You’re also limited to only a few big manufacturer licenses from the likes of BMW, Ford, Mercedes and Renault and one hopes SMS can attract more. Quite a few of them are fictional, however, and there’s little in the way of F1 machinery beyond a nice little Classic Lotus collection.
There’ll also be a career mode, but SMS has only announced a few details about it and we’re yet to try it ourselves.Īs far as the cars go, there’ll be loads, ranging from road-going track-day specials, tin-tops and Le Mans prototypes all the way through the single-seater range. No rewind and replay mode either, so if you crash, you pay the price – and that’s fine by us. There is no tortuous grind through a dungfield of powerless city cars here… in fact we couldn’t find any. SMS’ sandbox approach aims to get you racing for pleasure, rather than just winning in an all-out desperate crusade to level-up.
We were able to go straight to a classic Lotus 49 Grand Prix car, equipped with melodious Ford Cosworth V8 DFV, and blast straight out of the Oulton Park pits. To that end you get access to a huge range of cars, tracks, weather conditions, start times, lap counts right from the start. Project CARS is all about being user-friendly without the need to be arcadey.
#TURNING ON HEADLIGHTS PROJECT CARS PC DRIVER#
One nice touch is that with all the driver aids on, it’s still a rewarding challenge, while with them turned off it offers a rich simulation that you would expect to find in an iRacing or an rFactor – and all on a console. Even if you scale their ability, which you can do ad infinitum, they don’t do random braking.Įvery discipline is a deep simulation in its own right – and this offers promise of much depth online. The AI cars in Project CARS are bang on the pace, everywhere. While the AI still needs refining, it utterly delivers when it comes to the racing. It means that if the AI is ruthlessly ignoring your possession of the racing line, a problem we encountered on occasion, the game can easily be fine tuned.
#TURNING ON HEADLIGHTS PROJECT CARS PC PC#
And it’s the feedback from this community that defines Project CARS’ content.Įach week SMS releases a new alpha PC version to financially invested fans who, along with SMS’ in-house team, stress test it vigilantly. The CARS acronym stands for Community Assisted Racing Simulation, a title which harks from the crowd-funding concept SMS (Slightly Mad Studios) launched four years ago. The single-seaters are even more of a sensory experience, with each one harder to master as you move up the categories. The Renault Clio is different again, with the front end digging in and the light rear end skittering about until the turbo-charged engine pulls it back to order. Switch to a GT3 Aston Martin and you get a solid downforce-amplified sense of grip, as you’d expect from a heavy old GT. If you feel the car twitch, a natural application of throttle rewards you not with a destabilising tail flick a la Forza et al, but instead sees the Capri’s rear suspension squat down and settle in for the ride. We spent plenty of time inside a Group 5 Zakspeed Capri, a car with a massive rear wing that thumps out loads of stickiness at the back-end.
The specifics obviously depend on what you’re driving, but thanks to the game’s Seta tyre model it’s always accurate. Judge CARS solely on the way it handles and it’ll be right at the front of the grid. CARS looks spectacular but more importantly it’s also designed to handle beautifully.