Kurt "Yoda" Kalbfleisch
Scuderia Sprezzatura
I've been a flight simmer for almost thirty years, so I'm no stranger to computer-based simulations. I understand (and have participated in) a number of debates about the various flight sims over the years, and so I have approached the arrival of PC with what I consider a healthy skepticism, which is to say that I plonked down my $50 after waiting until I looked a little deeper than the prevailing debate about hype v. authenticity.
I consider myself to be an inexperienced racing gamer. I enjoyed some racing games fifteen or twenty years ago, but had gotten away from it until I saw Assetto Corsa a few weeks ago. I don't consider myself a "car guy", but I have owned a Maserati BiTurbo and two E92-bodied Bimmers. I have (a very small amount of) track time in a Ferrari 360 Modena and an F430. I say this to establish where I'm coming from -- I'm neither a newb nor an alien, and I have a real world frame of reference.
As with flight simulators, I've been looking at the overall depth of experience in AC and now in PC. I'm rusty at the engineering side of things, and I'm having to relearn how to drive fast (not that I ever was very fast). I enjoy the study involved (and I will say that in flying, there is more study material available when learning how to get the most out of a particular machine), but I'm looking for the overall experience of driving a racing car without having to drop four hundred grand on a 458 Italia GT car. I want the systems to seem to work like the real thing. I want to apply real-world performance techniques and have the simulation behave the way I'd expect a real car to. I want to see familiar (i.e. real world) cars on the starting grid. I want to face the moment-to-moment dilemmas a real driver faces.
Yesterday, with about eight hours total play time on Project CARS, I came pretty close. In the third race weekend of my first "career" season in GT5, during a 19-lap race under cloudy skies and fog at Silverstone with 19 other cars (AI), I got the call to box for a mandatory tire change. I'd won the pole by a second-and-a-half, and had a great start, so I was leading by about two seconds and stayed out to extend my lead. It seemed like a good decision -- I set fastest lap twice, and got to about seven seconds ahead of P2 when I decided to make my mandatory stop on lap 7.
The first rain drops spattered on my windscreen right as I returned to the track. I was now in P5, but knew that the guys ahead of me had yet to box, so I decided not to go back in for wets right away -- maybe I'd luck out and the rain would not get any worse. Maybe I could get away with a 1-stop race even with the weather.
Four laps later, I skated into the gravel at Copse, and again at Brooklands, so I felt there was no going on with slicks. The second stop took longer than expected. There was an electrical problem with the car, but the crew patched it up and sent me back out into the race. By now, I was in P15, but with the rain coming harder, it was clear I'd made the right decision.
I fought hard during the remaining eight laps. The highlight of my drive was a three-way drag race down the straight to Brooklands that saw me brake first and take the outside line. That set me up to be on the inside when we went through Luffield three-abreast, and I squirted out ahead into Woodcote in P8. With one lap remaining, I did everything I could to catch the next guy, but I just couldn't get by him, so we crossed the line door-to-door, and I finished three hundredths of a second back.
It was thoroughly and completely immersive.
Now -- was it perfect? No. I don't recognize the names of the drivers. I don't recognize the cars on the starting grid. I felt like a real race engineer would have been watching the weather and let me know it was coming. Armed with that information, I'd have stayed out a lap or two longer before making my mandatory stop. But, of course, that's also hindsight. Which is TOTALLY part of the experience.
At this point, I don't care whether PC is better than AC or any other game. I know now that rainy weather doesn't bring my aging graphics card to its knees, which was a concern expressed by many of PC's detractors. That makes me skeptical about all the rest of the criticism. It's not that I believe that everyone who points out an alleged flaw in any simulation is wrong, just that I'm aware of the need to examine things for myself before coming to a conclusion.
The bottom line, in my opinion, is that every gamer's perception of a particular game is essentially second-hand; no simulation is based on reality, but on a developer's perception of reality. Therefore, a gamer's experience within the framework of a particular game will differ from what it is in any other particular game. Human bias is part of the equation.
