

No idea why you brought a straw man argument about ACC and iRacing into the discussion, I never mentioned them and they seem to have little relation to pCARS 3.

I already said I'm looking forward to playing Shift 3 in VR, I just don't like being deceived by marketing departments.
 
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I'm baffled by the no fuel, tyres and pits design decisions.

It looked to me as if PCARS3 was going to be an FM7/GT6+ game, the plus being full day/night/weather cycle, VR plus the upgrade/tuning system. That game I could see a place for, sitting comfortably above the console racing games but more accessible than the full-on sims and with a full career mode.

Now PCARS3 seems to have shifted...downward to a Forza/GT- game. That means it will sit somewhere between FH4 and FM7 which is an odd place to be. Grid19 was ok as a sort of video arcade game of the past given a new lease of life but I don't think I need another game like that. The basic fuel and tyre systems in Forza work well enough. The lack of any need to change tyres in the wet still jars, so much good real racing is about choosing the moment to change tyres.

The engineer being able to set up the car to a decent level, I'd like that in all racing games.

I'm assuming the Le Mans circuit in various forms will be included in PCARS3? Le Mans without fuel and tyre stops...that will certainly be odd.
 
SMS are targeting this at the cash-cow casual crowd, but are also trying to lassoo as many sim racers as they can to maximise sales. Good luck to them, but a lot of people here have already seen through the deception.

For me theres more than black and white. SMS seems to know that too.


No idea why you brought a straw man argument about ACC and iRacing into the discussion, I never mentioned them and they seem to have little relation to pCARS 3.

As an example. Simple as that.
 
I'd argue that removing features isn't innovative, and neither is producing a game that seems to 'borrow' an awful lot from the Shift games. But hey, I really do think that pCARS 3 will be fun, especially if they can fix the various issues that Shift 2 had and improve on it even further. I just simply cannot understand why SMS aren't being honest about what type of game it is. It's already causing a lot of confusion. If SMS owned the rights to the NFS: Shift name then I've no doubt it'd be called NFS: Shift 3 because that's what it looks like it's trying very hard to be. And that's not a bad thing at all, so I've no idea why SMS seem ashamed to admit this and are trying to dress it up as something it's patently not.

Maybe it's a personal pride issue for Ian Bell, maybe he recognises that's where SMS's strengths lie (and that's where the money is) but sees it as a retrogressive step to produce a spiritual successor to the Shift games after trying with mixed success to go 'full sim' with Project CARS. It's almost like they're ashamed to be watering down the sim aspects and don't want to overtly acknowledge it. The spin they are putting on removal of pit stops and tyre wear is franky embarrassing. They must think sim racers are stupid. If SMS embraced this new direction for the pCARS franchise and were more honest about it I think they'd earn a lot more respect and might even get a lot more sales from a less confused buying public.

Of course, Codemasters might be pulling all the strings behind the scenes here, so maybe it's out of SMS's hands and they are already deep into damage limitation from a marketing perspective.
 
To summarize : We have removed, fuel usage, type wear, pit stops, etc etc just like in real world.

Seems like they were all handed out copies of 1984 to practice doublespeak before dishing out this tripe.
 
i loved pCars2 handling, cars easy to turn, better feel of driving on the limit, more immersive, more dynamic than AC, i hate AC understeer boat simulation... gues my only sim now becomes ACC, maybe ill check RRRE but dont like that there are no road cars. Or i play ACC for competition and if i want road cars ill chill with forza horizon 4 which i deleted some months ago whinking pCars3 will give me that
And they ruined it, LOL they aiming towards bringing more people into sim racing? Didnt they think people that they are trying to bring are already forza 7, Gran turismo, dirt like games, and nfs fans an why should they now choose pCars3 instead? focken idiots LOL
Seriously they had setups, pits in pCars2, its the same focken engine, why just remove it if they could just make single switcher in menu for ARCADE/SIM mode and that would be 2 different games in one. Tey instead deleted feature that tey was working on since years like that so dumb
What I read in this massive block of text.

We've turned off tyre wear. Cos it's no fun. Oh and fuel useage. And because of that - amazingly we also managed to eliminate pitstops cos they're no fun.

