james I think we finally agree on something haha pgr is the best arcade racer EASILY. Its not even close to sim, but it has the super duper basic stuff like lift off oversteer, spinning the rears under (or i guess I should say over) bumps, and just the entire overall way that weight distribution affects general vehicle dynamics, so you can still apply sim/real life knowledge when trying to make different cars handle different ways, its so different to all other arcade games I feel in that its total arcade (even tried it with a wheel lol you totally dont even need a wheel for it), BUT it still feels complex and dynamic, yet its fake and arcade I cant explain it lol (felt that pgr2 and 4 were the best in terms of pure driving). Pcars I feel is going to be more sim than people think, BUTTTTTT I dont think its going to be rfactor 2/assetto corsa/iracing hardcore TRUE sim. I think its going to fill in a gap where its more sim than the "simcade" Forza and Granturismo games, but still not detailed and complex enough to be a TRUE hardcore sim. I feel at the worst itll be Forza/Granturismo level. By the way I aint no pcars fan boy, infact I cant even stand playing it and i re try it every few builds. When i took the 80s turbo f1 car and just completely trashed it around the city/country side streets it was complete arcade, ok not arcade, but it was that total "claim to be a sim because its harder and more real than your typical arcade game but still total junk if you compare it to true simulator" feel. If I did in real life what I did on those city streets id be dead, dead about 17 times. But the car just took everything I did, every once in a while having some understeer or oversteer moments to remind you "Hey the car can be a handfull, Im a sim too!", yaaa , maybe in a year or 2 but not yet, definetely not even close. They seem to have the typical big company philosophy, attract and brainwash people with beutiful graphics and edited screenshots, make these awesome trailers on youtube, attract all the gamers who think they are now hardcore and playing a true vehicle sim, because thats a HUGE crowd $$$$$$$$$$$$, make everyone feel like they are Michael Schumacher, PLEASE LOL Total brainwashing and marketing crap, its smart financially obviously. The guys are pumping out new cars like they're going out of style, have insanley distorted sounds just to make the cars sound so crazy like in real life (always thought we need some more distortion in our sims, but they've over done it by about 1000x), they have these insane graphics (which by the way once your ingame look not even close to the screenshots u see littered all over the net from wanna bes who think they have stepped up to a true sim just cause the games harder than shift lol), theyre constantly comming out with new tracks as if the other tracks are just too boring now or something, please.... In 6-12 months when the new tyre model comes out and in 1.5 years when its gold im sure itll be COMPLETELY different, but when I see people saying the way it is NOW is close to as good as rfactor 2 and better than rf1 in terms of vehicle simulation of a racing car, I almost fall off my chair laughing.
As with all their titles, they feel ok nothing special upto the limit. It's when you try going over that limit, that is when they then fail. This new tyre model will certainly be interesting for them but i thought the first one was industry best? And then they updated that and that was industry best and now a new one? Personally i think rF2 has been a wake up call for them on how a tyre model should be. I'm really looking forward to trying Assetto Corsa and also whatever Simbin bring to the table now just to see how close they all are. The new Porsche sim will be an interesting insight on what SMS can do when they do a dedicated PC simulation. They are behind that, obviously not as SMS but a sister company. I would love it to be great as i am a Porsche fanatic but as soon as i found out they were behind it, my hopes dropped extremely fast rF2 and AC are dead certs for me for my sims of choice for the next few years, i just wonder if Simbin can add to that. I like what i have been seeing from Simbin in terms of tracks etc.
I will try to stay out of this discussion because frankly nothing anyone says will convince any of you one way or the other, and the only people who can convince me one way or the other are the SMS people themselves and what they do with their product. I'll just address this one bit: They freely admit that this is where they have the most problems at the moment. The transient grip behavior being too sudden is an inherent problem with every steady state model, including the brush component of the current SMS tyre model and the Pacejka model in rFactor. Every steady state i.e. non-dynamic tyre model suffers from this to some extent. They also have stated quite clearly that at the moment they don't have any of the usual "hacks" over the tyre model that are featured in other games (like rF1) to make this on the edge behavior more sensible. They're working on that at the time, one of the proposed solutions is adding a dynamic component to the tyre model. We'll see what this does, but frankly it's of fairly limited interest to me because it'll only be featured in the console version in the end. You might be right about rF2 being a wake up call (though I wouldn't be too surprised if A.J. had been thinking on similar lines in any case, since it's a pretty logical next step in modeling technology), the up and coming tyre model sounds very similar to the rF2 tyre model. Both have a dynamic brush model handling the contact patch and both have proper carcass modeling, major difference in principle being (from what I can see) that rF2 has a precalculated table based solution, compared to dynamic in A.J.'s model. Both have their good sides, rF2s best being naturally greater resolution. Waiting with excitement to see how both turn out (rF2 isn't finished yet either).
Certainly sounds like the right thing to do and step forward. Putting it into practise though i'm sure will be another story. The one thing that would bother me personally if i was an investor would be them just throwing the old funky tyre model on the console version which is gonna be the core sales? Do you not find that a little odd and in a way silly. I mean once the customers have bought the title i suppose it doesn't really matter as the sale has been done. But the current tyre model has alot of problems and in reality surely once on console it will not work as good as it would on PC. So surely it's gonna be even worse on the consoles and again the console guys will have a flawed sim from SMS. For you PC guys though that are sticking with pCARS it certainly sounds like a good step forward. The games not for me either way but will be interesting to read feedback on the new tyre. I have friends that still play it that think like i do when it comes to feel in a sim, so will be good to see how they feel.
The current model will obviously be honed to as close to perfection as it can before release obviously, the console version won't be dumbed down in that sense. =) The core tech is solid, Eero did a good job, but it is missing features needed to get it to where it needs to be. Best case scenario, there will be very little difference in how the two versions feel at the end. We'll see. But the console version getting the current tyre model (doesn't mean "in its current state") is something that can't really be avoided. The new tyre model is just too physics intensive to run on consoles. If they figure out a magic trick that'll enable them to squeeze it into the console version without sacrificing everything else, then they'll do it. At the moment though it doesn't seem likely. Oh yeah, meant to say this in the earlier post but forgot at some point. This is sort of irrelevant and a divisive subject, so I'll just say this and leave it at that, I'm not interested in a fight: From everything I've read and seen in the forums from the community and the devs themselves alike I've never gotten the feeling that what they're in any way emphasizing the console aspect. The only reason they've mentioned that consoles will bring the most money is the simple fact that EVERY SINGLE GAME SELLS MORE ON CONSOLES. Almost no matter what game we're talking about, if it's available for the consoles and the PC, it'll sell more on the consoles. Look at Skyrim for goodness's sake. I don't understand how anyone anywhere could reasonably buy Skyrim for anything else than the PC, because that's where the mods are, yet 59% of the sales are for Xbox360, 27% are for PS3 and 14% are for the PC. Even Morrowind, which is about as hardcore as open world RPGs have come since Daggerfall sold more on the Xbox. Heck, I bet that if ISI released rF2 on consoles too it'd sell more than twice what it sells on the PC alone, even without any console amenities.