Speaking solely for myself, I love PC *and* AC, for different reasons. But I'd love PC more if it gave me a GT class Ferrari.
I consider myself to be an inexperienced racing gamer. I enjoyed some racing games fifteen or twenty years ago, but had gotten away from it until I saw Assetto Corsa a few weeks ago. I don't consider myself a "car guy", but I have owned a Maserati BiTurbo and two E92-bodied Bimmers. I have (a very small amount of) track time in a Ferrari 360 Modena and an F430. I say this to establish where I'm coming from -- I'm neither a newb nor an alien, and I have a real world frame of reference.
As with flight simulators, I've been looking at the overall depth of experience in AC and now in PC. I'm rusty at the engineering side of things, and I'm having to relearn how to drive fast (not that I ever was very fast). I enjoy the study involved (and I will say that in flying, there is more study material available when learning how to get the most out of a particular machine), but I'm looking for the overall experience of driving a racing car without having to drop four hundred grand on a 458 Italia GT car. I want the systems to seem to work like the real thing. I want to apply real-world performance techniques and have the simulation behave the way I'd expect a real car to. I want to see familiar (i.e. real world) cars on the starting grid. I want to face the moment-to-moment dilemmas a real driver faces.
Yesterday, with about eight hours total play time on Project CARS, I came pretty close. In the third race weekend of my first "career" season in GT5, during a 19-lap race under cloudy skies and fog at Silverstone with 19 other cars (AI), I got the call to box for a mandatory tire change. I'd won the pole by a second-and-a-half, and had a great start, so I was leading by about two seconds and stayed out to extend my lead. It seemed like a good decision -- I set fastest lap twice, and got to about seven seconds ahead of P2 when I decided to make my mandatory stop on lap 7.
The first rain drops spattered on my windscreen right as I returned to the track. I was now in P5, but knew that the guys ahead of me had yet to box, so I decided not to go back in for wets right away -- maybe I'd luck out and the rain would not get any worse. Maybe I could get away with a 1-stop race even with the weather.
Four laps later, I skated into the gravel at Copse, and again at Brooklands, so I felt there was no going on with slicks. The second stop took longer than expected. There was an electrical problem with the car, but the crew patched it up and sent me back out into the race. By now, I was in P15, but with the rain coming harder, it was clear I'd made the right decision.
I fought hard during the remaining eight laps. The highlight of my drive was a three-way drag race down the straight to Brooklands that saw me brake first and take the outside line. That set me up to be on the inside when we went through Luffield three-abreast, and I squirted out ahead into Woodcote in P8. With one lap remaining, I did everything I could to catch the next guy, but I just couldn't get by him, so we crossed the line door-to-door, and I finished three hundredths of a second back.
It was thoroughly and completely immersive.
Now -- was it perfect? No. I don't recognize the names of the drivers. I don't recognize the cars on the starting grid. I felt like a real race engineer would have been watching the weather and let me know it was coming. Armed with that information, I'd have stayed out a lap or two longer before making my mandatory stop. But, of course, that's also hindsight. Which is TOTALLY part of the experience.
At this point, I don't care whether PC is better than AC or any other game. I know now that rainy weather doesn't bring my aging graphics card to its knees, which was a concern expressed by many of PC's detractors. That makes me skeptical about all the rest of the criticism. It's not that I believe that everyone who points out an alleged flaw in any simulation is wrong, just that I'm aware of the need to examine things for myself before coming to a conclusion.
The bottom line, in my opinion, is that every gamer's perception of a particular game is essentially second-hand; no simulation is based on reality, but on a developer's perception of reality. Therefore, a gamer's experience within the framework of a particular game will differ from what it is in any other particular game. Human bias is part of the equation.
Speaking solely for myself, I love PC *and* AC, for different reasons. But I'd love PC more if it gave me a GT class Ferrari.