I loved PC2, despite it's shortcomings, and have over 700 hours in it, and 100's more on console before I moved to 'Sim' and PC.

And this....

Well, I'm nervous for it. Gotta say.
I think PC2 was worse than PC. I've compared both with vr glasses. PC have better handling, better graphics, is more realistic than PC2. Nonetheless every body sell that PC2 is better. Try the same car (e.g. BMW pro car) in the same track (e.g. Zolder) and tell me if PC2 is better than Project Cars. Probably whatever happens everybody will tell you that PC3 is better than before instalment. I say we will see. put your vr glasses and try with the same cars and tracks
 
I have to say that i'm still interested on pc3 despite these news. Instead of spreading the resources on lots of things, it might be better to focus on less things and do them properly.
If the driving part is well simulated, i might buy it.
 
Thing is, PC 2 had Sim characteristics, so most sim racers were expecting that PC 3 would
be an improved version of PC 2 regarding physics, but sadly this is not the case - PC 3 will
be mostly an arcade game, so hence the dissapointment for many sim racers.

Now, if the developer has decided to go total arcade, apparently, and since many racers
or gamers love arcade games, that's fine for them - let them buy it and have fun with it.

Most sim racers will not buy it and will keep sim-racing rFactor 2, Live for Speed, AMS 1,
AMS 2, iRacing, AC, ACC and RaceRoom. So, everybody happy with their thing.
 
  • Deleted member 963434

Hello, this is wake up call to anyone who criticizes this game!

This game will be perfect for me. Now i can just drive and race without no worries about tires and fuel. I'm too lazy to test everything, I have too little time to practice all possible adjustments. So this game makes races fairer. You will got a good driving experience without hundreds of hours practicing setups.

So it’s the same thing as a 300-person team that makes adjustments and tests as complete as possible, you just finish them with your own adjustments. Real F1 drivers don’t train for hundreds of hours.

Nothing is more annoying than taking part in a race but not having enough time to test all the tires at different temperatures.

For example, race practises and qualification may be run at a temperature of 20 degrees Celsius, but when the race starts at a temperature of 30 degrees, the race will be ruined if you have not tested it and can't choose the tires and tire pressures correctly. I do not have time to test everything. I would like to do only 2 or 3 hours training before the race and definitely not several days as todays simulators takes.

Some of pro sim drivers make adjustments 50 to 60 hours per week, that's insane!

Thank you SMS can't wait any longer this Masterpiece!!!

your wrong, pc2 already have simple fuel cause before race start it tell you how much laps you can do with fuel you set, also yo wrong bout setups cause they leave it there and setup car is much more difficult than calculate fuel, aslo they made it even more diffucult by adding car upgrades so you will race same car with guy who played more, gained more points to buy better upgrades xD they are idiots xD
i agree what you said bout temps 20 degree vs 30 degree and you have to tweak it , they made it good so engineers no driver setting car cause i agree its not engineer simulator but driver simulator, they made this good but why remove tyre wear and fuel i dont understand? ok ai engineer set your tyres and set your fuel so you wont run out of it during short race, that dont make difference in short races but tyre wear they should left cause somebody may overdrive tyres and become slow, and other guy will constantly chase him then pass him when ready, thats also skill. They say us only driving skill is important i dont agree.
They could leave all setups to automatic engineers so everyone at start would have perfect car to make their best time but in longer races we should be able to get into pit where also automatic engineer would give us new tyres also perfectly set and load fuel to finish race, that should be autmatic, then would be easy, fun and most important realistic and then racing would not be just drive like its nfs but also consider your strategy, not to overheat tyres, brakes etc.
 
