Project Cars 2 And The Next Evolution Of Simulation Racing

It narked me a little when Slightly Mad Studios came out and announced the crowdfunding project for a sequel to their hit before the tyres had even had a chance to really warm up in Project Cars. Something like six weeks after that game’s launch, and they were already giving people a glimpse of what they were thinking for the future. Of course, that’s just how the entertainment industry works. That crowd funding push was jarring, but it didn’t mean that Project Cars was being abandoned, far from it.

Now, however, as Project Cars 2 has been more formally and officially announced, it’s clear that 2017 signals the transition from the old to the new, and there’s plenty that Slightly Mad have been working on to take the experience of racing, their car handling, and their vision for the future of racing games in general to the next step.

So there’s big numbers bandied about – over 170 licensed cars, over 60 tracks – new disciplines like rallying, and having the dirt and mud that makes that possible. There’s LiveTrack 3.0 to give even more nuance to the track evolution and changing conditions of the original. Oh, and on PC it can support 12K – that’s three 4K screens next to each other – for anyone that’s happy to blow five grand on a gaming rig…

But the important thing is how it actually plays and, well, if you liked Project Cars and the sim racing genre as a whole, you’ll almost certainly feel right at home. It’s admittedly quite difficult to get a real feel for how the racing has actually evolved, especially when you’re dropped in to play with a gamepad, without control over the assists, and so on. This was a rather accessible form of the game, and perfectly driveable, but underneath you still have the twinkle of the potentially hard nosed simulation.

That was most apparent once racing around Fuji Speedway with the LiveTrack 3.0 being showcased through changing weather conditions. Over three laps, the game shifted from bone dry to full on rain that soaks the track, and then quickly back again. This isn’t a new trick, but it’s the best example of the game’s improved visuals, and it’s safe to say that (running on high powered PCs) it looks simply phenomenal. There’s also the very real shift in the handling, where you can brake, how fast you can go through corners, just as you’d expect.

However, LiveTrack 3.0 means a lot more than just having the weather change. It means that the track can evolve over the course of a race weekend, starting off very green and slippery on the first day, before rubbering in through practice and qualifying and into the race day. When weather affects the track, it won’t simply be a blanket change across the entire track, but there’s the potential for localised weather, so different parts of the track are getting wetter or drying out at different times. For fans of motorsports, that’s a huge deal. The number of times we’ve heard F1 commentators talking about how one particular corner hasn’t dried out yet, or team radio wondering if the track’s ready for a particular type of tyre, this could be a big step forward to giving that authentic experience.

And, of course, sitting down with a racing wheel and sliding a VR headset on will only add to that. As anyone that’s tried this set up in other games will attest, it’s simply a more natural experience, it’s more intuitive to look into corners, to quickly check your mirrors to spot where the chasing car is, and so on. Currently, all that’s confirmed is that it will support VR at launch, but if you have your fingers crossed for PSVR, it’s a case of having to wait and see. At the event, they had Oculus Rift, while HTC Vive was also supported in the original, but PSVR is tricky when SMS insist that they want to take an all or nothing approach. If PSVR is supported – perhaps through Sony allowing for it to be PS4 Pro only – it will be the whole game. No half measures.

The one other slightly sour note at this point? I really didn’t get on with driving round the recreation of the Mercedes-Benz Driving Events Winter Training Ice Track in Sweden – yes, I copied and pasted that. That said, Andy Tudor, the game’s Creative Director, admitted to us that the physics model and the surface simulation still needed to be tweaked to match their recent real life tests. Simply the fact that they’re well on their way to adding this alongside other surfaces, allowing them to bring new racing disciplines into the game is fantastic, though.

It’s a little churlish to say, but it’s basically more Project Cars. Yet, when I say that, I mean that it’s Project Cars that does more, that it goes deeper into what Project Cars wanted to be, and that it’s shaping up to be a few steps closer to achieving that.