  • Deleted member 963434

I think PC2 was worse than PC. I've compared both with vr glasses. PC have better handling, better graphics, is more realistic than PC2. Nonetheless every body sell that PC2 is better. Try the same car (e.g. BMW pro car) in the same track (e.g. Zolder) and tell me if PC2 is better than Project Cars. Probably whatever happens everybody will tell you that PC3 is better than before instalment. I say we will see. put your vr glasses and try with the same cars and tracks

you drove bmw pro car at zolder in real life? how can you tell which is more realistic? And why you tell pc1 had better graphics? cause sun effect was stronger and asphalt was more shiny? or when it was rain it looked better? and why pc1 has better handling? cause was more difficult?
i tell you, same in terms of graphics, better sun effects and candy like graphics not mean more real. good looking shiny asphalt not mean better and more real. more diffucult handling also not mean more real and i tell this for years that today cars are made to drive easy to pass moose test when rapidly turning at 80 km/h and not slip (btw someone should compare real life mosse tests and do both in same car in AC and PC2 - i feel when in ac car slip tey say so hard so real, and if in pc2 car pass they say "arcade style" even if real car would able to do that easyli and not slip xD)
but returning to rain effects i know what you mean pc1 had better graphics, i saw video comparison where people telling pc1 had better rain than in pc2, but thats cause in pc1 if started to rain it immediately made whole track wet and puddles, but in pc2 it works with progression, tracks gets wetter and wetter and puddles more bigger during time, and guy compared pc1 wet track to pc2 wet track when was raining for 1 minute, and to get pc1 wet in pc2 it should be raining for 30 minutes cause of progression. pc2 was best sim available in whole market that had best weather system, none game had such weather system and they just made it worthless by removing different tyres, now it makes no difference if you start race dry on slicks and it starts to rain, you dont need to change tyres they say car would become just a little more slippery, thats no real, no fun and stupid
 
  • Deleted member 963434

i still hope they just trolling us to make it controversial as it always was, make discussion, make hype, all youtubers now say pc3 would not have pits, all community talking about it, then its game premiere and we got pits and Bell post rick rolled video xD but that just may be my pipe dream
 
I'd argue that removing features isn't innovative, and neither is producing a game that seems to 'borrow' an awful lot from the Shift games. But hey, I really do think that pCARS 3 will be fun, especially if they can fix the various issues that Shift 2 had and improve on it even further. I just simply cannot understand why SMS aren't being honest about what type of game it is. It's already causing a lot of confusion. If SMS owned the rights to the NFS: Shift name then I've no doubt it'd be called NFS: Shift 3 because that's what it looks like it's trying very hard to be. And that's not a bad thing at all, so I've no idea why SMS seem ashamed to admit this and are trying to dress it up as something it's patently not.

Maybe it's a personal pride issue for Ian Bell, maybe he recognises that's where SMS's strengths lie (and that's where the money is) but sees it as a retrogressive step to produce a spiritual successor to the Shift games after trying with mixed success to go 'full sim' with Project CARS. It's almost like they're ashamed to be watering down the sim aspects and don't want to overtly acknowledge it. The spin they are putting on removal of pit stops and tyre wear is franky embarrassing. They must think sim racers are stupid. If SMS embraced this new direction for the pCARS franchise and were more honest about it I think they'd earn a lot more respect and might even get a lot more sales from a less confused buying public.

Of course, Codemasters might be pulling all the strings behind the scenes here, so maybe it's out of SMS's hands and they are already deep into damage limitation from a marketing perspective.

This is my major beef with them as well. They are trying to paint it as something that it isn't. Why not just be honest and say its a fun, arcade-ish style simcaid that's designed for relaxed game play. What they're doing now is clearly an obvious marketing gimmick. Sad to say that it's not surprising considering how they dropped Pcars2 on its head.
 
I'm baffled by the no fuel, tyres and pits design decisions.

It looked to me as if PCARS3 was going to be an FM7/GT6+ game, the plus being full day/night/weather cycle, VR plus the upgrade/tuning system. That game I could see a place for, sitting comfortably above the console racing games but more accessible than the full-on sims and with a full career mode.

Now PCARS3 seems to have shifted...downward to a Forza/GT- game. That means it will sit somewhere between FH4 and FM7 which is an odd place to be. Grid19 was ok as a sort of video arcade game of the past given a new lease of life but I don't think I need another game like that. The basic fuel and tyre systems in Forza work well enough. The lack of any need to change tyres in the wet still jars, so much good real racing is about choosing the moment to change tyres.

The engineer being able to set up the car to a decent level, I'd like that in all racing games.

I'm assuming the Le Mans circuit in various forms will be included in PCARS3? Le Mans without fuel and tyre stops...that will certainly be odd.
those games acutally have pit stops and fuel burn
 

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